Leo shoved back from the desk. His chair tipped over. He scrambled to his feet, but the room wasn’t his room anymore. The walls had become translucent, like frosted glass. Through them, he saw other versions of himself: a Leo who laughed easily, a Leo with strong hands fixing a car engine, a Leo who knelt beside a hospital bed, holding his mother’s hand without checking his phone for bill reminders.

“This is fake,” Leo gasped, tears streaming. “It’s just a fantasy. You’re not real.”

He never downloaded another free PDF again. He bought the book—hardcover—and kept it on his nightstand, spine uncracked. He didn’t need to read it. He was living the chapter he’d tried to steal.

He clicked a link that looked like it had been designed in 2003. The page was a graveyard of pop-up ads and broken promises. He dodged three fake “Download Now” buttons before his cursor finally hovered over a file name: Becoming_Supernatural_Joe_Dispenza.pdf

But his voice echoed in a way that felt less like sound and more like a key turning a lock. He looked back at the laptop. The PDF had changed. It was no longer a document. It was a mirror.