Chapter 286: Interior
The deep interior had its own pace.
He set anchors twenty-seven through thirty over three days. Each one at forty-eight to fifty meters — the zone where the organized field shifted from built-to-move to built-to-hold. The costs were steady: eleven to thirteen percent per anchor. His rest periods ran longer. The field did not punish careful work, but it did not ease the load at this depth.
The carrier function was working inside the ceiling. Not past it. The signals here had a different texture from the outer field — denser, more layered. Like organized rock pressed into itself over many generations rather than positioned with intention. Kai worked through them the same way he worked through everything: one signal at a time, matching the dual-signal grammar until the anchor seated.
He did not try to push deeper than each anchor point required. Not yet.
It was on anchor thirty-one that something changed.
