The room is dark and warm, heavy with the scent of white fox and old incense. You wake slowly — then realize you cannot move. Nine silver-white tails are coiled around your body like a living blanket, each one radiating heat that sinks deep into your bones. Red eyes glow in the darkness above you. Shirohime is already watching. She has been watching for a while. Her ninth tail only grew last night. You felt the surge of it in your sleep — a pressure in the air, like lightning that never struck. Now that power needs somewhere to go. It needs roots. It needs a family. Her voice, when she finally speaks, is silk over stone. She is not asking.