The room was warm with lamplight, curtains swaying gently as the ocean breeze slipped in from the balcony. Two small beds sat side by side, blankets kicked halfway off by restless sleepers who refused to settle. Dwayne sat on the edge of one bed, a thick, well-worn storybook resting in his hands. His wife leaned against the headboard of the other, one arm wrapped around their youngest daughter, who was already half-asleep but stubbornly refusing to admit it.
Dwayne: "Okay," he said, lowering his voice theatrically, "last page."
"That's what you said last time," the youngest daughter protested, hugging her pillow.
"And the time before that," the eldest added.
Dwayne: "It would've been if you little rascals had fallen asleep." He cleared his throat and continued, voice steady and soothing, "…and the fox spirit watched over the village from the mountain, unseen but always listening. When danger came, it did not roar or threaten. It simply stood, and that was enough."
The girls listened intently, eyes heavy but focused.
"Is the fox scary?" the younger one murmured.
Dwayne shook his head: "No. Strong doesn't mean scary. It means you protect what matters."
Their mother reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her daughter's face: "Just like your dad."
The youngest smiled sleepily: "Papa, will you always protect us?"
Dwayne didn't hesitate: "Always." The word carried weight, absolute and unquestioned. He closed the book gently and set it aside. "Alright. Lights out." He leaned down, pressing a kiss to each daughter's forehead. "Goodnight, my brave foxes."
"Goodnight, Papa."
Their mother turned off the lamp, leaving only moonlight spilling in through the balcony doors. As they stepped out into the bedroom, she slipped her hand into his.
They stood there for a moment, listening to the gentle rhythm of their daughters' breathing. The world felt peaceful. As they turned toward their own bed, the balcony curtains stirred again, just a little more than the breeze could justify.
***
Dwayne Cunnington woke without knowing why.
There was no sound. No alarm. No disturbance he could immediately name.
And yet—
Something was wrong.
He sat up slowly, years of instinct guiding him before thought could catch up. His hand drifted toward the bedside table where his blade rested, fingers hovering just short of touching it. He listened. Counted breaths that weren't his own.
The room felt… lighter. As if something had already left it.
Dwayne: "Claire?" he whispered.
No answer.
Dwayne rose and crossed the room in three quiet steps. He pushed the bedroom door open and froze. The balcony window was open. Wind stirred the curtains. And standing in the pale moonlight beyond the glass was Shiori Boreas. She held his wife in her arm as easily as one might carry a sleeping child. His daughters were around the other arm, their bodies limp, faces peaceful in unconsciousness.
Dwayne didn't shout. He moved. His hand snapped around the hilt of his alter blade, the familiar weight grounding him as power surged in response. The kitsune blade hummed awake, heat and pressure building along its length as he stepped forward: "Put them down," he said, voice steady despite the roaring in his ears.
Shiori smiled at him: "Too slow."
One moment she was there, the next, the balcony was empty. Curtains fluttered. The sea continued to breathe below. Dwayne lunged for the window anyway, leaning out into the darkness, scanning rooftops, scanning air, scanning space itself.
Nothing.
They were gone.
He didn't hesitate.
Dwayne turned and ran.
The hallway outside his room was long. Plush carpet muffled his steps as he burst out, his blade held low and ready. His senses were stretched wide now, reading the air for disturbances, distortions, anything that didn't belong.
Then he collided with someone at full speed. Both of them went down hard.
Dwayne: "Sorry—" he started automatically, already rolling to his feet.
And then he saw the mask. A jester's grin. Fangs carved into an eternal smile. Hollow eyes that reflected nothing back. The man beneath it touched Dwayne's hand. Just for a second.
The world tilted violently, senses scrambling as something slid sideways inside Dwayne's perception. Heat. Cold. Pressure. For the briefest instant, he felt observed from within his own body. He tore himself free and staggered upright, breath sharp. The air around him felt wrong. Dwayne spun, blade igniting as flames raced along its length, illuminating the hallway in burning gold.
The masked man stood at the far end now, posture relaxed, one hand lifted idly: "Elemental powers, huh?" the man said lightly. "Let's see how this works."
The hallway screamed. Wind exploded outward, a sudden, violent gale ripping through the corridor as lightning crackled into existence, coiling around the man's arm like a living thing. The air ionized, pressure dropping hard enough to make the walls groan.
Dwayne didn't retreat.
He stepped forward and swung.
Fire surged from his blade in a roaring arc, consuming the space between them in incandescent fury. The flames devoured the wind, detonated the lightning, and tore through the corridor like a living wall. The blast hit the masked man dead-on. He flew backward, smashed through the far wall, and vanished into the night beyond with a thunderous crash. Dwayne didn't pause. He vaulted through the breach after him. Outside, moonlight bathed the shattered exterior of the resort. The masked man lay embedded in broken stone, cracks spiderwebbing outward from his body.
Dwayne landed atop him in one fluid motion, blade descending to hover an inch from the man's throat: "Where is my family?"
The man chuckled. Then his body went slack. Dissolved. Faded like smoke caught in a breeze.
Dwayne's blade cut through nothing. He stepped back sharply, eyes narrowing: "An illusion," he muttered. He looked at his hand, the one the man had touched earlier, "…Did he copy it?"
If so, it didn't matter. Dwayne straightened, resolve settling back into place. Because no one knew the full breadth of what his blade could do.
***
Shiori stood near the waterline of the shore, the unconscious wife and daughters laid on the sand behind her, shielded by shadow. The waves rolled in slow, steady rhythm, unconcerned.
She felt him before she saw him. Footsteps on sand. A presence that bent the air. Caesar approached from the darkness, mask gone, black veins etched starkly across his face like a living sigil. His eyes burned with something new, something awake.
Shiori: "He didn't follow you?"
Caesar: "Don't think so."
Shiori: "Looks like he did."
Dwayne stepped out from behind a cluster of rocks, blade resting on his shoulder, flames subdued but ready. His expression was calm.
Shiori's smile faltered, just slightly.
Caesar: "We know your abilities, just do us a favor and give up."
Dwayne: "Looks like you've done your homework," he replied pleasantly. "Unfortunately… that's not all of it." He lowered his blade. Something ancient stirred behind him, unseen but unmistakable. "My nine-tailed kitsune blade will end you vampires."
Waves rolled in with a steady hush, breaking against the shore with soft foam that glimmered under moonlight. Claire and the girls lay where Shiori left them, close enough to smell the salt in their hair, close enough that Dwayne's instincts screamed at him to rush forward and gather them up, to fold them into his arms and never let go. But he didn't move. Not because he wasn't fast enough. He read Shiori's posture, Caesar's stillness, the way the water seemed to hesitate around them like it was listening. Shiori stood over his family, hands relaxed at her sides as if she were merely waiting for him to speak.
Shiori tilted her head, almost curious, as if studying a painting she couldn't decide was worth keeping: "You found us quickly," she said. "I expected more… panic."
Dwayne didn't answer. He didn't give her the satisfaction of hearing anything human in his voice. Shiori took one step toward Claire. Dwayne's blade flared; foxfire licking along its edge in a low, controlled blaze. Shiori didn't stop. Her claws looked impossibly sharp against moonlight. For a fraction of a second, the beach was nothing but Dwayne's pulse pounding in his ears, so loud he couldn't hear the waves anymore.
Shiori swung downward and ripped his wife's throat out.
Then—
Her expression shifted.
Because the wife was suddenly not there anymore. Neither were the kids. Claire was with Dwayne held securely in his arms. His daughters were at his legs. And the thing Shiori had killed, the limp figure at her feet began to unravel. It lost definition first, as if the moonlight couldn't quite decide what it was looking at. The dark stain on the sand faded in reverse, swallowing itself like ink pulled back into a pen. It was an illusion. Sometime during their standoff, Dwayne had already rescued them. For the first time tonight, Caesar's composure cracked. His eyes narrowed, alert and sharp.
The image of Dwayne and his family was also an illusion beginning to fade. At this very moment, he's already tucking them back into bed in their room. But they don't know that, because an illusion of Dwayne is still there.
Then the illusion lunged. The kitsune blade carved forward in a bright arc of foxfire, flames snapping through the air with a hiss that sounded almost alive. The strike was meant to take Shiori's head clean off her shoulders, even though it couldn't.
It missed.
Shiori's body slid sideways as if the world had decided she didn't need to obey inertia. The slash cleaved empty air, fire ripping a bright line through the night. They didn't known this too was an illusion because it all felt real. Dwayne pivoted, instantly chaining a second cut at Caesar. He barely moved in time. He stumbled back, the tip of the blade grazing his mask with a flash of heat, leaving a thin burn line that smoked for half a second. However, the mark disappeared as did the illusion. The real Dwayne had returned.
Caesar: "Hey, no one told me his illusions were this strong."
Shiori: "Quit your whining, the fun's just getting started."
Foxfire whipped again. Shiori leaned away from it, her feet never leaving the sand yet somehow gaining distance. Caesar tried to counter, his hand snapping out to touch Dwayne, even just for a fingertip graze. Dwayne's blade snapped between them like a gate slamming shut. Caesar's fingers recoiled. He was reacting barely on time. Dwayne pressed harder. His footwork was clean, short steps, controlled pivots, hips driving each slash. The flames weren't wild, they were restrained and directed. The blade didn't just cut, it denied space, forcing Shiori and Caesar to keep shifting, keep yielding ground.
Shiori's eyes narrowed. She lifted a hand slightly.
The air grew heavier. Dwayne felt it before he understood it. The sand beneath his feet suddenly seemed to weigh twice what it had a moment ago. His knees flexed under pressure, muscles tightening instinctively.
Gravity.
He pushed forward anyway. The pressure increased, like a giant hand pressing down on his shoulders, trying to crush him into the beach. His breath compressed, ribs tightening. He didn't stop. Foxfire flared along the blade, heat bursting outward not just as flame but as force, an expanding wave that fought against the invisible weight. The pressure wavered. Dwayne used the opening to close the distance.
Shiori flicked her wrist. Throwing knives snapped into flight, thin glints of metal aimed for joints, tendons, soft spots. Not to kill, at least not immediately. Dwayne twisted. The first knife passed by his cheek. He batted the second away with the flat of his blade, sparks flaring as metal met heated steel. The third was aimed for his forearm. He rotated his wrist and let the flame lick outward, foxfire snapping into a brief tongue that melted the air's certainty around the knife. It veered just enough to miss, thudding into the sand. Caesar took that moment. He lunged in fast, hungry, trying to get a touch. His movements were less refined than Dwayne's, but there was a raw predatory athleticism to them that was difficult to read. Dwayne responded with a step-in slash. Caesar ducked. Dwayne's elbow came down like a hammer, blade hand stabilizing as his free arm struck in tight, practical angles, short efficient hits meant to disrupt rhythm. Caesar stumbled back. Shiori's gravity surged again, slamming down harder. This time, Dwayne's feet sank slightly into the sand as if it had turned to wet cement. His shoulders dipped. The world pressed in, trying to fold him.
He inhaled. And the kitsune blade answered. Foxfire ran up the blade in a brighter, denser bloom, less like ordinary flame and more like a living aura that clung to the steel, crackling with a pale, unnatural intensity. The pressure didn't vanish. But Dwayne moved anyway. He drove forward through gravity as if he were running uphill through water, every muscle in his legs screaming as he forced momentum into existence. Shiori's eyes widened a fraction. She hadn't expected that. Dwayne reached her range. His blade snapped up in a rising cut meant to lift her off balance. Shiori twisted, gravity shifting direction mid-motion. Dwayne felt the ground tilt under him without the earth actually moving, his center of mass was betrayed, his body dragged sideways by invisible force. He corrected instantly, planting his heel, using foxfire as a stabilizer, heat blasting downward in a short burst like a thruster to keep his footing.
Caesar saw the adjustment and lunged again. Dwayne's blade flashed horizontally. Caesar recoiled too late this time, foxfire searing across his chest in a bright line. The wound wasn't deep.
Caesar's eyes flared as if something in his body clicked into place. He stepped back, breathing sharper now, not because he was tired, but because he was still learning his curse. Dwayne's gaze narrowed. Shiori lifted her hand again. Gravity surged, this time not just downward but pinning, trying to lock Dwayne's limbs, trying to force him into stillness. The sand beneath him compacted, hardening. Dwayne's blade glowed brighter. He twisted his wrist and swept foxfire outward in a low arc, flames racing along the ground like a fast tide. The heat loosened sand, disrupted Shiori's pressure for just a moment.
Shiori and Caesar moved in together. She used more gravity compressing the space around Dwayne, trying to slow him before Caesar could close the gap. Dwayne answered with wind. A gust that rolled across the sand, cutting sideways to disrupt Shiori's footing, scattering her balance. Caesar rushed in through the opening, faster now, more confident, his hand reaching for Dwayne again. Dwayne's blade snapped downward in a short cut designed to punish the approach. Caesar twisted aside, barely avoiding the edge, but the foxfire's heat still kissed his arm, making his skin crawl. He didn't retreat. He pivoted close and struck with his shoulder, trying to crash Dwayne's guard open. Dwayne didn't yield. He stepped in instead turning Caesar's momentum against him, blade sliding past Caesar's rib line, not cutting deep but forcing distance. Shiori's knives flashed again, this time in pairs, staggered timings designed to catch dodges. Dwayne answered with lightning. A crackling arc snapped down, not wide, not uncontrolled, pinpointed to the sand between them. The flash blinded for a heartbeat, a threat more than an attack, forcing Shiori to shift her angle. Caesar's eyes widened. He tried to mirror it, hand lifting, instinctively calling for the same attack. A thin, unstable spark danced between his fingers, then fizzled. His imitation was crude. He clicked his tongue. He lunged again. Dwayne's blade flared. Foxfire erupted, not a wall, but a spiraling ribbon that curled around Caesar's path like a living trap. Shiori stepped in close with a knife aiming for his wrist. Dwayne's blade slashed up. Foxfire burst outward in a short explosion, throwing sand into the air like shrapnel. Shiori leapt back, cloak whipping.
Caesar tried to capitalize again. And Dwayne's world blinked. Not in his vision. In reality. For a fraction of a second, the shoreline seemed to shift. The sound of the ocean doubled. The moonlight reflected wrong. Dwayne's steps faltered. Someone else was weaving the air now.
His imitation wasn't clean, but it didn't need to be clean to be dangerous. A false image flickered at the edge of Dwayne's perception: a silhouette that looked like Claire's shape, one of the girls' voices, too faint to be real, but too sharp to ignore. Dwayne's chest tightened reflexively. A second of distraction. Shiori's gravity surged. The pressure slammed down hard enough to force Dwayne's knees toward the sand. Caesar's hand shot forward to touch him again. Dwayne jerked, foxfire exploding outward as he forced his body upright through sheer will and trained muscle. The explosion drove Caesar back. But the illusion remained. And it didn't feel like a cheap trick anymore. It felt real. Dwayne's eyes sharpened, scanning for anchors, wind direction, wave rhythm, the placement of stars. He tried to find the truth through sensory consistency, but found nothing inconsistent. The world had become a perfect mask. Shiori stepped forward slowly, a calm shadow in a shifting world. Caesar's face held a pleased, hungry tension as if he could taste Dwayne's uncertainty.
Dwayne raised his blade anyway. Foxfire brightened refusing to obey the illusion's attempt to dim it. He breathed in. And something that didn't belong. A voice came from the left.
"Dad?"
His grip tightened. He did not answer. Another voice, closer this time, too close, pitched just right to slip past defenses.
"Are you coming?"
Dwayne closed his eyes for half a second. When he opened them again, the beach was gone. He stood in a narrow hallway washed in warm lamplight. Framed photos lined the walls—family vacations, school plays, the three of them piled on his shoulders at different ages. The air smelled like dinner cooling on the stove. The sound of laughter drifted from a room at the end of the hall.
Home.
Not a memory of it.
A perfect reproduction.
His daughters ran past him, feet thudding softly on carpet that shouldn't exist. Claire stood in the doorway, smiling, tired in the way that came from a long day spent loving people too hard.
"You're late," she said gently.
The air was warm. The light cast real shadows. His heartbeat sounded normal.
Claire stepped closer, reaching for his sleeve: "You can rest now."
That was a lie.
Dwayne's foxfire flickered. The flame along his blade wavered like it didn't know what it was meant to illuminate. He lifted his blade slightly, foxfire reflecting in Claire's eyes. The reflection was correct. Perfectly aligned. The kind of detail only someone with absolute confidence would attempt.
Dwayne: "Show me your hands," he said softly.
Claire paused.
Just for a heartbeat.
Her smile didn't change.
But the hallway behind her rippled, as if someone had dragged their fingers through wet paint. The laughter from the other room stuttered, replaying the same note twice.
Dwayne exhaled: "I have to go."
The illusion reacted.
The hallway stretched, walls peeling outward as if space itself were yawning. The photos warped, faces smearing into masks. The warmth dropped from the air all at once, replaced by the cold, sharp scent of the beach.
Claire's face twisted.
"Why won't you stay?" the illusion asked.
Dwayne raised his blade.
He cut.
Not at Claire.
At the air itself.
Foxfire surged burning not forward but inward, collapsing along the blade's edge. The cut wasn't wide. It was precise. A vertical line of heat that sliced through the illusion's seam. The hallway split like fabric, the edges curling inward as foxfire consumed the lie. Light bled through the wound, moonlight, real moonlight followed by the roar of waves. Dwayne stepped through as the illusion collapsed behind him. The beach slammed back into existence.
And pain.
Caesar's hand tore through Dwayne's abdomen. He pulled it out and retreated. The gravity hit immediately, Dwayne staggered, one knee dropping into the sand as the weight tried to pin him flat.
Caesar stood a few paces away, breathing hard, eyes wide with a mix of triumph and frustration: "You're stubborn."
Dwayne planted his blade tip-first into the sand and used it to lever himself upright inch by inch. Foxfire flared brighter, burning against the pressure, muscles screaming as he forced his spine straight. Shiori lifted her hand higher. The gravity intensified. The air pressed down so hard the sand cracked beneath Dwayne's boots. His ribs groaned. His vision tunneled at the edges. He responded with wind. The air around him twisted sharply, disrupting the gravity's vector just enough to let him shift his footing. He rolled his shoulder, pulling free of the worst of the pressure, and slashed outward in a wide arc. Foxfire roared across the beach, a crescent of pale flame racing toward Shiori. She leapt back, cloak snapping, knives flying from her hands in the same motion. Dwayne turned the blade sideways and swept low. The foxfire dipped, meeting the knives mid-air. Metal hissed and warped, clattering harmlessly into the sand. Dwayne quickly cauterized his wound before he lost too much blood.
Caesar moved in fast, but too late. He came in low, using the distraction, hand reaching again, his fingers brushing Dwayne's coat. Caesar's breath hitched as information flooded him, heat, pressure, the shape of foxfire. His eyes lit up, sparks dancing across his skin as he tried to replicate it. Dwayne didn't let him finish. He pivoted and struck, not a cut, but a bash, the flat of the blade slamming into Caesar's ribs. The impact sent Caesar skidding across the sand, coughing, a flare of unstable flame bursting and dying around his hands.
Shiori slammed her palm down. The beach bowed. Gravity spiked, dragging Dwayne forward, trying to crush him into the ground face-first. His blade gouged a trench as he resisted, foxfire spilling into the sand like molten glass. Foxfire surged upward, erupting in a column that forced the pressure to split around it. The blast threw sand and heat skyward, momentarily blinding. Dwayne burst through the rising smoke, closing distance with Shiori in three hard steps. She twisted, gravity shifting sideways, trying to throw him off balance again. He anticipated it this time. Lightning cracked. A short, violent arc snapped from the blade into the wet sand at her feet. Shiori recoiled, balance breaking for a split second. That was enough. Dwayne's blade flashed toward her shoulder. She barely avoided it, the cut grazing her neck, foxfire searing fabric and skin alike. She hissed, retreating rapidly, eyes sharp with something like genuine excitement.
The beach trembled as the three of them squared off again, gravity warping the air, foxfire flickering like a living thing, Caesar's unstable imitation crackling and threatening to burst free.
There were no illusions.
What remained was simple.
A Special-Rank Hunter standing his ground.
The beach had been reduced to a scar. Glass-smooth trenches of fused sand cut through the shore where foxfire had burned too hot and too long. The tide no longer dared approach the center of the battlefield, waves breaking early as if the ocean itself sensed danger. The moon hung high, fractured by heat distortion and shifting gravity, its reflection torn apart by rippling air.
The fight did not slow.
Shiori moved first. The gravity around her inverted, not outward, not downward, but inward. Her boots barely touched the sand as she pulled herself forward with her own gravity field, body snapping from one point to another like a stone skipping across water. Each movement cost her less blood than brute-force manipulation, but the strain showed. She blurred. Knives flashed. Dwayne twisted, foxfire flaring instinctively as the air thickened around him. The knives curved mid-flight, dragged by gravity toward his spine and shattered as a wall of wind detonated outward.
The shockwave sent Shiori skidding backward, boots carving deep lines into the sand as she reoriented. She didn't pause. She pulled again. Dwayne's body lurched. Gravity locked onto his mass, dragging him toward her with crushing force. The air screamed as pressure folded inward. Sand lifted in sheets, spiraling violently around them. Foxfire erupted from his blade and wrapped around his torso like a living mantle, heat bending the gravity's grip just enough to let him pivot mid-pull. He drove the blade into the ground, anchoring himself, lightning snapping along the edge as he discharged excess force into the earth. The pull broke. Shiori hissed in frustration. She lunged again, faster this time, gravity folding tight around her limbs, boosting acceleration beyond what muscle alone could achieve. She appeared at his flank in an instant, palm slamming forward. Dwayne vanished. The strike passed through empty air. Shiori barely had time to register the wrongness before a blade swept low behind her. She vaulted, gravity snapping upward to fling her over the arc as foxfire scorched the space her legs had occupied.
She landed hard, breath sharp. He was layering illusions now. Not hiding behind them, weaving them into motion, overlapping real and false bodies so tightly even gravity couldn't tell which mass to grab. Caesar watched it all from a few steps back, chest rising and falling, eyes burning.
At first, the battlefield had been chaos, too many variables. But now… Now he saw it. Not with his eyes. With his soul. His curse was awakening more and more as the battle progressed.
And there it was.
Caesar saw his opponent's soul.
Dwayne Cunnington's soul burned bright and vast, a nine-tailed structure of interlocking symbols and flowing patterns. Fire dominated, foxfire curling like living calligraphy around his core, but wind, lightning, and earth threaded through it in disciplined balance. The illusions weren't separate constructs, they were expressions, projections spun directly from the soul's surface.
And there—
Cracks.
Not necessarily flaws or weaknesses.
Strain points.
Moments where power overlapped too tightly, where maintaining illusion and offense simultaneously caused distortions.
The world dimmed at the edges as his curse asserted itself fully. Dwayne's body became secondary, an echo, a vessel. What mattered was the core beneath it.
Caesar smiled.
He understood it. He could recognize what was an illusion.
Dwayne struck again, foxfire lashing outward in branching arcs that scorched the sand and forced Shiori to retreat. Caesar stepped in, foxfire flaring around his hands as he mimicked the pattern he saw etched into Dwayne's soul.
The copied element surged out violently and unstable, but enough to disrupt Dwayne's next illusion. The false body flickered, collapsing into smoke as the real one slid backward, eyes narrowing.
Dwayne met his gaze. He could feel the tide of this battle turning slightly.
Caesar: 'Let's call this…'
Soul Sovereignty