The first night

0 · Watch it first (2 min)

A recorded run with callouts pointing at each element as it appears:

The video is a real run on a fixed seed — the same words, the same tide, every time. What you do with them is the only variable.

1 · Your hand

You begin with four words: EARTH, FIRE, NAME, ONE. They are the Start Set — the only words the library gives you outright. Your hand holds at most four; new words arrive one or two per night from the run's pool.

2 · SPEAK — the word is the key

SPEAK casts a word's inscribed effect: attack an Eater, heal, or open the final Gate. Power scales with tier. In the Vestibule you will meet the Vault — a locked chest. SPEAK a gold (T3) word to open it. The word is the key, and the key is spent: the word is torn from your vocabulary forever.

3 · OFFER — biding time

OFFER sacrifices a word to repel the Eaters' tide. It is low-risk survival: the word is gone, but the tide recedes and the night passes. When you have nothing you want to lose, OFFER is how you keep breathing.

4 · The Fade — hoarding is taxed

Unspent words erode on their own, letter by letter, faster the longer you hold them. At two letters or fewer a word becomes its glyph — coarse, weakened, still usable. At zero it is consumed: logged forever to the Wall of Consumed Words. The library keeps exactly what you refuse to use.

5 · The Eaters

Every second night the Eaters advance one edge toward the library. If they reach it, the archive falls — the Devouring ending. You never lose health; you lose ground, and the ground is made of words.

6 · The Wall

Every ending lands on the Wall of Consumed Words: what you spent, rendered in dying typography, with the ending's final word last. Your browser keeps the ledger — see Your Archive.

---

Ready? Begin at the library. Want to know what a word can do before you spend it? Browse the Words.