Wren crouches. The carvings are small and precise — not rough chisel-scratches but the kind of marks someone planned for years before making. She can make out shapes: a sun, a spiral, what might be a hand, repeated in a circuit around the base. She touches the tip of the sword to the nearest mark. The lantern answers immediately. The ember-light doubles, then trebles — warm gold bleeding through the stone's grey surface wherever the blade rests. Not fire. Something calmer. The glow runs leftward from the sword tip like a flame catching a fuse, lighting each carving in sequence, and stops at a sun symbol directly facing her. The same sun, faded and tarnished, pressed into the breastplate of the dead knight's armor. The stone holds its breath. The light holds. Wren looks down at the breastplate, then back at the lantern. Whatever this lock requires, it seems to have been waiting for something that is now, technically, wearing her.