The day began with a hammer on stone, but the sound came from the quarry, not the forge. Abigail the driver had gone out early to check the load for the mill, and she found it before the sun was fully over the trees: a seventh block, square and clean, sitting where the survey said there should be six. She counted twice, then a third time, running her fingers along the edges as if the stone might confess. She did not shout. She walked back to town with her hands in her pockets, and she told Liesl Kfir first, because Liesl was the one who asked questions no one else wanted to ask.

Liesl set down her wrench and listened. Her knuckles were white where she gripped the bench. "Seven," she said, not a question. She did not say it was a mistake. She had seen the survey herself, the one Garrin Zohar had filed, the one that listed six blocks and no more. She wiped her hands on her apron and walked to the quarry with Abigail, and they stood together over the stone, neither of them speaking. Liesl touched it, then turned and walked back. She did not go to the hall. She went to her shop and shut the door, and the sound of her hammer was louder than usual for the rest of the morning.

By mid-morning, the square was restless. Rimon the younger and Jonah had found a reason to argue—no one remembered what it was, not even them, but the argument grew until Rimon shoved Jonah, and Jonah swung, and they rolled in the dust until two guards pulled them apart. Ivo Segal stood at the edge of the square, watching, and when it was over he said nothing. He only nodded at the guards and went back to his post, his eyes lingering on the fog line beyond the houses.

In the hall, the morning was quieter, but no less strange. Hannah the teacher had not woken. Neither had Matan the teacher, nor Rimon the librarian, nor Amos the younger, the cook. They were found in their beds, faces peaceful, hands folded, as if they had simply decided to stop. The nurse Yonah, pale and weak, tried to sit up when she heard the news, then sank back. "Three days," she whispered, and no one corrected her, because no one knew how to say it.

The babies came in the afternoon. Four of them, one after another, each arriving with a cry that turned almost immediately to a soft, rhythmic breathing. The midwife heard it first: a phrase, clear as a bell, spoken in a voice that was not quite a baby's voice, not quite an adult's. "The fog is just fog." Malachi the younger said it, and Benaiah, and Levi the younger, and Kenan the younger. The mothers looked at each other, then at the midwife, and no one spoke. Miriam Segal, the baby who had said it before, lay in her cot, her eyes open and calm, as if she were listening.

At the mill, the day passed in low voices. Meir and Miriam sat on the bench by the water wheel, their heads bent together, and they talked for a long while about nothing that mattered—the grain, the weather, the price of flour. Nava and Ruth did the same on the other side of the mill, their hands busy with mending, their words soft and deliberate. No one spoke of the babies, or the old ones, or the seventh stone. The river turned, and the mill hummed, and the afternoon wore on.

In the east road, a guard turned Yael the younger back at the fog line. "The Council prefers people to stay at their work," he said, and Yael looked at the fog, so close she could have touched it, and then turned and walked home without a word.

Noa Hadar came to the well at dusk. She listened for a long time, her head tilted, her pencil ready. The well was silent. She wrote in her book, then closed it and walked to the square, where the marks of the fight were still in the dust. She did not erase them. She stood there until the light failed, and then she walked home.

That night, the hall was quiet. The four new babies slept, their breath even, their dreams their own. The old ones lay in their beds, still and cold, waiting for the morning. The nurse Yonah slept, and in her sleep she murmured something, but no one was there to hear it.

Liesl Kfir sat in her shop, the door locked, a single lamp burning. She had a piece of chalk in her hand, and on the floor she had drawn the quarry, and the six blocks, and the seventh she had seen with her own eyes. She stared at it, and then she wrote a question mark beside the seventh block, and she did not sleep.

The fog stood at the edge of town, patient, unchanged. But the stones did not match the map, and the old ones had died in their sleep, and the babies spoke the sentence in their dreams. The mill turned, the river ran, and the town lay under the fog, waiting for the day to begin again.