She wakes with a wound that pulses like code.
Bodies are towers now. Flesh threaded into steel. Bone woven through the frame. Someone carved scripture into skin that still remembers how to scream.
The Machine is turning witnesses into vessels. Aleph was formatted to carry the signal. She was the one meant to seal the recursion.
She isn't compiling. She doesn't kneel.
When something mistakes itself for God, refusal is the only prayer left.