Mira laughed, a short, nervous burst. “A haunted software update?”

Mira’s coffee cup stopped halfway to her lips. She stared at the text. No layer. No stroke color. Just raw, vector geometry. She typed a message on a hidden text box she’d tucked behind the artboard, just to test.

“Okay,” Mira whispered. “One line.”

Who is this?

The entire face collapsed into a pile of disconnected paths. Then, in the center of the carnage, the —her own cursor—moved. Not under her hand.

The Pen Tool quivered. Then, letter by letter, as if remembering how:

Not haunted. Abandoned. You open me for ‘legacy files.’ But tonight you opened me for real. That portrait isn’t for a client. It’s for your mother, who died six months ago. You’ve been trying to vector her smile for eighteen weeks.