The kitchen cellar's bone-walled enclosure reeked of rusted blood as dawn mist seeped in. Alyssa crouched in shadows, her maid's gown scorching beneath grey fur—Wolf Mother's prenatal-blood embroidered runes squirming like live wires.
"Cellar rats crave blood feasts?" She ripped her collar open, watching runes coalesce into incomplete proto-wolf glyphs. The number 73 glowed beneath her collarbone as marrow ooze from wall fissures crawled upwards, crystallizing translucent prophecy: "Blood gazer shall awaken bone-sight."
Screams crescendoed from the execution grounds. Kicking the cellar door open, Alyssa inhaled lilies' pre-decay sweetness mingled with fresh wolf blood—an exact replica of her mother's sacrificial night. Her knees buckled against the doorframe.
Kane's silhouette tore the last elder's throat in dawnlight, arterial spray refracting crimson through his "Mad King" sigil. "Peeping grey mice deserve plucked eyes." His dagger suddenly pierced the bone wall beside her ear, skewering a messenger raven's carcass.
As the raven's neck snapped, feathers dissolved into blood-sigil mist, serpentining into her pupils.
Retinas burning, Alyssa witnessed Wolf Mother's 300-year-old crucifixion on these same walls, Kane's ancestor painting the "Mad King" totem with her prenatal blood. Hallucinatory lilies merged with present stench as her gown's runes constricted newborn silver veins.
"Crone's bones chatter." She bit her tongue, bloody phlegm hitting the central altar. Wolf blood mingling with menstrual fluid triggered bone-wall runes to screech like jammed gears. The freshly-flayed elder skin wrapped around Kane's dagger-wiping hand.
"Petty tricks." Kane shook off the skin, his wrist revealing the same numeric brand as Alyssa's collarbone. Crushing a wolf skull beneath his boot, he splattered marrow crystallizing inverse prophecy: "Cycle 73 vessel marked."
Wolf Mother's spinal column shattered deep within the cellar. Retreating, Alyssa overturned a lily pot—its rotten roots entwining a silver emblem with bite marks matching the execution victims' neck wounds.