The sky was red.
Not the red of sunset - no, this was deeper, heavier. A crimson veil stretched across the heavens, and at its center, the blood moon rose like a wound that refused to heal.
You stood at the edge of the world, where land met the storming sea. All around you, the world had changed. Trees grew strange and twisted. Rivers reversed their flow. Animals moved in silence, sensing the unraveling of balance.
And above it all, the Bakunawa rose.
Coiling like a serpent of stars, its scales shimmered with moonlight. Its eyes - endless, ancient, grieving.
At its heart stood him.
The boy who once picked up your books.
The one who believed in you - then stopped believing in anything.
Your friend.
Now the serpent's vessel.
His voice broke through the hum of magic. "You still cling to those stories, don't you?"
You stepped forward, foxfire dancing in your breath. "They weren't just stories. You knew that once."
"I wanted to believe," he said, shaking his head. "In fox spirits, in balance, in fate. But where were they when everything fell apart?"
"They were watching," you said quietly. "So were we."
His eyes gleamed with pain. "I was done watching."
"And so you became this?"
He gestured to the storm above. "I became what the world needed. You hold onto myths. I hold power."
"You used to believe in the old tales. In the shrine, in the fox. In me."
He laughed bitterly. "You still don't get it. I didn't stop believing because I outgrew the stories-I stopped because they didn't save us."
You stared at him across the trembling ground. Two vessels. Two scars of a world at war with itself.
"I'm sorry," you said. "But I'll stop you."
A pause. Something softened in his gaze-but only for a heartbeat. "Then come," he said.
And the blood moon flared.
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