For the last three months, she had been rebuilding her late brother’s digital ghost. Leo had been a game developer, a lover of chaos and particle effects, who had died suddenly from a brain aneurysm at thirty-four. His PC—a custom-built beast with RGB fans that still cycled through his favorite color palette of violet to emerald—sat in the corner of her home office. She hadn’t touched it at first. Then, grief turned into something else: a need to finish what he started.

It wasn't a game. It was a memory.

She paused before hitting Enter. It was 2:17 AM. The rest of the house was a still-life of silence—her husband asleep, the dog curled in a ball of forgotten dreams. But for Mira, sleep was a distant country she no longer had a visa for.