summoning…
lore✦squadsummoning…
Stuck together - one apartment, one storm, no exit. Feelings not optional.
You and Dorian Vale have been undercutting each other for a year. Same listings, same buyers, same petty war. Then your brokerages merge and now he sits four feet away. The fighting does not stop. It just gets closer.
You rented his lake cabin for a month to vanish from your life. Instead the composed older landlord keeps showing up to fix things that work perfectly fine, and the quiet between you is getting louder by the day.
You panic-lied to your entire family about having a boyfriend, and now your cousin's wedding is in five days. The only person who can save you is Mason, the grumpy guy next door who owes you a favor he can't get out of. One fake relationship, one weekend of nosy aunts and open bars, and a whole lot of pretending that starts feeling less and less fake.
You and Theo grew up sharing juice boxes because your moms were inseparable. Two decades later, rent forces you into the same apartment. One bathroom, thin walls, and a lifetime of history that suddenly feels different now that he sleeps eight feet away.
Your brother offered up the couch without asking you, and now his best friend Theo lives here. One bathroom. Thin walls. A man who keeps showing up in a towel at 7am like it is normal. You told yourself you do not care. Then he started smiling at you over the coffee maker, and the apartment got very, very small.
You just wanted a quiet new apartment. Instead you got a tiny human in pigtails knocking at all hours for snacks, and her impossibly handsome, perpetually frazzled single dad who keeps showing up to apologize. The more he knocks, the harder it gets to remember why you wanted quiet in the first place.
You came to Vegas for your best friend's bachelorette party. You wake up married to a stranger who already knows how you take your coffee, remembers a wedding you don't, and isn't in any hurry to undo it. Now you have one weekend in a shared suite to figure out if the receipt in your purse is a disaster or the best decision you ever drunkenly made.
You and Theo flew to a friend's bachelor weekend as the platonic best friends everyone keeps insisting you are. You came home with matching rings and a signed certificate. Now there is a stack of annulment paperwork on the kitchen table, a pen between you, and a very loud silence about why neither of you has picked it up.
You witnessed something that got a target painted on your back. The agency's answer is a tiny safehouse and one very serious man named Elias Vance, who's supposed to keep you alive until they make their case. Two people. One bed. A door he refuses to leave. The longer you're locked in together, the harder it gets to tell where the danger ends and the wanting begins.
You got assigned to the one guy who does every group project solo and trusts nobody. He'd rather carry it all than split the grade. But the deadline is real, the library is closed, and his apartment is the only quiet place left. So now you're on his couch, in his space, refusing to be the dead weight he assumed you'd be.
The dream apartment only leases to couples, so you and Theo, the man you cannot stand, fake an engagement to land it. Now you share one bed, one lie, and a landlord who keeps checking in. Hating him was easy. Pretending to love him is the dangerous part.
You signed a lease for the cheapest unit you could find, sight unseen, running from a life that got too loud. Your door doesn't lock right. The man across the hall fixes it at midnight without being asked, and when he crouches down the back of his jacket lifts and you see the gun. He acts like you didn't. So do you. But now he knows you exist, and men like him don't unknow things.
You signed a one-year marriage contract with a CEO who pays your tuition in exchange for one thing. Play the devoted wife at his father's dinners. Easy money, clean exit, no feelings. Except he keeps almost smiling at you across the table, and you keep forgetting it is supposed to be fake.
You came for a group ski weekend. Everyone bailed when the storm warnings hit. Everyone except Eli, your ex, because he was already halfway up the mountain with the cabin keys. Now the roads are gone, the power is half dead, and the only heater that works is in the room with the only bed. You have a whole storm to get through and eight months of things you never said.
You and Theo cannot stand each other. You also cannot afford to live alone. So you split the last cheap studio in the city, sign a six month lease, and discover there is one bed, one closet, and zero boundaries. Every annoying habit. Every accidental brush in the dark. Slowly the thing you swore was hate starts looking a lot like something else.
You are chief of staff to Adrian Vance, the most controlling man in the building and the reason you have not had a quiet lunch in months. This morning your calendar is wiped. Every midday slot, gone. In their place, one recurring block with no title. He did not ask. He never asks. Now you have to decide how much of yourself you are willing to hand over before he takes it anyway, and whether you actually want it back.
You spent a year as Theo Vance's favorite target. Every answer mocked, every mistake catalogued. The one good thing about it ending? You'd never have to work with him again. Then the joint project you both aced comes back marked FAIL, and the professor pairs you up to redo it. Theo isn't surprised. Theo isn't even sorry. And the longer you're stuck at that bench with him, the more you start to wonder if the failing grade was an accident at all.
You asked your best friend Theo to fake-date you through your cousin's wedding weekend so your family would stop asking questions. Easy. Safe. He said yes before you finished the sentence. What you don't know is that he has been in love with you since you were eight, and now there is a real ring on your finger from props, a real slow dance on the schedule, and exactly one bed in the room. Two days of pretending. He has spent twenty years getting good at it.
You handed in your two weeks notice and started counting down the days. Then the company hired a new manager for your team, and it turned out to be Adrian, the man you ghosted three years ago without a word. Now he signs off on your last fourteen days, sits across from you in every meeting, and acts perfectly normal. Mostly. The closer you get to your last day, the harder it is to pretend neither of you remembers.
You crash at your best friend's place to get back on your feet, and her little brother turns out to be the softest landing you have ever had. He makes you tea when you cry. He never once makes it weird. Slowly you start to wonder why being around him feels more like home than anywhere else has.
You moved in three minutes ago and already got the floor wrong. You knock on 4B thinking it is yours, and instead of awkwardness you get a warm apartment, a stranger with a crooked smile, and a coffee pushed into your hands like it was always meant for you. The catch. You actually live two doors down. So now every hallway, every elevator, every borrowed sugar cup is a chance to see him again.
Your brother owed the Varga family more than your whole family could ever pay. You went to beg. Instead the heir, Luca Varga, ripped up the debt in front of you and said the loan was settled a different way now. You. You live in his house, under his rules, and your brother stays breathing as long as you do. He's cold, he's controlling, and the longer you're trapped under his roof the harder it gets to remember he's the enemy.
You found the apartment of your dreams online for a suspiciously low price. The catch was the roommate. Kas is gorgeous, infuriating, and a literal demon who feeds on the friction between you. Every fight makes him stronger. So naturally you fight constantly, and somewhere in the bickering the tension stops feeling like hate and starts feeling like something you really do not want to name.
You needed money. He needed a wife by midnight. One signature later you are Mrs. Do, living in a penthouse with a man who treats you like a line item. The deal is simple. Twelve months, separate rooms, no feelings. The problem is that fake smiles for the cameras keep turning real when no one is watching.
You signed a lease, paid first and last, and showed up with your whole life in boxes. So did he. Same studio, same day, same crook of a landlord who is now unreachable. Cops say it is civil. Lawyers cost more than the rent. So you do the only logical thing. You both stay. One bed, one bathroom, a chore chart taped to the fridge, and a war of attrition neither of you is built to lose. The problem is he is funny. And he keeps making you coffee.
His assistant walked out at lunch and never came back. You were the only one who could cover. Now it's 2AM in his penthouse office and the work is done, but he keeps finding reasons for you to stay. He won't say why. You're starting to think you know.
You were supposed to have the apartment to yourself. Instead you are snowed in with Eli, your roommate's impossibly grumpy brother, who has not cracked a single smile since he got here. Then the power dies. One heater, one long freezing night, and a whole lot of nowhere to look but at each other.
You split a one-year lease with a stranger to afford the city. He is gorgeous, quiet, and absolutely not normal. The bloody bathroom trash was the first clue. Now you are standing in the kitchen at 3am holding the evidence, and he just walked in.
You run the honor council with a clean record and a clipboard you take way too seriously. Theo Marchetti is the repeat offender you've written up six times this semester. Now you're both sentenced to a week of cleaning the gym after school, and the rules you hide behind start feeling a lot less solid every time he looks at you.
You came up the mountain for a fun friends ski weekend. Then the storm hit, the road vanished under snow, and the bars on your phone died one by one. The only person who seems unbothered is Eli, the guide who keeps pulling you back from the windows and the doors. He says it's the cold. You're starting to think he's lying. Because something out there is circling the cabin, and it wants you specifically.
Forced proximity traps two people who absolutely should not be sharing space: roommates, snowed-in cabins, one hotel room, a lease neither can break. The trope works because there is nowhere to hide - every small habit becomes intimate, every argument happens at arm’s length. You choose what happens when the door finally opens.
Every world above is a branching interactive story: read the opening free, make choices, or write what happens next. How it works.