Morning came without a bell.
Eryk woke with his cheek pressed into needles that smelled like old sap and wet ash. For a few breaths he did not move, because moving used to be something you did when someone wanted it.
Nothing wanted him.
The forest held still around him. Wind moved high branches. A crow called once and shut up like it regretted the noise. Somewhere far away, water ran thin over stone.
Eryk opened his eyes and stared at gray light between boughs.
No shouting.
No chains.
No routine.
His body did not understand what to do with that. His hands stayed clenched as if he were still holding a bucket handle. When he forced them open, his fingers trembled.
Not fear. After Blackstone he knew fear's shape. This was the leftover of a night spent waiting for something to find him.
He pushed himself upright carefully. The world tilted. His stomach lurched like it had forgotten what up meant.
He swallowed and blinked until the trees stopped swimming.
His ankle answered when he tried to put weight on it. A sharp complaint, then a dull, stubborn ache that climbed into his shin.
He looked down.
One shoe was still there, split at the toe. The other was half gone, heel crushed flat like it had been stepped on by something heavier than a boy running for his life. His socks were wet through. His toes felt too cold to belong to him.
He touched his ribs once, just below the sternum.
The deep place under bone was quiet.
The thrum was not gone. It was there in the way a held breath was there, waiting for permission to become sound.
He stood anyway.
From where he was, he could see the slope down toward Blackstone's cut in the land. He expected the quarry face to loom through the trees, a raw wound in the hills.
He saw only branches.
For a moment that broke him in a way he did not understand. Not grief with tears. Just a small, wrong emptiness, like reaching for a tool on a hook and finding bare wall.
Blackstone should have been visible.
Blackstone should have been making noise.
He limped forward until the ground dropped away and the trees opened enough that he could see.
The place was there.
Smaller than it had ever felt.
Flattened.
The yard was a smear of churned earth and broken wood. The shed had collapsed inward, roof caved like a rib cage cracked open. The pump beam lay snapped in two. Rope trailed across the mud like pale hair.
The gate hung crooked.
And the quarry path beyond it was empty.
Eryk stood at the edge of the slope and breathed through his nose until the taste of smoke stopped scraping the back of his throat.
He had left people down there.
Bran's hands.
Tomas's voice.
Hala's ladle hitting a pot like a threat.
Lysa's eyes, sharp enough to keep you alive if you listened.
The thought that they might still be there, hiding the way he had hidden, came and went so fast it felt like a cruel joke.
He started down anyway.
His ankle tried to stop him. He ignored it.
The yard smelled wrong. Not only smoke, not only blood. There was a sourness in the air, like iron left too long in water. The mud was torn up in lines that did not match boot prints. Something had moved through here without slipping, without hesitation, without caring what it stepped on.
He did not see the creatures.
He did not want to.
Bodies lay scattered, but fewer than there should have been.
That was the first thing his mind latched onto. Not as horror. As arithmetic.
There had been more people than this.
There had been boys in the shed stacked pallet to pallet.
There had been chained men on the quarry tiers.
There had been foremen, guards, clerks, cooks, dogs, pigs.
Now there were only the ones the ground had decided to keep.
A man lay near the gate with his chest crushed inward. A guard, by the coat. Eryk did not recognize the face. It had been turned into something that did not belong to a man anymore.
He stepped around him and kept moving.
He reached the intake area and stopped without meaning to.
The chalk board stand was gone.
Not snapped. Not kicked over.
Gone.
The place where it had stood was cleaner than the rest of the yard, as if someone had taken the time to clear debris away from that specific patch of ground.
Eryk's mouth went dry.
He turned slowly.
There was paper.
Not the torn scraps that sometimes blew into the yard from the upper offices. Real sheets. Folded. Pinned. Weighted down with stones. A strip of parchment tied to the gatepost with twine, edges fluttering like it was trying to fly away.
Paper did not belong among corpses.
Paper belonged to men who lived after.
Eryk moved closer.
His ankle complained. He did not let it change his pace.
At the old desk where the clerk used to sit, a board of wood leaned against the wall. A single sheet was nailed to it. Ink marched down in neat, patient columns.
No chalk.
No smearing.
No ghosts.
Just certainty.
Eryk read without touching.
Inventory recovered
Tools, salvageable
Stores, secured
Personnel, relocated
Losses, recorded
Recorded.
Not mourned. Not searched for. Recorded.
Below it, a stamp pressed into the paper hard enough to bruise the wood behind it.
AUTHORIZED FOR REMOVAL
He stared at the stamp until the letters stopped being letters and became only shapes.
A sound came from the kitchen side of the yard.
Wood scraping.
Crate being dragged.
Eryk's spine went tight.
He backed into shadow behind a broken cart and lowered himself until he could see without being seen.
A man moved near the kitchen doorway.
Not a guard from before.
His boots were clean, but scuffed at the toes, like he had walked real distance. His cloak was plain, gray wool without trim. His hands were stained with ink.
He was loading bowls into a crate.
Empty bowls.
Washed.
Stacked carefully.
As if the world was still going to need them.
Two more men came into view carrying sacks. One had a ledger tucked under his arm, the book held tight against his ribs like a shield. The other had a coil of rope slung over one shoulder and a small hammer at his belt.
They did not look at the bodies.
Not because they were brave.
Because looking would mean acknowledging, and acknowledging would mean delay.
They spoke in low voices that did not carry.
Eryk caught only fragments.
"Set the count at the gate."
"Mark the salvage line."
"Leave the rest. Quarry is a loss."
"Orders say remove what can be reissued."
Reissued.
The word hit him the way "effects" had hit him in the middle store, when boots and knives still held warmth.
A bowl was not a bowl.
It was an asset.
A boy was not a boy.
He was a body that could be moved into a different column.
Eryk's hands clenched until his nails bit into his palms.
He wanted to stand up. To kick the crate. To spill the bowls into the mud. To shove the stamped paper into the fire that no longer burned.
He did none of those things.
In Blackstone, any movement that made the system louder became the system's next focus.
And if these men had come back after the night, they were not men you wanted looking closely at you.
He stayed still and watched.
A cart creaked at the gate. Wheels. Iron rims cutting lines into the mud. Another cart behind it. Then a third.
They had come prepared.
They had known this would happen, or they had known it could.
Eryk felt cold rise under his ribs that had nothing to do with morning.
This was the part no one talked about in the shed.
Not the killing.
The cleanup.
The part where the world proved it had planned for your absence.
One of the ink-handed men stepped toward the shed wreckage and paused.
He leaned down and picked something up from the mud.
A strip of cloth.
Gray.
Eryk's breath caught.
He knew that cloth. He had seen it on Bran's sleeve when Bran patched his own coat with a stolen scrap. He had seen the same weave on the rag Lysa used to wipe chalk dust from her fingers.
The man turned it over once between his fingers, as if checking whether it was worth washing, then tossed it into a sack without looking back.
Eryk's body moved before his mind gave permission.
He shifted, just slightly, to keep the man in view.
A twig snapped under his heel.
The sound was small.
It was enough.
The ink-handed man stopped.
Not startled.
Stopped the way a machine stops when resistance is detected.
He turned his head toward Eryk's hiding place.
His eyes were pale and flat.
Eryk did not move.
The man stared for a long moment.
Then he nodded once, like he had confirmed what he suspected.
He did not call out.
He lifted a hand and made a small motion, two fingers curling inward.
A signal.
Someone else moved behind the carts.
Not the clerks.
Not the ink men.
This man came low, quiet, using the wreckage for cover the way Eryk had learned to use walls.
Leather creaked softly. A blade handle showed at his hip.
He did not wear Blackstone's coat. His clothing was layered and plain, built for travel and weather. His boots were worn where mud and rock had taught them to be worn. His face was not hard. It was blank.
He stopped ten paces from Eryk's cart and spoke without raising his voice.
"Come out."
Eryk swallowed.
His mouth tasted like copper.
He could run.
His ankle would decide how long that lasted.
He could fight.
He had nothing in his hands.
And even if he did, fighting a man who moved like this would only change how quickly the story ended.
He stood.
Slowly.
He kept his hands open, away from his body, the way men did when they wanted to be seen as no threat.
The guard, if that was what he was, watched him step into the open and did not change expression.
Behind him, the ink man returned to stacking bowls.
Because the system did not stop for one boy.
Eryk took one step forward and pain flared in his ankle. He corrected his weight without thinking, hiding the limp as best he could.
The guard's eyes flicked down and back up.
Assessment.
Eryk hated how familiar that felt.
"Name," the guard said.
The question should have been simple.
It was not.
Names were hooks.
Names were how you got pulled.
Names were how you got written down.
Eryk heard Bran's voice in his head, quiet and tired.
You can care. Just don't do it where people can use it.
He hesitated one breath too long.
The guard's gaze sharpened a fraction.
"Boy," he said. Not impatient. Just precise. "Name."
Eryk forced the word out.
"Eryk."
The guard repeated it once under his breath, like testing how it fit in his mouth.
Then he looked past Eryk, toward the ink men and the carts.
He did not shout the name to them.
Good.
He did not write it down.
Better.
He stepped closer until Eryk could see the scarring on his hands. Old cuts. Burn marks. The kind you got from rope friction and hot metal. Work hands, not soft hands.
"You come from here," the guard said.
It was not a question.
Eryk kept his face blank.
"Yes."
The guard nodded once and turned his head slightly.
Another figure approached from between the carts.
A woman.
Not tall, but built like she could carry weight without it changing her breathing. Her hair was tied back tight. Her coat was dark and simple. No adornment. No jewelry. A knife sat at her belt. A short bow rode over her shoulder.
Her eyes went to Eryk's hands first.
Then his feet.
Then his face.
She did not ask his name.
The guard spoke to her in the same low voice.
"Found him."
"Alive?" the woman asked.
"Yes."
The woman looked at the yard, at the bodies, at the stamped paper.
Then she looked at Eryk again.
"You were with the quarry," she said.
Eryk did not answer right away.
It was true, but it felt wrong to say it in this yard, standing over what was left of it.
"Yes," he said finally.
"You know the roads around here," she said.
"I know paths," Eryk replied.
The woman considered him.
Her gaze did not soften.
"You can walk," she said.
"Yes."
"Not well," she added, eyes dropping to his ankle again.
Eryk did not lie.
"Hurt," he said.
The woman nodded as if that was a piece of inventory too.
She turned slightly and looked at the carts.
"Cleanup is done by noon," she said, not to Eryk. To the guard. "We move before then."
The guard nodded.
The woman looked back at Eryk.
"You have food?" she asked.
Eryk's stomach answered for him with a tight, ugly twist.
"No."
"You have water?"
"Some."
He did not. Not anymore.
The woman's mouth moved in the smallest expression that could have been amusement if it had lived on a kinder face.
"You have anything worth carrying?" she asked.
Eryk's mind flashed to the sack the ink man had tossed the gray cloth into.
To Bran's hands.
To Lysa's rag.
To Tomas's voice counting what mattered.
He spoke before he could stop himself.
"There's a rag," he said. "Gray. They took it."
The woman's eyes held his.
For a moment, something passed through her expression.
Not sympathy.
Recognition.
Then it was gone.
"That's not worth carrying," she said.
Eryk's hands clenched.
"It is," he said.
The guard shifted his weight slightly, the way men did when they prepared for trouble.
The woman held up a hand without looking at him. The guard stopped.
The woman stepped closer to Eryk until she was within arm's reach.
"Listen," she said. "You have two options."
Eryk did not speak.
He waited. Waiting was what had kept him alive so far.
"First," she said. "You limp into the forest and try to become invisible. The cold takes your toes. Hunger takes your legs. Something else takes the rest."
Eryk's throat tightened.
"Second," she said. "You carry for us. You keep pace. You do not ask for things we do not give. You do not bring trouble home."
Eryk stared at her.
Home.
The word was wrong in her mouth. Too big for what she meant.
He forced himself to speak.
"Who are you?"
The woman's eyes hardened.
"You don't need that," she said.
"You're escorting them," Eryk said, nodding toward the ink men.
The woman glanced at the carts, then back.
"We're here until they're gone," she said. "After that, we're gone too."
Eryk's mind tried to latch onto a name anyway.
Company. Band. Guard. Dogs.
He let the thought slide away. Names were hooks.
The woman's voice dropped a fraction lower.
"You want to live, Eryk," she said, and it startled him that she used it at all. "Then stop reaching for things that get you counted."
Eryk's jaw clenched.
"Blackstone counted everything," he said.
"Yes," she replied. "And look what it did with the count."
She let the words hang.
The yard behind them did not argue.
Eryk looked past her at the stamped sheet on the board.
AUTHORIZED FOR REMOVAL.
The phrase had been meant for tools and bowls and rope.
It fit a boy too easily.
He felt something deep under his ribs stir, faint as a distant chain shifting.
He thought of Garren's iron ring.
He thought of the feeling of iron obeying him for a breath in Hollowford.
He thought of what Bran had been turning into, day by day, in the shed.
Not a man.
A brace.
A piece of load bearing structure.
And then removed.
Eryk exhaled slowly.
He looked at the woman again.
"If I come," he said, "I'm not staying with them."
The woman's mouth tightened. The closest thing to agreement he would get.
"We're not staying with them either," she said.
She turned her head and spoke one word toward the carts.
Not a name. A signal.
"Load."
Men moved.
Not the ink men.
Others, dressed like the guard, layered and quiet, appearing from behind the carts and the tree line, as if they had been there the whole time and simply had not needed to be seen.
They took up positions without talking.
One checked the road. Another checked the treeline. Another went to the stamped board and tore the sheet down, folded it once, and handed it to the ink man like it was a receipt for something purchased.
The ink man took it without emotion.
Eryk watched the paper disappear into a ledger satchel.
His hands shook again, just once.
The woman saw it.
"Can you carry?" she asked.
Eryk swallowed.
"Yes."
The woman reached behind her and unstrapped a pack.
She held it out to him.
It was heavier than it looked.
He took it with both hands. The strap cut into his palm. The weight pulled his shoulder down.
He adjusted without thinking, shifting it to sit better against his back, tightening the strap, making the load part of him.
The woman watched the adjustments like she was watching a tool being fitted.
Then she nodded once.
"Good," she said.
Eryk's eyes slid back to the kitchen area.
The sack with the gray cloth sat near the crates, half open.
The ink man had turned away.
This was his only chance.
He took one step.
Pain flared in his ankle. He bit it back.
The guard's hand moved slightly toward his knife.
The woman's voice snapped low.
"Stop."
Eryk froze.
The woman did not raise her voice. She did not step closer.
She simply waited, eyes on him, letting him decide whether he was worth the trouble.
Eryk's throat burned.
He could leave the cloth.
He could let it become another effect reissued to a different place.
He could keep walking and tell himself it did not matter.
He heard Tomas in his head, murmuring in the dark.
That matters.
Only when the ledger wants it to.
Eryk made his choice.
Not loud.
Not brave.
Small.
He reached into his shirt and pulled the cord at his waist free, the crude knotted strip he had used since Blackstone because he had nothing else.
He held it up between two fingers.
A thin piece of nothing.
"I need one thing," he said. "Not from them."
The woman stared.
Eryk forced the words out, steady.
"I need to tie my ankle," he lied, because truth was expensive and he did not have coin. "If I don't, I slow you."
The woman's eyes dropped to his ankle.
Then to the cord.
Then back to his face.
For a long moment she said nothing.
Then she jerked her chin toward the kitchen wreckage.
"Quick," she said. "And if you touch their sacks, I cut your hands off and leave you here."
It was not threat as anger.
It was threat as boundary.
Eryk nodded once.
He moved.
He did not limp now. He made his body behave through pain, because pain was cheaper than being abandoned.
He reached the kitchen area and crouched by the mud near the broken wall.
He did not go to the sack.
He did not touch the crates.
Instead, he reached under a collapsed plank where debris had collected and pulled free a strip of cloth caught on a nail.
Gray.
Rough weave.
Not the exact rag he had seen, but close enough that his mind accepted it as the same kind of thing.
A piece of Blackstone, torn loose before the ink men could claim it.
He shoved it into his shirt.
Then he grabbed a splintered length of wood and snapped off a smaller piece, smooth enough to serve as a brace.
He wrapped the cord around it and around his ankle quickly, clumsy but effective, tightening until the joint felt held.
It hurt.
It also held.
He stood and returned.
The woman watched him come back with the pack still on his shoulders.
She did not ask what he had done.
She did not ask what he had taken.
She only looked at his face, then his hands.
Then she nodded again.
"Move," she said.
The carts rolled.
The ink men climbed up and settled with their ledgers. The stamped board was gone. The paper markers at the gate were taken down and folded away.
Blackstone was being erased in real time.
Eryk followed the group as they left the yard. He did not look back until they reached the bend in the road where the trees began to swallow the view.
Then he stopped for half a breath and turned his head.
The ruin sat in the low ground like something already half forgotten.
No smoke rose now.
Only the carts made sound, and even that faded quickly.
Eryk stared until his eyes stung.
Then he turned forward again, because the woman had not stopped, and stopping was how you got left.
They moved into the trees.
No bell.
No yard.
No chalk.
Only footsteps and the weight on his back, and the cold certainty of a new kind of rule.
Behind him, Blackstone became a place people would argue about later, a story told by men who had never been there.
Ahead of him, there were only paths and people who did not use names.
Eryk tightened his grip on the pack strap until his knuckles ached.
He walked.