The fox in the grove.

The portal shimmered, and with it, the last of the fiends withered away, leaving only the fox-tailed woman standing before it, her heart pounding with anticipation, fear, and a promise of reunion.

On the other side was a hidden world, a pathway leading to the far reaches of the Last ascension mortal plane—to another continent where her beloved had been missing for over a century.

The woman, with jade white hair, foxy ears, and a moonlight tail as graceful as the celestial disc of the night, pondered with a scowl. It was thirty seconds over the promised time.

…No matter. She had waited two hundred years. What harm were a few more minutes, days, centuries?

The woman sensed another rip in the void a hundred miles west, but a thunder of life and darkness engulfed the newly spawned fiends before they could truly live. Her simulacrum had been hard at work for months, securing this morsel of land from the corrupted creatures. But the continent of madness was a never-ending cesspool of evil; voidfiends and chaosfiends alike popping out from thin air to have at each other.

The portal shimmered. The fox-tailed woman’s figure rose higher to meet the descending glows of light. At long last, her heart would be complete—

“Boring.” A childlike voice echoed. A lady voice.

The fox-tailed woman stopped in her tracks.

“You did come. I lost the bet.”

A pristine figure. Petite, no taller than a sapling, the top of her head barely at the fox-tailed woman's chest. She was as youthful and delicate as a fresh spring bloom. Yet so alluring, so bewitching. So innocent.

Spirit qi, mired by the dao principles of space and time, danced around her innocently to aid her teleportation.

Three more spots of light coalesced behind the little girl. A yao maiden of the whaledragon clan, and a celestial darkness engulfing myriads of stars in the shape of a demure goddess. A living primordial.

And…

"Dare you not believe our champion once more?" The whaledragon maiden raised her chin triumphantly; the little girl huffed before stomping her feet. The primordial kept quiet, staring at the fox-tailed woman with starry eyes. Evaluating. Appraising.

The fox-tailed woman sensed a voidfiend skewer through the neck of one of her shell-shocked simulacrum.

The final figure came to be, and the portal closed with a crystal chime as though it announced the arrival of an emperor. Golden robes, sword brows, the gait of a hero. There was nothing but yang in sight as the tall man came forth on a course of fire and light and mist and vermilion, ablaze with the presence to subdue reality. He grinned, then flew down to the fox-tailed woman while his entourage of women looked on with interest, envy, and contempt.

"Zhen'er!" With shoulders broader than the heavens and an imperial grace that denied all challenge, the man embraced her in his touch. A touch so hot and electric, like lightning coursing through her body and liquefying her insides. The hug from her beloved melted all her ice. The heat from his body radiated on her so strongly that she imagined, just for a split second, the warm yang of his qi caressing her frigid yin, until the chilling reality set in again. She knew that the warmth was just an illusion.

The tall man ran his hands through her long, lustrous hair to the very end. It was a touch she dearly missed; so long ago had she last laid her eyes on his pure, loving countenance.

But the purity was gone. The chastity all but ruined, mired by the yin taints of others.

The fox-tailed woman dared not look at him. Aghast, she did not move, did not reciprocate. She almost did not believe her own eyes.

Her beloved did not come alone.

***

The weaved man.

Elsewhere,

“Phew! I made it in time.” In the grey world devoid of movement, a tiny humanoid figure made of neon threads of gold waved her hands grumpily. The cracked windows, walls, and computers mended themselves, and blood flowed back the floor and up the mangled corpses.

Silence reigned.

In no time, the dismembered corpses were whole again. His family, friends, and the scientists of the research institute.

But time did not move. He was just a floating orb of light trying to escape the trauma of seeing his bastardised body tear his loved ones to ribbons.

“Hi! I’m Moira.” The witch-hat-wearing thread-girl said. She flew in front of Jung and blew a kiss. His terror melted away like summer ice.

“W-W-Wha-!”

But the confusion remained.

“At least you can talk now,” Moira said. She flew around his orb-like body while rubbing her chin. “Yes, yes! You look like a good man.”

Om in, Om out.

Jung breathed in and out with the tunes of his favourite songs. He forced himself to concentrate on the musical beats and the soft humming vibration. It relaxed him. Slightly, but just enough.

This orb-body can breathe! Om in; I volunteered for the latest virtual reality tests by my nephew’s institute. Om out; it worked! I moved for the first time in decades! Then they scanned my brain, captured the fluclight… The AI… The AI!

“The artificial soul took over my body!” Jung shouted, and the fairy thing giggled.

"Close." Moira pointed at the tube-like machine. It was a silver tube filled with gears and mechanisms, emitting a faint azure light. Protruding pads at the base were used to connect it to other devices. Thin robotic arms spun and pulled the gears inside while silver circuits adorned the top, each spark of wire carrying its own unique meaning. The instrument resembled a harp, with numerous wires branching out from a central point like roots. It had angular and rigid features and many delicate accents and curves.

"The moment this contraption created the artificial soul by scanning yours, it sent a blaring alarm through the universes and attracted our uninvited guest to Gaia." Said Moira.

Jung’s now restored body was strapped to a million wires inside of the contraption again, as though he had not suddenly turned into a monster and killed all his—

Om in, Om out. Aaaaaa—!

“The weird portal thing!” Jung remembered. “Something crawled out of it.” This talk with Moira helped keep his mind off—dammit!

“A creature from a lower dimensional universe. A bone god of some kind. It ate the artificial soul, and then it ate yours and took over your body. The rest… well, I’ll let you om in and out for a while longer.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

Moira flew up and chanted a strange melody. There were other orbs, souls, floating above each of the corpses.

No! They are alive. This Moira being turned back time to save them… right?

His hopes were not dashed. The orbs sank into each body. Jung could feel their life returning.

“I think I’m calm now,” He said.

Moira flew back. “Good! You must have a lot of questions.” There was something strange to her expression.

“I. What happens now?” Why did you not send my soul back to my body yet?

Moira looked away. She could definitely read his mind.

“Thank you,” Jung quietened his tone. He did not mean to sound accusatory, not least to his saviour. He had been living a life of the dead for the last nineteen years anyway. Death to him was a release. But he wanted to know what would become of his family. “Thank you for saving the most important people in the world to me. Please ask if there is anything I can do to repay you.”

“You are a good man,” Moira said. “The creature is not dead.”

Jung lost his hard-fought calm.

“I sealed it in the contraption, inside the artificial soul in your body. But I can’t kill it. As I said, it’s a god. And gods are tricky.”

“Can it escape?”

“Mother Gaia, I hope not. But there is a way to kill it once and for all. I’ll need your help.” A colour of sadness clouded Moira’s golden visage. “The artificial soul alone could not let the creature live in our universe. Gaia would squash it in microseconds. It needed a suitable native host to integrate itself.”

Jung remembered what Moira had said before. “You mentioned it was a bone god? Oh.”

My damned disease.

“Bone attracts bone. Aspect attracts aspect, a divine formula. Your muscles have been all but calcified, making you the best host possible. It was a strange series of coincidences. The creature was already in a limbo of alive and dead. This act was probably its last grasp at life to escape its home universe. If it wasn't so weak, I couldn’t have sealed it away so quickly. And since it has partially integrated into Gaia already, I can’t simply fling its godsoul back the way it came. No god can, not even Gaia herself.”

“So I brought it here.” I am keeping it here.

“Hey!” Moira liked saying hey. “It was a multifaceted cause and occurrence. Don’t make the fallacy of negligence of common causes, dear Jung.”

Jung laughed. The last book he read was about informal logic.

“So it was bad luck. Wait, The Moirai, the Greek goddesses of luck?”

Moira blushed. “Singular. And the Greek goddess of the fates! And I don’t control the whole universe’s fate. There are many other divinities of destiny and fate and luck and so on, eternally.”

“Sorry.” Jung said, “The fallacy of irrelevance. Let’s get back on topic. I figure I can help kill this monster for good?”

“If it dies in your body, it stays dead.” Moira nodded. “But the body’s original soul needs to stay away … You don’t have to go along with this! I won’t force you or trick you. I am not Loki.”

“What will you do, if I say no?” Jung did not believe the alternative solution would be simple.

“I’ll have to seek out other patients with your disease and ask if they want to volunteer.”

“If they all say no?”

“Then Tartarus.” Moira shrugged. “Or the Narakas. Or Gehenna.”

Jung trusted Moira, but he did not know why. She could calm him with a flying kiss and read his mind, but Jung had this unshattering belief that Moira spoke the truth. Jung wanted to believe that Moira did not control his mind to think so. She could have overridden his will with mind control if she was such a being. To make him go along with her request.

“Thanks. You’re sweet.” Moira blushed again. It was strange, the pink hues on her thread-formed cheek.

“I didn’t have long to live anyway,” Jung decided to see this through. “What’s going to happen to my family? I can’t imagine dying and reviving is a good experience. In the Greek mythos, the revived are always changed in strange ways.”

“There will be side effects. I wiped their memories, though experiences like this live on in nightmares. But! I promise,” Moira caught his tiny soul in her embrace and flew towards the machine. “I will care for them. I’ll bless five generations with the luck of royals. Especially your nephew. His team was the fifth to create artificial souls in a non-magical and unique way! Sarasvati, Thot, and Athena at least will not let him pass before his time.”

“If I die, I don’t think his team will dub that a success.”

“That’s the thing, sweet Jung.” Moira giggled and dove into the machine. “You won’t die.”

“… You said you would not trick me!” This time it was Jung who blushed. Gosh, and I was acting like a noble martyr!

“But I didn’t. I only said the creature had to die in your body, not you.”

They were back in the virtual world. A lush green depicting the central Chinese plains of the Tang dynasty. His nephew created this background at Jung’s request.

Nineteen years. That’s how long Jung suffered from Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva, a rare disease that changed his muscle into bone. He lost his ability to move seven years ago. Five years ago, he lost his senses of smell and taste—then eyesight, hearing, and touch.

To live and breathe in life-realistic air, water, and soil again should have been the greatest moment of his life. He walked, jumped, sat down, and cried. It was the greatest moment of his life before the portal appeared.

The portal was an unassuming thing, dark and cracked like a rip in space. It was not a feature of the landscape. Foreign, alien, evil.

It hovered above a miniature fox shrine, which also wasn’t a Tang dynasty feature. But Jung liked the Inari legends.

“There is a valence to the universes,” Moira explained, pointing at the cursed circular shape.

“Multiverses?”

“Universes. Multiverses are different.” Moira accepted his apology. “At equilibrium, each universe is disconnected by the quantum barrier. Usually, the universe the bone god came from would be nothing but a baseless imagination; a hypothetical, unreal, and parallel reality that may or may not exist. They are as real to us as the fictional world of Star Wars. We can’t exist simultaneously, for in between, there is the event horizon of existential perception.

“But now there is a portal, and one soul from that side escaped here and observed our universe. As long as there is this imbalance, more of these uglies can find their way to this side.”

“Oh god. You want to transmigrate me?”

“Oh, goddess.” Moira giggled, correcting his exclamation. Moira liked giggling. “And no. You want me to transmigrate you. And the moment your soul observes their universe, it will restore the equilibrium and erase the valance difference, saving the day! Yay!”

“I…” Jung stammered. “There are creatures like the bone god on that side.”

“Definitely.”

"Will you give me a mission? Revenge? Reverse invasion? Will I remember you, my nephew, or my family?" Jung wondered if this was his elder sister's uncertainty before her wedding night. Probably not.

“Mother Gaia, why would I want to take up more work?” Moira tutted. “Better to cut off their reality from ours forever. You won’t have a mission. Just live your life however you wish. As for your memories, well, come here.”

Moira plucked Jung from the air again and kissed his, forehead? The top part of his soul sphere.

“My gift to you.” She smiled, but it waned in a second.

Not knowing where or what he would be, especially being purposeless, scared him. But it was better than being a paralysed fossil. Endless possibilities, now that’s a compelling phrase.

“I want to say goodbye to my family.”

“I can’t let them talk to you as a soul; there’s a good reason mortals are ordinarily disallowed to interact with the supernatural. And I can’t put you in your body unless you decide to turn back. The creature is trapped inside of it. And you can still turn back.” Her fingers were made of golden, metallic threads, but they felt warm on his soul. “Time needs to move soon too. Chrona is at her limit.”

“I’ve made my choice.” Jung cleared away the doubts. He trusted Moira.

“You are a man of your word.” Moira clapped three times. Jung felt a part of him break; the link connecting him to his mortal flesh. The next second, a roar unlike any he had heard screeched out. No, he had heard it before, just forgotten—when the creature had hijacked his body and devoured his being.

I’m angry.

“Don’t be. I killed it. A changeling will take over your body and live pretending to be you for six months. After which he, you, will pass on peacefully. Let no one say that Moira doesn’t provide extra service to her best customers!” Moira smiled again. It was a beautiful smile, not the kind given by sleazy saleswomen. “This is goodbye.”

Jung nodded. He was ready. He felt the surroundings change. Golden threads swirled around him, humming softly with an otherworldly power that vibrated through his body. The ethereal melody they created was comforting yet eerie, like a lullaby from another world, filling the air with a soft, soothing music that surrounded Jung with a feeling of peace and security.

The gold then carried him to the portal, before weaving across him like armour. As they settled on his orb-skin, he felt the vibrations emanating from them morph into a comforting embrace and energy, filling him with courage and warmth. Despite the uncertainty surrounding him, he felt safe and at ease, embraced by something larger than himself.

“Goodbye.” He said first to his family. He could sense their souls breathing outside this virtual world. Stuck in time but not for long. Jung’s favourite song that had been playing in the background resumed ever so slightly. He heard, felt, and bade farewell to the final tunes that made him feel alive.

Om in, Om out. How truly rare and beautiful it is, that I had them as my family.

“The universes will be cut off forever. But your light will carry on endlessly, even after... your passing.” The goddess of the fates whispered, joining him in humming the sad tune. The hopeful tune. “But… no information will pass from that side to this… or vice versa, hereafter.”

Jung’s senses grew muted. His soul orb melted into liquid light and entered the portal as though he was a star being devoured by a black hole.

"Remembering might take a while, but please trust my blessing. You'll be safe, and then guide yourself to yourself. I made sure that fate won't bother you too much in that regard!" But Moira's voice was soft; it soothed his qualms.

“Goodbye.” He next said to her.

“I hope you like my gift. You don’t know what big a favour you did us. You deserve this holiday.”

The last thing he heard was Moira’s quiet sob. With shortness of breath, she said, “Bye, Jung; we will miss you.”