Stormgate was already moving when we arrived: warders trading posts, engineers packing cables into tidy coils, gulls writing sloppy arcs over the sea-line. The day after a big job is when things usually slip—fatigue, pride, shortcuts—so we treated it like a stubborn door: steady pressure, no yanking.
Kade stretched out on the grass with a stethoscope to the earth like he was dozing. "Spine's on-note," he said at last, rolling to his knees and rapping a pylon's base twice. "Still honest."
