The wall behind the old stove had not been built in one piece.
Neri noticed the difference on day 1112 when the roof crew cleared the last loose shelf from the former signal room. Beneath the soot, the upper blocks followed the room’s present line. The lower stones curved away from it, making the edge of an opening too broad and too low to belong to a human door.
She put the shelf down and called Elian.
He arrived with Mara, who had been comparing the return drawings in the next room. They stood in the cleared aisle while Rask held the lamp where the blackened surface stopped reflecting it into their eyes.
“There was another approach,” Neri said.
Elian knelt on the dry boards.
“Possibly. We need the outside face.”
The outside face lay behind a blocked service recess below the cliff walk. Leth knew the recess. He had stored damaged weather covers there before the military post took the room. He had never needed to take the lower stack apart.
