Elias softened his voice without meaning to. “Then help me with what you can. Stay. Watch. Tell me what people avoid, what times they avoid it, what parts of the grounds no one uses.”

Lina glanced toward the commons. Morning tones drifted from somewhere above the trees, soft and musical, and in the distance people began moving in the same general direction with lazy certainty. Food, he guessed. Shade. Some scheduled comfort.

She did not move at first. “You look like you are trying to break the world open.”

Elias said, “I’m trying to find the part that’s real.”

Her throat worked. “That may be the same thing.”

For an hour she stayed with him in fits and silences while the sun climbed. He searched the wall, counted panel breaks, mapped the base with his steps, and noted where the outer surface changed temperature. She stood a little way off, shifting whenever the tower’s shadow touched her feet, answering when he asked simple things and falling quiet when he pushed too hard.

No, no one played here.

Yes, the paths bent around this side at evening.

No, she had never been told what was under the ground.

When he asked who brought fresh fruit to the halls or cleaned the sleeping rooms or repaired the broken edge of a pool he had seen the day before, she frowned as if the question itself kept slipping through her hands.

“It is there again when morning comes,” she said at last.

Elias said, “That is not how maintenance works.”

She looked almost sorry for him. “It is how here works.”