They followed the wake.
For an hour the city seemed to breathe around them in a single pulse: feet on boards, the slap of oars, the distant bleat of ship horns. The cart had vanished down the quay like a promise; the collectors' boat had cut a thin white line across the water and vanished toward the open channels where the city's hidden business ran. Kaito ran with Haru at his shoulder, Mira's thread coiling at her hip, Rein breathing numbers like a metronome. Toma stumbled after them, face still ashen with the taste of shame.
"Boats go two ways," Rein said, voice clipped. "One toward the Shelf, one toward open trade. The wake narrows — it turns left at the second pier. They'll hit Elys's channel in twenty minutes if they keep oars on the current."
"Then we go by land and take the inner crossings," Haru said. "We cut them off at the shelf's inlet. Rein, find a spot where the current slows. Mira — be ready to thread the water. Kaito, you keep the lullaby steady. If the shard pings, you'll feel it first."
Kaito let the lullaby answer in his chest, thin as a string. He had learned to treat it like a compass now: not a voice that told him what to do, but a nudge that let him know when something in the world had tilted for him. The watch-thread at his wrist hummed with a small urgency. He had a new kind of focus — not a hero's blaze but a hunter's steadiness.
They cut through alleys that smelled of tar and fish, climbed ladders that dumped them onto warehouse roofs, and slid down ropes into narrow waterways where only the smallest craft came. Rein's anchors were faint moon-shapes on the air; they meant safe return, should someone try to drag them into a trap. Mira's threadblade glinted when it caught what little light there was — a bright sliver in the dim. Toma kept his head low, carrying a small bundle of rope like a man who'd learned a single trade very young.
At the second pier the current was a ribbon of oil, and there — a shadow moving fast — they saw the lifted bow of a skiff. It was small and swift, perfect for carrying a crate and five men who wanted to be gone before anyone could read them. The collectors' craft slipped into a side channel that fed directly to the outer ring of warehouses: the Shelf's neighborhood. Lanterns blinked faintly against the rain-brighted wood. The crate was not visible now; whoever had carried it knew how to hide weight on a small vessel.
"Follow," Haru whispered. "Quiet."
They split into two teams: Haru and Rein took the lane toward the main dock where the collectors might try a quick offload; Mira, Kaito, and Toma took a lower route, skirting watermen and fishwives, keeping their steps to soundless pads. The air tasted like rain and ink; the city at night bared its nerves.
They were three turns from the inlet when Toma stopped and shoved a hand into his coat.
"They sent a signal," he whispered. "Not the shard — a paper banner. Someone's flyered the Shelf: Tonight, first reveal — private buyers invited. The time—" He swallowed. "Dawn."
"Dawn," Kaito echoed. That made answers sharpen. The collectors were not moving the ledger to hide it; they were moving it to a place where the ledger could be opened for a select few. Private owners. Untethered names.
"Then we have less than ten hours," Rein said. "We cut the crossing and wait. We don't let it wake in private hands."
They reached the inlet like shadows held to string. The waterway opened onto a ring of warehouses stacked like sleeping teeth. The Shelf itself could be seen from this inlet: a low, ancient quay with iron doors and a narrow stair where old men used to sit and read in daylight. Tonight the doors were shut, but through the cracks a faint blue seam of light pulsed — not the warm lamp-light you expect, but glyph-light, the cold, precise kind used when one wanted to keep memory tidy and sterile.
"That light," Mira breathed. "Someone's already binding."
Kaito felt the lullaby thrum against his ribs. The watch-thread flared — not with the shard's quick hammer but with something broader, like a drum measured by a hand. The Ninefold's echo was reacting to the Shelf's call. He could feel it in the set of his shoulders and the way his bones sat under his skin. It was not hunger exactly. It was recognition.
"Marcell," Haru said, voice flat. "If Rein is right, he handles manifests beneath Elys's. He's a keeper, not a buyer. When keepers open a ledger, they do a read that maps the ledger's strings. Someone wants that read to happen tonight under private roofs."
The plan was simple and dangerous. They could try to follow the boat, but Elys's Shelf had more exits than entries and the collectors knew the routes. They could try to storm the Shelf now, but a direct confrontation in the heart of a private hall where ledgers slept would mean a chance to lose more names to private shelves. Haru chose a third way: intercept movement outward.
"We watch the exits," he said. "We make sure no ledger leaves the Shelf once it's there. We cut the buyers off."
It felt like a small mercy — stop the buyers, stop the privatization — but Kaito could see the risk. If the Shelf opened the ledger and its contents were copied then sealed, their window would close like an eyelid.
They settled into shadows. Rein whispered measurements and gave Kaito a strip of charcoal to mark runes on stones that would guide them back. Toma perched on the ledge above and kept watch like a guilty owl. The city around them huddled in sleep.
Hours passed in shallow breaths. The sky turned from black to ink-thin purple. A tide slipped in like a heartbeat and the quay's lanterns blinked awake. Boats arrived like ghosts: two, then three, then a line of dark shapes that slid against the moorings. Men in cloaks already waited on the Shelf steps, their faces hidden but their expectations audible in the hush of boots.
Then, as the first line of dawn began to leak like a bruise, a bell tolled — not the Registry's formal bell but a low, hollow iron sound that seemed to come from the Shelf itself. The great iron doors groaned, hinges complaining like old men waking, and light poured from the crack. It wasn't a single light; it was a pattern of glyphs spiraling out across the air, each line a filament of cold blue that laced into the dawn like a spiderweb. People who had stood on the steps murmured and crossed themselves as if the opening were a mass.
Kaito's throat tightened. The lullaby turned into a line that pulled; the Ninefold echo stepped closer to the rim of his bones and sang.
"Bind your breaths," Haru said. "Wait for the reading, wait for the manifest. When they open, we step if they carry the ledger. If they begin a private reading, we signal the Registry and act. We do not charge blind."
The doors opened fully and men flowed out. Some bore crates; some carried sheathed tablets and ink stones. A single man walked last, hands empty but posture like a man holding a book in his chest. He was small, neat, old as a ledger, and when the pale dawn found his face Kaito understood what Rein had said earlier — this must be the keeper, Marcell.
Marcell's eyes were the sort a man uses to read a room and make a room fold into a page. He moved like an archivist who had learned to make men smaller with a look. He set his gaze upon the line of buyers and slid his hand into a pocket. A small bell chimed from the leather and a roll of parchment unfurled: a list of names for private reading.
When Marcell looked in Kaito's direction, Kaito felt a prick of cold run along his spine. The lullaby stilled in an instant; the Ninefold's echo answered with a single sharp note that made his teeth buzz. Marcell smiled, and his mouth was made of ink.
"Collectors," he said. "We have a special reading today. Let those assembled receive their due. May your holdings keep you warm."
One of the buyers stepped forward — a man in a tailored coat whose cuff showed a hint of gold thread. He spoke in a low voice that sounded like an exchange: arrangements, payments, a final binding fee. The keepers began their ritual: glyph-light unfurled over the crates and a hush fell. Men bowed with the politeness of clients who had paid for rights.
Kaito had practiced restraint his whole life. He had learned to put small memories like coins on a plate and hand them to a Shade that might otherwise claw them away. But watching men trade in names like objects — hearing the faint, cold language of "final binding" — made something in him tilt.
"Now," Mira breathed, and the word was sharp as flint.
They moved.
Not as a charge. Not as a shout. Haru signaled: Rein would cut across the steps to the buyers; Mira would thread a net across the inner quay; Kaito and Toma would slip to the side and try to take the keeper's rout. The plan relied on timing and the quiet fingers of skill.
Kaito stepped forward and felt the air change. The Ninefold's echo at his ribs trembled with an awareness that went beyond hunger. It was as if the ledger itself — weighty with names — had sighed and recognized a pulse it wanted to visit.
He kept his hand near his watch-thread and stepped like a man treading along the edge of a page. He closed the distance to Marcell in three breathing-calm strides. The keeper's face turned, not surprised but pleased to see a new face in the morning's theater.
"Young host," Marcell said. His voice was a ribbon of parchment. "Who escorts you?"
"Mine," Kaito said. He did not say Haru's name; it was not necessary. He kept his tone light enough to be polite, heavy enough to say he was not a paper to be handled.
Marcell's smile sharpened. "And the ledger?" he asked, eyes nearly kind. "A fine piece. We will be careful."
At that precise moment a low murmur rolled across the dock — a different sound, like boots changing direction. Rein had executed his move; a net of glyphs had burst in a ring that snagged buyers' capes and tripped the first line of men. Mira's threads had swept in to block an alleyway, a pale braid catching a hand and closing it in a soft prison. The buyers were aware and angry and, suddenly, exposed.
From the top of the steps a voice called, a sound shaped like a seal: "Registry! Open the safe and witness!" Someone in the crowd had seen threat and chosen civic procedure.
Marcell's eyes glittered with something thin and old. He reached into his robe. Kaito's hand tightened on his watch-thread.
The keeper drew a small black shard from his sleeve — not marred or rough like the ones they'd seen on rooftops, but polished, ancient, and carved with tiny glyphs that translated into the light of recognition when they caught the early sun. As he tapped it to his palm, the shard's echo shot a ripple into the air — a signal that sounded through Kaito's bones like a bell turned inside out.
The lullaby in Kaito's chest answered — then broke into a pattern he had never felt before: many notes layered tight, like a chord with too many strings. The Ninefold's echo thrummed with it, matching pitch. The ledger at the crate, the one they'd lost, seemed to answer in the same tone, and Kaito realized something with the instant sharpness of a struck match.
The ledger was not merely a book. Tonight the ledger would be read as a registry of power — a map of connections. And somewhere in the pages, hooked among names, was his own mark: a line waiting to be opened.
Marcell's shard shone. The receivers in the crowd blinked. The buyers leaned forward like men hungry for spectacle. The Registry guards moved, their motions disciplined and slow.
Haru's hand closed around Kaito's shoulder — a voice in a storm. "Do not let it name you," he said in his ear. "If they call your line, you answer on your terms."
Kaito felt the lullaby thrum into a roar. The Ninefold's echo reached out — not to bite, but to call. He had to decide now: let the ledger be read in a room of collectors, or stop the read and risk an all-out fight where names might escape into private hands forever.
He opened his mouth, and the word he said was small but sharp and steady. "Stop."
The keeper's smile didn't waver. He bowed, as if to acknowledge a line in a contract, and then he spoke three words that made the dawn catch: "Open the ledger."
For a heartbeat, the air around them held like glass. Then ink-light erupted like a net, and the ledger's voice — muffled at first, then clearer, like someone whispering a century-old name into a bell — began to unspool into the morning.
Kaito felt the Ninefold answer that whisper on a scale he'd never known: not a tug at the ribs but the sweep of a drum pressed against his sternum. The lullaby stopped being a lullaby and became a call.
Above the quay, someone slipped a hand into a pouch and turned a small glass shard until it caught the light. On a rooftop in the distance, a hooded watcher lifted his head and smiled into the new day.
They had arrived too late.