Suddenly, a surge of static jumped from the buttons to Elias's fingertips. For a second, he didn't feel the plastic of the controller; he felt the salt spray of a pixelated ocean and heard the distant, haunting cry of a bird that existed only in code.

"If the dream ends, where do we go?" Link’s speech bubble read.

He moved the file to his SD card, the "NSP" extension acting as a key to a world that shouldn’t exist outside of a plastic cartridge. When he booted the console, the familiar wailing of the Wind Fish’s egg filled his room, but something was off. The colors of Koholint Island were oversaturated—the greens too deep, the blues of the ocean almost humming.