The maintenance ledger did not begin with a confession.
It began with intervals, reference marks, and recurring withdrawals entered by people whose ordinary work had been keeping a structure running. Some pages were careful. Others had been copied after damage, with uncertain characters left beside a later reader’s attempt to resolve them. The dates reached far beyond the lives of anyone at the table.
Juno worked through the selected span with Pela and the two historians. The heading identified a maintenance process associated with the caretaker’s work. Terms beside the withdrawals were ones Ilyan and his rival associated with the dead. A cross-reference linked the transfer to the seal’s upkeep rather than to the settlement’s ordinary stores.
The independent engineer asked to see the repeated reference in another entry.
Ilyan showed her the permitted extract and the local observer confirmed it against the source. She compared the notation with the terminal record from the family-approved experiment. Similarity did not make every old entry identical to the recent trial, but the recurrence was not a mark introduced by Juno’s vessel or the independent instrument.
“These records predate either setup,” the engineer said.
“Yes,” Juno answered.
“The earlier vessel cannot be the sole explanation for this pattern.”
