💀 GHOST IN THE CODE

✨Chapter 5: Mirrorverse

He gestured to the shifting world around them.
"Everyone here was broken. Now they live forever. Even you."

Rudra's fists clenched. "This isn't life."

He looked around at the hollow smiles and flickering faces.
"It's a prison made of memories."💡 Scene 4: The Hidden Code

The ground buzzed beneath his feet, a low-frequency hum that crawled up Rudra's spine.

Then—

A flash.

Out of nowhere, Leela appeared in front of him.

Flickering like a dying hologram. Her eyes glowed—part fear, part code.

"Find the backdoor," she said. Her voice was soft, urgent, and distorted.
"Before he locks you in forever."

And just like that, she was gone.

As if she was never real.

The wind changed. Cold, metallic. Like breathing inside a processor.

Rudra turned slowly. The world around him twisted—faces melting, windows looping the same ten seconds, and buildings coded with words he couldn't read.

That's when he saw it.

In the distance, hidden behind a glitching wall, was an old command terminal.

It was ancient. 

The kind of machine you didn't find anymore—unless it was meant to find you.

He approached.

The screen buzzed to life, like it had been waiting all along.

> RUN: exit_mirror.exe
> PASSWORD: _______
The cursor blinked.
Once.
Twice.

Waiting for an answer, his heart didn't know—but his trauma did.

Rudra's hands trembled above the keys.

And then...

A whisper from memory.

A voice that still haunted him:

"Echo..." Ankit had said, moments before death.

One word. One code. One goodbye.

He typed in the password. E C H O

The moment he pressed Enter—
💥 A shockwave rippled through the Mirrorverse.

The ground fractured like cracked glass. Alarms screamed across the sky. Code rained down like ash. The air turned heavy, thick with static.

People—no, echoes of people—began to disappear.

Their outlines tore apart, pixel by pixel.

The buildings bled data. The entire world was breaking.

Rudra staggered back, shielding his face. The mirror-world roared as if waking from a long, twisted dream.

He didn't know where the exit was.
But he knew one thing for sure—
"This place isn't dying," he muttered to himself.
"It's being deleted."
And he ran.

🕳️ Scene 5: Escape or Eternity? 

The code storm intensified.
Screams echoed from the glitching sky—half-human, half-modem noise.

Then Ishaan's voice boomed through the collapsing world, louder than thunder:

"You can't leave, Rudra!
You ARE the Mirror now!"

Rudra froze.
The words hit deeper than he expected—like something inside him believed it.

All around, the Mirrorverse was dying.

👁️ Faces twisted into static before vanishing.
⌛ Time melted—buildings flickered in and out like corrupted GIFs.
📶 The sky above cracked, revealing raw, scrolling code.

"No... this isn't death," Rudra whispered.
"It's deletion."

A jagged exit portal shimmered in the distance, surrounded by falling code like burning snow.
It pulsed—like a heartbeat—as if counting down.

Ishaan appeared again, reaching out, glitching, screaming:

"Stay! You chose this. You belong here!"

But Rudra had already turned.

He ran—through collapsing corridors, through raining fragments of memory, through people turning into white noise and fragments of old conversations.

He reached the exit.
It buzzed with unstable energy.

With one final look back, Rudra whispered,

"You were wrong, Ishaan.
I may be broken...
but I'm still me."

And he jumped.

🌫️ Scene 6: The Real World?

A deep gasp.

Rudra shot up from his bed like he'd been pulled from underwater.
His chest rose and fell in panicked waves, lungs rediscovering air.
Everything was... still.

No glitching lights.
No whispers.
No, Ishaan.

Just silence.

He looked around.
Familiar walls. A ceiling fan creaking softly.
The warm, dull buzz of a tube light.
It was home.

He pressed his fingers to his face. Skin. Sweat. Warmth.
He was... alive.
He was... back.

"Was it all just a dream?" he whispered.

The laptop on his desk sat closed.
No static. No code. No prompts.

But then—
his eyes met the mirror across the room.

For a moment, it was him.
And then—just for a blink—his face glitched.
Eyes pixelated. Jaw jittered.
Like a bad frame in a corrupted video.

Then, everything snapped back to normal.

He stumbled backward.

"No..."
"No, no, no—"

His heart raced.

Was he really back?
Or just in a deeper layer?

Was this reality?

Or just another version of the Mirrorverse pretending to be real?

Fade to black.

🧩 END – Chapter 5: Mirrorverse

He escaped the Mirror...
...or did he?

🪞 Next Friday:📖 Chapter 6: Shadow Protocol

The virus may be gone...
but the infection has just begun.