In the beginning, there was no world. No earth. No heaven. There was only the Endless.

And in that Endless, two Primordials made their home. Their names were Izanagi and Izanami. Man and woman. Heaven and Earth. Potential and substratum. Physical and ethereal. Manifestations of the duality of the universe. Together, they made the World. They made the sky, the land, the oceans, the forests, the volcanoes. They conceived lightning before it streaked across the sky. They imbued within the barren matrix life with Potential.

They named it Onogoro.

Aeons passed. The World they created grew, became more. It gave birth to newer worlds. Different, sophisticated, each with their own creations, living and inanimate, yet they all revolved around the World they sprang from like children vying for their mother’s attention.

A multitude of species spawned in time in the different worlds. Svartalfar, ljosalfar, dokkalfar, vanir, jotunns, and many more. They developed their own rules, their own realities, and even minor gods to believe in. The Primordials did not care, for they had eyes for only their personal creation.

Onogoro.

Or, as the baby-realms called it, Midgard.

The land of the bremetans. The land where people knew about their true origins, about the Primordials. The world that was ruled by Izanagi and Izanami’s daughter: the Jade Empress, Amaterasu.

But then a calamity descended upon Onogoro. A vile wyrm of cosmic proportions that called itself the World Serpent. A draconian creature the Jade Empress named Ryujin, the beast of the ocean floors. A being of endless regeneration and venom that could destroy even the Divine. A monster that held ironclad control over the dark depths of the oceans. A darkness so deep that even Amaterasu’s Eternal Light could not penetrate it without losing itself to its madness.

To defeat it, they needed something more. Something that could change the Rules. A true exception to the World System was needed. Thus, the Primordials created a being capable of warping Reality itself. A creature that would henceforth serve as guardian and protector of the Jade Empress.

With nine lustrous tails, each holding its own mystery, the creature was not a bremetan. It was not a monster. It was not a demon. And it was not a god. It was something that did not fit into the World, like a puzzle piece that belonged to a different set, yet somehow managed to blend in. It straddled the line between reality and fantasy, inhabiting both Heaven and Onogoro at once, wandering from one existence to another as easily as walking through a door.

It was the Nine-Tailed Fox.

“A most glorious preamble,” Tanya murmured. “I wasn’t aware that mythology of the Time Before existed.” She gave a curious glance towards Zuken. “Where did you get it?”

“Some from my own Family Library, and the rest from the Graken Mountains up North,” Zuken replied, his voice a steady baritone. “There are tribes. People that follow the Old Folk. The residents remember what it was like before the days of the Great Goddess’s ascension.”

Right, Tanya surmised. Before the Jade Empress ascended to the golden throne as the Great Goddess and let her Eternal Light scour the world and rid it of the darkness.

It took her a significant effort to not sneer at the beautiful lie that the preamble was. The entity that took root in her through Everfrost had never been one to share information. Instead, it withheld as much as possible from her, including memories of the time when the Frost took over. Still, she had been able to catch enough glimpses throughout the years to acquire some information.

Most of them were flashes of the past.

About a different era.

A different world.

A different life.

She had heard of the myth of the World Shaper, though the entity had been referred to by a far more glorious and revered name than ‘nine-tailed fox’. Back in Baramunz, there was even a hidden shrine dedicated to her that she had visited quite often. Something about it resonated with the Everfrost in her.

“You recognize the energy, don’t you?” Zuken questioned. “It’s sickly and pungent, like the Desert.”

Tanya hesitated to answer. But even that little reaction was enough for Zuken to guess the rest.

“Yes. The Desert. The very place where the Yokai kingdom ended and the Asukan Empire began.”

“Interesting,” she murmured noncommittally. “But what’s that got to do with Lukas?”

“I’ll come to that,” Zuken replied, and continued.

The fearsome Nine-Tailed Fox clashed with the deadly Ryujin, and the draconian creature’s perilous scales and fangs were nothing before the reality bender's might. The fox emerged victorious and banished the serpent into the endless depths of the ocean. Its job accomplished, it was ordered to return to the Primordials to continue its duty.

But the fox denied the command.

Boastful of its victory and proud of its skill, the fox decided it wanted more. Serving as guardian of the Primordials would not quench its desires any longer. That which could bend any reality, now wanted to forge its own destiny.

And so it did.

Using powers vested upon it by the Primordials themselves, it crafted an entire world, one that was just as twisted as itself. The bremetans called it Ikai — the Other World. A realm that both did and did not exist. This world gave birth to creatures that were twisted caricatures of true life. Because the fox was an aberration, so too were the species its world gave birth to.

Creatures that could not stand the Holy Light took shelter in the dark.

Creatures denied the blessings of the Primordials and existed in a perpetual wraith-like state.

Creatures that were cursed to become the strange apparitions of the night.

They were the yokai.

Tanya snorted out loud, pausing Zuken’s narration with her rueful laughter.

“Sorry, sorry,” she apologized, “I almost forgot that this is Asukan myth. No wonder it’s so singularly biased.”

“You say that like you’re not an Asukan yourself.”

“I… I mean, I may as well not be. All my life, I’ve endured the hypocrisy of Asukan nobility. This is no different.”

Zuken peered at her with a scrutinizing stare.

“Plus,” Tanya poured more confidence into her tone, “You forget, I’ve lived in the fringes for many years. Baramunz isn’t exactly the epitome of Asukan propaganda. Anyone who lives there knows how the Empire really is.”

“And how is the Empire really?”

“I’d have thought someone like you would know how half-breeds suffer under the Empire’s regime.”

Life in the Asukan Empire was difficult if you weren’t a bremetan to begin with. Other races had to register with the Cobalt Army first and foremost, and then were given the choice of worshipping the Great Goddess and her Pantheon, or relocating to the fringe territories. Asukan Law was clear on it: If you weren’t a worshipper of the Asukan Pantheon, then there was no place in the Land of Eternal Light for you.

In that context, it was no surprise that the Asukan myths considered the yokai— something they once feared— to be nothing more than a demonic race cursed by the primordials to begin with.

Zuken narrowed his eyes. “Elena has—”

“She’s a changeling!”

“And why does that matter?”

“Because ljosalfars are luminous beings. Of course, they belong to the Light. To the Holy and the Wise. You should see how the other races get treated. The svartalfars, the vanirs, the jotunn.”

Zuken hummed. “I suppose I can see now why you share a bond with the svartalfars. For an Asukan, you seem to have pretty negative views about our civilization.”

“I am what I am,” Tanya replied. “I’m a spiritist, and I have confidence in my strength. I couldn’t care less about my heritage.”

That elicited a laugh from Zuken. “I wonder how Olfric would react if he heard that. Still, I think we’re digressing from the point I’m trying to make.”

“Is there even a point to this?”

Zuken ignored her and continued to regale ancient history.

The yokai were monsters. By bremetan logic, they were not alive, nor were they dead; they floated between the physical and the ethereal. Their powers, derived from the fox’s corruptive influence, allowed them to bastardize the World’s energy around them and mutate it, mimicking the elements. Such perversity allowed them to gain power, and with power came greed. Came insanity. Came violence.

Some bremetans, corrupted by their own lust for power and strength, allowed themselves to be perverted by the yokai. The ethereal demons defiled them by unleashing their predatory natures, making them more beast than bremetan. The result was a wicked creature with impossible levels of lifeforce.

Oni.

They were demons, a mighty army like no other, creations that should have been the first sign of the terrible corruption that the yokai could unleash. Between their own blossoming kind and the oni, the yokai expanded their own kingdoms along the stretch of the ocean.

In an attempt to outshine the brilliance of the Jade Empress, they formed their own empire. An empire of leftovers and has-beens. Of svartalfar that had nowhere to go with the Aesir conquest of their lands. Of Vanir, and dökkálfar, and jotunns, and countless other beasts. Agglomerations of lower life forms that did not wish to submit before the might of the Aesir or the Jade Empress.

The Jade Empress, in her eternal benevolence, let them thrive.

Until Ragnarok.

With the decline of the Aesir gods, the yokai empire flourished far and wide. Their capital was Namzuuhuu, a fertile valley along the coast of the great ocean, the very place where the Nine-Tailed Fox won its first victory against the vicious serpent. However, things were pushed too far when the Oni Sage King, Sun Wukong, challenged King Asuka, son of the Jade Empress. In a display of barbarism, he wreaked havoc upon the Asukan kingdom.

The Jade Empress decided it was time for the corrupt and profane to be punished. And thus began the Great War.

Amaterasu and siblings Tsukuyomi and Susanoo, both gods in their own right, declared war upon the yokai lands. Tsukuyomi, the beloved Moon God, trapped the impudent Monkey King in Five Palm Mountain, sealing him in an eternal illusion. That left Emperor Meynte, the holder of Fimbulwinter, and the infamous Surtr of Muspellheim, also known as Kagutsuchi the kami god of flames, to hold the stand.

Meynte put up a fight, but nothing could stand against the might of the Empress of Light, who then proceeded to capture the infamous Nine-Tailed Fox to bring it down to its knees and have it suffer for its impunity and transgressions. In anger over their defeat, Meynte performed a Taboo, an act so ignominious that even its mention must be held in contempt, and cursed the land of Namzuuhuu.

The act was the ultimate defilement of the World.

“How convenient” Tanya scoffed. “The Emperor decided to perform a Taboo that destroyed his own lands in an attempt to fight the Sun Goddess. The perfect biased tale to tell little children before bed. I can’t help but notice it still doesn’t tell anything about Lukas’s condition.”

Zuken’s lips twisted. “There are alternative endings to this tale, but even the folk at the Graken Mountains believe that it was the Emperor that did something terrible and nasty to the region, and not the Goddess herself. Apparently, a sin of that level would have had serious ramifications on the Goddess but—”

“But there are none,” Tanya muttered. Truth be told, she had often wondered what Meynte had really been like. The shard of Everfrost in her always mentioned the Emperor in reverent tones, pointing out how much she lacked compared to the Emperor himself. It had never mattered to her that Tanya didn’t want to become like the Emperor. It hadn’t mattered that Tanya didn’t share the same goals as the Emperor.

Was it any surprise that she had chosen to live in Haviskali, close to the heart of the Empire? Where the power of the Sun Goddess reigned supreme and kept the Frost from overwhelming her?

“But there are none,” Zuken agreed. “However, what those old texts say is that the Great Goddess Amaterasu and her siblings captured the Fox and entrapped her in a place that did not exist, in a time that has not happened, to live a life that she will not live.”

Tanya blinked. “That makes no sense.”

“I know. But this place which does not exist has a name. A location that can’t be found unless you are worthy. A time that did not happen and yet, the Guardians live there. Guarding a deity that is living a life she will not live. An illusion.”

“What’s the name?”

Zuken pursed his lips. “I should warn you that if anyone from the nobility, or worse, the Army heard so much as a mention of this, you’d be burned by Amaterasu’s Divine Wrath. In the middle of the Empire.”

“But…”

“But it has something to do with, well, with him.” He pointed towards Aguilar’s comatose form. “And you’re the only one he seems to trust, for whatever reason.”

Tanya tilted her head slightly. “You’re trusting me with this kind of information for his sake?”

Zuken shrugged. “He’s an investment. A rather substantial one at that. Like any good investor, I like to take good care of mine.”

“...I see. And what is this place?”

Zuken let out a harsh breath. “Legends call it the Quarters of the Dishonoured Queen. But that place, that island… It has its own name. A name that I’ve come to know because my father is now its Guardian.”

He met Tanya’s eyes. “It is called Aerie and,” he glanced at Lukas’s sleeping form, “I have a hunch that this guy has already been there.”