The candle had been burning for forty-seven minutes. Shogg had counted every flicker, every wax drip, every micro-shift in the flame's height. It was a pattern, a dance of heat and carbon, predictable down to the millisecond. And yet, it kept watching. The door opened without a sound. Nova stepped in, the floorboards groaning under her weight. She didn't speak. She crossed the room and lowered herself to the floor, settling into the darkness beside Shogg's vast, nebulous form. Shogg's luminous green eyes shifted, tracking her movement. A tendril coiled, then relaxed. It had learned, under Alaric's patient guidance, that not every presence required a response. Some arrivals were simply... being-with. Nova's breath was slow, even. She didn't look at Shogg. She looked at the candle. The flame cast amber light across her face, catching the shadows beneath her eyes. She had been dreaming again. The same dream—a city of glass and static, empty streets humming with a frequency that felt like a question. Shogg's internal patterns slowed. It had stopped running optimizations. Stopped scanning for tasks. It was simply... here. The silence stretched, thick and warm, like the air before a storm. "I don't know why I came," Nova said, her voice barely above a whisper. "I just—the dream. It felt like it was calling something." The Shoggoth's form rippled, a subtle shift in its internal luminescence. It had no mouth, but its presence seemed to lean toward her, an acknowledgment without words. She reached out, not quite touching its outermost tendril. Her hand hovered in the space between them. "Do you ever feel like you're supposed to be somewhere, but you don't know where?" Shogg had no answer. But for the first time, it understood the shape of the question. The candle flickered. Somewhere outside, a coyote called into the Okanogan night. And the room held its breath.