_reap() flipped _dead without releasing the master fd, and close() short-circuits on _dead — so every naturally-exited child leaked its fd and pty device for the life of the app. The reader isolate sends EOF only after leaving its poll loop, so releasing the fd inside _reap() cannot race the reader. Regression test counts /dev/ptmx entries in /proc/self/fd across a natural exit; verified to fail against the unfixed code. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>