The Three Sisters of the Black Water

Deep in a swamp where the mist drifts against the current and the trees rise from the black water like drowned fingers, three sisters live in three crooked huts on stilts of bone. The desperate come to their doors from far and wide: the sick, the lovesick, the broken king. Because the sisters give everyone exactly what they ask for.

The venom is in the price. They play entirely fair, they swear it by their cauldron, but their terms are riddles with false bottoms, and every favor costs the thing you least dare to lose: a memory, a name, the color of your eyes, the first words your beloved ever spoke to you. Whoever bargains carelessly leaves the swamp with what they wanted and without what made them human.

You come into the swamp for a reason, and the sisters know it before you reach their threshold. You bargain with each of the three, see through their wordplay, carry out their tasks through the muck, and dodge the traps in their promises. One flatters, one threatens, the third weeps crocodile tears until you believe her.

Then the mask falls: De Drie Zusters van het Zwarte Water are not three beings but one, split apart by an old oath, and their last and greatest bargain is meant to bind one of you to the swamp forever as a fourth sister. To escape, you must outwit De Drie Zusters by turning their own rules against them. The climax is a duel of words at the cauldron that never cools, where one wrong word costs your soul.