The positron fraction climbs from 10 GeV to several hundred GeV where secondary production predicts decline (PAMELA, AMS-02). The dark matter reading needed annihilation boosted hundreds of times above thermal, leptophilic channels to dodge antiproton limits, and a movable cutoff, while CMB injection bounds excluded the required enhancement. Pulsar halos around Geminga and Monogem, measured by HAWC, supply the positrons without accessories. The flagship excess is dissolving into astrophysics.
A thermal-relic particle should leave annihilation products in cosmic rays, so every primary excess invites a dark matter fit first and an astrophysical audit later. The assumption taxed the model twice: boosted cross-sections to fit the rise, then evasions when the boost collided with the CMB and antiproton ledgers.
SCT has no annihilation channel: the positron excess must be astrophysical (P54), and the framework registers the pulsar attribution as a requirement rather than a preference. The measured TeV halos around Geminga and Monogem are the mechanism caught in the act, and SCT's demographic layer makes the inventory comfortable: collision seeding and the deep recycling history of the disk (P46, P25) enrich the middle-aged pulsar census whose nearby members feed the local positron flux. No boosted cross-sections, no leptophilic tuning, no movable cutoffs: the spectrum is the sum of a few discrete neighbors, which is also why its high-energy shape carries bumps rather than the smooth annihilation edge.
The discriminating structure is granularity: a pulsar-fed spectrum is built from individual sources with ages and distances, predicting mild anisotropy toward the dominant contributors and spectral features tied to injection history, where annihilation predicts smooth isotropy with a sharp cutoff. Every AMS-02 statistics upgrade has moved the data toward the granular reading.
This is the same universal-null-plus-deep-inventory stance behind the GeV excess and the 511 keV bulge: the dark sector is silent in every messenger, and the compact-object ledger speaks instead. There is no need to invoke a particle whose every fit required an apology.
The registered kill: a confirmed dark matter signature in the positron spectrum, a sharp isotropic cutoff with the annihilation shape, cross-correlated with a matching signal in another channel at the same particle mass, would falsify SCT's no-particle ledger outright. The astrophysical reading is exposed too: AMS-02 anisotropy limits tightening below what nearby-pulsar dominance requires, with no granular spectral structure emerging, would strain the discrete-source account.