Where the Bears Roam: A Mountain of Lies

High in Bulgaria’s Rila Mountains, near the famed Seven Lakes trail, a young woman’s mutilated body is found.
Authorities rush to blame a bear.
A tragic accident, they insist.
Nothing more.

But Stefan Hristov—ex-cop, reluctant hiker, and the man who found her—recognizes staging when he sees it. The pieces don’t fit. The timing doesn’t fit. The silence from officials especially doesn’t fit.

Every step he takes toward the truth pushes him deeper into a web of inexplicable events: guarded sites hidden in the mountains, night-shift workers too terrified to talk, and a pattern of missing young women whose disappearances vanish from every official record.

Something is operating here—smooth, disciplined, protected.
Something that turns victims into secrets and secrets into leverage.

Stefan has only glimpsed its edges.
The full picture remains locked behind layers of fear and influence.

But someone already knows he’s looking.
And they want him gone.

Forced to navigate the deadly wilderness and the corruption rotting the valley below, Stefan must risk everything to expose whoever—or whatever—is preying on the vulnerable.

Because the real threat isn’t the bear the authorities keep talking about.
It’s the people who trained the valley to believe in it.