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⚠️ Warning ⚠️

Mentions of sexual assault
Gore
Violence
Death

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With the demon moonrise came the searing winds from the ocean, unusual gusts that could torch entire grasslands over a single night. The scent of wild smoke and ashes danced through the girl's nose, carried by the breeze entering the room through a half-opened shoji door.

The brush in her hand remained steady despite the fluttering edges of the girl's heavily embroidered sleeve. A woman with sunken cheeks and tired eyes stared back at her from the mirror. The brush's wooden body clacked when it hit the edges of the paint pot.

The rouge the girl had dusted on her pale cheeks gave her some semblance of health, the red dye clung onto her chapped lips like fresh blood. Fallen hair strands, ones that had refused to be tamed into a low bun, sprouted between the broken teeth of the old wooden comb lying beside her.

Here she was, playing the mistress of the manor wearing a dead lady's best silks. Wilted chrysanthemums bloomed across the moth-bitten crimson fabric of the kimono, adorning one ghost following in the footsteps of another.

With the loud thud of a staff's base hitting the wooden floor, the silhouette of an oni darkened the paper of the sliding door to her right.

"My lord is asking for you," announced the oni without caring to open the door. "I hope you are ready."

The girl replied without hesitation— the quicker it could get over, the better.

She stood up and cast one last look at herself in the mirror. Somewhere from deep within her being, gratitude surfaced, gratitude towards the oni for letting her see herself one last time,  clothed in nothing less than the faded finery of a noblewoman. It was tinged with the bitter regret of never witnessing the joy in her father's eyes upon seeing her dressed like a lady.

Death waited for her in a room somewhere underneath the same roof. As she followed the demon guard, she counted each unfulfilled wish. Threading them into a rosary, she worked them on her mind, forcing herself into the numbness required to endure what was coming. Alas, she still felt things— disappointment, remorse, and grief.

It had been painfully evident from the lack of the traditional white bridal wear that the demon lord did not have marriage in mind. He sat in one of the larger central rooms, admiring the painted cranes flying across the mountains on the fusuma. This wasn't a tie meant to last for long.

His bride was instructed to take her place beside him with a ceramic flask of sake ready in her hand to fill his sakazuki cup whenever he required.

It seemed as though the crickets had followed the cicadas into the underworld, the night remained still as a corpse. A frightful blankness graced her mind each time she declined the demon's offer to pour her a drink.

The girl's refusal to drink the sake when she was offered it the third time caused the ceramic flask to be flung at the terrified guard. It struck the guard oni's horn and shattered into a million pieces, forcing him to exit in a hurry.

The calmness transformed into calamity within the blink of a frightened eye.

Pain shot up the length of the girl's arms when the oni lord sprung upon her and grabbed her by her wrists. The sake spilled from the fallen flask onto her clothes and the soft tatami mats carpeting the floor.

The girl found herself pinned underneath the weight of the grinning monster, her wrists held above her head by one gigantic hand. A terrified gasp left her lips as the oni's rough hand trailed up her back. Sharp claws ripped apart the kimono that was gifted to her and the bitter cold bit into her exposed skin. The stray fibers of the tatami mats sank into her naked skin with the vigor of a thousand needles.

Her wrists seemed to crack and burn like the wood fuelling a bonfire underneath the force of the demon's grasp. The oni's hands had dipped deep into her chest, caught hold of the fabric of her soul, and were now slowly ripping her being into shreds as she remained a mute witness. She could see herself in her mind's eye— a discarded, dirty ragdoll of a creature splayed underneath a monster.

Her choking sobs, interspersed with the loud raucous laughter of a drunken oni, echoed across the wooden rafters of the house. The girl closed her eyes and begged herself for forgiveness, for bringing a monster's unbridled lust and hunger upon herself.

The demon leaned in and whispered in her ear, "Scream, thrash, and fight. It makes it all the more enjoyable for me when I eat you. You should have heard your father scream while we were cooking him. The old man barely had any meat on his bones."

Her pupils contracted as she registered what was said. She could only manage a defeated whimper as the world around her crashed. The fingers of the demon's left hand threaded through her scattered hair.

"I am an oni by nature, foolish human, I am horrible at remembering the deals I make, much less keep them. You should have known before striking a bargain with me like that."

"Then again." The oni lord chuckled. The girl threw her head back, crying in pain as he wound her hair around his hands and tugged at her scalp. "What difference would it have made? Your destiny is to fill my stomach, violated or not. Consider this your final experience of pleasure before dying. Try to enjoy it while it lasts, hmm?"

The oni's sharp teeth bit into her lips in a mockery of a kiss. The world tasted like warm, liquid rust for what seemed like an eternity.

Then she remembered what a fool she was to believe the lies she had spun. A spider thrashing within a web of its making.

The winds that rattled the misplaced and broken clay tiles on the roof seemed to applaud her performance as they raked across them. Encore, they seemed to cry, encore.

The demon lord leapt backwards as he let loose a spine-chilling, primal scream from his throat. He scampered to his feet, blinded by a pain that seemed to choke him. Warm blood flowed down his chest like water from a spring. His shaking hands moved upwards along his wet neck, tracing the rivulets to the source of the searing pain.

His entire lower jaw was gone, plucked from its sockets on either side of his skull from where the blood spouted.

It now hung by its blackened lower lip from between the girl's teeth. His lower fangs were bared at him from the distance, their ivory-white bodies now stained with red. The girl opened her mouth and his torn lower jaw fell to the floor. Her lips curved upwards in a mocking smile.

She drew her right leg in a circle underneath her and stood up. The girl towered over the kneeling demon and ran her fingers through his matted mane, humming a forgotten human song. There was that gleam in her eyes, the very same her father had possessed while he was being cooked into soup.

His eyes widened as realisation struck him. The gleams in their eyes were quite literally the same.

The girl threw her head back and sighed loudly. Her long nails sank deep into his scalp, eliciting a sharp, gargled cry from his throat.

"Have you no reverence for your food, demon?" she asked. Her voice had deepened, acquiring the sweetness and tranquility of a wild stream flowing over smooth pebbles. "Even a tiger bows its head to taste the lamb's flesh."

No longer supported by a jaw, the oni's flopping tongue had fallen to his chest. The creature wearing the skin of a human girl lifted it and let it fall back. She looked amused.

"Oh my apologies, great Lord. My appearance seems to have left you dumbfounded."

The scent of blood hung heavy before his nose like curtains. As he parted the layers one by one, he smelt the girl's scent once more. It had remained unchanged ever since she had set foot in the mansion— a teasing, rousing aroma that had set his mind alight. But right now, which each haggard inhale, he recognised the hidden undertones in her smell. She had smelled of ashes, wet hair, rice fields, and aged sake.

The creature felt his irises throb with anticipation as she shifted her free hand toward his neck. Her nails sliced through his throat like it was warm butter, uprooting his head from his spine. The demon lord could only bear witness to his decapitated body clawing at the mats as the girl cradled his head in her arms. The demon writhed in the cage of his immortality as pain transcended into a state of existence.

As she passed each room, the girls who had been offered to the demons stepped outside bearing decapitated heads, clapping and jeering at him. The demon noticed the white masks that all of them wore on their faces and the smiles painted in red onto their smooth surfaces. In a macabre procession, they escorted the girl and the demon lord outside.

The steady whisper of rain greeted them when they stepped outside. The demon lord's wide eyes conveyed a spectrum of emotions ranging from shock to disbelief to horror. Standing in the garden of the mansion around a crackling, unnaturally blue bonfire were the humans he had eaten for supper.

The humans of the herd took turns to greet their daughters with embraces, rainwater trickled down the smooth curves of the white masks they had donned. One by one, they pitched the demon heads into the fire's blazing blue maw and cheered as the blackening skin peeled off their faces.

The demon lord locked eyes with the old man as he patted his daughter on her back. The demon's eyes returned to the girl's. The rain had plastered her black hair to the sides of her pale face. He hadn't been wrong and it wasn't a trick of the light cast by the bonfire— both of them had the exact gleam in their eyes.

"Oh, I must thank you before you die. I was amazed by how well you played your part. Truly spectacular, you had me convinced that I was but a helpless peasant girl about to die. Had it not been for your compliance to play along, the play wouldn't have been half as magnificent to perform."

She let a single, elongated canine slip from underneath her red upper lip in a lopsided grin.

If the demon lord's head still had a complete mouth he would've cried the creature's identity to the winds and the clouds. The girl allowed her father to do the honors of throwing his head into the flames. His still wet tongue trailed across the bed of his subordinates' bitter ashes. In his final moments, the girl had reft him of a voice to scream.

The illusion slowly fell apart in the rain and its human actors dissolved into figures of smoke and ghost lights. The girl danced through their fading outlines, her bare feet leaving deep imprints in the wet mud and sloshing the water collected in puddles. Her laughter could be heard through the thunderclaps and the roaring downpour, clearer than polished quartz. The rain only invigorated the blue flames cackling beside her.

Her feet carried her into the bosom of the fire treading upon the carpet of cinders, crushing the skull of the still alive demon lord and stepping upon his exposed brain matter. The girl spun with her arms wide open, spurring on the flames gnawing at her tattered kimono to eat to their heart's fill. As she felt her body beginning to combust, she relaxed entirely. Limpid tears dripped onto her trembling soot-covered hands, hands that had served her loyally through this short life, hands that had deserved better.

In the blinding whiteness of the heat that swallowed her, she glimpsed what she had once been and put this form of hers to rest forever.

The kitsune stepped out of the whirlwind of flames, having left the remnants of the mortal shell to crack and fizz amongst the cinders. The wind dusted the ashes off her naked limbs and prompted her to smile at the setting demon moon. Thunder rumbled in the heavens, pleased at her performance. She threw her head back and howled at the clouds staying true to her nature.

With a lazy flick of her wrist, the kitsune freed the blue bonfire of the constraints she had placed on it. It fanned out to become ten times its original size and tore through the shoji doors of the household. Like a pack of hunting dogs closing in on their prey, the flames shredded the banisters and brought down the rafters, forcing the roof to collapse and fall right into their jaws. The kitsune watched it all in silence.

"Lady Fox," came a whisper from behind her.

The yokai looked over her shoulder and turned around fully. Her eyes stung in the rain. If one were to look closely, they could see the spectres who had called her through the curtains of raindrops rippling in the winds. These lights only vaguely remembered the forms they had once worn when they had walked the earth and thus their forms remained blurry like distant memories. The humans and animals alike had gathered in the courtyard to watch the mansion burn.

The kitsune's heart felt heavier as she picked out the vague ethereal scents and matched them to those still clinging to the burning corpses and skeletons in the village and the garden. Had she arrived a little sooner, she could've prevented the slaughter and torment the demons had wreaked upon their homes.

The spectres' mouths moved again but their words were devoid of sound. The kitsune nodded in understanding. She flexed her right hand and commanded the attention of her flames to the gardens. Soon enough, the blaze devoured the bodies and set the spectres free from their mortal shackles.

The lights bowed deeply in unison and the kitsune bowed back. She caught a sob in her throat when she saw them slowly remembering how to smile. The young humans lifted their hands as if to wave her goodbye but seemed to have forgotten the actual motion. The dogs, cats, and livestock had their ears relaxed and tails poised. The mistress of the mansion whom the kitsune recognised from the red kimono she wore placed a hand over her heart. The kitsune's eyes weren't welling up from the rain.

Deep within her heart, she felt that she had failed each one of them miserably. Things might have been different had she reached them sooner, perhaps a few of them would have survived to see another dawn. There was only so much a single fox spirit could do. Being in multiple places at once was not one of them. Such was life, its march remained ruthless, uncontrollable, and at times unfair. 

The least she could do to repent was to avenge them.

When the spectres had disappeared and the sky had cleared up, the demon sun was already peeking at her from the horizon, dying the stranded clouds a dull, weary brown. Sunrises were no longer beautiful as they had once been.

The kitsune drew a deep breath and slipped into the vulpine form she was more comfortable with. She padded down the cobblestone path leading outside, leapt over the burnt fragments of the wooden gate, and broke into a full sprint. Her claws provided her with all the traction she needed to race through the village and into the grasslands beyond its fringes. Her amber fur rippled in the winds like the sea of yellowing grass she ran through.

Once she had scaled to a higher altitude, the fox yokai stopped upon an outcrop of rock and gazed over the abandoned village one last time. A whimper slipped through her muzzle when she remembered the promise she had made to the people of the region. The razed settlement below her was merely one of the many fractures in that promise. The ghosts had been generous in not bearing a grudge against her. She could see no reason for their kindness.

Then again, the world had become a broken one the day the heavens bled. Reason had ceased to exist a long while ago.

The vixen's ears perked and she looked towards the horizon beyond the village. Dotting the morning sky were seven massive structures flying in a formation reminiscent of a flock of cranes. She could hear their gigantic stone wings churning up the clouds as they flew over the land. The vixen noticed one of the structures gliding at an altitude much lower than the others. In that split second, she glimpsed an opportunity.

The fox yokai let out a yelp and rushed through the grasslands as fast as her feet could carry her. There wasn't much time before the mountain landed and she had to get all the survivors on it before it took to the skies again.

Bare-branched forest tracts alternated with drying grasslands and large craters left by the airborne mountains. What might have taken a regular fox five days to traverse, the kitsune had crossed in under an hour. The kitsune was sure that her paw pads would be bleeding for days from her sprint but it didn't matter at that moment. As breathless as she was, she never faltered or stopped to rest. Her claws bled in their sockets as they grazed across rock, grass, bark, and ground all the same, propelling her forward toward the forest. A single thought streamed through her mind urging her tiring feet onwards towards the south, one to stay true to her word.

It was a kitsune's nature to never forget kindness and a kitsune would always repay their debts— a heart for a heart, a life for a life.

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Chapter Word Count: 3042

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Glossary

Shoji:

These are panels made from a lattice wooden frame covered with translucent paper or cloth which function as sliding doors, windows or dividers. 

Fusuma:

These function almost the same as shoji but they're opaque amd usually have beautiful paintings of forests or mountains decorating them.

Sakazuki cup:

A type of cup used to serve sake.

Sake:

It's an alcholic beverage made from fermented rice. It's also the national beverage of Japan.