u/Imaginary_Ease_7851

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Story Link Here.

(edit: I forgot to add the d**n link again. Every. Single. Time)

Yes, I know it's a fourth chapter and at this point it's probably better to find beta readers. But bear with me. You know how tricky the whole beta reader thing is and the crits here are better.

Premise: in an 18th century rural coastal village, girls often have uncanny and preternatural abilities the call the lure. But when three men are murdered and dismembered, fear over witchcraft lands an ensemble group of five girls, known for having lure, and making it stronger in secret rituals called esbats, in the crosshairs of a witch trial.

Story is told through the lens of Marcella, retrospectively explaining events to specific person years after.

Sorry for the lore dump but it's the fourth chapter and I don't expect anyone to go back and read the others:

This chapter follows on events in Chapter 3, where Marcella and her older sister Rose are being taken to a smokehouse to be held with other girls after the murders.

Some things are going to get a bit lost because a lot isn't explicitly stated. Briefly: Rose can affect what people feel, Marcella can hear almost everything (with certain constraints), Alice can make somebody believe something (not necessarily for long) if she says it, Kitty can slip through tiny gaps and become very hard to see (not invisible, your eyes just don't register her properly), and Ruth has a gift for finding missing things. (Might change Ruth's name after this because it's phonetically similar to Rose.

Okay, that's it.

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This a third chapter, but please don't be put off. Basically, chapter 1 establishes a world set in a coastal village in 1700s. Witchcraft is still a capital offense (kind of) but girls are born with little preternatural/uncanny gifts known as the Lure. Chapter 1 sets up the narrator, Marcella, who is deeply emotionally enmeshed with her sister, Rose.

Chapter two ends with the girls returning from the moors to find that their village, Aldhaven is in a state. 3 men have been murdered, one of them a boy that Rose may have had been involved with.

Link Here

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I hesitated to put something up so long, but I need to move on from this chapter. It's a literary crossover with a dark gothic fantasy. The story is told retrospectively from an older version of the protagonist, Marcella, so at times she addresses the reader directly. It's part of a frame story that relates to her testimony over what happened.

Link Here

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This is a second chapter. Don't worry, I don't think anybody has to read chapter one to be able to follow. Basically, it's a rural 18th century type setting, where are girls are born with certain preternatural abilities called the lure, in an era where witch craft can still have catastrophic consequences. Any feedback is welcome. Link here

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1321 Edit. I just realized I didn't make this document accessible when I posted. Sorry. This part of a literary Gothic fantasy. A new first chapter so you don't have to have read anything prior. It's a story told retrospectively, first person, so if the tone feels older than sixteen, it's because the narrator is older and the older voice leaks through. It's a was a little rushed, so not as clean as it could be.

Link here

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Hey. This chapter 1, minus the frame story. A few notes: this is a literary gothic style fantasy. There is a frame story. The narrator is a much older Marcella writing to a Mr. Talbot to explain what happened when she was 16. I left the frame out of this chapter; it's in my first post with my prologue. Link here

[1283] Sorry. New here had some issues. Here is the link to opening via Google docs to keep the formatting. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HkSZQKfMuw5NM5GEuuyetxFMet3UWZAbVna7Nv5Mpjk/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.lf52t4xgpnbl