The winter did not stop the wires.
It slowed them, stiffened them, forced men to learn patience with cold fingers and brittle resin, but it did not stop them. And because the wires did not stop, neither did Phillip's days. Not in the way people imagined exhaustion, with collapse or drama, but in a quieter erosion where time lost its edges.
The morning began like many others, with no summons and no crisis.
Phillip woke before dawn in the small house beside the Shropshire foundry, the same one he had lived in before the telegraph swallowed his life. Frost traced the inside edges of the windowpanes. The world outside was pale and still, the kind of silence that came only after a hard freeze. Somewhere beyond the yard, a sounder clicked once and then went quiet again.
He lay still for a moment, listening. Not for messages, not for alarms, but for the absence of them.
It was rare now.
