A test build of the hunt
Twelve Locks.
Count With Us.
This is a test build of the Metamorphosis treasure hunt — a working miniature of the game the books will open with. One chained trunk, twelve locks, and a journey: every lock's clue lives behind a different door of the Metamorphosis world.
How it works, plainly: each lock below names a door — a web address of its own. Visit the door, solve the one clue on its page, and the door will reveal a key word. Bring that word back here and type it at its lock. Turn all twelve, and the trunk opens.
One rule, printed before anything else: the books keep their own cipher, and it is never part of any game — not here, not anywhere. This hunt runs on twelve words invented for the game alone. Solving here, however hard, reaches nothing but the game. That is not a tease. It is the promise the whole house stands on.
How the Journey Works
[The Door] — every lock names its door: a different corner of the Metamorphosis world, at its own address.
[The Bill] — at the door, a short bill tells that stage's story.
[The Clue] — the door's page holds exactly one clue. Solve it on that page, and the door reveals one key word.
[The Journey Back] — carry the word home to this trunk. Words are typed at their own lock, below.
[The Lock] — a turned lock stays turned, in this browser, under your account. Twelve turned locks open the trunk.
[The Finale] — the twelfth lock has no door. It wakes on this page when the other eleven have turned.
A test build of the Metamorphosis treasure hunt — the full hunt opens with the books.
The hunt hub — test build
The Trunk
The trunk lives here; the clues live out in the world. Visit a lock's door, earn its word, come back and turn it. Locks one to eleven can be turned in any order — the twelfth wakes when the rest have turned.
Your Collected Words
A word appears here only after you have turned its lock yourself — your own keys, lock by lock.
The Twelve Locks and Their Doors
The twelfth lock
The Trunk Stands Open
Twelve stages, twelve counts, twelve keys — and a lid lifted by your own two hands. This is what the whole audience will do together when the hunt opens with the books: nobody locked out for being slow, everybody in at the opening.
Inside the lid — a card from the Floral Sisters
Two girls in tarlatan, a lamp, a tune,
a trunk that counted every afternoon;
twelve locks, twelve notes, one lifted lid —
the secret was the counting, all we did.
— the Floral Sisters' verse card, first of the trunk's rewards. In the full hunt, the song itself arrives the same way: verse first, the whole song at a late lock.
✦
Certificate of the Count
First Keyholder
Keyholder
Having travelled all twelve doors of the test hunt — bill, clue, word, and lock — and having opened the trunk by counting, which is the only way it has ever opened.
A test-build certificate: in the full hunt, keyholders are named on the leaderboard bill at the hunt hub, with honor.
The Full Hunt Opens With the Books
This miniature ran on one browser and one pair of hands. The real hunt runs the same journey at campaign scale: doors across the franchise's own domains, locks turned by a whole audience at once, rewards that are pieces of the world — the music first, the covers, the song, and on a Halloween not yet chosen, the twelfth lock turned live. Thank you for testing the trunk.
[ Tell Us How the Hunt Played ]
This test build has no server, so your feedback travels the old way: the button below makes a small text file you can send back to whoever sent you the trunk. Nothing is collected or transmitted by the page.