The ossified tunnel walls oozed blood-tinged mucus beneath Alyssa's fingertips as she traced the Wolf Mother's fossilized vertebrae. The third rib's confinement rune suddenly clamped onto her nail—a living glyph swallowing her body heat like a starved eel.
"Old crone's bones got expensive tastes." She spat blood mingled with silver hair fragments. The rune recoiled, cracking open a fissure where moonlight revealed an embryo-shaped fossil veined with azurite.
Her charcoal pencil spontaneously combusted, smoke coalescing into ravens that dive-bombed the crevice. A stumbled heel against a protruding sacrum triggered seismic howls—three-centuries-old wolf cries blended with a child's whimpers.
Visions burrowed into her pupils like maggots: Seven-year-old Kane chained to an altar, his scapula flayed open by a vampiric elder wielding the Wolf Mother's fang as a branding tool. Each stab drew golden-red fluid from the bones beneath. "Crying?" The elder crushed his milk tooth. "You're swallowing glorious curses." The boy's screams harmonized with present-day howls. Alyssa's disguise fur bristled as silver veins beneath her skin writhed into inverted sigils.
"Voyeurism needs cure." Kane's voice seeped through bone as his phantom hand—scarred by childhood manacles—materialized to choke her. Her silver hair erupted from grey strands, coiling around his wrist.
Raven flocks dove from the ceiling, beaks clutching bloody missives. Alyssa twisted free as parchment ignited on contact with her hair, flames projecting Kane's recent massacre: his "Mad King" sigil devouring marrow, mirroring the childhood ritual.
"Feast fit for cycles." She smeared burning ash onto the fossil. Azurite veins lashed her arm like arteries, force-feeding memories— The elder's silver stylus was the Wolf Mother's rib. Every brand shattered her bones deeper. Now the tunnel's tremors were her vengeance.
Rotting lilies wafted from the dungeon—her mother's death-scent. Alyssa ripped a hair strand, jamming it into the fossil. The Wolf Mother's wail erupted, birthing new visions: Adult Kane stood over her infant self on the same altar, "Mad King" sigil complete, raising the rib-stylus toward her collarbone.
"Easter egg?" Real Kane's blade pressed her nape, its metal identical to the vision's stylus. He licked silver hair melting into azurite fluid on its edge.
"Modifications run deeper than I thought." His cogwheel pupils split, revealing rune-carved irises. "Even crone's bones snitch to you now."
The tunnel tilted, dropping Alyssa into a sacral groove. Hordes of mice assembled her shed fur into a warning: 73rd voyeur becomes offering. Kane's shadow morphed into child-adult hybrid, blade flickering between stylus and flayer's tool.
Dawn bells found her clutching cold metal in the groove—a remnant of Kane's childhood chains, its clasp engraved with the same ouroboros wolf as her infant swaddle.