For Heather Morell, nightmares and hallucinations lurk around every corner, relics of schizophrenia and childhood bereavement.
Until she meets Raine and Evelyn, that is — self-proclaimed bodyguard and bad-tempered magician — and learns she’s not insane at all. The spirits and monsters she sees are all too real, the god-thing in her nightmares is teaching her how to surpass human limits, and her twin sister who supposedly never existed could still be alive, somewhere Outside, beyond the walls of reality.
Heather plunges into a world of eldritch magic and fanatic cultists, trying to stay alive, stay sane, and deal with her own blossoming attraction to dangerous women. But being ‘In The Know’ isn’t all terror and danger. Sometimes the monsters wear nice dresses and stick around for afternoon tea. Sometimes you find you have more in common with them than you think. Perhaps this is Heather’s chance to be something more than the defeated husk she’d grown up as, to find real friendship and meaning among things like herself - and perhaps, out there on the rim of the possible, to bring her twin sister back from the dead.
Katalepsis is a Ancient Greek word which means ‘comprehension’, or perhaps more accurately, ‘insight’.
Katalepsis is a serial web novel about cosmic horror and human fragility, urban fantasy and lesbian romance, set in a sleepy English university town.
New chapters are currently posted once a week, on Saturdays.
The first four arcs (Volume I) are also now available as an ebook and audiobook. If you've just finished one of those and you're here to pick up where the story left off, you'll want the start of arc 5: https://www.scribblehub.com/read/74472-katalepsis/chapter/80127/
Cover art by Noctilia: https://noctilia.artstation.com/
This is a Scribblehub mirror of Katalepsis' own website, located here: https://katalepsis.net/ Chapters will be posted at the same time here as on the main site, every week.
- sediment in the soul – 19.2Nov 19, 2022
- sediment in the soul – 19.1Nov 12, 2022
- loyal to the nightmare of my choice – 18.8Nov 5, 2022
- loyal to the nightmare of my choice – 18.7Oct 29, 2022
- loyal to the nightmare of my choice – 18.6Oct 22, 2022
- loyal to the nightmare of my choice – 18.5Oct 15, 2022
- loyal to the nightmare of my choice – 18.4Oct 8, 2022
- loyal to the nightmare of my choice – 18.3Oct 1, 2022
- loyal to the nightmare of my choice – 18.2Sep 24, 2022
- loyal to the nightmare of my choice – 18.1Sep 17, 2022
- pale student of unhallowed arts – 17.15Sep 10, 2022
- pale student of unhallowed arts – 17.14Sep 3, 2022
- pale student of unhallowed arts – 17.13Aug 27, 2022
- pale student of unhallowed arts – 17.12Aug 20, 2022
- pale student of unhallowed arts – 17.11Aug 13, 2022
- Content Warning
All Rights Reserved- Ongoing - Updated Nov 19, 2022
- 932 reading
- 188 plan to read
- 17 completed
- 28 paused
- 26 dropped
I can't believe I have found such an amazing story available online. The vocabulary, writing style, character interactions, and plot are incredible. I have read some "best sellers" that were not even close to as interesting as this story. The characters don't fit specific "roles" all the time like many stories do. You can clearly feel the characters changing as the story moves on, and not always just improving like many other stories. They sometimes contradict themselves while still trying to maintain the "self" that they believe they are. It makes everyone feel so real, as humans rarely stick to their convictions and are often hypocrites to their own ideals. The story also builds a great "horror" without the constant death of characters. It is just like many of my favorite Lovecraft shorts; horror though atmosphere rather than gore. I feel like I could right a small essay on this work but that would just bore everyone so I will end it here with a "This Story is a 5 Star Story" that I would recommend to any of my horror/dark inclined friends. Thank You soooo much to the Author for sticking with this story!
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This story is fantastic! The relationships between the MC, Heather, and her friends, Raine and Evelyn, is so well developed. I want more! I highly recommend reading this book. Don't skip out on it.
The first meetings that the MC, Heather, has with her new girlfriend, Raine, and new best friend, Evelyn, are pretty awkward. For example, Heather and Raine meet when Heather is bent over a toilet emptying her stomach from Cthulu sickness, and her meeting with Evelyn has Eve being very rude to Heather. However, starting from Heather's second meeting with Evelyn where Heather saves her life, Heather's relationship with Raine and Evelyn improve tremendously. Evelyn sincerely apologizes for her rude behavior, and Raine eventually makes it clear that she wants a relationship with Heather. I absolutely adore their interactions together.
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Simply a 5 stars. Can't say anything more.
Plot, story, characterd, world building, drama, investigation, mind hack, and of cour yuri. Just read it.
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This story can be described only as the work of art. Deep world building, deep characters, story flow not letting you go from reading every sentence and not skip smallest details. Definitely great story. ?
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What if the Cthulhu mythos was not used as a reference in the middle of other fantasy systems and power ladders?
The author of this magnificent, disturbing, brilliant and offputting story could easily write a segment in the Necronomicon and I would believe that it should be there.
To the uninitiated; be prepared for a psychological mind trip the likes you most probably have never read before and only very few people can ultimate draw out.
This is an existential horror story about a young girl and her coping against the unknown Outside.
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It was very difficult to read because of the constant self-pity from the protagonist. A helpless victim, unable to do anything and waiting for people to impose their kindness.
Too much drama. However, the most important twist in the plot (related to the twin) was presented so casually that it had no effect on me. Partly because of the overdramatization, partly because it was immediately obvious that the protagonist hadn't lost her mind.
And the protagonist's romantic interest is the person who is willing to give her everything she needs. She doesn't even need to do anything - the girl, as you can expect from the first chapters, will take the first steps herself.
Perhaps this was to be expected from a story about girls love, but the absence of any male characters in positive roles still bothers me very much. Analyzing the structure of the story and its elements, I can only come to one conclusion: this is an ode to infantilism. Give the heroine safety, warmth, carelessness, passivity and "we", that is, return her to her mother. Not to the biological mother, and not to the one in the story, but to the ideal one. And let this ideal mother do her job properly and help the heroine to stand on her feet in this terrible cruel and suffering world. And never lets go. Although there is a paradox in this...
For five full chapters, I still did not understand what kind of personality the heroine was. Except that she loves to read and suffers constantly. The desire to be normal and date a girl who plays the role of a savior knight is too faceless and dull. Even if the heroine is in the position of a child, I want to see some features that make her a unique person, and not just a blank for the projection of readers' desires. Otherwise, what's the point of narrating in the first person?
The approach to magic was very interesting to me, but otherwise the story only repulsed me. Perhaps I will come back to study the text from the position of a person who also wants to write something and analyzes other people's work, or if I just get bored. There is still hope that things will get better, but to be honest, it's not based on anything I encountered in the first five chapters, it's just my desire for escapism.
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