Chapter 1.1 The Town that Never Was

In the age before memory, chaos reigned.

Light eclipsed shadow; emotion shattered reason.

The world frayed, formless and forgotten,

Threads slipping loose into silence.

 

Then rose the Regulators, guardians of space and time:

The Architect drew order from the empty dark,

The Tether fastened bonds to anchor fragile worlds,

The Sage tuned frequencies, harmonizing discord,

The Watcher witnessed truth, eyes unblinking, ever vigilant,

The Revisionist repaired ruptures, mending fate’s broken paths.

 

And finally, the Keeper, vigilant and solitary,

Sealed the Void with a sacrifice unspoken.

 

We bring threads together; through darkness we see.

We bind and we balance, hold fast and hold true—

For we are the hands that the world passes through.

 

The Oath of the Regulators

 

 

The Town that Never Was Part 1

Jack Sullivan whispered the oath of the Regulators under his breath as he stepped onto the deserted main street of a town he’d never heard of. He wasn’t the only one who’d never heard of Hollow Creek, no one had. It showed up on the Commission’s map just east of Erie, Pennsylvania, having sprung up overnight. Jack made it a point to recite the oath whenever he walked into a situation he knew he might not walk out of. He found himself repeating it more in the last few months than he had in a long time.

Jack was a tall, sturdy man in his early seventies. Although he was considered young for a Watcher, his face was accented by the lines of someone with the life experience to earn them. His white push-broom mustache and thick set of eyebrows made him appear more serious than he was. His grandchildren often encouraged him to smile more.  He blamed his severe demeanor on too many years in the field.

The Oath of the Regulators was important to Jack, being one of the first known written records kept by the Watchers. A tapestry featuring the Oath hung in the main hall of the North American Regulation Academy, as it did in every Regulation Academy across the globe. It was a reminder, not just of the Regulators’ birthright, but of their inherent obligation to humanity. Their existence intertwined with the laws and boundaries of reality.

He would repeat the last line of the oath to himself we are the hands that the world passes through, we are the hands that the world passes through whenever he felt a pit forming in his stomach. On this particular evening, he felt a pit the size of a bowling ball and just as heavy.

 The derelict, wind-swept town lay before him, unnaturally silent in the purple dusk. Four figures moved against the evening backdrop, just before the horizon fell. They were here under the assumption that a rogue Editor—a nefarious manipulator of reality—was hiding somewhere in the twisted, abandoned structures. Three of them had run-ins with this Editor in the past, but none of them had ever been able to corner him. Increased signs of his presence were appearing more by the day. If he was here, it meant they weren’t the only ones in trouble. The Commission was feeling an intense pressure to apprehend him. It wasn’t just the Regulators that felt the chaos The bonds of reality itself were beginning to vibrate, as if they were shivering with fear.

Jack had been in situations like this before, but there was a certain urgency this time. He’d honed his talents to a sharp point as a senior Watcher for nearly half a century and he could sense the thin membrane of reality waning the second he stepped across the threshold of the main street. Not only was the town nameless, and not only was it simply abandoned. It was hollowed out, like someone had reached into its fabric and pulled out the stitching that made it real. Shoe prints here had no owners. Each doorway meant a potential slip into an empty pocket of reality. It was the kind of place where every step felt like it could sink through the ground into nothingness.

Jack adjusted his coat against the biting wind. “I don’t like this,” he muttered. Not that it needed saying—his colleagues could read it in his stiff posture, the way his hand hovered near his holster. They all knew Jack didn’t like walking into traps, and this town had all the telltale signs.

Elias Thornton, broad-shouldered with silver threads through his close-cropped hair, pressed a palm against the brick wall of an old gas station. He was a Tether—one of the Commission’s best—and in the field he was their anchor. His fingers twitched as he felt along the wall, sensing the flow of energy. His brow furrowed in frustration. “It’s been altered,” Elias murmured. “Not just edited, it’s layered. Someone doesn’t want us seeing what was here before.” The fabric of the town was gray, reading like a journal that had been written and erased thousands of times over.

A few paces ahead, Lena Moreau clicked her tongue, more in concern than disapproval. Her sharp eyes scanned the street from under her knit cap. “Editors don’t usually work this hard to cover their tracks,” she said warily.

“Or this recklessly,” Elias added. He stepped back from the wall, rubbing his palm as if it burned. “We haven’t seen layers like these in… what, twenty-five, maybe thirty years?” posing it a question, he was hoping he was wrong. A town-sized overlay hadn’t been seen since the Great Erasure, which was long before any of them were born.

 Jack’s frown deepened. “He does,” he said as if he were confirming the presence of the Editor.

“And he knows we’re looking for him,” Jack said, more to himself than to the others, “and we don’t want a repeat of last time. This Editor was bold and cocky. He left traps, false trails. The last time they’d gotten close, two junior agents vanished from reality for two days before Elias found a way to tether them back. They resigned from their posts that day and Jack wasn’t about to let that happen again.

Gabriel Vance, the youngest of the team, shifted his weight nervously. He was fresh from the Academy, all eager eyes and twitchy fingers. He resembled a chubby blood hound in the moment. “We’re sure it’s him?” Gabriel asked in a whispered voice, fiddling with the top button of his coat as his gaze darted over every shadow like a pinball.

Jack gave him a sidelong glance. “You have someone else in mind?” he asked dryly. Gabriel swallowed and fell silent. The poor kid was jumpy, but Jack couldn’t blame him. The place felt wrong, Jack’s own skin crawled with the sensation that they were trespassing on a spider’s web, and the spider was waiting for them to make a mistake.

They proceeded carefully down the main street in formation, Elias leading as he traced invisible fractures running through the bones of the town. Each step toward the center made the world slightly less tangible. Jack watched a rooftop at the edge of his vision: one moment the roof sloped normally, the next it stretched at an impossible angle before settling back. The road under their feet narrowed to a single lane then widened out into a plaza and back again between blinks, as if the town was breathing around them. Reality was flexing and warping under the Editor’s influence .

“That’s new,” Gabriel said suddenly, stopping in his tracks. He pointed a gloved finger down a side street, eyes wide, staring to the left.

Jack followed Gabriel’s gaze and felt his stomach tighten. At the far end of the street, where there had been nothing but the fading dusk a moment ago, stood a house. A detailed house that made everything around it appear blurry in comparison. A turn of the century style Cape Cod, with dark windows, a sagging porch that appeared out of thin air. Lena swore under her breath. “Well, this is going to be fun,” she said to her colleagues, feigning excitement, but swallowing hard. She didn’t need to explain her sarcasm; they’d worked with her long enough to know.

“Let’s move,” she ordered. “No use prolonging it.” Determination hardened her features as she unclipped her gloves from her belt.

They marched forward in careful succession, spreading out to cover each other’s blind spots. Every sense was on high alert for movement. Their eyes bulged searching for anything that didn’t belong. This was a tall order in a place that was itself, an outlier of reality. Nearing the impossible house, Elias went first up the creaking wooden steps. He didn’t hesitate; pressing a steady hand against the front door, Jack saw Elias’s jaw tighten.

“This is fresh,” Elias whispered. The wood grain writhed under his palm as if it were alive. They were, without question, walking into a trap.

Jack drew the sidearm from the holster at his hip. He knew full well that mortal bullet wouldn’t do a thing to an Editor who could blink it out of existence, but the heft of the cold metal was a familiar comfort to him and that was what he needed. They were about to run headlong into a trap, the only question was how deep in they already were .

Without warning, the front door creaked open on its own. A dark yawn from within dared them to enter, its molecules opened in expectation. Elias and Lena gave each other a knowing glance. Gabriel’s hand darted instinctively toward the door, aiming to push it wider or test it.

“Gabriel!” Jack hissed. “Don’t touch anything.”

Gabriel froze, fingers inches from the doorframe. He swallowed and pulled back. “I-I wasn’t going to,” he lied unconvincingly. Jack shot him a look. In a place rigged by an Editor, touching the wrong thing could erase you from existence before you even knew it . The kid had a lot to learn if he wanted to survive fieldwork.

A tense silence fell. Lena motioned with two fingers, and they entered the house cautiously. They would have to move painfully slow not to disturb the loose boundaries of the house’s reality. Elias went first, running his fingertips over the seams of the floorboards. Lena had her gloves tight and a gypsum pencil in her hand, ready to write, or rather, rewrite any broken boundaries. Jack and Gabriel brought up the rear to keep an eye out for any strange happenings. The interior was a single room, impossibly large and bare. The light from the doorway fell on walls covered in writing. Scrawled in a looping hand, Jack recognized it as ancient Architecture script. It covered every inch of peeling wallpaper. In the dim light he couldn’t make out the language or content, but it gave him a bad feeling. He studied Lena’s face, hoping to see a reassuring calmness, but he wasn’t seeing it. Elias stepped further in, sweeping his flashlight over the scribbled walls. Lena followed, keeping to the perimeter.

The entryway stretched unnaturally, walls angling into impossible geometry. The air felt heavy, like it was thick with static.

Jack stepped inside, keeping his gun drawn, knowing it wouldn’t help, but feeling better for it anyway.

Elias was already studying the floorboards, running his fingers over the shifting seams of reality. “This place isn’t supposed to exist.”

“It doesn’t,” Lena said. “Not really.”

Gabriel exhaled sharply. “Then why do I feel like something’s watching us?” He was aware that he didn’t say “someone.”

Jack didn’t answer. He felt it too.

And then the air crackled—like an old radio struggling for a signal. The room around them lurched, walls bending, wood groaning under the weight of something unnatural.

Jack turned sharply. “We need to—”

The hallway was gone. The front door, gone.

Gabriel swore. The floor lurched, sending him to his feet. “What the hell—”

“It’s a pocket,” Lena cut in. “A fold in reality.”

Jack crossed the threshold when a high-pitched buzzzzzz broke the silence, muffled inside his coat pocket. He grimaced. A phone call, now? On the edge of a reality glitch? He should have silenced his phone. Still, if someone was calling his secure line, it might be important. Possibly the Commission. He took a calculated risk and answered, putting the phone to his ear while keeping his eyes on the strange room .

“Hello,” he whispered gruffly, more question than greeting.

A breathless, urgent voice crackled on the other end. Jack immediately recognized the tone—Commission HQ, and something was very wrong. He listened, eyes widening.

“You too?” he murmured, heart beginning to pound. He didn’t have to specify what—if they were feeling it, he knew exactly what it meant. Across the line, the speaker confirmed Jack’s fears in hurried, clipped sentences. Jack’s free hand balled into a fist at his side.

Elias glanced back at him. “Jack? Everything okay?”

Jack held up a hand for silence, straining to hear the voice on the phone over the faint buzzing that permeated the town.

“How… how is that possible?” Jack asked under his breath. His face had gone ashen. Gabriel, watching from a few steps away, felt a sick weight drop into his gut seeing the blood drain from Jack’s face .

Whatever the call was, it was bad.

On the line, the dispatcher’s words came through: simultaneous disturbances… memory fluctuations… possible Void breach indicators. Jack could hear his heartbeat pounding in his ears. He had suspected something big was happening beyond simple Editor mischief here. And now the Commission was confirming it.

“I can feel it,” Jack said quietly into the phone. “It’s stretching—like the universe is holding its breath.” His eyes flicked to Elias and Lena, who were watching him tensely now.

“I was hoping it was just this place, but if you’re feeling it too, any Editor can feel it.”

That was the worst part of it—whatever was happening, any rogue Editors in the northern hemisphere would sense the opportunity.

A crackle of affirmation from the phone. Jack’s heart hammered. He listened a moment longer, then said, “Understood.” A pause. “Keep her safe?” he with a rare tremor in his usually authoritative voice.

“I’m on my way.” He ended the call and slowly lowered the phone, mind racing.

Lena stepped forward, her dark eyes focusing sharply. “What is it?”

Jack met her gaze. “Something’s happening,” he said, voice grave. “Something big, it sounds like,” he inhaled deeply. “The Commission needs us back now. They have… a situation,” he exhaled exhaustively as he continued.

He didn’t want to say it, didn’t want to think it. But they had to know.

“Potential Void breach,” it came out of his mouth matter-of-factly in a vain attempt to downplay the situation. Like it was an everyday occurrence.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Elias thought he was swearing under his breath but when the three sets of eyes flew in his direction, he realized he wasn’t as quiet as he thought. A Void breach? Even the suggestion of one would be top priority.

“That has to be a mistake, yeah? A Void breach. Let’s be realistic about those odds. Don’t we need to take care of this first?” He gestured around the room with its odd angles and eerily scrawled walls, hopeful they could finish what they started. None of them wanted to turn their backs on the Editor they’d tracked so far. They were close, each of them could feel it. Even Gabriel.

Jack looked around at the house’s interior. The scribbles on the wall… one caught his eye as his flashlight passed over it. There was something familiar he remembered from his limited knowledge of ancient architecture. A name, repeated over and over in different scripts.

“Lena, what d’you make of this?” Jack asked, drawing her attention to it. Seeing a name written in an Editor’s overlay made his skin crawl. Lena’s eyes darted back and forth, then up and down over the text taking it all in.

“Well, it’s a name,” she said, confirming Jack’s theory.

 “But it’s old, pfffft”, she exhaled, eyes wide, “really old. I’ll have to look this one up,” she said as she pulled out her phone to snap a few reference photos. “I’ve never met an Editor who could write like this. So, what is it doing here?” she said, wholly perplexed.

“Would an Architect work with an Editor on an overlay like this?” Jack asked. It was a serious question with big implications.

“Given that they would be breaking, I don’t know, twenty Regulation laws, the better question is which Architect is working with an Editor. With this Editor,” she posited, pointing at the handiwork of an Architect she feared she might know. Jack could almost see her searching her through her memory like she was flipping through a Rolodex. 

He holstered his gun. “This was a distraction,” he muttered. It clicked now—the elaborate trap, the layered town, all of it meant to occupy them while something else went down. “He led us here on purpose.”

Lena’s jaw tightened. “To keep us away from that breach?”

Jack clenched his jaw. “He did this on purpose.”

A voice echoed from nowhere, smooth, amused, dripping with self-satisfaction.

“Of course I did.”