It rained that night.
Not a thunderstorm—just a steady, whispering rain that blurred the edges of the world and made the trees weep. Ren lay awake on a futon in one of the upstairs rooms, the sliding door to the veranda left open so he could hear the rain tapping on the wooden deck outside.
He couldn't stop replaying Kanzaki's voice in his head.
The ember must either grow into a wildfire… or be snuffed out.
He turned onto his side, staring at the flickering shadows cast by the lantern on the table. Kiyomi was asleep in the next room, or at least pretending to be. She didn't really need sleep—not like humans—but she still liked to pretend, he'd noticed. Maybe it made her feel closer to something she'd lost a long time ago.
Ren eventually got up and walked to the veranda. The air was cold and wet. Mist curled through the garden below. The old plum tree swayed gently, its wet branches glinting in the faint moonlight.
He wasn't alone.
At first, he thought it was just a trick of the rain—a silhouette near the base of the tree. But when the mist shifted, he saw her clearly.
A girl. Standing barefoot in the grass, her long black hair soaked, her white dress clinging to her like fog. She stood perfectly still, her head tilted slightly, like she was listening to a sound only she could hear.
Ren's breath caught in his throat.
He didn't move. Didn't speak. Just watched.
Then she slowly turned her head toward him.
Her eyes—no whites, no color. Just deep, glimmering voids like polished obsidian.
Ren backed up a step. "K-Kiyomi—!"
But before he could say more, the girl vanished.
Not in a flash. Not in a blur.
Just—gone. Like she'd melted into the rain.
Kiyomi appeared beside him a heartbeat later, tails raised, eyes scanning the garden. "I felt it too. You saw her?"
Ren nodded, still shaking. "She was just there. Staring at me."
Kiyomi's face was tense. "Describe her."
He did, quickly—every detail he could remember. When he mentioned the eyes, Kiyomi went quiet.
"That wasn't a yokai," she said. "That was something worse."
Ren looked at her. "Worse?"
"She had Hollow Eyes."
Ren didn't know the term, but the way Kiyomi said it chilled him more than the rain.
"They're not spirits. Not fully. Not anymore," she explained. "The Ashen Court uses them. Children who were touched by the void. Emptied. Remade. They're like... dreamwalkers. They move between the cracks in the world."
Ren tried to process it. "Why was she watching me?"
Kiyomi glanced at him. "Because she's interested. And that's never a good thing."
They didn't sleep the rest of the night.
By morning, the rain had stopped, but a damp fog still clung to the trees. Ren's grandfather said nothing when told about the girl. He simply lit a stick of incense and nodded grimly.
"There will be more," he said. "Eyes in the dark. Voices in the rain. Once your fire stirs, the hidden world begins to notice you."
Ren sat across from him at the breakfast table, poking at a bowl of rice. "So what am I supposed to do? Just wait for something else to find me?"
"No," Kiyomi said from the doorway. "We need to stop hiding."
She stepped into the room, her usual smirk replaced by a rare seriousness. "You need to learn. Fight. Control the fire before it controls you. And that means going back to the shrine."
Ren frowned. "The one where we met?"
She nodded. "The spiritual flow there is stronger than anywhere else in this region. The seal that bound me has left scars—rips in the veil. We can use them to train."
"Train?" Ren echoed. "Train how?"
Her smile returned, sharper now. "I'm going to burn the fear out of you."
They returned to the shrine that afternoon.
The mountain felt different now. Not just alive—but alert. As if the land itself remembered Ren and had decided to test him.
They stood in the center of the cracked stone courtyard, surrounded by half-collapsed torii gates and overgrown roots. Kiyomi raised her hand, and a blue flame coiled into existence above her palm like a serpent.
"This," she said, "is foxfire. Pure spirit. It takes many forms, but at its heart, it's emotion. Will. Intent."
She gestured toward Ren. "You have fire too. But it's not kitsune-born. Yours is ancestral. Human. Tied to blood and memory."
Ren tried to focus, just like she showed him. Breathe. Feel. Call it forth.
Nothing.
"Close your eyes," she said. "Think of something you care about. Something worth protecting."
He thought of his mother—her hands, her laugh, the way she cried quietly at his father's funeral, trying to hide it from him. He thought of how lost she looked when Ren told her he was leaving for Autumn Hill.
Something sparked.
A flicker. A faint heat rising in his chest.
Then—light.
Not bright. Not blue like Kiyomi's. But a soft orange glow pulsing around his fingertips.
Kiyomi's eyes widened. "Good. Now hold it."
The moment he tried to, the light flared—and exploded.
Ren flew backward, landing hard on his back with a groan.
Kiyomi laughed. "Better. Pain is proof of progress."
He groaned again. "You really suck at encouragement."
She knelt beside him. "Get up, flamebearer. That was only the beginning."
But as they trained under the gray sky, neither of them noticed the pale girl standing at the edge of the woods, watching from the shadows.
She did not blink.
She did not breathe.
But her empty eyes flickered—once—and a whisper curled from her lips like smoke.
"He's not ready."
Then she, too, was gone.