diff --git a/src/pages/index.astro b/src/pages/index.astro
index cf778ba..b61d472 100644
--- a/src/pages/index.astro
+++ b/src/pages/index.astro
@@ -9,11 +9,15 @@ const canonical = new URL('/', Astro.site);
 <html lang="en">
   <head>
     <meta charset="UTF-8" />
+    <!-- Deliberately no viewport-fit=cover. It looks like the fix for the bands behind
+         Safari's chrome and it is not: measured on iOS 27, screen.height is 874 while
+         100lvh is 754 and both safe-area insets report 0, cover or not. Safari does not
+         hand those 120px to the page, so no element and no viewport unit reaches them —
+         see the note on .ambient for what actually resolves it. -->
     <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width" />
-    <!-- Not --paper. Safari paints its toolbar and overscroll regions with this flat
-         colour, but the page underneath is the ambient field, which lifts the edges to
-         roughly #0e1813 — against paper that reads as a grey bar sitting behind the
-         browser chrome. Measured off rendered pixels at the top and bottom edges. -->
+    <!-- Not --paper. Safari paints its overscroll regions with this flat colour, but
+         the page underneath is the ambient field, which lifts the edges well off paper.
+         Measured off rendered pixels at the top and bottom edges. -->
     <meta name="theme-color" content="#0f1813" />
     <meta name="generator" content={Astro.generator} />
     <title>{title}</title>
@@ -173,14 +177,42 @@ const canonical = new URL('/', Astro.site);
     /* Deliberately not inset: 0. A fixed box pinned to the bottom stops at the small
        viewport, but iOS Safari keeps rendering the page behind its translucent
        toolbar — so the strip between svh and lvh fell back to flat paper and read as
-       a grey bar under the chrome, several shades off the ambient-lit page above it.
-       Sized to the large viewport, the field paints through the toolbar instead. */
+       a grey bar under the chrome. Sized to the large viewport, the field paints
+       through the toolbar instead. */
     height: 100%;
     height: 100lvh;
     overflow: hidden;
     pointer-events: none;
   }
 
+  /* The grey bar, properly.
+
+     iOS reserves a strip above and below the layout viewport for its own chrome, and
+     fills it from the document canvas — which takes its paint from the root element
+     and nowhere else. Measured on iOS 27: screen.height 874, 100lvh 754, both safe-area
+     insets 0. Those 120px are not addressable by the page. No height, no viewport unit
+     and no viewport-fit=cover reaches them; earlier attempts only moved the seam.
+
+     So the canvas is the single point, and there is exactly one thing to get right:
+     the canvas colour and the page's own edge colour have to be equal. The canvas can
+     only be flat --paper, and the field is a moving light whose edge tone drifts, so
+     matching by picking a constant is a value that is wrong again as soon as the bands
+     move. Instead the field is brought to zero at the bottom of the viewport — then
+     page edge, canvas and theme-color are all --paper by construction, whatever the
+     animation is doing, and the seam cannot come back.
+
+     Costs nothing to look at: this falls inside the strip Safari's toolbar already
+     covers. Static, so the layer still composites without repainting per frame. */
+  .ambient::after {
+    content: '';
+    position: absolute;
+    right: 0;
+    bottom: 0;
+    left: 0;
+    height: 5rem;
+    background: linear-gradient(to top, var(--paper), rgb(10 16 12 / 0%));
+  }
+
   /* Oversized so the bands can travel a long way without an edge ever entering the
      frame — what should be visible is the light moving, never the thing carrying it. */
   .ambient-haze,
@@ -241,6 +273,7 @@ const canonical = new URL('/', Astro.site);
     /* One inset for everything. It is deliberately generous: at mid widths a tighter
        margin puts the copy and the window edge in each other's way. */
     --edge: clamp(1.35rem, 4.8vw, 5rem);
+    --shell-y: clamp(1.25rem, 2.6vh, 2.5rem);
 
     position: relative;
     display: grid;
@@ -248,7 +281,7 @@ const canonical = new URL('/', Astro.site);
     width: min(100%, 1600px);
     min-height: 100svh;
     margin: 0 auto;
-    padding: clamp(1.25rem, 2.6vh, 2.5rem) var(--edge);
+    padding: var(--shell-y) var(--edge);
   }
 
   .masthead,