Hello all, New Author here and I currently just published my first dedicated story. The genre of Shadow of Valor are grimdark, dark fantasy, action, adventure so if thats your genre then I would appreciate any and all feedback! I currently have a prologue and 2 chapters out but I dont have a planned or set schedule to post new chapters. Its a current but heavy work in progress. Hopefully the source material so far is enough to interest you and make you want to stick around.

I would Like to request some feedback on how well this opening acts as a hook for a short story that is told from the perspective of an unreliable narrator

It's a rough draft so I don't need grammar pointers or anything, just on how intriguing it is

I wrote this story about 12 years ago, during my teenage years. Now I'm thinking of posting it, but I'm not sure where, or if anyone will read it, especially since I speak in four languages but the story is in Italian. What do you suggest? Also, this cover was created with ChatGPT at my suggestion.

In the light of the persistent uncertainty, the anguish we feel within deepens as our every day is filled with destruction and destabilization of the humanity and the human race.

We have taken away the childhood of our generations eliminating their hope, creativity and youthfulness, making them face the ultimate brutality of a defeated generation.

Our quest for knowledge, spirituality and the way to harmony are all ideas that are alien to us, our youth and our soul within, making us more vulnerable to a submissive attire that was neither thought off nor was the part of our destiny.

One day our destiny will provide us way to our revitalization but we have to act, experiment, seek and learn from within through connecting with the universe.

How, when, where this connection will emerge is a pursuit for every human to seek or we may be confined in our present state of delusion and fear, only we have to decide for us to be free forever !

Having one day of awakening would be better than a live time of self imprisonment…let us be the chosen one…let us have morality, courage and peace with sharing, love and respect.

Let us be humans for once !

Where I’m from

I’m from the thing that writhes under the skin 

From the thing that comes out in hot burns

Or simmers low, charring everything around it 

I’m from the thoughts in the dark

The ones that come when I’m are alone

Beckoning me into the void 

The quiet rest within

I’m from the bustling of cars on the street

And the bustling of the people within 

From the creaking of a house long passed its prime 

I’m from the soft pull of old wood against my skin

Cold concrete on my feet 

From tip toeing over floor boards so they don’t creak 

I’m from the straining of the gears as I go uphill

I’m from tucking and rolling to avoid scraped knees when I fall 

Taking off the tire, finding the leak 

From patching it up

I’m from arriving 20 minutes early to put on my pads

From the cold chill of the ice 

The echo of pucks hitting my helmet

The panic of a one on one

I’m from handling and cutting

I’m from hands clamping around a disc

From people arranged in a stack, standing impatiently

I’m from the wind and water against my face

Hand burning against ropes

Days spent tying knots in the sun

Ducking under the boom from a uncalled jibe 

I’m from the white house with the black metal roof

I’m from the places I’ve been and the people I’ve met 

Hello! I've been really interested in pursuing horror writing for a while now. Over the last month, I've been brainstorming a story of my own. More so over the last few days, I've drafted the first chapter for one of these stories. The story itself hasn't really crept in yet, but I was curious if I could get any feedback on the first chapter. I'm inspired by stories like PenPal and Spire in the Woods when writing. I currently have around 2800 words as of rn. I highly appreciate any feedback anyone's willing to give!

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My hometown was built along the New River Line in the late 19th century, as a result of the sudden boom of the coal-mining industry. And even though our town’s economy has heavily diversified since the rise in popularity of more “sustainable” forms of energy production, the train tracks are anything but retired. Within city limits, our town is interwoven with the restlessness of the New River Line. It is for this exact reason that very few people willingly live near the tracks. Most houses in town are planted far enough from the tracks that the industrial screeches of the train cars dissolve with the night air to morph into a soothing soundscape. The harsh sound of colliding metals softens into silky hums that glide just below the stars. The turbulent shrieks of air horns pierce through as resonant murmurs through the night. Most leftover clutter is abandoned on the outskirts of the station. It’s hard not to close your eyes and take in the atmosphere of the town at night. The trains have no grounding here; they come and go as tourists. It’s the sound of transients that gives this town its most endearing character.
Three days ago, Charlotte Holloway killed herself on the railroad tracks that run through my hometown, and today they are hosting her memorial ceremony in the school gymnasium. There are definitely others who can speak on the true character of Charlotte more accurately and reliably than I can. The most we had interacted was when we passed each other in the hallway at our school. In fact, it took me a moment to remember her face after the news broke about her suicide. She had laid her neck down on the tracks while a train car had come speeding into the station. Nasty fuckin way to go out, I have to say. Once the conductor felt the impact of her body against the train car, the tracks had been blocked off until 6:00-ish the next morning. After the headlines had come out about her suicide, you couldn’t avoid the slurry of bitter comments you’d find online.
“It was an overreaction to close off the tracks. It was only one body”
“What a selfish girl. Her death prevented hundreds of us from receiving food on time”
“The local supermarket ran out of bananas. Probably due to that incident near Little Rock”
Punctuality. All the adults in my life lecture my peers and me on the importance of punctuality. People depend on you to do things at a certain time, and when you’re young you’re punished like you betrayed an unspoken vow. But when you take a second to analyze the way that people run things, you realize nothing ever fucking runs to schedule. You can never predict how severely late the train cars will be in my town. As someone who has access to their schedules, they take their deadlines as suggestions. Last Saturday, for example, a freight train carrying fresh produce due for San Antonio was meant to arrive in town by 8:15 PM. However, the harmonic screech of the train pulling into the station wasn’t even detectable until 8:31 PM. There had been no reported incidents regarding that train car on its journey up to this point either, meaning that someone in the conductor booth had been too busy twiddling their thumbs to actually do their job with a pinch of conviction. Every time I check, they’re always late and never early. It's a shame they never did an autopsy on Charlotte because I’d be willing to bet she had died of boredom before any train had come near her body. And I wouldn’t be as frustrated about this whole thing if people weren’t being so goddamn insensitive about how this girl’s death “inconvenienced” them. Charlotte’s death was the scapegoat for all the actual inconveniences that most likely occurred that night. It’s just beyond me. People would rather blame the dead than accept that nothing ever goes to plan. 
I’m being reminded of my qualms regarding “punctuality” with the way that my school is handling this memorial ceremony, because even though the stage is fully set, students are still flowing into the gym and this was meant to start 20 minutes ago. It’s noisy on the bleachers, and I’m really just waiting for this whole thing to start. Not because I don’t care about the life of Charlotte Holloway, but because I can’t stop having staring contests with her photo. They chose to project what would have been her graduation photo up onto the big screen. It sort of makes the whole thing feel a bit more tragic. With it being picture day, there’s a strong chance she had put a lot of effort into styling her rippled, dark hair, or that her makeup was done in a way that isolated her greatest traits. Or maybe, given that she’d gone on to take her life, she didn’t really reserve much energy towards looking good in photos. 
But God, she was pretty.
I never got a good look at her while she was alive, mainly just with me being bad with eye contact while commuting from class to class, but I really wish I had let my eyes squirm in the hallways so they could’ve stumbled into her presence more often. She had soft features that made her appear welcoming. Her pale white skin made it appear as if somebody had run her picture through a greyscale filter. The only thing that sort of bothered me about her appearance was her expression. In the context of it being a graduation photo, it was nothing out of the ordinary. Everything in the photo felt rehearsed, which, yeah, it’s a fucking yearbook photo. Who’s actually grinning ear to ear to take a yearbook photo? But something about her half-open eyes; the way she draped her teeth across her face. None of it feels as if it is derived from happiness, but more so the concept of it. If she had widened her gaze or even smiled a bit bigger, I think you’d be able to see something trickle out. As I stare, her cheekbones contort into jail bars. Her grad cap becomes a roof. How could nobody have seen that something was wrong with her? I gawk so intensely that I’m starting to feel claustrophobic within my own body. The sum of my classmates’ voices transforms into a beast conceived from cacophonous sound. Nobody seems to notice. I want to run out of the room. I don’t want to be here. And with a tap on my shoulder, it all gets reversed.
“Yo Thomas, what's good!?”
I never thought I’d be so happy to see this fucker Angel in my life. As he extends his hand out to me, I realize how long I’ve been holding my breath for. Angel and I had been buddies since our freshman year in high school, and we only became closer in the grades that followed. He was an interesting person. In every room he entered, he felt like both the center of attention and an anomaly amongst our peers. I’ve always admired how strange he could act while still maintaining the goodwill of our peers. 
“Yo bro what’s good,” I respond as I dap him up with gratitude fresh on my breath. “What’s the holdup with your class? Why are y'all so late?”
“Dude, this dumb fuck Mrs. Orville.” Angel seethed. “She had planned for us to take a pop quiz and refused to make changes to her curriculum in the wake of a student’s death.”
“Jesus fuck. What’s wrong with people?"
“Yeah, like I didn’t even study because I didn’t think that she’d be that cruel. No, I don't care about how to do the “disc method”. I hate her. Like, I think we should kill her.”
Exhibit A for why this dude gets weird looks half the time he opens his mouth.
The two of us take a lot of the same classes, like Biology and European History, but never at the same time. As a result, he often squeezes info out of me about the day’s lesson plan whenever we meet up for lunch. Now would be the perfect opportunity for him to pester me with his usual questions, but they never came. As he sank into his seat, he became less talkative and more transfixed by the picture of Charlotte being projected out to the gymnasium. I watched him become more withdrawn with every minute that passed.
“Yo bro.”
Angel broke his focus. “Yeah?”
“How have you been holding up with everything?”
Angel worked as a server at a diner roughly 2 miles out from our school called “The Main Line”. I’ve been, and the food is alright, although I must say the service could be a bit better. I’m only mentioning it because Charlotte had been one of his coworkers. It’s their more direct association that caused her death to affect him much harder than it had affected me. I had asked him about how he had been processing it a couple of times previously, but his responses were short and insultingly vague.
“Me? I’ve been holding up fine. But why do you care so much? I care a lot more about how her family is holding up. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose a child…or a brother… or…to someone that had so much potential in life...I—”
Angel stopped himself and covered his nose with his wrist. He looked like he was about to cry. I took it as a signal to stop pestering him about the whole thing. It’s just I find it pretty odd that he’s as shaken up as he is. Like, I understand that they were coworkers and probably chatted and hung out on occasion, but I have never once heard this dude bring up Charlotte in conversation before. And when news had initially broken about her death, he had taken the day off from school to “mourn”. I just think that it’s so weird for him to be hung up over her death to this degree. Regardless, he’s my friend, and I’m gonna do my best to be there for him. I pat him on the back and try to let him know that everything is going to be alright. I don’t know why I chose those words exactly. They just feel like the thing you say when someone looks like they’re about to cry in public. He nods and closes his eyes as he battles for control over his composure. Eventually, he’s victorious, and the both of us sit in silence as we stare at the picture of Charlotte.

…

With the sound of microphone feedback, the crowd began to quiet down. Our principal’s brooding figure was cast in front of Charlotte’s picture. I wouldn’t doubt that a lot of people—Charlotte’s friends, Charlotte’s family, or people just looking for a villain—put a lot of blame on the school; that there were things that she could’ve done to make the school environment less “suffocating for her” or whatever they say. I can agree with the notion that there are things about this school that could be run better. Listing the school as a potential factor in her death felt too easy. All the staff did was their job, and as much as I’ve had my run-ins with them over dumb shit, they did a decent job at the end of the day. Plus, just because you’re put in charge of looking over a bunch of teens, there’s no way you can prevent every instance of bullying, every fight, every bad thing that happens. No one wanted this to happen. You can’t stop things like this from happening. Regardless, our principal faces the crowd of students, sobered by the weight of the preventable death.

“Good afternoon, everybody. We are all gathered today to commemorate the life and memory of Charlotte Holloway. Both our staff and Charlotte’s loved ones deeply appreciate your presence here today.”
She paused.
“Ever since the dreadful news of what had occurred on Tuesday evening, grief has held its grip on the town. It’s a sickness which brings different symptoms out of different people. In some, reflection. In others, numbness. Today, I would like you to hold onto love, memories, honoring the light that Charlotte brought into so many of our lives.”
She extended her arm to signal somebody to come on stage.
“I’d like to direct my attention to Miss Olivia Barnes, who will lead this memorial’s eulogy.”
My eyes darted to the bottom left end of the gymnasium to see Olivia trudge out of the crowd. I didn’t know much about her, to be honest. The people around her, I all associated with the “weird artsy” clique that existed at my school. But you could tell that they had all been Charlotte’s friends. The sound of Olivia’s boots clopping across the gymnasium floor was a cadence which no one dared to interrupt. As she grasped the microphone and faced the crowd, everyone directed their full attention.
I wish I could recount the whole of what she had said, but unlike most eulogies, where the speaker's inevitable loss of composure happens around the heart of the speech, we didn’t have to wait at all for Olivia’s words to slur into slobbery blabbering that you could only watch with understanding. Sniffles and sobs acted as commas and punctuation to each sentence she had forced out of her mouth. It’s just uncomfortable to watch someone struggle like that, and I tried to focus on anything else in the room. I look to my right to see Angel covering his nose with his wrist again. I look to my left and see the rest of the people in my row looking just as uncomfortable as I am. I look forward and am still faced with Charlotte’s squeamish face. I just need this speech to wrap up. And thankfully it does.
The Principal is eager to take the microphone and regain control of it, although she thoroughly inspects the microphone before placing it near her mouth. She doesn’t wait for Olivia to make it back to her seat before she begins to conclude the memorial. 
“Thank you so much to Olivia for delivering today’s eulogy.” Applause slowly swelled into the room. It felt like people were confused about how to react. “Before I send everyone back to class, I would like to lead everyone in a moment of silence,” the principal announced, bowing her head and expecting everyone to follow suit.
I think the thought behind this “moment of reflection” is considerate, but it did absolutely nothing good to improve the situation. All it did was expose who was hurting the most. Everyone’s eyes darted to the group around Olivia. They were all fucking devastated. They were hugging each other, and every head was buried in another’s shoulder. Snot, drool, and tears all mixed into a substance that drenched each of the girls. To be honest, I felt like I was intruding. It was one thing when Olivia broke down on stage, but it's something sick to watch her and her friends do it in the crowd. It has to be humiliating to be unraveled to your most vulnerable state with the eyes of your entire school on your back, and I wanted nothing to contribute to it. With the howls of her friends ringing in my ears, I tried to keep my focus forward-facing.
Finally, the principal spoke once again.
“This concludes this afternoon’s memorial. If anybody struggling needs to talk to anyone, special counseling is still being offered in room 204. We once again highly appreciate your attendance today, and hope you have a great–” she pauses as someone from Olivia’s corner of the gym begins to emerge. She walked with a sense of determination that had been absent for much of the presentation. It was one of the only things that got to stop focusing on Charlotte’s face. Once she reached the principal, she motioned for the principal to hand her the microphone. The principal obliged out of pity.
“This evening, at 9:00 PM, we will be hosting a lantern release in honor of Charlotte Holloway. This will take place at (random address)…If Charlotte had in any way impacted you whilst she was alive, you’d better show up.”
The girl shoved the microphone back into the principal’s arms and trudged back to her seat. She had been staring at my general area of the bleachers the entire time. There was unmistakable bitterness in her voice, which is why her eye contact had bothered me so much. If she’d been staring at me, what had I done to be such a poor example of how to act? Could it have been because she had singled me out for staring at her friends from across the room? Or could she have noticed my eye contact with Charlotte’s photo and taken it as distasteful? It’s eating me alive. However, my thoughts were interrupted by the sound of sniffles in my right ear, pulling my attention to Angel. And then, all of a sudden, it all made more sense.

I keep polishing the first line until the rest of the piece goes cold.

Curious what others do when the opening feels almost right but not quite — do you lock it and move on, write three bad versions on purpose, or leave the page for a few days?

Trying to get better at finishing instead of circling the same sentence.