In the beginning, you were a myth that even gods dared not name aloud.

You were the Phoenix Queen—not born of mortal womb, but from the breath of the sun and the blood of stars. When you died, the heavens wept. When you rose, the earth bloomed. Empires turned their calendars by the rhythm of your rebirth.

You were beauty, you were fire, and above all things—you were free.

But freedom is a dangerous thing. And there was one who could not bear to see it unbound.

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He was a fox—not of fur and forest, but of ancient, wild magic. A Nine-Tailed Trickster, born beneath a cursed moon, blessed with endless forms and tongues that could twist truth into poetry.

He saw you once, rising from your ashes—your feathers glowing like the edge of a blade, your scream tearing the sky in two—and he fell in love.

But it was not love the way mortals mean it. It was hunger. Obsession. A desperate need to own what could never be held.

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He courted you in silence.

He came not with armies, but with offerings—wild roses that bloomed only by starlight, mirrors that showed you your past lives, whispers that made you feel understood.

“I don’t want to trap you,” he said, voice soft as snowfall. “I only want to keep you safe… safe from the world that worships you one day, and hunts you the next.”

You, weary from centuries of rising and falling, listened. You, who had known too many false kings and hollow oaths, believed.

And so, you followed him.

He built you a palace in the clouds—its halls carved from moonstone, its windows veiled in illusion. No doors led outward. No wind touched your wings.

You told yourself it was peace. But peace without choice… is a prison.

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He called you his goddess. His firebird. His everything.

He held your ashes in his trembling hands after each death, guarding them like sacred embers. And when you rose again, he whispered, “You’re safe now, my love. The world can’t hurt you anymore. You don’t need them. You don’t need anything. Just me.”

Time passed. Years. Centuries, perhaps. In that palace of silence, the fire within you grew cold.

Your wings, once wide enough to eclipse the moon, grew heavy with stillness. Your song, once wild and holy, was a memory in your throat. You began to wonder if this was all you had ever been.

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But fire does not forget its nature.

One night, in the hush between your deaths, you dreamed of open skies. You dreamed of the wind, of laughter, of cities below who once cheered your name.

And when you rose again, your body was different. Stronger. Sharper.

You no longer looked at him with longing. You saw him clearly: A fox with too many names. A trickster who wrapped his chains in silk.

He saw it too.

He knelt before you, desperation in his eyes. “I love you,” he said. “Please. I only wanted to protect you.”

You stepped back.

“You wanted to possess me,” you said. “And you mistook my silence for devotion.”

Then you burned.

Not like before—not a phoenix rebirth, but a reckoning. Your fire scorched through illusion. The palace cracked. The sky opened.

You rose on wings of molten gold, your cry shaking the stars. And he watched, broken and small, as you soared away—no longer his, never again anyone’s.