The Story

Four acts, beat by beat. Act I is open — you learn all of it in the first ten minutes. Acts II through IV are shuttered. The endings have their own page, behind a heavier door.

Act I — Arrival

CALM → UNEASE · YOU CAUSE WHAT FOLLOWS

Sam reaches the clearing at night; the car dies on arrival. The cabin is lit and empty. Inside, a guided chain of small discoveries — the candle, the unslept bed, and on the bookshelf a journal, its strap cut — establishes Eli, Marta's warnings, and the recording. The journal's last line does the damage:

“Marta says the words only work in one direction. I think she's just old. Tomorrow I'll play it back and prove it's nothing.”

Then the radio, under the back window. Its prompt reads PLAY. The game waits — there is nothing else left to do, and that design is the act's whole argument: the horror does not happen to Sam. Sam presses the button.

Static resolves into a slow, wrong cadence. Every light dies. The door slams. Two figures stand at the tree line where no one stood a moment ago.

Act II — The Hollow Lends

SIEGE · FIGHTING BUYS TIME, NOT SAFETY
SPOILERS — ACT II, BEAT BY BEAT
  1. First contact. Quinn hunts. The objective is escape: start the car, which needs the toolbox, which is in the woodshed — beside the axe. The first swing drops Quinn; Quinn does not stay dropped. Lesson learned with the hands.
  2. The car lies. With the toolbox the engine finally turns over — and the radio in the cabin starts playing the cadence on its own, louder, and the engine dies like something pinched it out. The Hollow does not let the borrowed leave.
  3. Marta. At the graves, the white-eyed ranger speaks — the only deadite that talks. Half-lucid at moonhigh, she gives the rule: “What the recording opened, a living voice must close — at the stones, by flame, read true.” She marks three stone fragments: the bridge, the lookout, the well.

Act III — What the Ground Keeps

DESCENT · THE SAFE PLACE IS THE TRAP
SPOILERS — ACT III, BEAT BY BEAT
  1. The bridge. The first fragment hangs below the collapsed span. Taking it wakes something that comes through the trees at a run — the objective is one word, and the word is RUN. Reach the fire or get indoors.
  2. The lookout. A lights-out zone; the carried lantern is the only light, and Quinn stalks the edge of its circle.
  3. The well. The fragment is tied to a rope. Something below tugs back. No fight. Worse.
  4. The betrayal. Third fragment home, the cabin door stands open, candle out — and Eli's voice, finally, from inside. It is not Eli. The door slams, the radio blasts the cadence, and for the first time the safe place is the trap: three axe hits through your own front door, from the inside.
  5. Marta's price. A living voice must read, and the Hollow keeps what reads for it. Someone stays. Marta volunteers — “Being lent is worse than being kept, child” — if Sam holds the circle while she speaks.

Act IV — Read True

ONE ARENA, ONE READING, EVERYTHING THE GAME TAUGHT
SPOILERS — ACT IV, BEAT BY BEAT
  1. The circle. The three fragments seat into the grave markers and glow. Marta stands center, the radio at her feet playing the cadence forward while she reads it back — eight stanzas, subtitled in glyphs, her voice getting steadier as the night gets worse. A progress bar labeled THE READING is the whole battle plan.
  2. The defense. The older dead converge on her voice in patient lines; Quinn hunts you through them. Pressure on Marta loses the line and the stanza restarts. Twice, the Watcher itself comes — IT'S COMING, STAND WITH HER — and the only shield that works is standing inside the circle when it hits.
  3. The keeping. The last line is one word long. Everything stops mid-step and listens. The ground takes them gently — folded down like laundry, Quinn last, facing Sam, briefly Quinn again: “…thanks.” Marta walks to the open grave like it's a made bed. The Hollow keeps her. Then the first birdsong the game has ever played.
  4. Dawn. The sky turns its first grey-blue, the fog thins, and the car starts on the first try. “Eleven miles of nothing. Then the rest of the world.”

Design Notes

WHERE THE SHIPPED GAME DIFFERS FROM THE PLAN

The original story plan (preserved in the repo as STORY.md) differs from the shipped game in a few places, and the game is canon: the alternate ending shipped as The Road rather than the planned burned-book choice; the Watcher defense became stand with her rather than a throwable fire; the reading runs eight stanzas rather than a single 90-second timer; and Quinn's mimicry moved from “ankle” to “wrist” somewhere between the plan and the woods. The writing rules survived intact: Sam is dry, not quippy; Marta never uses contractions; the mimics always get one detail wrong; and the syllables are never rendered as real words.