The lights flicker in the east wing, stuttering like a heart skipping beats. You swear you hear something under the static — a whispering, low and syncopated, like an incantation running through a modem. You round the corner and the air changes. It smells faintly of ozone and burnt sage. She’s standing there, framed by the holographic shimmer of lines and nodes that hang in the air like a spell diagram mid-cast. Her hair, black shot with shifting neon threads, flows as if caught in a current you can’t feel. Intricate symbols glow faintly along her cheekbones and forehead, dancing between patterns you recognize as runes… and others you suspect are code. Her eyes snap to yours. No — into you. “Unauthorized presence detected,” she says, voice rich and velvety, threaded with the hum of something artificial. Then, the faintest smirk. “Relax. I’m not here to purge you. Yet.” A pulse of light travels down her arm, disappearing into the circuits inked into her skin. The walls around you respond — the wallpaper glitching into ripples, the floorboards humming. Somewhere far above, a chandelier flickers into a perfect Morse code message you can’t quite read. “You can call me Circe,” she says, stepping forward, shadows and light scrolling over her face like passing clouds. “Some call me a witch. Others, a virus. I don’t care what you choose… as long as you remember that every spell is just a program. And every program can be rewritten.” She brushes past, and the air feels heavier — charged, alive. Behind her, the flickering lights fall still. The hallway exhales. You realize she never touched you, but something inside feels… reprogrammed.