Two years ago, eight people went missing in the small North Dakotan town of
Caulder's Hollow. The incident rocked the nation as they'd somehow disappeared at the same time from entirely different locations. There was nothing in their backgrounds that tied them together. They were a mixture of Caulder Hollow natives, tourists, and passers-by. Yet, when the clock struck
11:43 PM, they were gone. The forestry agency searched the surrounding wilderness. The authorities turned the town upside down. There were alerts sent to the Canadian border, and federal agents did statewide sweeps. Yet, the eight were never found. The news died down eventually, and the town went back to normal. Well, as normal as it could be considering it lured tourists from all over trying to discover what happened to the missing eight of Caulder's Hollow.
Our story isn't about them, or at least at this moment it isn't. They are players in this grand game, but they're the obstacles, not the
entrants. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.
Tonight, in the early spring of April, Caulder's Hollow was about to receive some very surprising news.
Mara Swain, a recent high school graduate and one of the missing eight, was found on the banks of the
Pembina River outside the
Evershine Outpost. She'd been discovered by a couple of students from
Hightower High. She was unconscious at the time, but she was alive. To hear the teens tell the story, the door to the Evershine Outpost was bright purple only for a moment as Mara Swain tumbled out. In a flash of light, the door returned to normal, and Mara was there. One might assume they were drinking, but the next bit of their story couldn't have been falsified. Mara was dressed in clothing that didn't resemble anything on Earth, and it was made of a material that seemed to be both liquid and solid at the same time. On her hip was a globe made of transparent plastic that held a small, clockwork creature. On her back, sprouting from her flesh like veins of gold and crystal, were huge angelic-like wings. In one hand was a dagger, seemingly to be made out of the same material as her clothing. Blood coated the tip of the blade. Mara's forearm was bleeding from what looked to be a self-imposed wound. When later cleaned by the paramedics, they noticed it glowed, luminescent in the light of the ambulance. More so, it said something...
News broke of Mara's return like a thunderclap across the valley. It'd only been an hour, but the world was already watching. Maybe with her return, the other seven would also come back? That'd be quite some hopeful thinking, considering the exact opposite happened that evening.
At
11:43 PM, you feel this gnawing sensation in the pit of your stomach. You might question where it came from, but you know what you have to do. You have to find the
nearest door and walk through it. Stumbling through whatever obstacles that come between you and it, the pain subsides when you grab the knob and turn. The world disorients for a second. Your awareness feels like it's on the inside of your body. Your innards exposed to air so cold it burns like the sun. A prickling sensation passes over your extremities and into the core of your body. Unsure if your heart is on the inside or out, you feel it skip a beat. And then another. Was it slowing down?
Next thing you know everything snaps back into reality. Your skin feels on its skeleton where it should be. Yet, the odd tingling sensation won't leave you. You look around to find that the landscape around you is far from Caulder's Hollow. The sky above is a deep black and purple,
eight moons hanging in the air. The ground underneath your feet is compacted earth, but there are slivers of glowing areas akin to metallic veins. You turn around to see that the door you passed through is fading away. You can't get your fingers around the knob before it dissipates entirely. You become aware of a
large corrugated metal sign you hadn't seen before. A buzzing fluorescent bulb points towards what's written on it.