The Containment Year - Matthew Petchinsky

One year ago, the first creature stepped out of the fracture.

Now the world is beginning to break.

In the remote Texas town of Briar Hollow, reality has been failing quietly-gravity pockets swallowing roads, shadows moving where no bodies stand, and creatures slipping through thin tears in the sky. What began as a single containment problem has become something far worse.

Rowan Mercer and Maeve Calder now operate the Briar Hollow Museum of the Unseen, a desperate frontline facility where every new anomaly is studied, mapped, and held back-if only for a little while. But when a massive gravitational surge spreads across multiple counties and the ancient entity known as the Harvester begins possessing humans to expand the fractures, it becomes clear that the town is no longer the center of the disaster.

It is only the beginning.

As government forces arrive with plans that could erase Briar Hollow from the map, Rowan makes a dangerous decision: expand containment beyond the town itself. Drawing a line across Texas may be the only way to stop a growing network of fractures that could tear open the continent.

But the Harvester is evolving.

And every new fracture brings something through.

The Containment Year is a sweeping gothic horror about survival, sacrifice, and the terrifying moment when humanity realizes the war for reality has already begun.