Council drones buzzed overhead, their lenses whirring as they tried to lock onto Celeste.
But each time they drew near, her pulses fried their cores.
One by one, they tumbled out of the sky, smoking husks crashing into rooftops, gutters, balconies, and cracked streets below. A few struck old council signs on the way down, tearing them from their hinges. Others spiralled into lamp posts and shopfronts, showering the road in sparks and broken glass.
Inside the Rustrows, alarms blared.
Lumina clutched the railing, eyes wide. “What’s going on out there?”
Skye pointed silently toward the balcony, his hand shaking.
Through the warped glass, Lumina could just barely make out the impossible figure of her sister drifting between realities like a broken constellation.
Celeste flickered above the city, not quite flying, not quite falling. Every pulse from her body bent the world around her. Rooftops shimmered, vanished, then snapped back into place with sickening cracks. Streetlights stretched like melted wax. The air itself seemed to glitch around her, folding and tearing in little bursts of pink-white static.
Skye suddenly pointed upward, voice trembling.
“Look… she’s not fighting.”
They all froze, staring through the shattered skylight.
Celeste’s body spasmed, flickering in and out of form. She wasn’t lashing out. She wasn’t attacking. Her claws scraped at her own neck, her body convulsing violently, glitching every second.
Skye’s finger jabbed up again, his voice flat and oddly steady even as it trembled.
“Look. She’s not fighting.” He didn’t shout. He stated it. “She’s not lashing out. She’s… splitting. One part reaching for the rune, one part trying to push it away. They’re arguing inside her. It hurts her.”
Plum winced, but didn’t drop her gun as she guarded the two of them. “Sorry, buddy, but practicality beats empathy right now. We let her keep going, she’s a walking singularity.”
Without a word, Lumina bolted.
She tore through the stairwell, ignoring Skye’s outstretched hand.
“Wait! Lumina—don’t!” he shouted after her.
But she didn’t listen.
She burst onto the balcony, and the sight stole her breath.
The city burned.
Where Celeste drifted, glitching in and out of space, devastation followed. Streets split open. Buildings flickered in and out of reality like corrupted files. Alarms screamed from every district. People fled through smoke and falling debris while council sirens wailed uselessly overhead.
And above it all, there was the sound.
A humming pulse vibrated from Celeste, magic-laced static wrapped around something unbearably sad. A broken lullaby dragging reality out of tune.
She wasn’t flying.
She wasn’t walking.
She simply… was.
Blinking from rooftop to street, from sky to alleyway, from one impossible place to another. In her wake, the world fractured.
At the edge of it all, Lumina stared.
Her hands trembled. Her mouth hung open as she gazed at the burning, fractured light.
Her sister.
Torn between worlds.
Unravelling before her eyes.
“No…” she whispered. “Celeste…”
Then louder.
“CELESTE!”
Her scream tore out raw, tears cutting down her cheeks.
But Celeste didn’t hear her.
Couldn’t hear her.
Something shifted.
A flicker of pink light swam through Lumina’s irises.
She gasped, trying to step back, but her feet slid forward instead.
Her fingers twitched. Her breath caught.
Soft pink radiance bloomed across her eyes, then across her skin.
Her body drifted forward.
Not dragged.
Not forced.
Pulled.
Resonating.
“Wh-what is…?” Lumina stammered, voice cracking.
She tried to anchor herself, gripping the balcony rail, but her core hummed. Her blood thrummed. Her bones seemed to answer the pulse in the sky.
She wasn’t just moving toward Celeste.
She was answering something older. Something deeper. Something woven into their bloodline.
The glow pulsed stronger, drawing her toward the storm.
Celeste hovered above the ruined city like a dying star, her aura strobing in unstable bursts. Each breath warped the streets below, bending the edges of reality like parchment in a fire. She clutched her head with trembling fingers, her unicorn gem splintering down the centre, glitches racing across her body like fractured lightning.
And still, Lumina’s light grew brighter.
Below, Ray had just returned from the lower barricades, where Hughes and Brassmane had finished off the last of the rebellion’s stragglers. She didn’t see Lumina’s eyes begin to glow. Didn’t see her core answer Celeste’s unstable magic.
Lumina’s breathing hitched.
She pressed a trembling hand to her chest.
“Something… from Celeste,” she whispered. “It’s pulling me. I can’t—”
Her voice cracked as her irises pulsed brighter and brighter.
Before anyone could stop her, she staggered forward, straight toward the balcony’s edge.
“Lumina!”
Skye lunged, catching her wrist and hauling her back.
But the closer she drifted toward the storm, the more her body began to change.
Feathered wings unfurled in a shimmer of mana. Glowing horns pierced the air at the sides of her head. A gem blazed to life on her forehead, bright and terrible.
“Don’t listen—stay with me!” Skye pleaded, his voice breaking.
But Lumina’s gaze remained locked on her sister, as though only Celeste’s heartbeat existed.
“Help!” Skye screamed, dragging her back from the ledge.
Ray spun, saw the glow, and swore.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake—not you too! What is this, a family discount on cosmic meltdowns?!”
She grabbed for Lumina, but flinched back at the sheer heat of her aura.
“She’s like standing next to a bloody sun!”
Overhead, Arcade clung to Kirrin as her wings thundered through the smoke. His voice crackled over the comms, ragged and urgent.
“I’m almost at the tree! Mezzo’s ahead of me, but guys, from up here it’s getting bad. I think I can see the leylines, and the generals are noticing!”
With one last desperate yank, Ray pulled Lumina back from the edge.
Lumina collapsed against Skye’s chest, still trembling, still glowing.
And then—
Shadows stretched across the city streets.
One by one, massive figures stepped into view.
The zombie generals emerged from the ruined avenues, hulking and silent, their twisted eyes fixed upward. They weren’t attacking. Not yet.
They were watching.
Measuring.
Testing whether bringing Celeste down would be worth the cost.
Ray’s blood ran cold as she stared.
“Stars above…” she muttered. “If we don’t stop this soon, we’re gonna have more to deal with than just Celeste.”
The first to move was the Minotaur general.
His hooves cracked the asphalt as he bellowed, thrusting a rusted axe skyward. At his command, a wave of lesser zombies surged forward, claws and teeth bared, racing toward Celeste’s flickering form.
They never reached her.
The moment they crossed into her aura, their bodies warped.
Flesh bubbled.
Bones melted like wax.
Within seconds, they collapsed into pools of steaming rot, their shrieks drowned by Celeste’s own.
Her scream tore across the skyline, a sound like grief and static tangled into one.
Windows shattered.
The sky trembled.
Across the district, Brassmane stood among the remains of the broken rebellion line, his mane scorched, his armour smeared with ash. Hughes stood beside him, staff planted hard against the cracked ground, his eyes fixed on Celeste’s unstable light.
A young advisor stumbled toward them, nearly dropping the crystal pad in his hands.
“My lord,” he said, breathless. “You need to see this.”
Brassmane took the pad.
At first, his expression barely changed.
Then the map bloomed.
Lines of mana flared beneath Clawdiff. One after another, they lit up in violent pink and violet, spreading outward from Celeste’s position like cracks across glass.
Brassmane’s face went still.
“Oh no.”
Hughes turned sharply. “What is it?”
Brassmane lowered the crystal pad, his voice dropping into something close to dread.
“Her mana… it’s causing the leylines to resonate.”
Hughes stared at the pulsing map.
The old goat’s jaw tightened.
“That is not ideal.”
“No,” Brassmane said grimly. “It is catastrophic. If she remains above that leyline, the entire city will begin answering her.”
Another pulse ripped through the street.
The crystal pad flickered.
Several distant leyline points flashed red.
Hughes grabbed his comm crystal. “Then we move her. Now.”
On the hideout’s battered landing pad, Kirrin slammed down hard, the roof groaning beneath her weight. Two pegasi scattered as sparks flared from a nearby transformer, the sky above convulsing with unnatural pulses of pink and violet.
Tarps ripped and snapped like torn sails in the gale.
Arcade practically tumbled out of Kirrin’s arms, hitting the ground in a half-roll. He clutched his toolkit like it was a newborn and scrambled to his feet without even glancing back.
Above him, on one of the higher platforms, Marzipan nudged a microphone toward Bonbon, who stood trembling beside a tangle of cables and scavenged speaker parts.
Every time Celeste pulsed, a wave of pain shot through Marzipan.
Her scales glitched.
Green blood ran from her mouth.
She roared in agony, claws scraping across the platform.
Then she noticed Arcade.
For one tiny second, recognition cut through the pain.
Then Marzipan launched herself into the air.
“Marzipan!” Arcade shouted.
But she was already gone.
The white dragon burst into the storm clouds, wings unfurled, her form radiant and terrible. She circled above Celeste, every beat of her wings scattering the Minotaur’s forces below.
Her roar cut the air, echoing Celeste’s so perfectly it was almost indistinguishable.
Celeste and the dragon.
Bound in fury and pain.
Twin voices screaming at the world.
Inside the hideout, chaos boiled.
Carys paced in frantic circles, chewing her lollipop stick down to splinters, ears twitching with every fresh pulse from above.
Mezzo sprinted upstairs, covered in zombie guts and breathing hard.
“Sorry I’m late!” he blurted, skidding into the room. “There were a few things to kill on the way. Also, bad news, I think the Council noticed.”
Carys stared at him.
Then she snapped, “Pardon my Prydaenic, but no shit, Mezzo.”
Above them, Bonbon began to cry.
She looked terrified, clutching the microphone with both paws as Marzipan’s shadow vanished into the storm.
Carys looked up and tried to keep her voice steady.
“Bonbon, sweetheart! Someone will get you soon, all right? Just be brave for me!”
Bonbon hiccuped loudly, still crying.
Mezzo spotted Arcade and charged over, panic etched across his face.
“She’s unravelling reality like it’s candy floss! What the hell do we even do against that?!”
The comm crystal at Mezzo’s belt crackled alive.
Hughes’s voice came through, taut but steady.
“Brassmane wants to know—has Celeste moved at all?”
Arcade shoved a pile of cables aside, pawing through his pack. “No. Not at the moment.”
“Then listen,” Hughes said, urgency sharpening every word. “She’s perched directly over a mana leyline. Her mana is causing the whole network beneath Clawdiff to resonate. If you don’t move her soon, she’ll overload her body—and possibly explode.”
Mezzo froze mid-step, his fur standing on end.
“What the fuck?! And we’re standing in the blast radius?!”
The comm crackled as Hughes barked back, sharper this time.
“Focus, boy! Don’t lose your shit—help Arcade. The other mythics are gathering to shield Clawdiff while we stop this. Now move.”
Arcade stormed past, toolkit under one arm, goggles hanging crooked.
“I need ten minutes of silence and about three rolls of duct tape! Mezzo—you got a minute? I need everything ready. I’m hitching this microphone and some parts I have to the relic Brassmane gave me, aiming it at her, and hopefully knocking her flat before she tears the city in half.”
Mezzo, wires slung over his shoulder like bandoliers, grinned despite the fear.
“Aye, aye—is this all of it here? Don’t go and turn us into fireworks, yeah? I’m not explaining that to Bonbon.”
“Not in the plan, cheers,” Arcade muttered, shoving cables into ports.
His arcbracer speaker suddenly crackled.
Through it, Arcade could hear Lumina screaming.
“Let me go! She needs me! I can feel her—it’s like… like she’s calling, but it hurts!”
There was a thud, then Ray’s strained voice.
“Hold her still! Skye, keep talking to her!”
Hughes’s voice cut back through the comm.
“Also, Lumina has started to go a little nuts.”
Arcade blinked.
“That is a very calm way to say that.”
Hughes ignored him. “Her eyes are glowing. Every time Celeste pulses, it drags Lumina closer to the balcony like she needs to get near her. They’re resonating through the same bloodline.”
Arcade’s paws froze over the wires.
Then he swallowed hard and forced himself to keep working.
“Brilliant. Love that. Absolutely adorable little nightmare detail. Adding it to the pile.”
Another pulse rolled through the city.
Glass rattled loose from window frames.
The storm-wracked sky flashed searing pink and violet.
The hideout itself groaned under the strain, walls creaking, lights flickering, pipes bursting in the lower floors. Somewhere beneath them, the old metal supports screamed as the whole building shuddered.
Caught in the rhythm of a girl who was no longer just herself.
Outside, Celeste screamed again.
And beneath Clawdiff, the leylines screamed back.
