"That's stupid," Leo whispered, but he wired it anyway. Engineering was precise. Fear was not a unit of measurement.

Leo pulled his hand back. He had, in fact, told his mother he was "fine" an hour ago. He wasn't fine. He was lonely, broke, and three weeks behind on his robotics thesis.

But the file was corrupted. Or haunted.

The rain stopped. The LED stopped its nervous heartbeat. And for the first time in months, Leo's hands were warm.

Project #3: A Servo Motor and a Photoresistor. The instructions were simple: "Build a pointer. Calibrate it to the light outside. When the light drops below 50 lux, the servo will point at the thing you fear most."

He did. The temperature jumped to 31°C. The serial monitor printed: "Your hands are cold for someone who just lied about being okay."

The cover was a lie.

He scrolled down the PDF. The text beneath Project #1 had changed. It now read: "The light breathes. Count the seconds between breaths. If it misses one, check the window."

Leo stared at the servo. It clicked once, then returned to zero.