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The image bloomed across his dual monitors. It wasn’t a glitch or a corrupted file. It was a high-resolution photo taken from a low angle, looking up at his own front door. The porch light was on, casting a sickly yellow glow over the welcome mat. In the reflection of the glass pane, he could see the silhouette of the person holding the camera.

It had appeared in his "Downloads" folder overnight, nestled between a PDF receipt and a software update he didn't remember clicking. There was no sender, no subject line, and no metadata once he right-clicked it. The date in the string—sent a cold shiver down his spine. That was the day of the blackout, the forty-eight hours where the entire city of Oakhaven simply went dark, and everyone’s memory of that Tuesday became a blur of static. Download IMG 20221116 102948 648 jpg

The figure was tall, impossibly thin, and wearing a coat Leo recognized instantly. It was his own heavy wool overcoat—the one he’d lost during the blackout and never found. But it wasn't the coat that froze his breath; it was the timestamp burned into the bottom corner of the image in glowing red digital ink: The image bloomed across his dual monitors

Leo stared at the cryptic file name on his desktop: . The porch light was on, casting a sickly

At that exact second, according to every official record, Leo had been three miles away, trapped in a stalled subway car with fifty other witnesses.

Then, his phone buzzed. A new notification appeared on his lock screen: File Received: IMG_20221116_102949_001.jpg The perspective had changed. The door was now open.