When the seventh full moon rose, the colored Windows of the Church of Holy Tears flowed with blood moonlight amid the sound of the tide.
Lin Luo stepped on Emily's wedding dress phantom to the cliff, the birthmark beat with the waves of 1943 air raid sirens. Gabriel clutches moonlit rose thorns, their tips oozing 1953 painkiller.
"Three quarters before high tide."
He read an old Provencal saying etched on the reef, "When the seven waves kiss Madeleine's pearl, the vault will spit out the cursed betrothal."
The church basement echoed with the crackle of the organ.
The vine marks of the forest tangled in the rusty iron fence, bursting blue roses in the salt spray corrosion. Gabriel cut his palm with a rose thorn, and the blood beads rolled into pearls when they fell to the ground, sealed Emily's unspoken confession before her death.
"The tide is the clock running back."
Lin Luo pointed to the numbers made up of tide marks on the wall - not Arabic characters, but confessional poems written in wine by monks seven centuries ago.
When the moonlight moved to the third verse, the stone wall of the cellar burst open, revealing a glass coffin wrapped in seaweed.
In the coffin lies Madeleine in a nun's robe, the seventh pearl necklace around her neck dissolving to reveal a curled silver grape embryo.
The sound of the waves suddenly became a 1943 air raid siren, and Gabriel's synesthesia made him hear a double whine: Linlo's heartbeat in this life and Emily's last gasp in a previous life.
"The first wave."
The moment the tide flooded into the cellar, the glass coffin turned into foam. Madeleine's pearls are flying everywhere, each reflecting a wedding scene from a different century.
Lin Luo grabbed the pearl that was sealed with plaster fragments, but was dragged into the memory vortex of 1953
She's a crippled Emily, digging through Louis's buried shell casings with her astrolabe. The tide suddenly burst, and the plaster leg disintegrated in the saltwater, revealing a dense white bone tangled in grapevines.
The real Gabriel gropes in waist-high water, his fingertips touching Lin Lo's real leg bones, and the vine tattoo is frantically regenerating flesh.
"This is the tidal contract test!"
A vision of Madeleine emerges from the foam.
"To get a token, it takes seven drownings."
A third wave pours in with a dark red moon.
Gabriel's synesthesia begins to spiral out of control as he simultaneously tastes: the sour grape juice of 1927, the aroma of wedding wine of 1953, and the salty taste of forest blood of 2023. As he hugged the Linluo who was about to be swept away, their heartbeats merged into the secret rhythm of "Notes of Luperz" in the tide.
Fluorescent algae suddenly appeared on the stone wall to write the supplementary terms of the marriage contract:
"If the true disunity, you can reverse the tide for seven seconds."
Gabriel did not hesitate to stab the rose thorn into his heart.
Blood splashed in a rainbow, and the tide miraculously retreated seven paces, revealing fragments of plaster in the crevasse - carved with Louis's unsent wooden whistle design, soaked in seventh-century tear salt.
Silence returned to the cellar before dawn.
Lin Luo put plaster fragments on the birthmark, and the cracks healed into the vein of the vine. Mother-of-pearl sprouts from the rose puncture wound on Gabriel's chest, and a clue to the next token is carved into the inner wall:
"Look in the eye of the storm for the wedding ring that will not fall."
As they walked out of the church together, seven ghostly sailboats appeared in the morning fog.
The sailors on the deck are all petrified deep-rooted capital pursuers, and the sail is Emily's bloody wedding dress. Madeline's pearl necklace flickered from the mast, each pearl playing a parting kiss from a different century.
Linlo's birthmark suddenly burned, and vines pierced the skin and tangled Gabriel's mother-of-pearl wound. In the throes of their bloodlines, they heard their 2097 selves cry out in the eyes of the Martian storm:
"Gather your tokens, the comet is taking the last of the moon!"
Lin Luo's birthmark is torn apart by the call of Mars, and vines Pierce the morning mist to weave a staircase to the sky.
The mother-of-pearl on Gabriel's chest burst, and out flew Louis's unsent letter of 1943 - the paper was a shard of Emily's wedding dress, the ink was mixed with the copper rust of the shell casing and the tears of life.
"Get on board."
He grabbed Lin Lo, who was attracted by the ghost ship. As the fingers touched the petrified chasers, the pale pupils suddenly turned into moonlight, reflecting the tidal Bible carved by a friar in a ship's hold seven centuries ago:
"When the kiss of the comet comes, all unfulfilled love will return to seed."
The deck at noon is burning hot like a wedding banquet fire in 1953.
Lin Luo opened the envelope, Emily's writing with the salt crystals peeling: "If you read this letter, please scatter my ashes in the eye of the storm..." The unfinished last words were scattered by the quantum storm of 2097, and the paper scraps were turned into distress flares for Mars colonies.
Gabriel's synesthesia experiences double despair:
Emily clutching the undelivered letter in her sickbed, and her 2097 self burning Lynn's cloned embryos in a space capsule. He fell to his knees before the mast, and rose roots grew from the mother-of-pearl wound, piercing the deck to absorb seven centuries of sorrow.
The ghost ship swerved in the twilight.
Lin Lo's vine birthmark resonates with Madeleine's blood mark on the steering wheel, and the compass needle spins wildly, eventually pointing to a luminous vortex on the sea floor. New section in the Tidal Bible Sail Visualization:
"When lovers drink blood and the moon together, the whirlpool will spit out a wedding ring that will not fall."
Gabriel sliced open the wound of the mother-of-pearl, and Linlo tore off the tattooed leaves of the vine.
Blood and leaf juice blend in the silver cup, and as the moon penetrates its walls, the remains of a Roman column rise from the depths of the vortex -- a bone ring encased in an anemone in a hollow top.
"It's Emily's..." Lin Luo's birthmark suddenly bled out, and the phantom pain of her previous life amputation made her fall into the rose and thorn bushes in Gabriel's arms.
The thorn's punctured skin oozes 1953 painkillers, healing their overlapping centuries-old wounds.
At midnight, the bone ring revives in the moonlight. The moment Lin Lo put it on, the cloned embryos in 2097 were born prematurely in a Martian storm. The cries of the baby dissolve into tidal gravity, and the ghost ship is dragged towards the glowing vortex.
Gabriel grabbed the wedding dress sail on the mast, and the fabric suddenly stretched into a parachute.
A second before they plunged into the vortex, he saw the petrified pursuit turn en masse to the east, where the comet was about to appear, their eyes spouted with lavender and their roots twisted around the scattered pearls of the forest.
"The contract is closing."
The bone rings of the forest grew vines that tangled with the roots of Gabriel's rose. At the bottom of the vortex, seventh-century monks are praying by the wine pool, the bottom of which is the reflection of all the lost wedding rings.
When the sense of suffocation reached its peak, Lin Luo kissed her lips with 100 bloodstained lips. The final chapter of the Tidal Bible is visible on the tips of the touching tongues:
"Love is the only lifeline, pain is the most beautiful moonlight anchor."
Pearls rose from the sea before dawn. Lin Luo woke up in the foam, and the anemones on the bone ring were blooming into wedding headdresses.
Gabriel lay on a raft of rose roots, his chest wound healed into a birthmark in the shape of mother-of-pearl.
On the far coast of Provence, seven olive trees collectively lean toward the sea.
The tide marks on the tree trunks indicate that at the next full moon the comet will carry away the last pearl - within which lies Madeleine's ultimate contract.
Lin Luo's birthmark suddenly contracted and spit out a lump of Martian ore.
On the surface of the ore, the 2097 self is kneeling in the eye of the storm holding a cloned baby, while Gabriel's bionic body holds a rose thorn and points it at the moon birthmark on the baby's heart.