The bell rang late.
Late bells had stopped meaning emergency. They meant drift. A day beginning without the first hand on the rope, then beginning anyway because someone finally remembered the habit.
Eryk was awake before the clang finished. Not rested. Conditioned. He lay for one breath with his hands on his ribs, listening to the shed adjust itself around the sound.
Straw shifting. A cough that never cleared. A low murmur that died when no one answered it.
Then he rose.
The pallets had been moved again.
Not fewer, though they were. Moved. Pushed closer. Gaps tightened, straw swept clean in narrow strips as if someone had taken time to make the emptiness look deliberate.
Bran sat on the edge of his pallet pulling on his boots slowly, jaw clenched as if the leather itself had become an argument.
Tomas was already standing, shoulders stiff, staring at the aisle like he expected his name to be spoken from it.
No one spoke until they were outside.
The yard smelled different.
Not only smoke. Not only stew.
Oil.
Not the cheap grease used on hinges when someone shouted for it. Real oil, sharp and clean. The kind that meant someone with authority had decided something was worth preserving.
The gate was shut.
Not barred. Closed, like a mouth held still.
Men noticed. They pretended not to. Their eyes slid toward the gate and away again, quick as hands near a hot pot.
At intake, the chalk board had changed overnight.
Yesterday it had been crowded and bruised with rewrites, names smeared and tallies layered until the whole thing looked tired. Today it was clean.
Someone had scrubbed it and let it dry. Someone had written fresh, neat columns.
Names spaced evenly. Assignments in smaller letters. Headings straight.
This was not a working board.
It was a sorting board.
The clerk stood at the desk with his sleeves down and his cuffs brushed. His face looked flatter than it had yesterday, like he had slept with his expression pressed under something heavy.
Two men stood behind him in cleaner cloaks. Not guards. Not foremen. Their hands were folded, posture calm, eyes half-lidded in the way of people who did not need to prove they belonged.
Eryk found his name halfway down.
Transport prep.
It had not been rubbed out overnight.
That meant it had been copied.
He did not search for Bran's name. He did not search for Tomas's. Searching was a kind of wanting, and wanting drew lines.
He lifted a crate and began sorting handles.
The work had changed again.
Broken tools were no longer being brought forward to be logged. Cracked pickheads were set aside without comment. Chains were separated. The solid lengths went under canvas. The cracked lengths were piled out of sight behind a stack of boards.
Not because anyone feared failure.
Because failure was no longer allowed to travel.
A foreman passed through intake holding a folded sheet of paper.
Paper.
That alone tightened the yard.
The foreman did not shout. He did not point. He leaned close to the clerk and spoke softly. The clerk read the paper once, eyes moving quickly.
Then he tore it.
One half disappeared into his pocket.
The other went into the brazier beneath the desk and curled black at the edges as if it had never existed.
No announcement followed.
But five names were rubbed off the board and rewritten lower, beneath a new heading.
Staging.
A rope was strung across part of the upper yard.
Not tight. Not guarded. Just there, like a line on a ledger.
Men were told to stand behind it.
No explanation followed.
Those who stepped behind the rope did so carefully, like livestock testing a fence that might still bite. Those who remained outside pretended not to notice the distinction.
Eryk kept working.
Hala came through intake carrying bread.
Bread, not stew.
Dark loaves, still warm enough that steam curled when she broke them. She handed out thick pieces for those near the rope, smaller for those drifting elsewhere.
"Eat," she told Eryk when she placed a piece in his hand. "Slow."
That was instruction, not kindness.
He ate.
The bread sat heavy in him and stayed. It made him aware of his body in a way hunger did not. Hunger had been a tool. Fullness was a distraction.
A boy near the rope tore into his piece too fast and choked. Another saved half, tucking it into his shirt like a promise.
Hala watched both and said nothing.
Bran passed by with a bundle of rope coils. His cheek was scraped raw, a fresh bruise swelling where a crate corner had met him. He did not mention it. Eryk did not ask.
In Blackstone, bruises were background. Paper was the story.
Midmorning, a cart arrived from the upper path.
Its wheels were wrapped in cloth. It carried crates, tool chests, canvas bundles tied with careful knots.
Inventory.
It stopped near the gate.
A guard unrolled a small board and propped it on his knee. Chalk numbers. Weight limits. Rules.
One bundle per man.
No metal tools carried.
Blankets counted.
The rules were spoken quietly, without emphasis, as if they had always existed and the yard was only now catching up.
The staging rope shifted.
Men behind it were pointed toward the gate in groups of four. Not called with ceremony. Directed. Moved.
The yard did not cheer.
It did not dare to.
A man stepped forward with a sack slung over his shoulder.
The guard tested it with his fingers. Pressed once. Then again.
"Too heavy," the guard said.
"It's my blanket," the man replied.
The guard did not look at him.
"Too heavy."
The man untied the sack. Pulled out a hammer. Hesitated, fingers tight around the handle.
Then he set it on the ground.
No one reached for it.
The guard nudged it aside with his boot, marked something on his board, and waved the man through.
The hammer lay where it was until a boy's hand drifted toward it and stopped. The boy looked at the guard. Looked at the gate. Withdrew his hand.
Later, the hammer was swept into a growing pile near the fence.
Residual.
A second pile grew beside it, smaller.
Shirts. Belts. A boot with the toe crushed flat.
Things that had belonged to someone yesterday and belonged to no one today.
Eryk kept sorting.
A name was called.
Wrong.
Two men answered.
They looked at each other, confusion crossing their faces in the same moment. One of them shook his head.
"That's not," he began.
The guard with the clean boots pointed.
"You," he said.
The man closest to the gate went.
The other took a step forward, then stopped.
"That's not me," he said carefully, as if careful words could keep him whole.
The guard did not look at him.
The clerk opened his mouth. Closed it again.
The chalk was rubbed away.
The man who had protested stood still, eyes fixed on the board as if the board might restore him if he stared hard enough.
Then the clerk wrote a new mark over the pale smear and the space where the name had been became something else.
A different assignment.
A different fate.
The man turned, slow, like a tool being set back in a drawer. He drifted toward the yard, not to work, but to find a place where he would not be in the way.
A second guard put a hand on his shoulder and moved him a half-step without looking at his face.
Not a shove. Not cruelty.
Cargo repositioned.
The man swallowed hard and did not resist.
Eryk adjusted a rope coil so it would not lean.
His hands were steady.
He understood now that correctness was not protection.
Only being forgettable was.
Near noon, the chalk board was copied onto paper.
Carefully.
Eryk saw the paper for only a moment when the desk door opened and someone inside shifted. A thin slice of warmth and ink smell slipped into the yard, then vanished.
The door closed again.
Carefully.
Chosen non-interruption.
Outside, the chalk board still stood.
But now it was less important than what had been carried through that door.
The cloaked man checked the copied list once and folded it.
Then the clerk wiped the board clean.
Fully.
In front of everyone.
Names vanished that would not return.
The rope line shifted inward again.
The yard compressed.
After the board was wiped, someone laughed.
A short, thin sound, like air forced through cracked lips.
No one joined.
Work resumed with a different weight in it.
Men moved like they were trying to be useful without being visible. Foremen spoke less. Orders came in gestures. When a man hesitated, he was nudged rather than shouted at, as if shouting might draw the wrong attention.
Late afternoon, a cry rose from the quarry path.
Not panic.
A warning.
Eryk turned his head before he could stop himself.
On the upper tier, a crane line had jammed. The rope rasped against wood. Men shoved at the load with their shoulders. The beam was still misaligned from weeks ago.
No one had fixed it because no one owned fixing anymore.
A man slipped.
His foot went out on grit that was too thin. He caught himself on the rope, hand snapping down hard.
The rope burned through his palm.
He made a noise, sharp, involuntary.
Then he did something worse.
He looked toward the intake desk as if the desk could see him.
As if injury required acknowledgment.
No one looked back.
The foreman shouted, not at the injury, but at the delay.
"Move it. Move it now."
The man wrapped his hand in his shirt without stopping. Blood darkened the cloth, then disappeared under dust. He kept pushing.
The load shifted.
The crane line jerked free.
The men below did not cheer.
They only resumed rhythm.
Two hours later, part of a quarry face collapsed.
Not a full tier. Not a disaster that demanded attention.
A slab tore loose and slid down, throwing dust into the air and burying a path used for hauling.
No one cleared it.
The path remained blocked.
The work simply rerouted around it.
Men climbed over broken stone like insects crossing a cracked plate.
A foreman looked at the collapse, then looked away.
His job was not safety.
His job was keeping numbers moving while the paper men watched.
By dusk, the carts were gone.
The last counted bundle rolled through the gate corridor on wheels wrapped in cloth. The gate shut behind it.
Not locked.
Closed.
The clean-boot guards remained for minutes after, then left without ceremony.
They did not stay to restore order.
They did not stay to patrol.
They had come to count and remove.
Nothing else.
The yard felt it immediately.
Not relief.
Vacuum.
Men stood where the staging rope had been as if the rope might reappear if they waited long enough.
It did not.
Someone asked, softly, "Tomorrow?"
No one answered.
Hala walked past Eryk with her pot and did not look at the gate.
Her shoulders were tight.
"You're still here," she said, not a question.
"Yes."
"Then keep moving," she replied. "If you stop, you'll start thinking."
She did not sound cruel.
She sounded like a woman trying to keep herself functional.
That night, the shed was colder.
Not because winter had arrived.
Because the space around bodies had increased again. More pallets had been pushed closer, but the emptiness between them felt wider anyway, like the building itself had begun to loosen.
Bran sat with his back to the wall, hands clasped.
"They took seven," he said.
"Seven," Tomas repeated, voice thin. He tried to make it sound like hope and failed.
Bran shook his head.
"They take what still works," he said, and the words came out fractured, breath between them. "They leave the rest to grind."
Eryk lay down and listened.
Outside, the yard settled.
Somewhere up the hill, a door shut.
Not slammed.
Closed carefully.
The same sound as earlier.
The paper door.
Hours later, a noise came from the fence line.
A scrape.
Not loud. Not dramatic.
Wood on stone. Metal on wood.
Then silence.
No guard called out.
No lantern moved.
No boots approached.
A dog barked once, then stopped.