For four hours, Leo composed. He didn't play the plugin; he talked to it. He hummed, he sang, he grunted. The ghost sax answered every time. By sunrise, the suite “Legacy” was finished. It was the best work of his life.

He crept down the hall. The air was cold. His laptop was open, the DAW running, though he had shut it down. The Swam Saxophones v3 window was on screen, but the photograph had changed. The club was empty. The phantom sax was gone.

The saxophone in the photograph moved . Its keys depressed as if an invisible man were playing it. And from his studio monitors came a sound that stopped his heart.

Leo’s heart did a nasty syncopated rhythm. His mouse clicked. The download was a chunky 4.2GB. As the progress bar crawled, the light in his studio flickered. He thought it was just the old wiring. The download finished with a soft ding .

The breath had gravel. The attack had the soft, wooden thunk of a reed on a mouthpiece. The vibrato was slightly out of tune, human, aching. Leo played a C# and the note bloomed with a microtonal wobble—the exact fingerprint of his father’s old, leaky horn.