City: Oais

  Year: 6202 AE

  The city of Oais rose like a living thing.

  Green spires of steel and glass pierced the sky, their mirrored surfaces alive with holographic advertisements and drifting glyphs of light. Bioluminescent vines crept along balconies and transit rails, reclaiming metal with patient inevitability. Skycars hummed overhead in graceful currents, weaving between floating platforms suspended on bands of blue light. Below, cobbled streets wound through gardens of wildflowers and moss-covered stone, where pedestrians moved at an unhurried pace, framed by a city that had learned—at least in its heart—to let nature breathe alongside progress.

  None of that beauty reached the outskirts.

  It thinned there, light dimming, growth retreating, until it vanished entirely in forgotten corners like the one Bella called home.

  Her house leaned inward, as if ashamed of itself. The room she slept in was barely larger than a storage closet, its walls scuffed and bare, lit only by the pallid glow of a holo-emitter embedded high in one corner. Dust clung to the air, carrying the faint scent of static and old circuitry. A narrow cot pressed against one wall, its blanket worn thin by years of use. A battered desk sat opposite it, gouged with scratches and burn marks from careless repairs. The single chair beside it creaked if anyone dared sit too long.

  Bella sat cross-legged on the cracked floor, the cold seeping through the thin fabric of her clothes. Her fingers drifted through the flickering light of the hologram projected before her.

  An ancient battle unfolded in translucent gold and blue. Warriors in flowing armor clashed with creatures of myth—yokai. Steel rang against claws and flame. Their cries echoed faintly, distorted by centuries and imperfect archives, like a half-remembered song carried on old wind.

  Bella’s eyes reflected the light, shimmering like shifting sand.

  A golden fox yokai darted across the projection, its sleek form alive with feral grace. It slipped between soldiers with impossible speed, tails fanning like living fire before it vanished in a flash of brilliance. Bella leaned forward without thinking, her hand lifting—then stopping—just short of the phantom battlefield.

  Her chest tightened.

  She wasn’t watching the fight.

  She was watching a world where beings like that had existed. Where strength meant protection, not domination. Where loyalty and courage burned brighter than neon lights and manufactured comforts.

  A world where she might have belonged.

  Her fingers brushed the light. The hologram stuttered, then reset, the battle rewinding to its opening clash. Bella sighed softly and leaned back, resting her palms on her knees. The cot creaked faintly behind her, as if the room itself were shifting under the weight of her loneliness.

  “They fought to protect what they loved,” she murmured.

  The holo-emitter did not respond.

  It never did—unless prompted.

  The myths of yokai had become her refuge. Not just for their power, but for their heart. Yokai were said to guard their clans, their lands, their people with unshakable devotion. They were fierce, yes—but also bound by love and loyalty so deep it could outlast gods.

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  Bella had often dreamed of being one of them. Strong. Fearless. Necessary.

  Her reality was far smaller.

  Her father had left the day she was born, disappointed by the absence of the son he’d wanted. Her mother, hollowed out by resentment, wasted no warmth on a child she had never asked for. By the time Bella could walk, she had been pushed into the back room and forgotten there. Meals were left outside the door like offerings to something unseen. Conversations were brief, clipped, transactional.

  The holo-emitter had been salvaged from a recycling depot—obsolete, glitching, temperamental. It became her teacher. Her storyteller. Her only companion.

  The projection flickered, switching modules.

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  Bella groaned softly, then straightened.

  Magic was another escape. A discipline where loneliness could be shaped into something useful. Where focus mattered more than bloodlines or attention. She raised her hands, fingers weaving carefully through the air.

  “Focus, Bella,” the machine’s voice instructed—calm, measured, devoid of warmth.

  She obeyed.

  A faint golden light shimmered at her fingertips. It gathered, tightened, then bloomed into a small, glowing orb. Bella stared at it, pride and ache twisting together in her chest.

  “Good,” the voice said.

  The praise landed hollowly.

  When the lesson ended, Bella let the light dissipate and sank back onto the floor. She switched the module herself this time, calling up the fragmented histories she’d memorized by heart.

  Ancient tales of yokai spilled across the room in broken sequences and half-preserved glyphs. Inconsistent. Contradictory. Incomplete.

  She devoured them anyway.

  They spoke of protectors—guardians bound by choice, not chains. Beings who cherished those they defended with a devotion fierce enough to defy death itself. Bella traced the outline of a holographic figure rendered in faint gold, her breath shallow.

  “A protector,” she whispered.

  The city hummed beyond the walls. Skycars passed. Laughter drifted faintly through cracked stone. Oais lived loudly without her.

  Bella turned back to the light.

  If yokai had existed once, she would find the truth—not to prove it to anyone else, but for herself. They had carved a place in the world despite impossible odds. Perhaps she could do the same with the jagged fragments of her own life.

  The emitter bathed the room in soft hues, transforming it briefly into something gentler. Not a prison.

  A beginning.

  Her gaze drifted to the crack in the ceiling above her cot. She had found it at ten—a narrow fissure that let in a sliver of sky. Night after night, she lay beneath it, memorizing the stars. They became her sanctuary. Her first teachers.

  She had woven her earliest shields under their light—fragile, imperfect things, but hers.

  Even now, she felt the same pull. A sense that something waited beyond Oais, beyond this room. A life where she could become more than an afterthought.

  “At the beginning of time,” the hologram librarian intoned suddenly, “yokai kind were enslaved—used for sport, broken for entertainment.”

  Bella stilled.

  “One being stood against the gods,” it continued. “A female humanoid. A Phoenix Shaman.”

  Her breath caught.

  “She freed the yokai and granted them power, teaching them to protect themselves and one another.”

  “Is that… true?” Bella asked.

  “Recorded in Circa 40 BE,” the librarian replied smoothly.

  “How did you find it?”

  “Cross-referenced archives. Search parameters: yokai, creation myths, Phoenix Shaman.”

  Bella swallowed.

  “Playback myth,” she said quietly.

  The story unfolded—of fire, sacrifice, and rebirth. Of a woman who burned so others would never bow again. Of a Golden Phoenix who still watched, waiting for moments when the world stood on the edge.

  As the myth ended, Bella sat very still.

  For the first time, the stories felt less like history—and more like memory.