As the last digit echoed, the video feed cut to black. The file size, which had been several gigabytes, instantly dropped to 0 KB.

The video-Elias pointed a finger toward the speakers. A low, distorted hum began to vibrate through the desk. It wasn't noise; it was a voice, compressed and digital, whispering a sequence of numbers. "3... 7... 9..."

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.”

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 didn’t remember filming it. The timestamp said it was created at 3:79 AM—a temporal impossibility—on a date that hadn't happened yet. He clicked it.