The hollow, robotic greeting echoed across the silent, sunlit crater.

It was a chilling, flawless mimicry of communication, completely devoid of the fierce, passionate soul of the woman they loved.

But before the Kings could even begin to process the absolute, apocalyptic horror of her empty gaze, her eyes rolled completely back into her skull. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

She collapsed like a severed marionette, plummeting forward toward the jagged stone.

"Roxy!" Zarek roared, his voice tearing violently through the mountain air.

He moved with blinding, desperate speed. He threw himself forward, sliding across the stone and catching her limp body against his broad chest a fraction of a second before her head could hit the rock.

"Roxy, look at me! Wake up!" Kaelen begged, his large, blood-stained hands frantically cupping her pale face. Her skin was as cold as glacial ice. She wasn’t breathing.

Torian dropped to his knees beside them, his massive hands trembling violently as he pressed two fingers to the pulse point on her neck. Zarek stood above them, his draconic chest heaving, his golden eyes blown wide with an absolute, suffocating terror. Syris and Caspian immediately pushed forward, their hands glowing with toxic-green swamp magic and deep-sea aquatic energy, desperately trying to push healing magic into her core.

But the Warlord magic violently bounced off her skin, repelled by an invisible, impenetrable divine barrier.

"We can’t heal her," Syris choked out, his elegant features completely shattered by panic. "The gods’ magic is rejecting us. We have to get her home. Now!"

Torian didn’t wait. He scooped her limp, unresponsive body out of Kaelen’s arms, cradling her against his massive, fur-lined chest as if she were made of the most fragile spun glass. The White Tiger Alpha turned and sprinted down the treacherous mountain path, moving with a reckless, terrifying speed, flanked entirely by the frantic Vanguard Kings.

They tore through the dark, winding slopes and burst into the blood-soaked courtyard of the Iron-Wood Manor. The remnants of the demonic horde were nothing but harmless, dissolving black sludge. The elite soldiers parted instantly, their cheers of victory dying in their throats the moment they saw the absolute devastation painted across the faces of their invincible Warlords.

They brought her directly to the master suite.

For six agonizing, suffocating hours, the Iron-Wood Manor held its breath.

The master bedroom was packed to the absolute brim, the air thick with the heavy scent of ozone, dried void-blood, and overwhelming despair. The roaring hearth fire did absolutely nothing to banish the freezing chill that had settled deeply into the bones of the Vanguard pack.

Roxy lay perfectly still in the center of the massive bed of dire-wolf pelts. She was still wearing the ash-dusted white silk nightgown. Her chest rose and fell in a slow, impossibly shallow rhythm, her face completely pale and devoid of its usual vibrant flush.

Surrounding the bed were the five towering Alpha Kings, refusing to leave her side for even a fraction of a second. Kaelen sat in a chair pulled directly flush against the mattress, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands clasped so tightly together his knuckles were stark white. Zarek paced the length of the room like a caged, feral beast, his heavy boots thudding against the floorboards. Syris and Caspian stood at the foot of the bed, their eyes fixed unblinking on her chest, while Torian sat on the edge of the mattress near her feet, his massive shoulders slumped in sheer exhaustion.

But the Alphas were not alone.

Gathered nervously near the mahogany doors were the pups. Drax stood at the front of the pack, the teenage drake acting as a living, protective shield for his younger siblings. His jaw was clenched tight, his dark eyes filled with a terrifying mix of teenage anger and profound fear. Behind him, the twins, Axel and Onyx, stood completely still, the adrenaline of the battle entirely faded, leaving them looking like the frightened young boys they truly were. Iris held Tanith’s hand tightly, the ten-year-old snake-shifter weeping silently, tears tracking down her cheeks.

Closer to the bed, toddlers Zale and Tyara had been brought in. Tyara was entirely shifted into her white tiger cub form, nervously pacing near Torian’s boots. Little Fedor, in his fiery-red fox kit form, was curled into a tight, anxious ball beside her.

They were all vibrating with absolute, desperate hope. They prayed to every god in the cosmos that the collapse was simply a side effect of the teleportation, or the strain of the battle. They prayed that when she opened her eyes, she would gasp, smile her brilliant, warm smile, and reach out to pull them into her arms.

The heavy, grandfather clock in the corner of the room ticked loudly.

Suddenly, the rhythm of Roxy’s breathing shifted.

It wasn’t a soft, groggy groan of someone waking from a deep sleep. Her lungs expanded in a sharp, perfectly measured intake of oxygen, recalibrating her internal systems.

The entire room violently froze. Zarek stopped pacing. Kaelen shot to his feet. Drax stepped forward.

Roxy’s dark eyelashes fluttered, and then, her eyes slowly opened.

The blinding, terrifying white light of the divine pillar was gone. Her irises had returned to their natural green. But as Kaelen leaned over her, his desperate, hopeful smile completely died on his lips.

The color was there, but the light was not. Her eyes were completely flat, dull, and entirely lifeless. They looked like dead moss, completely devoid of the fiery, passionate transmigrated soul that had loved them so fiercely.

Roxy didn’t blink. She didn’t look around with confusion.

She engaged her core muscles and sat straight up in the bed. It wasn’t the slow, aching movement of a pregnant, exhausted woman. It was a movement of absolute, mechanical precision. Her spine was perfectly, rigidly straight.

"Roxy?" Kaelen whispered, his voice trembling so violently it cracked. He reached his large hand out, intending to gently touch her cheek.

She did not lean into his touch. She didn’t smile.

Roxy slowly turned her head, her dead green eyes locking onto Kaelen’s face. She didn’t recognize the Wolf King who had held her as she cried, who had fought an army for her. She looked at him with the cold, clinical detachment of a supercomputer scanning a barcode.

She tilted her head slightly to the right.

Entity: Kaelen. Vanguard Wolf. Threat Level: High. Current Hostility: Low. Her gaze swept past him, entirely ignoring his outstretched hand. She looked at Zarek, Syris, Torian, and Caspian. Her dead eyes categorized each of them with chilling, robotic efficiency. She did not flinch at the sight of their blood-stained armor. She did not reach out to comfort her massive, devastated husbands. She simply analyzed them to determine if they presented an immediate physical threat to her vessel.

Then, her gaze shifted to the foot of the bed.

Tyara let out a soft, desperate chuff. The white tiger cub scrambled up onto the edge of the mattress, her tail wagging nervously. Beside her, Little Fedor let out a high-pitched, pleading yip!, hopping up onto the dire-wolf pelts. The two infant beasts pushed forward, their instincts screaming for the warm, comforting embrace of their mother.

Roxy looked down at the tiny, whimpering animals.

She didn’t gasp in delight. She didn’t scoop them up into her arms and press kisses to their fur. She simply stared at them, her face a completely blank, terrifying mask of absolute nothingness. She treated her own babies like entirely foreign biological specimens that had wandered into her designated perimeter.

The older children immediately sensed the catastrophic wrongness of the room.

Iris let out a choked gasp, stepping backward and hiding entirely behind Drax’s broad back. Axel and Onyx shrank against the wall, their wolf instincts violently repelled by the freezing, alien aura radiating from their mother’s body. Tanith let out a loud, heartbroken sob, burying her face into her hands.

The pups shrank back, absolutely terrified by the suffocating void where their Matriarch’s heart used to be.

The crushing, apocalyptic reality violently slammed into the Vanguard Warlords. The physical body sitting on the bed had survived the mountaintop. It was breathing. Its heart was beating.

But the woman they loved was gone.

The heavy, suffocating silence in the master bedroom violently shattered, replaced by the deafening roar of absolute, catastrophic Warlord grief turning instantaneously into blind, suffocating panic. The sheer weight of the Heavens’ betrayal crashed down upon their shoulders.

Torian sank heavily onto the edge of the mattress. The colossal White Tiger Alpha, a brute-force predator capable of ripping demons apart with his bare hands, completely folded in on himself.

He stared at the unblinking, emotionless shell of the Matriarch.

"She is not Roxy..."