The sky burned.
Ash drifted like falling stars, and fire curled in the breathless air. Above you, the seventh moon — the last — hung suspended in unnatural stillness, eclipsed and cold. Time felt fragile, brittle, as if the world held its breath for what you were about to do.
You stood at the edge of the old altar, where stone met the sea of memory. Where countless lives before yours had ended or begun. The wind had died, but something far older stirred beneath your skin. Something wild. Watching. Remembering.
The fox spirit — no longer just a whisper in dreams — coiled around your soul, awakened by pain, purpose, and love.
You were ready to give yourself. Not out of despair, but conviction.
But then — something cracked. Not in the world. In the Beyond.
The moment when the dragon come to his senses it resonated with the fox's true power, a scream echoed across the void. The villain — the ancient thing that had possessed the dragon — lost its grip. Its tether to the dragon's heart snapped, and in that heartbeat of clarity, the dragon opened his eyes.
He was still inside your friend. Still wrapped in fire and fury.
But now, he remembered.
Not the war.
Not the betrayal.
Not the curse.
You.
And from within your friend's mind, a single, unspoken thought rose — not meant for you, but felt by the dragon:
"Even with this monster inside me... I'd trade everything to save you. Because you were always the light. My light."
The dragon froze.
That feeling — fragile, stubborn, and mortal — struck deeper than any blade.
It was love.
Not the divine kind. Not perfect or eternal. But human. The kind that endures even after being broken.
You felt it too.
It was the same love that once bound the fox and the dragon together, long before they were called gods or monsters. Long before the stars fell.
The dragon moved — not to stop your sacrifice — but to reach out to the fox within you. To remember. To return.
And then...
The world cracked.
The ground beneath the altar groaned like it could no longer bear the truth. From the dark beneath the earth, something stirred — a slumbering force that had waited longer than time.
Then — one moon vanished.
The second.
The third.
Seven moons. Seven sentinels.
Each disappeared, snuffed out like candles in a storm.
And then... time stopped.
People below froze mid-scream. Flames paused mid-dance. The waves forgot how to move. Even the ash in the air hung motionless like snow caught in eternity.
In that stillness, you opened your eyes.
Foxfire burned in your veins.
Your friend stood just steps away, trembling, the dragon's shadow flickering behind his own. And you knew — he had heard you. All along.
"You heard me," you whispered, voice hoarse, "even when I thought I was gone."
He nodded, tears bright in frozen starlight. "I did. And I'm still here."
The fox spirit shimmered around you like a veil of ancient flame. The dragon, no longer snarling, bowed low — not in defeat, but in recognition.
Something above, beneath, beyond — the very bones of the world — began to hum.
You smiled. Not because you had won.
But because, maybe for the first time, you weren't alone.
And far below, in the cracks of that still and silent world, the villain screamed — powerless now against the one thing it could never touch:
A bond even gods had failed to understand.
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