The hospital waiting room was a hollow cathedral of grief, illuminated by the sickly, flickering hum of overhead fluorescent tubes that had long since surrendered to age. The air was thick with the scent of floor wax and the metallic tang of despair, but in the far corner, tucked behind a row of cracked plastic chairs, a different kind of light was pulsing. It was the frantic, electric blue of a makeshift server rig, a Frankenstein's monster of copper wire, salvaged motherboards, and a cracked monitor that Ishaan had built with the manic precision of a man trying to raise the dead.

Ishaan sat on the floor, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose, his fingers flying across a keyboard held together by electrical tape. He was no longer the arrogant tech prodigy who had used his brilliance to erase his sister's digital existence; he was a scavenger hunting for a ghost. The brothers stood in a semicircle behind him, their shadows elongated and jagged against the hospital walls. They were silent, the weight of the "Ledger of Blood" and the memory of Ananya's terrified screams acting as a physical pressure that made every breath a labor.