He spent the evening mapping the chain.
All five stages, read through the sovereign seed from Stage 1's deepest point to Stage 5's surface terminus two metres below the flagstones. The entity-built architecture was consistent across all five—the same cruder material composition, the same functional-but-not-precise junction tolerances, the same quality of something built by a mind that understood what it was making without having access to the surface builder's tools. It was not worse than the builders' work in any way that mattered for activation. The connections were sound. The stages were coherent. The junctions held.
What was different was the load cost.
