The Spirit Fang

The chamber trembled beneath their feet.

Each step Ahri took drew fresh pulses of energy from the golden thread around her wrist, trailing behind her like streaks of light in the dark. The Severed creature loomed taller now, threads unraveling and reforming around it like tendrils, twisting between pain and memory.

Jin stood at the ready behind her, holding the glowing talisman like a dagger. Beside her, the Elder planted his staff into the ground, whispering a chant in an ancient tongue that caused the surrounding stone to shimmer with warding sigils.

But Ahri... Ahri had crossed into something else.

She wasn't only hearing the fox spirit now—she was feeling it inside her.

Its thoughts pulsed through her blood like a second heartbeat.

"You still hesitate. That's why they'll tear the world apart."

Her breath caught. The voice was inside her mind—but it was hers, too. Like a buried instinct, old and sharp.

The Severed entity surged forward without warning, its mass of thread-limbs stretching out like a collapsing net.

Ahri thrust out her hand.

The golden thread reacted immediately, spiraling into a protective weave in front of her. The strands shone fiercely, a radiant lattice that deflected the blow—but barely. Each impact shredded part of the weave.

Ahri gritted her teeth, sweat beading down her temple.

"I can't hold this forever!" she shouted.

The Elder slammed his staff into the ground again. A wave of sealing energy erupted beneath the Severed's feet, staggering it. "You don't have to! You just need to reach the Fang!"

Jin's eyes snapped wide. "The Spirit Fang? Elder, that was just a myth—"

"No myth," the Elder said, his voice low. "A remnant of the fox spirit's power, buried in the Binding Below. If she can reclaim it... it might be enough to sever this thing's link to the Loom."

Ahri turned, her voice calm despite the chaos. "Where is it?"

The Elder pointed toward a jagged ridge beyond the ruined loom—a spire of cracked white stone that pulsed with a dull violet glow.

"The fang is bound to the one who remembers the pact," he said. "Only you, Ahri."

She nodded.

Then she ran.

The Severed roared behind her, threads lashing out in fury. One caught her leg, yanking her back—but before she hit the ground, a silver-blue flash cut through the tendril.

Jin.

"Go!" she called. "I'll keep it distracted!"

Ahri sprinted past the edge of the crumbling floor, her feet landing on the glowing stones of the ridge. As she neared the spire, the ground lit with runes—ancient glyphs humming in resonance with the golden thread.

She touched the stone.

A pulse of energy knocked her back.

Then the world cracked open.

For a heartbeat, she was no longer in the chamber—but suspended in a white void, surrounded by a swirling sky of thread and memory.

And in front of her—

The fox spirit.

Its form was massive and radiant. Nine tails fanned behind it, each glowing with a different hue—silver, gold, violet, crimson, midnight blue, and more. Its eyes, twin stars, locked onto hers.

But it didn't speak with words this time.

Instead, it opened its mouth and let out a howl—one that bent time and memory.

Ahri gasped as visions flooded her.

—Her mother, standing at the mouth of a temple, holding a fox mask and whispering an oath.—The fox spirit, bleeding from its flank, locking away a piece of its power in the stone fang.—A child—Ahri—swaddled in golden thread, marked by prophecy.—The day the Loom broke. A girl who looked just like her—perhaps was her—screaming as the fang was sealed away.

Ahri opened her eyes in the present, hand stretched out.

And there it was.

The Spirit Fang—a translucent shard of energy, shaped like a fang but vibrating like a tuning fork for fate itself. Threads spiraled inside it like trapped starlight.

She grasped it.

The golden thread on her wrist surged, merging with the fang, and her body pulsed with radiant heat.

She wasn't just channeling the fox spirit now.

She was wielding it.

Back in the chamber, the Severed lifted Jin off her feet, threads wrapping around her throat.

Then—

A howl.

Ahri returned, leaping from the ridge, the Fang now formed into a blade of woven energy in her hand.

She slashed once.

The threads snapped like brittle wire.

Jin fell to the ground, gasping.

Ahri stood over her, eyes glowing with the fox spirit's power. The Severed creature froze.

"You remember us," it rasped.

Ahri raised the fang-blade.

"I remember enough."

She plunged the blade into the ground.

A web of light exploded outward, forming a perfect sigil beneath the Severed. The ground cracked. The frayed threads writhed, then snapped—sucked into the rune as if being pulled into a black hole.

With one final shriek, the creature collapsed into smoke and vanished.

Silence.

The Loom remained broken. But the room no longer felt alive with pain.

Jin staggered to her feet, eyes wide. "You… you did it."

The Elder approached slowly. "No. She awakened."

Ahri didn't answer. She was staring at the fang, now dim and cool in her palm.

It had taken something from her. She didn't know what yet.

And above them—beyond the stone ceiling—something unseen stirred.

A ripple in the fabric of the world.

A thread... snapping.