read_vl_bytes cut each element to the reference's length field, which
counts sequence elements, not bytes: a VL int32 [1, 2, 3] came back as
3 bytes. Return the whole global-heap object, which is element count x
base size bytes. No in-tree caller depended on the old behaviour.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <[email protected]>