This is fiction. Very serious fiction.

Septum Files is the independent investigative archive documenting mysterious events, unusual phenomena, and absurd incidents throughout Septum County. It is part of an original, deadpan satirical mystery world, not a branch of county government.

An ordinary county. An extraordinary amount of paperwork.

Septum County is a fictional American county. Grievance Falls, its small-town county seat, is the heart of the story. Fragile Creek is a local landmark — and the site of the mysterious 2020 incident.

Tella Fero, a former military intelligence officer, returns to Grievance Falls after his childhood best friend Mal Gardner's body is found in 2026, six years after Mal disappeared. Around that unresolved mystery sits a bureaucracy that takes public sentiment, administrative procedure, and itself far too seriously.

The archive's reach extends throughout the county; the story begins in Grievance Falls. The satire is aimed at institutions and their terrible reasoning, never at real people's appearance.

The universe is being built as a structured story archive, with a possible illustrated book in development under the working title Septum Files: The Fragile Creek Incident. Nothing about that book is finished yet.