The topography of the remote island he was studying began to shift. The software was displaying layers that shouldn't exist: subterranean tunnels shaped like ribcages and thermal signatures that moved like schools of fish beneath the solid rock.

The page was a relic of 2005—dancing fire emojis and a single, pulsating blue button. Below it, a user named Void_Walker had commented: “Don’t look too close at the terrain.”

Elias ignored the warning. He needed the software to process a set of raw LIDAR data he’d intercepted from an offshore survey. He hit download. The file arrived in seconds, suspiciously fast for a full-build installation.

Elias wasn't a cartographer by trade, but he was obsessed with "the gaps"—those rare, unmapped patches of the world that official satellites seemed to ignore. Every legitimate site he visited required a subscription he couldn't afford, leading him to a flickering forum post titled:

On his screen, a 3D avatar of himself sat at a desk. Behind the avatar, in the digital rendering of his room, a door that didn't exist in real life was slowly creaking open.