The tide receded.
Normally, the sound of seawater ebbing away is a quiet thing. But on this beach, it was different. Every time the water pulled back, it was replaced by the sound of stones grinding against one another—the rattle of a pavement. Koyoi narrowed his eyes.
As the seabed was bared, it revealed something other than sand. There, a set of stone steps emerged.
It was a wide staircase, encrusted with moss and barnacles. As the surfaces that had been submerged met the air, the barnacle shells dried, turning a stark, chalky white. Each step was nearly knee-high, flanked by banister-like protrusions that lined both sides at regular intervals.
"It’s a road," Asahi muttered.
Kuon unfurled a nautical chart. The blue light of his prosthetic eye swept across the paper.
"This is it. The route marked with dotted lines on the chart—the old road connecting the Wells. It was used back when the Names still crossed over the surface of the earth."
Koyoi looked down at the stone steps. Seaweed clung to the edges of the tiers, and the drying seawater shimmered in the sunlight. The stairs sloped gently toward the open sea, eventually vanishing beneath the surface of the waves.
"The Names... they walked this path?"
"More like they flowed," Kuon corrected. "The Names travel from Well to Well by riding the veins of the water. This staircase is a device meant to pull those veins up to the surface. It only appears when the tide is out."
Kuon traced the surface of the stone. The sharp edges of barnacles caught his fingertips. Beneath them, a narrow groove had been carved into the rock. A conduit. A single channel ran straight down the center of the stairs; once, water infused with Names must have flowed through it.
"Let’s go down," Asahi said, stepping out first. The dry crunch of barnacles under his boots echoed through the air.
Koyoi met Kuon’s gaze and followed. The stone steps were less slippery than he had expected; the barnacles acted like a grip for his soles. The scent of seaweed was overpowering—the smell of rotting brine, and beneath it, the faint, lingering aroma of ink.
After descending about ten steps, the scenery changed.
Walls appeared on either side of the staircase. This was not natural rock. They were walls of dressed stone, their surfaces etched with regular, script-like carvings. Koyoi couldn't read them, but the format reminded him of the scrolls he had seen in the corridors of the Scriptorium.
"Record walls," Kuon said, placing a hand against the stone. As the light from his eye traced the etchings, the characters flared briefly before fading away. "A log of every Name that passed through here is carved into this stone. When they passed, which Name it was, and which Well they were traveling from and to."
The air shifted. The briny scent of the tide thinned, replaced by the heavy, damp smell of stone characteristic of the deep underground. The sunlight was struggling to reach them now. Since this path was only exposed during low tide, its time in the sun was strictly limited.
They descended another ten steps.
The path leveled out. The stairs gave way to a paved road, widening until all three of them could walk side-by-side. There was no ceiling, but the walls on either side soared high above, reducing the sky to a narrow ribbon of blue.
Koyoi looked at his feet. The groove running down the center of the pavement split into two here. A fork. This was where the Names chose their destination.
"It’s a dead end," Asahi’s voice called back from ahead.
At the terminus of the road sat a round stone lid, about the height of a person in diameter. It was made of white stone. It was a smooth, uniform white—distinctly different from the grey walls and paving stones surrounding it. It was devoid of dirt or moss, looking so pristine it was hard to believe it had ever been on the seafloor.
"...A Well," Kuon’s voice turned brittle. "There is a Well beneath this. But it’s been blocked. That white stone is a sealing material used by the Observers. I saw the same thing at the Scriptorium."
Koyoi touched the white stone. It was cold. But it wasn't the coldness of the ice in the Scriptorium; it was a coldness of rejection. This stone allowed nothing through. Not water, not Names, not records—a lid designed to shut out the world.
Inside his pouch, the Droplet trembled. It wasn't a pulse of fear, but something closer to anger.
"Is there a Name down there?"
"There should have been. Back when the Well was functional, there would have been someone here to receive them. A Caller would call, the Name would descend, and they would be gathered into a vessel. That cycle..."
"Was cut off," Asahi finished. He kicked the white stone with the heel of his boot. There was no sound. The impact was simply absorbed into the stone and vanished.
"It’s hard."
"It's not just hard," Kuon said. "It's absorbing the force. You can't break this physically."
Koyoi pulled a bundle of transcriptions from his coat. These were the copies of Names he had transcribed at the Scriptorium—the names of fifty-one deities, written in ink on thin paper.
He chose one and placed it atop the white stone.
The moment the paper touched the surface, the characters glowed faintly. The Name on the manuscript was resonating with the Name trapped in the sealed Well. The Name beneath the stone had sensed the one on the paper.
A streak of light—not a crack, but a vein of luminescence—raced across the surface of the white stone. The seal wouldn't break, but through the stone, the Names could finally recognize one another.
"It's reaching them," Koyoi said. "Even if we can't break it, even if we can't call them... just by placing this here, it reaches them."
Kuon checked his nautical chart. A small change was occurring at the coordinates of the sealed Well. One of the greyed-out guiding lines was shifting its angle ever so slightly. The manuscript on the white stone had influenced the trajectory of the Name.
The tide was beginning to turn.
Luke-warm seawater began to crawl across their feet. It was time for the low-tide path to sink once more.
"We have to go back," Asahi urged.
Koyoi left the manuscript on the stone. Once the tide came in, the paper would dissolve. But if the Names had resonated even once, that was enough.
They scrambled back up the stone steps. The water was already at their ankles. Treading on barnacles and kicking through seaweed, the three of them hauled themselves back onto the beach.
When they looked back, the stairs were already gone. The surface of the sea covered everything, the waves swaying as if nothing had ever been there at all.
But on the nautical chart, the coordinates of that Well remained faintly, stubbornly bright.