For thirteen years, Kuro had been crammed inside a too-small chest. For thirteen years, he’d run with tender human feet. For thirteen years, he’d huddled in the cold with only thin cotton covering him. For thirteen years, he ignored the simple truth:

His true body was divine.

He galloped through the alleys with his three fox tails extended. Kinks and knots worked themselves out of his back. His thick coat warded off the night chill.

Barriers proved no more than irritations. No crawling through alleys like a mouse. He crashed through the barrier gates, yipping with glee, just because he could.

The Capital was his city. These were his roads. This was his true self. This was where he belonged.

But he couldn’t stay.

He slowed to a trot and then stopped, hindquarters resting on the ground. He panted.

He couldn’t stay in the city. He couldn’t be anywhere near Ren. But he couldn’t leave for the forests. He couldn’t…

Kuro squeezed his eyes shut. He hadn’t planned. He hadn’t plotted. He’d just known he couldn’t hurt Ren by staying. Ren must have rubbed off on him.

He shook his muzzle, and sniffed out a leaf to return to human form. Running through empty streets when his fur blended into the night, when all the panicking humans were abed, was one thing. Creeping through the riverbank settlement searching for a den for the rest of the night was another. He groaned as he was shut into a too small container again.

One day, he’d have his own shrine, and he’d be free to run around in his true form all day long. One day, if he survived.

Back in the kimono Ren had given him, Kuro darted between row houses and shacks as he poked his head under their floors. He’d come too late. Sleepy but wary eyes peered out at him, glowing with reflected light. Fox and tanuki and chipped tea cups and other spirits crowded into the dens.

He trotted all the way to the end of the Riverbank Settlement, with the meanest shacks crowded together behind a wall. The riverbank continued, but weeds choked the land between the settlement and the blackened log fence of the Execution Grounds. Severed heads skewered on pikes stared at him.

Above the shacks loomed the abandoned sake breweries. The rice shortage had meant that rice prices had skyrocketed and the Shogun had put strict controls on how rice could be used. Most of the breweries hadn’t been able to afford the extra levies and had shut down. Their former owners would be living down in the muck in the shadow of their lost rank. The abandoned buildings would have made perfect refuges for spirits, except the samurai had warded the gates to imprison any liquor spirits born in the ruins.

Kuro trotted toward the bank anyway. Past the breweries, he’d reach the first shrine on Inari’s mountain. A thousand red torii gates would lead him to the Celestial fox dens. Not even the Shogun would dare to follow him there. He’d be safe, and fed, and warm, and—

Stolen novel; please report.

A cold wind buffeted Kuro, sneaking through the folds of his kimono.

—And his mother would drown him a second time, and this time, she’d make sure he was dead.

Kuro shuddered. He could never return there, just like he could never return to the Imperial Palace. At least Ren would be safe and warm.

He squeezed in between the wall and the last shack. Each breath crushed his body between the two, but at least it kept the wind off. Hugging his knees to his chest, he rested his cheek on the wall.

Was Ren searching for him, prey to wind and demon? Was he sleeping, Kuro forgotten, his limbs sticking out of his futon? How long before Ren forgot him?

“Don’t be stupid,” Kuro whispered to himself. He should be thinking about what he was going to do, not about Ren, if he wasn’t going to sleep. He’d have a few hours, he was sure. The one bridge between the Capital and the forest was lightly guarded at the break between shifts. With the sun peeking over the mountains, no demons would try to cross, and it was hours before any humans would hike down the mountain pass from the closest inn.

Except he didn’t have a checkpoint pass, and couldn’t fake one. When he’d snuck back into the Capital after learning to take human form, he’d tricked a human traveller out of his. But no one in the city had a pass. They wouldn’t even want one, since it meant they’d have to leave the safety of the barriers. Kuro didn’t want to leave either. He’d spent too many years hiding in the brush from the bigger demons sniffing around for weaker spirits to eat. He’d never slept more than an hour at a time, then. Even hiding in the Riverbank Settlement was a big step up.

The wall stood up and strode away.

Kuro fell to the ground. He jumped back onto all fours, bristling at the wall. He shook his fist. “Oi, I was resting on you!”

“And I was trying to sleep,” the wall spirit snapped back before lumbering further into the settlement, muttering about rude spirits leaning up against it.

Kuro whispered a scream of frustration. Without the security of the wall, the wind stabbed him.

He curled up more. He needed sleep to even attempt the checkpoint.

Soft cat paws padded up beside. “Aww, your human kick you out already, meow?” the Cat Girl said. “Did he find out you have fleas?”

“I don’t have fleas,” Kuro snapped back. Gah, he needed to sleep to get his full powers of mockery back.

“Fleabag, fleabag,” she sang, “about to kill his human, fleabag.”

He sneered at her. “I don’t have — wait, what?”

“Fleabag,” she repeated.

“No, the—” Kuro didn’t have the chance to finish.

An earthquake rocked the world with an earth-shattering boom. The tremor tossed Kuro into the shack. The wall buckled. Humans shrieked and tanuki barked.

Kuro scrambled away from the shack as the roof snapped. The other roofs rattled and groaned as they lurched like a frightened animal. Boards fell around Kuro, threatening to strike his head. He threw his arms over his head.

The world stilled as suddenly as the earthquake began.

Wait, no, not an earthquake. He peeked out of his arms. Earthquakes didn’t boom. That had been an explosion.

An attack? The city was being attacked?

Humans and spirits peeked out of their dens, panic widening their eyes as they demanded for someone to tell them what was happening. The shacks around him had collapsed, and bleeding humans pulled each other from the rubble with tears and sobs.

“You’re looking the wrong way, meow.”

Kuro turned back to her. She hadn’t lost her footing. She pointed up the bank, toward the north side of the city. Smoke billowed like thunderclouds.

“That’s…” he trailed off.

The Cat Girl licked her paw. “The Night Parade is attacking the Imperial Palace.”