The bell rang.
No one answered it.
Not immediately.
Eryk lay awake with his eyes open, listening to the sound roll out across the yard and thin itself against stone. The rope had been pulled cleanly. No hesitation. No double tug. Whoever had done it knew the weight of the bell and nothing more.
That, more than the silence that followed, unsettled him.
In the shed, bodies shifted without rising. Straw rustled. A man coughed and stopped himself halfway through, breath turning into a hiss between his teeth. Somewhere near the door, a boy whispered a question that never finished forming.
The bell rang again.
Still no voice.
No boots crossing the yard.
No door opening.
They waited until the sound died completely before anyone moved.
Eryk sat up and swung his legs off the pallet. The floor was colder than it had been yesterday. Not because the night had been colder, but because fewer bodies were sleeping close enough to share heat.
The gaps were wider now.
Not more numerous. Wider.
Straw had been swept into clean lines around the empty spaces, as if someone had taken time to make absence look deliberate. A new boy had been placed near the door sometime during the night. Small. Sharp-eyed. Awake already. He watched Eryk tie his cord and then looked away quickly, like he'd been caught staring at something dangerous.
Bran rose slowly, shoulders hunched. Tomas sat with his elbows on his knees, staring at his hands as if waiting for them to decide whether they were still his.
No one spoke.
They filed out when the second clang came.
Outside, the yard looked almost orderly.
That was what made it wrong.
The cart had been moved. Not far. Just enough that it no longer blocked the main path. The residual pile still sat in it, but the sacks had been stacked straighter. A coil of rope had been centered on top, laid with care, like someone had wanted it to look intentional.
The chalk board was gone.
Not wiped.
Removed.
Only the stand remained, leaning slightly where one leg had sunk into the dirt. Behind it, a pale rectangle marked the wall, clean stone where the board had shielded it from dust and weather.
Men gathered anyway.
They stood where they always had, looking at the empty space as if waiting for something to appear.
No one asked where the board had gone.
Without it, the yard felt larger. Less contained. As if the walls had stepped back and left them exposed.
Eryk drifted toward intake by habit.
No one stopped him.
The intake building stood open. The desk inside was bare. No ledger. No chalk. No paper. The ink bottle was gone. So was the rag the clerk used to wipe his hands.
A single quill lay snapped near the edge of the desk, its tip broken cleanly off.
Eryk did not touch it.
He stepped back into the yard.
Work began without coordination.
Men moved toward what they knew. Pump. Quarry. Kitchen. Intake. Each place filled unevenly, too many bodies in some, none in others. No one corrected it. No one shouted.
At the pump, the beam sagged lower than it had yesterday.
The groove had deepened overnight. The rope now sat in it like it belonged there, fibers pale and fraying. When Tomas took the first pull, the beam answered with a slow creak that sounded tired.
They pulled shorter draws.
Slower.
A bucket came up half-full and no one complained.
At the quarry, a face collapsed.
Not dramatically. A sheet of stone slid free where wedges had been set too close together. Dust rose, then settled.
No one stood beneath it.
Men stared at the fresh scar for a long moment.
Then someone set a new wedge and struck.
The kitchen ran quietly.
Hala did not stand at the steps barking orders today. She moved between pots with her jaw set, ladle tapping once against the rim, then not again. The broth that went out was thin and hot and tasted like water that had learned the memory of bone.
Men drank and kept moving.
No one thanked her.
Thanks was a kind of speaking. Speaking was a kind of attention.
By midmorning, the yard had found a rhythm without ever agreeing on it.
The worst part was that it worked.
Not well. Not safely.
But enough.
A man carried a crate wrong and set it down too hard. The crate split on the corner and a scatter of iron spilled into the dirt. No one yelled. No one wrote it down. Two boys crouched, gathered the pieces, and stacked them back into a new box as if the first had never existed.
A foreman walked the yard once.
Eryk watched him because the man's presence felt like a question.
The foreman did not stop at the pump. He did not inspect the quarry face. He did not step into intake.
He walked the perimeter, eyes on fence posts and gate hinges and the corners where the ground sank, then returned to the upper path and vanished without speaking to anyone.
Men worked less.
Not from laziness.
Because every movement had become a choice without permission, and choices cost.
If a tool fell, it stayed where it landed until someone had enough spare breath to pick it up. If a strap loosened, it stayed loose until the looseness became danger. If a man's hand bled, he wrapped it and kept moving, not because he was brave, but because asking for help required someone else to accept responsibility.
At the pump, the beam caught again.
This time it snapped a fiber.
The sound was sharp. Final.
Tomas froze with his hands on the rope.
Eryk held his breath.
The beam held.
Barely.
They tied a strip of cloth around the rope where it rubbed. An old trick. Not a fix. A delay.
It would make the snap quieter when it came.
No one said that out loud.
Near the far fence, someone swore softly.
Eryk turned.
Tracks.
Not deep. Not fresh. Pressed into the dirt where the ground sloped toward the tree line beyond the quarry road.
Too wide for dogs.
Too shallow for carts.
They led up to the fence.
And stopped.
Someone had stood there.
Watching.
A boy saw it too.
"Who—" he started.
An older man shook his head once.
"Don't," he said.
The boy swallowed and stepped back.
Eryk forced himself to look away.
He understood the logic now. Not because it was fair. Because it was true.
If you named the watcher, you made the watcher real.
If you made it real, you had to decide what to do about it.
And Blackstone did not do things because they were wrong. It did things because they interfered.
The day dragged.
Men moved as if the yard itself were heavier than stone. Not just tired. Unheld.
The gate stayed closed.
Not barred.
Closed, like a mouth with nothing to say.
At midday, no bell marked the meal. Hala simply began handing bowls out, and the line formed because hunger still knew how to organize men.
Tomas ate standing, eyes flicking toward the fence between mouthfuls.
Bran ate slower, watching faces instead of walls.
Eryk ate because his body insisted.
The stew slid down and left nothing behind.
After, they returned to work without being told.
That was the deadest part. That it continued.
That men still hauled, still lifted, still struck stone, even when no one was counting.
It meant the system had moved inside them.
Toward evening, the first transport cart arrived.
Not announced.
It came in through the gate without ceremony, wheels creaking softly, pulled by a pair of horses that looked underfed but steady. The driver did not dismount.
Two guards followed it in. Clean boots. No lash.
They stopped near intake.
"Bundles," one of them said. Not loudly.
Men looked at one another.
"Transport," the other guard added, already bored.
A clerk emerged from the paper room.
Not the chalk clerk.
This one's hands were black with ink.
He did not look at the yard. He held a folded sheet and read from it without raising his voice.
"Names," he said.
Some answered.
Some did not.
If a name was not answered twice, it was crossed out.
If two men answered to one name, the one who stepped forward first went.
No corrections were made.
Bundles were counted.
Not searched.
One per man.
"No metal tools," a guard said.
"Blankets count as weight."
A man tried to argue.
The guard stared at him without anger.
The man removed his blanket and left it on the ground.
The cart filled slowly.
Not enough to feel like rescue.
Enough to feel deliberate.
Eryk was not called.
Neither was Bran.
Tomas stood too close to the rope line and then stepped back, as if proximity itself had become dangerous.
The men who went climbed into the cart with the same faces they had worn in the yard. No gratitude. No relief. Only the tension of bodies trying not to believe in luck.
As the cart rolled out, no one waved.
The gate closed behind it.
The oil on the hinges did not squeak.
Night fell.
No bell marked it.
The guards left without announcement.
The yard settled into itself like a place deciding it had been forgotten.
That was when the noises started.
Not loud.
Wrong.
Something scraped near the quarry road. Not stone. Not metal.
Something breathed near the fence. Not wind.
A knock came at the gate.
Once.
Then nothing.
No one answered.
Inside the shed, men lay awake listening.
Eryk stared at the rafters until his eyes burned.
Outside, the world pressed closer.
Not attacking.
Not yet.
Just confirming.
Blackstone was unwatched.
And whatever came next would not be stopped because it was wrong.
Only if it interfered.
The night held.
So did the silence.
And somewhere beyond the fence, something finished noticing that Blackstone had been left behind.