Lore

To whoever finds this,

My name is Clancy Summers. I was a Hunter before that word meant anything to me, before the network went quiet, before I understood that yesterday can bleed into tomorrow if you cut it in the wrong place. This guide is what I could save, steal, remember, and write down before another door closed behind me.

The world you know is real. Unfortunately, it's not alone. There's something out there pressing against it from sides we don't have names for. We call those things Horrors, not because the name is clever, but because every better word fails when you're the one standing close enough to feel its breath.

For a long time, Hunters kept the pressure from becoming a rupture. We had structure, safe houses, codes, dead drops, old favors, older grudges, and enough bad coffee to drown a chapel. An organization of like-minded people is what I always called it. Then the chain snapped. Files vanished. People stopped answering. Whole divisions became rumors overnight.

I have seen three different explanations for the collapse, and two of them were written in my own hand.

That does not comfort me.

Something got us.

The Horrors noticed. They always notice. They're bolder now, testing fences that used to bite back. A thing that once haunted an old dirt road starts claiming a county. A bargain whispered in a cellar becomes a mayor's campaign promise. A child dreams of a door, and by morning every lock in town is warm to the touch.

This is where you come in. I would dress it up if I could, but recruitment speeches are for people with more time and less to lose. You are reading this because you saw the seam in the world and didn't look away fast enough. Maybe you want answers. Maybe you want revenge. Maybe someone you love is standing too close to the dark. These are all good reasons to stand and fight but none of them will keep you alive by themselves.

This book can't keep you safe. It will make you harder to kill, harder to fool, and harder to erase. It contains rules, methods, warnings, and the occasional confession. Treat the first three as tools. Treat the last one as evidence.

You'll be afraid. Good. Fear is a smoke alarm, not a weakness. Listen to it, then move anyway. Trust your crew. Question clean rooms, generous strangers, and any mirror that shows you what you want. Keep some records. Burn some records. Learn which is which.

If we're lucky, you'll never meet me. If we're unlucky, you already have.

Stay breathing,

- Clancy Summers