I have survived the usual dangers. I have survived the supernatural.
Today, the world itself tried to erase us.
"Danpung," Himitsu said abruptly, already loosening the cords of her shōzoku. "I'm attempting a Grand Possession. A full manifestation. A fox of that scale should tear through whatever veil this is."
Her voice was steady, but hurried—like someone counting seconds without saying so.
"…All right," I replied, though uncertainty sat heavy in my chest. I had no idea what I was meant to do.
I didn't like that.
"There—" Hazel said sharply, pointing into the fog-thickened thicket. "A figure."
"I see it," Dōngzhí said at once.
A streak of blue light cut through the mist—fast, precise. It struck nothing.
Himitsu's transformation was already underway. Fur surged across her skin, her frame swelling, bones reordering with a sound like ice cracking under pressure. The air itself seemed to recoil as her presence expanded.
Even after everything I had seen, the sight still felt wrong.
"That thing," Dōngzhí said slowly, eyes narrowing, "has no qi."
Hazel inhaled sharply. Her pupils glowed brighter than I'd ever seen.
"It looks human."
"No qi," I echoed numbly. "Human-shaped."
Something about that combination—
No.
And then—
Nothing.
Not darkness. Not silence.
Absence.
The fog vanished as Himitsu completed her transformation, now a massive white fox towering over the graves—but the world did not return with it.
The air was simply… gone.
My lungs emptied themselves violently, as if punched from the inside. I tried to gasp—
Nothing entered.
My throat locked in mute panic. I could feel my mouth open, my chest convulse, but there was no resistance, no sound, no breath to steal.
For a moment, my body refused to understand.
Air was supposed to be there.
It always had been.
My ears rang once—sharp, metallic—then even that vanished.
Pressure crushed inward and outward all at once.
My skin screamed as heat fled it, then surged back in a violent rebound. Cold so sharp it burned. Heat so sudden it felt the same.
I tried to scream.
My voice never existed.
Fear hit me then.
Not panic.
Not yet.
Just a cold, impossible certainty.
I was dying.
The thought arrived with horrifying clarity.
And there was nothing to fight.
The world tilted. My vision tunneled. Black bled in at the edges.
And then—
Collapse.
"—they going to be okay?"
The question reached me as if through water. Distant. Warped.
I couldn't open my eyes. My stomach lurched violently, nausea rolling in waves, but the ringing in my ears had stopped.
Sound had returned.
I could breathe.
The realization alone felt miraculous.
"What happened to Mommy and Sister Dōngzhí?" Zinnia's voice asked, small and frightened.
"They're just unwell," someone replied gently. "Go with your big sister. Have some sweets."
"Oooh," Zinnia said, momentarily distracted. "A big fox… how cute."
For some reason, that almost made me laugh.
Almost.
Her footsteps faded.
"What happened?" another voice asked—Victoria's, I thought. Or Heiwa's.
I couldn't be sure.
"They were exposed to a vacuum," came the answer, calm but tight. "If I'd been even a second later, they would have died—each in a different way."
A pause.
"Their voices went first. Lack of air. Then loss of consciousness. The burns are from thermal shock—temperature snapping back when the pressure returned."
Burns.
That explained it.
I could feel them now—raw, stinging patches along my arms, my neck. Not flame-burns. Something crueler.
As if the world had peeled heat away and slapped it back on without apology.
"Fire?" I wondered dimly.
No.
Just stolen breath.
And a part of me still couldn't quite believe it.
The explanation sounded absurd.
The pain did not.
I let the darkness take me again—this time willingly—as the shrine's safety closed in around us.
The world, apparently, had decided to keep its air.
For now.