The temple was quieter than usual.
The morning mist clung to the moss-covered stones, curling around the wooden beams and the wind chimes that sang softly in the breeze. Ahri sat alone on the veranda, her legs tucked beneath her as she traced the length of the golden thread still bound to her wrist. It pulsed faintly—more rhythmic now, like a breath, or a heartbeat that wasn't quite her own.
She had trained through the night. Her fingers ached from the delicate movements required to weave even the simplest thread seals, and her eyes were heavy from a dream that had bled too far into waking. In it, she had walked a path lined with statues of forgotten gods, and a broken moon had watched her from above.
The fox spirit had not appeared, not directly—but its presence lingered. A rustle at the edge of thought. A flicker in the smoke. A laugh that didn't belong to anyone she could see.
She heard footsteps behind her. Jin approached with two cups of barley tea, setting one beside her before sitting without a word.
"You didn't sleep," Jin said softly, her grey eyes scanning Ahri's drawn face.
"I couldn't," Ahri replied, curling her fingers around the cup's warmth. "It's changing. The thread, the visions. They're... louder."
Jin nodded slowly. "The deeper you go into the weave, the more it reveals. But some things don't want to be seen. Not by you. Not yet."
Ahri turned to her. "Do you ever hear them? The whispers?"
Jin hesitated. "Sometimes. But I think they're not meant to frighten. They're memories. Pieces left behind. We're just... close enough to feel the echoes."
The door to the main hall creaked open. The Elder emerged, leaning on his staff as if weighed down not just by age but by what he carried inside.
"There's something you need to see," he said. "Both of you."
They followed him into the heart of the temple, past the prayer halls and incense altars, to a staircase Ahri had never noticed before. It descended beneath the temple's foundation, hidden behind an ancient tapestry of cranes and stars.
"Not even the monks come here," the Elder said, lighting a thread-tipped lantern. "This archive predates our order. It remembers things we've chosen to forget."
The stairs spiraled downward, carved into living stone. Threads hung from the ceiling like cobwebs—faded, brittle, their stories long since broken. As they reached the bottom, a chamber opened around them, filled with wooden shelves, weathered scrolls, and a silence that pressed against the skin.
In the center stood a circular platform woven from golden thread, untouched by time.
"What is this place?" Ahri whispered.
"A sanctum of ancestral bindings," the Elder said. "Here, soulweavers recorded those whose threads refused to fade. Those fated to return."
Jin stepped closer. "Return?"
He nodded. "Reincarnations, echoes, anomalies. Spirit-bound entities who defied the natural weave. And among them... one name appears again and again."
He handed Ahri a scroll sealed with a violet wax emblem—the fox's sigil.
She unrolled it slowly. Her breath caught.
The name written in old ink was hers: Seo Ah-ri.
And beneath it, the same name... written a hundred years earlier. And a hundred before that.
"The spirit fox," the Elder said, voice low, "isn't just watching you. It may have been a part of you—across lifetimes."
Ahri stared at the name. Her vision blurred. The golden thread on her wrist flared bright, burning hot.
Suddenly, the ground trembled. Dust fell from the ceiling. A low groan echoed from beyond the sanctum walls—like a gate unlocking.
A cold wind swept through the chamber, and from the shadows emerged a flickering form.
It wore a cracked fox mask.
Miran.
Only this time, her threads bled into the chamber itself, dark and violent—pulling at the old bindings, unraveling the archive.
"You're not supposed to be here yet," she said, voice distorted, layered with something ancient and broken.
Ahri stepped forward, heart pounding.
"I'm not afraid of you."
Miran smiled behind the mask. "You should be."
And then the golden platform shattered, and the chamber collapsed in light.