Night cinched the coast like a bandage. The fog, tired of being a map, hung in strips over the pilings. The Harbor of Mist dimmed its breaths one by one: lanterns with sleeping laughter, bronze‑less bells keeping their silence, nets stretched that asked no wind. In the stilt‑house, three heartbeats searched for the same measure.
"We won't sing," Hai Xin said. That is what Dead Tide wants— to drink voices. "This vigil will be made of breath and knock."
Li Jiutian nodded. With the broken blade he scored three small notches in the planks where to set his fingers. Across the court, the fox set her forepaws on the wood. The bond among the three pulled tight like a mooring line.
"Vigil pattern," Hai Xin set, barely audible: three taps on wood, two on rib, one on jade… and quiet.
The first round was clumsy. The second, less so. By the third, the entire harbor seemed to adjust its breathing to that smallest dance.
---
Dead Tide woke far from any shore, like a pale eye learning to open beneath the piers. Its shadow crossed channels, putting out laughter in their vials and erasing the fish‑prints from sand. When it brushed the stilts of the house, the water did not splash: it kept quiet.
It entered through cracks, hunting song, vows, and names. It found three braided threads and tried to bite.
The jade chilled under the Tide Braid. The sleeping thorn tried to remember its master. The foam‑ring trembled.
"One," Jiutian breathed, his thumb setting the beat on wood.
"Two," Hai Xin marked, knuckles on her sternum.
The fox shut her eyes and touched the jade with her nose: three.
The bond burned in silver without raising a voice. Dead Tide stepped back, surprised that there was music without sound.
---
From the tower of quiet bells, Qiao Yun let loose three un‑bells into the air. The Mist Registrar walked the pier leaving, on each post, a grain of salt that looked like smoke. In the stalls, vendors draped their echo‑vials with dark cloths. No one spoke. The harbor kept vigil.
The gray current changed tactics. Instead of drinking, it tried to test.
It pushed a phrase up Jiutian's throat as if it had always been his: "Sorry… too late."
It laid a worn promise before Hai Xin: "I'll stay."
It put the sea's noise into the fox's bones until water felt like a mouth.
"Do not say them," the Registrar ordered, without voice. "Keep them."
Jiutian closed his lips and, instead, let out a square exhale that locked into the pattern. Hai Xin answered with a long inhale, woven to his exhale. The fox tapped once with a claw— the one of the jade. The phrases found no palate to latch to. They fell. Dead Tide tasted not honey but stone.
---
The pale eye opened wider. It sought the old crack of the inverted lotus in the fox's memory and seeped in like cold. The wood creaked. The bond thinned.
"Breath of Nine Stars," Jiutian said inward, and lowered the stars to low‑moon.
"Low Tide," Hai Xin murmured, and her quiet propped the descent.
The fox showed her teeth. She did not bite threads; she bit shadow.
"Moon‑Bite."
The silver arc cut not water nor ash; it scored the intention the shadow carried and threw it back to the surface. For the first time, Dead Tide saw what it wanted, and that sight made it hesitate. The Tide Braid, using the crack of doubt, cinched.
---
"Don't look at one another," Qiao Yun had advised. "Listen."
The vigil went on without eyes, only with heartbeats, wood and bone. The threads of silence the fox had tied to the doors vibrated like strings of a mute harp whenever the shadow tried to learn their music. Each failed attempt left in the air a faint rime, like salt undecided whether to stay or go.
Past midnight, Dead Tide changed edge. It stopped pushing and began to pull. The bronze‑less bells stretched downward as if the kelp‑ropes wished to touch ground. The pilings groaned with a not‑sound that made the gut reel.
"It wants the harbor," the Registrar said, touching a shell's lip with her finger. "We won't give it."
Qiao Yun came down with a basket of gray veils. One for each pier, another for the jade, another for the fox's tails. They did not hide; they left no path.
"Mist‑Veil, low anchor," she ordered. "Let the way toward us not exist while the moon is low."
---
The pale current angered without noise. It lunged once more and bit… yesterday. In their jars, sleeping laughter went out completely. In the tower, an un‑bell cracked as if it had had bone. The stilt‑house tipped the thickness of a sigh.
"Now," Jiutian thought, without word.
He released a memory he had not wanted to keep: the exact edge where his brother turned his back. Not to forget it, but to remember it correctly. Hai Xin gifted the day she promised to stay and went. The fox let fall the formless panic that sometimes woke with her on snowy nights.
The three offerings, unspoken, made weight in the pattern. Dead Tide, which knows not what to do with what is remembered without rancor, yielded.
---
When the sky, far away, began to pale, the pale eye shut. The bronze‑less bells shortened their ropes. The vials, one by one, regained a minimal laugh. The fog, exhausted, sat upon the harbor like someone dropping into a chair.
The Vigil of Low Moons had ended.
Hai Xin let voice return to her throat as if it were a saved animal. Jiutian set the jade on his palm— warm, still. The fox, spent and bright, padded to the water‑court's edge. Her shadow on the planks showed, for a heartbeat, a third tail as if the wood were sketching it before her body.
"Not yet," Hai Xin whispered, with a smile that was a promise. "But already yes."
---
The harbor exhaled. Qiao Yun and the Registrar arrived unhurried. The old woman returned to each of them their tithe, kept in shell.
"Until nightfall," she reminded. "Then you may speak what you kept, if it remains true."
Jiutian held the shell and did not open it.
"Thank you," he said. "For holding what was heavy."
"We'll leave today," Hai Xin added, "when the fog has rested. He will return with shadow and dust."
"Take this," Qiao Yun offered, setting in Jiutian's hand a white hook without point. "To fish for roads. It wounds no one; it only pulls toward."
The fox sniffed the hook and let the light on her flank touch it. The metal— if metal— grew warm.
"Together," she said, the human edge stronger.
---
Far away, in a grove where wind did not pass, Xie Moran watched the ash snail which— for the first time— did not know which way to creep. His dust had done its work: he knew the scent of the triad. Not their map.
"They're learning breaths not taught in schools," he observed, humorless. "Then I'll study their silence."
The Black‑Bone Claw left a mark on a tree's bark. The tree did not bleed; it kept quiet. Something in the forest prepared not to have memory.