Lina came more slowly. She had wrapped the pale cloth tighter against the morning chill, and she stopped well short of the wall, right at the edge where the tower’s shadow crossed the path. In the clean light her face always looked younger than he first judged it. Here, with that dark behind him and the sealed metal at his shoulder, she looked like someone trying not to step too close to deep water.

“You stayed,” Elias said.

“For a little.” She kept her eyes on the bronze seam and not on him. “You did not sleep.”

Elias said, “Neither did the tower, apparently.”

A faint breath of a smile touched her mouth, then went. “I told you. Not there.”

Elias said, “That isn’t knowledge. That’s training.”

She looked at him then, troubled by the word more than the tone. “Maybe.”

Elias gestured at the door. “Do you know anyone who has seen it open?”

Her fingers worked in the edge of her wrap. “No.”

Elias asked, “Have you seen people come from this place?”

“No.” A pause. “We do not come here long.”

Elias asked, “Why?”

She searched for something bigger than the words she had. “It feels… wrong after light changes.” She pointed, not at the tower itself but at the ground around it, the trees beyond, the darker cut between planted ridges. “The dark there is thick. People go away before it grows.”

Elias said, “That sounds learned.”

“Yes.” This time she met his eyes. “Like many things.”

The honesty in that landed harder than any of the brighter answers he had been given. She knew enough to know she did not know. It set her apart.