05/31/2025
Darkness of the Heart
A Southern Gothic Dream-Noir Mystery
Synopsis:
In the quiet university town of Oxford, Mississippi, Ksenia Ismailova tries to live a life of quiet redemption. At only 24, she’s already a legend in the digital underground—the former Russian hacker known as The White Rabbit, a name once synonymous with disruption, danger, and ghostlike escape.
But those days are behind her. Now she works as a low-profile private investigator, solving paranormal cases and hiding from the world that once feared her.
But everything changes when she’s called to Memphis, Tennessee, to consult on a bizarre psychiatric case.
A man in his mid-40s named Sydney has been found wandering the streets, barefoot and disoriented, claiming to be immortal and guided by a dream dragon named Gaesierum. He speaks in riddles, seems completely disconnected from time, and—most disturbingly—refers to Ksenia by her old hacker alias.
Sydney isn’t insane. He’s trapped.
Ksenia uncovers a Cold War-era project called NOCTURNA, an experimental military program involving dream manipulation and psychological encoding. Sydney was a cryptanalyst who once tried to sabotage the project to protect a civilian.
When it failed, he sealed off his own memory and created a psychic safehouse—a dream-world guarded by Gaesierum, a mythic protector born from his fractured mind.
To free Sydney, Ksenia must follow him into this surreal mental labyrinth—one shaped by trauma, regret, and recursive dreams. In that world, white rabbits lead her deeper, time runs backward, and Gaesierum soars above as a celestial guide, offering riddles that force her to confront her own past betrayals.
In the end, the journey isn’t just about saving Sydney. It’s about Ksenia facing who she really is—both the girl who ran and the woman who stayed. As she navigates the dream, she realizes the dragon guards not just Sydney’s mind, but something hidden inside her as well: the part of herself she thought was too dangerous to ever let free again.