The freezer door creaked open with Wolf Mother's toe bone, revealing 730 ice coffins in frost mist. Alyssa's silver hair glazed with icicles, exhaled breath crystallizing into inverted pentagrams under wolf-shaped chandeliers—matching Kane's fresh brand on her back.
"Crone's nursery upgraded to morgue?" She shattered the nearest frost crust. A silver wolf fetus clutched bronze umbilical rings engraved with "Mad King" sigils. Azure sludge oozed from engravings, crawling toward her ankle runes.
Moonlight through the skull oculus triggered crackling in Unit 73001. Alyssa's burning veins illuminated the fetus's twitching fingers—its ring bore her mother's initials and Kane's pheromones in patina.
"Snooping through baby albums is rude." Kane's voice ice-crackled, his biomechanical hand caressing coffins. Wolf Mother's rib walls exuded amniotic fluid, threading coffins into uterine networks.
Alyssa's fangs pierced her tongue, spraying prenatal blood on Unit 73001. Thawing ice revealed opened eyes—pupils projecting Laine's lab footage: Kane's embryo gnawing her umbilical samples in incubation pods, each bite deepening his "Mad King" brand.
"Two-way parenting class?" She snapped bronze chains, rings constricting her wrist. Wolf Mother's pubic tremors spiked temperature, azure amniotic fluid bleeding from coffins.
Kane's projection emerged from the network, his lupine arm frosting: "Vessel modification 101%—Surprised?" His metal fingers extracted memory crystals from the fetus— Footage of Laine transplanting infant Alyssa's tear ducts into Kane, who lubricated brand tools with stolen tears.
At lunar zenith, umbilical rings levitated into thorned crowns. Alyssa's hair impaled on spikes dripped blood etching new logs: 73rd cycle successful—Maternal vessel primed Her collarbone erupted stretch marks as Unit 73001's fetus developed miniature sarcophagus tattoos—Laine's paradox machine containers from Volume One.
Uterine detonations quaked below. Alyssa salvaged memory crystals through bloody slush, glimpsing her infant self— Strangled by Kane's embryo as Laine knotted their umbilical cords.