Elias ignored the warning and launched the program. His monitor flickered, the colors bleeding into a monochromatic, grainy gray. A window opened to a first-person view of a long, dimly lit hallway. The walls were lined with frames, but the canvases were blank—white voids that seemed to pulse with a low-frequency hum.

Inevitably, his eyes darted to the edge of the screen. In the dark periphery of the digital hallway, something was moving—a jagged, ink-black silhouette that didn't follow the laws of perspective. It was crawling out of the frame of the second painting, its long, charcoal-stained fingers gripping the edge of his actual monitor.

Panic spiked, but curiosity held him captive. He clicked to the next frame. It was a detailed rendering of his own desk, captured from the exact angle of his bedroom door. On the monitor within the drawing, a tiny version of Elias was staring at a tiny version of the gallery. He remembered the note: Do not look at the corners.