“Um… hi, I already have a girlfriend! She’s waiting for me at home, so could you get out of the way please?” I asked as politely as I could, trying to keep my voice calm. It was a bluff. A desperate one. But sometimes you had to throw whatever you had at the monster and hope they blinked.

  Chiisana blinked. Then tilted her head. Then blinked again, slower this time. Her eyes shimmered with confusion, amusement or maybe disbelief. It was hard to tell with her. “Girlfriend?” she repeated, rolling the word on her tongue like it was some rare delicacy. “You think… that’s going to stop me?”

  I straightened up, pnting my feet. “Yup. She’s got bck hair, really dramatic fir, makes weird noises when she draws, and would probably try to strangle you with a ribbon if she saw you getting this close. So if you could scoot about three feet that way…” I gestured vaguely toward the trees, “that’d be great.”

  Chiisana didn’t move. But she did look intrigued. “Bck hair? Hm. Sounds unstable. I like her already.”

  My stomach tightened a little. I tried not to think too hard about what was happening back at the inn. Yuzu had drawn me smiling that morning, lounging in bed, a little doodle of hearts floating above my head while she left and returned in the afternoon, a simple drawing message for me to stay still at the inn which I had broken.

  What if she had returned already? Would she open the door to that quiet, empty room and feel a twist of panic in her chest? Would she think I’d run off? Been kidnapped? Eaten by bandits? Or would she just sigh, make a new doodle of me napping on a roof or something, and wait with that little pouty frown?

  I really hoped it was the tter.

  Still, I couldn’t shake the mental image of her pacing that tiny room, clutching her katana and daggers to her chest, staring at the door like it owed her answers. And that made something sharp settle behind my ribs.

  “I need to go,” I said more firmly this time, trying to push past Chiisana. “Seriously. I’m not interested in creepy demon girls with ominous one-liners. I just want to go back and maybe have tea with my girlfriend and pretend today didn’t happen.”

  For a long, long moment, she said nothing. Just stood there, watching me with those eyes that saw too much.

  Then… she smiled.

  Chiisana’s smile bloomed slowly, like a flower unfolding. It wasn’t the smug grin of someone who’d been insulted and was about to retaliate. It was the grin of someone who’d just stumbled across an unexpected page in a storybook they thought they already knew by heart.

  “Well,” she purred, voice low and velvety, “aren’t you a curious little thing.”

  Her eyes didn’t leave mine. Not for a second. Not even to blink. She just stood there, utterly still, except for her hair and dress fluttering slightly in the breeze, like the world had to keep moving for her because she’d long since stepped outside of it.

  “You say that so confidently,” she continued, almost musing to herself. “Like you’re the one making the rules. Like walking away is something I might actually allow. And yet… something tells me you believe it.”

  I didn’t back down. My knees wanted to. My instincts screamed to. But I held my ground, even though the effort made my spine ache. I wasn’t brave, I was terrified. But fear had its uses. And right now, it was letting me remember that I had someone to go back to. Someone who’d fuss and pout and lecture me through little doodles and half-muttered threats of violence if I didn’t come home on time with ‘bery nnai’ nguage.

  “She’ll kill me,” I said quietly. “If I’m te.”

  Chiisana stared at me for a breathless second longer, then ughed.

  It wasn’t the kind of ugh you’d expect from someone so unnervingly graceful. It wasn’t high-pitched or girlish, and it wasn’t maniacal either. It was low, husky, like velvet fraying at the edges, and just a little too delighted. The sound curled around my ears like smoke, the kind that made you dizzy if you breathed it in too long.

  “She’ll kill you if you’re te…” she repeated, almost wistfully, like she was reciting the final line of a particurly tragic love poem. “How quaint.”

  Then, just as suddenly, the ughter stopped. Not faded, stopped. Like someone had flipped a switch. Her expression snapped back to that gentle, unreadable stillness, and the weight of her gaze returned full force. It was like being pinned under moonlight. Silent, cold, and inescapable.

  “But alright, fox,” she said, finally stepping aside with the grace of someone who allowed things to happen rather than did them. “Run back to your little ink-hearted lover, if that’s where you truly belong.”

  I blinked. “Wait. Really?”

  She tilted her head. “You think I’m going to eat you if you stay. But you’re wrong.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “So you don’t want to eat me?”

  “Oh, I absolutely do,” she said, voice sugar-sweet. “But not the way you’re thinking.”

  “…Please never crify that.”

  Her lips twitched like she was trying very hard not to say something that would make me sprint. Then, almost offhandedly, she added, “You’ve got something festering in you, Mashiro. It’s not just some cursed relic or leftover wyrmrot. It’s deep. And old. And when it wakes up… well.” She tapped her chin. “Let’s just say I’ll be first in line.”

  “Cool, great, thank you, leaving now.”

  The moment I turned my back and took a single step, the forest screamed.

  A shrill, unnatural cry tore through the stillness as four massive, chitinous scorpion tails erupted from Chiisana’s back with a sickening snap. The sound was wet and final, like tendons tearing free from bone. Dark purple and wickedly barbed, they shimmered with fresh venom under the slivers of sunlight that filtered through the trees. They didn’t hesitate. They lunged blindingly fast. Faster than I thought. A blur of malice and murder, all aimed straight for my heart.

  I didn’t react. I didn’t blink. I didn’t even breathe. But something else did.

  A bst of wind and raw heat roared to life behind me, tearing leaves from branches and kicking dust into the air. With the crackle of shifting bones and a fsh of blinding violet light, two massive bck wings erupted from my back, dragon wings, thickly scaled and jagged-edged like obsidian shields. Not fragile like before. Not twitching, unsure. These smmed into existence with a thunderous impact, intercepting the venom-dripping stingers just inches from my chest.

  Cng—kssh!

  The tails struck the scale. Sparks burst into the air like flint meeting steel.

  I staggered backward, boots scraping across the forest floor, heart thundering so loudly I could barely hear the wind. My lungs burned. My limbs trembled. My vision blurred with adrenaline.

  My cloak flickered to life with purple fire. Not light. Not magic. Fire. It licked through the fabric like oil-fed embers, dancing along the hem and colr, casting eerie reflections against the forest around us.

  My hood slipped back, and my fox ears popped free with a twitch, fur bristling, alert, on edge. And then I felt it. That pressure. That cold weight blooming above my right temple, like a hand resting where it shouldn’t.

  Pale. Bone-like. Not just resting, growing. Clinging to me like it belonged. I didn’t dare gnce at it. I didn’t need to. I could feel it watching for me.

  Across from me, Chiisana’s scorpion tails hung frozen in midair, the tips trembling just slightly as if frustrated by their near-miss. But she didn’t move. She just stared. Wide-eyed, unblinking, expression lit with something almost ecstatic.

  “I knew it…” she whispered. Her voice was low and reverent, like someone seeing a prophecy unfold in real time. “He’s inside you, isn’t he?”

  The forest held its breath. No birds. No breeze. Just the sound of blood pounding in my ears and the distant crackle of that strange purple fire licking at my cloak.

  Chiisana stepped forward, slow and deliberate, her boots barely making a sound against the moss-covered earth. Her pupils dited slightly, the red in her irises glowing like coals stoked by wind. “That pressure… that taste…” Her nostrils fred gently, like she could smell it whatever it was that had awakened. Her hands dangled loosely by her sides, rexed, casual.

  But the tails, those horrid, twitching limbs still hovered behind her, swaying like they were searching for the next soft spot to stab.

  “Delicious,” she murmured.