STRANGE wasn't always one person. He used to be two—Sheridan Hollow, a quiet genius obsessed with detective novels and exposing hidden truths, and Von Crankenstein, an unhinged prodigy with a love for the paranormal and a morally flexible code.
They were childhood friends, roommates, hackers, and eventually victims of the same forbidden site buried deep beneath the dark web. What they found wasn't just information—it was something more. Something that slithered through servers and dreams alike.
The Paranormal Net.
Sheridan stumbled upon it first, researching unsolved disappearances. Von saw it as a playground for forbidden knowledge. Together, they explored it until their minds fractured… and fused. Whatever ego boundaries once separated them began to blur. The network changed them.
By the time they were 18 and ready to be kicked out of their foster placement, they were no longer two boys.
They were Strange.
And they'd just been accepted into Deadman's College of Arcane Horrors—a tuition-funded hellhole for society's supernatural rejects. The price was steep, but between Sheridan's sharp tongue and Von's black-market contacts, they made it work.
⸻
The College stood like a corpse cathedral. Gothic towers scraped the sky. Green letters scrawled DEADMAN'S over the gates, flickering like laughter on the verge of collapse.
Inside, the first day of class was chaos: whispers, howls, a goblin trying to eat a chair.
The instructor—a wraith wrapped in what looked like stitched skin—called out from a crackling scroll:
"Von Crankenstein?"
A boy in a pristine three-piece suit raised his hand. His tie was silver. His hair, dark and curled. His smirk? Unsettling.
He didn't look like a monster. He looked like he hired monsters.
Whispers followed him as he sat. Some said he smelled too clean. Too human.
"What kind of monster are you supposed to be?" a six-eyed thing asked with a sneer.
Von didn't blink.
"A refined one."
The teacher moved on, but suspicion lingered.
⸻
Later that week, during a boring lecture on runes that could melt your soul, the back doors creaked open. A tall figure entered: masked in volcanic glass, trailing chains of scorched bone.
Dean Mortallis.
Even the goblin shut up.
The Dean's voice was a slow death rattle:
"You. Von Crankenstein. Come."
The room froze.
Outside the classroom, in the deadstone hallway, the Dean's eyes glowed behind the mask.
"You said you had experience. I'm listening."
Sheridan briefly surfaced, his voice lighter.
"Give me the light."
Von exhaled, and the switch happened. In a flicker of breath, Sheridan Hollow took control.
"Right. I inquired about a position when we enrolled. You didn't have it. So I created it."
The Dean tilted his head.
"And what exactly did you create?"
"A disciplinary force. A club to monitor students, investigate… and punish."
A pause.
"Name?"
Sheridan's lips curled.
"S.I.C.K. — Strange Investigations Club of Knowledge."
For a second, even the hallway felt like it was holding its breath.
Then the Dean spoke.
"I like the name."
He turned to leave.
As they walked back, the suit shimmered again—Von took over, cracking his neck with satisfaction.
"You're making this way too easy," he said to Hollow.
"We're just getting started."
"Of course we are. When you've got a killing ground, the first rule is simple—set the barricades, lock it down, and make damn sure no one gets out."
Before they became Strange… they were monsters in their own right.
Sheridan Hollow was methodical, brilliant, and cold. A would-be detective with a fascination for patterns, secrets, and the exact moment a person realizes they're going to die.
Von Crankenstein was chaos in a tailored suit—obsessed with the arcane, the grotesque, the limits of flesh and spirit. Where Hollow saw puzzles, Von saw ingredients.
Together, they didn't just explore the dark web.
They conquered it.
They ran a black market operation under the name "The Mirror Men." The rules were simple:
• Only target the ones no one would miss.
• Strip the body clean.
• Sell the organs to hospitals and cultists.
• Use the rest for rituals and research.
It was Hollow who scouted the victims. Von who dissected them with surgical precision. Between them, dozens vanished without a trace. They never felt guilty.
Until they found it.
Buried deeper than the dark web was the Paranormal Net—a network that pulsed like a living thing, whispering secrets not meant for mortals. Hollow chased it out of obsession. Von saw it as the final frontier.
They broke in. Something broke back.
Memories fractured. Voices overlapped. A ritual—half accidental, half divine—merged them.
The result?
Strange.
One body. Two minds. And something else buried inside, watching.
They swore off their past… sort of. The killing stopped—but not because they had a change of heart. They just found better victims. More deserving prey. More… interesting parts.
And when Deadman's College of Arcane Horrors sent that black-envelope acceptance letter, sealed with bone wax, they knew—
They were exactly where they belonged.
Deadman's College of Arcane Horrors didn't do curfews.
It did warnings.
The latest one was scrawled in blood across the mess hall ceiling, dripping onto moldy lasagna:
"ONE OF YOU IS GONE. WHO'S NEXT?"
Students whispered about it, but not too loud. At Deadman's, rumors had a way of growing teeth.
The name on everyone's cracked lips was Lark Blackbane—a second-year banshee major who hadn't been seen since Tuesday. Her scream could shatter mirrors. Her laugh could silence a ghost. And yet… she vanished.
No sound. No struggle. No trace.
Except one thing.
A scrap of black velvet, soaked in salt water and wrapped around an eyeball that wasn't hers.
The faculty, of course, shrugged it off. Disappearances were part of the curriculum.
But Strange?
Strange was intrigued.
⸻
Von sprawled in the middle of their dorm room, a chalk circle glowing faintly beneath him. He was shirtless, eyes closed, muttering backwards Latin as purple smoke coiled around his fingers.
Sheridan surfaced mid-chant, rolling his eyes.
"You're showboating again."
Von cracked one eye open. "I'm setting the mood."
"We're investigating a kidnapping, not seducing a poltergeist."
"Same principle," Von muttered. He flicked his wrist, and the chalk circle vanished with a hiss. "So. The banshee's gone. Thoughts?"
Sheridan leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "No signs of magical discharge. No blood. No echo residue."
"Which means," Von said, standing up and reaching for his tie, "whoever took her either wasn't human…"
"…Or was very, very good at pretending to be."
⸻
They started with the student directory—digitally, of course. The Paranormal Net was off-limits to most students. Not to Strange.
Sheridan cracked through the college firewall in seconds. Names flickered across the screen—half of them cursed. A few exploded. One just wept softly and refused to load.
They focused on dorm logs, rune activity charts, and anomalous shifts in astral pressure.
Then, they found it.
Dorm 13-C. A spike in shadow displacement the night Lark vanished. Roommate report flagged as "Emotionally Unstable." Name: Carmine Voss.
⸻
Carmine was a blood mage with a stutter and a pet leech named Munch. He wasn't the type to do anything bold unless he was told to.
Or controlled.
Strange found him in the basement prayer pit, bleeding into a silver bowl.
"Doing your taxes?" Von asked, stepping into the candlelight.
Carmine jumped. "W-what do you want?"
"Answers," Sheridan said flatly, his voice bleeding through.
Carmine's hands trembled. "I-I didn't do anything. I just— I just opened the door. I d-didn't know what it was."
"What what was?" Von stepped closer.
The boy swallowed. "It… it wasn't a person. I thought it was a professor or something. But it didn't have a face."
Sheridan tilted his head. "And you let it in?"
"I didn't mean to. It whispered my name. It sounded like my mom."
Von's eyes darkened.
"Memory mimicry," Sheridan said, more to himself than anyone. "High-level."
Carmine's voice cracked. "And when it left… Lark wasn't there anymore."
Strange crouched, eye-level with the terrified blood mage.
"Carmine," Sheridan said calmly, "you're going to tell us everything else you remember. Or Von is going to let Munch taste test your femur."
Von grinned. Munch hissed.