Where and how youma are born have remained riddles since the dawn of creation, riddles whose answers even those it concerns know no more than any less feared being can answer its own beginnings.
Obscured by countless millennia of continuous existence, his early memories consisted only of a firm, instinctual understanding of two words imprinted into his mind: Toutetsu and Gouran. Toutetsu meant hunger, it meant he could feed on anything or anyone unhindered, until he gorged himself drowsy on the tastiest meats unable to resist the Toutetsu. Toutetsu meant invincible power, it meant his shape was any he wished: shapes that frighten, shapes that lure prey, shapes that entrance victims, and shapes beautiful or terrible to behold, all dependant on nothing but his whim. Gouran meant he himself, and all that was solely him. Gouran meant haughty pride crossing the border into full-blown arrogance, standing undisputed at the top, beholden to no one and answering to nothing.
When Gouran idly thought back across the centuries to when he was young, that was all he remembered.
How or when he came to be in the Yellow Sea he didn't know. Perhaps he had been born here, or perhaps he had come when very young, or perhaps he had existed here as long as the Yellow Sea itself had existed. All Gouran knew was he had lived here for as long as his memory cared to remember, which was much longer than any human could possibly conceive. His existence was solitary. If he ever had parents he'd long forgotten them, and he had no inclination to seek out other toutetsu, if any existed. He was the All-King, the one being that no one met and lived to tell the tale, and he would suffer no rival to that self-proclaimed title.
Anyone he met quickly ended up as his supper, or, if he was feeling bored, his toy for a period first. Beasts, he found, were dreadfully dull to play with, whether magical or otherwise, so his favourite toys were humans. If he was feeling full and content and noticed a human wandering off alone or in a small group he might take on human shape himself. Once, he remembered nostalgically, he had come across a fat young shouzan pilgrim separated from the group. The man was lonely and scared, and Gouran came to him in the form of a beautiful woman, like that of one of the nyosen. The man quickly fell for Gouran, who had him perform tricks until he grew tired of his pet. The man wasn't nearly as tasty as he thought he would be with all that fat.
Other times he didn't bother with deception, just appeared in full-out monstrous glory and destroyed entire flocks of the migrating pilgrims, or else picked them off from the shadows one by one and entertained himself with the reactions of the paranoid remainder. A couple mysterious deaths in the shadows, a glimpse of a human form near the corpses, and those he allowed to live enacted a drama that decimated more than he had himself. It was very amusing.
Very occasionally he came across kirin. This was very rare, since not many were foolish enough to be caught off guard or foolhardy enough to challenge their superiors, but he had met more than a handful. He remembered the first time well, when a young arrogant little kirin, who thought herself all powerful having just attained constant human shape, tried to subdue him. That day he learned that kirin were mouth-wateringly delicious. After that when he saw one galloping through the Yellow Sea in the distance he would transform himself into a low-level youma and wait in an obvious location to try to entice it to come and subdue him. It rarely worked, but it was worth it whenever he did get the rare delicacy of kirin meat. And, of course, every time he ate one he became even more powerful than he originally was.
Gouran scoffed at youma that let themselves become kirin's slaves in exchange for the faint promise that one day they would get to fight all the other slaves over the kirin's corpse. He needed no such servitude to taste the scrumptious meat, nor had he any need to share. Sometimes he just sat to the side sneering as he watched some wimpy thing that barely deserved the name youma get sucked into becoming a shirei by a weak kirin's half-hearted spell, stroking his ego that as a toutetsu he would never need to stoop that low. He was the King of All, no beast, human, magical or divine creature could ever hope to dominate him.
Most of the time, though, kirin were far from his mind, since there were large intervals when all twelve kirin were grown up and in their respective kingdoms. During those times life seemed dull without the vague dream of juicy kirin, and Gouran became positively languid. He couldn't even motivate himself to hunt properly, just snapped up a dozen or so weak youma or youju when he felt hungry. On one of these lazy expeditions he strayed close to Mt. Hou, since the kirin had left many seasons ago and he was beginning to hope a new one had grown.
To his surprise there was a kirin at the base of Mt. Hou, a surprisingly large one with a funny coloured mane. The kirin was hesitantly chanting the subduing spell at a very weak mouse youma, which scurried away completely unaffected. It was quite pathetic. Gouran wondered vaguely if the reason why he had never seen this kirin before was because it was defective, and the nyosen kept it locked up in Mt. Hou out of either worry or shame. In any case, if it couldn't even subdue that then there wasn't much point in eating it. He considered for a brief moment eating it purely for the flavour, but brushed the thought aside, worried that the defective kirin might upset his stomach. Extremely disappointed and resigned to a long wait before he could bait the next kirin, Gouran returned to his abode and went to sleep grumpily.
He awoke to the sound of human voices echoing from above in his cave, and realized he had been asleep for a long period and was ravenous. In an almost bored manner, without even fully materializing, he reached out and dragged in the nearest human, feeling the female's arms and legs struggle uselessly in his shadowy grip. He formed a mouth to eat the tidbit when into his cave burst more snack, and Gouran paused and considered them.
There was the defective black haired kirin, a nyokai, a tough male in crunchy looking armour that would get stuck in between his teeth, and, of course, the entrapped female. He still didn't want to risk eating defective kirin, and nyokai taste like fruity sand, so he fashioned a scythe-arm and hurtled it into the male-human snack. The man surprisingly deflected it with his sword, and just as Gouran had changed his trajectory and was aiming the killing blow he felt the sharp tug of a kirin spell.
He turned to stare at the kirin foal in annoyance, but to his surprise the push he gave didn't break the spell, or even put a dent in it. Gouran let the female slip and fully concentrated on breaking free, since there was no way he, the King of All, was going to end up shirei to some timid little runt that couldn't even make the weakest youma submit! Yet despite Gouran's enraged efforts the spell held fast and, for the first time in his life, Gouran was locked into a stalemate.
Stalemate. Evenly matched. Oh the hateful words! He was Gouran a toutetsu and he did not suffer any rivals! Yet the pathetic kirin foal with the wrong coloured hair he'd seen failing to subdue the most pathetic youma on the very doorstep of Mt. Hou was now holding his gaze steadily, and continuing it much longer than any kirin Gouran had ever faced before. Gouran stood his ground and waited for the day to begin to wane at noontime, thus turning all the energy of life into energy of death, placing the natural elements in his favour. That moment came, and Gouran felt his power double as the sun passed the highest mark in the sky and began its downward descent. Soon, he believed, soon he would be free!
And just in that singular moment of elation, for the first time in his life Gouran felt an indescribable coldness creep into his heart. He continued resisting, but his heart was beating irregularly now, as it did when he was hunting, but this was not the same feeling. Rather than the excitement of the hunt, what he felt now held back his power rather than urged it on, and the sensation constricted his chest tightly. When the diminutive kirin sent an intense glare at him, he understood.
Fear. For the first time ever, Gouran the Toutetsu was afraid.
Upon realizing this, Gouran sent his body out as the all-encompassing darkness that frightened all creatures of the light. However, the kirin was not the least affected, so he returned himself to the space before the kirin and changed into a million different terrifying shapes. Instead of being intimidated, the young kirin commanded him with unquestionable, absolute authority,
"Submit, Gouran!"
Gouran quailed at the intense voice calling his true name, and, unable to withstand the force of it, he began shrinking himself into the shape of a normal-sized red wolf. A golden strain of gentle thoughts floated into his mind, and he baulked at the image of the cute, perky little puppy that appeared, but then slumped and changed himself into that according to his new master's wishes.
"Gouran… " Gouran's name had never before been uttered by a soul, as he had never told it to anyone, indeed never had anyone to tell it to. The one who softly called him now, without a hint of condemnation or disgust, gently beamed at him with a face of ethereal benevolence. Gouran had no concept of beauty, but still the kirin's unblemished purity awed him. Without realizing it his tail began to wag, and he affectionately licked the boy's hand. The kirin pulled him into an embrace, the first one of Gouran's life, and as he was squished by the chubby child arms Gouran felt an unfamiliar warmth flow through his chest which promised safety and only good things. And he found he didn't mind being subservient, or being forced into this laughable shape, as long as these small arms continued to hold him