The first complete transmission arrived with unusual confidence. Most RX fragments stutter, shear, and fold in on themselves before the Selenophone can isolate a stable carrier. RX_01 did not. It came through like a city seen through rain: already moving, already lit, already ancient.

The source vector points to Neo-Asgard, an industrialized northern megacity in a branch-history where the Viking Age was never absorbed into medieval Europe. Instead, its ritual systems, heroic economies, and seafaring networks evolved into corporate dynasties, neon ports, and pressure-sealed night districts built around old gods with new debts.

The recovered song appears to come from a club below a commuter causeway. Archive reconstruction identifies brass clusters that resemble trumpet, saxophone, and ceremonial warhorn, locked to syncopated breaks and a low-frequency bass layer that may have doubled as crowd-control infrastructure.

Vocal fragments resemble Old Norse, but not any surviving Earth dialect. The Selenophone labels the model ALT_OLD_NORSE: familiar enough to feel ancestral, changed enough to indicate centuries of cultural drift along a line that never became ours.