Baby System: I'm the Beast World's Only Hope!-Chapter 355: Episode 353: Till we meet again Great King

The icy, iron grip around her wrist was impossible.

Roxy stared down through her tears, her brilliant green eyes wide with a fragile, terrified hope. The Fox King was looking back at her.

The heavy, suffocating silence of the bedroom broke as Roxy let out a completely shattered, breathless sob.

She immediately dropped her raised fist. Completely ignoring the agonizing, tearing pain radiating from her own torn body, Roxy collapsed forward. She threw her arms around his neck, burying her face into the curve of his pale, cold shoulder, cradling his upper body against her chest as if she could physically anchor his soul to the mattress.

"Ren, my baby, you scared me..." Roxy wept, her voice trembling so violently the words barely formed. Her tears soaked the ruined linen beneath them. "You scared me so much, don’t you ever do that to me again. Please, don’t ever do that."

Ren’s chest hitched with a weak, rattling breath. He didn’t have the strength to lift his arms to return the embrace, but a tiny, incredibly faint smirk pulled at the corner of his cracked lips.

"If I knew you were going to beat me to death," Ren rasped, his gravelly voice a broken, airy whisper against her collarbone, "I should have woken up sooner."

A loud, wet sound escaped Roxy’s throat. She didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry. The sheer, ridiculous absurdity of him making a joke while he was literally hovering on the absolute precipice of death was so painfully, perfectly Ren.

She let out a watery, agonizing chuckle, pulling back just enough to frantically cup his translucent face with both of her trembling hands.

"Baby, you will be okay, I promise," Roxy swore frantically, her green eyes darting over his features, her mind racing with desperate, impossible calculations. She would tear the System apart.

She would force the Architect to rewrite the code. She would meet the gods and goddess. "I will find a way to piece you back together. We can fix this. Just hold on for me."

Ren looked up at her, his emerald eyes swimming with an ocean of love. He laughed faintly, a delicate, fragile sound that broke her heart into a million irreparable pieces.

"It was already too late..." Ren whispered.

"No," Roxy denied instantly, aggressively shaking her head. "Don’t say that—"

Before the words could fully leave her mouth, a faint, ethereal shimmer caught her attention.

Roxy froze. She slowly lowered her gaze, looking down at his lower body.

Right before her terrified eyes, the edges of his skin were beginning to glow with a blinding, iridescent light. It started at his long legs. His physical form was actively, rapidly destabilizing.

He was slowly scattering, his flesh and bone transmuting into microscopic, glowing stars that looked like pixie dusts. The tiny, luminescent particles began to float upward, defying gravity, drifting away from his body and dissolving into the cold air of the bedroom.

He was fading fast.

A bottomless, suffocating dread violently filled her heart. The reality of the magic was absolute. There was no wound to stitch. There was no blood loss to replenish. His very existence was simply being erased.

"No, no, no, fucking hell!" Roxy screamed, her voice tearing into a raw, frantic panic.

She slapped her hands over his chest, desperately trying to physically hold the glowing dust together, trying to press his dissipating flesh back into a solid form. Her fingers slipped through the shimmering light as if it were water.

"Stay with me, Ren!" Roxy shrieked, her whole form filled with desperation. Tears blinded her vision completely as she scrambled over his fading body. "Please, for fuck’s sake, please stay, fuck, fuck, fuck! Don’t do this to me!"

Ren let out a soft, incredibly tender sigh. The lower half of his body had already completely scattered into a swirling galaxy of glowing particles.

"Shhhh," Ren hushed her gently, his fading hand lifting just enough to graze her tear-soaked cheek. His voice was becoming distant, echoing as if spoken from the stars themselves. "Our baby is crying downstairs... Don’t you want to feed him?"

"I will deal with him later!" Roxy sobbed hysterically, completely blinded by her apocalyptic grief. She didn’t care about the infant. She didn’t care about her mates, or the Manor, or the entire Beastworld. She only wanted the man dissolving in her hands.

Ren offered a slow, incredibly sad shake of his head.

"That cannot happen..." Ren murmured, his emerald eyes locking onto hers with love.

"What does it matter?!" Roxy screamed, her voice cracking, completely inconsolable.

"It matters," Ren whispered softly, his torso beginning to fracture into a thousand points of brilliant light. "Because he was born out of my soul, Roxy. I was the sacrifice."

The devastating, beautiful truth hit her like a physical execution. The baby wasn’t just his heir. The infant was literally forged from the immortal spark that had once kept the trickster alive. The child was Ren’s remaining magic.

Roxy choked on her own tears. She collapsed over him, sobbing like a literal child, her authority entirely shattered. She was reduced to nothing but a broken, grieving girl in the dark.

"I didn’t ask you to make that sacrifice!" Roxy wept, her hands clutching the torn, bloodied linens where his waist used to be. "I didn’t ask for this! I just wanted you!"

Only his face and his chest remained. The Fox King looked up at his completely devastated Queen. He didn’t regret a single second of it. He had loved her fiercely, he had loved her completely, and he had given her the ultimate, undeniable proof of his devotion.

Ren smiled. It was the most beautiful, pure, and breathtaking smile she had ever seen him wear.

"In the next life," Ren whispered, his voice fading into the rushing wind of the storm outside. "I would like to be there with you and our child."

"No, no, no, no, fuck!" Roxy shrieked, her hands frantically grasping at his fading face. "REN, FUCKING DON’T GO!"

But the hourglass was entirely empty.

With a soft, almost imperceptible sigh, the remaining silhouette of the Fox King’s form violently burst.

He didn’t just fade; he exploded into a magnificent, blinding, and infinitely beautiful sea of glowing stars. The brilliant particles flooded the dark bedroom, swirling upward in a massive, breathtaking cyclone of pure, untamed Kitsune magic.

"No!" Roxy screamed, throwing her arms wildly into the air.

She fought desperately to catch them. She swung her hands through the cyclone of light, her fingers grasping blindly at the glowing embers, desperately trying to pull the stars back down, trying to hold onto the man she loved.

But the stars slipped effortlessly through her fingers, floating upward toward the shattered ceiling, entirely out of her reach.

The physical and emotional toll finally reached its absolute, catastrophic limit. The agony in her torn core, the massive blood loss, and the complete, psychological annihilation of her soul violently overwhelmed her brain.

Roxy’s vision entirely blacked out. Her arms dropped limply to her sides, and she fainted the very next second, collapsing heavily backward onto the blood-soaked furs of the mattress.

As her consciousness faded, the swirling sea of stars slowly settled. A single, heavy object dropped from the epicenter of the magical burst.

It landed perfectly against the center of Roxy’s chest. It was a smooth, heavy, and brilliantly bright red stone, glowing with the faintest, warmest pulse of residual magic, the crystallized, physical remnant of the Fox King’s heart.

***

Outside the walls of the Iron-Wood Manor, the apocalyptic storm that had been violently raging across the sky had suddenly, impossibly ceased.

The heavy, black thunderclouds parted. The freezing wind died completely.

In the sprawling, frosted courtyards, a massive, silent gathering had occurred. The entire Fox tribe of the eastern plains had bypassed the outer Vanguard patrols. Hundreds of sleek, red foxes and humanoid Kitsune shifters had flooded the grounds, their numbers stretching all the way to the tree line.

They did not march. They did not speak.

As one, the entire Fox tribe dropped to their knees, bowing their heads deeply against the freezing, frost-covered earth.

From the high, shattered windows of the second-floor master bedroom, a magnificent, beautiful cascade of shimmering stars began to drift outward. The glowing, ethereal pixie dust caught the moonlight, dropping slowly over the kneeling tribe like a gentle, warm snowfall. It was the residual magic of their fallen King, washing over his people one final time.

At the very front of the massive gathering, kneeling with his forehead pressed against the dirt, was Kaito.

The elite subordinate slowly lifted his head. His green eyes were completely blurred with hot, devastating tears as he looked up at the glowing, starry snowfall descending from the Matriarch’s window.

He had known this moment was coming, but the reality of the loss struck him with the force of a physical blow.

Kaito pushed himself up to his knees. He threw his head back, his voice tearing from his throat in a raw, echoing, and profoundly grieving roar that pierced the quiet night.

"Till we meet again, Great King!" Kaito shouted to the sky.

Behind him, hundreds of grieving, devastated voices rose in perfect, heartbreaking synchronization, their sorrow echoing across the entire Beastworld continent.

"Till we meet again, Great King!"