Elias did not step forward.
He didn't step back either.
He stood at the edge of the tide like a man caught between commands—one shouted across a battlefield, one whispered in his ear by something he had once agreed to obey.
The fog thickened until it felt less like weather and more like a wall pressed up against the world. Sound dulled. Even the bay's constant breath seemed to pull away, leaving only the faintest rush of water moving over sand.
Ahead of him, the bell sat upright in the wet sand, perfectly composed, as if it had been placed for a photograph.
Around it, rope lay in looping knot patterns that didn't belong on a beach. Not drifted in. Not abandoned.
Arranged.
The tide licked at the rope and the rope *held its shape*—as if the fibers remembered the hands that had tied them and were unwilling to forget.
Behind Elias, Mira made a small, choking sound.
He could hear it, even through the fog. He could hear the wetness at the back of her throat where she was biting down hard enough to keep herself anchored. Hard enough to taste blood.
Good, he thought distantly, as if the thought belonged to someone else. Anchor yourself. Don't answer.
But the bay hadn't spoken Mira's name again.
It had spoken his.
Not "Elias." Not "Crowe."
Something else—something older than language the way humans used it now. A sound that did not sit comfortably in the mouth. A name that didn't label him so much as *open him*.
The moment it had been said, his body had reacted like a lock turning.
Every borrowed reflex went still.
Every practiced lie—breathing, blinking, shifting weight—fell away.
And the water in front of him began to part in a slow, deliberate curve, making a path through shallow surf as if inviting him to walk straight into the bay without getting wet.
The invitation felt polite.
It felt inevitable.
Mira whispered his human name from behind him, the word muffled, thick around clenched teeth. "Elias—"
The sound hit him and slid off. Human names were paper shields.
The bay's name for him was iron.
Mira's boots crunched in the sand. She was moving. He'd told her not to, but fear made people do foolish things, and Mira's fear had a sharp edge: it wanted to become action.
"Stay back," Elias tried to say.
His throat refused.
His tongue was a dead thing in his mouth.
Mira came up behind his shoulder, close enough that he could feel the heat of her skin, the fast rhythm of her breath. She didn't touch him yet. She was deciding whether touching him would be permission or rescue.
Her eyes fixed on the bell and the rope knots.
Then, abruptly, her gaze dropped to Elias's hands.
His fingers were slightly spread, palm forward—still hovering in the same shape he'd held at the case in the museum, as if some part of him remembered how to read bindings even while the rest of him was being called.
Mira's voice shook. "You're not moving."
Elias heard her. He couldn't answer.
The fog pressed in tighter, and for an instant he felt the world narrow until there was only the path in the water and the bell waiting at the center of it like a mouth.
The water rippled again, that same perfect circle he'd seen begin in Chapter 2—like an eye opening beneath the surface.
Something down there was watching him with patience that bordered on affection.
Mira made a decision.
She yanked the cloth-wrapped charm from her belt with hands that didn't quite tremble. Her fingers moved fast, practiced, as if she'd unwrapped it more times than she wanted to admit. The dull metal strip flashed briefly in the gray light—etched with tiny marks, geometric lines and hooked curves, not decorative but functional.
She stepped around Elias so she could see his face.
The moment her body crossed into his peripheral vision, the fog shifted—reacting, as if it didn't like being made to acknowledge her.
Mira swallowed hard. "Look at me."
Elias's eyes did not move.
They stayed fixed on the bell.
Mira's jaw tightened. "Fine."
She brought the charm up and pressed the edge of it into her own palm.
Hard.
A thin line opened. Blood welled, dark against her skin.
The smell of it cut through the brine like a flare.
Something in the fog paused.
Elias felt it—a hitch in the bay's pull, the smallest stutter in a force that had been dragging him forward.
Mira didn't wait. She crouched and drew a line in the sand with her bleeding palm, dragging it fast and straight between Elias and the bell.
A boundary.
A threshold marked in blood.
The moment the line formed, the rope knots nearest it quivered. Not with the tide, but like a living muscle reacting to pain.
Mira's voice came out in a low rush, words that weren't quite prayer and weren't quite curse. "My blood, my body. My name stays in my mouth. My mind stays behind my eyes."
Elias recognized the shape of it, even if he didn't recognize the exact tradition.
It was the same principle he'd told her—pain, blood, body. Anchor.
Mira lifted her bleeding hand and, without hesitation, slapped it against Elias's wrist.
Warm blood smeared his skin.
The contact jolted him—not awake, not free, but *less empty*. Like someone had thrown a rope around his ribs and yanked.
His fingers twitched.
Mira's eyes widened with grim hope. "There you are."
The fog stirred again, annoyed.
The bay didn't speak his true name this time.
It did something worse.
The water on the path darkened, and in the shallow surface Elias saw a reflection that wasn't the sky.
A shoreline under a different moon.
Bodies laid out in rows.
Rope.
Hands.
And a bell ringing over water like a thin blade.
His memory didn't return like a story. It returned like a wound reopening.
1911.
He hadn't *died* then. Not the way humans meant it.
He'd been taken apart without being allowed the mercy of ending.
He saw himself—young-looking the way he always looked, but not composed, not polished. Dragged through wet sand. Forced to kneel at the waterline while voices spoke around him in a language that felt like salt on raw skin.
A circle of witnesses.
A rite.
A promise wrung out of him the way water wrung out of rope.
And in the center of it all, someone he couldn't see clearly—only the impression of a long coat and a head tilted as if listening to a private song.
The stitched-mouth thing?
No. Not exactly.
This figure's mouth in the memory was not stitched shut.
It was *smiling*.
Mira grabbed Elias's sleeve. Her grip was firm, human, real. "Elias. Elias, talk to me."
Elias's throat worked.
A sound came out—low, broken, not words.
Mira swallowed, then did the only thing she could do with someone who was being pulled out of himself:
She hurt him.
She took the charm and pressed its edge into the inside of his palm, just below his thumb.
Not deep. Not enough to maim.
Enough to demand his body's attention.
Elias's hand jerked reflexively.
For the first time, his eyes snapped toward her.
Mira flinched at what she saw there—not emptiness, not cold calm, but something older and sharper, like a storm contained in skin.
"Good," she breathed, voice trembling. "Stay with me."
Elias looked down at his palm.
There was a line where the charm had cut him.
He should not have bled.
He almost never did. Not in the human way. Not on accident. Not from small things.
Yet a bead of dark liquid gathered at the cut, thick and slow.
Blood.
Real enough to drip.
Elias stared at it like it was a betrayal.
Mira stared too. "You can bleed."
Elias's voice arrived on a rough exhale, as if clawing its way back through his throat. "Here," he managed. "I can."
His gaze flicked to the bell.
The bay's pull tightened again immediately, angry at the interruption.
Mira's eyes darted to the blood line she'd drawn in the sand. The tide had not washed it away yet. The line held, thin and stubborn, like a sentence written with conviction.
"What did I do?" Mira asked, frantic now. "Did that help or did I make it worse?"
"It helped," Elias said, though the words tasted like brine. "But it noticed you."
Mira let out a shaky laugh that wasn't amusement. "Yeah, I got that part."
Elias lifted his bleeding hand and pressed his palm into the sand on *his* side of her line, smearing his blood into the grains, widening the boundary.
The moment his blood touched the earth, the fog recoiled a fraction—as if recognizing him and resenting the recognition.
His blood was not a human offering.
It was a signature.
Mira's throat bobbed. "What are you?"
Elias didn't answer. Not because he didn't want to.
Because his true answer was the exact kind of thing the bay could use.
Instead he said, "Don't step past your line."
Mira's grip tightened on the charm. "Then don't step past yours."
Elias's mouth twitched, almost a smile, then failed.
He turned back toward the bell and the path in the water.
The bay was still holding it open, patient again now that it could feel his attention shifting away from Mira and back toward the call.
The rope knots in the sand began to move.
Not sliding with the tide. *Crawling.*
Each loop tightened subtly, as if invisible hands were pulling from beneath the waterline.
Mira made a small, horrified sound.
Elias's voice went flatter. "The knots are waking."
Mira shook her head. "Knots don't—"
"They do when they're tied with intent," Elias said, and then, because he couldn't stop himself, he added, "And with a witness."
Mira's eyes flicked to the bell. "So the bell is—what? A megaphone?"
"A key," Elias corrected.
The water in front of the bell rippled again, and that pale hand rose briefly—long fingers, skin like drowned wax. Rope circled its wrist, tied in the same knot pattern as the sand arrangement.
This time it didn't sink immediately.
It held there, half-submerged, fingers splayed like it was reaching for the air itself.
And then the hand did something impossibly human.
It beckoned.
Come.
Mira's breath came fast. "That's not a person."
"No," Elias said.
The pale hand dipped back under, and the path in the water brightened—an unnatural clarity, as if the bay itself was offering a hallway lit from beneath.
Elias felt the pull again, strong enough to make his bones ache.
Mira grabbed his sleeve. "Don't."
Elias looked at her, and in that second his face softened—not warmth, not comfort, but something closer to fatigue. "If I don't go, it will keep opening doors."
"To what?" Mira demanded. "To the dead hallway?"
Elias's gaze returned to the water. "To anything it can use. Museums. Homes. People sleeping with their names in their mouths."
Mira's eyes widened. "So you're going to trade yourself."
Elias's voice dropped. "I'm going to close the path."
Mira scoffed, bitter. "By walking into it."
"Yes."
Mira's hand tightened on the charm until her knuckles went pale. "You said don't build stories about you."
Elias glanced at her. "Don't."
Mira's throat worked. "Then give me facts. Tell me what happens if you cross."
Elias hesitated.
Honesty was a dangerous thing, but lies were worse when someone was already standing in the dark.
"If I cross," he said carefully, "it can try to finish what it started in 1911."
Mira's face tightened. "And what did it start?"
Elias's eyes slid away. "A separation."
Mira stared. "Separation from what?"
Elias's blood-dripping hand curled into a fist. "From myself."
The fog thickened again, as if anger had weight.
The bay didn't like the conversation turning toward understanding.
Understanding made resistance possible.
The water-path pulsed, and Elias felt a twist in his gut—an internal tug, like a hook set deep.
His voice turned tight. "It's pulling again."
Mira stepped closer, staying on her side of the blood line. "Then fight it."
Elias's laugh was soundless. "You think I haven't?"
Mira lifted her bleeding palm, eyes fierce despite the fear. "Let me help."
"You already did."
Mira shook her head. "Not enough."
She looked down at the rope knots in the sand, then back up at the bell. Something in her expression clicked into place—pattern recognition, the kind you got when you'd spent years pretending you didn't believe in the things you were preparing for.
"It's a ritual," she whispered. "The line, the knots, the bell… it's a setup."
Elias's jaw tightened. "Yes."
Mira's gaze sharpened. "Then rituals can be disrupted."
Before Elias could stop her, Mira took a step to the side—still behind her blood line—and hurled her charm like a throwing knife.
It didn't fly straight like a blade. It tumbled end over end, dull metal catching gray light.
It landed in the wet sand with a soft thud—directly into one of the larger rope loops.
The instant it hit, the rope jerked violently, as if stung.
The knot pattern nearest it loosened a fraction.
The bell rang once—sharp and furious, not a call this time but a warning.
Mira sucked in a breath. "I did something."
Elias's eyes locked on the charm now embedded in sand and rope.
He felt it too: the ritual's surface tension breaking slightly, like ice cracking.
But breaking ice didn't mean the water beneath was safe.
The bay responded.
The fog surged toward the charm and the disrupted knot, rolling low and fast. The air dropped into a colder register. Mira's breath fogged harder.
A voice pressed into the space between their skulls—closer than whisper, heavier than sound.
Not Elias's true name.
Not yet.
It spoke Mira's name again.
"Mira Sayeed."
Mira's body stiffened.
Her mouth opened reflexively—an instinctive *what?* on the tip of her tongue.
She clamped her teeth down so hard Elias heard them click.
Blood spilled from the corner of her mouth, bright against her pale lips.
Her eyes watered. She shook with the effort of staying inside herself.
Elias moved instantly, faster than human panic and cleaner than human reflex.
He grabbed her by the shoulders—not gentle—and forced her to look at him.
"Stay," he commanded, voice low and absolute.
Mira trembled, but her gaze held.
She nodded once, blood on her chin.
The fog paused, as if irritated that its trick hadn't worked.
Elias released one shoulder and extended his bleeding hand toward the water-path.
Shadows gathered at his feet, rising in thin, reluctant ribbons.
They reached for the rope knots, for the waterline, for the *idea* of the boundary Mira and he had drawn.
The bay pushed back.
Light—pale, underwater light—flared along the path, bleaching the shadows, thinning them like smoke in wind.
Elias gritted his teeth, and in his fist the cut on his palm opened wider, blood spilling more freely now. The pain was sharp, anchoring.
He used it.
He pressed his bloodied hand down into the sand again and spoke a single word—not a name, not a vow, but a command shaped like denial.
The rope knots shuddered.
The bell rang again.
And for a breath of time, the water-path wavered—its edges trembling like a mirage, uncertain whether it was allowed to exist.
Mira stared at Elias, eyes wide. "You're—doing something."
Elias didn't take his eyes off the bay. "Get your charm."
Mira blinked. "It's—"
"Now," Elias said, harsher.
Mira moved, fast, toward the spot where the charm had landed. She stayed behind her blood line, stretching out as far as she dared. The tide crept closer, eager to erase her boundary. Foam touched the edge of her line and hesitated as if unsure.
Her fingers hooked around the charm.
The moment she touched it, the fog lunged.
A pale hand burst up from the shallow water—not the same one as before, or maybe it was, hard to tell in the gray—grabbing for Mira's wrist with long, cold fingers.
Mira jerked back with a strangled gasp.
The hand missed her by inches and slapped into the wet sand, leaving an imprint too deep to be normal.
Then the sand beneath the bell began to sink.
Not washed away by tide—pulled downward, as if the bay was opening a mouth in the beach itself.
The bell tipped, rang once more, and then slid slowly toward the forming hollow.
Mira cried out, "It's taking it!"
Elias stepped forward without meaning to.
The bay seized that movement like permission.
The pull on his insides tightened, and his feet sank into wet sand as if the beach had turned to mud around his shoes.
Mira grabbed his sleeve again, panicked. "Elias!"
His head snapped toward her, and for a second she saw it—something in his eyes shifting, not toward monstrous rage but toward surrender. A terrible calm.
He spoke her name, low. "Mira."
Just that.
It wasn't romantic. It wasn't tender.
It was *real*.
It made her freeze.
Elias's voice went quieter, rougher. "If it speaks and you feel yourself answer… cut yourself. Do not let your name leave your mouth."
Mira shook her head violently. "No. Don't—don't you dare give me instructions like you're leaving."
Elias didn't respond.
Because the bay was speaking again, and his body was listening in spite of him.
The fog folded inward, and the water-path brightened until it looked like glass laid over darkness.
From beneath that glass, something moved.
Not a hand this time.
A shape too large, passing under the shallow water with slow certainty, like a ship beneath ice.
And as it passed, the water surface bulged upward, forming an outline—an arch.
A doorway.
Mira's breath hitched. "Elias… what is that?"
Elias stared at the arch rising from the bay and felt an old, familiar certainty settle into his bones:
The Rite requires witnesses.
The museum had been a stage.
This—this was the altar.
The arch completed itself, a perfect curve of water holding its shape against gravity, against physics, against the world's refusal.
In the center of it, darkness opened like an eye.
And from that darkness came a sound—not a ring, not a whisper.
A voice, close and intimate, that wore Elias's true name like a lover's hand around the throat.
Elias's mouth opened.
Not to answer.
Not yet.
But his lips moved around the first shape of that forbidden sound as if the bay had reached inside him and begun to speak through him.
Mira lunged forward instinctively, charm in hand—
—and the moment she crossed her blood line, the sand beneath her boots dropped away as if the beach had been waiting to swallow her too.