VEIN follows Aron Vale, a 26-year-old folklore researcher who suffers from severe insomnia and recurring nightmares of a red forest where voices call him by a name he does not know. His symptoms intensify when he discovers an old photograph in a university archive: a man from 1891 who looks exactly like him — down to a birthmark beneath the left eye.

The photo is connected to Dr. Elias Raine, a historian of rural occult traditions. Raine reveals that Aron’s family originated from a long-deserted village in the wilderness, abandoned after a catastrophic event that destroyed it in a single night. The villagers once worshipped a terrifying earth-bound witch-deity known only as:

The Mother of Red Earth

A being said to consume identity, turning people into empty vessels for the earth’s will.

Aron learns that his bloodline descends from the cult’s final chosen vessel — the body meant to house The Mother entirely. The attempt was interrupted before completion. The curse, however, remained dormant, passed silently from generation to generation.

Now Aron is the final inheritor.

As Aron and Raine travel to the abandoned village to uncover the truth, the environment becomes hostile and surreal — trees bleed red sap, old altars pulse beneath the soil, and whispers crawl beneath the human ear. Aron’s memories begin to blur; he can no longer tell which experiences are his and which belong to the ancestor in the photograph.

Raine studies Aron not out of empathy, but fascination — seeking to witness the completion of the ritual firsthand.

When the curse fully awakens, Aron’s body begins to alter in ways that defy biology. His veins shift like roots, his skin darkens like packed soil, his voice fragments. The Mother calls to him to return to the earth and finish what was begun more than a century ago.

In the final stages, Aron no longer knows whether he is resisting the transformation — or merely acting out a destiny written in his blood long before he was born.

Graduate researcher in folklore and anthropology.


Persistent insomnia and recurring nightmares.


Carries a genealogical secret he's unaware of.


Rational mind slowly decays as the curse awakens.


Historian specializing in occult rural traditions.


Knows more about Aron's ancestry than he initially reveals.


Driven not by affection, but morbid fascination.


Chapter 1 - Characters