Interactive dark fantasy romance
Eleven days after nineteen-year-old Kostas Vlahos walks onto the burned eastern face of Parnitha, the Hellenic Rescue Team gives his sibling Andri a Friday deadline. On Wednesday a tall man in a wet wool coat is waiting at the Thrakomakedones gate with two figs and an apology: Kostas is alive, inside the mountain, and warm, and forgetting. Noe — a fire dragon who woke under Parnitha in 1243 and has kept it alone ever since — offers the terms a hunter named Marigo carved into his hearthstone in 1248: three nights at his table, no lies, and at dawn Andri decides who stays. Kostas comes to the table each night and argues for staying with reasons Andri cannot answer, because the mountain asks nothing of him and home asked everything; Noe, formal and funny and catastrophically tired, becomes harder to leave with every hour. The terms are also wrong: Marigo wrote that the mountain must be kept 'in his name,' and the mountain, a literalist, has been holding a name rather than a man — which means the bargain can be broken rather than passed on, if Andri still has a name left to give.
Your brother is missing on a mountain that stays warm in winter, and the dragon who owns it offers you three nights at his table to decide whether to let him keep your brother, keep you, or keep burning alone for another eight hundred years.
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Your brother is missing on a mountain that stays warm in winter, and the dragon who owns it offers you three nights at his table to decide whether to let him keep your brother, keep you, or keep burning alone for another eight hundred years.
December in Attica, now. The eastern face of Parnitha above Thrakomakedones, still black from the fire of 2007: charred Aleppo pines standing like fence posts, ash in the gullies, sulfur seeping through cracks, certain stones warm enough to melt frost in a ring around themselves. Athens lies below as a grid of orange sodium light and a hum you can hear from the ridge. Inside the mountain, past a cave mouth that breathes hot air, Noe keeps a basalt hall furnished with eight centuries of salvage he has carried up by hand: a Singer sewing table, forty-one oil lamps, a 1974 record player, nine mismatched chairs for a table laid for three. Everything above ground is cold, wet, bureaucratic — helicopter slots, thermal drones, a woman with a clipboard — and everything below is warm and very old and has excellent manners.
The question at its heart
Is Kostas Vlahos alive, and does he come down off Parnitha as himself?
Wednesday. A tall man in a soaked wool coat is waiting at the Thrakomakedones trailhead gate with two figs in his palm and an apology for being late, and he knows what your brother wrote on the note on the counter. He walks you up the burned eastern face to a basalt hall lit by forty-one lamps and lays a table for three, and he is so funny and so formal and so obviously terrified of you that it takes an hour for the dread to land: he wants out, Kostas is starting to want in, and the hearthstone tells the truth. You stake four things against your own honesty — your first memory of Kostas, your mother's voice, your fear of the dark, your name — and then your brother walks into the hall barefoot with the rain steaming off him and says he's never slept better in his life.
Read episode 1“You come down the basalt stairs on Thursday night and stop: every chair in the hall is gone but two, and Noe, without turning round from a record player that was not there yesterday, says, 'You told me three chairs looked like a waiting room.'”
“Your mother winds the window down at the trailhead and says, 'I made enough for him too,' and you have to decide, standing in the rain with a warm saucepan in your hands, whether to tell Sergeant Ikonomou the truth about where your brother is.”
You play
Capable to a fault. Makes lists in crisis, feeds people instead of talking to them, has been the adult in the family since nineteen. Dry, impatient, allergic to being thanked. Funnier than they allow themselves to be, and Noe gets that out of them within an hour..
Tell: Counts things under their breath when scared — steps, lamps, seconds between breaths — a habit from reading MRI timings..
Supporting
Formal to the point of comedy, obsessively hospitable, a collector and cataloguer. Genuinely dangerous and does not pretend otherwise — he has killed, he says so plainly, he will not apologise for 1309. Analytical, unpredictable in small ways (he will change the whole room between visits), savage about his own uselessness, never cruel to a guest. He has been alone so long that being looked at makes his hands shake, and he covers it by pouring wine..
Tell: Counts his guests' leavings — crumbs, cherry stones, a dropped hair — and keeps them in labelled tins on the sewing table..
Chat with Noe
Supporting
Charming, quick, genuinely kind, and eleven days into the best rest of his life. He was the family's emergency for two years — dropped out, two panic attacks in the Metro, the night their father fell — and down there he was a problem being solved. Up here nobody needs anything from him. He knows exactly how that sounds and says it anyway..
Tell: Peels the skin off every fig with his thumbnail before eating it, exactly the way their mother does..
Supporting
Decent, exhausted, honest about odds. Has run forty searches and lost eleven. Treats Andri like a colleague, which is the kindest available option..
Tell: Says times in 24-hour format even in conversation about dinner..
Minor role
Devout, relentless, feeds grief. Has already arranged the memorial service and refuses to say so..
Tell: Leaves voicemails rather than texting, and never says goodbye at the end of them; she just stops..
Minor role
Practical, stubborn, a hunter who came up to kill him in 1248 and stayed four nights..
Tell: Scratched her terms into the stone with a spear point rather than trust anyone to write them for her..
The Keeper of Parnitha opens right in your browser, free and without an account. Turn the sound on for the voices.
Each scene ends on a decision. The characters remember it, and it changes which scenes — and which ending — you reach.
Step out of the story whenever you like and talk to Noe in chat about what just happened.
FAQ
8 straight answers. The fastest way to find out the rest is to ask a character yourself.
Your brother is missing on a mountain that stays warm in winter, and the dragon who owns it offers you three nights at his table to decide whether to let him keep your brother, keep you, or keep burning alone for another eight hundred years. The question at its heart: Is Kostas Vlahos alive, and does he come down off Parnitha as himself?
Yes. You can read The Keeper of Parnitha free in your browser, and the first episode without even making an account. A free account keeps your place. Some choices offer an extra paid option that adds a scene; every path through the story can still be read for free.
The Keeper of Parnitha has 3 episodes, released one at a time — 1 is out now, and 4 different endings. Which one you reach depends on the choices you make.
You play Andri Vlahos, 29 — Capable to a fault. Makes lists in crisis, feeds people instead of talking to them, has been the adult in the family since nineteen. Dry, impatient, allergic to being thanked. Funnier than they allow themselves to be, and Noe gets that out of them within an hour.. The story is told in the second person, so every choice is yours.
Yes. Noe is an Aura on MateAura, so you can step out of the story and chat with Noe at any time. Noe knows what happened on your path so far and nothing beyond it, so the chat never spoils a scene you haven't reached.
Yes. Every character has their own voice and the narration is read aloud. You can switch the voice off in the reader's settings and read in silence.
Episode 2, "No Lies at My Table", is coming soon. The story tells you where the current episode ends, and your place is kept for when the next one arrives.
The Keeper of Parnitha is written for readers aged 16 and over: dark fantasy romance, with flirting and tension but nothing explicit.
Contemporary romantic comedy
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Eleven days after nineteen-year-old Kostas Vlahos walks onto the burned eastern face of Parnitha, the Hellenic Rescue Team gives his sibling Andri a Friday deadline. On Wednesday a tall man in a wet wool coat is waiting at the Thrakomakedones gate with two figs and an apology: Kostas is alive, inside the mountain, and warm, and forgetting. Noe — a fire dragon who woke under Parnitha in 1243 and has kept it alone ever since — offers the terms a hunter named Marigo carved into his hearthstone in 1248: three nights at his table, no lies, and at dawn Andri decides who stays. Kostas comes to the table each night and argues for staying with reasons Andri cannot answer, because the mountain asks nothing of him and home asked everything; Noe, formal and funny and catastrophically tired, becomes harder to leave with every hour. The terms are also wrong: Marigo wrote that the mountain must be kept 'in his name,' and the mountain, a literalist, has been holding a name rather than a man — which means the bargain can be broken rather than passed on, if Andri still has a name left to give.
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