Putrid marrow dripped from dungeon bars onto the clay bowl's rim as Kane's silver stylus pressed against Alyssa's throat. The lily of the valley brew glowed cyan—identical to the prenatal blood hue from her altar vision three nights prior.
"Grey rats deserve sacraments too." Kane's thumb scorched her newborn silver veins, his sigil's golden-red patterns searing rancid smoke. "Drink, or I'll slit your throat to pour it in."
As the brew slid down her tongue, the Wolf Mother's spinal wall screeched like grinding gears. Alyssa's pupils dilated, revealing a blood-pool vision: an infant entangled in umbilical cords around wolf fangs, placenta floating seventy-three lily petals. The hallucinatory blood congealed like tar, yet she heard her own cries echoing a nearby pup's whimpers.
"Enjoy Grandma's bathwater?" Kane's voice pierced reality's membrane. Alyssa clawed bone crevices, finding damp silver strands—her own severed birth hair undulating in phantom blood tides.
The vision twisted. Young Kane emerged from the pool's depths, his incomplete "Mad King" sigil stabbing the Wolf Mother's womb with that stylus. Prenatal blood splattered the vision-infant's cheek, branding reality's collarbone sigil.
"Two-way feeding?" She spat a bloody sneer, biting her tongue. Real blood mingling with lily brew dripped, animating confinement runes into serpents that crushed Kane's stylus.
Ravens dive-bombed from ceiling beams, dropping a bitten silver emblem. Through hallucinatory fissures, Alyssa glimpsed its inner markings—the escape route symbols the mute servant left last night.
"Games sweeten." Kane released her convulsing form, rolling up sleeves to reveal fresh wounds mirroring her sigil, oozing azure-black slime.
Moonlight shifted. Phase two hallucinations began: the infant-self opened cogwheel pupils identical to Kane's. Wolf Mother's phalanges dragged the baby toward a bronze coffin engraved with "73", its swaddling cloth consumed by inverse "Mad King" sigils.
"Wake!" She severed umbilical cords in the vision, blood spray coalescing into ravens. Reality's bone wall cracked as the mute servant's wolf pup dashed in, snatching silver strands soaked in tonight's lily brew from her shin crevice.
Dawn mist crept through cells, revealing the pup's gift by the wall—a milky tooth stained azure-black, its root carved with a miniature ouroboros wolf matching the coffin's pattern.