Movement on the path drew his eye. A few of the garden people had drifted over with the loose interest they gave anything strange. Aven was among them, already smiling, not because anything was funny but because his face seemed to rest that way. Two others stood behind him with fruit in their hands, watching Elias at the door as if he were trying to teach a game no one quite understood.

Elias stepped away from the wall and pointed. “Who opens this?”

Aven glanced at the bronze panel, then back at Elias. “It does not open.”

Elias straightened from the bronze panel. “It is a door.”

Aven gave a tiny shrug. “Yes.”

Elias asked, “For whom?”

That seemed to use up his interest. He looked toward the bright terraces where water flashed between trees. “Not here,” he said.

Elias took two steps toward him before his side warned him not to make a habit of sudden movement. “Someone maintains the food halls. The transit. Waste removal. Climate control. I’ve heard machinery below the commons. This connects to that, doesn’t it?”

The two with the fruit had already begun to drift away. One of them touched the vine Elias had pushed aside, as if the plant mattered more than the door behind it. Aven watched her, then looked back with polite emptiness.

“It is tower,” he said.

Elias said, “That is not an answer.”

Aven smiled again, gentle and useless. “You ask hard ways.” He turned and followed the others toward the sun.

Elias nearly called him back, then let the impulse die. There was nothing there to push against. Only absence.