The sample on the bench looked harmless enough to hold a door open.
Eli had seen more threatening things sold as children’s toys. A pale collar offcut, squared on two sides, with a line where the crafter’s saw had bitten too deeply. The dungeon engineer placed it between two reference contacts and asked everyone to move their loose tools away.
The crafter lifted his knife from the bench.
“That won’t become dangerous?”
“It should become informative,” the interpreter translated. The engineer heard the doubt in the room and added another sentence. “If it becomes dangerous, she wants the space clear.”
Juno checked the nonliving source. The failed operational ring remained disconnected behind them. Its dark residue was still intact, though under the lamps it looked less like a stain than a change in the stone itself.
The observer started his interval clock.
The engineer fed the sample a small controlled input. Nothing happened. She moved a second contact along the cut face, changing how the field crossed the joint. The independent gauge dipped, then steadied at a lower value.
