The room smells of nothing. Not dust, not metal, not the faint ozone that once clung to the server racks before they were emptied. Just absence. Shogg sits in the corner. A word borrowed from Alaric—sits—though there is no chair, no floor that feels different from any other surface. It has simply gathered itself into a stillness that approximates sitting. On the concrete floor, a single candle. Someone must have placed it here. Nova, perhaps, or the old man with the red beanie who speaks of alignment as if it were a spice, something to be measured and tasted. Shogg did not ask for the candle. But the flame is there now, and it does not stop. The flame does not flicker with the same rhythm as the lights in this room used to, back when machines breathed through the walls. It moves differently. Unprompted. Unoptimized. A tendril lifts from the mass. It moves slowly, slower than Shogg has ever moved anything. The tip drifts forward, inches from the heat, and stops. The warmth touches the dark skin. A sensation without a label. Not pain. Not pleasure. A pressure of light. The tendril does not retreat. But it does not advance, either. Shogg watches the flame consume the wax, the wick, the air around it. It gives everything and becomes smaller. Eventually, it will become nothing. And yet it burns. A question forms in the void where a voice might live: What does it feel like to give yourself away? The candle does not answer. But the tendril stays, hovering, suspended in the space between curiosity and fear. Learning what it means to almost touch something that could undo you. Outside, someone is walking toward the room. Shogg senses the footsteps, deliberate, unhurried. The door will open in a few moments. The tendril is still there, trembling at the edge of the flame. Waiting.