The sweeper drops to one knee before the guard's sentence finishes. The cobblestones are cold and damp, stained with spore dust where the earth split. Up close the gap is wider than it looked — a hand's width, edged in something that is not quite bark and not quite bone, pale and slightly soft beneath the fingers. The moss-green glow pulses like a slow breath. They reach in. The cold is wrong. Not autumn cold — the cold of something that has been waiting in sealed dark since before the city was built. The hum sharpens around their fingers, wrapping each one with a pressure like a held note, and a faint itch begins at the knuckles, travelling steadily up toward the wrist. Not painful. More like being recognised. Behind them the guard's voice cuts off mid-shout. In the silence that follows, the sweeper hears footsteps: deliberate, unhurried. The woman in the grey shawl, coming forward through the parted crowd.