Dead Summer (Yankylma. Mystics of the Ural Villages)

Lost in the deep wilderness of the taiga are villages that can’t be found on any map. Entities that can look like people. Ancient menkvs and kulyas that lead travelers away so they disappear forever. This isn’t a collection of tall tales—it’s an ethnographic horror woven from Ural legends and suffused with a cold, uneasy atmosphere.

The story unfolds in a forgotten-by-God village at the edge of the world. Hoping to start a new life, the main character leaves for the city, but homesickness brings him back. Here everything seems frozen: life has stopped, and time has ceased to move. What once felt long buried in memory begins to awaken and slowly draw the hero into the abyss.

Will he be able to accept a reality in which the boundary between the living and the dead has been erased?