Congrats on getting your game up and ready for submission.
Wow... I did not expect such an absorbing, immersive experience!
I was a little pensive about having to put on the headphones at first, but boy was it worth it for the experience! I really love how the game is presented from the lush autumnal color palette, the sleek UI and even the font used is nice and fitting for the game.
You absolutely nailed the theme on trust. I find that it is intrinsically used in creative ways - such as the player having to trust in their mount, their loyal steed and also on a more base level of trusting our ears for audible cues as to the best path choose.
The writing is absolutely gorgeous and completely absorbs you into the world effortlessly. I am going to hazard a guess that your profession has something to do with creative writing or at the very least you are an avid reader or hobby writer of some description :)
If I were to give any constructive criticism it would be that the game would certainly have benefitted from a few more audio files. Especially the whispering voices, I found they could have done with another one or two files thrown in just for some variation on that as hearing the same words spoken when you moved away and found them elsewhere gave more the impression that you were stuck in a recursive time loop rather than stumbling blind into conspiratorial meetings in the dark forest.
All in all it's a creative masterpiece - I certainly didn't expect to love it as much as I did. I hope you enjoyed creating it as much as I did playing it! Thank you for making and sharing!