The bell rang into snow.
It was not loud. The sound fell into the cold and died quickly, smothered by wind and distance. For a moment it did not feel real enough to wake to. Eryk lay still on his pallet with his hands tucked under his ribs, breathing into the thin warmth trapped in his shirt.
Then Bran's boot struck the shed floor once.
"Up," he said.
The cold rushed in the moment Eryk moved. It found the cracked skin on his knuckles and slid into the tender places around his wrists. His breath smoked in the dim light as he sat up. Frost filmed the inside of the wall planks. Someone had not closed the door fully during the night.
Outside, the yard was white.
Not clean white. Soot had dusted the snow gray. Footprints crisscrossed it in overlapping paths, already ground into slush where traffic was heaviest. The pump handle stood rimmed with ice, a pale crust catching the weak light.
Winter had finally reached Blackstone.
Hala was awake before the boys lined up.
"You fall behind today and the cold will take you," she said flatly. "Water first. And don't bring me half-frozen slop like last year's fools."
The pump screamed when Bran threw his weight into it. The sound was sharper than it had ever been, the iron protesting with each stroke. Water burst into the bucket dark and smoking, skinning over almost immediately at the edges.
Eryk took the first load. The cold bit through the wood and into his palms. By the time he reached the kitchen hearth, a thin plate of ice had already formed across the surface.
"Again," Hala said without looking. "Before it sets hard."
The morning became a race against freezing.
Buckets skinned and cracked. Lids had to be smashed with fists. Knuckles split. One younger boy dropped his load when his fingers failed him. The bucket burst open against stone in a glitter of ice and water.
Gerrit struck him twice before the spill finished spreading.
"Pick it up," he barked. "All of it."
The boy's hands shook so badly he could not lift the bucket. Bran stepped forward without looking at Gerrit and righted it instead.
No thanks were given.
At the pump, a thin boy named Marek was sent to keep the line moving while the rest carried. He was slight even compared to the others and his gloves were little more than rags stitched into the shape of hands. The pump handle froze in stages. Each stroke grew heavier.
By midmorning, Marek no longer felt two of his fingers.
He lifted them once and stared, confused, at where feeling had ended.
"Pump," Tomas hissed. "Don't stop."
Marek pumped.
An hour later his fingers were dark.
Gerrit noticed the slowing first.
"For the love of rot," he muttered. "What's wrong with you now?"
Marek tried to answer. His lips were blue. No sound came out.
Gerrit spat into the snow and waved two guards over.
"Take him off before he drops on the handle and breaks it."
They dragged Marek upright by his arms. His feet barely moved as they pulled him away from the pump. Eryk watched his boots leave hollow tracks in the snow, the toes scraping shallow lines until the guards lifted him fully.
No one followed.
Tomas worked the pump in silence after that.
At the quarry slopes, winter made the stone treacherous.
The sun cut shallow bands of light across the stepped ledges. Where melt touched shadow, a glassy skin formed. Men moved more carefully, boots sliding despite the iron spikes driven into their soles. Steam rose from mouths and cracked lips. The chains sang a brighter note in the cold, higher and tighter.
On the upper run, Eryk carried a crate of wedges toward the storage shed. The path had been cleared earlier but fresh snow was already drifting back across it in thin veils. His shoulders ached with the familiar burn of weight. His breath rasped hard in his chest.
Ahead of him, a boy named Kett slipped.
Not far. Not into the pit. His foot simply lost its purchase long enough for his knee to strike stone. He cried out more from surprise than pain.
Eryk saw it happen.
He was close enough to shout a warning. Close enough that a sharp breath from him might have drawn attention to the spill patch on the path.
He said nothing.
Kett tried to stand. His knee folded. He went down again, this time hard enough that the sound carried.
A foreman looked up from below.
"Get him out of the way," he called.
Two men took Kett under the arms and half-carried him off the path. His knee swelled visibly through his torn trouser by the time they reached the shed door. He stared at Eryk as they passed. His eyes were wide and bright with the cold and pain.
Eryk lowered his gaze to his boots and stepped past the dark wet mark where Kett's fall had struck through the snow.
He delivered the crate.
By midday, the yard moved more slowly. Breath hung thick in the air. Hala wrapped her hands in cloth between bouts of stirring, then stripped it off again to grip the ladle. The stew steamed harder than usual just for the privilege of staying liquid.
At the pump, Tomas pumped with his shoulders now.
"You hear about Marek?" he muttered without looking at Eryk.
Eryk shook his head.
"Foreman says he's reassigned. He said it like he was moving a sack of grain."
Eryk took the next bucket and said nothing.
Winter worked on the quarry without mercy.
The cold made stone brittle. Hairline fractures split deeper than they should have. Small shears occurred more often now, sloughing off sheets of rock without warning. Not deep collapses, just enough to break bones and slow production in an endless, irritating way.
The foremen cursed the season as if it were a disobedient worker.
That afternoon, a man lost his balance when a ledge flaked under him. He hit three levels down and struck the wall hard enough that the sound drifted up even over the hammers. His chain bit into the stone and held. He dangled there for several breaths before they hauled him back.
His arm twisted wrong as they pulled.
No one stopped working.
That night, the shed was colder than the yard.
The wind found every gap. Snow drifted in under the far wall and gathered in pale humps between pallets. Breath ghosted with every shift in the dark.
Tomas whispered into the cracks above them.
"Winter sorts quicker."
No one replied.
Three days later, Marek's pallet was gone.
Its straw had already been reclaimed and worked into the others. No one mentioned his name.
Two days after that, Kett was sent to the lower sheds.
He did not come back at night.
By the end of the first full week of winter, Eryk could no longer remember when he had last felt his hands fully warm.
The cold slid into him and stayed. It lived under his nails and deep in the joints of his fingers. He learned how to move fast without appearing rushed. How to tuck his hands into the crook of his arms between runs so the blood would not abandon them too completely.
He learned that stone bit harder when frozen.
He learned that men broke more quietly in the cold.
On the tenth day of winter, a boy slipped at the path again.
This time Eryk was closer. He felt the sound of the fall rather than heard it, a dull knock through the sole of his boot.
He still did not shout.
That boy was reassigned before evening.
That night, when the shed had gone still and the last coughing had settled into sleep, Bran spoke without turning his head.
"You don't look anymore."
Eryk stared at the dark rafters.
"Look where?" he asked.
Bran did not answer.
Outside, the quarry chains creaked once in the cold as the wind shifted against them.
Winter pressed its teeth into Blackstone and found that the town did not resist. It only adapted. It let the cold take what it would as long as the ledgers stayed balanced.
Eryk lay with his hands tucked beneath his ribs, the ache in them a familiar weight.
In the quiet dark, he thought of how the system had not changed at all.
Only the weather had.
And the boy he had been in the fall.