Blood scabs peeled from stone walls with fingernail-on-skull screeches. Alyssa gnawed through her seventh finger joint, writing with exposed bone dipped in pus-blood. Moonlight pierced dungeon gears, projecting Wolf Mother's execution-night constellations every three hours seventeen minutes.
"Conserve strength, specimen 73,000." The guard's mechanical eye projected holograms of Layne admiring the vampire princess' new claws—forged from Alyssa's spinal gears. "Your stains vex the cleaning drones."
Moonflare smoldered in her marrow as hatchling form, battering ribcage metal. At the seventh dawn-dusk gearshift, she headbutted the wall. Azurite shards mixed with brain matter completed the third inverted pentagram. The dungeon tilted, black ooze digesting her blood runes into living glyphs.
"Darling, you're staining my antique castle." Layne oozed from sludge, clockwork fingers pinching her new scales. "Know what bricks these are? Eleventh bride's cremated..."
Alyssa jammed her severed digit into his wristwatch. Gears exploded as Moonflare hawk emerged, flames revealing Kane breaching lab vaults—vial of Wolf Mother's vocal cords in hand.
"Perfect timing." She coughed gear-shrapnel blood, continuing inscriptions with stolen embalming fluid from Layne's wound.
Tremors rose from earth's core. Saintly portraits bled ocular ichor, corridor armors self-assembling into gallows. Three-century screams resurrected in walls as she finished the final proto-wolf incantation. Bricks revealed prenatal records—Specimen 73: 99.7% synchronicity.
"You think you're making history?" Layne's gear-toothed pupils played clone death reels. "Just reenacting Wolf Mother's..."
Alyssa's spine erupted, metal vertebrae carving counterspells. Mutated Moonflare phoenix's eyes revealed curse-polluted energy veins through azurite pipes.
The princess shrieked through ceilings: "Contaminate containment!" Her mechanical tailbone wax-melted mid-strike—Alyssa's runes corrupting regeneration systems.
Layne's exposed heart-cage held Wolf Mother's miniature brain. Burning contract tattoos under his skin: "Then witness together..."
The spire cracked open. Liquid moonlight cascaded, blood runes transforming into screaming ravens. Alyssa saw Kane nocking curse-engraved arrows in southeast turrets.
"Delivery confirmed." She detonated the molar-bomb destroying Layne's projector. As Moonflare devoured the dungeon, Wolf Mother's whisper flickered:
"Now. Our turn."
The castle sank vertically. Falling, Alyssa saw clone faces in every brick. Furnace depths revealed thousands of fusing rings forming her collarbone-branded wolf sigil.