Empty Kingdom

In the rust-belt town of Ironharbor, a reclusive widower, Elias Voss, survives a brutal home invasion by luck and instinct. When the police and his insurer dismiss his case due to his property's "vacant" status and his own social invisibility, Elias realizes that sympathy without institutional teeth is mere performance. He transforms his decaying house into a labyrinth of everyday horrors—trapdoors, garrote wires from piano strings, acid baths from drain cleaner—to lure the same gang back. As the traps claim lives one by one, the town is forced to confront not just a killer, but the systemic abandonment that made him.