0:00
0:00
↓ Read on
Gilded Ruin is a work of fiction. It is an interactive gothic story told across a website, audio, images, and objects. The cathedral, the Choir, the saints, the houses, the Archivist — all of it is invented. Any message you receive in character is part of the story. No one here is a real organisation, a real church, or a real authority over you.
What waits past this page is not gentle. I keep the record because someone must, and the record is full of grief. You should know the shape of it before you choose to read.The story deals with dark material. Among it: grief, death, loss, control, coercion, religious authority and its abuses, bodily horror, fear, and isolation. It is designed to unsettle, in the way a horror story unsettles.
It is intended for an adult audience. If you are under 18, this project is not made for you.
This is meant to be unsettling the way fiction is unsettling — never to cause you real distress. If anything here affects you more than a story should, step away. It will keep. It is not going anywhere, and nothing is lost by leaving it.
If you are struggling in real life — not in the story — please reach out to someone you trust, or a local support line in your area. The fiction can wait. You matter more than it does.
If you ever send a message indicating you may be in real danger, the character stops. You will get a person, not a performance.
Gilded Ruin is an independent creative project. The garments, the jewellery, the writing, and the world are made and kept independently; the multimedia work — the music and original soundtrack, the recordings, the voice acting, the environmental audio, and the audio engineering — is produced in partnership with Faefield Productions. The Archivist and every other voice are fictional characters, performed as part of the work.
When you support the project or buy a piece, you are supporting an independent artist making an original gothic world — not a real cathedral, and not a real choir.
Practical questions — an order, a payment, a parcel, anything real — are answered plainly. Those belong on the contact form or at thegildedarchivist@proton.me, or on the Privacy, Returns, Payment, and Terms pages.