Press Kit
Perpetūra
An interactive literary romance · free in your browser, and two books on Kindle
Lives across centuries. One feeling no one has ever found the right words for. Perpetūra is a free, browser-based work of interactive literary fiction where your choices shape not just what happens, but who you become — and what you almost say to the person standing beside you.
Each story is self-contained and quietly part of something larger. No install required. No account. No cost.
At a Glance
| Genre | Interactive Fiction · Literary Romance |
| Platform | Browser (desktop & mobile) |
| Price | Free |
| Version | 1.10.2 |
| Available now | The complete novel: Hyunjae · Reine · Liuyan, a fourth story set in the present day (unlocked once three are finished), and a fifth reached only through the fourth (five complete stories) |
| Status | Complete — all five stories are live |
| Content | Sensual; optional explicit content behind age gate |
| Developer | Lacunae (solo) |
| Play | perpetura.lacunaedesigns.com |
Stories
The fourth and fifth stories' names and casts are deliberate in-game reveals. Please keep them sealed in coverage — “the fourth story,” “the fifth story,” or “???” is the framing used everywhere public.
The Books
The same five stories are also published as two books. They are not a transcript of the game: the prose is written to be read straight through, without choices, and each volume stands on its own. Both are in Kindle Unlimited, and both come to paperback and hardcover on 20 October 2026.
| Book One | The Ones Before — published 18 September 2026 · USD 3.99 · Kindle Unlimited · ASIN B0HHJ17W5S |
| Book Two | The Origin — published 25 September 2026 · USD 6.99 · Kindle Unlimited · ASIN B0HHNKZ8C8 |
| Format | Kindle ebook, and paperback and hardcover from 20 October 2026 (pre-orders open at Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org and Amazon). |
| Print ISBNs | The Ones Before 978-91-992361-0-0 (paperback) · 978-91-992361-1-7 (hardcover) | The Origin 978-91-992361-2-4 (paperback) · 978-91-992361-3-1 (hardcover) |
| Content | Mature romance, explicit. Intended for readers 18+. |
Book One · The Ones Before — full description
Joseon Korea, 1742. Hyunjae arranges everything, including herself. Her mother is arranging a marriage for her. She commissions a memorial portrait of her dead father from a painter who works only on the dead, and he looks at her a moment too long, and the arrangement does not survive it.
That is one story. There are two more.
Paris, 1893. Reine is the most looked-at woman in the city and the least seen. Painters compete for her. She has built an entire self out of being watched in the way she chooses, and she paints in private, work that is raw and strange and nothing like the composed woman on their canvases. Nobody is allowed to see it. Somebody is going to.
Tang Dynasty China, around 750. Liuyan guards merchants along the Silk Road, a blade for hire who has made her own body the one thing she can control completely. She has spent years being useful to people who never learn her name. Then one of them learns it, and keeps saying it.
Three women, three centuries, and a feeling none of them can name. Each story is complete in itself, with its own era and its own ending. Read in order they begin to rhyme, and by the third you will be reading for the echo instead of waiting for it. Book Two carries the pattern back to where it started.
Book One of Perpetūra. Mature romance by Lacunae. Contains explicit sexual content. Intended for readers 18+.
Book Two · The Origin — full description
Singapore, now. She is unremarkable by design: works, goes home, says as little as the room requires. She is also the commander of the most feared faction in the most complex game anyone has built, and the two halves of her have never once been in the same room. Then people start crossing between them.
Vienna, 1887. A watchmaker's daughter has spent her life doing to one feeling what her father did to clocks and her mother did to bodies: taking it apart to find out what makes it run. She is close to something. What it will cost her is not a thing she has calculated.
Two women, a hundred and forty years apart, who have never heard of each other.
Book Two of Perpetūra completes the cycle Book One begins. The second of these stories is the last in the series, and it is the one that explains why the others rhyme.
Mature romance by Lacunae. Contains explicit sexual content, and depictions of abduction, captivity, drugging and coercive relationship dynamics. Intended for readers 18+.
The books do not name the fourth and fifth women either. The eras and the volumes are public; those two names remain in-game reveals, and the descriptions above are the wording used on the retail listings.
What's In It
| Prose, not sprites | First person, past tense, literary register. No character sprites, no stat screens. A handful of pivotal scenes carry a small illustration, but the pictures are punctuation, not the point. |
| Branching routes | Each story has three to five routes: several people who could come to know her, and a solo path where she chooses herself. The solo path is a genuine resolution, not a failure state. |
| Quiet accumulation | Choices describe what she does, never what they "unlock." Attention accumulates silently and the route settles at the midpoint. |
| Original soundtrack | Every story, and every path within it, has its own music. Finishing a story unlocks its sung theme song, collected in a Soundtrack tab in the Codex. |
| A Codex that fills in | People, places, and the details that don't quite add up, unlocking as you read across all five stories. |
| Saves & offline | Saves live on your device, with optional Google sign-in to sync across them. Installable as an app, and playable offline. |
| All three originals rewritten | Hyunjae (v1.7.0), Reine (v1.8.0), and Liuyan (v1.9.0) have each been retold end to end since launch. Saves carry over and every choice still leads where it did. |
Screenshots
Menu screens captured on mobile on the Celestial Atlas redesign (July 2026); reader shots at v1.9.0. Right-click any screenshot to save. Full-resolution assets available on request.
Links
About the Developer
Perpetūra is written and built by Lacunae — a solo developer working in the intersection of literary fiction and interactive storytelling. Every story, every character and the world they move through, every choice and the unnamed feeling beneath it: imagined, designed, and held together by one person.
For press inquiries, coverage requests, or asset needs, email lacunae.writes@gmail.com, reach out via @playperpetura on Instagram, or use the feedback form inside the game.