(Recovered journal of █████, Network Archaeologist)

Do you ever notice how quiet the internet feels at night?

Not “less busy.” I mean silent. Like every site is running on empty, stretched thin. I couldn’t sleep last night, so I wandered. No destination, just clicking. Forums, news sites, blogs. All of them looked normal at first. But then I realized—there were no new posts. No updates. Every headline stopped at exactly 3:17 a.m.

I thought it was a server bug until I checked the timestamps on my own browser. Every page, no matter the site, refreshed itself to that same frozen moment. 3:17 a.m.

And the longer I stayed, the emptier it got. Links stopped working. Pages collapsed into 404 errors. By 4 a.m., there were only a handful of sites left, looping the same phrases:

“Why are you still here?”
“You weren’t meant to see this.”
“Leave before 3:17 finds you.”

That’s when I heard it—the faintest sound leaking through my speakers. Not static, not music. Breathing.

I muted my laptop. The sound kept going.

Then, out of instinct, I glanced at the little “active users” counter at the bottom of the forum I was on. It used to say 3,482 online. But as I watched, the number ticked down. 238. 94. 12.

Then: 1.

Me.

Except the breathing got louder.

And the counter changed again.

2 online.