Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

The sound was sharp, metallic, and entirely foreign. It possessed a precise, electronic cadence that did not exist anywhere in the ancient, magical expanse of the Beastworld. It wasn’t the slow, heavy thud of a dire-wolf’s heartbeat, nor was it the crackle of a hearth fire in the Iron-Wood Manor.

It was the sound of a terrestrial heart monitor.

Roxy’s consciousness surfaced, dragging itself up through a suffocating ocean of heavy, chemical lethargy. Her transmigrated senses, usually hyper-attuned to the ambient magical currents of the Warlords, were completely blind. The air did not smell of crisp mountain pine, draconic ozone, or damp swamp earth.

It smelled sharply, aggressively, of industrial bleach, rubbing alcohol, and sterile latex.

Where am I? Roxy’s mind sluggishly demanded. Is this the void? Is this what the hollowed soul experiences?

She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt as though they had been glued shut, heavy and crusted. She attempted to reach up to rub them, to summon a tiny spark of transmigrated energy to heal the sluggish fatigue in her limbs.

Nothing happened.

There was no rush of magic. There was no connection to the vast, cosmic code of the Beastworld. But far more terrifyingly, her physical body completely refused to obey her commands. Her arms felt like they were cast in solid lead, pinned heavily to her sides.

Panic, sharp and primal, began to violently spike in her chest. The electronic beeping beside her bed immediately accelerated in tandem with her terror.

Beep-beep-beep-beep!

Roxy finally forced her heavy eyelids to flutter open, fighting through the blinding, harsh glare of a long, humming fluorescent light fixture directly above her face.

She was staring up at a ceiling of cheap, white acoustic tiles.

She tried to turn her head to scan the perimeter, entirely expecting to see Kaelen’s stoic, armored form or Torian’s massive, reassuring silhouette standing guard. But her neck was entirely immobilized. A thick, rigid cervical collar was strapped tightly around her throat, holding her head perfectly still. She could feel the heavy, suffocating layers of thick medical gauze wrapped securely around her skull like a tightening vise.

She tried to gasp, to shout for her Warlords, but her mouth was bone-dry, her lips cracked and peeling. Her throat felt as though it had been violently scraped raw with sandpaper, rendering her vocal cords completely paralyzed. She couldn’t produce a single, audible sound.

Kaelen! Zarek! she shouted in the dark, silent cavern of her own mind. Where are you? Syris? Drax! Someone, please! Where am I?!

Her frantic green eyes darted as far as her peripheral vision would allow.

To her left, a clear plastic IV bag hung from a metal pole, dripping clear fluids into a tube that vanished beneath the thin, scratchy white blanket covering her arm. To her right, a sterile white wall was plastered with a laminated chart and a terrestrial dry-erase board.

Earth.

The realization hit her with the concussive, devastating force of a falling asteroid. She was in a hospital room on Earth.

The MotheroftheWorld hadn’t just shielded her soul from the Heavens’ erasure; the goddess had violently ejected her consciousness completely out of the Beastworld’s closed magical circuit. Her transmigrated soul had been forced back across the dimensional veil, violently slammed back into her original, broken terrestrial body.

She was Roxann again. Just Roxann. A fragile, powerless human woman trapped in a broken meat-suit, thousands of light-years away from the towering apex predators who loved her, and the beautiful, chaotic children she had left behind.

Tears of sheer, unadulterated devastation and panic welled in her eyes, blurring the harsh fluorescent lights. She was completely alone. The celestial sacrifice had worked, but it had trapped her in a sterile, paralyzed purgatory.

Suddenly, a shadow fell across the bright ceiling tiles.

Someone had stepped into the room.

Roxy’s breath caught in her throat. For one wild, desperate, and entirely illogical second, her heart soared. Had they followed her? Had the Alpha Kings ripped the Heavens down brick by brick just to track her soul across the universe? Had Zarek melted the dimensional walls to find her?

A figure leaned over the metal bed railing, blocking out the fluorescent light.

Roxy blinked, her tear-filled vision slowly coming into sharp, terrifying focus.

It was not a Warlord. It was not a majestic, fierce predator with glowing eyes and battle-scarred skin.

It was a face from her past. A face from a terrestrial nightmare she had spent her entire transmigrated life trying to forget.

He was wearing a crisp, expensive terrestrial suit. His dark hair was meticulously styled, and his terrestrial cologne—a sharp, overpowering scent of artificial pine and cheap musk—instantly filled Roxy’s nostrils, making her stomach violently churn.

It was Marcus. Her ex-husband.

The absolute, paralyzing fear that instantly flooded Roxy’s veins was unlike anything she had ever experienced in the Beastworld. Facing Abaddon’s abyssal horrors on the mountain had been terrifying, but it was a warrior’s fear. This was different. This was the deep, ingrained, psychological terror of a victim who had just woken up entirely defenseless in the presence of her abuser.

Marcus looked down at her. He didn’t look relieved that she was awake. He didn’t look worried.

His dark eyes gleamed with a chilling, possessive satisfaction. He reached out, his hand entirely too gentle, too deliberate, as he brushed a stray strand of hair away from the heavy gauze wrapping her forehead. Roxy’s skin violently crawled at the contact, her internal instincts screaming for Torian to rip the man’s arm off, but her physical body remained agonizingly, pathetically still.

Marcus leaned in closer, his breath hot against her ear.

"Don’t worry, Roxann," Marcus whispered, his voice dripping with a sickening, synthetic sweetness that masked a terrifying undercurrent of absolute control. "Once you are discharged, I will take good care of you."

The words were a death sentence. They were a promise of the cage she had originally died trying to escape.

Roxy’s heart monitor began to shriek, a rapid, frantic tempo of pure panic.

No! Roxy screamed in her head, thrashing violently against her own paralyzed muscles. Get away from me! Don’t touch me!

She tried to physically scream, opening her cracked lips, desperately trying to force air past her raw vocal cords, but only a pathetic, raspy hiss escaped. She tried to lift her hands to claw at his face, to summon Caspian’s water blades, Syris’s toxic mist, absolutely anything to defend herself.

But she was just a broken human.

Marcus watched her desperate, silent struggle. His face, which to the outside world always appeared so handsome and charming, slowly began to contort. The corners of his mouth stretched upward into a terrifying, uncanny valley smile. It was a sadistic, chilling grin that promised closed doors, isolation, and an eternity of suffering. He loved that she was broken. He loved that she couldn’t run.

The sheer, suffocating horror of his distorted smile broke Roxy’s transmigrated spirit.

She tightly squeezed her eyes shut, hot tears streaming down her pale temples, soaking into the thick medical gauze.

Let me die, Roxy prayed to the cold, empty universe. Please, MotheroftheWorld, let the Heavens finish the erasure. Delete my code. Burn my soul. Let me die for real this time! She would rather be reduced to cosmic ash than spend another second trapped in this terrestrial hell, completely severed from her Vanguard family and left to the mercy of a monster disguised as a man.

"Mr. Vance?"

The sharp, authoritative voice sliced through the suffocating tension of the hospital room, completely shattering Marcus’s terrifying monopoly over her space.

Squeaking rubber soles echoed against the linoleum floor.

Marcus instantly straightened up. The sadistic, horrifying smile vanished from his face in a fraction of a millisecond, flawlessly replaced by the deeply concerned, grieving mask of a devoted terrestrial husband.

Roxy snapped her eyes open, her chest heaving as she looked past Marcus’s shoulder.

A middle-aged doctor in a crisp white lab coat stood at the foot of the bed, holding a metal clipboard. He looked between the shrieking heart monitor and Marcus, his brow furrowing in professional concern.

"Her heart rate is spiking erratically," the doctor stated, stepping forward to check the IV drip. He looked at Marcus with a firm, uncompromising expression. "I need you to step out for a bit, sir. We need to stabilize her vitals and run some neurological tests now that she has regained consciousness. The stimulation is too much for her right now."

Marcus nodded, his face a perfect portrait of reluctant, loving obedience. "Of course, Doctor. Whatever is best for my wife."

He looked down at Roxy one last time, his dark eyes flashing with a silent, terrifying promise that he would be waiting right outside the door. Then, he turned and walked out of the room, the heavy wooden door swinging shut behind him.

The oppressive, suffocating scent of his cologne lingered for a moment before the sterile smell of bleach washed it away.

The doctor moved to the side of her bed, pulling a small penlight from his breast pocket. "Welcome back, Roxann. You’ve had a very severe accident, but you are safe now. Just try to breathe."

As the doctor gently shined the light into her pupils, checking her neurological responses, the absolute, crushing weight of the immediate threat lifted from Roxy’s chest. The paralyzing terror of Marcus receded, leaving behind a profound, staggering wave of sheer relief.

She was safe, for now. She was alive.

But as the reality of her environment fully settled into her mind—the beeping monitors, the acoustic ceiling tiles, the total absence of magic, and the horrifying realization that her Warlords were millions of light-years away mourning an empty, divine shell—the relief instantly morphed into an apocalyptic, mind-bending confusion.

Roxy stared blindly at the hospital ceiling, her transmigrated, fiercely Vanguard soul gathering every ounce of its displaced, cosmic energy to scream a single, resonant thought into the silent confines of her own fractured skull.

What the fuck is going on?!