The file sat on the desktop, a generic icon labeled Download Recording m4a. Elias didn't remember clicking a link or hitting save. He had spent the afternoon cleaning up his cluttered downloads folder, and there it was, wedged between a PDF receipt and a blurry screenshot.

He hovered his cursor over it. The metadata was blank—no date, no size, no source. Curiosity, sharp and cold, nudged him to double-click.

The blood drained from his face. The voice was his own, but the tone was wrong—hollow, as if spoken by someone who hadn't breathed in years.