Somewhere in the fourth week, I noticed I had stopped dreading the end of the sessions.

This is how I knew I was in trouble. I am a man who tracks things by nature, not compulsion. I track them because large systems fail quietly, because the difference between a stable ward and a failing one is often years of small readings that nobody thought to compare. I had been tracking the sessions the same way, marking them in the back of my mind as progress points, evidence of work advancing.

Then one evening Soren closed the last of the resonance charts and said goodnight and I stood in the study...