They say foxes are tricksters. That they grin with teeth hidden behind velvet lips, that their laughter sounds like bells but cuts like knives. They feed on weakness, on chaos, on the little fractures in the human soul.

But what no one warns you about is what happens when a fox spirit falls in love.

Or worse—when it mistakes you for a face it once loved, centuries ago.

I didn’t know any of this at first. All I knew was that something inside Stiles Stilinski—the boy who made me laugh on the worst days, who steadied me when everything else was falling apart—was changing. His smile would flicker and vanish like a dying lightbulb. His words carried edges that weren’t there before. And when his eyes locked on me, sometimes I felt like I wasn’t looking at Stiles at all.

But love has a way of binding you, holding you in place even when the ground is cracking beneath your feet. And by the time I realized what was really happening—that I wasn’t just dealing with a boy losing control, but with a Void Kitsune, a Nogitsune wearing his skin—it was already too late.

Because it didn’t just want him.

It wanted me.

The first time I heard the name “Nogitsune,” it sounded like a warning pulled from a ghost story. A word you only whisper. A word that lingers in the air like smoke.

I had been with Stiles when the pieces started to fall apart. He hadn’t been sleeping—again. That wasn’t unusual for him, but this was different. He looked… brittle, like glass one bad knock away from shattering.

“Just tired,” he told me when I asked. But his hands wouldn’t stop moving. His pencil tapped against the desk in frantic rhythms, his knee bouncing like a motor.

Then there were the lapses. Moments when I’d say something and he wouldn’t answer right away. Not because he hadn’t heard me—but because something else had caught his attention. Something inside him. He’d blink, come back to himself, and pretend it hadn’t happened.

At first, I tried to laugh it off. We all had shadows, after all. But the shadows inside Stiles were not normal. They were growing, feeding, curling around his mind like smoke.

It wasn’t until later that I learned the truth: the Nogitsune had been watching me through him. Through his memories. Through his heartbeat. Through his love for me.

And when it saw me—really saw me—it recognized something. A face from centuries past. The ghost of a woman it had once loved. And now I was standing here, alive, within its reach.

The world tilted when he looked at me, and suddenly I wasn’t standing in the room anymore.

It was like falling into someone else’s dream. A thousand images slammed into my mind all at once—too sharp, too vivid to belong to me, yet they burned behind my eyelids as if they’d always been there.

A winter night. Lanterns swaying above a narrow street, their light trembling like fragile stars. Laughter, quick and bright, spilling from the lips of a girl who looked exactly like me. Her cheeks were pink from the cold, her hands clutching her sleeves as if to trap warmth. She turned, smiling, and her eyes lit up with a joy that made my chest ache.

Then the image shattered.

Another scene surged forward: sunlight on water. The same girl—my reflection—kneeling at the river’s edge. Her fingers skimmed the surface, scattering ripples across the current. She whispered something, a promise perhaps, and looked up at someone standing just beyond my sight. The look in her eyes was unmistakable—trust, devotion, the kind of love that made you fearless.

I gasped, dragging in a breath like I’d been underwater. My knees threatened to buckle.

Those weren’t my memories. They weren’t even Stiles’. They belonged to him.

The Nogitsune’s eyes glowed darkly, locked on me with a hunger that felt ancient. “Do you see?” he asked softly, almost reverent. “You carry her face. Her voice. The shape of her smile.”

My stomach churned. “I’m not her.”

“Not yet,” he murmured, and the weight of his words wrapped around me like chains.