Kbach is not decoration invented at the wall. It is a grammar — four schools of unit, each with a name, each learned in order before a carver is allowed to compose anything. The snail-curl of *kbach angkor*, the poppy pods of *phñi tes*, the animal heads surfacing out of vine in *phñi voal*, the abstract flame of *phñi phleung*: every mark on an Angkorian lintel belongs somewhere in that system.

This system takes the stone as its surface, not the drawing. Grey-to-brown quartz arenite in gallery shade, darkened by a thousand years of biological growth and iron staining. Hue barely moves; value carries everything. Light arrives from one side, and shadow does the drawing.