Mira’s screen flickered. The Blade Mode timer—the slow-motion slicing window—had never been meant for real flesh. But now, every time she blinked, the world entered a 10-second slow-mo. She saw the micro-expressions on Dmitri’s face. She saw the tiny vibrations of the air. And she saw the knife in his pocket.

“There are no continues in reality. Press START to respawn at last checkpoint.”

The final line of the trainer’s code, which she had dismissed as flavor text, scrolls across her vision one last time: