His avatar shimmered. The cloak wrapped around him, but the effect wasn't visual—it was behavioral . The moment he returned to a busy public room, he noticed something wrong. People's avatars walked through him. No collision. No "Excuse me." Their chat logs scrolled by, but when he typed "Hello?" the text appeared only to him. No one replied.

Kael tried to create a new account. The site returned an error: "Email already associated with an active spectral identity. Please contact support."