Five seconds later, the message vanished. Deleted.
My fingers slackened, and my phone slipped from my grasp.
My body felt weightless as if I had become a bird soaring through the endless sky, drifting effortlessly without the need to flap my wings.
I had no sense of time. The blinding white around me stretched endlessly, swallowing everything until it didn’t.
Slowly, the emptiness faded, replaced by the familiar neon glow of the city at night.
I was floating. Suspended high above the skyline, looking down at the world I had once called home.
"What’s going on?"
I turned to the system. "Am I not dead yet?"
The response was cold. "Program disengagement in progress. In 12 hours, the host will return to the original world."
Twelve hours.
A bitter sense of helplessness washed over me. Below, the city sprawled in every direction, lights flickering like distant stars. Ten years I had spent in this place, and now, I drifted above it like a ghost with nowhere to go.
Then, movement caught my eye.
Two familiar figures.
Hugo and Ava.
They sat across from each other in a high-end restaurant, bathed in the golden glow of candlelight.
