On screen, a grainy, overexposed image flickered into view: a hallway. It was his hallway. The wallpaper was peeling in the exact spot he’d ignored for months. The camera moved with a slow, mechanical precision, gliding toward the door of his office.

The static on the monitor wasn't supposed to be there. In the corner of the screen, a file sat alone on the desktop: .

At that exact moment, Elias felt a cold breath against his right ear.

Then, the figure in the video—the one who had been holding the camera—stepped into the light. It wasn't a person. It was a silhouette made of the same digital artifacts and compression noise that plagued old tapes. It leaned down, its face a blur of shifting pixels, and whispered into the ear of the "on-screen" Elias.

The screen went black. The file was gone. Elias sat in the dark, the silence now louder than the hum, afraid to turn around and see if the recording was still in progress.

He reached for the mouse to kill the task, but the cursor was gone. The video continued. On screen, a hand—long-fingered and pale—reached out to turn the doorknob. Elias froze. He didn't hear a sound from the hallway behind him, but on the screen, the door was creaking open.