The eclipse's violet glare seeped through dungeon cracks as Alyssa smeared wolfbane sap over her seventh patch of peeling skin. The gray fur sprouting from festering wounds reeked of putrid flesh, a sickly contrast to the silver roots she'd deliberately preserved—the perfect masquerade of failed awakening.
"Grey rat needs redressing?" A guard kicked over her water bucket, filth flooding the straw hiding her true hair. "Should we carve off the rot?"
Alyssa crouched in moonless shadows, nails digging into the Wolf Mother's vertebral grooves. Three-century-old runes squirmed beneath her skin, guiding her to wind three silver strands around jagged bone protrusions. As the last hair vanished, the wall convulsed, a spinal fragment humming with starvation.
"Quiet, old crone." She mouthed soundlessly, spitting blood-tinged wolfbane phlegm. The tremor ceased, but azure-black ooze seeped from cracks toward her ankles.
Midnight bells brought her chance. Two guards dragged away a delirious prisoner, their chains scraping stone. Alyssa retrieved the raven beak hidden in her shin's bone cleft, its tip dipped in festering wound pus, sketching an incomplete spirit pact on damp ground.
"Lead or become stew." She prodded the shivering mouse at the array's heart. The creature stiffened, pupils glowing with the wall-runes' bloody hue.
After three tunnels, the mouse led her to an altar reeking of lilies—identical to her mother's execution night. Above rotting blossoms, the Wolf Mother's skull hovered in moonlight, three molar sockets perfectly fitting her hidden silver strands.
"Seventy-third greeting." She threaded the hairs into bone crevices. The skull spun wildly, eye sockets spewing bone-dust fog. Within the mist, Kane's silhouette appeared skinning a wolf carcass, his "Mad King" sigil oozing gold-red fluid—the exact shade of her mother's severed throat.
"Peeping's unladylike." The phantom Kane turned, flinging a blood droplet that shattered the mist. The real altar quaked violently. Alyssa stumbled into lily pots retreating, fetid liquid scorching seven charred holes through her grey fur disguise.
Guards' curses echoed from the dungeons. She rubbed bone dust into burns, aging the wounds. Returning to her cell, she found the mouse corpse desiccated to ash, its remnants arrowed toward her hair cache.
"Level up." She licked wolfbane residue from fingers, tasting lilies' pre-decay sweetness. The Wolf Mother's bones trembled again—not hunger now, but something like laughter.
Dawn pierced the eclipse as Alyssa traced newborn silver veins beneath her rotting disguise—chains or keys, she couldn't yet tell.