A small town dedicated to sheltering, studying, and eventually “digesting” people cursed for violating an ancient cultural taboo. The townspeople are not living humans, but “things” that maintain human form by strictly following a complex, uncanny set of “folk rituals.” Before being completely assimilated by the town or becoming a “sacrifice” in its rituals, every new “cursed one” must decipher the town’s deepest secret: the “First Forbidden Word.”