Aita for lying about what happened to their online friend?

i made an alt just to post this so my moots dont see but i lied about a huge thing to my online group and that is what happened to our friend. We two know each other in real life and our friend is sickly but also suicidal and recently they passed away due to suicide but i feel awful of sharing such terrible news to our friend group one of them had explicitly said that if (our friend) passes away i shouldn't tell. So i haven't told them to this day but i feel guilty they don't know. I've been telling them fake stories on how (our friend) is doing well now and is happy with their life. To make things believable i used their account to post things but since my friend is suicidal aswell i add some sad posts.

iIt's getting shittier I only said a small lie now its gotten so bigger i cant back down and would stop but doing this makes me feel like my friend is still alive. I dont know how else to cope with this grief. Some which i told the truth to are confused and is upset with me because they legit can't tell if their friend is alive or not cause I play too well.

i know this is an illegal site but i noticed some users have been venting about losing loved ones to suicide.