Prologue

Do you ever wonder what lies beyond the stars? What if we could, one day, go to a star? Would we meet new people and make new friends?

My mother used to tell me stories about people who lived in the heavens. She said that they are the gods of our world and that they protect us against evil. She said that they are the guardians of our existence. I don’t really understand what she means though, it sounds pretty complicated.

I am Yuki Inari, and I am a Kitsune, that is to say that I have physical traits that look like what you know as foxes. I have white hair and my eyes are golden, but those are not normal colors apparently. Like any kitsune, I can use magic. My mother actually trained me from a very young age to use all kinds of magic. She said that it would be very important for me to be able to use magic in the future.

On the year of my 6th birthday, rumors of the Demon Lord started spreading. I didn’t understand those stories at first, but then I started having nightmares. Every night I would dream about this demon lord. It felt as if he was looking at me. I told my mother about it, but she told me that everything would be ok.

My mother used to tell me that if evil were to spread, then the gods would banish it and that we would be able to live in peace again. Surely they would do something about the Demon Lord so that we could all live in peace right?

I lived in a small village that was at the border of a small kingdom known as Ilgen. It was a very peaceful place and we barely even heard of the kingdom itself. That is, until the day that we received messengers telling us that the kingdom had fallen to the demon army.

Somehow it did not even take 1 year between the moment that we first heard of the Demon Lord’s appearance and the moment that we learned of the downfall of our kingdom. Yet it felt like an eternity had gone by. Why? Because we did not get many messengers, and getting news from the world was somewhat difficult.

While we had magic, it was somewhat limited in power. By that I mean to say that magic could not be used to transmit messages on long distances. And so it would usually be more convenient to just travel the distance to transmit news.

Now, why was I talking about the stars again? Well… You see… I am not in my world anymore. I mean, I don’t know how I got here, or what “here” even is. But I know that this is a different world. I mean, it has to be, because one day, just before the summer solstice, the sky became orange. The air was actually getting thicker and so it was slowly getting more and more difficult to breath… But more troubling was the temperature that kept rising. As the temperature rose, it slowly became impossible to do anything. Things that were in the sunlight started burning.

Before I could hide properly, it felt as if everything turned black and cold. I didn’t understand what had just happened. I had a feeling that something really bad had just happened, but maybe it was just a dream right? I could feel the gaze of the demon lord somehow. It was really scary. But then everything vanished in a second. And I got here.

Now if only I knew what happened… and why… Or even where my family is…