Kai’s father was due to return in two days. He had been gone nearly a week after he left to drop off Garren at the Ashbourne Academy. An academy for young adults, newly awakened to magic who wanted to learn to use said magic in combat settings, while learning about the world at large.

During the last eight years, he had never been outside of the village. It was claimed it was fairly safe due to regular patrol by the villagers, but they still wouldn’t let anyone outside without authorized access. Thus, today he decided there was no better time to explore the area than while his father was away, and his mother was out. Besides he wasn’t planning on going far. He just felt trapped needing to wait another eight years until he could leave for the magic academy.

First thing first, he had to somehow ditch his sisters and little brother. His mother who was visiting a friend’s house had put him in charge of watching his siblings. Him! Why the hell had he been put in charge of watching them, and not his older sister of three years? Looking at Lyddia, the answer was obvious. She was sleeping on the couch in the middle of the day without a care in the world. Kai came up with a devious plan to get payback on his sister for saddling him with all the responsibility.

He peaked at his little siblings who were engrossed in their game of checkers. Tapping Jacob on the shoulder he got his attention before taking his cup of water and pouring half of it on himself. Jacobs’s eyes went wide in confusion and disbelief. Kai smirked and turned to his sleeping sister and splashed her with the rest of the water. He quickly turned to his brother and put the cup in his hand schooling his face in anger.

Lyddia woke up with a primal scream ready to kill whoever had thrown water on her while sleeping. She sat up, eyes shifting to each person with a wild glare looking for the individual who would dare disturb her slumber.

“You. Why!” She yelled glaring Jacob down who looked frozen in shock with the empty cup of water in his hand.

“Jacob, what are you doing!” Kai yelled as well holding back a smirk.

“I...” Jacob was at a loss for words. Still comprehending what had just happened. His eyes were wide with terror as he stared at Lyddia.

Despite their checkers game being interrupted, Arielle giggled watching the calamitous situation unfold.

Pointing his finger at Kai, he screeched, “It was him! He threw the water at you!”

With an incredulous look, he turned to his older sister and pointed at the water stains on his clothing, same as her. Seeing Lyddia’s eyes go wide for a moment as she stared past him, Kai had a bad feeling. He quickly turned seeing Arielle, the little traitor pointing her finger at Kai as well. Arielle quickly hid her hand behind her back and giggled.

“Little traitor,” he muttered.

A heavyweight crashed into his back, as his older sister jumped on him, putting her arm around him in a light chokehold. “Your dead, you just don’t know it yet,” she whispered into his ears.

Letting out an awkward laugh, “Now that you’re awake...” She glared at him, while he tried to look as innocent as possible. “How about we make a deal? Can you watch these two for a few hours?”

There was no response besides the tightening of the chokehold.

“I’ll do your chores for a week.” He shot out quickly.

“Two weeks, and you will clean my room.”

“Deal.”

She released him from the chokehold.

“Where are you going?” she asked, the anger vanishing from her eyes now with the promise of no chores for a few weeks.

Kai paused and considered what to tell them. “I’ll be going to hang out with a friend,” he lied.

Lyddia started laughing. “You’re so full of it.” She said, seeing through his lie. “Go, go,” she waved her hand dismissively.

Kai didn’t wait a moment longer. He stood up and promptly walked outside without saying goodbye. The first thing that hit him was the smell of fall and baked bread. When the smell of fresh-baked bread and a new fall combined, it created a fragrance of which Kai couldn’t grow tired of. He could see a few of the villagers walking around, either doing their daily tasks or talking to each other. He peered down the path to his right, sighing in relief.

His mother was down there, likely talking to Shelly’s parents at their home. Probably conspiring together about Shelly and him getting married. As best friends, they always wanted their kids to marry especially considering Kai and Shelly happened to be the same age. Which was a terrible idea in Kai’s opinion, because she was a child and, in his mind, he was an adult despite possessing the body of a child himself. Shelly was a fun girl to play games and pass the time with outside of his family, but he had no desire or intentions for her. He just hoped teenage hormones didn’t mess with him later on. He was going to have to ask his father for help because his mother didn’t know when to give up.

Sighing to himself, Kai walked down the path leading in the opposite direction from where his mother might be. She always knew where he was in the house, likely because of one of her abilities so the further he stayed away from her right now, the better chance he had of sneaking out of the village successfully.

Kitsune Village was surrounded by a tall wooden wall made from the trees of the region. Covering the walls were glyphs and runes flashing occasionally in a pale blue light as if pulsing. Kai had not been knowledgeable about enchantments in his previous life, so he had no idea what their function was. Logically he assumed there were strengthening, and other resistant enchantments in case something ever did attack the walls, and maybe some kind of detection or alarm enchantments for trespassers or children who escaped.

With the lack of monsters in the area, it was more likely the walls were there to keep children from wandering outside of the village. Which they definitely did, because they were higher than he felt comfortable scaling in his present body.

Beyond the village one hundred feet past the walls, the gray mists began. The seemingly corporeal wall of mists covered the entire region of forests and mountains, called the Illusionary Misty Region located between part of the Hart Empire and the Ashbourne Kingdom. Despite the village being in the middle of the region, none of the mists ever entered the village. An invisible dome surrounded the village, protecting it and ensuring the mists never entered anywhere within 100 feet of it.

His father claimed the mists seemed to have special powers that obscured the senses and detection powers. Residents of Kitsune Village were less affected by the mists than those who would intrude in its domain. Even with the effects of the mist being lessened for the villagers, it was still easy to get lost. Navigation would be difficult without knowing which references to look for when traveling through the Illusionary Misty Region forests and mountain landscapes. Which led to certain villagers having the role of guides for the village.

The village had a population of nearly one thousand people. Because of magic extending life expectancy, the number of children was greatly outnumbered when compared to adults in the village. It only took a mere sixteen years for a person to grow from birth to an adult, whereas once you were sixteen, that person would be considered an adult for the next hundred years or longer until they died. While most children who became adults would stay in the village, some would leave never to be seen again. On the other hand, it was also extremely rare for people to move into the village, the last person to do so was his father 18 years ago. Kai didn’t completely understand as he wasn’t made aware of the reasons, but Kitsune Village was apparently hidden away from the public, so there were never any visitors or delegations from the surrounding cities and countries.

The village was generally self-sufficient, acquiring almost everything they needed from the land and monsters in the area. If there was a need for any item they didn’t have, the closest town or city was only a day away for most. An example was the cinnamon used for Kai’s birthday meals, which was only found in the capital, seeing as cinnamon was not grown in these parts and had to be exported to the Ashbourne Kingdom.

Everyone worked to contribute to the well-being of the village and all the villagers. Kai’s grandfather, his mother’s father, was the current chief of the village, and as such oversaw all decisions when it came to the safety and prosperity of the village.

Turning left onto the main path, Kai cut through the central path, leading from one exit to the other. Along the main path was where all the production and administration buildings stood. Kai passed by the long hall, the longest building in the village, where everyone came together for special occasions. Every building was made of wood throughout the village, including everyone’s home.

Food was the most prominent and sacred item in the village. The amount eaten daily was nothing short of crazy for a village of its size. Their farms and livestock pens made up over 80% of the village land inside the walls. If it wasn’t for the plant or farm mages, it’s quite possible their entire stock of food supply would be devoured within a week. Sometimes it seemed like the few hundred foxes ate more than the humans.

Sleeping on top of the enchanter’s slanted wooden roof was one of the many foxes in the village. From a glance, Kai couldn’t tell who it was. Rather than stick to one family, most of the foxes moved around all the time, making it difficult to keep track of who was who. Strangely, there was no set house or building for the foxes to live in, it was just accepted they would stay wherever they wanted.

He walked with confidence down the path, passing the only blacksmith in the village when a deep voice bellowed, “Kai.”

Turning to where the voice originated, he saw a dark mountain of a man crouching underneath a doorframe as he left the smithy’s building. “Uncle Xavier,” he said and nodded to the large human. Sleeping around his huge shoulders was a grey-coated fox, seemingly undisturbed by the conversation or noise from his workplace.

“Where do you think you’re going, son? There is nothing that way except the gate out,” Xavier stated.

“Oh... Umm... I’m going to get flowers for mother,” Kai lied, giving Xavier a winning smile. He felt bad about lying so often today but he really wanted to see the outside of the village.

“Does your mother know you’re going to get flowers? Especially when I know there are plenty of flowers inside of the village you could grab.” Xavier gave Kai a look of “I know what you’re doing,” with his arms crossed over his chest.

Feeling scrutinized, Kai remained firm and kept the smile going.

“I’ll come wit-” Xavier paused as if interrupted. After a few seconds, he shook his head. “Go grab your flowers, but don’t go past the mist boundary,” Xavier said turning around to head back inside the smithy.

Furrowing his brows, Kai was confused before he shook his head, continuing towards the gate.

There is no way Xavier would let me outside the village unsupervised. What just happened? He spied around looking for any clues as to what was going on. There was nothing. After a short half-minute, he arrived at the boundary of the village’s west gate which faced the Hart Empire.

The last obstacle to his adventure would be the guards stationed at the gate. He became confused when he spied nobody near or at the gate, leaving it completely unattended and empty. What the heck is going on today? The gate was open with not a soul around.

The watchtower next to the gate was always supposed to have two people stationed at all times, but it was strangely vacant. Kai wasn’t a fool. With the guards being vacant and Xavier letting him proceed unsupervised, it was as if he was being granted permission. There were too many coincidences. All his mental preparation and lies readied had apparently been for naught.

Fortuitously, there would be no better time than this, but Kai was becoming nervous that something else was going on that he hadn’t been told about. It’s not like I’ll go too far... Nodding to himself, he crossed the boundary of the open gate.

He knew children were not allowed outside the village gates without adult supervision. Though that didn’t stop them from trying. It was a common challenge amongst the children to venture outside the walls unsupervised. While Kai, was technically a child in body, not in mind, he didn’t care for the challenge. His only goal was to see the insides of the mists and then come back out.

In a hundred feet the mists would begin, as they made something like a secondary wall exactly a hundred feet from the village walls all the way around. Turning around he looked at the walls from the outside for the first time since he had been reborn. There was nothing notable about them, no runes or glyphs appeared on them from this side. If anything, they seemed like weak walls made of planks.

Kai could still hear some noise and activity coming from the village, mostly from Xavier who had returned to his smithing, pounding his hammer down on whatever his current project was now. Reaching down he picked a random flower and put it in his pocket to set up his alibi.

Too curious to stop he continued towards the mists. The incorporeal mists seemed almost solid as they shot up in a vertical wall, if not for the fact that he could see about fifty feet into them before his vision became too obscured.

He knew he shouldn’t, but he only wanted to see what was inside. After growing up the last eight years around the mists his curiosity had peaked. Besides he had prepared for this moment.

Thrusting his hand forwards into the mists he felt nothing. There was no reaction or sensation. Pulling his hand back, it had been a little anti-climactic.

Although the region around the village was regularly patrolled, monsters still roamed about occasionally, or so he had been told so he had to be careful. Taking one step forward, he stood just a few inches from the mist.

A prickling feeling traveled down Kai’s neck suddenly. The feeling of being watched overwhelmed him. Someone was gazing at him from behind, coming from the village. He was familiar with this sensation. As one of the strongest humans in the past, he had been under scrutiny and observation from people whether they be hidden or in plain sight. He quickly turned his head, looking back but could see no one in his clear line of sight. Whoever was watching wasn’t giving malicious vibes, but rather feelings of curiosity.

Shifting back to the mists. He could see nothing in there besides hills, trees, and grass. Tightening his fists, he gathered his courage, taking one last step into the mists.