In the sun-bleached village of Valle Oscura, perched between a pine forest and a dead volcano, lived a boy named Nico. Nico was bored. Not the gentle boredom of a lazy afternoon, but the frantic, internet-scrolling boredom of a teenager whose satellite Wi-Fi had capped its data limit for the month.

Nico heard the basement door creak open. Not from the top of the stairs—from the concrete wall behind the server rack. The wall where a fresco of Saint Francis once stood. The plaster bulged outward like a snout.

Then he saw the peers list.

The villagers, who were used to Nico’s pranks (last month he had faked a broadband outage just to watch them panic), just sighed. Old Marta, the librarian, shook her head. “Nico, you cried wolf twice last winter. Now you cry werewolf? Go home.”