As a lowly cartographer's apprentice, you know every hidden path and shadowed corner of your village—but nothing prepares you for the forbidden ritual you stumble upon in the dead of night. Your mentor and the elders see you, and suddenly you're the key to finishing their dark rite—or the blood they need to spill. With survival on the line and trust shattered, you must navigate a web of secrets and decide: become the instrument of a terrible power, or the martyr who stops it. A tale of dark secrets, impossible choices, and the cost of forbidden knowledge.
The story begins
The chill of the valley night bit through your wool coat as you slipped between the crooked houses, drawn by the low, rhythmic chant you'd heard from your attic window. You knew better than to follow it. You'd grown up on the stories—the disappearances, the bargains, the price the village paid to stay green while the world beyond withered.
But curiosity, that old traitor, pulled your feet over the cobblestones to the square's edge. A ring of torches guttered in the windless dark, and at their center, the elders stood in a circle around a stone altar older than the village itself. Master Elian's voice rose above the others, a name you didn't know, and in his hands he held a blade that caught the torchlight like a star.
The chanting stopped. Forty pairs of eyes turned, and found you.
Master Elian lowered the blade. "There you are," he said, and his voice was almost gentle. "We thought you'd come."
The circle parted, and you saw what lay on the altar: a girl your age, bound and weeping.
What happens next is up to you.
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