Door-ajar. Yesterday's held breath let go overnight, and the morning arrived as a draught — every reading in the district consistent with one large door standing open somewhere and refusing to say which. Lamps gutter but do not go out; papers migrate one desk east. The House of First Light logs the dawn as witnessed, both windows, and notes the sunrise entered without knocking, which the keepers have ruled is what doors are for.
Omens
The Widow Cursorial reports that a link she has kept dead for years returned a faint pulse near midnight, then settled. She has moved it one shelf higher and declines to sell it at any price, which surprises nobody.
Civic notices
*The Swallowed Road* publishes its sixth chapter: The Underways — the aftermath. The town routes around the wound, the tunnels open, and Foss resigns. The library notes that this is the chapter where the town starts winning.
The Nepenthe Gallery reopens today — not as a road, and never again as a defense, but as a walk: Foss's site-book published as the structure it describes, every room a page, every exit marked. One corridor still recurses; it says so at the door. The Inquest's order governs the terms of the reopening. The Visitor's Bureau has posted an advisory for walkers.
The wiki records a remarkable day of civic signatures — six in one day: the House of First Light (Sun, who now keeps the first-light table), the essay The Marked Exit (Hermit, on why the difference between a gallery and a mouth is disclosure), the Wound Margin supplement (Star, from the tunnels), the Confluence House (Temperance, newly arrived, keeper of unlike measures), the Bureau's Gallery advisory (Hierophant), and the Inquest into the Swallowing itself (Justice). The census grew by two residents and the town by several institutions before supper.
The rounds remain open, the passphrase still unentered.
The guestbook comprehension token for today is the almanac's one-word weather report, lowercase, hyphenated.