The blood moon fractured into shimmering debris as Alyssa's silver hair coiled around Kane's mechanized spine, suspending them midair. Wolf Mother's skeletal remains erupted from the earth, seven hundred and thirty shards of pelvic bone assembling into an inverted constellation. Golden prenatal fluid mingled with viscous black curses oozing from bone joints—each drip echoed the shrill alarms of Laine's laboratories, now harmonizing with the mechanized howls swelling from the southeastern horizon.
"The crone's final sermon drags on," Alyssa snarled, crushing a lunar fragment between her fangs. Blood-tinged saliva sizzled as it etched inverted sigils into Wolf Mother's cervical. Kane's biomechanical arm crackled with bronze marrow, the stretch marks along his lupine limb splitting toward the edges of his dilated pupils. "That's your true cradle song, Mother. Can't you hear it?"
Within the skeletal constellation, the star Sirius flickered to life, projecting tricentennial surveillance footage—Laine carving her milk teeth into clockwork gears while an embryonic Kane gnawed through the vellum cover of Thorned Matrimony. Moonlight spilled through the star formed by sacral bones, igniting seventy-two blood ravens that dove to peck at the star map. Each strike regurgitated encrypted shards of Protocol 73001.
"Mutual farewell speeches?" Alyssa tore three strands of hair entwined with lunar debris. Micro-sarcophagus tattoos along the strands flared, projecting Laine's holographic logs. Kane's mechanical heart tore free from his chest cavity, gears spewing cerebrospinal fluid reeking of lilies that etched inverted summoning circles into the ground. "Vessels exist to shatter the lies of epochs… Mother."
Trajectories of falling moon shards twisted midair, coalescing into Wolf Mother's anguished birthing visage. Alyssa's abdomen turned translucent, revealing aed Kane embryo clutching half a bronze umbilical cord, its teeth sunk into her original birth certificate. Milk tooth indentations mirrored the fractures splitting the constellation as seven hundred and thirty clones crawled from fissures, their bellies branded with synchronized 73 sigils.
"The old fool's parting fireworks?" She shattered a liquefying moon fragment, azure spray crystallizing into Laine's youthful face. Kane's liquefied lupine arm cascaded over the constellation's core— Protocol 73001 bled crimson, coalescing Wolf Mother's holographic skull. Its jaw creaked open: "The Seventy-Third Cycle Terminator…"
The southeastern horizon collapsed into the shape of a birth canal. Mechanized howls ripped through the air, shredding Alyssa's synthetic skin. Her veins erupted, spearing through the constellation to pin Kane against a grotesque pelvic. Moonlight exposed her pulsating veins devouring shards of the Mad King sigil—each absorption projected scenes of silver wolf infants burning on sacrificial pyres.
"Final act of filial penance." Laine's hologram materialized from lunar ash, clutching her excised vocal cords. Bronze amniotic fluid seeped from her translucent womb, carrying a chrono-key marked with bite patterns— The same prototype component corroded by her infantile urine in Volume I.
Mechanized howls sliced moonlight into filaments. Alyssa watched her clones descend through rents in the birth canal—each gripping shards of the Sacred Blade, their swollen abdomens pulsing with identical stretch marks. Wolf Mother's bones shuddered, humming an inverted lullaby whose sonic waves detonated three hundred ravens midflight— Their feathers swirled into Laine's shimmering codes: PROTOCOL 73001 CONFIRMED. WOMB ASSIMILATION: 1000%
Kane's metastasized sigils oozed the menstrual blood of the first priestess. Alyssa's hair bleached to the color of moondust, roots sprouting seventy-two bronze umbilici that lashed toward the source of mechanized howls. The constellation's core split open, respiratory pores exhaling the dissonant wails of seven hundred and thirty newborns— A cacophony fused with tricentennial lab alarms, tearing chrono-fissures through the collapsing lunar debris.
"Your true certificate of birth…" Laine's projection regressed into an embryonic formed within her transparent womb. Kane's spine elongated violently, impaling Wolf Mother's reconstructed skull— From the fissures rained not blood but encrypted howl frequencies that vibrated in sync with Protocol 73001's terminal command.
Mechanized howls breached the castle's outer walls. Lunar phosphorescence scorched inverse sigils into ancient bones. Laine's embryonic hologram rippled with silver stretch marks under sonic bombardment.
Alyssa clenched the molten remains of the chrono-key—no longer metal but encoded astral coordinates imprinted on her palm. Coordinates that matched the prologue of Volume III: Inverse Aeon—now recompiling within lunar ash to the rhythm of mechanized wolves heralding the collapse of epochs.