The wind shifted.
He felt it before he heard it-a subtle change, like a thread pulled loose beneath the skin of the world. The air tasted different. The waves, once still, began to tremble. Something old had cracked. Something older had stirred.
And within him...
a single thread snapped free.
A memory.
Not just a thought, not an image. A sensation-warmth, rain, incense.
It rushed in without permission.
He saw a hallway. Dim light. The scent of old wood and sandalwood incense wafting faintly from a corner shrine. Shadows stretched long across the floor.
And then-
laughter. Bright, unguarded, echoing through the house like it belonged there.
He turned.
A boy stood in the doorway, soaked from the storm. Barefoot. His shirt clung to his skin, dark with rain. He held a book-too large for his arms, too ancient for a child. His hair dripped water onto the tiles.
"I found a story," the boy said, beaming. "A real one this time."
That voice.
That smile.
The memory hit so hard, it stole his breath.
He remembered standing there, years younger, watching the boy step into their house as if he were returning to a place lost in time. It should have been an ordinary day. But something had been different.
His mother had gone silent. Her expression tightened. She hadn't looked at the boy-she'd looked through him. Her eyes had gone wide, as if she were seeing something ancient in the shape of a child.
"...someone has returned," she whispered.
Then her gaze shifted-straight to him, the one remembering.
"But why now... and in him?"
He had forgotten her words. Or maybe he'd buried them, afraid of what they meant.
But now, standing at the edge of the sea as the seal unraveled and a storm gathered at the edges of the horizon, he felt it again. Felt him again.
The boy from the memory.
The one who believed.
He didn't need to see him to know-he was out there, somewhere beyond the horizon, where the foxfire stirred and the moon dimmed.
The fox spirit...
No.
The one who resonate the moon along with the fox.
Him.
The same boy. The same soul.
Not reborn. Not possessed.
Returned.
He clenched his hands at his sides. The wind tasted of rain and memory.
A whisper rose, not from the sea, but from within:
"You stood beside the moon."
Another echo-
"And the sun burned for you."
And at the heart of it all... the fox had smiled.
Not in triumph.
But in sorrow.
He stumbled back a step, shaken, breath hitching in his throat.
He didn't understand. Not fully. But something inside him remembered the weight of that final moment-
The circle.
The pact.
The price.
And standing there now, as the sea shivered and the dragon stirred, he finally saw the thread that connected them.
Not enemies.
Not strangers.
Co-rulers of the sky and earth.
One born of flame.
One born of shadow.
And one who walked between.
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