zackeryo
In the summer of 1956, the quiet Tennessee county of Redwood Vale begins to rot from the inside out.
An unexplained illness spreads through the high school first-students collapsing in hallways, coughing scarlet threads, whispering strange phrases in dead languages no one recognizes. At Redwood Vale High, the yearbook committee becomes the final witnesses to the world before it dies.
Seventeen-year-old Evelyn "Eve" Mercer, a shy, brilliant student with an obsession for philosophy and Eastern cultivation tales, starts noticing impossible things:
- classmates glowing faintly beneath their skin
- shadows moving against the light
- pages in the yearbook changing by themselves
- teachers speaking in voices that aren't theirs
As the sickness tears through the county, the outside world seals Redwood Vale in. Power lines fall. Roads are blocked. Radios chant warnings that twist midway into occult sermons. The teens realize the illness is not biological alone-it's spiritual, ritualistic, and hungry.
Their only hope lies in decoding the symbols that appear in the yearbook margins every day, symbols linked to a forgotten Xianxia-style cultivation practice buried beneath Appalachian folklore. But every revelation drags them deeper into psychological horror, unraveling their sense of reality.
As Redwood Vale collapses into a post-apocalyptic nightmare, Eve and her friends must navigate dark academia secrets, apocalyptic landscapes, and supernatural trials-and confront the truth that the illness isn't killing them...