Ethan Cole was never meant to survive the accident.
Doctors called it a miracle.
Ethan calls it a curse.
Ever since the night his heart stopped for three minutes, Ethan has been able to see something no one else can — the last unsent message of the dead.
Not voice notes.
Not calls.
Just unfinished texts.
Drafts that appear on broken phones, locked screens, even devices buried with their owners.
Words filled with regret.
Love.
Guilt.
Secrets.
Ethan can't reply to them.
He can't change what happened.
All he can do is read the truth people were too afraid to send while alive.
Then Lucas Reed transfers to his school.
Lucas is calm, distant, and strangely familiar with death. Wherever he goes, tragedies follow — accidents, overdoses, unexplained disappearances. Yet none of the victims leave behind messages.
No drafts.
No final words.
Nothing.
Ethan soon realizes why.
Lucas doesn't read the last messages of the dead.
He erases them.
As Ethan is pulled deeper into a hidden world where death leaves digital footprints, he discovers there are rules to his ability — rules that are already breaking.
• Some messages arrive days after burial
• Some are addressed directly to Ethan
• Some warn him about his own death
And the most terrifying rule of all:
If Ethan reads too many last messages, he will eventually become one of them.
Caught between the boy who reveals the dead's final truths and the boy who believes those truths should stay buried, Ethan must decide what matters more — closure or mercy, memory or survival.
Because in a world where death still has something to say,
the final message might not belong to the dead at all.