**The Residue**
Three weeks after the broadcast, the snow in the Alpine foothills began to sing.
Not with the haunted harmonics of the Pattern, nor with the seductive monotone of Julian's void, but with the simple, structural music of thaw. Water finding cracks. Ice releasing its hold on stone. The specific percussion of gravity working against frozen resistance.
Sophia stood at the window of the safehouse—now slowly transforming into something more permanent, a monastery of the specific—and watched the season turn. Her hands were still scarred from the shattered tuning forks, thin white lines across her palms that she pressed against the glass to feel the cold. The sensation was absolute: sharp, immediate, undeniable.
"You're doing it again," Ethan said from behind her.
"Doing what?"
"Listening with your skin."
She smiled, not turning around. "I have to. It's the only frequency I have left."
