They set a small circle and went.
No crowd. No speeches. Just work lines and a quiet road.
Kael walked point with a bundle of copper and a folded map. Orrin carried iron like a second spine. Mara brought a chorus of nine who could hold messy rhythms without thinking about anyone else.
Elian had a satchel of ask boxes and meter wheels.
Lena chewed mint and tapped 2-2 on her ring when the hum under the world tried to settle into her ribs.
Barrow Falls came up like a bruise. The old pit yawned. Frost smoke rose from cracks.
The half-collapsed trestle still pointed at the sky as if it wanted to measure it and failed.
They set the circle tight on the rim. Four protective stones, the iron web, three independent meters, one ask box on a low table, kill switch on a slate.
No one stepped closer than the chalk line Kael drew.
The maps flashed the request again over the pit's square.
LOCAL TEST: MEMORY HALLS CLEANUP. SCOPE: STONE ONLY. ASK-FIRST REQUIRED.
The Door did not open. The guard did not speak. This was stone work. Ask-only.
Mara lifted her palm. "Centers."
Nine voices breathed wrong on purpose. No chant. No shared beat.
Elian wired the box to bedrock. He rolled the wheel once. It spit a prime.
Sparks scratched the ledger. LIVENESS OK.
Orrin checked every bar twice. "If anyone wedges a meter, I will hear you," he said to the empty air. The empty air believed him.
Lena stood where she could see the whole rim and not the bottom. She did not lean.
Kael laid his hand on the ask box, then took it away. Out-of-band always.
He tapped on the iron table instead. Two short, one long, then primes.
"Barrow Falls," he said, plain. "We want to clean what hurts and lies. Stone only. No minds. May we show a ghost of what we would do, and you tell us yes or no?"
The box spun, flashed WAIT, then went dark.
They waited.
Winter light moved a finger-width. The hum under the ground shifted from one low note to three that did not match.
The box woke. YES... SHAPE ONLY. NO... TOUCH.
"Good," Elian murmured. "Ghost first."
He sketched simple tasks into the map-space over the pit. Large words anyone could read.
TURN OFF FALSE STEPS.
MUTE TRAPPED ECHOES.
SEAL OPEN TEETH.
DRAIN ICHOR CHANNELS.
MOVE BONES WITH RESPECT.
ASK AGAIN LATER FOR ANYTHING ELSE.
The ghost overlay drew itself over the rim and hung there like chalk dust. It did not touch the ground.
The ask box spun. YES TO SHAPE. NO TO TEETH. LATER.
Kael nodded. "No touching the teeth," he said out loud so the part of him that remembered the ceiling could hear it.
The first test came quiet and dirty. A warm laugh rolled up from the pit. Braided with cold granite and the smell of ash.
"Kael."
Elara's voice. Perfect and wrong.
A soft question rode it. Let me help you balance the line. Breathe with me. Say yes.
Lena's head snapped. Her jaw locked.
Kael tapped 2-2 under his breath without breathing to it. Out-of-band. NO on iron.
The laugh thinned to wind. The ask dissolved.
Mara's nine never synced.
"Proxy," Elian said. He wrote NO MIRROR / NO BREATH in the air and underlined it like he was carving it into stone.
They moved to the false steps. The overlay pointed at a run of boards that had killed five men because it looked sound when it wasn't.
They asked.
MAY WE MARK THESE AS DEAD? SHAPE ONLY.
The box spun. YES... MARK. NO... TOUCH.
Kael threw the mark as light. Big letters on nothing. NOT A STEP.
The ghost hung there for anyone who looked toward the pit. The boards themselves did not change. That was fine.
People would.
They asked to mute the echo that looped a scream three seconds late, forever.
MAY WE QUIET THIS? STONE ONLY.
YES, the box wrote.
The protective stones hummed. The Chorus breathed wrong. Iron tapped.
The echo's tail died down to something you could live near.
They asked to drain a black channel that burned whatever fell into it.
MAY WE OPEN A CUT TO THE RIVER? STONE ONLY.
LATER, the box wrote. SPRING THAW. NOT NOW.
Orrin grunted. "Place knows its own bones," he said, not angry. "We come back."
A Severer who had left them before came up the road with his hands out. No drum. Burned sleeve.
He did not cross the chalk line.
"I came to see if the box would obey me," he said to Orrin. "It didn't."
"Obey the rule with it," Elian told him, and set him to watch a meter.
The man nodded once like a knot coming loose.
At noon, a thin sound rose from the north wall of the pit. Iron rubbing iron.
Not their iron.
Orrin's head turned. "Wedge," he said. He did not move his feet. He said a name like a hammer.
Two of his people ran to a side crack and found the lever the hardliners had hidden last season. They took it out and set it on the ground.
Orrin put his boot through it and did not look at the men who watched from the birches.
"No more games," he said without raising his voice.
They kept working.
The biggest ask came on its own. Not theirs. The ground sent it up like heat.
STOP SHOWING THE FALL. The box printed it clean. CAN YOU QUIET THE LAST TEN SECONDS OF THE LAST DAY. STONE ONLY. NO MINDS.
Kael's hand went cold. He did not look at Lena. He did not look at Mara.
He looked at the ask.
Elian wrote the scope in big letters. STONE ONLY. NO MEMORY TOUCH. NO NAMES. MUTE A SOUND.
They asked the world for meter truth. Three wheels spun. Sparks popped. OK.
"Authorize?" Mara said softly.
Kael tapped 2-2. "Authorize."
The stones sang low. The Chorus held wrong breath. The iron web took the strain.
The sound at the edge of the pit un-hooked from stone. The last ten seconds of the last day. The clatter that turned to crunch. It softened and slid down into quiet.
No minds changed. The ground changed a little. That was all.
Lena put a mint leaf between her teeth and then took it out because she didn't need it.
Her eyes were wet. She did not lean.
Kael's mouth tasted like frost. He stood straight.
The next ask came small and human. The box wrote: MOVE MARKERS?
A list followed in earnest hand, not the guard's. Rian. Owe. Jin. Elara. Four chalk marks on the west rim that winter wind and boys' boots would scrub away by spring.
Kael swallowed. "Stone only," he said to the air that had once held a voice.
Elian wrote: STONE MARKERS ONLY. NAMES IF GIVEN BY LIVING NEXT OF KIN. ELSE: FOUR STONES WITH IRON NAILS.
The box spun. YES.
They set four stones a hand's span back from the rim. They hammered one iron nail into each.
They did not carve letters. The nails were enough. Weight was enough. Truth was enough.
Lena laid her ringed fingers on one of the nails and did not speak.
She tapped 2-2, then primes, slow and off-beat. It was not a message. It was a kind of thanks.
Late light bent across the pit. The place sent one last ask up the box. Almost shy.
LEAVE REFUSE/CONSENT HERE STONE. LEAVE BOX. WE WILL TAP.
Kael smiled without meaning to. "We will. It's yours by rule."
Elian inked DEFAULT NO on a slate and wired the box to bedrock with copper and a prayer to reality.
The meter wheels purred. LIVENESS OK. RATE LIMIT symbol glowed small beside them. SPIRAL. MERCY.
Orrin checked the joins one last time. "If anyone tries to wedge this, the box will burn them. And then I will talk to them."
Mara put a palm on a protective stone. The stone hummed back.
"Keep your own center," she told the ground. It sounded foolish and right at once.
They broke the circle down to travel and left what belonged.
On the road out, a runner from the village trotted up with a spoon and a stubborn jaw.
"We said no to a door down by the mill," he told Orrin. He tilted his chin like a challenge.
"Good," Orrin said. "Keep it. Change your mind later if you want. Or don't."
The boy blinked. Being allowed to keep his no was the strangest gift anyone had given him.
They reached camp at dusk. The stones there sang once, tired and pleased.
Ask-First marks held on every map. The Legacy Gate marks under the ice held. The little spiral for rate-limit pulsed where the askers had been too loud and learned to be quiet.
They ate bread and salted fish. They drank water that tasted like iron and winter.
They wrote notes.
Elian set down a short ledger. BARROW FALLS... SHAPE ONLY... DONE. TEETH LATER. DRAIN LATER. FOUR STONES SET. BOX LEFT.
Mara counted nine steady centers and sent two singers to bed. "I'll wake you if I need your noise," she told them. It was the kindest thing she could have said.
Orrin rotated watches. He sent a watcher home gruffly and looked away so no one saw his mouth soften.
Lena slept without a mint leaf. She woke once, tapped 2-2 on the iron frame of her bed, and smiled because the tap belonged to her.
Kael sat with the map in his lap until the lines stopped moving in his head.
Then he rolled it and lay down.
The Door did not open that night.
Near dawn, their maps flickered with a small note in the guard's clean hand.
NEXT WINDOW: INTERNAL REFACTOR. I WILL TEST YOUR RULE AGAINST OLD BONES.
Orrin read it and grunted. "We guard."
Mara read it and nodded. "We breathe wrong on purpose."
Elian read it and sharpened his stylus.
Lena read it and did not lean.
Kael read it and tapped 2-2, one long, then primes. Just once, to feel the shape.
Morning came pale and thin. Work waited like a door held open by a stone.
They had not fixed the world.
They had left one place quieter than they found it.
For once, that was enough.