There are creatures lurking in our world. Obscure creatures long relegated to myth and legend. They have been sighted by a lucky-or unlucky-few, some have even been photographed, but their existence remains unproven and unrecognized by the scientific community. These creatures, long thought gone, have somehow survived; creatures from our nightmares haunting the dark places. They swim in our lakes and bays, they soar the night skies, they hunt in the woods. Some are from our past, some from other worlds, and others have always been with us-watching us, fearing us, hunting us. These are the cryptids, and Systema Paradoxa tells their tales. *** Anne-Rose Connell and her daughter Dahlia venture to far-off Ireland on a graduate residency, grasping at a chance for a future while desperately evading their past. But they aren't the only ones with a secret. A stranger in a community wary of the outside world, Rosie struggles to navigate her graduate research into the legend of the local mythical beast while watching over her daughter. When she discovers the scheme of an ambitious business man to expose the very lore the islanders are trying to protect, it is a race to intervene before consequences grow bloody.