The engine door sat beneath the registry like a mouth the city had learned to keep shut. Its seams traced the same white-gold grammar that lived on Ash's chest.
The Watcher laid her palm against the stone without ceremony, and the door read her the way the civic line read a citizen.
The seal dissolved inward in a breath of cold, dry air that smelled of centuries without rain.
A keeper waited on the first landing with a lamp he had clearly been told to carry. His face showed he had not been told how to wear it.
He bowed to Ilyra without meeting the Watcher's eyes, then turned to lead them down without a word. His boots found the steps from a memory his mouth had forgotten.
The stair wound down around a single column of living stone that pulsed with faint blue light. Each step sat worn smooth by feet that had stopped climbing generations ago.
