The scent of parched earth and miso hung heavily in a small hut, trapped under the low thatch. Satoshi's calloused fingers untied the hemp cord of his indigo-dyed kosode, the rough fabric of his farming robes catching on the blisters earned from a day in the rice paddies.
At nineteen, his body was lean and corded with the kind of strength only back-breaking labour provides, his long hair tied back with a simple scrap of linen.
He laid his head upon the wooden neck-rest, the straw of the tatami matting pricking his skin.
The night split open.
Aieeeeee!
The scream was jagged, severed mid-breath.
Satoshi's eyes snapped wide open.
Thieves, he thought, the word a cold stone in his gut. The rōnin have come for the grain.
He didn't hesitate. His hand flew to the space beside his bed-roll, gripping the hilt of a heavy wood-splitting axe. He dashed through the paper doors, his bare feet hitting the dirt path outside.
The village street was a portrait of madness painted in arterial spray. It wasn't just the dead; it was the way they had been dismantled. A neighbour lay across a stone well, his limbs bent at angles that defied bone, his face a hollowed-out mask where features used to be. The grey matter of a village elder was splattered across a grain cart like spilt porridge.
"Miyu!" Satoshi's voice broke as a high, shrill wail pierced the roar of the wind.
He rounded the corner of his family's hut and froze.
Standing in the centre of the yard was a nightmare, draped in a gold and white Kimono. It was a woman, or the shape of one, nine massive, silken tails lashed behind her like living whips. She held a small figure aloft by the throat.
It was Miyu. His seven-year-old sister looked like a broken sparrow in the woman's grasp. Her black hair, usually kept in neat braids by their mother, was a tangled mess over her pale, tear-streaked face. Her small feet kicked uselessly in the air, her kimono sleeves fluttering like dying wings.
"Nii-san..." she wheezed, her voice a tiny, rattling plea. "Help... me..."
Satoshi's hands shook so violently that the axe head rattled against its handle. His mind was a frantic cage: Run. If I run, I live. If I stay, I die. The creature's eyes slanted and were glowing with an ancient, predatory hunger that turned toward him.
The air grew heavy, thick with a spiritual presence that made the ground feel like it was sinking. Satoshi felt a sudden, searing heat behind his brow. For the first time in his life, his vision shifted.
His left eye flared, the iris washing over into a dull, haunting grey. The world unveiled. He saw a red mist around the fox-woman, dripping from her tails like ink.
The air between them went cold as the nine-tailed creature turned. To any other man, she was a vision of celestial grace, a face so hauntingly beautiful it could break a heart or start a war. Her skin was like porcelain, her eyes two pools of liquid amber that promised paradise.
But Satoshi's left eye roared with a dull, grey fire.
The illusion shattered like thin glass. Through that grey lens, the beauty dissolved into a predatory beast. Her face was elongated and feral, covered in brilliant orange and white fur, her teeth like rows of serrated needles.
"Why?" Satoshi's voice cracked, his grip tightening on the axe until his knuckles bled. "This village... we have built shrines in your name! We have offered the first of every harvest! We have done nothing but worship you!"
The Kitsune tilted her head, a feminine voice silky and melodic echoing not in the air, but directly inside his skull.
"It is because of that worship, little mortal," she purred. The nine tails lashed behind her, stirring up the dust. "Your prayers were the key, you see. They broke the seals of my restriction. You gave me the life I now claim. As my followers, should you not be honoured to fall silent and die for me?"
Crack.
The sound was small, like a dry twig snapping in winter.
Miyu's small head lolled to the side. Her kicking stopped. The light in her eyes faded. The Kitsune let the girl's limp body drop into the dirt like a bag of discarded grain.
"No!" he tried to call out, but his voice was hollow.
A deep, suffocating aura erupted from his skin, a pressure so heavy it cracked the ground beneath his feet. With a roar that sounded more like a thunderclap than a human voice, he launched himself forward. He moved with a speed that defied the laws of the world, jumping unnaturally high into the night sky.
The Kitsune barely had time to widen her amber eyes before the iron head of Satoshi's axe came whistling down. The blade bit deep, shearing through the Kitsune's eye and carving a jagged line across her immortal face.
The Kitsune recoiled, a shrill, inhuman shriek tearing from her throat as she clutched the side of her face. Golden blood, shimmering with a sickly light, leaked through her fingers where her eye had been. The grace was gone, and her fury turned the air into a physical weight.
Before Satoshi could land, a blur of orange fur slammed into him. A hand, clawed and powerful, snapped around his throat, pinning him against the scorched wood of his family's hut.
Satoshi reached up, his fingers digging into the Kitsune's wrist, his grip like iron.
"Kill me!" he spat, the words bubbling through the blood in his throat.
The Kitsune froze. A slow, jagged grin spread across her ruined face, her wounded eye regenerating as it narrowed with a sudden, cruel realisation. She began to laugh, a sound like breaking glass.
"No," she whispered, her voice a poisonous caress. "Death is a mercy for the faithful, little farmer. For you... Death would be far too light a sentence."
With a lightning-fast motion, her free hand became a blade. She drove her claws into Satoshi's chest and dragged them downward, zipping through skin, muscle, and bone. The heat was instantaneous. Satoshi looked down in a daze to see his chest cavity forced open, his organs pulsing in the cold night air, his life pouring out in a dark, steaming river.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhh," his scream tore through the night.
"My blood is your blood now," the Kitsune hissed.
She sliced her own palm open with a jagged nail. She held her hand over his gaping chest, letting the heavy, divine ichor fall directly into his exposed heart.
The moment the first drop touched him, Satoshi's world inverted. His nerves screamed as the silver blood began to stitch his organs back together with agonising, unnatural speed.
His vision fractured. The twin moons above seemed to melt into the violet sky. As the darkness finally rushed in to claim his consciousness, the last thing he heard was the Kitsune's fading laughter.
"Let us play a game."
Everything faded to black.