"Who are you looking at?"

Marcus’s voice was a harsh, venomous hiss, cutting through the buzzing hum of the fluorescent lights. He noticed Roxy’s darkening, blurring eyes shifting away from his face, tracking something in the empty center of the hospital room. He tightened his brutal grip on her throat, leaning his weight into her collarbone.

"Look at me, Roxann," he commanded, his twisted smile widening with sadistic delight. "Are you hallucinating? Is your broken little brain finally giving out? Good. It will make you so much easier to manage."

Roxy’s vision was narrowing into a dark, suffocating tunnel. The edges of the hospital room were fading into black. But in the exact center of that encroaching darkness, Tanith stood like a radiant, golden-green sun.

Tanith took a step forward, completely unfazed by the terrifying terrestrial abuser. She couldn’t physically touch him, but she could pour the absolute, unyielding fire of the Vanguard directly into her mother’s fading consciousness.

"Listen to me!" Tanith shouted, her high, fierce voice echoing with the resonance of a thousand ancient Warlords. "You are not a victim! You are the Matriarch! You survived the collapsing ruins of the Fox Kingdom! You stared down the Demon King of the Void and you didn’t blink! You tamed the King of the North, the Dragon of the East, the Tiger of the South, the Serpent of the Swamps, and the Leviathan of the Seas!"

Marcus laughed, a cruel, mocking sound, entirely deaf to whatever Tanith was saying. To him, Roxy was just weakly squirming against the plaster.

"You endured the pain of the Heavens to save us!" Tanith continued, her golden-green eyes blazing with blinding, proud tears. "You are the strongest person in the entire universe. You are our superhero. He is just a shadow, Mother! He is nothing! But there is not enough time. Break him! Let’s go!"

The word pierced the suffocating veil of Roxy’s trauma like a blazing comet.

She wasn’t the fragile, isolated woman who had wept on a marble kitchen counter. She was Roxann of the Vanguard. She was a mother of monsters and kings, and she had an entire empire waiting for her on the other side.

Deep within her chest, the golden-yellow spark planted by the MotheroftheWorld violently erupted. It fed on Tanith’s fierce devotion, swelling into a blinding, unstoppable inferno of transmigrated magic.

A single, hot tear slid from the corner of Roxy’s eye, cutting a clean path through the terrified sweat on her cheek. It wasn’t a tear of defeat. It was the absolute, definitive shedding of her terrestrial chains.

Marcus saw the tear and smirked, opening his mouth to deliver another killing blow to her self-worth.

He never got the chance.

With a sudden, explosive surge of phantom, supernatural strength that defied all terrestrial physics, Roxy planted her bare feet against the linoleum. She brought her hands up, pressing them flat against Marcus’s broad chest, and violently shoved.

The sheer force of the push was apocalyptic.

Marcus’s eyes widened in absolute, incomprehensible shock as his grip was forcibly ripped from her throat. He flew backward as if he had been struck by a speeding truck, his expensive leather shoes completely losing traction. He flew across the width of the hospital room and slammed into the opposite wall with a sickening, heavy CRACK.

He slumped to the floor, gasping for breath, completely dazed and utterly confused by the impossible strength of the woman he thought he had broken.

Roxy didn’t gasp for air. She didn’t rub her bruised throat. She didn’t hesitate for a fraction of a millisecond.

She lunged forward, her hospital gown sweeping around her legs. She reached the shattered remnants of the bedside examination lamp that Marcus had thrown moments earlier. Her hands closed around the heavy, solid iron base of the pole. It felt heavy, solid, and wonderfully lethal in her grip—just like a Warlord’s broadsword.

She turned, her moss-green eyes blazing with the unholy, terrifying wrath of a Queen who was finally settling her accounts.

She advanced on Marcus just as he was trying to push himself up from the linoleum, his face twisted in a mask of panicked disbelief.

Roxy raised the heavy iron base high above her head.

"This is for the time you ruined my life," Roxy snarled, her voice a deep, guttural roar as she brought the heavy metal crashing down.

The impact struck his shoulder, driving him back down to the floor. The sound was deafening, but Marcus didn’t bleed red blood; a strange, dark, shadowy mist seemed to fracture from his skin. He wasn’t real. He was the crucible.

Roxy raised the weapon again, her chest heaving with years of suppressed, agonizing fury.

"This one is for the time you cut and striked me for your own satisfaction," she screamed, bringing the heavy iron down across his chest. The ghost of her abuser let out a choked, muffled cry, his form beginning to violently glitch and flicker like a corrupted television signal under the sheer force of her psychological triumph.

She stood over him, the absolute master of her own mind, her own trauma, and her own soul. She raised the iron base one final time, pouring every single ounce of her earthly suffering into the strike.

"And finally," Roxy breathed, her voice dripping with absolute, lethal finality, "this is for causing me pain, so you could have sex with me."

She swung the heavy metal down with the concussive force of a falling mountain.

The instant the iron connected, Marcus Vance did not scream. The terrifying, possessive abuser simply shattered into a million pieces of dark, formless shadow, dissolving into the sterile white linoleum like smoke caught in a hurricane.

He was gone.

The heavy iron base slipped from Roxy’s trembling fingers, clattering loudly against the floor.

She stood in the center of the hospital room, her chest heaving, her breath pluming in the suddenly freezing air. And then, it happened. A massive, suffocating, invisible load that she hadn’t even realized she had been carrying for her entire adult life simply dissipated from her chest. The paralyzing terror was completely eradicated. She felt unimaginably light. She felt free.

The sterile hospital room began to violently violently violently violently hum. The acoustic ceiling tiles cracked, revealing a blinding, brilliant white light behind them. The linoleum floor began to turn translucent. The terrestrial loop had been defeated.

Roxy turned around, her breath hitching as she looked at the glowing, golden-green projection of her daughter.

Tanith was smiling. It was a bright, beautiful, and profoundly proud smile that entirely lit up the collapsing earthly dimension.

"Let’s go, mother," Tanith said, holding out her small, glowing hand.

Roxy didn’t hesitate. She stepped forward, her heart soaring with an absolute, overwhelming tide of maternal love. She reached out, her fingers wrapping securely around Tanith’s small hand. The touch was electric, a direct, burning tether back to the world she actually belonged to.

"I have you," Roxy whispered, tears of pure joy streaming down her face.

Tanith tilted her head, her bright, ancient Warlord demeanor suddenly evaporating, entirely replaced by the genuine, innocent curiosity of a ten-year-old child who had just heard her mother yell something highly unusual during a battle.

"Btw mum," Tanith asked, her golden-green eyes blinking innocently as the hospital walls began to rapidly disintegrate around them. "What’s a sex?"

Roxy’s jaw dropped. The profound, epic, cinematic triumph of her spiritual victory came to a screeching, violently awkward halt. Her pale cheeks instantly burned with a flush of absolute, blinding, maternal embarrassment.

"I—what? Tanith! You don’t—I mean—" Roxy stammered, completely flustered, desperately trying to compute how to explain the birds and the bees while simultaneously traveling through a dimensional void. "Where did you even—I mean, I said it, but—"

Before Roxy could literally die of embarrassment, the MotheroftheWorld granted her one final mercy.

The illusion of the hospital room completely, catastrophically collapsed.

The blinding white light swallowed them both, accompanied by the deafening, rushing sound of a million rushing waterfalls. The sensation of falling returned, but it wasn’t the agonizing, sterile pull of the celestial formatting. It was a warm, gravity-bound plunge back into the physical realm.

Roxy’s eyes snapped shut against the light.

When she opened them again, the harsh fluorescent glare was gone.

She blinked, her vision momentarily blurry. The air was rich and heavy, smelling beautifully of crushed winter pine, draconic ozone, damp swamp earth, and fresh rain.

She was sitting upright in a massive bed, propped against a mountain of soft, familiar dire-wolf pelts.

Roxy drew in a deep, shaking breath. Her lungs expanded flawlessly. The sterile, robotic stiffness in her spine had completely melted away. She blinked again, and as her vision cleared, the dead, mossy dullness of the Vessel vanished. Her irises blazed with their brilliant, passionate, vibrant green light.

She was back. She was entirely, fully in control of her own body. The celestial firewall had been utterly destroyed from the inside out.

She looked down at her lap.

Curled tightly against her thighs, snoring softly with his fiery-red tail wrapped around his nose, was the tiny Kitsune infant. The heavy braided leather necklace with the green suppression stone was lying discarded on the furs beside him.

Roxy felt the profound, overwhelming warmth radiating from his small body. She slowly raised her trembling hand, running her fingers through his incredibly soft, fiery fur. It wasn’t a mechanical, robotic pat. It was a touch filled with absolute, soul-deep adoration.

A single, joyful tear slipped down her cheek.

"Oh, my Fedor..."