The last thing she remembered was a cold rain.
It hammered the pavement in silver sheets, clinging to her clothes as she ran through the narrow alley. The streetlights had long since flickered out, leaving only the wet neon glow from the main road behind her. She didn't even know why she was running, only that she had heard a scream, sharp and desperate, from somewhere deeper in the alleyway.
A scream that wasn't meant for her, one she shouldn't have chased, but she had.
It was the wrong place and the wrong time. She knew, she had read stories like this and it only ended with the MC paying the price.
She reached the end of the alley, breath clouding in the frigid air. Her shoes skidded slightly on the slick concrete as she turned a corner and froze.
A figure stood hunched over another body, rain smearing the red pooling beneath them. A man? A woman? She couldn't tell, only the silhouette mattered. It was dark, wrong, almost like a shadow coming to life.
Lightning split the sky and the figure turned towards her with a deliberate ease.
For a moment, she thought she saw its face and the scream died in her throat. Fear crept up her spine and she stumbled backward, causing her feet to slip.
She felt as though the air itself tilted in a sickening lurch. The side of her head struck the corner of a brick wall with a sharp, hollow crack. White burst across her vision and darkness swallowed it whole.
A fleeting instinct told her she wouldn't get up again.
For a moment, she thought she would not be able to get up again, that this would be the end of her miserable and lonely life. But, before her consciousness could be swallowed whole. She heard a voice.
"Oh, child of wandering fate…"
"Come home."
The voice was soft. Almost ageless. Neither male nor female. But it wasn't the voice of the figure she had seen earlier; this did not sound human at all.
'What is going on? Am I going to die like this?'
Before her thoughts could wander any further, another whisper followed, closer now.
"You are not done; follow the light. Not the world you came from?"
She wondered what it meant and what was going on, but all she could feel was a chill and the pain coursing through her head. She tried to move her fingers, but they didn't respond. Her breath left her in a shudder and fear gripped her heart.
"A—are you okay?! Someone call an ambulance!"
Voices swarmed around her, muffled like sound underwater. A pair of hands pressed cloth to her side, trying to stop the bleeding that refused to listen.
Her name had been Aurelia Vance, though in that moment her name didn't matter. What mattered was the warmth leaving her body.
Aurelia tried to speak. "I am okay... it's fine, I can still..." but her breath caught on a sharp edge of pain, and her vision shuddered.
She wasn't supposed to die. She was twenty-two. She had deadlines. Rent. A half-finished sketchbook to take care of.
This wasn't supposed to be her story's end.
"Aurelia! Stay with me—hey—look at me!"
But her eyes had grown heavy. The world blurred into streaks of red and white, sirens in the distance stretching thin like the last thread holding her here.
And then, she wasn't here at all.
She did not know why tears came to her eyes, not when she had lived the life of an unwanted girl child in a family where men were always right and ruled.
'I was never enough, not after Mom died. I was nothing but a burden to Father, his mistake, a female instead of a male. Maybe this was my fate. Wrong place. Wrong time." She thought.
And yet… Part of her hoped she would still be wanted, even though it was a foolish wish.
At the same time, the rain stopped. She did not know what was going on, but it felt as though she was floating.
No weight. No cold. No pain.
Below her, the world she had lived in stretched out like cracked glass, shattered pieces drifting away in the dark. She knew instinctively she couldn't go back, even if she wanted to.
Something or someone, had severed her tie to it.
She was dying or she had already died.
Then a single point of light appeared before her chest. It flickered, shimmered, and then unfolded like a blooming flower.
"Choose," the voice whispered again. "Do you cling to a broken fate… or accept a new one?"
The light stretched out to her, brushing softly against the faintest remnant of her soul.
Her answer came without hesitation. "Please... Anything. Anywhere, just not in a life where I have to feel shame for being born...
The moment she accepted, the world around her shifted into black and white, as though it was dissolving.
When she woke, she didn't recognize the air.
It was warmer. Softer. Alive in a way she couldn't describe. Scents she had no words for danced through her senses, earth rich with dew, leaves humming with an energy that she did not recognize.
She tried to inhale, and her lungs expanded differently. Too flexible and small?
Her eyes snapped open and the bright light almost blinded her. Her brows furrowed, everything felt wrong. Every flutter of wind trembled through her fur—
Her fur?
She looked down and her eyes widened in shock. Paws. They were small, delicate, snow-white, and tipped in faint silver. Her body was tiny, no bigger than a housecat, though shaped wrong in ways she instantly understood were right for what she was now.
Her ears twitched instinctively at the rustle of leaves.
A ring of soft grass surrounded her, a clearing bathed in pastel light. Flowers glowed faintly, as mist curled around ancient stones etched with symbols older than language.
In the center of it all, faint sparkles still drifted around her, remnants of whatever ritual or calling had pulled her here.
She stood on trembling legs. Her balance felt unfamiliar, but natural instincts guided her easily.
A whisper of movement brushed behind her. She turned and her body went frigid.
A tail?!!!
A single, fluffy fox tail, white as moonlit snow, swayed lightly behind her, shimmering faintly as if woven from silver threads.
"What the hell is this?!!"
That's when she noticed she was no normal fox. A Nine-Tail Seedling Fox. A species whose future evolution was whispered in myth.
But who had summoned her?
And why? Was she dreaming or was this her new reality?