Nessa had opened the blue door so often that her hand knew the weight of it before her eyes found the handle. She had stood on that threshold to welcome new apprentices, to call Ivo in from the street and to watch Nell return with an armful of things that needed fixing. Now she stood there knowing it might be the last time.
A home can be measured in rooms and tools and walls. It can also be measured in the sounds you expect to hear when you come back. For the founders leaving Doreavinea, it was the second kind of loss that had no space in their bundles.
The remaining passages opened only toward the human world. Orrean ordered everyone out, turning the last open ways into roads that led only away. It did not ask where they wanted to go or whether they were willing to leave.
Nessa returned once to the blue door. Nell had packed the tools they would need to begin again. Ivo had found the brass bird.
Its wing was bent. Nessa tried to fold it for the journey, but the hinge had seized. The departure bell rang. Gauge held out a padded tool box.
“I can keep it.”
“For whom?”
He had no answer.
Nessa laid the bird inside. She folded the drawing of the room and placed it with the bird.
Spark kept watch over the place where people had once arrived.
“For whoever wants to know what we were trying to make.”
She left the sign hanging from one chain. All along the street, people abandoned ordinary things: an order waiting behind a counter, a table set for guests, a door they expected to open again.
At the arrival platform, Nessa checked Nell's bag and Ivo's hands. The apprentices were arguing about who should carry the heavier tools. This time she let them. They left together. No surviving record says where they settled.
The kettle stayed on the fountain ledge.
Orrean wanted the Meganites to tend the empty city. They refused. They hid in maintenance tunnels and workshops, taking tools, records and anything that might help someone repair Doreavinea one day.
Spark stayed on Main Street, the arrival refuge outside the sealed district gates. A small local supply there lay beyond the emergency key's reach. It was enough to keep Spark alive through long periods of sleep. It could not feed a human community or power the empty city.
Beyond the gates, Spark's connections went dark. It still knew who it was and remembered what had happened. But it could no longer reach the workshops, records or roads spread across Doreavinea.
Orrean held the closed districts. Spark kept watch over the place where people had once arrived.