The sweeper moves before the guard's second syllable lands — cuts across the cobblestones, broom trailing, closing the distance before the guard's boots can pivot. The woman in grey does not retreat. She watches the sweeper come with the tired patience of someone who has been waiting much longer than this morning. Up close, the flush in her cheeks is worse than it looked from across the square. Not wind-flush, not cold-flush — the kind that climbs too high and burns too still, the kind that belongs to a sickroom. The small boy at her hip has gone quiet; he watches the mushroom rather than the newcomers, which is perhaps the more honest response. "You hear it too," the sweeper says. Not a question. "My mother heard it," the woman says, very quietly. "Sixty years ago, in Arboga. Different shape. Same sound." Her eyes move to the glowing gap at the stem's base, then back. "I was hoping I was wrong about what it means." The guard's voice lands directly behind them: warm breath, cold words.