Morning doesn't happen here the way it does on land. The fog does not change color; it changes opinion.
The Beacon's blade keeps its corridors cut and squared, and inside those borders the air is drier, not kinder. The lantern above the stair sighs between beats like it knows the measure and doesn't need to count out loud.
I wake in the pocket under the steps with the Compass where I left it, face-up in my palm like a watch that won't tell time to anyone else. The crack in the stormglass shard has not grown in the night. It has not healed either. I decide to call that peace.
"Xi," I whisper. "Roll call."
[Vitals] Steady.
[Debt] 12%
[CN] 52/100 (regen +5/10s)
[Lock] Chain Breaker (21:08 remaining).
Worth noting that I slept. It felt like a luxury purchase.
The square outside the tower carries traces of work done: a coil of rope laid the way a proud sailor coils, a nail head shining where yesterday there was only rust, a set of small tally scratches at the base of a wall that did not exist before we made the deal we didn't language.
The capstan waits by the far dock like a beast that recognizes the halter. The warehouse yawn is smaller now, more boat-shed than mouth of a thing that eats men. If I squint, the catwalk looks like something solid, not a dare.
I stretch until the old breaks report in sequence. Threshold Walker hums beneath the bones like a second tendon set. The strain I earned yesterday sits where I left it rather than sloshing into everything; it's a small proof that "endurance" is sometimes just the right filing system.
"Work," I tell the harbor. "Then questions."
I run the Beacon's band toward the capstan. A pair of Choir figures stand in their appointed fog pockets, not blocking, not greeting. One lifts its hook and touches the dock once: tok. Then it points the hook toward the dry dock gate that sits beyond the capstan—two broad doors of iron and wood gone to salt, with a line between them where centuries tried to become a hinge.
The hook traces a circle in the air, then a line, then another circle smaller than the first. A child's math. Coin, turn, coin.
"Tax continues," I say. "Understood."
Up close, the capstan carries yesterday's sweat under its grime like a dark polish. Near the base, the notch where I set the shard has a faint clean scrape. The tally marks scratched high on the housing—five-five-five and a single—look newly brushed; not touched by hands, but by meaning. I lay my palm on the iron the way you lay a hand on a shoulder of a stubborn friend and breathe once for cadence.
The rope is still threaded through the chain-link and around the cleat. I check the fibers with my thumb. They remember my fingers. They will hold if the story requires them to.
"Xi," I murmur, "the gate mechanism?"
[Inference] Capstan torque linked via buried gear to gate clamps.
[Risk] Over-torque -> fracture (catastrophic flood).
[Advice] Test at half-tooth increments. Observe basin levels.
"Lesson plan accepted."
I set the shard under the capstan lip again. It hums in the bones of my wrist like a sung note withheld at a choir practice. Not loud. Known. I don't want to lean on it; I admit that I will.
I push. The wheel doesn't fight as hard as yesterday. It settles into the catechism of motion faster, permits the rope to bite the cleat, allows my weight to translate into drift and then into work. Half-tooth. A chain somewhere in the dockside belly groans like a man reconsidering a vow.
At the gate, the seam between the leaves hiccups—a little spray of black water and rust slimes out and beads on the line. A breath. Then stillness.
Half-tooth.
The seam twitches a finger-width and then resettles. The harborside basin level jumps the width of a bootlace and then calms.
Two Choir figures take one step back and lower their hooks in parallel. Not deferential. Librarian. Acknowledged.
"Debt check."
[Debt] 12%
Good. We're paying with the kind of coin that breathes and eats; the Ledger respects that currency.
I set a rhythm — four breaths push, one breath reset — the way a man splits wood when he loves both the axe and the tree. Threshold Walker catches the strain before it spills and pours it into buckets where legs, back, lungs, and stubbornness can drink it in sequence.
Another half-tooth. The seam at the gate ghosts another two finger-widths, then stops, a hand held up to say it has heard me and needs a minute to confer with other hands.
From inside the dock, the water makes a different noise—as if a throat tried to swallow air. Eels do not like that noise. I hear them writhe in the basin beyond the warehouse, angry at a change in grammar.
"Hold," I tell the capstan, and it does, because respect is a muscle you build one hand placement at a time.
When I step away, one of the Choir figures moves.
It is not a lunge. It is not a threat. It walks past the capstan in the Beacon's lane, a half-step at a time, until it stands beside the gate. It sets its hook down and presses both hands against the seam where a man would set his shoulder to help. The other figure sets its hook down and mirrors; four hands without fingers lean on the line as if bodies that are mostly salt remember that weight is a vote.
I take the shard from under the capstan and walk to the gate. I don't touch the Choir. I don't want to disturb their idea of themselves. I press the shard against the sigil where the star/gear lives, and something inside the Beacon takes attendance.
A coin falls in the jar above the fog. It is not for me. For once, that is a relief.
The seam stirs. Two of the clamps draw back with the reluctance of men asked to work on a rest day. The third hesitates and then jerks free with a small explosion of rust that paints my glove in red freckles.
The left-hand leaf shifts just enough to change from a line to a line with depth. The right-hand leaf refuses to be helpful.
"Registered," I say. "But not generous."
The shard has cooled. I tuck it away. I set my shoulder where the Choir set theirs and add one human's insistence. Metal groans. The left-hand leaf concedes another hair's width. The right-hand leaf changes its mind with all the dignity of a cat forced off a warm chair. Together, the two leaves make a gap I could get an arm through. I am not eager to put an arm through a gap that connects to anything the sea might name.
"Xi," I say, breath easy because Threshold Walker rewrote my lungs' mood, "What's behind? Dry dock basin, floor? And where do you think the third Seal sleeps?"
[Map] Basin floor irregular. Machinery pit likely.
[Compass] Fissure leaning north-by-east.
[Guess] Third Seal linked to gate or pit machinery.
Of course it is.
I look down through the seam. The water gleams like oil with ideas. Below, a shape moves past, long and patient, wider than a boat and slower than contempt.
The Harbor Warden.
It does not show a fin. It does not need to. It is a statement in negative space, a subtraction that proves there was a sum.
"Morning," I say to the seam.
The gap is too small for a Warden. It is too small for trouble that wears a proper name. But trouble comes in sizes that do not need pre-approval. I step back into the Beacon's band and let the law touch my shoulders again like a coat shrugged back on.
First contact doesn't have to be brave. It has to be useful.
I tie a line to a bit of broken cleat near the gate, fix a niece of rope to a length of driftwood—I could call it a "floater" if I wanted to pretend I brought the right kit—and make a small harness out of a chain link and some stubbornness. I affix the stormglass shard to the wood with a loop that does not trust knots to stay tied under pressure. Then I feed the contraption through the seam and let it dangle in the water like a poor man's sensor bouy.
The shard hums when it touches the black water.
Not nice. Alive. The Beacon hears it and sings back, a tone I feel in the hinge of my jaw. The wood trembles. The line tenses. The water pulls, then releases, then pulls again: a breathing exercise executed by a continent.
"Vital read," I tell myself. "Currents."
I close my eyes and let the line write on my skin what the water says.
Left-to-right and down: outflow. Long slow pulse under it: tidal beat. A third, stranger vibration riding across the others, not opposing them but changing their minds about how to arrive. That third vector is not water. It is rule—pressure that isn't the weight of mass but the insistence of language.
"Xi?"
[Reading] Ambient field interference.
[Advice] If aptitude present, unlock: Vital Currents Walker.
"I don't have paperwork for aptitude," I mutter. "But I do have a line in my hand and a Lantern telling the truth in a voice too quiet to mail a letter."
I let my breath follow the line: draw when the outflow eases, hold when the pulse rises, release when the third vector sings past. After thirty seconds of respect, the line stops being a line and becomes a teacher's finger guiding a child across a page. And, in that slight, ridiculous humility, something opens.
[Unlock] Vital Currents Walker — (Ability to absorb and harness ambient energy.)
[Passive] Trickling CN gain near active fields (low).
[Active] Siphon Thread (CN 15) — calm/borrow minor field for 3 s.
It was waiting at the back of the tongue of whatever this Power is. I do not grin. I nod at the seam instead like a peasant nods at a duke who is also his cousin.
The Choir figure nearest the gate tilts its head. It can feel the change; it doesn't know the word for it. Neither do I, but we can both count results.
"Test," I say.
I call Siphon Thread. It slides out of somewhere just behind my sternum like a ribbon of attention. I lay it along the third vector—the rule-field, not the water—and let it drink without taking with teeth. The shard's hum steadies. The rope tension eases for three seconds. The water's grammar goes from a lecture to a conversation.
Then it snaps back to lecture, and the line jerks, and I step back because I know better than to argue when a teacher slaps the desk.
[CN] 37/100
I didn't feel the energy arrive. I felt the absence of a certain kind of disapproval.
"Useful," I tell the seam. "That will keep a man alive longer than a speech."
The Warden moves again beneath the gate, a negative mountain sliding past. It does not nudge the floater. It does not show dorsal or wake. It changes the shape of what silence means down there.
Three breaths later, the shard's hum changes pitch and timbre like a wine glass touched by a wet finger that changes pressure. The line tries to climb back through my hand. The rope fibers heat. The beam of Beacon light at my shoulder tightens and brightens, not brighter to the eye but to the bones. The Warden is closer than a thought you intend to have.
"Xi, if it comes up, what do we do?"
[Best] Remain in Beacon line-of-sight.
[Use] Siphon Thread on peripheral eddies to disrupt pre-wave.
[Avoid] Direct engagement.
[Note] Observe for pattern.
So: stay where the law is, borrow a small corner of an energy that doesn't miss what is borrowed, and wait for the ocean to tell me what it wants before I teach it what I refuse.
The floater jolts. Not a bite. Not a blow. A "hello" delivered by a god that has noticed a flea.
The shard sings a double-tone. I plant my feet the way the crane taught me to: knees soft, hips aligned, a small lowering of the center. It isn't fighting posture. It is "I will not fall because you have not earned it."
The water under the seam bulges without spray. The rope goes slack. The floater pops up, rides a small round swell in place, and then sits, trembling, the shard's edges blueing as if they were catching a cold fire.
The Beacon's lane tightens again. The lantern above the tower utters the smallest cough of approval.
"I am not food," I say to the dark. "I am not even an answer."
Silence is not an absence here. It is participation. The Warden holds its breath, and by holding it, lets me have mine.
I draw the floater up, not greedily, not with fear. The shard is hot, but its crack has not widened. The loop that held it is blackened. The wood smells like a burned library.
"Thank you," I tell the seam that is now both gate and mouth and window. "I'll come back with better questions."
The Choir figures take one step back and retrieve their hooks. One taps twice—tok, tok—at the base of the gate, then drags the hook tip carefully along the stone to draw a small oval and a line through it. Coin. Paid. Their book is different. The conclusions match.
The Beacon shines in a tone that, if you were a man instead of a light, would be called relief. I add a small half-tooth to the capstan and then stop. The seam widens a hair and then finds equilibrium.
"Xi," I say, "we'll call the tax satisfied for now."
[Entry] Capstan rotation recorded (3).
[Gate] Authorized movement partial.
[Status] Local entities cooperative.
The square feels content the way a dog does when it curls around a boot it loves. That feeling makes me suspicious; comfort is the most convincing mask for negligence I've ever met.
I dismantle the floater, cut off the blackened loop, and pocket the shard. The rope, once more, goes back to its coil in a figure eight, the way you coil a thing you respect because you want it to respect you back next time.
When I stand, the Compass vibrates in my palm and points its fissure not at the gate's seam but beyond it, to the north-by-east Xi guessed. Machinery pit. Fourth clamp gone. Third Seal somewhere that needs a hand that has learned to keep books straight.
"That's us," I tell the Compass. "Bookkeepers who lift."
I start for the tower. Halfway there, I stop without deciding to. The fog has changed sentence. Somewhere near the breakwater, the faint pale circle rises again, that exhalation mark drawn on the world. It holds, slightly bigger than last time, then fades. The Warden is not patrolling. It is tracing.
"Mapping," I say softly, and it is not a metaphor. "He's measuring our corridors against his."
The Ledger drops a single coin in the jar above, neat and uninterested, like a clerk who knows the line but not the story behind it.
"Counted," I say. "We're learning each other."
I climb. The gallery gives me the harbor as diagram and rumor. The valve work shows as a cleaned edge in the Beacon's lane. The capstan's labor shows as a pair of bold strokes at the dock's mouth. The Warden's circle is a watermark that doesn't belong to my paper but bleeds across anyway.
I set both Seals on the rail and look at them until the idea of a third Seal stops being greed and starts being completion. The lantern's hum takes the part of a tuning fork, and my thoughts line up like teeth that could chew if asked.
"Plan," I say. "Then rest. Then execute."
The plan writes itself in the way that a path writes a foot. I'll need another tool. The nail is a friend; the rope is a colleague. The shard is a fragile diplomat. I need something that can meet the machinery pit halfway—conduct rule without breaking, carry torque without pride, feed the Beacon a clean line.
In a port, those used to be called "keys." The kind you turned before you understood the word "authorization."
Where do you find a key in a city drowned but not dead?
Where keys always live: in a drawer someone kept where no one else knew because someone else would have used the key too often. Under a desk. In a box that had papers in it once and now has faith.
The customs office.
I go down the stair and cut across the square. The Beacon keeps its lanes clean. The fog had just begun to have opinions about my margins. With the Key in my pocket, the opinions diminish.
I walk back to the gate. The Choir is where it was, hooks down, heads tilted the way you tilt when you want to pretend you are not interested but might kill for gossip. I set the Key against the sigil and hold the copper loop in my off hand like a man holding a rail in a moving car.
The Beacon purrs down the wire. The sigil brightens. The clamps draw back another finger-width without complaint. The seam becomes a slit a hand could go through with less reluctance. I do not offer my hand. I offer a nod.
The Warden moves under the gate again. Not closer. More present. If presence were weight, the dock would sag.
"Tax paid with interest," I say. "Let me through tomorrow."
No answer, but the water's grammar includes a word like "later" written in swells.
Fair.
I pull back, pocket the Key, and run the lane to the tower one last time. I am not tired the way I would have been yesterday. Threshold Walker has changed what "tired" means from a wall into a slope.
I could push more. I do not. There is a kind of manhood that spends itself for the admiration of nothing. I have been that man. I would rather sleep where the law sees me.
On the gallery, I lay the Key beside the Seals and the Compass and let Xi take in the sight.
[Inventory] Stormglass Compass • Seals (1,2) • Stormglass Shard (cracked) • Port Key (improvised) • Clarity Amulet • Silent Boots.
[CN] 39/100
[Note] Ambient trickle from Vital Currents present (low).
The Ledger drops one last coin into its jar, as neat and mean as you'd expect from a god who balances without smiling.
"Count it," I tell the air. "We'll settle the rest when I have the third Seal, and after that, when men are ready to argue the price of a sky."
The Beacon says nothing. It does its job. That is more answer than I can use tonight.
I sleep for a little. It is enough to turn a man's blood back into something that considers generous future employment.
Before sleep, I try a thought on like a coat: when the day comes and the gates open and the docks drain and my people arrive in numbers that change what a map means, will the tax be on them too?
Of course it will. Laws are the only species that thrive without sunlight.
I put the thought back on its hook. I let the harbor with its stitched light blink around me until blinking turns into breathing and breathing into sleep.
[Window]
Level: 8 • Debt: 12% • Zone: Rusted Tide (C)
Lineages: Human S1 — Steel Nerves | Anchor • Chain Breaker S1 (LOCKED) • Titles: Threshold Walker • Vital Currents Walker (NEW)
Condition: Gloves 80 • Cuirass 88 • Boots 92
CN: 39/100 (regen +5/10s; ambient trickle active)
Items: Stormglass Compass • Clarity Amulet • Silent Boots • Stormglass Shard (hairline crack) • Port Key (improvised) • Barnacle Seals #1, #2
Seals: 2 / 3 • Boss: 0 / 1
Next: Gate → Machinery pit (north-by-east): locate third Seal • Warden: pattern observation (circles near breakwater)
Flags: Black Beacon ✓ • Warehouse (valves) tuned • Dry Dock/Capstan: tax recorded (3)
Rule: Beacon in sight = reduced pressure; transactional behavior enabled.