At the foot of the hill stood a new Shinto-style shrine, its bright red torii stark against the green of the surrounding trees. The shrine was built on sacred ground, right where the great stone had fallen and become the seal of the nine-tailed fox. Though the fox spirit had long since been corrupted, to the kitsune it was still an ancestral god. That place had now become a new symbol—a symbol of prayer, of hope, and of wounds from the past that could never be completely erased.
