Deadlight: Hold Your Breath (Sci-Fi Survival-Horror One-Shot)

You boarded a dead ship for one easy payout. The crew who died here left four words on the wall: DON’T MOVE.

Hold Your Breath is a complete, system-agnostic science-fiction survival-horror one-shot for a single evening of play. Your salvage crew reaches the silent bulk-hauler Ourane a day ahead of the company recovery ship, to grab one sealed container worth a fortune. The lights are dead. The crew are not aboard, or so the empty bunks suggest. And in the dark of the cargo hold is the thing they pulled from a drifting pod because it looked like money. It hunts movement and the stir of the air, not sight or sound, so the only safe thing to do in the dark is nothing at all.

Over one shift you learn the rule the hard way, decide whether the payout is worth what the dark will charge for it, and choose what you carry off this ship: the prize, a warning, or just your life.

Why it runs well

• One evening, one Game Master, any system. Fully system-agnostic. No stat blocks, no math. Bring the game you already play.
• Fear through stillness, not gore. The whole scenario is the held breath: freeze in the dark and the thing passes; move and it comes. The bravest move in the game is to do nothing.
• A monster you survive, not slay. No boss fight. A real rule, a real choice, and a creature you never quite see whole.
• A choice that lingers. It ends with the prize within reach and a long dark crossing between you and the airlock, and what you decide to carry is the whole story.

What is inside

The full scenario (read-aloud pitch, GM truth, cast, a four-movement shift, the climax and its endings), a GM toolkit for running claustrophobic dead-ship horror, and print-ready player handouts.

Loved it? The dark is bigger than one shift

This single salvage run is the opening of Deadlight: Campaign Codex + GM Kit, the full season where you fight to understand the creature before it understands you, find the survivor who knows its weakness, reach the nest, and decide what you will pay to keep the quiet aboard the Ourane. A perfect, low-cost way to try the world before you run the campaign.

The fine print

Mature survival horror: themes of body horror, claustrophobia, and death in the dark, handled with dread rather than gore. Includes a safety-tools note. A personal-use digital download.

From Narrative Hall. We build the foundation. You tell the story.