Winter arrived not with a blizzard, but with a slow, silent descent of frost that turned the industrial park into a monochrome etching. The air in the shop was dry and warm, smelling of hot metal, fresh coffee, and the faint, clean scent of the citrus-based cleaner they used on everything. A new quiet had taken hold, deeper than the post-Gullwing calm. It was the quiet of a watch's interior, of precisely meshed gears turning without sound, of a system in perfect, self-regulating balance.
Leo's absence was a physical presence, a shaped void everyone worked around with instinctive care. His bench remained untouched, a shrine of bare, scarred wood. But his spirit was everywhere. Liam had tacked the index card that read "The best tool is a calm mind" above his own computer monitor. Sofia had placed the brass piston-ring hammer in a small, clear display case on the reception desk, a silent totem. The shop had absorbed him. He was in the walls.
