How many sides does a story have?
One, where everyone's point of view coexists; a vision of reality shaped by perception. Then there is the truth, Absolute and immutable. Unaffected by circumstance, opinion, will, or choice.
This version exists in silence, behind every perception, ever-present, reachable only by those who dare seek.
Most prefer the first: a sea of plausibilities. A multiverse of "right answers." A consensus reality designed not to find truth, but to keep life intact. But no matter how far you bend reality to your liking, the truth doesn't move—only we do.
The Gedfy were nobodies—by reality's standards. In truth, they were the final line of defense between the world we know and the chaos waiting beyond.
Since the age before time itself—before the shape of things took form—the supernatural has touched this tiny rock we call home. And somewhere above it all, the strongest being assigned this world a number: Zone Six.
The Gedfys have protected this Zone for generations.
They weren't alone; reality requires many hands, sacrifices, and an absurd amount of luck to hold together. But only the Gedfys trained every son, daughter, grandchild, and great-grandchild to be warriors in this cause.
Legacy. Duty. Family name. They provided whatever reason the child required, until they followed through and maintained the family's responsibility.
Someone had to bear the burden.
If no one volunteered, why not force responsibility onto them for the greater good?
"Isn't it time?" asked Mrs. Meyer.
"It was… long ago," Mr. Meyer replied. "Maybe it's not a duty anymore -- maybe it's a curse." He tried to shrug it off, but the weight settled into his shoulders again before he could pretend. "Sorry, I dragged you into this…" He looked away, not wanting to show weakness.
They were childhood sweethearts.
Meyer had always pushed her away, knowing what his future held… Until his father, worn down and bitter, couldn't take it anymore.
One morning, Meyer woke up in an empty motel room. A note on the wall, scrawled in his father's hand: Run. Live the life we weren't allowed. We'll take the consequences. One of us should grow old.
It was the greatest rebellion a Gedfy had ever committed.
The family's grim tradition was well-known to them all: Marry at eighteen, conceive by nineteen, train your child until they turn nine, and die before thirty.
One ancestor—the so-called coward—lived till forty.
Ever since, that became the family's hopeful benchmark.
Yet they all knew the truth: The price of keeping reality intact is your life.
After nine, most Gedfy children are raised by strangers. These caretakers refer to themselves as "colleagues" of the parents, but never share their names, jobs, or whereabouts. That's because the parents are dead, and memories in a Gedfy training are considered a distraction—a waste of space.
At nine, Myer Gedfy waited for his replacements. But none came.
Unlike the generations before, his parents had told him the truth before they vanished.
He waited a year without receiving any letters, calls, or any news about their bodies.
His parents had become ghosts in a world trained to forget them.
Not the "secret-agent" kind of ghosts. That kind you can still track.
No—this was the work of pure magic of the highest order.
Once a Gedfy disappears… not even a god can find them.
How would a nine-year-old understand that?
He could—because they had raised him to.
They gave him every ounce of love they believed he'd need. Trained him for the abandonment they promised, then fulfilled it.
Still, when the moment arrived, Myer shattered. No amount of preparation dulls the pain of being left behind by the person you love the most.
Mrs. Meyer, then, still just a girl, gave up her own life to stay by his side.
Her parents screamed, slapped, and shamed her for abandoning them for a boy they barely remembered. Yet she stayed, because they were childhood friends.
Because he had shared everything with her.
She hadn't believed a word of it. Not at first. But when the reports came up blank—when official records were erased, and not even private investigators could find a trace—she began to understand.
Myer wasn't seeking attention. He was mourning something the world didn't even acknowledge.
So she stayed. Held him through the nights. Cooked, cleaned, and comforted him until the beginning of the second year when she slapped him, hard enough to snap his mind back from the abyss.
Now, whenever Myer drifted into old memories, he instinctively rubbed his cheek.
"Sorry," he muttered, blinking.
"If I'd known a slap worked that well," Mrs. Meyer said with a smirk, "I'd have done it long ago." Her chuckle cracked a reluctant smile from her grumpy husband.
The moment passed like sunlight through storm clouds. Mrs. Meyer tugged on a bronze chain at her hip.
A pocket watch slid from her coat, spinning mid-air.
It circled her like a comet, gaining speed—Streaks of bronze light drawing sigils in the air.
Then—snap. She caught it barehanded.
Bronze smoke hissed and curled around her fingers, as the runes glowed and dimmed.
The world around them tilted ever so slightly, like the gear of time had just clicked into a new setting.
The watch's face bristled with tiny, unnatural needles, none of which tracked time.
There were no numbers, no circular frame.
Some needles folded in on themselves; others slipped between dimensions—appearing, vanishing, reappearing at different angles.
Mrs. Meyer didn't raise the watch to fight or to trace a threat. She simply stared at the shifting image inside the flip cover.
A child's photograph, morphing in real time. From a baby with golden curls… To a toddler with piercing, crystalline eyes. Then to a boy, maybe seven, with a gentle smile that refused to fade.
"Girls are going to go mad for those eyes," she murmured.
Meyer frowned. "Blond hair and blue eyes... your type, huh?"
"You didn't have to change our child so much," he added, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. "He doesn't resemble either of us."
"We agreed it was for his protection," she said flatly, but her grip on the watch tightened. "And it's sapphire blue. Not just any blue."
"Sappy blue…" Meyer muttered, almost fondly, then sighed. "Yeah, yeah. That was before I realized I'm nowhere near your ideal man."
He dropped to one knee. His sword, slumbering at his back, began to shimmer.
The more he cursed himself, the more it fed, growing longer, heavier, jagged with emotion.
"I'm ready," he said, the blade crackling with pent-up Power. "Let's go slay some demons."
"Broken souls," Mrs. Meyer corrected. "Don't forget the new assignment. They're waiting."
"The damned wait for no one."
Mrs. Meyer wasn't ready yet. "Let's see him. Just one more time." She pleaded.
"We just saw him, a couple of months ago," Meyer groaned. "You know, we can't keep dropping in whenever the mood hits. That's why we left in the first place."
"What if he finds out later?" she asked with puppy eyes. "Like you did...? What if he wanders into this world chasing revenge? All this—everything we've done—would mean nothing."
Meyer didn't reply immediately. The sword at his back crept higher, as if feeding on the conflict.
He reached over his shoulder, gripped the handle, and locked the weapon into place.
Then, without warning, he kicked the blade at the tip.
The massive sword spun in a circle on its axis like a bronze weather vane gone mad, until he caught the hilt with practiced ease and rested it gently across his shoulder.
"My father wanted me to be the first to live," he said in a grim tone. "I was too proud. Too stubborn. I threw it all away—and dragged you into this curse with me." He exhaled, shaky. "So no. I won't give that same choice to—"
He stopped, unable to say two simple words: "My son."
He wasn't ready for that.
Instead, he whispered, "Zackery Templeton will become the boy who lived… whether he wishes for it or not. Also, I am a cat person. Those eyes do not affect me!"
Mrs. Meyers flicked her wrist, and a needle shot from her pocket watch—silent, sharp, impossible to follow.
Yet Meyer, standing barely a foot away, swirled his sword around his body in one fluid motion, deflecting four of them, as he spun like a dancer in armor.
The fifth needle embedded itself mid-block, right in his blade.
"Don't you da—"
"Begone!" she chanted, pointing her finger.
The needle ignited—morphing into a chain-laced rocket that yanked Meyer off his feet, launching him backward like a cursed firework.
"I don't feel right," she said, brushing hair from her cheek. "And I'm going to see my-our child." Her voice cracked slightly. "I don't need your permission or your excuses. Honestly, I should've left you the day I had him."
From far off, Meyer's voice echoed, muffled by trees. "Ouch!"
Then came a string of magic words like a disgruntled spellbook.
"Minimize!"
The sword shrank, popping out of existence.
"Exchange!"
In a flash, Meyer took the blade's place, tiny as a sparrow, kicking off the giant binding chain like a gymnast.
"Shoot!" He pointed, and the sword reappeared mid-air, zipping toward his fleeing wife.
"Exchange!"
He teleported once more, this time slamming into her with an accidental oomph.
They rolled across the hilltop until he pinned her to the grass with all the weight he could muster. "Same absurd boat, mad woman," he muttered between breaths and kissed her.
After a long, reluctant pause, she scoffed. "Oh, psst! I didn't even put my back into it."
"You almost killed me."
"You've got Power Pills. You could have lived." She argues.
"Could have?" Meyer echoed, aghast. "Like with a question mark?"
But she'd already pushed him off, summoned two glowing needles, and stepped onto them like airborne sandals. With a smirk, she took off into the sky.
Meyer stared after her. "Could have..." he repeated, stunned.
Then he recalled his sword, swung it once, and used the momentum to vault upward.
Each swing hurled him higher and faster until—on the fifth swing—he caught up.
"COULD HAVE?!"
They hovered side by side, drifting above the clouds. Spying on their child had become a shared ritual—equal parts guilt, love, and protection.
From this altitude, they used 'Soul Artifacts,' gifted to them by their 'Patreon'—an unknowable being who spoke directly into their minds, like divine static on a broken radio.
The artifacts granted ethereal vision, though they lacked the multitasking abilities of their primary weapons—Meyer's 'Soul Sword,' and her reality-warping 'Pocket Watch.'
Their Patron had once offered them an isolated dimension—a peaceful world just for their family.
All it took was "a snap," it claimed.
A simple gesture of rubbing two fingers together.
They declined, of course, even as its high-pitched whisper scorched itself into their synapses.
The memory still gave them both shivers, not from the voice, but from how small the being was and how impossibly powerful it seemed. Such godly Power stuffed in such a small frame was unnatural, to say the least.
Mrs. Meyers didn't want to use the artifact this time. She didn't want to hover above, cloaked in clouds and guilt, spying on her son like a ghost.
She wanted one real encounter she could remember, so she broke protocol.
She slipped into the crowd—another stranger during his school trip—and lured their twelve-year-old son into an alleyway with the kind of instinct only a mother could trust. Time froze around them like a flipped switch, the world pausing mid-sentence.
They didn't speak.
They only hugged.
Longer than they should have.
Long enough to soak his shirt with tears he wouldn't even remember.
When they vanished, they left behind silence and the faintest warmth in the fabric.
"For someone who didn't want to come," Mrs. Meyers said, eyes red, "you sure cried more than me!"
"Allergies," muttered Meyer, sniffing.
She chuckled, wiping her nose. "An immortal getting allergies. What's next?"
"Shut up." He swung his sword with all his might, blasting off in a gust of wind.
Mrs. Meyers shot a dozen needles into the air, riding the pressure like a rocket. She couldn't catch him.
"Hold up, you giant crybaby!" she called out, voice wobbling through the gusts.
"THAT'S JUST SCIENCE!" Meyer shouted from ahead. "WIND MAKES YOUR EYES WATER! I READ IT!"
It didn't take them long to reach the Ghost Town. Evacuated yesterday and abandoned today.
Named long before either of those things, as if it had always known what it would become.
The ghost town was less a place than a punishment.
Silence didn't live here. It hid.
Every step echoed loudly against fractured pavement, only to be swallowed by a pressure in the air that gnawed and watched.
Metal wept rust like open wounds. Signs twisted. Cars crumbled to hollow shells. Lamp posts snapped mid-spine like brittle bones no one buried.
Above them, thunderclouds spun like predators in heat—bloated and furious, lashing lightning down at random, as if trying to stab the world awake.
But there was nothing to find.
No life. No resistance. Just... ruins.
Houses stood like corpses, roofs collapsed like sunken ribs, and windows gaped like charred eye sockets.
Doors hung sideways or vanished, exposing rooms that were no longer rooms, instead open mouths of rot and memory.
Pit-holes cratered the streets where the earth had surrendered, swallowing whole homes, stores, and roads. Jagged edges ringed the holes like scars.
The weather had stopped trying—frozen in a permanent state of grey rage.
The air reeked of mildew, ozone, and secrets left too long in the dark.
While circling the town was something else.
A color that had no name. A hue too dark for shadow.
It didn't belong to this world. It slithered at the edge of vision, moving not with purpose, but with hunger.
This place wasn't just dead. It had been rejected. Not forgotten -- but banished.
A wound the world itself refused to heal.
The duo always worked alone. Not like the standard Soul Hunter teams of seven, each with their specialties and protocols. No. Mr. and Mrs. Meyers were the protocol, the outliers, the strongest pair their secret society had ever tolerated.
But even they were starting to reconsider that strategy.
"Level five? Maybe six?" guessed Meyer, squinting at the warping skyline.
Mrs. Meyers tilted her head, eyes narrowing. "Feels more like a blossoming Ten."
"Blossoming?" Meyer frowned.
"What?" she shrugged. "Trying to make what's happening sound less creepy."
Meyer didn't argue. He pulled out an artifact made by mortals—a plain smartphone—and tapped out a brief group text to their network: Soul Hunters of Erica.
Location: Ghost Town, Tier 7 Collapse Zone
Situation: Probable Oblivion Keepers (plural)
And hits send.
That plural 's' at the end did all the heavy lifting. It was the kind of thing that made seasoned 'Soul Hunters' choke on their coffee and start packing silver bullets.
Most low-level souls, once 'Broken,' cling to a single domain, draining spiritual energy to avoid becoming part of the source. But the hazardous ones? The ones who choose to evolve?
They form Soulbinding Pillars.
A forbidden technique, ancient and damned.
By fragmenting its essence into multiple vessels, a spirit could cheat ascension. It chooses living conduits—unknowing Oblivion Keepers—who agree, often unconsciously, to bear its Power. These Keepers become batteries, absorbing dark energy and feeding it back into the shattered ghost.
This pact cannot be severed, not by faith, force, or ever without any risk.
To defeat such a soul, hunters must locate and sever every Keeper—break their spiritual paths, unravel the bindings, and starve the ghost of its stolen immortality.
Only then can it be captured.
What made this worse was that even a mere 'Whisp'—the lowest kind of soul—could mimic the abilities of a 'Vessel' using this technique. Just as the Meyers, 'Flickers' by rank, could exceed 'Harbinger-class' threats using 'Soul Artifacts' and 'Power Pills,' these ghosts could ascend beyond natural law.
Well... natural as in their reality.
"Remind me," Meyer muttered, sliding his phone back into his coat, "when's the last time we faced one of these?"
Mrs. Meyer cracked a crimson-black orb in her palm. "The time we reported it... and ran?"
"Ahh, right," Meyer laughed. "We're ranked Harbingers but barely survive a level three Broken Soul." His laughter turned sharp and cynical.
They stood side by side at the edge of something they weren't ready for and grinned anyway.
"Fun!" They chimed in as one.
"Aren't we generous today?" Mrs. Meyer snickers. "Forgot the ass-whooping we got from a Vessel already?"
Her grin fades when she sees Meyer's face—a man lost in thought, struggling to recall.
"Damn these backlashes," she mutters, pulling him into a hug. "I'm here to remember the useless facts."
Meyer pushes her away.
"Sorry," He mutters, trembling. "But that's not something small to forget."
"Shake it off," she snaps. "Loop it. Lock it in. We don't have the luxury to fall apart right now." Her voice softens. "After the mission. I promise."
That gentle smile was enough to ease his trembling—but not his dread.
"Don't do that!" he yells, pulling back again, eyes wide with paranoia, so she acts.
A flash of white dust bursts from her fingers, clouding Meyer's vision. Ethereal particles wrap around his head, draining color and weight from his memories. He sways, and she catches him before he hits the ground.
"Forget," she whispers, her voice cracking.
In the drifting dust, stolen memories flicker—brief pictures only she could see. She hugs him tight, desperate to press them into herself, and tries to forget with him.
Meanwhile, at the world's bleeding edge, Domains converged—realities colliding in ways the universe was never meant to handle. Powers not meant for this realm poured in, displacing the very laws of nature. And at the epicenter of it all stood two figures.
In another life, someone might've stopped them, warned the world, prepared the defenses. Maybe if the Gedfys hadn't been so distracted, they could have survived long enough to scream a warning.
But duty had dragged them elsewhere.
"Tell me it worked this time," rasped a gurgling voice, thick with irritation. "Or I'll snap a new joint into your pathetic little head. Might even help you morph better." A wet, grating chuckle followed.
"I can do that myself, thank you very much," replied a second voice—smoother, smaller, but no less strange.
This one stood barely waist-high next to the behemoth, his form lean and twitchy. Even sidelong, he doubted he could eclipse the monstrous shape beside him.
"If you want to help," he added, "start manipulating the surroundings. If it bends, it's like your freak-realm. If not, it must be packed with other crap. Hopefully... Sani."
The towering figure raised its hand, halting mid-gesture. Its head turned.
The smaller one followed the gaze, ready to mock the creature's paranoia—until he felt it too.
Eyes.
Watching.
Not at them—but through them, peering into the core of who and what they were.
"This place is filled with Sani," the smaller one muttered, gulping and cursing in his own—untranslated—tongue. "Farken' Fa'cel fo'lum." (Roughly: 'F'in F'sakes, why is it always me?')
"Find someone else for fark's sake…"
No matter what the duo did—or how loud they became, the girl with the chestnut curls remained motionless. She simply stood, her head slightly bowed, her eyes unblinking.
The clash of elemental forces, divine thunder, heat distortions, eldritch ripples—all danced around her without landing a mark. Even their insults, soaked in venom and pride, rolled off her like air off stone.
The two entities gasped for breath, drained by the strain of even existing in her presence.
Yet she simply noticed. Nothing more.
Something—instinct, fear, ancestral programming—made it clear to them: this child was beyond handling. Beyond measurement. So they ignored her and focused on their task instead, willing themselves not to glance back.
Only when the world detonated in splinters of light and form did they realize she was gone.
Inside a bubble carved from external dimensional safeguards, the duo hovered as chaos consumed everything. The land cracked, the sky unzipped, the laws of nature dissolved. They waited, as always, for a savior to arrive, or for the end to finish its sweep.
But then… Snap.
A sound—a command?—echoed across the vacuum of obliteration.
They barely had the time to blink as they found themselves standing on solid ground, then transported to outer space.
Below them: the world whole again. Restored to its original might. No scars, no signs of collapse.
The second figure chuckled darkly, glancing sideways. "Of course, this world has one of those guarding it," he sneered. "I sure as hell can't fight it. Which makes you more than useless."
He vanished mid-laugh, teleporting beyond his companion's reach.
"Begone." A thunderous and intimate word struck their minds, echoing across the void with such weight that resistance didn't even occur. They obeyed without question.
Floating backward through dimensions, the smaller one laughed into the cold nothing.
"My work here is done anyway," the smaller intruder said, toward the voice—toward something. "We shall meet soon, oh mighty one… and our battle will be etched into the very fabric of the life-belt."
The stars seemed to shudder at his words. And as he vanished beyond knowing, a whisper curled into existence, "Their kind still roam the belt...? Doom is indeed -- quite close."
AN: Clarification through the author's journal: The above broken pieces of information are thanks to a single child who survived the cataclysm. One of our pillars and a hero of the highest order, Sir Zackery Templeton.
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