Chapter 277 - Into Fury

The anger burning in Maggie was no longer a timid flame; it was a wildfire, devouring everything in its path. The Wood Mask's sly strike—the attempt to rip her memory away, to drown her in its whispers—had awakened beneath the ashes something older and darker: the house, the flickering television, the stench of death, the cold knife in the hands of a child. That image returned now, sharpened and compressed, and she understood with dreadful clarity that survival was no longer enough. She wanted to tear. She wanted the Mask to know, in bark and marrow, what it meant to face a rage born from the most intimate deprivation.