When the seventh draconic horn erupted from Garret's spine, the capital's bell tower chimed midnight. His wolfish jaws tore through church spires, molten saliva dripping into putrid violet fumes.
"Damn... damn... damn!" Raine's scaled vambrace bore three claw slashes, the Dragonheart Crown burning his brow. "Garret! You recognize me?!"
The reply was a wolven roar laced with dragonfire. Garret's right eye—a holy silver prosthetic—now shot Inquisition lasers, while his left pupil slithered with Dracula's crest in abyssal ooze.
Serena's asphalt wings intercepted the third laser volley, rotting flesh flaking off: "Need funeral plans? Couple's discount available."
The ice-plains teleportation array flared beneath Raine—Garret's tail snared his ankle. Bones creaked as crown thorns stabbed Garret's forehead: "By dragon's blood... seal!"
The arctic blast revealed what lay beneath the ice—hundreds of half-dragon, half-wolf skeletons frozen mid-howl, decaying crown replicas lodged in their ribs.
Garret's silver eye shattered in the freeze, a final human glimmer fading: "Tell Ellen... the biscuit tin..."
The crown pulsed. Crimson tendrils rose from the ice, syphoning ooze from Garret's spine. Raine's right eye burned, vision warping until Cassandra's specter scorched retinal runes:
Cure in Dracula's coffin Where your reflection sleeps
Serena's tattered wings shuddered in the blizzard. She pried open Raine's new slit pupil: "Congratulations—montherhood looks good on you."
Machinery rumbled beneath the ice. Holy light ignited in hundreds of skeletal sockets. The crown dragged Raine toward the plains' heart, its "vessel" engraving drowning in ooze.
"Not the first savior." Serena kicked a replica crown with identical script. "Won't be the last."
Garret's icy tomb glowed with crimson veins, resonating with the capital's residual ooze. Raine's mutated eye saw Dracula's coffin projected kilometers above, its lid carved with Raine himself in papal robes.
Cassandra's final wisp pressed bloody fingers to his mutated eye: "Beware... the cure is the true..."
Collapsing buildings roared from the capital. New beastial howls rose as the skeletal legion stirred, their replica crowns syncing with Raine's.