Leo looked at the chat one last time. The green text had stopped. Every user—all 1,247 of them—had the same status: [connesso] . No one was typing. No one was leaving. The only active input was a single blinking cursor, waiting for him to type.
The stream’s audio, which had been silent, suddenly hissed. It wasn’t white noise. It was layered voices, hundreds of them, speaking over each other. One rose above the rest: an old woman’s voice, calm, in a rural Italian dialect.
The thumbnail was a screenshot from his own webcam, taken ten minutes ago. But in the picture, Leo wasn’t alone. The shadow in the hoodie sat behind him, one hand on his shoulder, a cursor blinking on his forehead like a third eye. esp fenomeni paranormali streaming community
The stream title: [ESP-3] - Soglia 77 Hz - Fenomeni in tempo reale .
> Io sono già qui da prima che nascessi. > I was already here before you were born. Leo looked at the chat one last time
Leo’s webcam light turned on. He hadn’t touched it. He stared at the tiny green LED, and in the reflection of his dark monitor, he saw his own face—except his mouth wasn’t moving, but his reflection’s was. Forming one word: "Aiuto." (Help.)
He checked his own channel. A new video was uploading. He hadn’t made it. The title: "ESP Fenomeni Paranormali Streaming Community - Episodio 1: Il Nuovo Ospite" No one was typing
A new user joined. No name. Just a hexadecimal string: FF:D9:00:00 . It typed one line in perfect Italian, then English, then a third language that looked like a grid of dots.