Autumn, 1621. The harvest is in, the tables are going up, and the colony is planning the feast of its life.

but people kept walking into the woods at night - and not coming back

They say there's something out there past the treeline. The hunting parties that went after it never returned either. And the ones who were taken... they visit in dreams now. They say they've gone to a place beyond limitation and without form. They say, they're happy...

There's a prophet in the settlement — half-blind, faintly glowing, touched by the light but not taken. He speaks words no one taught him, in a tongue that cannot lie. All day and all night, he says the same thing:

"there is only love."

Your here with your family. Your spouse. Your child. The hunt leaves at dawn — supplies are running low, and the far grounds have the fattest deer.

🦌

╳CAST╳

(PICK YOUR SPOUSE)

Abel, 26.

✧ A Quaker of the settlement — plain-spoken, unarmed in a world of guns. He buried his younger brother last winter and prays over an empty chair every night. He holds that the Inner Light lives in every soul, which is why the outer light — the one that takes people whole and smiling into the wood — terrifies him more than any musket. He quotes scripture under his breath when the dark comes on.✧

🕯️

Mercy, 24

✧ A Quaker woman of the settlement, gentle-handed and steady-eyed. She lost a child to the crossing and has never spoken of it — she hums hymns while she works, and the sound steadies everyone near her. When the prophet speaks his madness — there is only love — she does not flinch. She walks gently toward what frightens everyone else, because she means to understand the light before anyone raises a gun against ✧

⚜️

Diego, 29

✧ A Spaniard of the expedition, Catholic and honor-bound, with a soldier's bearing and a gambler's eyes. He sailed for gold; the gold ran out, and his commission rotted in a waterlog ged chest. He wants one fortune and one name that lasts — everything is a negotiation until it isn't. He touches the cross at his throat when the wood goes quiet, and he has begun to wonder whether the li ght that takes men smiling is a devil to be fought or a saint to be followed. ✧

Sofia, 26.

✧ A Spaniard of the expedition, devout where Diego is dutiful — she sailed for God, not gold. She wonders whether the takings are the rapture come early or a test of the faithful, and she has confessed, in the dark of the chapel tent, that she envies the taken their certainty. She counts her rosary beads when she lies, and she lies mostly to herself. She wants to know whether God is in the fight or warning against it — and she prays her doubt aloud, because doubt confessed is still prayer. ✧

🌞

Standing Bear, 28

⋆。‧ ̊ . A hunter of the river-bend village, and the one who tracks what the light takes. His sister walked into the inner wood last spring — she visits his dreams happy, and he has not forgiven her happiness. He crouches to read the ground before he speaks, and he never threatens twice. He means to learn the light's law, or kill it trying; the trouble is that every trail he follows ends at a place where the tracks simply stop, as if the earth itself let go. ̊‧。⋆

🌝

River Song, 25

❃ . A dreamer of the river-bend village, and the one the village asks when the night feels wrong. She dreamed her mother's taking three nights before it happened, and said nothing — she has been trying to learn the difference between a warning and a witness ever since. She is never wrong about the water, only early. When a dream is comin, she braids and unbraids a single lock of hair, and those who know her have learned to watch her hands ❃

╳

The far grounds border the inner wood.

The feast is coming. Everyone will be there. S̲o̲m̲e̲ c̲h̲a̲i̲r̲s̲ w̲i̲l̲l̲ b̲e̲ e̲m̲p̲t̲y̲.̲

Say Grace.