Sera drew the first boundary around a tool, not a body.
Its shaft lay across the safest visible line through the corridor. A person stepping over it might dislodge the broken housing beside it, and nobody yet knew whether that housing supported anything beyond the dust covering its lower edge. She marked the checked floor short of the shaft and asked the party to keep their packs there.
Tessa knelt where she could see the remains without disturbing them. The partial view established that someone had died here. It did not establish the number of people in the larger scene or how long each position had remained undisturbed.
“We record before we move,” she said. “Necessary safety or identification work only. No searching pockets for a name because we’re impatient.”
Eli stood with his hands at his sides. He wanted an instruction that let him carry someone out. Tessa had given him one that required him to wait.
The dungeon engineer shifted the lamp to expose the fastening she had noticed. Its pattern was distinctive, but she checked the opposing side before speaking.
“My community used that fitting,” she said. “More than one workshop made it. The tool marks might narrow the source.”
