Farther in, an office with a broken door contained maintenance notes stored in a stone cabinet. The cabinet had protected the inner pages from weather, though not from age. He skimmed while standing, one shoulder near the wall, listening between page turns.
District signal stones.
Route markers.
Inner gate indicators.
Some of the writing was technical enough to be annoying. It referred to calibration intervals, signal clarity, night-warning patterns, and color-coded status pulses that no longer mattered without knowing whether the system functioned. Liam ignored the ceremonial language about civic order and resident discipline. He focused on practical fragments. Signal stones were placed at key district junctions and connected to the central operations chamber. Route markers could be activated manually from local points or monitored centrally. Gate indicators reflected whether certain internal paths were open, obstructed, sealed, or under alert.
He took two pages. Left the rest.
