The church basement reeked of rotting flesh and honey biscuits—Raine knew it was a trap before Garret's claws pried open the confession booth's floor. Below lay no cellar, but a demonic embryo bathing in liquid holy light, thousands of tubes pumping clone blood into its draconic horns.
"Family reunion?" Serena's wings dripped black ichor, her secondary wing-spikes piercing through shoulders. "Mommy, mommy's clones, and mommy's boss." She kicked over a crystallized honey jar containing Elaina's severed finger.
Ellen's spine shrieked, her starlit scales magnetizing toward the embryo. She clawed at Raine's scales: "Don't let it open... core is..."
The holy light boiled. The embryo's eyelids fluttered as stained-glass saints turned around, revealing demonic sigils. Serena snapped off wing-spikes, stabbing them into the floor. Black blood seeped into the light pool: "Whelp! The Blade!"
The Dragonheart Blade oozed resistance. When Serena gripped it, her skin carbonized from fingertips. Black blood clashed with holy steel, birthing void rifts. The embryo wailed like a newborn, the cellar quantum-collapsing.
"Serena!" Raine's scales eroded into honeycomb patterns. "You'll die—"
"Shut it!" She plunged the Blade into her heart. Asphalt blood fused with holy light into violet vortexes. "This gift... for mommy's little angel..."
The dark matter explosion birthed Elaina's phantom. Her fingers phased through Raine's chest, pressing a thorned crown into his reversed scales—"Vessel must survive" etched in dried amniotic fluid.
Ellen's scream preceded the blast. Her spine coiled around embryo tubes, scales vaporizing: "Run! With my sister's coordinates—"
Raine's claws grasped her wrist as light consumed her. A charred spine segment landed in his palm, its fracture projecting the Citadel's hologram.
Serena floated at ground zero, wings morphed into dark matter tendrils. Brand Ⅲ devoured the Blade, its eye sprouting Dracula's fangs: "Surprise... I'm his ultimate host now..."
Garret crawled over with his skeletal tail, Elaina's finger in his jaws: "Mommy's... present..."
The crown constricted, thorns piercing Raine's temples. Elaina's final memory detonated—twelve Citadel hands pressing her pregnant belly on their table.
Church airship engines roared outside. Serena's tendrils flung Raine through stained glass: "Naptime's over... little vessel..."
The embryo's remains coalesced into a new form—Ellen's face grafted onto a body, the transmitting spine jammed into its neck.