Pulchra_Aurum
[Amazing cover by @shedrawscartoons]
BOOK 1 OF THE HORKOS TETRALOGY
Four teenage friends make a pact to commit suicide together when their family struggles have them stifled to no end. Ten years later, they reenact the pact following their school's jubilee cum reunion, only to awaken a malevolent entity known as The Horkos.
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A decade ago, four teenagers; Ha-ra, the perfectionist drowning under her mother's cruel expectations; Kiel, the star athlete masking his father's violence; Yosef, the survivor grappling with guilt and suffering recurring nightmares; and Cyan, the unwilling heir, etched a suicide pact in Waltham High's old derelict gym. They survived the attempts they took, but the scars never faded.
A decade later, back to the school's gleaming campus for its jubilee slash reunion, a drunken push leads them to reenact the pact, laughing through tears. But when the new oath settles, something changes.
The Horkos awakens.
Form shifting between shadow and a version of themselves, they are left to grapple with the weight of their oath. It feeds on everything they give; their regrets, guilt, the oath itself, twisting the vow they longed to abandon into a curse.
Complete the pact, or watch everyone you loved die in your place.
But as the entity tightens its grip, the friends uncover a darker truth. Their pact was never private. The Horkos has lurked in Waltham's soil for centuries, binding oath-breakers to its ledger. To survive, they must commit to their oath or let one bear the full cost.
Death had never been a choice for them.
Only a sentence.