The ceremonial hall sat near the archive grounds, though not quite touching the tower itself. A long low building of pale stone and dark glass, half-sunk into a rise of clipped moss, it opened onto a silent court lined with empty plinths. The place had the careful stillness of a museum after closing. Wind moved over the polished floor. Thin water ran in black channels around the base of the plinths. Beyond the far edge of the court, the dark tower rose apart from the warm bright buildings around it, its surface swallowing the light.

Lina smiled faintly, proud to have brought him somewhere she thought might help. "See? Old things. Safe things."

Inside, the hall offered rows of display recesses with nothing in them. Some held only a metal label frame. Others showed soft marks where objects had once rested. Above a central aisle, dim projectors still tried to cast images into the air, but age had reduced them to wavering ghosts: faces, ring shapes, drifting lines of text too broken to read. The effect was solemn without being useful.

Elias moved from plinth to plinth, trying to force meaning from absence. Storage hall. Ancestral display. Archive annex. It made the tower easier to explain. A sealed repository beside a ceremonial site. Important, yes. Alive with power and systems? Perhaps not.

He caught himself exhaling through his teeth, some tight coil loosening. Maybe he had built a machine-state out of scraps because he needed the machine to matter. Needed it to be central. Needed his lost apparatus to sit at the heart of things.