The name drifted through the void.
"Asahi..."
It echoed not through air, but through something older—woven into the seams of fate itself.
Back in the temple of Yumeno, the night held its breath.
Tomo stared at the child—barely days old—his tiny chest rising and falling in steady rhythm. The candle beside him had gone out without warning, snuffed not by wind, but by something unseen. Something deliberate.
And for the briefest instant, Tomo had seen it again.
Red.
Asahi's eyes—bloodred, glowing faintly like the dying embers of a long-dead star.
Now they were brown once more. Innocent. Deceptively so.
Tomo clutched the scroll tighter. His old fingers trembled as he read the final line again:
If he remembers the eclipse, the cycle begins again.
He turned to the shrine door.
Click.
It had come from the heart of the temple—the inner sanctum. A chamber sealed for centuries, untouched even by the high priests.
But tonight, its lock had unlatched on its own.
✦ The Silent Chamber
Tomo stood before the door, each breath colder than the last.
The air inside the sanctum was stale and thick, as though the room had been exhaling darkness all these years. Dust rose in swirls, dancing in slivers of moonlight like faded spirits.
The sacred tapestries lining the walls—once still as stone—now fluttered softly.
In the center of the chamber, words had been etched freshly into the wooden floor. Ash, black and smudged, formed a message that hadn't been there hours ago:
The sky weeps in crimson. He must not remember.
Tomo's knees buckled.
Not prophecy.
Warning.
Someone—or something—was watching.
✦ The Mirror Breaks
Far to the north, in the frostbitten silence of the Forgotten Fortress, a tall woman stood before a fractured mirror. Snow howled outside, but inside, all was deathly still—until the glass cracked.
A single line.
Thin, jagged.
Ancient magic pulsed outward from it like a ripple across time.
The woman placed her gloved hand against the mirror's cold surface. Her breath fogged the glass as she whispered:
"He's born."
Behind her, a figure emerged from the shadows. An old man, spine twisted like gnarled wood, tattoos of iron spiraling across his arms.
"He carries it?" he rasped.
She nodded. "The mark. The talisman. And... the eyes."
The broken mirror shimmered, forming a blurred reflection—not of them, but of a candlelit room. A boy. A priest. A birthmark glowing beneath pale skin.
The cloaked woman watched in silence.
Then, her voice cut through the cold.
"We do not have much time."
✦ A Strange Growth
Back in Yumeno, time passed strangely.
Asahi—barely a week old—had begun to do things no infant should. His head turned with focus, eyes scanning walls as though reading the ancient scriptures carved into them. He giggled—not the light, random sounds of a baby—but deliberate. Timed.
Tomo dared not speak of it.
Instead, he began writing.
Scrolls upon scrolls, sent through hidden channels: to mountain monks, to desert seers, to the last remaining Mirror Cult in the East. Each letter asked the same question:
"Have you seen the Crimson Child?"
Most returned nothing.
Until, one fog-covered dawn, a white raven perched atop the temple roof. Its feathers shimmered silver in the morning light. Tied to its leg: a scroll bound in black silk.
Tomo unfolded it with shaking hands.
Seven words written in deep blue ink:
"He is not the only one who remembers."
✦ The Fox Awakens
That night, moonlight bathed the garden in silver.
Tomo carried Asahi out beneath the open sky. The boy's eyes sparkled at the stars, reaching out as if he recognized them.
The stone fox statue beside the shrine had changed again.
What was once eroded now stood flawless. Its surface gleamed as if newly carved, and its eyes… gleamed red.
Tomo blinked.
And the statue moved.
Not stone.
Flesh.
A real fox stood in its place, fur the color of dried blood, eyes like molten rubies. It gazed at Asahi—not with hunger, not with fear—but with something else.
Recognition.
It bowed its head low.
Then vanished into mist.
Tomo couldn't breathe.
He had read of such creatures in forbidden texts: Kitsune Guardians, said to have vanished after the War of Stars. Loyal to a ruler no one dared name aloud—the Crimson Emperor, lost to myth.
And now one had bowed to the child.
Tomo looked down at Asahi, nestled in his arms. The boy was asleep. Peaceful.
But the birthmark still glowed. And as Tomo leaned closer, he noticed something new:
A whisper.
Not sound. Not voice.
But a whisper in the bones.
"Do not let him remember."
Tomo clutched the boy tighter.
He was no longer just a guardian.
He was standing at the mouth of a storm.
And it had already begun to breathe.