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Cast

World

Cast

Horror Mystery Thriller
1 story · 30 chapters · 3+ hours of reading

Begin Here

Separation

Chapter one · What She Left Behind

Some of this world is for members only · $9 a month unlocks everything →

The Premise

Imagine a world exactly like ours, with one difference. Your shadow tells the truth.

Not a metaphor. When you lie, your shadow doesn't. When you smile at someone you can't stand, the shape on the wall behind you leans away. When you want something you'd never say out loud, it reaches for it. You can control your face. You spend your whole life learning to control the thing on the floor, and most people get good enough to make it through a workday.

Most people.

So you learn the rules everyone learns. You don't take a first date somewhere bright. You interview for jobs in rooms with the blinds half drawn. You watch what your kid's shadow does before you believe a word out of their mouth. It's just how things are. It's the ocean you swim in, and you stop noticing the water.

Then you notice something small. A shadow that's a beat too still. A shadow pointing the wrong way. A shadow doing something the person it belongs to would never, ever do.

And you can't stop noticing it.

Every story in Cast starts there, with one ordinary life and one small wrong thing on the floor beside it. Nobody explains the shadows. Nobody ever has. You just live with them, and read them, and hope the one attached to you keeps your secrets a little longer than it wants to.

Read them somewhere the light is good.

The Stories

01

Separation

Your shadow shows what you're really thinking.

Not what you're saying. Not what you're pretending. What you actually want. What you're about to do. The lie you're telling gets exposed the second your shadow moves.

This is just how the world works. Always has been. Everyone's adapted. Job interviews happen in bright rooms. First dates in dark restaurants. Politicians master shadow control or they don't make it past their first debate. Kids learn to manage their thoughts before they learn to tie their shoes.

Most people get pretty good at it. Some never do.

And sometimes shadows separate from their people entirely. Usually during extreme psychological distress. Suicide attempts. Severe trauma. The shadow just refuses to participate anymore and walks away.

The Department of Shadow Services collects them. Stores them in facilities called Wards. That's their job. Keep separated shadows contained and catalogued. Keep society running smooth.

These 33 stories follow people living in this world. The collector who retrieves abandoned shadows. The nanny whose shadow bonds with the kids. The senator whose career depends on perfect shadow control. The guy on a first date who notices something very wrong with his date's shadow.

Each story is its own complete nightmare. Personal horror that scales bigger the more you think about it. The kind that starts with someone's shadow giving them away at the worst possible moment and ends with you lying awake wondering what your own shadow knows that you don't.

Welcome to Cast. Where everyone can see what you're hiding. Where your body betrays your secrets. Where the truth has a shadow.

And that shadow might know something you really don't want to find out.

30 chapters · 225 min read · 29 free chapters · 1 member chapter

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Every World. Story. Chapter. Word.

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29 worlds · 35 stories · 446 chapters · 66+ hours of reading
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