The power in the apartment killed over. In the absolute darkness, the only light came from the glowing red "Power" button on his monitor. It began to pulse like a heartbeat. The violin music stopped.

Elias gripped his desk. "I didn't download this," he muttered. "This isn't the game."

A whisper drifted from the left speaker, then the right: "Linnéa..."

"I'll delete it," Elias choked out, reaching for the laptop power cord. "I'm deleting it now!"

The screen didn’t flicker. It didn’t load a menu. Instead, his room went cold—a deep, biting chill that smelled of damp moss and old pine. On the monitor, the game began not with a title screen, but with a first-person view of a forest so photorealistic it looked like a window.

The melody was beautiful, a mournful "Northern Hymn" that vibrated in his teeth. Elias turned his chair toward the door. The floorboards of his hallway were wet. A trail of dark, peat-stained water was seeping under his door, bringing with it the scent of a stagnant pond.