“The save isn’t on your hard drive, Leo. It’s in the cloud. And I’ve been rewriting it. Every night. Come find me.”

The screen bloomed to life. His Boss—Val’s likeness—stood on the roof of the Saints Tower, the sun setting in a perfect gradient of orange and purple. But something was wrong. The character wasn’t idle. She was waving .

Buried in a subfolder called was a single audio file. He double-clicked.

He stared at the neon light flickering outside. The sound of Mira’s soft breathing from the bedroom. The faint hum of the PC.

He pressed Y.

His finger hovered over the mouse. Just a file. But inside that folder was the moment he and Val—his real-life Val—had laughed so hard at a glitched NPC that she’d snorted milk out her nose. The save was a ghost, and he was the medium.

The last thing he saw before the power cut was the save folder path changing. No longer C:\Users\Leo\AppData\Local .