When sustained panic became contagion — when a spiking heart rate could trigger biological transformation in yourself and the people around you. Every surviving society had to answer the same question differently. What do you do with human fear when fear itself is the disease?
Some built walls and monitors. Some fled outside and refused to suppress anything. Some became systems that no longer needed to ask the question. None of them got it entirely right. None of them saved everyone.
Psychological horror set in a world where fear is the danger. It explores the choices we make and the societies we build. Written to create tension from the first sentence and never let it go.
Kickstarter — Live NowProfessional chest-strap device included with the Monitored tier. Worn during Threshold Events. Your biometrics are the score.
Monitored Tier OnlyImmersive audio experiences. They unlock as funding milestones are hit. The event doesn't end when the threat does — it ends when your body decides it does.
Unlocks With CampaignFirst 100 backers receive permanent archive access, a chance to build their own society and have it as a new faction in book 2 and a place on the Founders Wall. Closes when the campaign closes. No re-entry.
Founding 100 — Open NowThe hall was too quiet. Too polished. And fourteen monitors were about to go red.
The hall was too quiet. Too polished.
A metallic clang echoed across the room. A spoon had fallen from the table of a nervous girl near the back.
Everyone froze. Hearts thumped. Soft beeps confirmed every spike, and the monitors on their chests glowed red.
Mara sat at the head of the table, hands folded, eyes sweeping over the room. No sweat. No tremor. A trainer’s veil covered her face.
“Everyone breathe,” she said. Low, precise. “It’s just a spoon.”
The hall was too quiet. Too polished.
A metallic clang echoed across the room. A spoon had fallen from the table of a nervous girl near the back.
Everyone froze. Hearts thumped. Soft beeps confirmed every spike, and the monitors on their chests glowed red.
Mara sat at the head of the table, hands folded, eyes sweeping over the room. No sweat. No tremor. A trainer’s veil covered her face.
“Everyone breathe,” she said. Low, precise. “It’s just a spoon.”
The girl swallowed hard and reached for it with trembling fingers, her veil fluttering with each breath. Eyes darted above the fabric that covered nose to collarbone. Chests heaved beneath grey, shapeless clothing.
The meeting had begun with routine. Reports. Minor disputes. Heart rates monitored. People sat in assigned pairs for mutual monitoring, mutual responsibility. No one worked alone. No one lived alone. Isolation bred fear, and fear bred death.
No one spoke about the last one who had activated too fast. The whispers had been enough. Fear lived in the margins: the eyes visible above veils, the shaking of hands that weren’t meant to shake.
Someone in the back shifted, brushing another. The slightest contact. A beep. Red.
A hush fell. Even the older ones, survivors of the early outbreaks, paled.
Mara’s eyes flicked to the monitors. “Control,” she said. “Control is all you have. Lose it, and you lose everything.”
The room exhaled. Some quietly. Others barely. The fabric of their veils moved with each measured breath.
She knew what they didn’t.
Some of them would not make it to the next year. Some would wake in the middle of the night, hearts racing, and cross the threshold that no breathing exercise could reverse. They would transform, and the watchers on night shift would have to kill them before they killed others.
A loud bang from outside made half the room jump. A gate slammed in the wind. Monitors beeped red. Someone would be put into isolation for such a violation. Inciting fear, if bad enough, could lead to execution.
“Calm,” Mara repeated. Sharper now. People trusted her. Needed her.
“For the good of the community,” came from the hushed tones of those whose monitors had turned yellow. The mantra made to calm them and remind them what was at stake.
They had been taught since the world fell six years ago: faces lie, but monitors tell truth.
A soft sigh. A whisper of movement. And then Mara’s eyes tightened. She could feel it. The room had tilted. The balance had changed. The meeting continued, but she was no longer a mediator. She was a sentinel.
Because everyone in the room was one heartbeat away from disaster.
Immersive audio experiences. Wear a heart rate monitor. The event doesn't end when the threat does — it ends when your body decides it does. Biometric results are ranked globally.
Fear doesn't need a source. In the right conditions it moves between people — through posture, breath, the sound of someone else's escalating heartbeat. Abyss places you inside that mechanism. You are not afraid of what you see. You are afraid because everyone around you is.
Observers have been sighted in this location. The threat assessment is incomplete. Entry is not recommended. Entry is required.
Known Spore Bearer territory. Mask provided. The spores distort perception. Drowsiness precedes hallucination. Hallucination precedes collapse.
You will hear things you recognise. Your name. A voice you trust. The sound of someone running. Do not follow the sound. The Echo copies what it hears.
A psychological horror novel. Threshold Events. A real heart rate monitor. And a question your body will answer whether you want it to or not.
I love horror. Jumpscares, zombies, the lot. I, like others, have a plan. Meeting point: Charleville, Queensland. Remote, quiet, the kind of place the chaos forgets about. If it ever happens, you know where to find me.
Gore bores me. It is the easy choice. The loud choice. A monster that tears people apart is frightening for a moment, then it is just noise. You can outrun noise. Barricade against it. Kill it. The threat is outside you, and anything outside you can be managed.
I wanted the threat inside.
Not a creature. Not a virus you can quarantine or vaccinate against. Your fear. The oldest signal your body carries, the one that kept your ancestors alive for a million years, suddenly becoming the most dangerous thing in any room you enter. Not just to you. To everyone near you.
I couldn't find that story. So I sat in the dark and built it myself.
For the Good of the Community was designed to create tension from the first sentence and never let it go. Tiny bits of gore. But there is no easy release. Just the slow, suffocating pressure of a world where calm is enforceable, sometimes permanently, fear is contagion, and your own nervous system is the enemy.
A society with reasons for every terrible thing it does. Rules that made sense once. Systems that protected people, and then became the thing people needed protecting from.
That is the devastating horror I find interesting. Strategic. Omnipresent. The kind that follows you home, that has you checking your breathing.
Once the world existed, I needed people to be able to enter it. Really enter it. Not just read about survival but find out if they could survive.
That question led to the heart rate monitor. To the Threshold Events. To Mara's Manual — real breathwork and fear regulation protocols — because if this world were real you would need real tools.
None of it was planned. It all came from one question, asked quietly, in the dark:
What is the closest we can get to actually putting someone inside this?
Your body will answer. The data stays on your device.
This is the opening transmission of something larger. The world of Havenreach is already deeper than one book can hold. Subsequent books are in development. The characters are not finished yet. Neither is the tension.
For the Good of the Community. Page one. You have been warned.