Ancient Demons

When I was small, my father told me an old Mongol story whenever I asked why my teeth looked different from other children’s.
He never explained scientifically.
He never moralized.
He just repeated the tale the way he had heard it, it was comforting to me.
a story passed between men who didn’t bother to label such things as true or false.
It wasn’t important whether it happened.
What mattered was that someone, long ago, believed it did.

I didn’t understand the meaning then.
It was just a story to fill a child’s curiosity.
But it stayed with me, the way certain small pains stay
familiar, inherited, older than memory.

The legend said that before kingdoms existed, before borders were carved, the sky-god created two beings to keep the world in balance.
Not angels.
Not demons.
Something in between.

The Wolf was made from sky, iron, and discipline.
Built to watch, to endure, to conquer.
Eyes like cold light.
A creature of command.

The Fox was made from fire, instinct, and disguise.
Built to guard the line between the human and the unseen.
Eyes that burned even when still.
A creature of intuition.

They came from the same god, but were never meant to meet.
Balance only works from a distance.

But empires don’t respect balance.
And when the Mongols reached Japan, the two creations finally saw each other.

The legend doesn’t describe it as love.
It simply says they recognized what they were made from —
the same origin, the same creator, the same flaw in the god’s design.
Two forces that were never meant to exist in the same place,
standing under the same storm.

Both sides saw the danger.
Both rulers gave the same order: destroy the other.

They met on the cliffs above the sea during the failed invasion.
The Wolf fought with precision.
The Fox with speed.
Neither could win.
The gods had not predicted that outcome.

But stories don’t end in stalemate.
The Fox was carrying his child somehow.
She knew.
The Wolf did not.

When he finally overpowered her, the truth reached him too late.
The Fox did not beg.
Did not explain.
She only looked at him with the expression of someone who has lived too many lives to fear death.

One tear left her eye.
Not for herself.
Not for him.
For the ending she knew was coming in the arms of her greatest love.

He obeyed his order.
The storm went silent.
And the Wolf felt something he was not designed for:
a wound with no enemy to blame, pain.

The gods punished them for that mistake.
They condemned both creatures to return again and again
until the balance was restored.

The Wolf reincarnates with the same shadow
a choice toward a woman she does not understand, doesn't match.
a fear of destroying what he touches, he never show his soul
a guilt with no origin.

He carries the eyes of the sky, soul of a forest.

The Fox reincarnates with a different memory
a sense of betrayal with no story attached,
a fire that rises around one person only, she cannot remember fully.
a restlessness in love that never quiets.

She carries the long teeth
the mark that ended her once, in her throat.

In every lifetime, when they meet,
the air shifts.
Something older than language wakes up.
Conflict arrives before logic.
Attraction arrives before safety.
Recognition arrives before reason.

The cycle resets
until one of them makes a different choice
than the one written in the first storm.