WE'RE NOT SAFE HERE

A teen investigates the bloodstained secrets of a town built on ritual, silence, and monsters.

Wispy Falls promises safety—but a 17-year-old vlogger, a black-haired, brown-eyed boy who goes by Storymancer, knows that’s a lie. His 7-year-old brother, Lee, is among those who vanished in the woods. After someone finds a body in the woods, LightParticle121, a conspiracy message board user, sends Storymancer a news clip from a local station that strangely doesn’t appear in the news archives. Storymancer begins corresponding with LightParticle121, who claims that all the missing were sick (Lee had cancer, but few people know that). Even as their exchanges grow increasingly unhinged, Storymancer pursues this lead, documenting his investigation into the bloodmoon ritual, which the authorities claim will protect citizens against the cryptids in the woods. But the deeper Storymancer digs, the more he questions the ritual—and suspects that the Penumbra Institution, which controls the town’s medical care, may be hiding something far more sinister. Told through video and radio show transcripts, emails, and more, the found footage–style narration creates a chilling realism. Chupeco demonstrates a keen understanding of how misinformation spreads and digital natives process fragmented information, though the structure works against the story’s emotional core. The town’s mythology and the cryptid classifications are well-crafted, but the pacing sags under the weight of the plot’s complexity and exposition-heavy forum posts.

A haunting and twisted, if unevenly developed, tale that explores the line between safety and control.