The sound that woke them was not loud.
It was close.
Eryk opened his eyes and did not move. The shed breathed around him in shallow pieces, straw shifting, a cough starting and stopping, someone turning too fast and then freezing as if motion itself had become an invitation.
The sound came again.
A dull knock. Wood on wood. Careful. Almost polite.
No one spoke.
The night held for another breath, then another.
Then something scraped along the outside wall.
Not claws.
Not metal.
Something dragged with weight behind it, slow enough to be deliberate.
Bran's hand found Eryk's wrist in the dark. Not tight. Just enough to say: don't.
The knock came again.
Lower this time.
Closer to the door.
Someone near the far end of the shed whispered, "Is it…"
A sharper sound cut him off.
Wood splintered.
The door did not burst inward. It sagged. Hinges groaned softly and gave a fraction. Cold slid in along the floorboards, thin as water, carrying wet earth and rot and something faintly sour like old breath trapped in cloth.
A shape filled the gap.
Too tall to be a man. Too narrow to be a cart. It leaned forward as if testing the opening, uncertain of the idea of doors.
Someone screamed.
The sound cracked the night open.
The thing pushed.
The door gave.
It fell inward with a flat, useless sound, and the shape came with it, stumbling into the shed in a rush of limbs and stink.
Eryk scrambled backward. His heart hit so hard it blurred the edges of his sight. Bodies surged around him, men tripping over pallets, boys clawing for space that no longer existed. Straw flew up in pale clumps. Breath tore out of throats. Someone's knee struck his shoulder and he barely felt it.
The thing rose.
It was not one thing.
It was several wrong parts moving together.
A frame that did not sit right inside its skin. A torso like stretched hide pulled over angles that should have been bone and were not. Limbs too long, joints folding in places that made the eye stumble. Its head did not lift fully. It hung forward as if its neck could not decide how to carry it.
Its mouth opened.
Not to roar.
To breathe.
The sound was wet and uneven, like lungs that had learned the wrong rhythm and kept trying anyway.
Someone rushed it.
A man, older, broad, holding a hammer like the tool might remember what it was meant to do.
The hammer struck what looked like bone.
The sound was dull.
The thing reacted a second later. An arm swung out, not fast, just certain. The hand at the end of it was half made, fingers fused into a hooked mass.
The man went down.
Not thrown.
Placed.
His body folded against the wall and slid, leaving a dark smear where his head struck.
Another shape appeared in the doorway.
Then another.
The shed became noise.
Wood breaking. Bodies colliding. Breath tearing out of throats.
Eryk crawled.
Not away. Sideways. Under pallets, hands slipping in straw and dirt and something warm he refused to name. He shoved himself into the only space that was not already filled by panic, pressing his chest to the floor so hard it hurt.
Bran went over him and did not get back up.
Tomas screamed Eryk's name.
The sound ended abruptly.
A boy tried to climb the wall and was pulled down by his ankle. Skin tore with a sound like cloth ripping. The boy made a choking noise that was not a word.
Eryk reached the far corner where the wall met the floor and pressed himself flat. His breath locked in his chest. His hands were open on the boards, fingers spread as if they could grip the world and hold it still.
One of the creatures turned its head.
Not toward sound.
Toward movement.
Its eyes were wrong. Too many, clustered where they had no business being, catching the faintest shifts of shadow and skin. They fixed on the trembling straw where Eryk lay.
It took a step.
Then stopped.
A deeper sound rolled through the yard outside.
Not a roar.
A call.
The creature hesitated. Its head tilted. Its mouth opened and closed as if tasting the air.
Then it turned away.
It dragged itself back toward the fallen door.
Eryk did not move.
He did not breathe.
The thing left the shed.
Another followed.
The sounds moved into the yard.
Wood breaking. Metal clanging. Something heavy striking stone.
The pump beam snapped.
The sound was unmistakable. A sharp crack, then a long groan as the structure gave up and collapsed.
Someone outside screamed until something hit them hard enough to stop the sound.
Fire flared briefly. A torch knocked over. Flame licked at spilled oil and then went out under trampling feet.
The yard dissolved.
Men ran without direction. Some toward the gate. Some toward the quarry road. Some simply away from wherever the sounds were loudest.
The creatures moved among them with no pattern Eryk could understand.
They did not chase.
They intercepted.
A man stumbled and one of them reached out, hooked fingers closing around his shoulder, pulling him aside as another ran past without slowing.
No hunger.
No rage.
Only movement correcting movement.
Eryk stayed in the corner until his lungs burned. He took a breath so small it barely counted, then another. The shed was quieter now, not because it was safe, but because the noise had gone elsewhere.
He waited for a name.
For an order.
For the bell.
Nothing.
There was only the yard being taken apart.
He slid along the wall and found a gap where boards had loosened from damp and neglect. The shed had always been patched. Always been one winter away from falling apart. He pushed his shoulder into the gap and felt cold air on his face.
Outside, shadows ran. Shapes moved too tall and too narrow. A man crashed into the trough and did not get up.
Eryk did not look for Bran.
He did not look for Tomas.
Looking required choosing what to see.
He chose the gap.
He shoved himself through.
The night hit him like water.
He crawled first, then found his feet. The yard was a churn of bodies and broken structure. The pump lay at an angle like a snapped limb. The rope flailed loose, frayed fibers catching moonlight in pale strands. The dogs were screaming in their pen until the screaming stopped.
Eryk ran.
Not straight.
Never straight.
He went for the shadowed path between the kitchens and the storage shed, where the stone wall rose high and blocked the yard from view. He slipped on something wet and caught himself on a post. Splinters bit his palm. He did not feel them.
Behind him, something struck the kitchen door hard enough to shudder the whole building. A window burst. Glass fell like thin rain.
He did not turn.
He ran uphill, then cut down.
He took the quarry switchback because it was familiar, because his feet knew where the stones sat loose and where the ash was thickest. The path was partially blocked from the earlier collapse. Men had climbed it by habit. Tonight he used it as cover.
A figure lunged out of the dark ahead and he flinched hard enough to stumble.
It was a man.
Not a creature.
The man's face was open in a silent scream, eyes wide, mouth working. He reached for Eryk and missed, fingers scraping cloth. He fell to his knees and stayed there, as if his body had run out of instructions.
Eryk stepped around him.
Not because he did not care.
Because stopping meant being caught by something that did.
The sounds followed.
Not footsteps.
Not pursuit.
Just the steady breaking of a place being dismantled.
He heard the gate hinge creak once. Dry and wrong.
Then a crash. Wood meeting stone.
Then silence for half a breath.
Then more breaking.
Eryk ran until the air cut his throat and his legs felt like they belonged to someone else. He could not tell if he was moving toward safety or simply away from light.
At the switchback he threw himself off the path into scrub and rolled. Branches tore at his clothes and skin. He landed hard and did not get up.
He lay among roots and wet leaves, chest burning, ears straining for the sound of pursuit.
No footsteps came.
The noises moved past him.
Downhill.
Toward the lower yards.
Toward where men were still running.
Eryk stayed where he was until the night thinned into gray.
Cold settled into him in layers. His muscles cramped. His fingers stiffened around nothing.
When the light finally made shapes honest, he crawled back toward the yard.
There was nothing left to recognize.
The shed had collapsed inward.
The pump lay in pieces.
Bodies lay where they had fallen, untouched once motion had ceased.
No one was screaming anymore.
The creatures were gone.
Eryk stood at the edge of what had been Blackstone and understood something simple and final.
No one would come.
No report would be written.
No count would be taken.
The place had been abandoned before it was breached.
And now there was nothing left to abandon.
He turned away from the ruins and walked into the trees without looking back.
The world was wider than systems.
And it did not care whether he understood it yet.