As expected, the meeting with my mother and that bloodsucking bitch, Ivanoska Sokolova, was a complete shitshow.

  I’d stomped out of the lab, Yoishiro trailing nervously behind me like a well-dressed shadow, only to be ushered into Mother’s opulent, suffocatingly traditional office. The air was thick with unspoken accusations and the faint, metallic tang that always seemed to cling to high-ranking vampires.

  Turns out, the Sokolova clan had also been relieved of a "precious trinket," as Ivanoska so delicately put it, her voice like ice chips grinding together. She didn’t offer many details, the smug cow, but her crimson eyes, narrowed and glinting with malice, kept flicking towards me and the other Arakawa representatives present.

  The implication was clear: she believed members of our house were responsible. Or, at the very least, somehow complicit.

  Damn it all to the deepest hells. That accursed Lilia Takahashi. Her and her little band of idealistic, thieving rebels. The stench of her betrayal was starting to spread, contaminating everything.

  The name alone, Lilia, was enough to dredge up a swamp of memories I usually kept locked away, buried under layers of expensive silk and carefully cultivated indifference.

  It began years ago, a lifetime it felt like now. I must have been… what, ten? Maybe eleven. Old enough to understand courtly whispers, young enough to still be blindsided by naive affection.

  Lilia was brought into the Arakawa household not as a ward, not as a guest, but as something… other. Adopted, they said. A convenient fiction to mask the inconvenient truth: she was the illegitimate whelp of one of Mother's consorts… no, not just any consort... She was the get of the Prime Consort.

  My mother, the formidable Arakawa Matriarch, maintained a harem of consorts, each selected for their potent yoki and genetic compatibility. The Prime Consort was, by definition, the one with the highest probability of siring a true nine-tailed heir. The one closest to Mother. The one whose betrayal, therefore, cut the deepest. And he, the esteemed, powerful Kitsune noble, had sullied himself, and by extension our entire lineage, with a… a changeling. A godsdamned lycanthrope.

  That liaison, that disgusting lapse in judgment, produced Lilia.

  She was… different. An anomaly. Not quite a Kitsune, her fox spirit diluted and warped. Certainly not a full lycanthrope, lacking the feral power and lunar transformations. For all intents and purposes, to the untrained eye, she was mostly human, albeit one blessed with slightly more strength and sharper reflexes than average. And, most curiously, she possessed a significant, yet strangely singular, affinity for Kitsune magic: the Path of Creation.

  Our magic, the very essence of our being, isn't just some parlor trick. It’s a spiritual expression, a conduit to the cosmos, divided into what the elders called the Four Paths. From birth, or shortly thereafter, a Kitsune can usually access three of these great disciplines:

  The Path of Illusions: The art of deception, of weaving dreams and nightmares, creating spectral duplicates, and vanishing into shadows.

  Masters of this path could fool even the gods, or so the scrolls claimed. A useful skill, I’d always thought, particularly when dealing with the terminally stupid. It was all about misdirection, my personal favorite for...

  Then came the Path of Creation—Lilia’s singular strength. This art granted Kitsune the ability to shape spiritual energy into tangible form, conjuring mystical weapons or… whatever. I never really cared. Whatever the caster willed in the moment, I suppose.

  Yeah… hardly awe-inspiring.

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  And finally, the Path of Elements: The bond with nature’s raw power. Command over wind and storm... Very dramatic, very messy.

  I’d seen Setsuna nearly level a training ground once trying to impress Mother. Ambitious, but utterly lacking finesse.

  Lilia, with her tainted blood, could only touch the Path of Creation. She could mend broken objects with a touch, coax flowers to bloom out of season, and once, memorably, conjured a shimmering, vaguely fox-shaped shield to protect a prized vase I’d almost knocked over. It was… limited. Pathetic, even, when compared to the full spectrum of abilities a true Kitsune could wield.

  The fourth path, the Path of the Eternal Cycle, was another beast entirely. Reserved for those who achieved nine tails, it was the magic governing life and death itself.

  The power to kill and resurrect with the Flame of Destiny (at great personal cost, naturally), to consume an enemy’s life force with the Eclipse of Soul, or to commune with the departed and twist their fates with the Bond of the Forgotten. It was forbidden, of course.

  But back to Lilia. Despite her… deficiencies, and despite the unspoken tension surrounding her origins, we became close. Inseparable, even.

  She was quiet, observant, with a gentle smile that could, on occasion, slip past the armor of sarcasm and aloofness I so carefully maintained.

  We shared secrets, stole sweets from the kitchens, and lamented the endless etiquette lessons. I taught her how to craft a passable insult; she tried to teach me patience—though I suspect that lesson never quite took.

  For a few fleeting years, she was the sister I never had, a welcome change from my actual siblings, Setsuna, Akiko, and Byako, who always felt more like rivals.

  Then, it all shattered. One day, she was there, her presence a quiet constant in the sprawling Arakawa estate. The next, she was gone. No note, no warning. She’d simply vanished, taking with her a few personal belongings and a sizable chunk of my childish trust.

  Fuck.

  And now, thanks to that treacherous bitch, the bloodsuckers have come whining—because, clearly, we didn’t already have enough problems.

  Utter bullshit.

  “…iko-chan? Kiriko-chan, are you ready?”

  A cool, silken voice, Tamamo-no-Mae-sama’s, sliced through my grim thoughts, yanking me back to the cold, sterile present.

  I blinked, the opulent image of Mother’s office dissolving. My skin prickled, not from memory, but from the chill air of the underground laboratory. I was standing naked, vulnerable, within the complex, glowing runes of a meticulously drawn magic circle. Across from me, in a similar circle, lay the still, pale form of Ezra Graves, the not-quite-dead courier. My unwilling, soon-to-be spiritual anchor.

  A fresh wave of disgust and fury washed over me. “Fucking hell,” I spat, the curse echoing slightly in the suddenly quiet room. My eyes, narrowed with irritation, found Tamamo’s. “Yes, I’m ready. Just get this damn farce over with, before I change my mind and set fire to this whole bloody lab.”

  Tamamo-no-Mae-sama merely offered that infuriating, knowing smile, her nine tails swaying almost hypnotically behind her. She raised her hands, elegant fingers splayed. “As you wish, Kiriko-chan.”

  She began to chant, her voice a low, resonant hum that vibrated in my bones. The words were ancient, guttural, a language I only partially recognized from the deepest, most forbidden sections of the Arakawa library. I strained to catch them, to understand the mechanics of what was about to happen to me, but then…

  Pain.

  It wasn't a cut, or a burn, or a blow. It was… other. It started as a prickle under my skin, like a thousand icy needles injecting liquid fire into my veins. Then it intensified, a grotesque crawling sensation, as if invisible insects with razor-sharp legs were burrowing deep into my flesh, scurrying through my muscles, invading my very marrow. My breath hitched. The runes beneath my feet blazed with an almost blinding white light, and a corresponding light flared briefly around Ezra’s still form.

  The sensation clawed its way up my neck, into my skull, a vise of pure agony tightening around my temples. It felt like something was trying to rewrite my thoughts, to etch itself onto my soul. Every nerve ending screamed in protest. My vision blurred, a red haze descending. I clenched my jaw, determined not to give that nine-tailed bitch the satisfaction of hearing me break.

  But the pain… oh, the pain… it escalated beyond anything I could have imagined, beyond anything I could control.

  A sound ripped from my throat, raw and ragged, tearing through the sterile air of the lab. A scream. My scream.

  And then, darkness.