The estate woke quiet and tense.
Attendants moved like shadows, laying fresh wisteria along the garden path. Lanterns hung unlit, waiting for dusk. The bell over the north gate didn't ring. It only swayed, like it was listening.
I dressed in pale silk. Mitsuri helped fasten the sash. "You look beautiful," she said, eyes shining. "Scared?"
"A little."
"Good," she smiled. "Means you're paying attention."
Shinobu brought a slender vial. "For your pulse if it races," she said. "And wisteria salve if the mark burns." Her gaze softened. "Breathe. Keep your name steady in your head."
I nodded. "Thank you."
When I stepped out, the path to the small inner shrine was lined in petals. The Hashira waited in a loose circle—Rengoku bright as a flame even at rest, Giyuu still and unreadable, Tengen pretending not to be interested and failing, Himejima murmuring a prayer through his beads. Sanemi leaned on a post, storm-gray eyes amused.
"Ready to be fog's wife?" he said, low.
I met his gaze. "Ready to stay alive."
His grin crooked. "That's the right answer."
Muichiro stood near the shrine, hair loose, uniform immaculate, sword at his left hip. The wisteria light made his eyes look like pale glass. He didn't smile. He didn't need to. When I approached, he stepped forward one pace—quiet, sure, enough.
Ubuyashiki-sama waited beneath the eaves. "Come," he said gently.
We knelt on either side of the small altar. Incense curled upward in thin, steady ropes. A shallow bowl of sake reflected the sky.
"The pact is an old road," the Master said. "Today you won't walk it as others did. You will choose your own way across it."
He looked at Muichiro. "Tokito."
Muichiro bowed his head. "I will protect what stands beside me," he said, voice calm and low. "Whether the mist thickens or clears. Whether bells ring once or twice. Until I can no longer stand."
He turned to me. "And I will listen when you say stop."
The last line loosened something in my chest.
"Bride of Mist," the Master said, turning to me.
I swallowed. "I will keep my name steady," I said. "I will not open doors that call me wrong. I will stand beside him. And if the mist forgets his way, I'll remind him."
A breath passed through the Hashira circle like wind through grass.
We lifted the cup and sipped in turn. The sake burned clean. Ubuyashiki set a thin strip of wisteria cloth on our joined hands—light, cool, smelling like old spring.
"Rise," he said.
We stood. The Master's fingers brushed the bronze bell beside the altar.
It rang. Once.
The sound was clear and light. The second ring did not come.
The air shifted—colder at the edges, warmer between our palms. A faint mark flickered on the inside of my wrist where Sanemi had bruised it days ago. Two circles, the tiny wisteria bloom at center—only this time the ash wasn't ash. It shone, silver-pale, then cooled to skin.
Muichiro's breath left him very quietly. I glanced at his left wrist. The same pattern flashed and faded there, fainter than mine.
Shinobu exhaled. "A mirrored seal," she whispered. "Good."
Himejima's beads clicked, sorrow easing. Rengoku grinned openly. "A fine sound!" he boomed. "One bell is enough!"
Sanemi watched without speaking, eyes unreadable for a heartbeat. Then his mouth curved, wolfish again. "Guess fog knows how to keep what it takes."
Muichiro didn't look at him. He looked at me. "Are you in pain?"
"No." I flexed my fingers. "It felt like… a thread pulled tight, then tied."
"Stay with that feeling," Shinobu said softly. "It will keep doors shut."
Ubuyashiki nodded once. "It is done." He replaced the bell's cord on its hook. "Walk the garden together. Let the estate learn the shape of you."
We moved beneath the wisteria in a long, quiet loop. Servants bowed. Wind tried to lift my sleeve; the new mark cooled and held. The mist around the pond parted and then closed behind us like a curtain that approved.
"Does it feel different?" I asked.
"Yes," Muichiro said.
"How?"
He thought a moment. "Like standing where the wind can't take you."
We stopped near the small bridge. The water below mirrored sky and flowers and nothing else.
"I'm not good at ceremonies," he said.
"I noticed."
A breath that might have been a laugh. "But I meant what I said."
"I did too."
He looked straight ahead. "I'm twenty-two," he said again, quieter. "I don't remember being younger. I only remember… after." He paused. "This feels like before."
The words were simple. They landed heavy and bright.
My hand twitched. He noticed. He didn't reach for it. He let it be, like a promise to not rush what was finally moving.
A breeze slid across the pond. The hairpin in my hair caught light. The wind bells under the eaves didn't ring.
"Come," he said. "There's one more thing."
He led me to the pavilion bridge. The boards were clean; the carved lines on the central beam were sharp in daylight. We stopped short of the threshold.
The air here still felt wrong. Not dangerous—just old.
Muichiro lifted a small paper charm and pressed it to the post. "Archivist said to count," he murmured.
I counted the carved lines. Some tall. Some small. A last short set, lower than the rest. I touched it without touching. Cold climbed my arm.
"A child," I said.
"Yes." His voice had that careful tone he used when stepping between memory and fact. "Not anymore."
Wind rose. The bells above us trembled—but did not sound.
He reached up to the southern eave, fingers searching along the beam, and drew down a thin sliver of silver—the twin to my hairpin, tarnished and dark.
He weighed it in his palm. "Keep this one too," he said. "In case the house forgets which door belongs to you."
"Whose was it?"
His eyes dimmed, then cleared. "Someone the mist tried to keep. Someone I could not."
I didn't ask more. The quiet we stood in felt like a grave and a promise.
He slid the old pin into my hand. For a moment our fingers touched—brief, steady, electric only because we didn't flinch.
A shadow passed over the pond. We looked up.
Nothing there.
"Back to the shrine," he said.
Dusk pulled lavender across the roofs. We gathered again beneath the altar eaves. The Master stood with Shinobu and Giyuu; Sanemi arrived last, a faint bruise on his jaw from some earlier exercise he'd likely started on purpose.
"The seal held," Shinobu reported. "No echo. No second bell."
"Good," Ubuyashiki said. His gaze went distant for a heartbeat, listening inward. "Then hear this: the Archivist's warning has begun to unfold."
As if called, a servant hurried in, breathless. "Forgive me—there's ash on the west wall. The circles again."
"Here?" Giyuu asked, frowning.
"Yes, sir. But—" the servant swallowed, "it faded when the bell rang once."
All eyes shifted to us. Not accusing—measuring.
"The house is choosing," Shinobu murmured.
"Not the house," Himejima said. "The bond."
Sanemi clicked his tongue. "So the fix is a wedding, and the wedding sticks." He slanted a look at Muichiro. "Lucky fog."
Muichiro ignored it. He faced the Master. "What next?"
Ubuyashiki's smile touched the edge of sorrow. "Next, you leave the estate. The seal is strongest where it was made, but it must hold on the road too."
"When?" I asked.
"Soon," he said. "But not tonight. Let the bells learn your names in one voice first."
He stepped closer, his presence gentle as ever, his words iron. "Whatever hunted the brides will test this union. It will use doors you can't see and sounds you want to trust." His eyes warmed. "Answer each other first. Then answer the world."
He lifted the bell cord once more and let it fall.
The bell rang.
One clean note.
No echo.
Sanemi pushed off the post. "I'll keep the idiots off your back till morning," he said, almost lazy. Then, to me alone, lower: "If he goes quiet, make him talk. Quiet men bleed in all the wrong places."
Muichiro's eyes met his for a long second. "I don't need your advice."
"You never do," Sanemi said, already turning. "That's why I give it."
He left, boots loud on the stones, smile crooked.
The courtyard emptied in slow ripples. Lanterns bloomed. Crickets began.
Muichiro and I stood alone beneath the eaves.
"You should rest," he said.
"So should you."
He looked at the bell. "Later."
We started toward the guest house. Halfway there the wind shifted from the west—cool and smelling faintly of old lime and paper.
We both stopped.
The bell over the north gate stirred as if uncertain.
It did not ring.
The mark on my wrist cooled, then warmed once—like a heartbeat answering.
Muichiro's hand hovered, not touching, close enough to feel the shape of his palm. "I'm here," he said, simple and final.
"I know."
The wind settled. The path ahead felt steady.
When we reached my door, he stopped again, listening to a sound I couldn't hear.
"Tomorrow," he said, "we leave at first light."
"For where?"
"Where the bells were born," he answered. "And where they stopped."
He stepped back into the mist and sat the way he always did—outside, facing the dark, patient as a blade in its sheath.
I set the twin hairpins side by side on the low table—one bright, one old. The silver mark at my wrist shone once and faded.
Somewhere, very far, a bell thought about ringing twice—and changed its mind