The watch-thread sang.
Not with sound — not in a way that anyone else could hear — but as a pressure against the inside of Kaito's wrist: a little insistence, a reminder that something had been sewn to him and that sewn things sometimes woke in the night. He felt it when he rolled over on his thin mat and the moonlight found the scar along his forearm. He felt it when the lullaby in his chest hummed a chord that made his teeth want to chatter.
Kaito sat up. The dojo smelled like old oil and boiled tea; it smelled like the memory of sweat. Outside, the city breathed in and out. Lanterns stitched a soft path along the lane. Somewhere a dog barked once and then forgot it had barked. The world did not feel like a danger so much as like a question.
He wrapped his fingers around the watch-thread at his wrist. It was almost invisible — no thicker than a single hair — and cool as a reed. The thread did not pull. It only reminded. The lullaby tugged back like a cat insisting on being noticed.
"You're noisy tonight," he muttered into the ceiling, and the lullaby answered with a small, rising note that sounded to him like a promise.
Kaito dressed in the quiet ritual of someone who'd learned to move softly so that the sound of his shoes didn't betray him. He wrapped the frayed ends of his cloak twice, tucked the loose hair out of his eyes, and slipped out the back gate. The night had a way of forgiving the kinds of trouble he usually got into — less witness, more chance.
Rein was on the roof, as he often was when not precisely required elsewhere. Rein's silhouette looked like a straight, measured thing against the moon, the four-glyph sigil on his palm faintly visible when he flexed his fingers. He turned when Kaito climbed up, a flat smile waiting.
"You're up early," Rein said. His voice always had the polite edge of someone reciting a fact.
"Up late," Kaito corrected. He flopped beside Rein and let the rooftop shingles leave a print on his sleeve. From up here the city looked patient, like an animal curled up to sleep. "You dizzy with registry plans?"
Rein's mouth twitched. "The Registry wants details, not dizzy people."
Mira joined them a breath later, moving like a shadow that had learned to sew itself into light. The threadblade at her hip gave off the faintest shimmer when she leaned back on her palms. Her hair hung loose tonight, and she looked like someone who'd chosen quiet rebellion over neatness for once.
"Master Haru's not sleeping either," she said. "Which either means he has a plan or he'll be up complaining in the morning."
Kaito snorted. "Haru can't help complaining."
They were quiet for a while, the three of them, letting the lullaby hum between them like a secret chord. Rein's sigil pulsed once in sympathy — not with the wildness of Kaito's mark but with a steady pattern like a metronome.
"Why do you hum that thing?" Rein asked finally, softer than his usual voice. "The lullaby."
Kaito shrugged and kept his eyes on the moon. The lullaby was small and private. It had been with him the first night he remembered breathing on his own. He had once tried to hum it in the alley to a younger kid who'd shivered in the cold; the kid had fallen asleep like a stone within minutes. "It keeps me from thinking about other things," Kaito said. "It saves me from being hollow."
Mira's fingers found his, an absent, warm touch. "It ties you," she said, and the word sounded like both praise and worry. "But ties can be cut. We must learn to stitch the right ones."
They sat like that until the hush of the city warmed into the first gray of morning. Master Haru came out with the same slow, deliberate step he took when a student had stumbled badly and not yet found the reason. In his hand was a cup of tea. He passed it to Kaito without ceremony.
"You have the watch-thread now," Haru said. He leaned on the parapet and looked over the eaves with the expression of a man counting the cost of a storm. "The Registry has eyes. So do collectors. The shard that watched you will be traced. I can feel it like a weight in the air."
Kaito swallowed the tea and let it sit in his mouth like a promise of warmth. "Good," he said. "Let them look. I get bored when nobody stares."
Haru's jaw tightened. "Arrogance will not save you."
"Neither will fear," Kaito shot back. It was reflex; he had been practicing contraries since childhood. Haru's mouth softened a fraction at that, and for a moment Kaito thought he might be forgiven for being too loud.
"Today we train," Haru said. "We practice control. You showed the Ninefold's power in public. That will draw men of interest. If the Registry calls for assessments, we will go, but you will be more prepared. Today is about resonance control."
"Resonance?" Rein repeated. He sounded like someone reading an old book whose letters might have been rewritten.
"Yes," Haru said. "Resonance is the first stage of synchronization. It is when the host and the Shade begin to hear each other beyond hunger. If the Shade stirs and the host answers with fear, then the Shade will take. If the host answers with will, the Shade will listen. The boundary is a thin hair. We'll practice building muscle there."
Mira's fingers tightened around his. "You'll not be alone," she said. "I'll thread for balance while Haru guides your posture. Rein will help set glyph markers for stable fields."
Rein made the flat sound of someone who had accepted being useful. "I can create small sigil anchors," he said. "They will give you a place to return your shadow. Think of them like mooring posts."
Kaito blinked. "You mean like ropes?" He tried to picture it and failed spectacularly.
"Metaphorical ropes," Rein said. "With ink."
They moved to a small training yard where the old posts had taken the marks of a thousand blows. Haru laid out a mat and showed Kaito the positions with hands that were efficient and exact. The practice was not fancy. It was repetition, patience, and small humiliations that forced the body to learn humility.
"Center here," Haru said. "Breathe into the mark. Do not call the Shade. Call your own bones first. Feel your ribs like they are a cage of paper that can hold more than air. When you feel the thread sing, do not shout. Speak. The Shade understands cadence."
Kaito wanted to laugh at the notion of giving cadence to a beast that had howled in the market. Instead he tried to breathe in the way Haru instructed, counting silently like a clerk adding up a ledger. He felt foolish and clumsy and then, like the moment a bell is struck, something happened.
The watch-thread at his wrist vibrated — barely — and the lullaby lifted into a clearer, single tone. For a second his vision blurred and the world narrowed to the feel of the mat under his feet and the slow movement of Haru's hand. He did as he was told. He whispered a short line the way a man might count a blessing beneath his breath.
The Shade answered.
Not with teeth or claws, but with image: a ribbon of shadow like a fox's tail unspooling from the hollow of his chest and running out along the mat. It brushed his leg with the sensation of cool silk. Kaito flinched and held still. Haru's voice was a rope: "Anchor. Now."
Rein, pale in the dawn light, drew with precise fingers a small sigil into the air. The glyph was simple — a three-stroke scar that looked like a trident's reflection. Ink smoke curled and the symbol hung in the air for three breaths like a lantern. At once the ribbon of shadow turned toward it, curious. Kaito felt the shadow's interest like a finger on his sternum and managed to name his next breath.
"Friend," Kaito said without thinking, and the single, ridiculous word had the weight of a command and the softness of a joke. The shadow paused and its edge shimmered.
Haru exhaled. "Good. You spoke without fear. Now lengthen the pause. The Shade will offer, and you will choose what to take."
Kaito took another breath. The wind through the courtyard sharpened. The shadow curled into a smaller knot, tasting the sigil like a dog sniffing a stranger's hand. For a moment Kaito could feel something like the memory of being wrapped in cloth; he could feel a nurse humming a lullaby that smelled of boiled rice. The lullaby in his chest answered like a hidden choir and steadied him.
"Don't let it take what it wants," Haru said. "The first bargains are always the simplest and the cost the highest."
Kaito imagined the Ninefold as something that loved to trade: hunger for power, scraps for a memory. He didn't want to lose anything more than he'd already lost. He tightened his fingers, made his face into the flat, stubborn thing that had kept him from being broken when he was small, and pulled the shadow toward Rein's sigil like a rope he dared not snap.
It worked. The shadow curled around the glyph anchor and rested there, like a fox curled around a hearth. Kaito's chest grew lighter. He laughed — a small, sharp sound that was more relief than mirth.
"Beginner's luck," Rein said, but there was warmth in the edge of his voice. He looked at Kaito with a tilt of new assessment, not quite acceptance but the first notch toward it.
They practiced for the rest of the morning. Haru pushed, then steadied; Mira mended stray threads with quick, surgical dips of her blade; Rein learned to draw anchors in the air with his fingers and laugh gently when the glyphs buckled. Kaito learned to name things — not ideas, but sensations. He learned to offer the Shade little things that cost nothing: the memory of a burned crust, a laugh shared with a stranger, the scent of lantern oil. He learned to refuse what the Shade wanted most: names.
By late afternoon there was a small festival of success. A stray dog wandered into the yard and accepted Kaito as one of its pack in three heartbeats. The dog took Kaito's boot as if it had always been a toy and dragged it off to roll in the dust. Kaito swore, laughed, and let the dog win. For the first time since the market, he felt the edge of something like control.
But the Veil is not a teacher that forgives mistakes, only one that punishes them in manageable pieces so the next lesson is learned.
They were stepping down from the ridge of the dojo when a shout rose from the lane: the clerk from the Registry, breathless and red-faced, came hauling a paper toward them. Two suited men followed, faces like the inside of sealed books. Their jackets had an emblem Kaito had seen once before: a pair of crossed pens and a crown. Not Wardenate, but close enough to make the heart line in his chest tighten.
"We require an immediate reassessment," the clerk panted. "A collector has been sighted at the east dock, and his watchers have recorded a resonance spike near your area. For the safety of the public and the Registry's records, you are requested to accompany us."
Haru's expression didn't move. "That is standard," he said. "They wish to see how you perform now that your mark has been active."
Kaito had a small, hot twist of something behind his ribs. Excitement. Fear. The lullaby trilled like a laugh at the edge of a roof. It felt like the world sharpening just to watch him.
"Why would collectors watch the docks?" Rein asked, voice thin.
"Trade," one of the men said with a hint of contempt. "Rare artifacts move by sea. Collectors like to be near ports. Marks like yours — particularly ones with Ninefold echoes — are valuable."
Kaito had the sudden, bright flash of an image: the hooded watcher on a rooftop, the glint of glass in his palm, the slip folded into his sleeve. The shard that had watched him had not been a chance. It had been a compass.
"We go," Haru said. He did not wait for permission. "You will be calm, Kaito. You will be steady. Mira — you keep an anchor on the thread. Rein — you bring sigils for crowd-control."
They moved through the city like they were already part of the registry's choreography: a teacher, a marked youth, a precise sigil-slinger, and a quiet threadblade. Lanterns meant to guide fishermen threw long teeth of light on the water. The docks smelled of salt and oil and the cheap perfume of goods trying to look newer than they were.
The Registry men ushered them through a cordon where a small crowd had gathered. Men in cloaks moved near the far edge: the kind of men who apparent like they had been born with a ledger under their arm. One of them laughed once at nothing and the sound fizzed like a candle.
"Collector's watchers," the clerk said, a little too loudly. "Tidy as roaches."
Kaito looked out across the dock and saw the watchers — three figures in hooded cloaks spaced along the quay like chess pieces. One of them stood very still, shoulders hunched so that his cloak made him look like a small, nondescript heap. On his palm, for a blink as he adjusted his sleeve, Kaito saw something flash: a shard of black glass cupped in a leather palm. The shard winked like a small star.
The watch-thread at Kaito's wrist throbbed.
He felt the Shade answering like a hound on scent. The lullaby inside him broke its usual tune and threw out a single note that sounded suspiciously like warning.
Rein's fingers moved, drawing sigils in the air that smelled faintly of ink. Mira's threadblade sang softly as she kept her focus. Haru's voice cut like a steady blade: "Anchor now. Hold my voice."
Kaito swallowed. The shadow curled at his ribs but did not leap. He had a name for this feeling now — resonance — and the name felt like armor.
A hooded watcher lifted his hand, and the shard in his palm pulsed with a light that was not warm. It was precise and hungry and the kind of light that finds the edges of a map. Kaito's skin prickled as if someone had walked across a graveyard. The watchers moved with the polite choreography of predators.
One of the cloaked men at the edge of the crowd — not the watchers but one of the collectors' jacks — stepped forward. He had a smile like wet pages. "We thought to record this event," he said, "for the Registry's interest."
Haru's jaw sharpened. "You will not take the boy."
The man laughed, soft and practiced. "The Registry will decide. We are but humble buyers. We trade for preservation."
The last word was a flat coin tossed into a well.
Kaito felt the Shade stir. Not hunger this time, but curiosity. It nudged at the anchor that Rein had cast, testing the mooring posts like a dog sniffing a boat. Kaito took a breath and answered with the same soft cadence Haru had taught him. "We will not trade," he said. The word was small and clear, and the lullaby backed it like a chorus.
For a moment nothing happened. Then the hooded watcher on the quay — the one with the shard — tilted his head and tapped the gleam against his wrist. The shard's light skittered across the water and ticked like a clock. The watcher raised his arm and released a small, folded slip into the wind — a paper that fluttered like a moth.
The slip landed at Kaito's feet.
He picked it up with fingers that had always been better at stealing fruit than reading messages. The slip was thin, the paper the kind used for secret orders. On its face was a single character, dark and fast: a sigil he had not learned in a day, but knew in the marrow: the mark of collectors. Beneath the sigil, in finer script, three words: Open the ledger.
Kaito looked up. The watchers had already melted into the crowd like a thought unmade.
Haru's face was stone. "They call for the ledger," he said simply. "They want to see your file in person."
Kaito slid the slip into his pocket like a hot coal. The lullaby in his chest had gone quiet, the way a hearth goes quiet before a storm.
"You will not be led," Haru said. "We will not let them pry the boy from his home. Not today."
The Registry clerks, polite but firm, had their instructions. They wanted a controlled environment, not a disturbance. The collectors wanted the ledger. Kaito understood then, with a suddenness that was almost childish, that ledgers were not just bricks of paper. Ledgers were keys.
Mira's hand on his sleeve was small and fierce. "We go back," she said. "We will report this. We will ask the Registry for a secure reading. If the collectors push, we will call for aid. But Haru — be ready."
Haru's mouth thinned. He had his own cords of caution, and for once he did not iron them away. "We return to the dojo," he said. "We do not give the collectors an inch."
Kaito wanted to say something grand — that he would face the collectors alone, that he would answer the ledger with his roar, that he would carve a new name into the Court's books with his teeth. Instead he slid his fingers into his pocket, feeling the paper there like a second watch-thread. The lullaby pulsed, and he realized that control was not simply refusing; it was choosing the right moment to act. Choosing the right moment to open the ledger.
Above the quay, a hooded watcher pressed his shard to his wrist. The light blinked once and then a faint pulse raced down a line of signal threads that must have run below the city like an undercurrent. The pulse traveled further than the dock. It traveled into dark rooms where men ate late and counted coins and drew up lists of things they wanted.
Kaito could not see that, of course. He only saw the slip in his hand and the little chorus of his friends around him. He felt both small and enormous, like a bell that had finally been struck.
"Get back," Haru said softly. "We prepare. We will not be surprised."
Kaito put the slip into a small pouch and tied it around his neck. Not because he trusted it, but because he liked the weight of it against his sternum. It felt like a promise: a single line that said this story was not over.
They walked away from the dock and into a city that hummed with business and with watchfulness. The lullaby in Kaito's chest folded into a careful, steady rhythm. He had learned to anchor the Shade today. He had learned that collectors wore smiles like armor and that ledgers could be petitions or traps.
Behind them, out on a high rooftop, a stranger in a hood watched their backs until the last lantern swallowed them. He pressed the shard into his palm until it fit like a thought, and then he spoke into the night as if into a keyhole.
"The Ninefold wakes," he said. "Prepare the ledger."
The words drifted down into alleys where men who kept lists listened and smiled. Somewhere a candle guttered. A clock in the registry hall clicked toward business hour. The world, once it saw a name, did not easily forget how to call it.
Kaito walked home with Haru and the others and felt the lullaby hum like a map. He was not yet the strong one. Not yet. But he had resonance now, and in a ledger's shadow, that was a beginning.