Hayuni floated in the void between consciousness, her body wracked with tremors. The Tenth Tail no, the Maw coiled around her soul like a serpent made of stolen time and broken mirrors.
"You were always the lock," the voice murmured, its tone horrifyingly familiar—her own, but warped, older. "But who said the prisoner was ever yours to keep?"
Vision:
A black sun dripping foxfire
A shattered mirror reflecting infinite Hayunis, each with one more tail than the last
A crib floating in the void, its bars bent outward from the inside
Hayuni woke screaming, her claws digging into her own arms.
Payune stood guard over Hayuni's fitful sleep, her dragon senses tracking:
The irregular pulse of Hayuni's foxfire
The wrong shadows her tails cast
The way the air thickened around her, like the moment before a lightning strike
"You're not telling me something," Payune accused when Hayuni's eyes finally opened.
Hayuni wiped blue-tinged sweat from her brow. "Would you believe me if I did?"
The Third, lurking in the corner, licked his teeth in response.
The Godsbane Gauntlet had moved overnight.
Now it sat at Hayuni's bedside, its fingers curled in mockery of an invitation.
Payune kicked it away it reappeared instantly.
The Third finally spoke: "It doesn't want her. It wants what's inside her."
Hayuni's tenth tail flickered under her skin, a barely contained shudder.
The Silent Apostate appeared at dawn, her blindfold now a seeping wound.
"You opened the door," she rasped. "Now you must choose—feed the maw, or let it feed on you."
Hayuni bared her fangs. "I control it."
Syrinn laughed—a sound like bones breaking in reverse. "Child. You are the leash. It is the hound."
She pressed a rusted key into Hayuni's palm.
"The Matriarch left this for you. For when you're ready to see... who really gave you that tail."
That night, the itching became unbearable.
Hayuni slipped away, following the Tenth Tail's pull to
A dead battlefield where the grass grew in spirals
A statue of a nine-tailed fox with its mouth sewn shut
A hole in reality that whispered her name
When she inserted the key into the statue's base, it screamed—
—and the Tenth Tail spoke clearly for the first time:
"At last. My turn."
Hayuni's vision splintered.
The Tenth Tail was never hers
It was something older wearing her like a skin
And it had plans for Payune
Hayuni stumbled back to camp at dawn, her:
Eyes bloodshot
Tails matted with void-substance
Hands clutching a shard of the statue's face
Payune took one look and drew Dragonrend.
"What happened?"
Hayuni's smile was all wrong.
"I met our grandmother."
The shard reflected not Hayuni's face but the Maw's.