Leo blinked. His gaming chair was gone. The empty pizza boxes, the glow of his router lights—vanished.
"I... I just wanted to watch the movie."
Not a CGI lion. Not a motion-capture performance. The lion.
"Wait—"
Lightning forked again. In the flash, Leo saw it: not a pride behind Mufasa, but ghosts. A thousand versions of the character, from storyboards, from deleted scenes, from animators' fever dreams. They stood in the rain, watching.