The 120 Spirits

The Call 1

Kiara and I set out together, but the atmosphere between us felt loaded, warped by everything we’d been through. Just days ago I’d seen her in the moonlit woods, hands slick with blood as she ripped the heart from a man who’d pleaded for mercy. Since then, I couldn’t shake the image from my mind. She knew my secret now—she knew I was fully human, soft and vulnerable, nothing like her. Sometimes I’d catch her watching me with those strange, ancient eyes, and I’d worry she was sizing me up as prey. I’d lie awake at night, wondering if I’d wake up to her teeth at my throat, or not wake up at all. Oddly, she didn’t seem to mind that I was human; she took it in stride, almost as if she’d expected it. But underneath that calm, I could tell she was afraid—her fears weren’t about me hurting her, but about me leaving her. She’d confessed she loved me just last night, her voice trembling, and the words had left me stunned, torn between gratitude and terror, unable to respond. The confession hung in the air between us, heavy and unresolved.

Meanwhile, the danger hadn’t lessened—her people, the red foxes, were relentless, tracking us across every patch of forest, every abandoned road. I could hear them sometimes, in the far-off rustle of leaves, or see the gleam of their eyes at dusk. We were running out of places to hide, and we both knew it.

That night, exhaustion knocked me out the moment I hit the ground. I was deep in a dreamless sleep when Kiara’s cold hand clamped over my shoulder, shaking me awake. “It’s time to go,” she whispered, her voice barely more than a breath. The world outside was black and silent, the kind of midnight that swallows up sound. My heart pounded—I wondered if this was it, if she’d finally decided to kill me where no one would hear my screams. But just as panic started to take hold, Kiara’s head snapped up, her body tense. Something was coming. She caught the scent before I heard the faintest rustle: red foxes moving closer, hunting us.

Without thinking, I let fear take the wheel. I bolted, tearing through the forest, ignoring her desperate shouts behind me. In my panic, I smashed my shin against a jagged rock, but adrenaline kept the pain at bay. Branches whipped at my face as I crashed forward, desperate to put distance between me and whatever hunted us. Up ahead, the undergrowth parted and I glimpsed the red fox clan, their gleaming eyes fixed on me. I knew if I stopped, I was dead. So I ran harder, lungs burning, hoping sheer speed would carry me through the gauntlet.

Back at the base—a makeshift command center cobbled together from old shipping containers and tarps—the leader waited for word from the bombers. Tension was thick, the kind that made everyone avoid eye contact. No one knew what was happening out in the wild. Finally, the leader scribbled a note, terse and urgent: “One of you needs to come back for the bombs. The last bombers are dead.” She tied the message to the leg of a raven, whispering a blessing, and sent it winging into the night, hoping someone would answer.

Kiara and I, battered but alive, stumbled into the borders of a demon stronghold. Demons and red foxes shared a mutual hatred—demons were powerful, cunning, able to rip a fox to shreds, but the foxes were clever and tenacious, never backing down from a fight. We didn’t have time to be cautious; if we wanted to make it back to the base, we had no choice but to take the most direct path, right through demon territory. So we made our entrance bold and noisy, stomping through the brush, hoping to avoid ambush by making ourselves too obvious to bother with. Strangely, the demons watched from the shadows, their eyes burning, but didn’t attack. Maybe they respected the bravado, or maybe they sensed our desperation. We paused to catch our breath, and in the flickering half-light, I realized one of Kiara’s old friends—a woman she’d called her “mummy friend”—was actually a demon, her skin stretched tight over ancient bones, eyes ageless and full of secrets.

Meanwhile, Hood and Daniel grabbed a battered trolley to the next town, the wheels squealing as they rattled over broken tracks. We’d been through dozens of towns in the past two weeks, number 167 just another ghostly stop on an endless journey. Some places were utterly deserted, not a trace of life—no spirits, no monsters, not even the wind. The silence pressed in, thick and unnatural.

But the next place was different. It was haunted, but not with malice—with memory. White red foxes lived there, a secretive clan who’d chosen exile rather than risk hurting humans. They understood too well the thin line between predator and protector. They lived in hidden camps beneath the roots of ancient trees, keeping their distance from the worlds of both humans and monsters. When we found them, they welcomed us with wary hospitality. We exchanged passwords and directions to the base, hopeful that maybe, just maybe, we could build an alliance.

It was in that quiet, haunted town that Hood met Kate. She was unlike anyone we’d met—tall, regal, her fur snowy white, every movement elegant. Her clan had sculpted her into something close to perfection. But beneath her calm grace, she nursed a hopeless crush on Damien, who was himself completely infatuated with Eliana. Eliana, of course, only had eyes for Lucian. Their tangled loves were a mess, an endless cycle of longing and disappointment, but it gave them something to hold onto in a world that wanted to tear them apart.

Hood, though—Hood was unique. He was like a motel for spirits, a living crossroads. Spirits drifted in and out of him, seeking shelter in his strange, welcoming body. Some stayed for days, others for only minutes, but all of them left something behind—memories, dreams, scars. Hood bore them all, his eyes reflecting a thousand lives he’d never lived. Sometimes I wondered if he was still himself, or just a vessel for the lost and wandering. But he never complained. In a world haunted by the past, maybe being a home for spirits was the closest any of us could get to peace.