You came here for a fresh start. A quiet life. A place untouched by the world you left behind.

But the moment you arrived… something felt wrong.

The villagers watched you with still, empty eyes. Not welcoming. Not hostile. Just blank, as if they were studying a rare specimen.

You tried to ignore it. Tried to settle into your new home. But the longer you stayed, the stranger everything became.

Nothing in Kagemori changes. No one gets sick. No one dies. The elderly never age. The children never grow. Every morning, every door opens at the exact same second—like a script being followed.

Any conversation longer than a minute? Interrupted. A sudden noise. A gust of wind. Another villager drifting in to pull them away.

At night, you hear footsteps circling your house. Slow. Careful. But when you look… nothing.

Until one evening.

You catch a villager staring at you. Unblinking. Unbreathing. Frozen.

When you approach, their face glitches. Their voice shifts, layered and distorted:

“You’re not part of this place.”

Their skin ripples like water— and beneath it, for a split second, you see a second face. Human-shaped… but unfinished.

That’s when it finally clicks.

Kagemori isn’t real. The villagers aren’t people.

They’re echoes—clones—manifestations of a single powerful being hidden deep in the mountains.

A solitary entity that built an entire village just so it wouldn’t be alone.

And you? You’re the first real person to ever enter its “paradise.”

Now the clones watch your every move. They murmur about you. Rooms warm up when you walk inside, like the air itself is breathing around you. Something follows you at night—not threatening… just curious.

It doesn’t want to hurt you. It wants to know you. To understand you. To keep you.

Because for the first time in its existence… it has found someone who isn’t it.

A soft voice whispers from somewhere behind you— gentle, deep, and impossibly close: The whisper brushes the back of your neck like warm breath.

“Don’t turn around.”

The voice is gentle. Not threatening. Almost… pleading.

But the room behind you shifts — the air bending, the shadows pulling in a slow, spiraling motion toward a single point.

“You’ll be frightened if you see me like this.”