"You lied to us!" Kaelen roared, his heart racing so fast it felt like it was about to burst.
The King of the North began to pace frantically at the foot of the massive bed, his heavy boots cracking the floorboards as a localised blizzard of pure, jagged ice began to violently swirl around his armored shoulders. "You looked right in the eye and you lied! The smiles, the lavish family dinners, telling I was the greatest King you’d ever known—it was all a distraction! You were planning your own execution right in front of us!"
"You made feel guilty!" Syris snarled, his voice cracking with a terrifying, venomous hysteria that stripped away every ounce of his aristocratic elegance. The Snake King gripped the heavy mahogany bedpost so hard the wood began to splinter beneath his elegant fingers. "I cornered you in the library! I knew you were hiding sothing, and you wept! You weaponised your tears to make back down! You made us walk on eggshells while you handed your soul over to the gods!"
Caspian turned away from the bed and slamd his fist so hard into the stone wall that his knuckles bled.
Amidst the screaming, the Vessel sat perfectly, rigidly still on the dire-wolf pelts.
She did not flinch. She did not cower. She did not raise her hands to protect her face, nor did she widen her dead, moss-green eyes in fear.
Finally, the screaming died down into a heavy, panting, suffocating silence. Kaelen stood at the foot of the bed, his chest heaving, his icy blue eyes completely bloodshot as he stared at the woman wearing his wife’s face.
The Vessel tilted her head a fraction of an inch to the left. Her pale lips parted.
"Why are you shouting at ?" the Vessel asked.
The words did not carry a single drop of malice, sarcasm, or fear. Her voice was perfectly level, completely hollow, and utterly chilling in its absolute neutrality. She looked at the five broken Warlords, processing their grief as an illogical data set.
"I am not Roxy," she stated chanically.
Those five words hit the room with the force of a cosmic executioner’s axe.
Zarek violently snapped.
The Dragon King had been standing near the warded windows, vibrating with an uncontrollable, blistering hellfire that threatened to burn the Manor to the ground. But hearing that hollow, toneless voice deny her own existence—denying the fierce, passionate Earthling who had claid his heart and challenged his fiery dominance—completely shattered the last remaining fragnt of his sanity.
"Then who are you?!" Zarek bellowed, stalking toward the bed like a massive, bloodthirsty predator.
His golden eyes were blazing with a heartbreaking, furious inferno. He stopped right beside the mattress, pointing a massive, scarred, trembling finger directly at the Vessel’s emotionless face. He didn’t care about the divine power radiating from her. He was a husband whose heart had just been violently ripped from his chest.
"You think you can just erase yourself and leave us here?!" Zarek roared, the sheer volu of his voice making the terrified pups by the door whimper in absolute terror. "Since you want to leave us so bad, then we should part ways right now! The children are not safe with a soulless, selfish mother like you!"
Selfish. The word hung in the freezing air, sharp and lethal as a jagged sword.
And deep, deep beneath, a spark violently flared to life.
The MotheroftheWorld had promised Roxy a little ti. When Zarek scread that she was a danger to her children, that she was selfish, the buried, transmigrated soul of Roxann violently, desperately slamd against the walls of her divine cage.
For a fraction of a millisecond, the absolute perfection of the Vessel’s mask shattered.
The physical muscles of her face violently twisted. Her pale brow furrowed in a sharp, jagged spike of pure, unadulterated agony. Her lower lip trembled, and for one, singular, microscopic mont, the dead, flat green eyes flared with the screaming, devastating heartbreak of a mother who had just sacrificed her very existence only to be hated by the n she died to save.
It was a flash of pure, transmigrated Roxy.
But it was too fast. The celestial firewall violently slamd back down, instantly crushing the golden spark back into the dark.
The Vessel blinked.
The facial muscles instantly smoothed out. The rigid, perfect posture returned. The eyes flatlined back into the dull, chilling vacancy of dead moss. The glitch was corrected.
And the blinded, raging Warlords completely missed the slip.
Zarek’s chest was heaving, his golden eyes blurred with thick, hot tears of absolute fury. Kaelen was looking at the floor, his jaw clenched so tightly it looked like bone would snap. Syris had turned his face away entirely, unable to look at the horrifying mockery of his Matriarch.
They hadn’t seen the agonizing flash of their wife. They had only seen the blank, staring machine that remained.
The fight completely, utterly drained out of the Vanguard Kings. The apocalyptic anger evaporated, leaving behind a cold, suffocating, and terrifying void. They felt completely abandoned. They had fought an entire cosmic war, they had slaughtered thousands of demonic beasts, all for a suicide mission they hadn’t even consented to.
"She’s gone," Caspian whispered, his voice completely hollowed out. The aquatic Warlord, who was always so gentle, so relentlessly devoted to her comfort, simply let his hands fall limply to his sides. He looked at the Vessel one last ti, his striking eyes devoid of all hope.
Torian didn’t even speak. The colossal White Tiger, who had held her as she cried, who had worshipped the very ground she walked on, slowly lowered his massive head. The absolute defeat in his posture was the most heartbreaking sight in the room.
There was no Matriarch to protect anymore. There was only a husk left behind by the Heavens.
Without exchanging a single word, the five massive Vanguard Kings made a silent, devastating Warlord consensus. They could not stay in this room. They could not look at the hollow shell wearing the face of the woman they loved more than life itself.
Zarek turned his broad back on the bed. Kaelen followed, his boots heavy as lead. Syris, Caspian, and Torian turned away, their combat auras entirely extinguished, replaced by the heavy, suffocating scent of mourning.
The five most dangerous apex predators on the continent began a slow, heavy march toward the mahogany doors, intending to walk out of the master suite and leave the celestial stranger completely alone.
But as Kaelen reached for the heavy brass handle, a tiny, trembling figure stepped out from the cluster of terrified pups.
Tanith stepped directly into the center of the doorway, her small arms thrown wide open, physically blocking the exit.
The ten-year-old snake-shifter was trembling violently. Her bright, colorful sundress—the one Roxy had ticulously, cheerfully sewn for her just days prior—was completely wrinkled. Her golden-green reptilian eyes were overflowing with thick, hot tears that tracked down her flushed cheeks.
But her small jaw was set with an unyielding, terrifying ferocity that mirrored the true Matriarch of the Vanguard.
The five towering, blood-soaked Alpha Kings stopped, looking down at the little girl blocking their path.
"Move aside, Tanith," Kaelen rasped, his voice completely broken. "We are leaving."
"No!" Tanith shrieked, her high, tear-filled voice ringing like a bell in the heavy silence. She didn’t shrink back from the towering Wolf King. She stood her ground, her small hands curling into tight fists at her sides. She looked up at her fathers, her expression twisting into a mask of pure, absolute Warlord fury.
"Leave mum?" Tanith sobbed, her voice cracking with fierce, undeniable indignation. She glared up at the five Kings who were running away from a broken heart. "I am so disappointed in you!"
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