The elders met in the ancestral hall before noon. Muo placed the repair order beside a request to open the lower archive. The first paper named the missing glaze specification. The second listed the contract shelves Yao and Jian wished to inspect. They would enter together, but the two searches would remain separate.
Daro stood by the table with the maintenance ledger. “The pylon manual is in the west aisle. The family index is in the inner registry cabinet. The entrance formation recognizes family tokens and council marks. If someone reaches for a shelf that is not named in the order, it can close the door.”
Han asked, “Does it close the door on everyone or only the person who moves the shelf?”
“We do not know,” Muo said. “No one has tested it in years.”
“Then we do not test it,” Han said. “If a latch is unclear, we step back.”
Muo nodded. He would accompany them to open the first door, but he would not override the formation or force a shelf. Daro and Lian would record every item examined and every copy made. The original papers would stay in their place.
Bai asked that the order say explicitly that Sato’s absence carried no penalty. “She does not want to enter, and her decision cannot be counted as agreement with what the others find.”
