The final message was an image. It was a screenshot of her own character in the game, standing atop a giant sunflower. But the bee circling her wasn't the friendly, pixelated bumblebee from her mod. It was a hyper-realistic, twitching hornet, its stinger dripping with a dark, viscous fluid that seemed to stain the very pixels of the screen.

Elara looked up. Outside the window, the streetlights were flickering out, one by one. In the growing darkness, she saw them—not digital glitches, but shadows, heavy and droning, pressing against the glass. The Hive wasn't just online anymore.

The screen flashed one last time. “Welcome home, Beekeeper.”