Lilith rose to greet the stranger and bowed to the real guest of the shrine. Ruby stumbled back, scrabbling to get away from whatever it was that sat before her sister. A white fox, as large as a wolf hound and brandishing nine tails bushy and half-aflame in the twilight.

“What the hell is that?” Ruby reached for her sword, but when Lilith raised a hand to stay her action she rested a palm on her rapier’s hilt. “Lilith, what is it!”

“This is a kitsune, a guardian kami who serves the Kami Lord Inari.” Her matter of fact tone did little to ease Ruby’s nerves.

“Why is it…here?”

“The correct question is why am I here.”

The kitsune moved around Lilith, its paws floating off the ground and distorting the fabric of reality in its wake. It moved unthreateningly towards Ruby, head low, tails bunched together and stopped on the bottom step leading away from its shrine. It sniffed the air, then bowed a head.

“It won’t harm you.”

Ruby looked at her sister, then the fox, then her sister again.

“That’s you?”

Lilith nodded.

“When we destroyed the Jurugumo the veil between our world and the kami’s realm fell. Outside the Comb Mountains, nobody in Akashima has seen a kami for decades. When I found the shrine, I found this kitsune at death’s door, a pup with a single tail clinging to the memories of the tree.”

The kitsune purred when Ruby patted it gently on the nose, and when her fear faded, she moved closer to nuzzle its neck. It was warm and cold to the touch at the same time, and the fur on its back was softer than clouds.

“It sensed that I carried the Greater Oni in my heart and we fought. Both at death’s door, I offered my heart to it, so that it could feed off my piety and regain its strength.” Lilith sat on the step. With the moonlight behind her it cast her in a foreboding light. Ruby realised her sister’s hair was silver now, and that her skin shimmered with faint traces of kanji.

“What does that mean, feed off you?” Ruby climbed the steps again and sat next to Lilith. The kitsune curled into a ball at the foot of the shrine and watched them gingerly with a single, effervescent golden eye.

“I remember something about myself when we bonded. That I, by Lao Sheng’s side, was once a kami. I was reborn as something to protect people who could not protect themselves, as we all have been remade since Oblivion cursed us.”
“You never spoke of this before.”

“Too many lives to speak of, Ruby. I hadn’t the good fortune of your privileged position. I had to fight, tooth and nail to protect people I love. To safeguard my home.”

“Akashima owes you a great debt because of that.” Ruby’s gaze drifted back to the kitsune.

“Finding him again reminded me who I am. What I am.”