Elias finally gathered the courage to turn around. His room was empty. The window was locked. Everything was normal. He let out a shaky breath and turned back to his computer to delete the shortcut. But the file was gone. In its place was a new one: 380.mp4 . The timestamp? One minute from now.
He froze. In the video, the "on-screen Elias" slowly turned his head toward the camera. He didn't look scared; he looked expectant. He held up a handwritten sign that read: “Don’t look behind you yet. Keep watching the file.” 379 mp4
The screen didn't show a video. Instead, it showed a live feed of his own room, filmed from the corner of the ceiling. In the video, Elias was sitting at his desk, exactly as he was now, staring at the screen. Elias finally gathered the courage to turn around
The folder was a graveyard of old memories—blurry vacation photos, "New Project (Final) (2).doc," and dozens of unnamed video clips. But at the very bottom of the list sat 379.mp4 . Everything was normal
As the last digit echoed, the video feed cut to black. The file size, which had been several gigabytes, instantly dropped to 0 KB.
Elias felt the air in the room grow heavy. His mouse hovered over the ‘X’ to close the window, but his finger wouldn’t move. On the screen, a shadow began to stretch across the floor of the recorded room—a shadow that didn't belong to any furniture.