His heart hammered against his ribs. He looked at the timestamp of the photo:

He opened one. It was a photo of his own living room, taken from the perspective of his webcam. In the center of the frame, sitting in his empty gaming chair, was a blur of dark wings and violet eyes.

He checked the official forums. No one else was reporting a 5:10 PM patch. There were no patch notes, no dev blogs, nothing. Yet, every time he logged in, the game felt heavier. The Succubus NPCs, usually programmed with three lines of flirtatious dialogue and a combat scream, were growing quiet. They didn't attack. They just stood on the edges of the digital cliffs, watching his character run by.

Then, the small LED on his disconnected monitor flickered to life. A single line of white text appeared on the black glass:

Elias felt a hand—cold, slender, and clawed—settle gently on his shoulder.

He decided to delete the local files and reinstall. But when he opened his file explorer, the "Succubus" folder wasn't filled with .dll or .exe files anymore. It was filled with image files—thousands of them.