Dawn arrived without color. The coast woke wrapped in a fog that neither wet nor weighed: it listened. Every step on gravel smothered its own sound halfway, as if the air saved it for later. Hai Xin walked ahead with the sleeping salt snail in her palm. Li Jiutian kept her pace, the jade warmly tucked under the Tide Braid; the fox, Xiao Huli, moved between them, tails alert, scenting a harbor that did not exist until one looked away.
"Don't look for the harbor," Hai Xin said. "Let it find you."
When Jiutian obeyed, the Harbor of Mist revealed itself: wooden walkways on pilings, oarless skiffs gliding as if pushed by a sigh, unlit lanterns that were more shadow than light. In the distance, a tower hung with bronze‑less bells on ropes of kelp; they did not ring: they kept quiet.
At the entry, a very old woman kept a wet‑slate counter. Her eyes were pale, as if they had lent their color to the sea and no longer needed it. A cluster of little shells hung from her neck.
"Mist Registrar," Hai Xin whispered. "No one enters here without a name and a tithe."
"Three travelers," the woman said, without raising her voice. "A prince who bleeds by the hand, a borrowed singer, and a moon‑sister with memory incomplete. Today's tithe is simple: each of you will leave something unsaid until nightfall. In the meantime, the fog will keep that silence on your behalf."
She looked to the fox first.
"What are you called?"
The fox turned her head toward Jiutian.
"Xiao Huli," he said, and the name, spoken here, sounded like a truth settling.
"Accepted," the Registrar nodded. "Your tithe?"
The fox thought. Her fresh voice did not reach for long promises. She touched the jade with her nose and turned to Hai Xin.
"Fear," she managed. "Of… singing water."
"The sea will not bite you today," the Registrar said, and took the fear with a shell, storing it within.
She turned to Jiutian.
"Li Jiutian," she said, as if tracing a thread. "Your tithe."
He breathed. In a harbor where words had weight, he chose with care.
"I will not say 'too late, sorry,'" he offered. "If I must ask forgiveness, it will be in time."
The shell drank the phrase and shut with a gleam.
"Hai Xin," the woman said. "Your tithe."
"I will not say 'I'll stay' if I must go," the young woman answered, without hesitation.
"Enter," the Registrar indicated. "The fog will give you a map when you don't look at it."
The Harbor of Mist was full of things that made no sound: nets stretched that did not crack, children playing hide‑and‑seek with the tide, vendors offering hooks, perfumes, and echoes in glass vials. A man with rope‑hands sold threads of silence to moor promises; an old woman embroidered names on handkerchiefs with white thread.
"We're looking for a seal that hides not only a trail," Jiutian said, "but intent."
"You need a Mistwright," a boatman replied. "Go to the tower of quiet bells. Ask for Qiao Yun."
They climbed stairs that creaked only on the inside. The tower smelled of dried kelp and metal that had never rung. Qiao Yun was a woman of uncertain age, fisher's hands and eyes that weighed words before believing them.
"What do you want the world not to guess?" she asked, plain.
"That we're seeking each other," Jiutian said, and the echo did not return the phrase: it kept it.
"That we sing for one another when a voice is missing," Hai Xin said.
The fox lifted her chin.
"That we are three," she said, clear.
Qiao Yun neither smiled nor frowned. She took a gray skein, gathered vapor from her own breath, and began weaving a net so fine it changed with intention itself.
"Mist‑Veil," she explained as she worked. "It does not hide footprints; it hides the paths that would lead to you. While the veil lives, whoever hunts you will see roads you do not choose."
"Price?" Jiutian asked.
"Three gentle truths," Qiao Yun said, "spoken here, now. Not grand confessions; truths that loosen your hearts."
Jiutian spoke first:
"I want to learn not to become the wound that was done to me."
Hai Xin followed:
"I fear the sea will ask me to stay a day I needed to go."
The fox took a beat. Then said:
"When you sleep"—she looked at Jiutian—"my light isn't afraid."
The skein hummed faintly. Qiao Yun tied the last knot and let the veil fall over the jade and over Xiao Huli's tails like a cloth thrown over a lantern.
"Done," she decreed. "Leave through the Whisper‑Canal when the bell does not ring three times."
"Does not ring?" Jiutian echoed.
"Here, things work in reverse when they're tired," Qiao Yun said. "And the fog is tired of having to be a map."
Evening came. The harbor thickened, as if someone had added a spoonful of silence to the air. They sailed the Whisper‑Canal in a skiff that obeyed the triad's heartbeat. On either side, piers held glass lanterns with laughter asleep inside. The fox touched one: the laughter woke, took a turn, and slept again.
"When you are three," the skiff whispered, as if remembering the lake, "the door will know your form."
"I know," Jiutian said, and said nothing more, because words tire too when repeated too often.
The canal's exit was closed by a gate of old wood studded with shells like nails. There was no lock. Hai Xin drew breath, and instead of singing, she kept quiet. The quiet braided with the Lunar Bridge and the arcs of Moon‑Bite, tracing a sign over the water.
The gate opened as if it remembered who was calling.
They were not alone.
On the outer pier, a man who did not smell of salt waited with a basket of fish without flies. His shadow did not move to the breeze's rhythm. When he lifted his gaze, his eyes were correct, courteous… and empty of mist.
"Strangers," he greeted, polite. "I'm looking for misplaced goods: a jade with nine half‑moons and a two‑tailed lunar beast. I pay well."
Hai Xin glanced down at her salt snail. It slept. Qiao Yun, from the tower, rang a soundless bell. The whole harbor lifted its eyes without moving.
"We don't sell what breathes," said the boatman of the Canal. "Least of all what breathes together."
The man inclined his head. His shadow, at last, blinked with a gray spark. He was not Xie Moran. He was his dust.
"Inform me," he said courteously, "when the jade grows heavy."
He left without turning any corner.
"They've scented us," Hai Xin said, severe. "The Mist‑Veil works, but he uses messengers that need no map."
"Tonight, sleep where you won't look at each other," Qiao Yun advised. "In the Harbor, that is safety."
They chose a stilt‑house with two rooms separated by a water‑court. At night, the fog hung like curtains. Hai Xin sat at the edge, feet in the cold water, humming low so the sea would know this was pause, not forgetting. Jiutian, across the court, cleaned the broken blade with kelp‑scented cloth. The fox went from room to room carrying threads of silence in her mouth to tie on the doors.
"Xiao Huli," Jiutian called softly.
She leapt the water‑court in one bound. Light on her flank flickered; for an instant, her shadow wore a human shape, with two tails lined behind like a sketch.
"Don't let go," she said, clear, for the first time.
Jiutian dropped the sword. It made no sound. His hand found her warm back.
"I won't let go," he answered, and the promise did not weigh; it rested.
Hai Xin smiled in silence. Her song turned to a lull. The Tide Braid pulled snug like a blanket.
At the sea's border, far from maps, a small gray capsule finished drinking moisture. It opened like a pale eye. Dead Tide began to stretch its shadow through the channels, extinguishing sleeping laughter and bronze‑less bells. The Harbor of Mist trembled, barely, like someone changing a secret from one pocket to another.
"Tomorrow," Xie Moran's dust said, far away. "Tomorrow no one will sing for you."