First Vent smelled of warm stone and old paper.
The junction stood six kilometers from the Gate’s main receiving ground, where the upper shelf bent close to the cliff. Three signal masts rose above its roof. Their present work was local: water, warning and the vent linkage that kept the neighboring road from being surprised by changes below. The station did not command the valley merely because several useful things met inside its walls.
Leth, its operator, met Iven at the door with a cup in one hand and a chain link in the other.
“Which have you come to ask about?”
“The cupboard.”
Leth looked at the link, then the cup.
“Unexpected.”
Iven showed him the copied threshold plate from Slate Orchard and the keeper’s name, Tessa Olt. Leth recognized both the contact hollows and Tessa’s habit of sending difficult questions to someone else’s working day.
