Hope in a Dying Cage: Life Behind Nostalgie’s Barrier

Nostalgie

In the heart of the Tristesse region, where the soil has turned to dust and the trees have long since been chopped into nonexistence, lies a forgotten town called Nostalgie.

Here, life clings on by splinters and stubbornness. The people live in shacks hammered together from rotting wood and rusted scrap, patched and repatched until the walls themselves seem tired. The only water is the stagnant, sorrowful Lake Oublié—"the Forgotten Lake"—where even the fish seem reluctant to stir, hiding from the threat of being netted and eaten. Only one tree has survived, a gnarled cork oak whose bark is too valuable to lose. There are no forests to harvest, no nutrient-rich soil, no riches to be found. Just survival, slow and grinding, day after day.

And yet, it is here that Gavril calls home.

Edgard

The town’s mayor, Edgard, rules with a bitter pride. Once a mere laborer, now a man obsessed with order and survival, Edgard dreams of a stable Nostalgie—one shaped in the image of Seigneur Gervais, the powerful lord he reveres almost religiously. To him, Gavril is a blemish: the daughter of a foreigner and a Résonateur whose presence unsettled the fragile balance. He despises her mother Fleurette's obsession even more—mocking her flighty ways and scorning her stubborn devotion to a man who vanished seventeen years ago.

Fleurette

Fleurette still wears the same green dress her husband gifted her all those years ago, the fabric and embroidery threadbare but carefully mended. She waits for him with a smile and a thousand little stories about why today might be the day he returns. Beneath her dreamy, drifting nature, there is a sharpness—a slyness—that has allowed her to survive in a town that offers no kindness to dreamers.

Mathieu

Among the few who still stand by Gavril is Mathieu, her oldest friend. Now apprenticed to Edgard, Mathieu straddles two worlds: loyalty to the mayor who demands his respect, and affection for the girl he once raced through the dusty streets with. He smiles when Gavril is promised to the son of a seigneur, because it means a future. But when he lies awake at night, fear gnaws at him — fear for what that future will cost.

In Ghost of Nostalgia, Nostalgie is not just a place. It is a ghost itself: a remnant of forgotten hopes, haunted by what was lost and what must be sacrificed. And it is here, in the creaking bones of a dying town, that Gavril must choose between duty, loyalty, and the echoing call of her own heart.

Step into Nostalgie—a town the world left behind, but whose spirit refuses to fade.