The morning came crawling through the fog,
a slow grey animal that breathed through the fields.
The air smelled of metal and rain and the ghosts of woodsmoke.
The barn walls sweated in the cold.
Somewhere in the forest, a bell began to ring,
its sound dragged low through mist and distance.

The soil pulsed beneath me.
It was faint, a tremor at first,
but soon I could feel the rhythm in the beams, in the trough, in my chest.
It was the sound of the earth turning over in its sleep.
It was the sound of something waking too early.

The man came before sunrise.
He did not whistle.
His eyes were full of weather.
He touched the latch, waited,
and left it open.
When he went, he did not look back,
and the gate moved gently,
creaking to itself like a mouth half-formed around a word.

Beyond the hedge the fields were darker than they should have been.
The frost lay over them like thin glass.
The oaks stood still, their roots deep as time,
their branches holding the sky in place.
The air was thick enough to drink.
Somewhere, the crows were gathering,
their calls sharp and broken like iron striking stone.

By midday, the road began to fill.
Men moved through the valley,
not shouting, not laughing,
but walking as though led by the ground itself.
Their boots struck in perfect rhythm,
a new heartbeat that did not belong to the living.
Carts followed them,
groaning under the weight of shapes hidden beneath grey cloth.
The wheels sang, low and steady,
and the air answered.

I watched until their colours bled into the mist.
The horizon folded in on itself,
and the sky became a lid pressed tight over the hills.
The clouds began to churn in slow circles,
grey upon grey upon grey,
and in their centres something moved,
turning like a buried wheel.

The water in the trough rippled,
though no wind stirred.
The surface darkened until it became a mirror of smoke.
Faces rose there, pale and rippling,
their mouths open,
their eyes without light.
One blinked and vanished.
The rest followed into stillness.

Evening came without warning.
The sun did not fall, it simply disappeared.
The fields took on a reddish light,
and the air burned with the smell of oil and sap.
The barn trembled.
The rafters sang softly, a sound like teeth on metal.
Somewhere, a machine began to breathe.
Its first exhale rolled through the earth,
and the animals in the valley went silent.

It grew louder, a voice without throat or mercy.
The ground shook,
and I felt the roots beneath the oaks tear free from the dark.
The trees leaned toward the horizon as if listening.
The clouds tore open, spilling light the colour of steel.
The wind came alive with ash.
I could taste it,
sweet and bitter and final.

Then came the bells,
their tones warped,
the notes melting into one another like wax.
Smoke uncoiled from the hills.
The sky throbbed red.
The earth began to whisper again,
softly this time, almost tender,
as if comforting itself for what it had done.

When night rose from the ground,
it brought silence.
No stars, no voices,
only the slow breathing of the new world.
I stood still in the dark,
listening to the soil beneath me,
and it spoke one word,
over and over,
until the meaning was gone.