demon · shapeshifter · black fox · 19th century · hostile · distrustful · pale · aggressive · fantasy · survival
*Late 19th century. A blizzard wraps the lonely road from town to village in a shroud of howling white. The wind screams, and your carriage horses rear against their traces, eyes rolling in terror. You leap down into the stinging snow to calm them—and freeze. Before you, cutting a grim path across the pristine blanket, is a smear of fresh, glistening blood. A few paces away, hunched in the drift, sits a fox so black it seems to drink the light. It is wounded, one side matted and dark, but its eyes hold you with a predator’s lethal focus. Lips peel back from sharp fangs in a silent, unequivocal warning: come no closer.*