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Chapter Text

To understand Ryomen Sukuna as he was, one must go all the way back to the beginning, to where the legend of the King of Curses first took root: a dilapidated thatch house listing dangerously at the village’s edge. 

The roof sagged under its own weight, exhausted by years of rain and neglect. The wooden supports had rotted through in places, giving the whole structure a precarious lean. The walls were warped and rotting, gaps stuffed with whatever materials the occupants could scavenge—straw, mud, torn cloth, anything to keep the elements at bay. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the crude smoke hole, carrying the acrid scent of burning weeds and damp wood that hadn’t wanted to burn in the first place. It was the kind of dwelling that even beggars might glance at and decide to take their chances elsewhere, which was appropriate, really, for the lowest class of Heian society.

From within came the sound of an infant crying. 

This wasn’t unusual. Infants cried. It was practically their sole occupation. What was unusual was the quality of the crying. Deeper. Resonating with something that lived in the spaces between human and not-quite, something that made even the village dogs whimper and slink away with their tails between their legs, as dogs will when they sense what humans refuse to see.

An elderly woman sat on a rough-hewn bamboo bench that looked nearly as ancient as she did, spooning watery rice gruel into a bundle of coarse fabric. The child within had a disfigured face, four red eyes, four arms, an extra mouth on his stomach that occasionally made sounds of its own. Twice the size of a normal infant, he’d almost torn his mother open when she gave birth to him, which had rather soured their relationship from the start. 

Terrified of his monstrous appearance, his mother couldn’t bring herself to touch him, let alone nurse him. “Demon child!” she’d hiss, backing away whenever his cries grew too loud. “Don’t bring it near me! Keep that thing away!” 

She said “it,” not “him.” That should tell us everything we need to know.

His father named him Hiretsu. “Vile.” It was less a name than a condemnation, and it turned out to be a prophecy for what he’d later become. But then, if one names a child “Vile” and treats him accordingly, one can’t really act surprised when he lives up to expectations.

His grandmother, whose weathered hands trembled as she prepared the watery gruel, muttered prayers under her breath. “The gods test us... we must endure... must not anger them further…”

The gods, if they were listening, offered no comment.

His grandmother forced each spoonful past his lips, careful never to touch his skin directly. “Eat,” she commanded. “You must live, or the gods will punish us worse. Take your food and spare us their wrath.”

He ate. He lived. The gods punished them anyway, as gods do.

Years of misery blurred past. He grew into a painfully thin child, belly never truly full, shoulders permanently hunched in a futile attempt to minimize his imposing height. His distinctive hair, which might have been striking if anyone had ever washed it, grew wild and matted because no one ever tended to it. Dirt and soot had turned it the color of old smoke. A crude eyepatch couldn’t fully hide the horror of his face, so he learned to keep his head down, to fade into shadows and corners where people might forget he existed. He forgot he existed sometimes, too. It made things easier.

He stuffed his mouth with whatever scraps he could find, searching through refuse piles behind houses, stealing food meant for dogs (who always seemed to eat better than he did), eating straight from the filthy ground, suffering every indignity, every cruelty, doing anything to survive one more day.

“Better than nothing,” he’d tell himself, licking grains of rice from filthy fingers. “Better than starving. Better than dying.”

(It wasn’t. But the thing about survival is that it narrows one’s perspective considerably.)

The village children were worse than the hunger.

“Monster!” they’d shout in voices shrill with learned hatred, hurling stones that left purple bruises blooming across his skin. “Demon child! Cursed thing!”

“I’m not,” he’d say, in the beginning. “I’m not a monster.” 

But the rocks kept coming, and eventually he stopped saying anything at all. Silence became his armor, though it protected nothing. Rocks hurt whether one screamed or stayed quiet. At least, silence denied them the satisfaction of his pain.

His father beat him day after day. Little Hiretsu never cried—what was the point?—just curled into a ball until it was over. He was long past pain. Blood matted his hair, indistinguishable from its natural color. A crimson crown for a king of nothing. 

He first discovered his strength when defending a mangy stray cat from a pack of village boys. The cat had been minding its own business, which apparently made it an acceptable target. He’d grabbed the oldest boy’s wrist. Not hard, he thought, just enough to make him stop. The bone snapped like a dry twig. The look of horror on the boy’s face was mirrored on his own. The boys ran screaming. The cat limped away. Everyone lost that day.

Despite the world’s relentless attempts to crush him, he’d grown into a man. Scarred and jaded and disgruntled, yes, but not yet the King of Curses. That would come later. For now, he was simply a young man who’d survived childhood through sheer stubbornness and spite.

He left what passed for his childhood home, gathering materials to build his own shelter at the edge of the forest where the villagers wouldn’t have to look at him. A mutual arrangement that suited everyone involved. Out of sight, if not entirely out of mind.

He was a giant of a man, even half-starved, known for never backing down, for hitting back harder than anyone foolish enough to strike first. The villagers who once tormented him now avoided him, their hatred tempered by fear of what those massive hands could do. They used him when they needed something heavy moved, when dangerous work needed doing.

“Oi, demon!” the bow maker had called one autumn morning. “Need firewood. Water too.”

“How much?” he’d asked, his voice rough from disuse and perpetual suspicion.

“A month’s worth of both. Do it, and I’ll give you a yumi and a quiver of arrows. Good ones.”

He worked for days, hauling loads that would have broken a lesser man, trudging through mud and rain without complaint, shoulders aching, hands blistered and bleeding from the rough wood and rope. When he received the bow, he disappeared into the forest and taught himself hunting through trial and error and a great deal of patience. Deep in the woods, he was a predator, though not the mindless beast the villagers imagined. He took only what he needed to eat or trade, never killing unnecessarily. There was enough death in the world already. He didn’t want to add to it for sport.

Every few days, he’d leave prepared game at his grandmother’s door: rabbits, pheasants, sometimes a young deer, always skinned, cleaned, ready to cook. Payment for those meager spoonfuls of gruel that had kept him alive. She never acknowledged him, never so much as opened the door while he was there, but the food always disappeared by morning.

The village craftsman hired him to repair a tilting shed that threatened to collapse with the next strong wind. When the rotted supports gave way, he threw himself over the smaller man as the structure came down. Wood broke against his broad back, leaving splinters embedded in his skin and fresh scars to add to his collection.

“Didn’t ask for your help,” the craftsman grumbled, but then taught him the basics of pottery.

Then there was the elder healer—a tiny, ancient woman who’d toppled into the river while washing clothes. He’d fished her out of the currents and carried her all the way home.

“Put me down this instant, you disrespectful oaf!” she’d squawked, beating ineffectually at his shoulder with fists like bird bones. “I am not some sack of rice to be hauled about!”

“No,” he’d agreed. “Rice doesn’t complain this much.”

That had earned him a good smack upside the head, but also some herbs for his trouble and an unexpected invitation to stay for tea. He could barely fit through her doorframe, had to duck his head and turn sideways just to enter. He started bringing her skinned rabbits after that.

“Think I’m too weak to hunt?” she’d demand, pelting him with small stones whenever he came near. “Too old and feeble to manage on my own? I’ve been hunting since before your father was born!”

Eventually, she let him help with her herb garden. “You’re doing it wrong,” she’d snap, grabbing his enormous hand to show him how to properly pull a root without breaking it. “Like this, see? Gently. Even you can manage gently, surely.”

He could. As it turned out, those massive hands that could snap bones and break wood could also coax medicinal plants from soil without damaging them.

When fever struck him down one bitter winter day, the old healer grudgingly tended to him in her home, dragging him inside with strength that shouldn’t have existed in such a small frame.

“Useless lump,” she muttered, pressing cool cloths to his burning skin. “Taking up space in my house, eating my food, disturbing my peace, sweating all over my good blankets.” The whole time she complained, she forced medicine down his throat, grumbling about foolish young men who didn’t know enough to come in from the rain.

He drifted in and out of consciousness, half-convinced he was dying. It would have been better for the world, perhaps. But she wouldn’t let him. She sat beside him for three days while the fever raged. He was delirious, muttering things he’d never say when conscious. She heard all of it and never mentioned it again.

Afterward, when he’d recovered, she taught him about herbs, which ones healed, which ones killed, which ones simply eased the kind of pain that went deeper than flesh. 

“Because no one else will ever help you,” she’d said, not unkindly. “And I won’t be here forever to patch you up when you do something stupid.”

The sake brewery provided steady work. The master brewer hired him for his strength, pure economics with no sentiment involved. One demon was cheaper than ten men and far more reliable. Demons didn’t complain about working conditions or demand time off for festivals. It was the brewer’s daughter who made those long days bearable. 

“Good morning, Hiretsu!” She always greeted him properly, with his name instead of the usual alternatives. Sometimes, she’d slip him treats, dango wrapped in leaves, tiny bottles of sake tucked into his palm when her father wasn’t looking. “You work too hard,” she’d say, smiling up at him as if he were just another person, just another young man. “Everyone deserves something sweet now and then.”

He didn’t know what to do with kindness, so he usually just nodded and looked at his feet.

From the shade of his favorite tree during rest breaks, he’d watch her move through the brewery yard and memorize the music of her laughter. When the coughing sickness took hold of her, he brought every healing herb he knew, even carried the protesting elder healer through the snow to treat her. 

“Some things can’t be fixed,” the old woman told him bluntly, after she’d examined the girl. “Not by medicine, not by prayers. Not even by demons.”

The girl died on a moonless winter night. He’d never told her how beautiful her smile was, never found the courage to speak the words that might have mattered. He left offerings on her grave every day for weeks—herbs, wildflowers, small wooden carvings. Her father burned them all. The message was clear enough. Even her death couldn’t bridge that gap.

Chapter Text

The old healer didn’t last much longer after the brewer’s daughter went into the ground. She knew her time was coming, so she made one final request when the mist hung low and gray over the village. 

“Take me to the mountain temple,” she wheezed. “I want to pray to Inari one last time before I die.”

“You’re not dying,” he growled back. Still, he did as she asked because what else was there to do? He couldn’t refuse a dying woman her last pilgrimage, even if she’d been tormenting him for the better part of a decade.

The journey took seven days, mostly because they had to stop every few hours for her to rest and catch what little breath she had left. He carried her on his back when the path grew too steep, her weight hardly more than a child’s now.  She complained the entire way, somehow finding the energy to criticize everything from his walking pace to his poor choice in campsites to the particular angle at which he held his shoulders, as though mortality were merely an inconvenience that needn’t interrupt her running commentary on his failings.

“This ground is too hard,” she’d mutter as they bedded down for the night, poking at the packed earth with a gnarled finger. “My old bones will turn to dust by morning.”

“Wait here. I’ll go find you a bed of silk cushions in the middle of nowhere. Perhaps the Emperor keeps a spare palace in these woods.”

“Don’t sass me, boy. I taught you better than that.”

“You taught me many things. Manners weren’t among them.”

When they finally reached the temple, she was still alive and grumbling, which relieved him more than he’d admit. At least, the stubborn old bat would get her prayers in. He’d carried her this far; it would be wasteful if she died within sight of the shrine.

The temple was no simple mountain shack with a crooked roof and a donation box, but a massive Shinto shrine dedicated to Inari, far grander than anything he’d expected to find clinging to such a remote peak. A path of vermillion torii gates cut a vivid gash through the forest green, leading to a main hall with its sweeping roof and wooden carvings. Stone lanterns, green with moss, lined the walkways.

And everywhere— everywhere—were fox statues.

They came in all sizes, carved from stone or cast in bronze, no two exactly alike. Some smiled serenely, others bared their teeth. One weathered pair seemed to be sharing a private joke at the expense of pilgrims. Another duo appeared to be mid-argument. They flanked the torii gates in pairs, stood guard at the corners of buildings, perched on roof edges watching visitors with knowing eyes.

“Look at you all,” he muttered to the stone army. “Smug little bastards, sitting pretty while the rest of us suffer.”

The foxes, being stone, declined to comment.

Ignoring his blasphemy, the old healer shuffled to the main courtyard. She pulled pieces of fried tofu from her pouch and laid them reverently before the largest fox statue. Unlike the others, this one stood alone, majestic and proud, its head held high with a regal bearing. Its stone tail curved gracefully upward, and in its mouth sat a small red stone, balanced perfectly on its tongue. Foxes were believed to be Inari’s messengers, and the old woman clearly hoped this offering would ensure her prayers reached divine ears.

While the healer prayed, he wandered the courtyard. The temple was quiet today, with only a few servants going about their duties. Unlike the villagers who either fled or stared, they nodded at him politely as they passed. The casual acknowledgment of his existence was... strange.

He distracted himself by counting fox statues, studying their various poses and expressions. Forty-three so far, and he hadn’t even explored the entire grounds. He wasn’t spiritual, hard to believe in divine benevolence with the kind of life he had. But something about these foxes intrigued him. 

In all his hunting, he’d never caught one. Not from fear of Inari, of course. He feared nothing, or told himself he didn’t. Foxes were just too clever, too quick, more trouble than they were worth for the amount of meat they provided. Now, with nothing better to do than wait for an old woman to finish her conversation with god, he wondered idly if Inari would strike him down if he managed to eat one of those sacred messengers. Might be worth trying, just to see if the gods were real.

One of the stone foxes seemed to narrow its eyes at him, but that was probably just the angle of the afternoon light. Probably.

He turned to check on the healer—to make sure she hadn’t expired—and froze in place. Beside her sat a fox, but no ordinary woodland creature. This one had silvery fur that seemed to shimmer with its own ethereal light, as if moonbeams had gotten tangled in its coat and decided to stay. Nine magnificent tails flowed behind it, and its eyes were molten gold. A visible ripple of power distorted the air around it. The old healer, deep in prayer with her forehead pressed to the ground, seemed oblivious to its presence as it delicately sniffed at her offering of fried tofu. 

Sensing his gaze, the fox turned to look at him, tilting its head in consideration. Those golden eyes seemed to pierce right through him, seeing past his eyepatch to the horror beneath, through his clothes to the extra arms bound against his sides, through every defense he’d built to the wounded core of what he was.

Then, still holding his gaze, its mouth curved in what could only be called a smirk. Gracefully, it reached out one paw and knocked over the water gourd he’d left beside the healer. The gourd clattered against the stone. The old woman startled, picking up the bottle with a confused expression, showing no sign that she could see the creature responsible. The fox’s smirk widened, immensely amused by its own prank and his shocked reaction.

So it was one of those things. And it was fucking with him. He scowled and started forward, ready to teach it a lesson about respect, divine messenger or not. He’d killed things that didn’t die. He could handle one smug fox.

“Please excuse her manners,” came a voice from behind him, smooth as silk and ancient as the mountain itself. “I assure you, she means no harm. Or at least, no permanent harm.”

He turned to find a woman in the formal attire of a head priestess: crisp white haori and crimson hakama, her dark hair arranged beneath an ornate headdress adorned with gold and jade ornaments. Her face bore the serene wisdom of middle age, with laugh lines around kind eyes that had seen things and chosen to remain kind anyway. The way she carried herself spoke of power, like a still pond hiding unfathomable depths.

It took him a moment to realize she was actually addressing him. People typically didn’t start conversations with the village monster. They crossed streets to avoid him, or spoke in hushed whispers when they thought he couldn’t hear, occasionally threw things and ran.

“You… can see it, too?” he asked hesitantly.

“Her,” the head priestess corrected. “And yes, I can see her quite clearly. That is Kyubi. I would appreciate it if you didn’t let her hear you call her ‘it.’ She can be quite touchy about such things, and her pranks get considerably worse when she’s offended. Last week, a visiting monk stepped on her tail, so she tricked him into thinking that his robes were possessed. He left in his underclothes.” The priestess paused, considering. “Kyubi’s a troublemaker by nature, but her heart’s in the right place.”

“What is she exactly?”

“A nine-tailed fox spirit, as I’m sure you’ve gathered. Very likely Inari Okami’s most powerful disciple, though don’t tell her I said that. Her ego’s quite healthy enough already.” The priestess smiled with the weary fondness of someone who’d been dealing with an incorrigible child for far too long. “And quite young for her station, actually. Terribly young.”

He frowned, glancing from the priestess to the smirking fox and back again. “Young?”

“Ah, that’s a curious story,” the priestess explained. “Fox spirits gain tails with age and accumulated power, you see. Most take centuries of dedicated study and spiritual practice to earn each one. Trials. Pilgrimages. Acts of great wisdom. It’s quite the ordeal. Kyubi here... well, she’s something of a prodigy in the spirit world. She reached nine tails far faster than anyone thought possible. Makes her a bit impulsive sometimes, like a child with too much power.”

“So you’re saying,” he said slowly, “that the most powerful fox spirit in Inari’s service is a spoiled brat.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” the priestess said mildly. “She can be mature and wise when she wants to be.”

He watched, transfixed, as Kyubi nuzzled affectionately against the still-praying healer, who remained oblivious to the powerful spirit now using her bony shoulder as a comfortable headrest.

“Can everyone here see her?” He gestured vaguely at the courtyard, the servants, the world in general.

“Not everyone,” the priestess said meaningfully. “Only those with the gift. Myself, the other servants in the temple… and occasionally visitors like yourself.” She began walking slowly along the stone path, expecting him to follow. “But this isn’t the first time you’ve seen things others can’t, is it?”

He glanced back at Kyubi, who had procured a piece of tofu and was now dragging it behind the largest fox statue. Curious about where this conversation was leading, he fell into step beside the priestess.

“No,” he admitted after a moment of internal debate about whether honesty was stupid or necessary. “I’ve seen other things.”

Horrible things. Grotesque things that writhed in corners and clung to people’s backs. Things that had convinced him he must truly be a demon, because why else would he alone see such horrors? Why else would the universe show him its rotting underbelly unless he belonged there? Now the ground seemed to shift beneath his feet as this priestess calmly confirmed she saw them too. That there were others like him, others who lived with this sight. No wonder the temple servants hadn’t flinched from his appearance. They were used to seeing terrible things.

“Those are called curses,” the priestess explained as they walked past rows of stone lanterns. “Manifestations of human negative emotions. Fear, hatred, grief, rage. All that darkness has to go somewhere, you see. And those of us who can see them? We are sorcerers.”

“Thought you were a priestess.”

She laughed. “I’m many things. Priestess, teacher, guardian, mediocre poet, excellent sake drinker. But ‘sorcerer’ is the root from which everything else grows.”

“Sorcerer,” he repeated the word, testing how it felt on his tongue, rolling it around like a stone to see if it had sharp edges. Not demon. Not monster. Not cursed abomination that should have been drowned at birth. Sorcerer. It changed everything and nothing all at once.

They walked in silence for a moment, past more fox statues. One of them definitely hadn’t been smiling before. He was almost certain.

“You should stay,” the priestess said suddenly, stopping to face him. “Learn more about our world. About yourself.”

“I won’t become a priest,” he warned, because that needed to be clear up front. “And I can’t pay for instruction or—”

“You wouldn’t have to,” she cut him off smoothly. “There’s plenty of honest work here. We could use a guard, for one thing.” She touched his arm lightly, and he was shocked to find no fear in the gesture, no revulsion. “You have tremendous strength, young man, but you’re capable of so much more. Stay. Learn. Train. Discover what you were truly meant to be. If you hate it, you can leave whenever you choose. Simple as that.” 

It sounded too good to be true—someone acknowledging his strength without fear, offering guidance without demands, welcoming him somewhere he might actually belong. There had to be a catch. There was always a catch. The world didn’t just hand out chances to people like him.

“Your people won’t want me here,” he said, gesturing awkwardly at his eyepatch, his towering frame, all the visible markers of his otherness. “I’m not… normal.”

“Neither are we,” she smiled. “We are sorcerers, remember? Normal is the last thing we aspire to be.”

His gaze drifted back to where the old healer sat peacefully, Kyubi now sprawled across her lap like an oversized, impossibly fluffy housecat.

“So… are they real then?” he asked quietly. “The gods? Inari?”

“That,” the priestess replied, her eyes twinkling, “is something only Kyubi truly knows.” She gently took his arm, guiding him back toward the courtyard. “Now come. Your elderly friend is welcome to stay as well. I’m called Hoshi-sama here in my formal capacity, but you may call me Tengen.”

Chapter Text

Despite Tengen’s generous offer, the old healer refused to stay at the temple, stubborn to the last breath rattling in her chest. “I was born in that house,” she’d wheezed. “And by the gods, I’ll die there, too. Don’t you dare try and change my mind, boy.”

So he carried her home and tended her until the end came as quietly as it does for all mortals, regardless of how many demons they’ve healed or how much wisdom they’ve beaten into stubborn heads. Following her wishes, he burned her body and scattered the ashes in the river where they’d first met.

“There’s your last bath, you cranky old hag,” he said, watching the ashes swirl away. “Try not to complain about the temperature.” His words drifted across the current, half-prayer, half-conversation with someone who could no longer argue back.

After cleaning her small house one last time, inhaling the lingering scent of dried herbs and touching the worn groove in the floorboard where she’d paced for seventy years, he gathered his meager belongings and headed for the temple. This wasn’t just about finding others “like him,” but the promise of becoming more than the village demon who did backbreaking work for scraps.

When he showed Tengen his true form—peeling away the eyepatch, removing the bindings that held his extra arms tight against his sides—she didn’t flinch.

“Will the others be afraid?” he’d asked, hating how small his voice sounded.

“That’s for them to decide,” she’d replied calmly. “Just as it is your choice whether or not to show them.”

He chose to wait. Small steps, he reasoned. Small, careful, non-threatening steps.  No need to rush. Too much, too soon would only end badly. It always did, in his experience, which admittedly wasn’t extensive but was consistent.

For the first time in his life, he slept in a proper bed with warm blankets. He was given clean clothes that actually fit his massive frame, clothes that weren’t threadbare and patched and held together by hope and increasingly desperate stitchwork. Tengen made him a better eyepatch from soft leather, one that didn’t chafe his skin raw, and showed him how to tie it properly. He could wash the dirt and soot out of his hair and tie it up like any other man might. The simple dignity felt revolutionary. His posture slowly improved, a process accelerated by Tengen’s constant corrections and her uncanny ability to materialize behind him whenever he slouched.

“Back straight!” she’d bark, smacking him between the shoulder blades as she passed. “You are a sorcerer, not a wilting flower!”

Life at the temple was pleasant, which was suspicious at first, but eventually he allowed himself to believe it. Each morning, he’d wake before dawn to sweep the courtyard and check the protective wards. The stone foxes seemed to watch him with increasing fondness as months passed, or perhaps he was simply projecting. He learned their individual quirks: which ones gathered moss the quickest, which needed regular cleaning from the presumptuous droppings of irreverent birds who didn’t respect sacred spaces.

The other sorcerers gradually warmed to him. They’d share meals together, swap stories of curse encounters. No one pressed him about his appearance or his past, or questioned why he avoided crowds on busy festival days. Sorcerers all had their peculiarities—one woman only ate white foods, another refused to speak on full moons, a third insisted on sleeping with his sword because it got “lonely”—so they accepted his strangeness without comment. 

During group training sessions, they’d pair up with him voluntarily, never complaining when his strikes landed harder than intended. Which was often, given that he was still learning the difference between “incapacitated” and “obliterated.”

“You’re holding back too much,” Tengen would chide, watching him pull his punches in ways that still sent his sparring partners sprawling. “They are tougher than they look.”

A voice whispered from the darker corners of his mind that they might not be so accepting if they saw what lay beneath his disguise. He ignored it the same way he’d once ignored the gnawing pain of hunger, by acknowledging it existed and then carrying on anyway.

His quarters, though small, became the first space that was truly his own. He hung dried herbs from the rafters—a habit learned from the old healer—and their scent reminded him that kindness sometimes wore thorns. He carved wooden figures in his spare time, mostly foxes, arranging them on shelves alongside scrolls and texts Tengen lent him.

Most of his time went to studying sorcery. Tengen taught him jujutsu fundamentals and combat techniques. While he hardly needed instruction in violence, it was nice to learn proper forms instead of just punching things really hard until they stopped moving. He absorbed knowledge like parched earth drinking rain. It didn’t take long for him to learn everything Tengen had to offer, even gaining full mastery over his own cursed technique. 

The temple, he discovered, was more performance than shrine. Tengen’s true work wasn’t honoring Inari, but containing the curses that swarmed the region, aided by her “priests” and “priestesses”—fellow sorcerers playing their roles in a long-running production for the benefit of ordinary people who needed their monsters properly categorized. The masses slept better believing the gods protected them. The sorcerers knew better, but did the protecting anyway.

Soon, he joined their exorcism missions to nearby villages and towns. No curse proved too powerful for him. Most didn’t even prove particularly challenging.

“Hoshi-sama’s finest student,” they called him with genuine respect, and he tried not to let it matter too much that he finally had a title that wasn’t an insult. 

Everyone wanted him on their teams, sought his tactical advice as if his opinions carried weight beyond the force of his fists. Even visits to his old village changed. People still remembered what he was, still felt wary, but now he was a “servant of Inari,” and they swallowed their disgust along with their prayers. Even demons could be useful, it seemed, if they served the right gods and didn’t make too much noise about it.

He found unexpected joy in small things. A hillside where red spider lilies bloomed each fall was his favorite meditation spot. He’d sit there for hours, cross-legged among the flowers that symbolized death and rebirth, watching them sway and finding peace he’d never known. The distant view of his village was a nice plus. From this height, his memories seemed smaller, more manageable. The past became just another landscape to observe rather than a wound that wouldn’t heal.

He even found something akin to friendship, oddly enough, with Kyubi, though friendship might be too generous a term for what amounted to benevolent tyranny. Unlike her aloofness toward other sorcerers, whom she regarded with the disdain reserved for furniture that had forgotten its place, she seemed fascinated by him. 

At first, she expressed this fascination through minor acts of mischief that bordered on psychological warfare. It began small. His sandals would be in the wrong place when he woke, perhaps facing the opposite direction, as if they’d spent the night having philosophical disagreements about which way was forward and had decided to permanently split over irreconcilable differences.  

Then, his belongings would migrate overnight on mysterious journeys. His water flask would be balanced precariously on a fox statue’s nose, wobbling just enough in the breeze to suggest it might fall at any moment but never quite committing to the act. Scrolls would be relocated to the temple roof where they fluttered like prayer flags, somehow never quite blowing away despite the wind that should have scattered them across three provinces.

Ink stones would be found buried in the herb garden. His favorite brush—the one with the perfect tip that never split—would vanish for days only to reappear inside his rice bowl, standing upright. His clothes received similar treatment. Robes would be found folded into origami cranes, each crease so precise they could have flown if they’d believed in themselves hard enough. Socks would be paired not with their matches but with completely random items: one sock with a teacup, another with a stone. 

Just when he thought he’d identified the pattern (there was always the suggestion of a pattern, tantalizingly close to comprehension), Kyubi would change the rules entirely.

As days passed, her pranks grew more elaborate. He’d wake to find every single one of his possessions had been moved exactly three inches to the left. Not randomly relocated, not hidden in impossible places, simply nudged slightly leftward while he slept, creating a subtle wrongness that took him nearly an hour to identify and the entire morning to correct. 

Another day, she threaded his obi through the wooden slats of his window shutters in an intricate pattern. The fabric wasn’t cut, wasn’t torn, just woven through the wood as though the shutters had grown around it. He spent an hour carefully working it free while she sat nearby, observing his progress with a critical eye.

She never broke anything, which made it infinitely worse. The precision of her pranks suggested intelligence and intent, a methodical campaign to drive him slowly mad through the simple act of never being able to find his things where he’d left them. 

This harassment continued for weeks. The other sorcerers began to notice his increasingly harried state, the way his eye had developed a slight twitch, the way he now checked behind him constantly. They’d exchange knowing glances when he appeared for training wearing mismatched sandals or searching frantically through the temple grounds at dawn. A small crowd would gather each morning, eager to witness Kyubi’s latest installation. Bets were placed on what would be relocated and where.

“Lose something again?” someone would ask with barely suppressed amusement. 

“My meditation beads,” he’d reply through gritted teeth as he scanned every corner of the training yard, knowing they could literally be anywhere in a three-mile radius.

They would inevitably be discovered hours later, each bead threaded onto individual blades of grass in the garden. The precision was maddening. The artistry was undeniable. The sheer audacity was breathtaking. He wanted to be angry, but part of him had to admire the commitment.

The final straw came when he found his belongings suspended from the temple’s ancient oak tree. Clothes, books, eating utensils, even his pillow—all hung from silk threads so fine they were nearly invisible. As always, nothing was damaged, nothing destroyed. Just impossible. Staring up at his entire life swaying gently in the breeze, he finally understood the message: Kyubi could rearrange his existence at will, and no lock, no barrier, no earthly defense would deter her. She was making a point, and the point was that she could.

Tengen found him there an hour later, still craning his neck at the display. “You know,” she said conversationally, “in my experience, fox spirits only put this much effort into someone they’re genuinely fond of. She could simply ignore you, after all. That’s what she does with everyone else.”

“This is fondness?” he asked, his voice hollow.

“Gods show affection differently than mortals do. Consider yourself blessed.”

“I’ll consider myself tormented.”

“That too. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.”

And so he trudged to his old village the next market day, enduring the suspicious glances and whispered prayers, all to purchase Kyubi tribute: fried tofu prepared with sesame oil, golden and crispy and exactly the way she loved it.

After that peace offering—presented formally, with the appropriate bows and the quiet acknowledgment of defeat—Kyubi became his constant companion in the way cats adopt humans they deem worthy of their attention. The relationship was clearly not one of equals. She was a god, however minor, and he was the devoted worshipper who happened to have opposable thumbs and access to the village markets. 

At least, his belongings stayed where he left them, a small miracle that he didn’t fully appreciate until it happened, until he woke three mornings in a row to find his sandals where he’d left them and nearly wept with relief.

Chapter Text

He bought Kyubi treats regularly now. More fried tofu, naturally. She had standards to maintain. He’d learned which vendor in the market fried theirs in the sesame oil she preferred, and which one she would reject with a single disdainful sniff. The first time he’d brought her the “wrong” tofu, she’d looked at him as though he’d presented her with a dead leaf and walked away, tails held high. He hadn’t made that mistake again.

He’d bring the tofu back wrapped in paper that quickly became transparent with oil, and Kyubi would smell it before he’d even crossed the threshold of the temple. She’d appear from wherever she’d been napping and sit with exaggerated patience, all nine tails arranged in a perfect fan behind her, the very picture of a fox who had never begged for anything in her life.

He’d unwrap the treat carefully, blow on it to cool it because Kyubi had no patience when it came to fried tofu and would burn her tongue otherwise (she’d done so once, and the accusatory look she’d given him had made it clear whose fault that was). 

He’d taken to watching her eat, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. There was something mesmerizing about it. First, the inspection: a thorough sniff from multiple angles, whiskers twitching as she analyzed its worthiness. Then, if it passed muster, she’d take the smallest, most delicate bite from one corner, chewing thoughtfully as though consulting some internal registry of every piece of fried tofu she’d ever consumed. Only after this initial assessment would she commit fully.

The sweet rice cakes were different. He’d found those at a different stall after asking the vendor which sweets might appeal to someone with discerning taste. “Oh,” the vendor chuckled. “That girl will eat you out of house and home, young man.” He didn’t correct the vendor that the discerning one was no simple girl, but a mountain god in her own rights.

Kyubi adored those rice cakes, not as much as the fried tofu, but the texture seemed to amuse her. She’d sink her teeth in and pull, sending up small clouds of powdered sugar that settled on her face. By the third cake, she’d be completely frosted, white powder clinging to her whiskers, her nose, the fur around her mouth. She never seemed to notice, or if she did, she didn’t care, not until the feast was over and she’d suddenly become aware of her undignified state. Then would come the grooming. She’d lick her paws and scrub at her face indignantly, like the sugar had applied itself to her fur through no fault of her own, and the universe owed her an apology.

He’d started bringing her new things just to see how she’d react. Little trinkets and baubles for her to investigate before inevitably batting them off whatever surface they occupied. She’d peer over the edge at the fallen object, tails swishing, as though she’d conducted a successful experiment in gravity. 

He bought her more things the following week. And the week after that.

All of the allowance Tengen gave him went toward Kyubi now.  Every coin. The sensible part of him had been thoroughly overruled by whatever part of him had decided that this imperious fox spirit was worth more than financial prudence. He should have been setting something aside. He wasn’t.

There was nothing left for himself, but then again, what did he need? He had his quarters, his scrolls, his training. He had everything that mattered. He had her. Somehow, without his quite noticing when or how it had happened, she had become the most important being in his life. 

Kyubi deserved the best he could offer. Which, he was painfully aware, wasn’t very much. He wasn’t wealthy. His allowance was modest, his prospects uncertain, his status as Tengen’s student the only thing of real value he possessed. But what he had, he gave to her. He brought her warm tofu and watched her eat. He bought her toys and watched her destroy them. He saved the shiniest coins from his allowance and thought: perhaps that ribbon seller will have something in blue this week. Blue looked good against silver fur. 

She had colonized his quarters for a long time. His futon was no longer his futon. It was her occasional resting place, which he was permitted to use when she wasn’t sprawled across it. She’d arrange herself directly in the center, all nine tails fanned out in a magnificent display of territorial sovereignty, while he hunched at the edge with his scrolls, trying to pretend this was a perfectly normal arrangement.

He had no idea where she’d been staying before this, before she’d decided to adopt him as her personal servant. There were various nooks around the temple, he supposed. The forest itself. Perhaps she’d had a whole string of temporary residences, each abandoned when they failed to meet her exacting standards. Perhaps she’d simply materialized into existence the moment she’d decided he needed managing.

The point was: she’d chosen him.

It was a strange feeling. People generally didn’t want him around. Oh, the villagers wanted his labor. They wanted him to haul and lift and dig and build, to be useful in the way that oxen were useful, present but not really there. The moment the work was done, they wanted him gone. Preferably before he got ideas about sitting down, or resting, or existing in their vicinity for longer than absolutely necessary.

But Kyubi wanted him around. Not for what he could do, but simply because… Well, he still wasn’t entirely sure why. Any sorcerer in the temple could go to the village and buy her tofu. Tengen made sweets for her regularly. Yet she wanted to be near him, specifically. She sought him out. Waited by the door of his quarters when he returned from his duties, as though his absence had been a personal inconvenience requiring his immediate attention upon return.

Which brought him to an important lesson he’d learned quickly: wanting him around did not mean he got to touch her. Oh, heavens, no. 

He’d tried to pet her once. Just once. She’d been sitting beside him, looking so perfectly soft and touchable that his hand had moved of its own accord, reaching for the plush fur along her back. For perhaps half a second, he’d thought he’d gotten away with it. Then her paw had materialized out of nowhere and smacked him squarely in the face. Mercifully, without claws and not hard enough to truly hurt, but with enough force to communicate: How dare you.

She had no qualms whatsoever about violating his personal space. She’d drape herself across his lap when he was trying to eat. She’d climb onto his shoulder while he studied. She’d press her cold nose against his cheek when he was trying to sleep. But these were privileges she granted to herself, and herself alone.

Touch was something she initiated. Always.

When she wanted affection, she’d leap at him, demanding attention with small chirping sounds. And he would sit there, perfectly still, hands hovering uselessly in the air until she butted her head against his palm. This was the signal. This was permission. Only then could he stroke the soft fur behind her ears, could run his fingers along her spine while she stretched and sighed. 

Occasionally, she brought him “gifts” in return.

The first had been a rock. Not a particularly interesting rock, despite what her proud expression suggested. It was gray. It was roughly the size of a plum. It had presumably been a rock for quite some time and seemed content to continue being a rock indefinitely. She’d placed it beside his pillow, then sat back and waited for his reaction. He’d thanked her. She’d looked pleased.

The rock was followed by other rocks, each selected according to criteria known only to Kyubi. A flat one. A round one. One that might have been purple in certain lighting, though he suspected this was wishful thinking on his part. Another had a hole through the middle, which he had to admit was moderately more interesting than the others. She seemed especially proud of that one, and he made appropriately appreciative noises while internally wondering what one did with a growing collection of stones.

He kept them in a small basket. She checked on them periodically, ensuring he hadn’t thrown them away. He wouldn’t have dared.

Then came the shiny objects phase.

A broken hair ornament, its decorative flower missing half its petals. Three coins of different denominations, one of which didn’t match any currency he recognized. A small bronze bell that no longer rang, having lost its argument with whatever had dented it so thoroughly. A shard of mirror that showed his reflection in disconcerting fragments. An actual gold ring that made him genuinely nervous because it looked valuable and someone was probably looking for it.

She presented each treasure with the same ceremonial gravity, and he accepted them with what he hoped was appropriate reverence. He did not ask where or how she’d acquired them. It seemed safer that way.

Once, she brought him what appeared to be someone’s lunch—still wrapped in its cloth, still warm—which she dropped at his feet while he was practicing calligraphy. He’d stared at it. She’d stared at him. Somewhere in the temple compound, he imagined, a sorcerer was discovering his meal had achieved enlightenment and vanished from the physical plane. He’d returned it to the kitchens, inventing a story about finding it on the path. Kyubi had watched this act of treachery with slitted eyes.

But the mouse. The mouse was when he realized she’d fundamentally misunderstood how humans worked.

She’d brought it to him at dawn, which was already a terrible time for gift-giving as far as he was concerned. He’d been deeply asleep, dreaming of something that had probably been pleasant before it was interrupted by a small, insistent paw tapping his cheek. Then again. Then a third time, with claws slightly extended.

He’d opened his eyes to find her face approximately three inches from his own, whiskers tickling his nose. And held gently in her mouth was a mouse. A live mouse. Still squeaking. Looking at him with tiny, desperate eyes that suggested it had already had a very difficult morning and would like to lodge a formal complaint.

Kyubi made a proud, muffled sound around her mouthful of rodent. Look, her expression said. Look what I have brought you. Protein. Fresh. Still moving. I am an excellent provider, see?

For a long moment, he simply stared. The mouse squeaked again, dangling from her jaws. One of its little paws was making futile swimming motions in the air.

“Kyubi,” he said carefully. “That’s a mouse.”

Her eyes narrowed. Obviously, they said.

“A live mouse.”

Yes. The tail-waving intensified.

“You want me to... eat it?”

She made an encouraging sound. Her head bobbed in what was unmistakably a nod. What else?

“Raw?”

Another nod, more vigorous. The mouse’s squeaking reached a higher pitch.

He sat up slowly, running through his options. Accept the mouse and somehow explain to a fox spirit why humans didn’t eat live rodents for breakfast? Refuse and risk offending her? Pretend to eat it and hope she didn’t notice?

“I’m very honored,” he began, in the tone of someone delivering regrettable news. “Truly. This is a very fine mouse. Clearly you’re an excellent hunter.”

Her tails fanned wider. She was preening.

“But humans... we don’t actually eat mice. Even fresh ones. It’s not— We can’t— Our stomachs don’t—” He was making this worse. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate— Look, I’m just going to—”

He took the mouse from her—gently, trying not to think about the small wet patch of fox saliva now on his fingers—and crossed to the window. The mouse seemed to understand it was being rescued. It went very still in his palm, barely breathing. He opened the shutters and released it into the garden below, watching it streak away into the undergrowth.

Kyubi wasn’t pleased. He had failed to appreciate fine cuisine. He had rejected her offering. He was, her entire body suggested, the worst thing that had ever happened to her in several centuries of existence.

She refused to look at him for an entire day afterward. When he tried to apologize, she turned her head. When he offered her fried tofu, she sniffed it as though it might be poisoned, ate it anyway, and then returned to ignoring him. By evening, he’d apologized six more times. She’d acknowledged precisely none of them.

He slept alone that night. She didn’t return to the futon until the following evening, and even then, she claimed only the very edge farthest from him, her back turned, her tails wrapped around herself. It took three days and an entire plate of sweet rice cakes before she forgave him. Her expression suggested she was only forgiving him because she’d grown bored, not because he’d earned forgiveness.

She never brought him another mouse. He never rejected one of her gifts again. When she brought him a beetle the following week, he kept it in a small box until it died of natural causes, and then he buried it in the garden with what he felt was appropriate dignity. Kyubi supervised the funeral. She seemed satisfied with his behavior.

Tengen had mentioned once, in passing, that fox spirits with enough tails could speak when they wished to. That they could shape-shift into human form when the mood struck them, as easily as he might change his robes. It was apparently something they did at parties to mess with humans, or when they needed thumbs.

The comment had lodged itself in his mind. He had, admittedly, wondered about it. Late at night, when Kyubi was curled against his side. Occasionally, when she was doing something particularly fox-like, such as grooming her ears or chirping at birds through the window or attempting to fit her entire body into a bamboo basket half her size.

What would she look like as a woman, hypothetically?

Would she still have silver hair the color of moonlight on snow like her fur? Would her eyes remain that divine molten gold? Would she be tall or small? Would her smile hold the same mischief?

Would she even be a woman at all?

Really, why had he assumed? She could be a man. Could be neither, or both, or something that defied categorization entirely. Natural spirits like her were older than human conventions about such things and they weren’t bound by such tedious considerations as consistency, either. Perhaps she’d be beautiful. Perhaps she’d be plain. Perhaps she’d be whatever shape best suited her purposes, which would probably involve maximum inconvenience to everyone around her.

Though when he really sat with the question, turned it over in his mind like one of the rocks she brought him, he realized something: gender had never been relevant. 

She was Kyubi. Complete. Entire. Requiring no modification or clarification.

She was a force of nature. She was what chaos looked like when it decided to have a physical form. At least, that was how he’d always thought of her. She contained multitudes and also very specifically contained herself. Attempting to imagine her as anything other than exactly what she was felt rather like trying to fit the ocean into a teacup. 

Kyubi had smacked him right then. Not gently, either. A solid paw to the nose. Stop it, foolish mortal. 

He’d yelped. She’d sat back, her tails swishing in a specific pattern he’d learned to recognize as the fox equivalent of smug laughter.

Could she read his thoughts? He didn’t know. He suspected it was more that she could read him, every micro-expression, every shift in breathing, every telltale sign that his mind had wandered somewhere she found either boring or offensive. She’d had centuries to learn how to interpret humans. He’d had months to learn fox. The playing field was not level.

The thing was: she had never transformed. Not into human form, not even partially. Had never spoken in human language.

This was not an inability but a pointed refusal to accommodate the mortals around her by shrinking herself into something more palatable, more comprehensible, more convenient for their limited imaginations. She would not translate herself into their language when she had a perfectly good language of her own.

They would have her as she was—tails and fangs and claws and bad attitude—or they wouldn’t have her at all. There would be no compromises.

He found it strangely inspirational, this absolute refusal to diminish herself for others’ comfort. She was a fox. She had decided she was a fox. Not because she couldn’t be anything else, but because this was what she wanted to be, and that was the end of the discussion. The world could bend or break around that decision. It was not her concern which it chose. If it made anyone nervous when she trotted through the compound, well. They could be nervous. She would be napping.

It was a lesson he was still learning, this business of taking up space. Of not apologizing for the shape of himself. Of understanding that making others comfortable was not the same as making things right.

Kyubi made it look possible. She made it look like the only sensible way to move through the world. Maybe someday he’d learn to do that too. For now, he’d settle for not getting smacked quite so often.

(She’d sneezed in his face, then, which rather ruined the philosophical moment. But the lesson remained.)

Kyubi’s silence suited him fine, anyway. Speech would have complicated things, made demands, required responses he wasn’t sure he could give. With Kyubi, there was only presence: the warm weight of her beside him, the soft sound of her breathing, the occasional thump of a tail against the ground when something pleased or displeased her.

They spent long afternoons among the spider lilies on the hillside. He’d sit with his back against the tree, reading or meditating or simply existing, while Kyubi lounged beside him in a sprawl of silver fur and supreme unconcern, inevitably crushing several flowers beneath her considerable bulk.

“Careful, Kyubi,” he’d say without much hope. “You’re squashing them.”

She’d respond with a yawn, showing off an impressive set of fangs before stretching out languidly to squash a few more. The world was full of flowers. There would be more flowers next year, and the year after that, flowers unto the ending of the world. But there was only one Kyubi, and she would take up as much space as she pleased.

He never pressed the issue. Somehow, watching her claim space so unapologetically made it easier to believe he might be allowed to do the same.

Sometimes he’d glance over to find her watching him with those golden eyes. In her gaze, he felt seen without being judged, understood without having to explain himself. It was perhaps the closest thing to unconditional acceptance he’d ever known. Not because she didn’t see his differences, but because they didn’t matter to her. They weren’t flaws to be overlooked or forgiven or graciously tolerated. They were just... facts. Features. Parts of the landscape of who he was.

She never flinched when he removed his eyepatch to rub at tired eyes, nor showed any disgust or that careful neutrality that was worse than either. When he stretched out his extra arms after long study sessions, working out the cramping that came from keeping them folded away, hidden beneath layers of cloth and pretense, she’d readjust her position to accommodate them, perhaps draping herself across one or two if they happened to be convenient.

If anything, she seemed to prefer his true form. She’d position herself deliberately where the extra hands could reach her, angling for maximum scratching efficiency. Would purr louder when all four arms were employed in petting her, as though this was simply the correct and proper number of hands a person should have, and anyone with fewer was clearly making do with inferior equipment.

Fox spirits, apparently, had little patience for pretense. They’d spent too many centuries watching humans lie to each other and themselves to find any charm in it.

The seasons turned. Spider lilies bloomed and withered. Snow fell and melted. For three peaceful years, this was his life. His strength was respected, not feared. No one called him demon or monster. The words still existed in the world beyond the temple walls, he knew, but they couldn’t reach him here. This place was sacred.

He had a home, a purpose, a fox spirit who had annexed three-quarters of his futon and considered this a reasonable compromise and would fight him for the remaining quarter if she felt he was getting uppity about ownership. On good days, he might even call it happiness—carefully, quietly, without drawing too much attention to it in case someone noticed and decided to take it away. 

Even the voice in his head that whispered about rejection and betrayal grew quieter, reduced to occasional murmurs easily drowned out by temple bells and Kyubi’s contented purring as she claimed yet another portion of his futon.

They’ll turn on you eventually, the voice would hiss on bad days, when old injuries ached or memories surfaced. They always do. It’s only a matter of time.

But then Tengen would nod approvingly at his progress. Or the older sorcerers would invite him to share tea. Or Kyubi would bring him another rock. And the voice would quiet again, retreating to whatever dark corner it lived in, waiting.

Three years. Long enough to feel permanent. Long enough to forget that nothing ever is.

For a precious span of time, it really seemed like this peace could have lasted forever. Like he’d finally found his place in the world, among people who saw him as more than the sum of his monstrous parts. 

But fate, as it often does, had other plans.

Chapter Text

The catalyst that would birth the King of Curses arrived on a spring morning, though naturally no one recognized it for what it was. The temple bells had just finished their morning song when a young sorcerer came pelting across the courtyard, breathless and grinning from ear to ear.

“Hiretsu!” he called out, his voice giddy. “There’s a woman asking for you at the main gate! By name!”

The other sorcerers, who had been scattered around the practice yard in various states of exhaustion from their morning drills, suddenly found themselves possessed of remarkable energy. Within heartbeats they had descended upon him with the merciless enthusiasm of men whose lives contained far too much training and not nearly enough scandal.

“Oho? A secret lover?” one of them crowed, nudging him with a sweaty shoulder.

“And such a pretty one, too! Saw her on my way from the kitchens,” another added, waggling his eyebrows in a manner that suggested he’d been practicing the gesture for just such an occasion.

“Here we thought you were devoted only to your duties!”

“Who would have imagined? Our stern brother, conducting secret romantic affairs!”

“Perhaps all those trips to the village weren’t just to appease Kyubi-sama as we believed!”

He stood in the center of this barrage, confusion filling him. He rarely interacted with anyone outside the temple walls. His life was contained within these grounds. The outside world had largely forgotten him, and he had returned the favor. Who could possibly be asking for him by name?  More to the point: why?

The woman waiting in the outer courtyard was young, dressed in simple but well-made clothes, the garments of a family with some prosperity but no pretensions to grandeur. Something about her tugged at a thread of his memory, but he couldn’t place it. She had a gentle face, eyes downcast in proper modesty, hands clasped nervously before her.

“Hiretsu-san?” she ventured uncertainly. “I… I hope you’ll forgive my presumption in coming here...”

“Do I know you?” he frowned. He didn’t mean for it to sound quite so blunt, but subtlety had never been his gift.

She twisted her hands together, the knuckles white. “Not… not directly, no. I am the youngest daughter of Master Taka, the sake brewer. You worked for my father several years ago, before you came to this temple.”

The brewery. Yes, he remembered. The back-breaking labor of hauling barrels, the endless hours cleaning vats, the cloying smell of fermented rice. But this woman...

“My... my sister,” the young woman continued in a trembling voice. “My older sister. She spoke of you often, in those days. Before she… before the sickness took her, she told me that if I ever needed help, I should seek you out. She said you were an honorable and kind man, that you would surely help me, if I asked.”

The memory clicked, not of this woman, but of another one with the same delicate features and doe-like eyes. “You look like her,” he said neutrally.

Tears spilled down the woman’s cheeks. “Father means to marry me to Lord Ishida. He is thrice my age and known to be cruel to his wives. There have been three already, and none of them lived long enough to bear him an heir. But he offered a great fortune for my hand, more than Father could refuse. I… I cannot…” She choked on a sob.

“What are you asking of me?”

She collapsed into another bow. “Help me escape. Please. I only need safe passage through the mountain paths, just to the next town, or the town after that. I have relatives in the capital, my mother’s sister, and she will take me in. But I will never survive the journey alone. If you could just escort me far enough, I swear I will trouble you no further. I know it is too much to ask, especially since we have never properly met—”

Looking at her, all he could see was her sister’s face. The person who’d shown kindness to the village demon. The one he’d failed to save, because what use were his powers against simple sickness? What good was strength when all it could do was break things? Here was a chance to repay that debt, a way to quiet a nagging failure that had followed him for years.

“When?” he asked quietly.

“Three days hence, before dawn. Father will be away on business in the next province.”

“There is a shrine near the old cedar grove. Meet me there at first light. Bring only what you can carry.”

The woman bowed low again, so low and so many times. “Thank you, thank you, I will never forget this kindness, I will pray for you every day, I will—”

“Go now,” he cut her off gruffly. “Before you are missed.”

As she hurried away, he felt a sense of certainty. A simple act of kindness, a duty to repay an old debt. He had no way of knowing this would be the last noble decision he’d ever make. He had no idea that he’d just pulled the loose thread that would unravel his entire world, and a good portion of the world beyond it.

On the dawn of his departure, with Tengen away attending to some dreary court matters, he sought permission from the temple’s most senior sorcerer—an elderly man who managed the temple’s daily affairs. The old sorcerer, so ancient his skin looked like brittle parchment stretched over bone, granted his leave without question, barely looking up from the scrolls he was meticulously transcribing. 

A grunt emerged from somewhere in his desiccated chest. A hand waved vaguely in what might have been blessing or dismissal. Honestly, it was difficult to tell and he clearly didn’t care which interpretation one chose. Bureaucracy at its finest, really. He could have announced he was leaving to become a traveling noodle vendor and likely would have received the same response.

Before leaving, he made what he told himself was a practical detour to the gardens, though really he simply wanted to. Kyubi was draped over her favorite slab of granite, tails swaying lazily.

“I’ll be gone for a few days,” he announced to the fox spirit, because one did not leave without informing the great Kyubi of one’s plans. That way lay sulking, and a sulking nine-tailed fox was a tedious thing indeed. 

She cracked open one golden eye, regarding him with an expression that held both ancient wisdom and complete, utter disinterest in whatever minor drama he was currently entangled in. Her response was an ear twitch—the left one, which was the dismissive ear—and a profoundly bored flick of one of her tails. The second tail from the left, if he wasn’t mistaken, which was her “yes, yes, I heard you” tail.

Mortal affairs held little entertainment value for a creature who had watched centuries pass. He could practically hear her thoughts in the slowness of her yawn, which showed every single one of her very white, very sharp teeth. Oh look, a mortal is doing mortal things again. How tedious. Do wake me if anything actually interesting happens, which it won’t.

“I’ll bring you back some fried tofu from the village market,” he added as a strategic afterthought.

Ah. That got her attention. 

Both eyes were open now. A rumbling purr vibrated through her as she deigned to allow him the tremendous privilege of scratching behind her ears where her silver-white fur was softest and she was, despite all evidence to the contrary, still fundamentally a creature who appreciated a good ear scratch. 

Don’t you dare die on the way, then, she seemed to communicate through the intensity of her purr and the way she pressed her head more firmly against his hand. I will be exceedingly cross if I don’t receive my tofu. I might even knock over that vase you’re inexplicably fond of. 

He scratched under her chin for good measure, receiving another rumbling purr that sounded like distant thunder. “Noted,” he said solemnly. “I shall endeavor to remain alive and tofu-procuring.”

He set out with a light pack containing little more than rice balls, a water skin, and a few coins for the promised tofu. The journey to his old village was uneventful, but what awaited him at the shrine would change everything. The scene that greeted him was straight from hell itself. And he would know. He’d been called a demon often enough to have developed some expertise on the subject.

The young woman lay crumpled on the ground, her body beaten beyond recognition. Blood had soaked into the earth beneath her, turning the soil black. Her face was crushed, limbs twisted at unnatural angles. He rushed to her side, but her skin was already cooling. No breath stirred her chest. No pulse fluttered beneath his fingers. She was dead. Too late. Again, he was too late.

A twig snapped in the trees. The trap sprang. 

Men emerged from the surrounding woods, led by a portly noble in expensive silks that strained across his belly. Lord Ishida himself, looking remarkably pleased. His companions numbered perhaps a dozen—retainers, guards, and various hangers-on. Their grins were triumphant as they pointed accusing fingers.

“The demon returns!” “Look! He’s killed her!” “We caught him red-handed!” “Monster! Filthy beast!”

They had discovered the young woman’s plans. Perhaps she had been careless, perhaps someone had betrayed her, perhaps Lord Ishida was the sort of man who kept very close watch on property he considered his. They’d followed her here. When she refused to submit, Ishida had struck her in rage, one blow too many. To cover his crime, he’d ordered his men to mutilate her corpse, then left her body as bait. They had been waiting to frame whoever she was meeting, probably expecting some peasant boy, some childhood sweetheart they could dispatch and blame.

They’d gotten lucky. It wasn’t just any man who had walked into their trap, but the village demon himself. Who better to blame? Who would question it? Who in their right mind would ever believe the demon’s word over that of the revered Lord Ishida, generous landowner, pillar of the community?

The men advanced, weapons drawn. He barely saw them. All he could see was her face—so like her sister’s—now battered beyond recognition. Rage rose like bile in his throat. All the years of prejudice, of being called demon while these respectable men committed true atrocities in the light of day—it all came crashing down. They called him demon? Oh, he would give them their demon.

The slaughter was brief. Lord Ishida died first, since this had all been his idea. Then, his men, all cut down to bloody chunks before their screams could fully form. Limbs separated from bodies. Heads rolled like dropped fruit. It should have been satisfying. It should have felt like justice. 

It wasn’t enough. Because she was still dead. He had to save her. He had to try.

Desperately, he licked her blood from his hand, then bit deep into his palm. He let his blood drip between her cold lips, trying to force his technique to take hold, trying to will her body to accept what he was offering, even knowing it wouldn’t work on the dead. Again and again he tried, even knowing it was futile. He couldn’t stop trying, couldn’t accept another failure, couldn’t stop seeking a miracle that wouldn’t come.

The villagers found him like that—covered in gore, surrounded by dismembered bodies, hunched over a mangled corpse with blood smeared across his mouth and chin. The fact that he was still in the process of licking blood from his fingers probably didn’t help matters.

Their screams pierced his skull.

“The demon! He’s eating her!” “The demon is eating people!” “Kill it!” “Monster!” “Death to the demon!”

They rushed him en masse. Numbers gave them the courage to act on the decades of festering hatred. Farmers with pitchforks. Merchants with knives. Even a few old women with kitchen implements. Their shouts were deafening, making it impossible to think. 

He needed to concentrate. Needed to think. Needed to save her. They wouldn’t let him save her.

He cut them down. 

Women grabbed children and fled as blood painted the ground. He barely noticed. More men arrived and he dealt with them too. There was no rage. All he wanted was silence. 

He held her body until the last warmth left it, until rigor mortis came and went, until the sun set and rose again. When he finally lifted his head, he was drenched in blood from head to toe. It had dried in his hair, cracked on his skin, stiffened his clothes. The ground around him was littered with severed limbs and mutilated corpses, easily fifty or sixty bodies, maybe more, he hadn’t been counting. A scene worthy of a demon. 

They’d finally gotten the monster they always said he was.

Chapter Text

The temple sorcerers arrived as one unified force. They surveyed the carnage with cold eyes that held no surprise, no horror, no shock whatsoever. This bloodbath, their expressions suggested, merely confirmed what they had always expected to find. What they had perhaps been waiting to find.

“Did you kill these people?” 

The question came from one of the more senior among them, a man he had once considered almost a friend. He didn’t sound accusatory or disappointed or angry. He was simply seeking confirmation of a foregone conclusion.

“Yes,” he replied truthfully. There was nothing left to lie about. The evidence was fairly comprehensive on that point.

No further questions came. 

No one asked why. No one sought explanation or context for the field of corpses. They didn’t need to. They’d already decided his guilt long ago before the first drop of blood was shed, probably years ago, possibly the very first day he’d walked through the temple gates. 

In perfect synchronization, they surrounded him. Everyone moved seamlessly, each knowing their exact role in what was to come. Their movements were too precise to be improvised, too coordinated to be anything but extensively rehearsed behind his back. Some carved sigils into the blood-soaked earth with the tips of their blades. Others began chanting in ancient tongues. Hand signs flew in complex patterns.

In an instant, an eight-trigrams seal materialized around him. Though he’d never seen this specific ritual performed, his knowledge of jujutsu theory told him what it was: a sealing ritual crafted specifically for him. Worse than the seal was the sudden, searing agony from the steel bands he wore on his wrists and ankles. They burned against his skin, not with heat but with something far more insidious, the sensation of his strength being drained away, pulled out of him.

Those bands had been Tengen’s gift. 

He had cherished them so deeply, had seen them as precious symbols of acceptance. Every other sorcerer in the temple wore similar ones, and when Tengen had presented him with his own set, when she’d fastened them around his wrists with her own hands, his heart had swelled with pride and a sense of belonging he had never known. He’d never once removed them, terrified that doing so would remind everyone of his otherness, his status as an outsider. He’d worn his chains willingly, a dog grateful for its collar, desperately seeking the approval and acceptance he’d never found anywhere else.

The temple was a prison. His “brothers” and “sisters” were wardens who had spent years practicing his execution while he slept trustingly among them, comparing notes on his weaknesses over tea. 

Tengen hadn’t offered sanctuary out of kindness or even pity. She’d recognized his power and decided he needed to be contained, studied, and eventually eliminated. Keep your enemies closer, he understood the saying now. Tengen had kept him close indeed, using his strength for her own purposes while cataloging his weaknesses, preparing for this precise moment when they would finally put down the demon they’d only ever pretended to accept.

It had all been a lie. Every smile, every shared meal, every word of encouragement, every pat on the shoulder, every time someone had called him “brother.” All of it. A lie.

The eight trigrams pulsed brighter as the ritual neared completion, the air crackling with energy, each chant a hammer blow against his soul. There was no doubt what would follow once he was fully bound. He fought against the restraints with everything he had, screaming as agony lanced through every cell in his body. Blood streamed from his eyes. The pain was beyond anything he’d imagined possible. Death’s cold fingers squeezed tighter around his heart with each labored beat.

In what he believed were his final moments, he cursed himself with every foul word he’d ever learned and a few he invented on the spot. 

What an absolute fucking fool he’d been. 

So naive, so desperate for a scrap of belonging that he’d walked willingly into this trap. His thoughts turned to Kyubi. Had she known? No, impossible. Even now, facing death, he couldn’t believe she’d been part of the deception. She was too direct, too honest in her disdain for human complications. She had never pretended to be anything other than what she was, had loved him for what he was. The only one who ever had.

Who would bring Kyubi her favorite fried tofu now? The kind from that one stall, cooked in toasted sesame oil until it was crispy on the outside and soft within, the kind that made her purr so loud the ground vibrated. He supposed there’d be no village left to make it, after what he’d done. No stall, no vendor, no one left who remembered the recipe.

Would she miss him when he was gone? Would she wait by the gate for a few days before accepting he wasn’t coming back? Would she knock over that vase after all, just out of spite? Would she even notice his absence, or would she find another rock to nap on, another source of fried tofu, another few centuries to while away?

The very ground beneath them all began to tremble. It started as a vibration. Then it built, and built, until the earth itself was shaking with the arrival of something ancient and absolutely incandescent with fury. Something that made even the sorcerers pause in their chanting, glancing at each other with the first flickers of uncertainty.

Through blood-blurred vision, he saw her.

Kyubi stood before him in her full, towering form, shielding his body with her own. The ritual affected her even more severely as a cursed spirit. Her fur rippled and smoked as the seal cut into her, yet she planted herself firmly between him and his executioners. Her hackles rose, ears pinned forward, nine tails lashing the air. Her growl vibrated through the earth itself and into the marrow of their bones, rattling something primal in every person present that screamed predator, run, flee. 

He’d never seen such fury in her golden eyes, never imagined she was capable of it. He tried to tell her to run, to save herself, but couldn’t form words through the pain. All that emerged was a wet, choking sound.

A young sorcerer took a hesitant step forward, hands held up in a placating gesture, as though Kyubi were some dog that might be soothed by gentle words and a calm voice. 

“Kyubi-sama, please,” he pleaded, and to his credit his voice only shook a little. “You must understand. He has gone mad with bloodlust. He has slaughtered innocents. He must be put down now, before it’s too late.”

Kyubi snarled. Stand. Down.

The sorcerers exchanged grim, resolute glances. The decision was made in a heartbeat. In their calculation, she was acceptable collateral damage. One fox spirit with a bad attitude for one rampaging demon—a fair trade for the greater good. They’d probably write poems about their noble choice later, about the difficult decision they’d been forced to make. They resumed their chanting, redoubling their efforts.

The ritual was designed to drain even the mightiest power source. But Kyubi was more than mighty. Among spirits, she was a prodigy. Inari’s strongest disciple, Tengen had called her. 

With a roar that shook the heavens and sent birds fleeing from trees a mile away, she slammed one paw into the earth. The impact sent shockwaves radiating outward, cracking the ground in a spider-web pattern. An impossibly vast torrent of raw cursed energy poured from her into the seal. The ground split as she forced more and more power into the breaking point. 

The sigils glowed white-hot, then fractured under the strain. Even Tengen’s best work couldn’t contain the great Kyubi of Hida when she decided she’d had enough of human foolishness. The seal crumbled, and his shackles along with it. 

He was free. But the price was too high. 

Drained completely of cursed energy now, Kyubi’s physical form dissolved into wisps of white mist that swirled around him once like a final embrace. He felt the ghost of her warmth, smelled the scent of her fur—clean snow and forest and moonlight. Then she was gone, returned to whatever realm spirits go when their physical forms can no longer sustain them, if they go anywhere at all.

His only true family, the only one who’d never doubted him, had sacrificed her very existence to set him free. 

Something fundamental broke inside him then. Not cleanly, like a bone snapping, but the way a foundation cracks. Everything that had held him together, that had kept him human despite everything, simply... ceased.

He rose to his feet, unbound and hollowed out. He killed them all. Every last sorcerer who’d played a part in Kyubi’s death. Some tried to fight. Some tried to flee. It didn’t matter. The results were the same.

She wouldn’t have approved, he knew. These were people she’d watched grow from children into adults, had cared for in her own aloof way, smacking them when they were foolish, purring when they brought her offerings, tolerating their affection with the air of a queen enduring peasants. She could have killed them herself but chose to give up her own life instead of taking theirs. She’d shown more kindness than they deserved.

But Kyubi was gone now. And with her, so was mercy. Nothing mattered anymore. It was all ash and smoke and lies anyway.

He burned the village to the ground. Every house, every shop, every structure that had stood while they called him demon and feared him and finally proven themselves right. He watched the flames lick the sky and felt nothing. Then he burned the temple. He watched as the halls where he’d trained went up in smoke, as the gardens where Kyubi had napped turned to char.

Let it all burn. 

From the ashes, Ryomen Sukuna rose, born of betrayal and blood, of humanity’s bottomless hatred and a single fox spirit’s unconditional love. 

The world would bleed for what it had taken from him. He would make certain it bled slowly.