Wall Draft 1

# The Ballad of Foundry City: Fear, Labour, and the Wall

## Part One: The Rhythm of Stone

The city woke to the sound of hammers.

It always did. In Foundry City, the rhythm of metal on stone was as constant as breath, as inevitable as the grey dawn that crept over the rooftops each morning. The sound echoed through narrow streets thick with soot, bounced off walls stained black from decades of smoke, and settled into the bones of every person who lived there.

Anya knew that rhythm better than her own heartbeat.

She stood at the base of the Wall, her gloved hands gripping the handles of her sledgehammer, and waited for the signal. Around her, two hundred workers did the same. They stood in ordered rows, their faces hidden behind scarves and goggles, their bodies bent under the weight of tools and exhaustion. The Wall rose before them like a great grey tooth, biting into the sky.

It was already taller than the highest building in Foundry City. Taller than the old clock tower that no longer told time. Taller than the smokestacks of the foundries themselves. And still, it climbed.

Anya tilted her head back and let her gaze travel upward. The top of the Wall disappeared into the morning mist, lost somewhere in that grey space between earth and heaven. She had been building this Wall for six years. Her father had built it before her. His father before him. Three generations of her family had shaped this stone, and still, it was not finished.

It would never be finished.

The Foreman's whistle pierced the air. Sharp. Commanding.

"Tools up!"

Two hundred hammers rose as one.

"What keeps us safe?"

The call came from somewhere high above them, amplified through speakers mounted on the scaffolding. The Foreman's voice, deep and certain.

The workers answered without thought, without hesitation. Their voices merged into a single sound, rough and rhythmic, beaten smooth by repetition.

"The Wall we raise!"

"What holds back the dark?"

"The Wall we raise!"

"What stands between us and the Waste?"

"The Wall we raise!"

The whistle shrieked again. The hammers fell.

Stone cracked. Dust rose. The rhythm began.

Anya swung her hammer in time with the others, her muscles remembering the motion even when her mind wandered. The work was brutal and mindless and endless. It stripped the body down to its most basic functions: lift, swing, breathe. Lift, swing, breathe. Anything more complicated than that was dangerous. Thinking was dangerous.

But lately, Anya had been thinking.

She thought about the quota. The new one, announced three days ago. An increase of forty per cent. Impossible. Inhuman. The Foreman had stood on his platform and told them the threat was growing. The Wastelanders were massing at the borders. Intelligence reports. Imminent danger. The Wall must rise faster.

And so, they had called up the elderly. The children. Anya's brother, Tomos, only fourteen, now worked the lower scaffolds, his thin arms barely able to lift the stones.

She thought about the celebrations. Wall Day, held every year on the anniversary of the first stone laid. The medals they gave to the fastest builders. The portraits of the strongest workers, hung in the town square. The pride that was supposed to fill your chest when you looked up at what you had made.

She thought about the propaganda broadcasts that played every evening, the same stern voice reminding them of what lay beyond. The Wastelanders. Savage. Desperate. Envious of everything Foundry City had built. Only the Wall kept them out. Only the Wall kept the people safe.

Anya had never seen a Wastelander. No one had. But everyone knew they were there.

The whistle blew for the mid-morning break. The hammers stilled. The workers slumped where they stood, too tired to move far. Anya pulled off her goggles and wiped the dust from her face. Her hands were shaking. They always shook now.

Across the work yard, she saw Tomos sitting with his back against a pile of stone. His face was pale, his lips cracked. He was too young for this. Too small. But the quota demanded bodies, and bodies were what the Corporation took.

"Drink."

Anya turned. A woman stood beside her, holding out a tin cup of water. She was older than Anya, perhaps fifty, with silver threads running through her dark hair. Her name was Marged, and she had worked the Wall longer than anyone else still alive.

"Thank you." Anya took the cup and drank. The water was warm and tasted of metal.

Marged nodded towards Tomos. "Your brother?"

"Yes."

"He won't last a month at this pace."

Anya said nothing. There was nothing to say. Marged spoke the truth, and the truth was a stone too heavy to lift.

"They'll kill us all with this quota," Marged said quietly. Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "We're building faster than they can supply the stone. Faster than the scaffolds can hold. Someone will fall soon. Then someone else. Then ten more."

"Then we build slower."

"And break the quota?" Marged's eyes were hard. "You know what happens to idlers."

Anya did know. Everyone knew. Idlers were sent beyond the Wall. Cast out into the Waste, where the Wastelanders would find them. No one who went beyond the Wall ever came back.

At least, that was what they said.

The whistle blew. The break was over. Anya handed the cup back to Marged and pulled her goggles into place. She picked up her hammer. The weight of it felt heavier than it had that morning.

"What keeps us safe?" The call echoed across the yard.

"The Wall we raise."

The hammers fell. The Wall climbed.

And somewhere, high above the noise and dust, someone began to sing.

***

## Part Two: The Singer's Question

The voice was thin at first, barely audible over the hammering. A single thread of melody weaving through the crash and clatter of the work yard. But it was there, persistent, and slowly, heads began to turn.

Anya paused mid-swing and looked up.

On the highest scaffold, a figure stood silhouetted against the grey sky. A man, tall and lean, holding no hammer. He stood with his arms spread wide, his head tilted back, and he sang.

The song had no words, not at first. It was just a melody, rising and falling like breath, like wind, like something half-remembered from a dream. It was nothing like the propaganda chants. It had no rhythm for hammers, no call for response. It simply existed, fragile and defiant, in the space between the stones.

The Foreman's whistle shrieked. "Back to work! No singing! Back to work!"

But the man on the scaffold did not stop.

Slowly, impossibly, the melody began to shift. Words emerged, soft and strange, curling around the notes like smoke.

*Who told you to be afraid?* 

*Who taught you to bow your head?* 

*Who built this wall of silence,* 

*And called it safety instead?*

The hammering faltered. One by one, the workers stopped and looked up. The silence spread like a stain across the yard, thick and dangerous.

The Foreman was shouting now, his face red, his voice cracking with fury. "Get that man down! Get him down now!"

Two guards scrambled up the scaffold, their boots clanging on the metal. But the man did not run. He stood his ground, still singing, his voice growing stronger with every line.

*The Wall is not your saviour.* 

*The Wall is not your friend.* 

*The Wall is just a story* 

*They tell you, without end.*

They dragged him down. His voice cut off mid-note as they wrenched his arms behind his back and hauled him towards the Foreman's platform. The workers watched in silence. No one moved. No one spoke.

Anya felt something cold settle in her chest. She knew that man. Everyone did.

His name was Rhys.

He had worked the Wall once, years ago, before something changed. He had walked away from the scaffolds one day and never come back. No one knew why. No one asked. But he had not been cast beyond the Wall. Instead, he had taken to singing in the streets, in the taverns, in the market squares. His songs were strange, unsettling things that asked questions no one wanted to answer.

The Corporation had tried to silence him before. Arrested him. Fined him. Beaten him, some said. But always, he returned. Always, he sang.

The Foreman stood on his platform, glaring down at Rhys with cold, flat eyes. "You know the law. No unauthorised songs during work hours. No disruption of labour. No spreading of doubt."

Rhys lifted his head. His lip was bleeding, but he smiled. "I'm not spreading doubt. I'm asking questions."

"Questions are doubt."

"Then perhaps you should answer them."

The Foreman's jaw tightened. He turned to the assembled workers. "This man is a disruptor. An idler. A threat to the safety and productivity of Foundry City. He seeks to undermine the Wall, and in doing so, he seeks to undermine you. All of you."

No one responded. The silence stretched thin and taut.

"Let this be a lesson," the Foreman continued. "The Wall protects us. The Wall requires sacrifice. And those who refuse to sacrifice, who refuse to build, who refuse to obey, will be cast out into the Waste where they belong."

He nodded to the guards. They began to drag Rhys away.

And then, quietly, from somewhere in the crowd, a voice rose.

*Who told you to be afraid?*

It was Marged. She stood with her hammer at her side, her face lined and tired, and she sang.

Another voice joined her. Then another. Then ten more.

*Who taught you to bow your head?*

The Foreman's face went white. "Silence! Silence, all of you!"

But the singing grew louder. It spread through the yard like fire through dry grass, voice upon voice, until the melody drowned out even the Foreman's shouting.

*Who built this wall of silence,* 

*And called it safety instead?*

The guards hesitated. Rhys turned his head, his eyes wide with something like hope.

And then the whistle blew. Three sharp blasts. Emergency.

The singing stopped.

The Foreman's voice cut through the sudden quiet, sharp and cold. "Anyone who refuses to return to work will be marked as an idler. You know the consequences."

The threat hung in the air like smoke.

One by one, the workers picked up their hammers. The singing died. The guards dragged Rhys away.

Anya stood frozen, her hammer heavy in her hands, her heart pounding in her chest. She had not sung. She had wanted to, but she had not.

Because she was afraid.

***

## Part Three: The Discovery

That night, Anya could not sleep.

She lay on her narrow bed in the tenement she shared with Tomos and stared at the ceiling. The room was small and cold, the walls thin enough that she could hear the neighbours coughing, arguing, weeping. The sounds of Foundry City at rest.

But rest was a lie. No one in Foundry City truly rested. They only stopped moving long enough to gather the strength to move again.

Tomos slept in the corner, curled into a tight ball beneath a threadbare blanket. His breathing was shallow and quick, the breathing of someone too exhausted to dream.

Anya closed her eyes and tried to summon the familiar comfort of routine. Tomorrow, she would wake before dawn. She would drink weak tea and eat stale bread. She would walk to the Wall. She would lift her hammer. She would build.

But tonight, Rhys's song would not leave her alone.

*Who told you to be afraid?*

She had been afraid all her life. Fear was the foundation of everything in Foundry City. Fear of the Wastelanders. Fear of idleness. Fear of the Foreman, the guards, the Corporation. Fear of the Wall itself, that massive, hungry thing that demanded more and more and more.

But what if the fear was a lie?

The thought was dangerous. The thought was treason.

The thought would not go away.

Anya sat up. She pulled on her boots and her coat and slipped out of the room. The tenement hallway was dark and silent. She moved carefully, avoiding the boards that creaked, and made her way down the stairs and out into the street.

Foundry City at night was a different creature. The hammering had stopped, but the foundries never truly slept. Smoke still poured from the stacks, glowing orange at the base where the fires burned. The streets were empty except for the occasional patrol, guards with lanterns and truncheons, watching for idlers.

Anya kept to the shadows. She knew the city well enough to avoid the patrols, to move through the narrow alleys and forgotten courtyards where no one looked. She did not know where she was going, only that she could not stay still.

Her feet carried her towards the Wall.

It loomed in the darkness, vast and black, blotting out the stars. The scaffolding was empty now, the workers gone. Only the Wall remained, silent and immovable.

Anya stood at its base and looked up. She had stood in this exact spot a thousand times, but tonight, something was different.

Tonight, she was not here to build.

She moved along the base of the Wall, her fingers trailing over the rough stone. It was cold to the touch, colder than the night air. The stone had come from the quarries to the east, hauled in on carts and lifted into place by cranes and pulleys and the bent backs of workers. She had helped lay many of these stones herself. She knew their weight, their texture, the way they fit together.

But she did not know why.

Anya stopped. Ahead of her, half-hidden behind a pile of discarded materials, was a small wooden hut. It was old, forgotten, the kind of place used for storage and then abandoned when something newer was built. The door hung crooked on its hinges.

She pushed it open.

Inside, the air smelled of damp wood and rust. Moonlight filtered through gaps in the walls, illuminating stacks of crates, coils of rope, broken tools. Anya stepped inside and let her eyes adjust to the gloom.

And then she saw it.

On the far wall, pinned beneath a rusted nail, was a piece of paper. Old, yellowed, torn at the edges. She crossed the room and carefully pulled it free.

It was a blueprint.

Anya carried it to the doorway where the light was stronger and unfolded it. Her hands were shaking.

The blueprint showed the Wall. Not as it was now, but as it had been planned. The measurements, the angles, the projected height. But there was something else. Something that made her stomach turn.

The Wall was not built to face outward.

It was built to face inward.

The design showed the Wall encircling Foundry City, yes, but the defensive features, the parapets and gates, all faced towards the city itself. And beyond the Wall, marked in faded ink, was a wide, open valley. Not a wasteland. A valley. With notes scribbled in the margins: *Fertile soil. Water source. Suitable for agriculture.*

Anya's breath caught in her throat.

She turned the blueprint over. On the back, in the same faded handwriting, was a list of numbers. Export quantities. Ore. Stone. Steel. And beside them, prices. Enormous prices, paid by someone called the Inner Council.

Her mind raced. The ore they mined was not for the Wall. It was being sold. The stone they shaped, the labour they poured into this endless, brutal work, it was not for their safety.

It was for profit.

And the Wall itself, the great Wall that was supposed to protect them from the Wastelanders, from the savage, empty Waste...

It was a cage.

Anya folded the blueprint carefully and tucked it inside her coat. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it might break through her ribs.

She stepped out of the hut and looked up at the Wall. The moonlight caught the top edge, and for the first time, she noticed something she had never seen before.

The shadow the Wall cast did not fall outward, towards the imagined Waste.

It fell inward. Over the city. Over them.

She stood there for a long time, staring at that shadow, and felt the last of her fear turn to something else.

Rage.

***

## Part Four: The Alliance

Anya found Rhys two days later.

He was not hard to find. Even after his arrest, even after the beating and the public humiliation, he had returned to the market square. He sat on the steps of the old fountain, the one that no longer ran, and he sang.

His voice was quieter now, rougher, but it carried the same questions, the same defiance.

*Who built this wall of silence,* 

*And called it safety instead?*

A small crowd had gathered. Not many. A dozen, perhaps. Mostly the old and the young, those who no longer had the strength to build or had not yet learned to stop asking why. They listened with bent heads and tired eyes.

Anya waited at the edge of the square until the song ended. When the crowd dispersed, she approached.

Rhys looked up. His face was bruised, his lip still swollen. But when he saw her, he smiled.

"You're Anya," he said. "The builder. I've seen you at the Wall."

"I was." She sat down beside him. "I'm not sure what I am now."

"Awake, perhaps."

She pulled the blueprint from her coat and handed it to him. "I found this."

Rhys unfolded it slowly, his eyes scanning the lines and notes. His expression did not change, but his hands tightened on the paper.

"Where did you find this?"

"In a hut by the Wall. It was hidden. Forgotten."

"Or left behind," Rhys said quietly. "By someone who wanted it found."

He traced a finger over the valley marked on the map. "I heard stories, when I was young. My grandmother told them. She said Foundry City used to be different. Open. Green. She said there was a valley beyond the foundries, where things grew. Where you could see the sky."

"Then the Corporation came," Anya said.

"Then the Corporation came." Rhys folded the blueprint and handed it back to her. "And they built the Wall. Not to keep danger out. But to keep us in. To keep us from seeing what they took."

"The valley," Anya said. "The ore. Everything."

Rhys nodded. "And they invented the Wastelanders. A story to keep us afraid. To keep us building."

Anya felt the rage rising again, hot and bitter. "Three generations of my family have died building that Wall. My father. My grandfather. And for what? So the Inner Council can live in luxury while we break our backs in the dust?"

"Yes."

The simplicity of the answer was worse than any elaboration.

Anya looked at Rhys. His eyes were steady, calm. He had known. Perhaps not the details, but the truth of it. And still, he sang.

"What do we do?" she asked.

"We tell the truth."

"They'll kill us."

"They're already killing us." Rhys stood and offered her his hand. "The only question is whether we die quietly or whether we die singing."

Anya took his hand and stood. "I don't want to die at all."

"Then we'd better sing loud."

***

Over the next week, they moved carefully. Anya showed the blueprint to Marged, who showed it to two others, who showed it to five more. They passed it from hand to hand in the darkness, in the quiet moments between shifts, in the alleys where the guards did not patrol.

The truth spread like a crack through stone.

Rhys taught new songs. Not loud, not public, not yet. He sang them in taverns and tenements, in whispers and hums. Songs that asked questions. Songs that named names. Songs that turned the propaganda chant inside out.

*What keeps us blind?* 

*The Wall we praise.*

And slowly, people began to listen.

Anya returned to the Wall, but she did not build the same way. She watched the Foreman. She watched the way the guards moved, the way the ore was loaded onto carts and taken not to the foundries, but to the eastern gates. She watched the shadow the Wall cast over the city.

And she taught Tomos the chant.

Not the old one. The new one.

He learned quickly. His voice was high and clear, and when he sang, others joined him.

The Foreman noticed. Of course he did. He issued warnings. He doubled the patrols. He called a special assembly and stood on his platform and reminded them of the threat, the danger, the Wastelanders massing just beyond the Wall.

But his voice had lost its certainty.

And the workers had stopped listening.

***

## Part Five: The Stand

The breaking point came on a cold morning in late autumn.

The Foreman stood on his platform and announced a new quota. Fifty per cent higher than the last. Impossible. Suicidal. He justified it with the usual rhetoric: intelligence reports, imminent danger, the need for sacrifice.

But this time, he added something new.

"To meet this quota," he said, "we will be implementing a new system. Each worker will be assigned a number. Those who fail to meet their individual target will be removed from the workforce and sent beyond the Wall."

Silence.

Anya stood in the second row, her hammer at her side. Tomos was beside her, his thin shoulders trembling. Around them, two hundred workers stared up at the Foreman.

"Do you understand?" the Foreman said. His voice was hard, unyielding. "There is no room for idlers. No room for doubt. The Wall must rise, and it will rise, whether you build it willingly or whether we replace you with those who will."

He raised his hand. The whistle was at his lips.

And then, quietly, from the back of the crowd, someone began to sing.

*Who told you to be afraid?*

It was Rhys. He stood at the edge of the yard, his arms at his sides, his voice clear and strong.

The Foreman froze. "Silence that man!"

But the guards did not move.

Because Marged had joined the song. And then five others. And then twenty.

*Who taught you to bow your head?*

Anya's throat was tight. Her heart was pounding. She looked down at Tomos, and he looked back at her with wide, frightened eyes.

And then he sang.

*Who built this wall of silence,* 

*And called it safety instead?*

Anya's voice broke free. She sang with her brother, with Marged, with Rhys, with all of them. The melody rose like a wave, crashing against the Wall, against the Foreman, against everything they had been told to accept.

"Stop this!" the Foreman screamed. "Stop this now!"

But the workers did not stop.

Instead, one by one, they set down their tools.

Anya bent and placed her hammer at the base of the Wall. Tomos did the same. Marged. Rhys. Two hundred hammers laid down in silence, a wall of metal at the foot of stone.

The Foreman's face went white. "You will be cast out! All of you!"

"Then cast us out," Marged said. Her voice was steady. "Let us see what's really out there."

"You'll die!"

"We're already dying."

The workers turned. As one, they turned their backs on the Wall and faced the Foreman's tower. They stared up at the high, narrow windows where the Inner Council watched from safety and comfort.

Rhys sang the final verse.

*The Wall is not your saviour.* 

*The Wall is not your friend.* 

*The Wall is just a story* 

*They tell you...*

He let the melody hang, unfinished, in the air. An invitation. A question.

The workers hummed the tune, soft and low. A melody without a name. A song they had not been allowed to sing.

The Foreman stood on his platform, his whistle still in his hand, and said nothing.

The guards stood at attention, their truncheons at their sides, and did not move.

And the Wall, vast and grey and unfinished, stood silent.

***

## Epilogue: The Song Remains

The Wall still stands.

It is incomplete now, its top edge ragged and uneven, its shadow falling where it always has: inward, over the city, over the people who built it.

But something has changed.

The workers no longer build. They have not returned to the scaffolds. They have not picked up their hammers. Instead, they gather at the base of the Wall each morning and sing.

The Corporation has sent new workers, brought in from distant towns with promises of safety and wages. But when they arrive and hear the singing, most of them set down their tools and join the chorus.

The Foreman has disappeared. Some say he was recalled to the Inner Council. Some say he fled in the night. No one knows. No one asks.

Rhys stands at the base of the Wall and leads the singing. His voice is hoarse now, worn thin by days of shouting over the wind, but it carries.

Anya stands beside him. Tomos is on her other side. They sing together, their voices blending with the others, a low, persistent hum that rises like smoke.

The melody has no end. It simply continues, passed from voice to voice, from day to day.

And somewhere, high in the tower, behind those narrow windows, the Inner Council watches and waits.

But the Wall, for the first time in three generations, does not rise.

The people have stopped building it.

And now, they are building something else.

A song. A question. A memory without a name.

The Wall still stands.

But now, so do they.