A/N: This entire chapter is a flashback. I know I'm introducing a new character thirty chapters into this story, but it was never really explained how Rang went from a child crying over a puppy to the bloodthirsty fox out for vengeance that he was when Lee Yeon next saw him. So I'm going to have some flashbacks in the last half of this story that will try to fill that gap, and eventually it will be relevant to what is presently happening, I promise :)

There is some violence in this chapter but nothing graphic. Mainly just references to blood (and, well, organs being eaten). Fairly heavy angst.

Six Hundred Years Ago, Joseon Dynasty

Rang was hungry, and the scent of dried jerky—deer meat, from what he could tell—had drawn him from deeper in the forest to its edge, where a middle-aged man dressed in scholarly attire sat huddled over a fire, eating jerky from his traveling pouch.

Rang's mouth watered. It had been two weeks since the fire that had consumed the forest where he'd lived peacefully with his brother for the past two years.

His brother must have died in the fire. That had to be the only explanation as to why he hadn't come back for Rang, and rumors had spread throughout the forest that the mountain god was no more, that the mountain had been abandoned and belonged to no one. Otherwise, why hadn't the god returned and exacted vengeance on those who had destroyed his home?

Rang had searched for his brother for three days in the charred remains of their favorite places. When he'd found nothing but burnt tree trunks and dead grass and he'd eaten the last of the food he'd found in a cave he'd frequented with his brother, he'd decided to travel down to a section of forest that hadn't been destroyed. There, he'd foraged for berries—he was grateful his brother had taught him which ones were poisonous—and slept wherever he could find shelter, gradually moving towards the forest he now found himself in, far from his brother's territory.

One advantage of knowing how to shapeshift into animals was that Rang could make himself smaller and squeeze into unoccupied spaces, like holes in trees or hollowed out trunks. There, he could hide from the rain and any not-so-friendly creatures.

Unfortunately, this power didn't help Rang if he wanted to sleep; the laws of shapeshifting dictated that he had to be awake to maintain his altered form. Thus, he'd taken to sleeping during the day when he was less spooked by every sound—a light sleep, ready to awaken at any moment—and traveling and searching for food during the night when his night vision and heightened sense of smell and hearing gave him an advantage over whatever might be waiting for him in the dark.

He might be a fox, but he was also human and scared of the dark, as humans were.

Sometimes, he hated being human.

At present, Rang waited in the shadows until the scholar fell asleep, which didn't take long. He figured if he was super quiet and used his heightened speed, he'd be able to sneak away with the man's pouch without being noticed. He was a fox, after all. Maybe he was totally lost—he didn't even know how to get back to the mountain at this point—but he should be able to get himself some proper food. Otherwise, he could see his brother in his mind's eye, shaking his head in disappointment.

Creeping towards the man's sleeping form, Rang easily swiped the pouch from him. He quickly made his retreat and smiled to himself as he vanished into the forest. He couldn't believe his luck. Dried meat—meat of any kind—was a luxury he'd never had when he lived with his mother, though he'd grown used to eating fresh, cooked meat for most of his meals with Lee Yeon. Not bothering to wait until he made it further into the cover of the trees, Rang slowed his pace and tore the pouch open. Pausing by a small stream, he gleefully reached into the pouch and retrieved one piece of jerky; he shoved the whole piece in his mouth and chewed ravenously, then reached for another piece, then another. So focused was he on the heady flavor of the meat and the emptiness in his stomach that he didn't take much note of the grass rustling behind him until suddenly he was hoisted up by the collar of his hanbok and thrust backwards into a tree, the wind knocked out of him.

The man who faced him was not the man he'd stolen from, however; he was a soldier—Rang could tell by his dress—a heavyset man with a scarred cheek and enraged eyes. He breathed foully in Rang's face.

"And who is this, stealing from the scholar Yi San-hae in the middle of the night?!" the soldier demanded.

"Uh, um…" Rang gulped, shocked into silence. His throat seized up; he couldn't move, paralyzed by panic. He'd checked. There hadn't been anyone else there. At least, he hadn't seen anyone or sensed anyone in the area.

Or maybe he'd been too focused on the jerky. His brother was always telling him to be more careful, to not rush into things impulsively.

His stomach growled. A few feet away, the pouch filled with jerky had fallen uselessly to the ground.

"Speak," the soldier commanded. He drew his sword from behind his back, and what happened next happened all too quickly. Suddenly, Rang's limbs moved of their own accord, sloppily copying one of the defensive moves Lee Yeon had taught him. The violent, overpowered kick to the soldier's stomach was enough to surprise him, and he dropped Rang on the ground as he stumbled backwards. Rang scrambled to his feet, but the soldier yanked him backwards by the collar of his hanbok. As he was dragged through the dirt, Rang flailed around with his claws, slicing through the man's arm. When the soldier's hold on him loosened, Rang twisted his body and rolled himself away.

He jumped up. The man's arm was bleeding through his hanbok, and Rang's claws remained out, dripping red in the moonlight.

"You," the soldier growled. "You're one of those evil spirits." He slashed at Rang with his sword, but Rang was too fast for him and easily avoided the blade; he disappeared in a blur and reappeared far out of reach of the man's sword. In truth, he had no interest in fighting the soldier further, and he would have run away—just run as fast as his fox feet could carry him—but he'd come all this way for the deer jerky, and now the man was standing right on top of it. Surely, he could draw the soldier away long enough to grab it and be on his way. He was a fox.

Besides, Rang had known men like the soldier in the village, men who would hit him with sticks just for existing, who would look at him like the soldier was doing now as he sized him up, wondering what manner of beast lurked beneath the surface of Rang's human skin and how to defeat it. Rang was exhausted and hungry and alone, and he didn't feel like giving up his jerky to a man like that.

Unfortunately, the man realized what Rang was waiting for—maybe Rang had looked at the jerky for too long. He snatched the pouch off the ground.

"Do you want this?" he asked, holding the pouch aloft. "I think you'll have to come through my sword to get it." The silver metal of his weapon gleamed in the moonlight, taunting Rang. Of course, Rang had learned sword fighting from Lee Yeon, but he didn't have a sword with him, and even if he had, he'd never been in a real fight before. His brother had made him practice with a wooden sword. And he believed the man sensed his fear because even though he'd called him an evil spirit and his hanbok sleeve was soaked with blood, he didn't look deterred by Rang's presence in the slightest. It made Rang angry. Humans had destroyed his forest and his brother and his puppy, and now this one wasn't even really afraid of him, which was the only thing Rang could have had going for him. He'd wanted to be a proper fox, to be able to save himself. If he ran now, he'd never be one.

Rang forced himself to recall his long afternoons practice-fighting with Lee Yeon in the meadow. He thought how he might disarm him. He circled the soldier slowly, and the soldier mimicked his movements, seemingly in no hurry to defeat a child, even one with claws.

When Rang felt semi-confident, he slowly drew closer to his target. Closer, then closer, until he had no choice but to attack.

Unfortunately, the man anticipated his movements and cut him off, and everything thereafter blurred together in a series of flailing kicks and jabs, only half of which landed properly. At some point, the soldier slashed through Rang's hanbok, slicing him across the chest, and Rang thought he might indeed die trying to get the pouch. Panic sent him flying into a series of desperate motions, and by the end of it, the man was slumped over on the ground, gasping for air as blood gushed from his throat.

Moments later, he was dead.

Dead.

Rang hadn't meant to.

Killing humans—messing with them, period—was the one thing Lee Yeon had always told him not to do.

Rang hadn't meant to. He stared at the man in disbelief, then at his own claws that were covered in blood, the claws that had saved him, the claws that had also betrayed him. Rang remembered how his mother had screamed when he'd shown her his claws. This was why she'd hated him. She'd known what he was capable of.

But he really hadn't meant to.

Rang expected to be injured himself, but when he checked for the gash on his chest that was surely there, he found only smooth, perfectly intact skin. It had stung when the man had slashed him—but maybe not in the way it should have, Rang realized. It only felt like a bee sting. A large one. The blood on his hanbok wasn't his own. His wound had disappeared almost instantly.

Of course, his scrapes and bruises had always healed quickly, but he'd assumed that, being a half-fox, something could kill him. Swords seemed an obvious choice since his brother had taught him to sword fight—maybe Lee Yeon hadn't been sure what could kill Rang. A human sword was apparently not one of those things.

He felt safer and also alarmed. He felt like an evil spirit, like the man had said.

He was still hungry. Still exhausted. Still alone. And now...now he was a murderer.

Rang lunged for the stream nearby and began frantically splashing himself with water, trying to scrub the blood out of his hanbok. He was making too much noise, but he didn't care. What if his brother could see what he'd done?

Suddenly, he was back in the small village he'd grown up in; he could hear the villagers chanting that he was a monster. Rang rubbed more furiously at the fabric, but he didn't think the blood was coming out.

He hadn't meant to. He hadn't meant to. He hadn't meant to. He'd panicked.

Rang hunched over, sobbing, with his hanbok soaking wet from the blood and the water.

"H-hyung," he choked out between sobs. "Please come back, hyung. Please come back." He sat there crying and shaking for what felt like an eternity, and when he heard movement behind him again, he felt certain it was the scholar coming to avenge the death of his friend.

Rang didn't know if he had it in him to fight it.

When Rang looked up in the direction of the intruder, however, he saw, instead of the scholar, a girl roughly his age dressed in a blue, white, and yellow hanbok. She had blood on her clothes as well but a serene smile on her face, and she licked her lips as she approached.

Right away, he knew she wasn't human. Black claws tipped with blood crowned her fingers; two shimmering amber eyes were set into her face like serpentine jewels; and polished white fox canines descended from either side of her mouth like tiny daggers. But what struck Rang the most as she approached was the set of nine glowing reddish-gold tails at her back.

He'd never met a nine-tailed fox near his age before.

"Wh-who are you?" he asked, his voice wobbling. "Are you h-hurt?" He pointed at the blood on her clothes.

"Someone who's going to eat your dinner if you don't," the fox girl said, ignoring his second question. "You can worry about your clothes later."

Rang blinked. He didn't understand her comment.

"H-huh?" he ventured, hot tears silently streaming down his face.

"I'm saying you should eat him while he's still fresh," the girl explained as she approached. "The other human back there was really delicious." She inclined her head towards the campsite where Rang had stolen the jerky. "He was a high-ranking scholar, it looked like," she continued. "They're always well-fed, so they taste better than the average human. Better than your soldier there." She gestured to the man on the ground. She winked. "My sister taught me that. So why'd you just grab the jerky?" She wrinkled her nose. "I'd been trailing these two for a while, but I wasn't sure about attacking them both by myself. Thanks for taking care of this one for me. Normally, I don't share, but since you look really hungry, I can give you half of the soldier. Take your pick. Heart or liver."

Suddenly, Rang understood the girl's initial statement, and his eyes grew wide with alarm.

"My brother says we're not supposed to eat humans. It's against the rules of the gods."

The fox girl looked around as if searching for the gods he'd mentioned. She gave a chilling laugh, high-pitched as if her voice was a knife being sharpened.

"You're that half-fox, aren't you? The one the mountain god Lee Yeon was taking care of? He's your half-brother, right?"

Rang nodded.

"H-he's...dead. He died in the fire that took out the forest on our mountain."

The girl gave him a sympathetic look and drew closer to him. The moonlight illuminated half of her face, the rest of it darkened by shadow.

"My older sister died in the fire too," she said. "I'm on my own now. My name's Su Gyeong. What's yours?"

"Rang...Lee Rang," he said, adding his brother's surname. He sniffed and wiped his tears and his runny nose on his dirt-smudged hanbok sleeve.

Su Gyeong gave him a fanged smile that looked predatory, but perhaps all of her expressions appeared that way. It was hard to not look predatory with claws and fangs; Rang knew that.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Eleven."

"Me too. We should be friends then. I saw you fighting that solider earlier. Your technique's not bad for a half-fox. Did your brother teach you?"

Rang nodded, and Su Gyeong sat beside him on the ground with an effortlessly straight posture, neatly folding her blood-stained hanbok underneath her. In her colorful, decorative clothes, she looked like a miniature version of the only court lady he'd ever glimpsed when she'd passed through his village, dainty and proud. Only Su Gyeong had the aura of some of the soldiers he'd seen—like she could use her body as a weapon at any given moment. Like a snake lazing calmly in the grass until it found something to strike at. It didn't help that her gaze kept darting back and forth between him and the forest—searching the night for danger, he guessed—and that her pupils were narrowed to slits inside the glowing amber of her eyes—fox eyes, both of them. Unlike his single fox eye that he didn't know whether to hide out of embarrassment or to keep visible as evidence that he was at least half a fox and didn't deserve to be eaten by her.

He decided to keep his fox eye visible.

"My sister taught me to fight," she informed him. "Of course, it isn't quite the same as being taught by a mountain god," she continued in a self-deprecating manner, "but I can take care of myself. Are you sure you don't want half?" She cocked her head and gestured again to the man on the ground.

Rang shook his head.

"Suit yourself."

The fox girl got up and flounced over to the body, the spring in her step not matching the situation at all. Rang didn't mean to watch her carve into the man's chest, but he couldn't tear his eyes away, partially intrigued and partially repulsed by the girl's actions. She seemed so strong and confident, and Rang felt lost. He'd even been crying pitifully a few minutes ago, in the same way he'd cried in the night for his mother when he'd first lived with Lee Yeon, but though this girl had just lost her sister, she was expertly finding the exact spot to draw out the organs she wanted and in no time had one human heart and one human liver in her hands. She scarfed the liver down quickly, then ate half of the heart, licking the blood off her fingers as she went. Finally, she looked back up at Rang, blood smeared on her face, and asked if he was sure he didn't want to try a little piece of the heart.

"It's the best," she assured him. With her claws, she sliced the remainder of the heart into small quarters. She held one quarter out to him. "Come on. Just try it. Don't be such a baby."

Rang stared at her bloodied, outstretched hand, at her claws gleaming with wetness. His stomach growled again, betraying him, and he couldn't deny that the smell of the man's blood was enticing. He glanced up at the girl, then back down at his blood-soaked hanbok.

His brother would tell him not to, but his brother wasn't there. And Lee Yeon had also told him that no one would save him if he didn't save himself.

"You know," the girl said when he still hadn't answered, "this is one of the men who killed your brother, so you really shouldn't feel bad about eating him."

Rang's blood ran cold.

"It is?" he asked anxiously. "How do you know?"

"I saw him," she said. "That day, I saw him and some other men from this one village set the fire. I got out, but...my sister didn't make it. Why do you think I was tracking him?" Su Gyeong stretched her arm out a little more, motioning for Rang to take the piece of heart.

Rang searched her face, then the face of the man he'd killed. Or, rather, the face of the man who'd killed his brother. His jaw clenched. Suddenly, he made up his mind.

Walking over to the girl, he accepted the heart from her and shoved it in his mouth before he could rethink his answer. He thought the organ would taste disgusting, but she was right. It was the best thing he'd ever tasted, like it was food made just for him. The meat was so tender, it melted in his mouth—he was using his fox canines to eat it, but there was really no need—and the acidic blood washing it down tasted sharper and more deliciously sour than the kimchi he'd eaten from his brother's table.

It tasted like food from heaven. Or maybe he was just that hungry.

Unfortunately, when he looked up, Su Gyeong had eaten the other three quarters of the heart. She got up then and washed her hands and face in the stream. When she turned back to him, she looked as ladylike as ever, though she still had her fangs and claws showing, and the blood on her hanbok glistened wetly.

"Did you like it?" she asked, and Rang nodded slowly. "Told you it was good. Bet you wish you had more now, right?" She approached him, her gold hairpiece shining in the moonlight. "If you want, we can go hunting together since we're both on our own. I can teach you some tricks. We can eat meat like that every day," she said, a wicked gleam in her eyes.

Rang wasn't sure he trusted her. He didn't know why she was even talking to him. When other fox spirits came to visit Lee Yeon, Rang was all but ignored, save for the polite things they would say to him for Lee Yeon's benefit.

He didn't trust her. But just the thought of eating meat every day set his stomach growling again. His mouth watered. Despite what he'd been taught, he couldn't deny that tiny piece of human heart had made him hungry for more. And maybe she was right. Why should he care about the humans who'd taken his brother and his home and his dog away from him? Humans had never cared for him; even his own mother hadn't cared. They only ever saw him as a monster.

His stomach growled again.

He had to save himself. No one was coming to save him anymore.

"Besides," the girl continued, appealing to him with a piteous look, "since I gave you some of my food, don't you think you should repay the favor?" She lowered her face and looked at him through upturned eyelashes.

Oh. Lee Yeon had always stressed the importance of a fox repaying his debts, though technically Rang supposed he could argue that she hadn't killed the soldier. He had.

He didn't feel like arguing.

"We can eat meat every day?" he clarified.

Su Gyeong nodded.

"I guess I could come with you," Rang said, not wanting to stick around that place any longer than he had to. He couldn't look at the dead man anymore.

"Perfect," Su Gyeong said. Her unsettling eyes gleamed in the darkness, and another predatory grin lit up her face.