Chapter 1 One

Countless ancient runes floated above the Sacred Ascension Platform, lighting up the entire Fox Sovereignty. Every Great Clan had gathered to witness it.

After a thousand years, a Nine-Tailed Fox was finally about to be born.

Kaien Ashwyn stood at the center of the formation. Twenty-two years old, the youngest Eight-Tailed Fox in recorded history, the successor the Fox Council had personally chosen. Thousands of disciples watched him with something close to reverence. Some called him the future of the Sovereignty. Others said he'd surpass every Fox Sovereign who came before him.

He raised his head toward the Heavenly Fox Monument towering over the platform and thought about everything it had taken to get here. The near-death cultivation trials. The years he'd spent inside the Spirit Abyss. Every battle he'd fought for a Sovereignty that had never once asked if he wanted to fight them.

It had all led to this moment.

The Grand Elder stepped forward. "The Ascension Ceremony begins."

Dozens of Elders released their spiritual power at once. The formation activated. Golden light poured down from the sky, and Kaien felt spiritual energy flood into his body faster than he'd ever felt it move before. His cultivation surged. For one perfect second, he believed he'd actually done it.

Then the light changed.

The gold turned black, rune by rune, until hundreds of them had gone dark at once. The heavenly pressure that had been building in his chest vanished, replaced by something crushing and cold, a sealing force that dropped onto him like a wall collapsing.

"What—" His spiritual sea shook violently under it.

The Ninth Tail never woke. Instead his Eight Tails started disappearing, one after another, sealed away by whatever had just taken hold of the formation. He tried to circulate his energy and nothing answered him. The platform meant to crown him had turned into a cage.

The plaza broke into noise around him.

"What happened?"

"The formation changed!"

"That's impossible!"

A voice cut through all of it, cold and carrying. "Kaien Ashwyn. You stand accused of betraying the Fox Sovereignty."

The plaza went silent.

Kaien turned toward the voice and found Lord Orion, leader of the Celestial Fox Clan, the man who'd raised him since he was a child.

"What?" It was the only word he could get out.

Orion's face didn't move. "Evidence has been presented proving you cooperated with the Fox Hunters."

"I've never even met a Hunter." Kaien said loudly.

No one answered him.

Master Vaelor stepped forward instead. The man who had trained him since childhood, who had sat beside his bed for a week when he was nine and nearly died from a training injury, who had taught him more about who he wanted to be than anyone else alive.

Vaelor kept his eyes down. "I found traces of forbidden cultivation in his spiritual veins."

"Master." Kaien's breathing had gone ragged. "You know that's not possible."

Vaelor said nothing.

Rowan stepped forward next.

Kaien's chest went tight before Rowan even opened his mouth. His closest friend. The person he trusted more than anyone in the Sovereignty, including himself some days.

"I witnessed him cultivating forbidden techniques," Rowan said.

The world seemed to stop turning. Kaien's ears rang. He looked from Rowan to Vaelor to Orion, one after another, and understood, all at once, that every person who had ever stood beside him was now standing against him.

"No." He forced himself a step forward. The sealing formation crushed him back down onto one knee, and blood spilled from his mouth onto the white stone. "This is a mistake. I've given this Sovereignty my entire life. I fought your wars. I protected your borders. I have never betrayed anyone."

His voice carried across the mountain and died there.

Nobody spoke. Nobody moved to defend him. Thousands of disciples and thousands of foxes watched him kneel in his own blood, and not one of them questioned what they were being told.

The Council's verdict came fast.

"Kaien Ashwyn. You are stripped of your cultivation, and sentenced to death."

Kaien laughed. It wasn't the laugh of someone who found anything funny. It was the laugh of someone who had just understood his entire life had been built on nothing.

"You can't do this to me, I'm innocent"

Chains of spiritual light wrapped around his body as the execution formation activated. His vision blurred. He searched the crowd one last time for a single face that hadn't already decided he was guilty, and didn't find one.

Rowan stepped forward with a sword in his hand.

Kaien didn't beg. Didn't scream. He just looked at Rowan and searched his face for even the smallest trace of hesitation.

There wasn't any.

The sword came down. Pain tore through his chest, and warm blood spread across the white platform beneath him as his body gave out. The noise of the crowd, the accusations, all of it faded into nothing.

His last thought was simple.

Why would they do this to him.

Then everything went dark.

Kaien opened his eyes gasping, one hand flying to his chest.

No wound, no blood, no execution platform.

Just the wooden ceiling of his academy residence, familiar in a way that made his heart pound harder instead of easing it.

He looked down at his hands. Young and unscarred. He pushed his spiritual energy through his body without thinking, an old habit, and felt it settle at seven tails.

His brows furrowed how was he back to seven tails

He crossed the room fast and stood in front of the bronze mirror by the bed. The face staring back at him was seventeen years old.

He stood there for a long moment, just breathing, just looking at a version of himself that hadn't been betrayed yet.

Then something in his chest went cold and steady, the fear settling into something he could actually use.

If he'd really been given his life back, he wasn't going to wait around to be betrayed again. He was going to find out who had orchestrated his death. He was going to find out why the people he'd loved most had turned on him. And when he finally had the truth, he was going to make sure none of it happened the same way twice.

Outside his window, the morning bell of Fox Academy rang out across the mountains.