KSetyanto
If It Ends With Me is a slow-burn psychological novella set in post-World War II rural Vermont. Two veterans, Cordell and Leonard, retreat to an inherited horse farm believing that labor, routine, and isolation can restore what the war fractured. The barn-old, weathered, and familiar-becomes the center of that hope.
At first, the land behaves as expected. The horses settle. The structure holds. But subtle irregularities begin to surface: unexplained pressure against the walls, animals reacting in unison, sounds without clear source. Cordell responds by reinforcing the barn, convinced that stability can be imposed through effort and resolve. Leonard, increasingly uneasy, begins to doubt that resistance is the right answer.
As winter deepens, the farm grows more isolated, and the distinction between environmental stress, psychological strain, and something unnamed begins to blur. When the barn finally collapses inward under forces no one can fully explain, the men are forced to confront the cost of holding on too tightly.
Told through restrained prose, the story refuses easy answers. It is less concerned with what causes the collapse than with what it reveals: about pride, control, silence between men, and the danger of mistaking endurance for strength.
If It Ends With Me is a story about pressure-structural, emotional, and human-and what happens when something is pushed beyond the shape it was meant to hold.