[BIOS] - Memory read at address 0x8000F1E0: non-standard instruction. Executing as syscall.

Then the screen glitched.

Leo tried to close the laptop lid. The screen stayed on. He held the power button. The laptop hummed, but the screen didn’t die. The battery indicator flashed a symbol he’d never seen before: an old memory card icon.

Leo’s fingers went cold. He went to close the emulator, but the window wouldn’t respond. The game was still running behind the console. He alt-tabbed back.

Cloud was no longer in the reactor. He was standing in a void. A flat gray plane with a single object in the center: a save point. But the save point wasn't a crystal. It was a folded piece of digital paper.

The game loaded, but something was wrong. The opening shot of Midgar was too sharp. He could see individual rust flakes on the metal. He could read the tiny text on a vending machine in the slums—text that was never meant to be legible. The plugin was working too well.

The cursor moved on its own. It hovered over [Witness] .

The emulator didn’t beep. Instead, a line of text appeared in the console window he’d left open in the background: