A frantic 2 a.m. text: ‘He’s coming for me—tell Mom I tried to run. Don’t trust the Shhh.’ Sent hours before silence swallowed her whole. Her final plea, ignored until now.

From a ghost phone’s inbox, Celeste’s desperate warning claws its way out—hinting at a stalker in the spotlight, a trap sprung too late, and secrets that could topple an empire. As the leaks pile up, one girl’s voice cuts through: Was this the cry that could have saved her?

The message that haunts the headlines—read her words:

A chilling final message from 15-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, sent in the dead of night to a close friend, has leaked online, delivering a gut-punch warning about an impending threat from singer D4vd that prosecutors say could rewrite the narrative of her brutal end. The text, timestamped 2:13 a.m. on March 15, 2025—just hours before her phone went dark and aligning with revised forensic timelines—reads: “He’s coming for me tonight. Locked the door but he has keys. Tell Mom I tried to run—don’t trust the Shhh. Love u, delete this.” The message, forwarded from a now-deleted Snapchat thread and verified by Riverside County DA digital forensics, has exploded across social media, amassing 25 million views on X in mere hours and thrusting the already labyrinthine case into a maelstrom of renewed fury and forensic frenzy.

The leak, first posted anonymously on Reddit’s r/TrueCrimeDiscussions before migrating to TMZ’s wire, arrives like a digital dagger amid a cascade of revelations that have upended the probe into Rivas’s death. Her severely decomposed remains—discovered September 8, 2025, in the front trunk of D4vd’s black Tesla Model 3, impounded for illegal parking in Hollywood Hills—were initially pegged to a July 2024 homicide based on early estimates. But the September 24, 2024, Nest cam footage showing Rivas alive and arguing with a neighbor, coupled with the graphic iPhone gallery seized from the artist depicting abuse into early 2025, forced a timeline overhaul. Now, the medical examiner’s pending toxicology—delayed by the volume of digital evidence—points to a March death window, with blunt force trauma and possible asphyxiation as leading causes, her body at just 71 pounds suggesting prolonged starvation or restraint.

Rivas’s friend, 16-year-old Mia Lopez from Lake Elsinore High, confirmed the message’s authenticity in a sworn affidavit released Wednesday, her hands trembling as she read it aloud to ABC7 reporters outside the DA’s office. “Celeste was scared—whispering about David [Burke, D4vd’s real name] tracking her apps, showing up unannounced. The ‘Shhh’ was their tattoo, his ‘joke’ for secrets. She sent this after sneaking home from his place, said he followed her. I froze—thought it was drama. God, if I’d called 911…” Lopez, who last saw Rivas at a February 2025 mall hangout where the teen confided in bruises hidden under hoodies, deleted the thread as instructed but screenshots resurfaced via her iCloud backup, subpoenaed last week. The leak ties directly to the phone gallery’s February clips: Rivas, hollow-eyed in a Queens basement, murmuring “our forever secret” under duress, geotags pinging Burke’s family home during his tour hiatus.

For David Anthony Burke, the 20-year-old TikTok phenom whose moody anthems like “Romantic Homicide” once masked a shadowy persona, the text is a potential death knell. Holed up in a Houston safe house since abruptly canceling his Withered world tour on September 19, Burke’s attorney Blair Berk lashed out in a fiery response to Variety: “This ‘leak’ is a fabricated Hail Mary from grief-stricken opportunists. My client was in Minneapolis for a show that night—alibis ironclad, texts doctored. David’s mourning Celeste like the little sister she was; this witch hunt ends now.” Yet contradictions mount: A resurfaced SoundCloud demo titled “Celeste_Demo unfin,” leaked in December 2023 and mentioning “afraid you’ll only love me when undressed,” now syncs eerily with the warning’s timestamp, while Discord chats from the September 30 hack show Burke DMing Rivas March 14: “Back in LA soon—don’t ghost, Shhh.”

LAPD’s Robbery-Homicide Division, already sifting through 1,247 gallery files and Tesla Sentry Mode logs, confirmed the text’s evidentiary weight in a rare midweek briefing. “It’s a breadcrumb to motive—stalking, escalation, silence,” Detective Lena Vasquez told NBC News, noting the message’s deletion coincided with a 2:45 a.m. iPhone factory reset traced to Burke’s IP via VPN logs. The September 18 raid on his Doheny Drive rental yielded not just the blood-flecked MacBook but a burner phone with Rivas’s number favorited, its last call outgoing to her at 1:58 a.m. March 15. Caleb Burke, the singer’s 18-year-old brother whose immunity-shielded testimony detailed a July “struggle” now recast as rehearsal for the real horror, faces perjury escalation after admitting in a sealed addendum: “She texted Mia—David saw it, lost it. I heard the keys jingle… helped zip the bag after.” Caleb, under Van Nuys protective custody, has gone mute, his sketches of remorse swapped for silence as immunity dangles by a thread.

Maria Hernandez, Rivas’s single-mother beacon of unyielding grief, clutched a printed screenshot during a candlelit vigil in Lake Elsinore Thursday evening, her voice a rasp over 500 mourners. “My mija warned the world—and we slept. ‘Don’t trust the Shhh’? That’s his brand, his cage. He archived her pain in photos, silenced her in texts. This message? It’s her fighting back from the grave.” Hernandez’s GoFundMe, ballooned to $620,000 with pledges from outraged fans boycotting Burke’s streams, now funds a national hotline for digital stalking victims, inspired by Rivas’s “ghost” returns—brief homecomings marred by fresh welts and whispered threats. Brother Matthew Rivas, 18, amplified the leak on TikTok Live: “Celeste drew warnings in her journals—stick figures running from shadows. This text was her last sketch. David’s not a star; he’s the eclipse.”

The message’s ripple shreds Burke’s fraying defense. Tour manager Jax Rivera, fingered in Venmo trails for “cleanup gigs,” resigned Tuesday amid accessory whispers, his X account purged of March 2025 posts geotagged near Rivas’s home. Interscope Records, post-catalog yank, faces a swelling class-action alleging “enabler negligence,” with plaintiffs citing the leaked “Celeste” demo as prophetic grooming. Public venom boils: #CelestesWarning eclipses #JusticeForCeleste at 4.2 million posts, X threads vivisecting the text’s emojis—a frantic yellow heart mirroring her bracelet—for clues. True-crime reactors like Ashleigh Banfield on HLN replay it looped: “This isn’t fanfic; it’s a flare gun.” Brands from Crocs to Hollister, early dropouts, now amplify PSAs; Discord’s age-gate push, spurred by the hacks, logs 200,000 underage exits.

Broader shadows loom over the creator cosmos. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children hailed the leak as “a siren for Snapchat shadows,” noting Rivas’s case echoes 2024 stats: 1 in 7 minors stalked via apps. Forensic shrinks profile Burke’s “archival fixation” as narcissistic control, his Queens upbringing—Gloria Burke’s Variety plea of “healing through hurt”—recast as origin story for obsession. Gloria, estranged from Caleb post-affidavit, checked into seclusion, her voicemail to People: “David’s words were songs; Celeste’s were screams we ignored.”

As October 1 bled into night, Lopez lit a lone candle at Rivas’s grave, the yellow bracelet replica a talisman against the dark. “She loved u—delete this? Nah, we scream it.” Prosecutors eye indictments by October 7, tox results the wildcard. LAPD’s cyber squad traces the leak to a Lake Elsinore VPN, but for Rivas—a dreamer whose sketches outshone the scars—the text endures: a warning woven into warning, her voice the verdict fame can’t mute. In the Shhh’s shattered echo, justice whispers back—not silence, but storm.