"No one can kill me," Abaddon spat, thick, dark blood dripping from his lips onto the stone. He thrashed wildly under the crushing, immovable weight of her bare foot, his pitch-black eyes wide with a frantic, entirely human panic. The centuries of god-like arrogance were violently stripped away, leaving behind a terrified man from Earth facing his own deletion. "I am Abaddon the Demon King! I am immorta—"

She simply pressed her heel down a fraction of an inch.

A silent, concussive blast of pure, concentrated divine energy erupted from the sole of her foot directly into his chest cavity.

His flesh peeled away into fine grey dust, followed by his bones, and finally, the dark, screaming core of his magic.

He didn’t even get to finish the word.

In less than a second, the greatest threat the Beastworld had ever known was completely, brutally erased from existence. There was no grand explosion, no final cursed monologue. Abaddon simply ceased to be, his remains scattering like ordinary ash in the freezing mountain wind.

The cosmic war was over.

If Roxy was here, perhaps she would have given a cynical commont.

The Vessel stood perfectly still in the centre of the crater. The parameters of the terrestrial contract had been fulfilled.

The Beastworld was secure. The Iron-Wood Manor, the anomaly’s Warlords, and her hybrid offspring were permanently shielded by an unbreakable vow.

High above the jagged peaks, the bruised, unnatural darkness of the eclipse violently shattered. The thick clouds parted, and a brilliant, piercing beam of natural spring sunlight struck the mountaintop, washing over the frozen stone.

The Vessel looked up at the sky, her posture completely rigid, waiting for the celestial tether to fully retract and leave the flesh completely hollowed.

The Motheroftheworld.

The overwhelming entity of nature and aggressive fertility bypassed the celestial firewall, her voice echoing directly into the empty cavern of the Vessel’s mind.

"This is the little time I can give you, Roxann..."

Before the Vessel could understand what the MotheroftheWorld sai, a sudden, blinding flash of warm, golden-yellow light erupted from the heavens. It struck the Matriarch’s chest, completely enveloping her in a glowing, protective sphere. The yellow light sank rapidly into her skin, bypassing her transmigrated core and burying itself deep within her physical body.

The light faded as quickly as it had appeared. The Vessel stood silent, processing the anomaly, but her divine directives remained intact.

Far below the summit, the courtyard of the Iron-Wood Manor was a blood-soaked graveyard of dark matter.

The exact second Abaddon’s soul was erased on the peak, the endless, shrieking horde of demonic beasts in the courtyard violently collapsed. Without their creator’s code to sustain them, the thousands of corrupted monsters instantly melted into harmless puddles of black sludge, soaking into the snow.

The Vanguard had won the battle. But the Alpha Kings did not cheer. They did not drop to their knees in relief.

They ran.

Covered in thick layers of black void-blood, sweat, and their own injuries, the five Warlords tore through the shattered iron gates and sprinted toward the treacherous mountain path. Panic—absolute, visceral, blinding terror—completely overrode their physical exhaustion.

Kaelen led the charge, his broadsword still gripped tightly in his bloodied hand. His chest heaved with ragged, agonizing gasps, his boots slipping on the jagged, icy rocks.

We can still stop it, Kaelen’s mind chanted, a desperate, completely irrational mantra. The eclipse just broke. The ritual takes time. We can still pull her out.

Zarek was right behind him, in his humanoid form but running on all fours, his claws tearing massive gouges into the mountain path to propel his heavy body upward faster. Torian hauled his colossal frame up the steep incline, ignoring the deep, bleeding gash across his ribcage. Syris and Caspian flanked them, pushing their physical agility to the absolute limit.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t have the breath to spare. The sheer terror of losing their Matriarch drove them up the mountain at a speed that defied their injuries. They had fought a war for her, and they were not going to let the heavens take their prize.

"Roxy!" Torian roared, his voice cracking as they neared the final ridge.

They crested the summit, entirely prepared to violently clash with an army of gods or rip Abaddon limb from limb.

They skidded to a halt on the flat, frozen stone.

The mountaintop was completely quiet. The biting wind had died down to a soft breeze. The Demon King was nowhere to be found. There were no celestial pillars of light, no corrupted beasts.

There was only a single figure standing in the exact center of the rocky crater, bathed in the bright morning sunlight.

She was barefoot, wearing the sheer white silk nightgown that was now lightly dusted with grey ash. She stood perfectly still, her back turned to them.

The Warlords froze.

For one agonizing, suspended second, relief washed over them. She was standing. She was alive. The physical form of their wife had not been destroyed.

But the ambient magic radiating from her was completely, fundamentally wrong. It didn’t feel like the warm, fierce, transmigrated soul they loved. It felt like standing next to a massive, freezing glacier.

Syris took a step forward. The Snake King, an ancient predator who had survived centuries of brutal warfare with flawless, elegant composure, completely broke. He stared at her back, the crushing weight of his earlier guilt slamming into him. He let out a ragged, choked sob, the sound entirely devastating in the quiet air.

"Roxy..." Syris wept. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

The sound of his voice broke the paralysis.

Kaelen’s fingers went entirely numb. The heavy, runic broadsword slipped from his grip, hitting the frozen stone with a loud, metallic clatter. He couldn’t take another step. He knew, deep in his tactical Warlord bones, exactly what they were looking at.

But Zarek and Torian operated on pure instinct.

"Roxy!" Zarek yelled, his voice thick with desperate relief. The Dragon King charged forward across the crater, completely ignoring the warning signs. Torian surged right beside him, the colossal White Tiger reaching his massive, blood-stained arms out, fully intending to scoop his pregnant wife up and shield her against his chest.

They closed the distance in seconds.

Hearing the heavy, approaching footsteps, the figure in the center of the crater finally moved.

She turned around slowly. The movement was perfectly fluid, yet entirely devoid of human hesitation.

Zarek and Torian slammed to a halt just a few feet away from her.

They looked at her face. The beautiful, flush cheeks were pale and set like marble. But it was her eyes that made the Warlords’ blood run completely cold.

Her brilliant, passionate green eyes—the eyes that had flashed with fiery determination, wept with empathy, and looked at them with profound, unyielding devotion—were completely gone. The irises remained green, but they were entirely lifeless. They were dull, flat, and chillingly vacant, staring out at the world with the stark, empty gaze of a corpse.

She didn’t smile at them. She didn’t flinch at the sight of their blood-soaked armor.

Her posture was impossibly rigid and alien, her shoulders squared with mechanical precision. She looked at the five towering, terrifying men who loved her more than life itself.

She tilted her head slightly to the left. The motion was entirely unnatural, an investigative sweep of her environment, analyzing their physical threat levels, calculating their magic, determining if they were friend or foe based entirely on the aura they possessed.

The transmigrated Matriarch was gone. The Vessel had assumed control.

Her pale lips parted. She spoke.

Her voice was perfectly steady, but it was completely hollow, devoid of a single drop of warmth, inflection, or emotion. It was a recorded playback, a terrifying mimicry of terrestrial communication.

"Hi family."