The Orchard of Return
You've come home to your family's cursed orchard, but the trees remember why you left.
Fifteen years ago, you fled the apple orchard that fed your family for generations, escaping the bargain that kept its soil fertile. Now your mother is dead, her bones buried beneath the roots, and the orchard's ghost has summoned you back as its new groundskeeper. To pay the soil's debt, you must harvest the apples that grow from her grave—but every fruit you pick carries a memory, and the trees speak in her voice. Can you tend the land that consumed your mother, or will the orchard claim you too? A haunting tale of survival and redemption awaits.
The story begins
The branch snapped beneath your boot with a sound like a bone breaking, and you froze mid-step, your breath catching in your throat. Around you, the orchard breathed—ancient trees shifting in the dusk wind, their leaves whispering secrets you couldn't quite hear. The apples hung heavy on every limb, each one glowing with a soft, internal light, like embers caught in glass.
You'd come here to escape. That much you knew. The city, the noise, the man who'd broken your heart and taken half your savings—all of it was a hundred miles behind you, a world away from this hillside of black soil and honey-scented air.
A figure moved between the trees.
You saw only a silhouette, tall and broad-shouldered, pausing as it noticed you. The setting sun caught the edge of a jaw, the curve of a shoulder. Then it spoke, the voice rough like bark and smoke.
"You're not supposed to be here."
What happens next is up to you.
Or read in the app
More like this
The Steady Stoker
MatureYou are the only one who knows the dead have returned—and the family's fortune is built on their lie.
The Hollow Man's Return
MatureYou came back to face your past—but the village is sealed in a living tomb, and only your shame can cut through it.
The Charnel House Legacy
MatureYou dig the graves beneath a dying noble house—until the dead name you their heir.
The Gilded Puppet
You staged every discovery—until a real map falls into your hands, and the wilderness you faked becomes your only way out.
The Unmade Mapmaker
You drew the world that made you — now erase the lies and find the real one.
The Painted Firmament
You've lived your whole life in a village with painted stars overhead—and now the painter is watching you.