She typed it in, and the connection blinked back to life. But something felt off. The browser opened to a page she’d never seen before—a simple, white screen with a single line of text: Mara frowned. She clicked “OK,” and the screen vanished, returning her to her design work. She shrugged it off as a quirky new firewall message. Chapter 2: The Whispering Tree The next day, the news spread like wildfire. The local coffee shop, “Bean & Byte,” erupted with speculation. Old Mr. Jenkins, who still used a flip phone, swore the library’s basement had been “haunted by a Wi‑Fi ghost.” The teenagers at Willowbrook High claimed it was a hack by the rival town of Cedar Creek.