There was a book called "Lullaby for a God" that sold moderately upon its release.
It wasn't groundbreaking and it didn't bring anything new to the genre. Quite frankly, it was cookie-cutter and easy for people to drop unless they enjoyed such clichés. It had the Duke of the Noth male lead, the Saintess female lead, the Redhaired Witch villainess. It had a lost empire holding secrets to an ancient evil, and that evil was to be defeated once more by the male and female leads and their ragtag group of allies.
It was nothing new. But some people still enjoyed it.
"Lullaby for a God" was initially serialised online in its beta version. It had a small following and got moderate views with each update, and the author had promised to revise it with the critique given in mind. This was the version of the story they'd come up with when they'd started college. It had many kinks to refine. Many holes to be filled in. It was honestly embarrassing that anyone even enjoyed such sloppy work, they'd confessed in an author's note.
A month after "Lullaby for a God" was announced to be revised and published online, an anonymous commenter caused a stir that left many speechless, but few unsurprised.
[anon: the author is dead. i am a relative who was caring for her. the revised edition will be published as an ebook for you all.]
The published version of "Lullaby for a God" mentioned in its notes that the author had committed suicide. The author had said in the note they'd left behind that they regretted not showing the revised edition to their readers, and so their caretaker published it for them. That was how "Lullaby for a God" became a moderately selling novel, and how it never broke out of any particular clichés upon its first revision. That was how most people knew the story to be—a last hoorah of a suicidal author.
It was almost pathetic how something written for fun and just to discuss ideas became known as something so depressing.
Like anything tied to suicide, "Lullaby for a God" became a hot topic of urban legend in the home country of its author. A cursed book, they'd say, that if you didn't finish reading it you would die within a week. It was all very sensationalised. The reality of the urban legend was that those who died before finishing the book within a week of starting it just happened to be the readers of the original, and like the author, they also couldn't hold back the urge to vanish. To sleep forever like the titular god from the novel.
It was hard to say goodbye to something you enjoyed so much, especially when it was taken from you so suddenly. Finishing the book, to some, meant forgetting the author and moving on. They'd made many friends when they'd serialised their novel online. How do you move on from honouring the dead when the dead won't let you go, after all?
That was the case for her. She had her own issues, to be sure, but the author had been a comfort. Her once-a-week guilty pleasure. Duke Gelum and Saintess Soleil were nothing new, but she'd found comfort in their victories nonetheless. Small pieces of trivia that humanised them, that made rereading certain interactions more entertaining—it would all be gone, and the ebook would not provide such notes that showed how much love and care went into the author's work.
She no longer felt her guilty pleasure connected with her. It no longer felt human.
So she too fell to the "curse" behind the covers of the novel, and she too became another victim in the urban legend posted in the book's reviews.