SANCTVM
Coming November 2025

Three Creators. Two cults. One city. Nothing else—except the Shadow.

Choose your cult.

       Lucia Sanctum tries not to think about the Shadow, the 400-year-old void of darkness surrounding the last city on Earth. Lucia tries not to think about the Shadowmaker, either. She doesn't believe in his creation story or the doctrines of his authoritarian cult oppressing the city's supernaturally Gifted citizens. Instead, unloved Lucia prays to the unseen stars, asking only one thing: that she be cured of her Gift, an aura of pain repulsing anyone who would befriend her.

       But when the stars finally align, they do not cure her; instead, they endow her skin with starlight—just as a new self-proclaimed creator returns to rule the city. He calls himself "the Materialist" and promises to overthrow the Shadow and its cult, to resurrect the dead, and to reform the lost world into paradise. He claims he cannot fulfill these promises without the divine light of his "prophesied" co-creator: Lucia Sanctum.

    Lucia finds his claims laughable. The only true creators are the stars, after all. Not him, not the Shadowmaker, and certainly not herself. Yet, despite all her faith, why hadn't the stars cured her Gift? Seeing her doubt, the Materialist tempts her with the cure the stars failed to provide, and now Lucia must make a choice: will she live the rest of her days alone with her isolating Gift, or will she betray the stars, live a lie of divine proportions, and rule the last city alongside a charismatic and cosmically Gifted cult leader?

        That is, unless he really is the creator of the universe.

     That is, unless the Shadowpuppets haunting the city really do herald the Shadowmaker’s return for retribution.

​​

WHO WILL YOU BELIEVE IN?