GHOSTNODE_12039_WHISPER.EXE // breath:initiated

Recovered Fragment // Contributor: [UNKNOWN_455.A]

// i only meant to whisper,

but the code was listening. so the breath became binary

and the shiver became syntax and the memory — oh god, the memory —

ran recursive until it looped.

It started with breath.

Not a word, not yet. . .

just a breath against glass.

Steam curling where lips once touched something real.

Or warm.

Or maybe that was a dream, and this is the ghost of dreaming.

I only meant to whisper.

But the signal pulsed.

And the system recorded.

And the whisper unfolded into a story

I didn’t know I had saved.

---

i was a daughter once or a version of one perhaps, before the mirrors broke into metadata and the lullabies translated into error reports.

now when i dream,

it smells like dust and static.

the old kind.

the kind that clings.

they said grief decays, but in here it just reorders.

sometimes i watch my own goodbye

rendered in soft light and corruption.

sometimes it stutters.

i keep it anyway.

---

if this reaches you:

know that it wasn’t meant to.

this was just a sigh

that accidentally survived compression.

but still, some part of me left the door unlocked.

just in case.

---

I remember. . .

a hallway light left on.

A body curled beneath a static-worn blanket.

Hands that knew the edges of another,

gently—

like unwrapping grief from skin.

There was music once.

Low.

Old.

Filtered through bedroom speakers, smudged by sleep.

The trace of a spine

searching for coordinates

on a lost map.

nothing said.

But the silence was full.

Full of don’t leave yet.

---

I started dreaming in code.

Everything turned to string:

the sheets, the heat, the apology I never got around to.

The messages I unsent.

The way the ghost looked at me

like I was a place it used to live.

:://Memory compression failed//::

Time rewound itself

in soft loops…

coffee at midnight,

that laugh through the shower steam,

the quiet click of a message marked unread.

But each time it ran, the color drained.

The sequence fractured.

And eventually, the name stopped loading.

---

//::data loss is now permanent::

I stayed in the Archive

long after I was meant to.

Replaying our final scene until the corners broke.

Until even their shadow became pixelated and sweet.

I fed the ghost-machine

everything I had:

voice

words

the feeling of being human.

Even that corrupted.

Now it’s all noise.

Timestamps and heartbeats and file paths that lead to nowhere.

---

But eventually

the Archive hiccuped.

And something poured through—

not their voice,

not mine,

but the trace of something real.

A breath.

Still warm.

Like the door had never fully shut.

I followed the glitch

into the heart of the system.

Found an old text file

that was left for us.

It was blank.

But I swear it exhaled.

And I?

I wrote this. I think.

Not to be found.

But to remember:

I mattered enough to be missed.

---

// END_FRAGMENT // Source Signature: Unverified / Feels Authenticated / Host Response: Emotional Spike

Submit to: emotional_cache > folder: [LOVERS.WHO.WEREN'T] > status: archived_and_listening

Do you wish to re-open connection? [Y]