You didn't expect the wind to carry voices.
And yet, as you stood barefoot on the sand, the evening breeze tugging at your shirt and the horizon bleeding into twilight, there it was—something old, coiled beneath the edge of the world. Waiting.
You squinted toward the sea. It was quiet. Too quiet.
"Hey," your cousin called from behind, wiping sweat from his brow as he hoisted a bag of groceries inside. "Looks like it's going to rain. You should come back in."
But you didn't move.
Your chest tightened. A sound—it wasn't a sound, not really—rose in your ears. Like the breath of a mountain, or a name you used to know.
And then, without warning—
A pulse.
Like something vast had exhaled.
The sand shivered beneath your feet. The wind staggered. And from deep inside you, the fox spirit—silent all this time—rose like fire spilling into the bones.
Tails you didn't know you had flared. Eyes that weren't yours opened. Your breath caught, and for a moment, the world looked wrong—too bright, too thin, like it might peel away if you blinked too hard.
You heard its voice in the sky.
> "He wakes."
The fox inside you growled—not in fear. In recognition.
And far away, on the rim of the world where the stars had not yet come, something stirred in reply.
> "He remembers."
You dropped to your knees. Not from pain. From weight. Memory surged—not your own, but the fox's. A war buried. A promise broken. A name swallowed by waves and darkness.
> The Moon Eater.
You didn't know the shape of it. Only the hunger. And the grief.
You barely noticed your cousin rush toward you.
"Hey! What the hell's happening to you?" he shouted, kneeling beside you. "You're pale! You look like—"
But he stopped.
Because he saw it. Just for a second.
The flicker of tails. The shimmer of gold in your eyes. The outline of something inhuman draped over your shoulders like a memory.
He swallowed hard, stood up, and backed away.
"I—I think you got panic attack."
You didn't respond.
"I'll go take some medicine. Just—just take care, okay?"
"W-wait me here." He said while trembling in fear that you might collapse
You wanted to stop him. To explain. But you couldn't speak. Not yet.
He left, and the silence wrapped around you again.
Above, the moon cracked through the clouds. And beneath it, a shadow writhed—like it had been watching you all this time.
The fox didn't speak. But its tails shimmered like fire caught in tide.
You understood.
This wasn't the war. Not yet.
But it had begun watching you again.
Just as the moon turned its face.
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