The seal keeper asked me to leave my bag outside the vault.
"Lamp too," she said. "We have light for the inspection."
I put both beside the partition door. The receipt stayed with the custodian. My hands remained empty.
It was the third day of the month. By then I had read the approval often enough to know what it didn't contain. No handling. No active Aether. No opening of the sealed unit. The visit ended if the pressure I had felt yesterday returned.
The seal keeper checked those conditions with me before touching the covered lock.
She was a small woman with white dust on one knee and a tool roll that made several quiet clicks when she set it down. She didn't look impressed by the Valdrake mark. She looked more interested in the narrow gap around its lower edge.
"Outer cover is sound," she told the custodian. "Record that before I remove it."
He wrote it down.
