Outside, the zombie generals pressed their advantage.
The Minotaur led the charge again, axe raised high, his bellow shaking loose tiles from the rooftops. But each time one of them dared to step closer, the white dragon swept low. Its claws carved trenches through the ground. Its wings scattered smoke and ash. Its roar struck the streets like thunder, sending entire squads of undead staggering back.
It held its ground fiercely.
A guardian born from Celeste’s unraveling soul.
Keeping the generals at bay even as Celeste herself glitched in and out of sight like a fractured reflection above the city.
Inside, Carys scrambled up the stairs and reached Bonbon at last.
The little panda was curled near the upper platform, clutching the microphone Marzipan had tried to push toward her before she launched herself into the storm. Bonbon’s whole body shook, her plush unicorn crushed against her chest, tears streaking her face.
Carys dropped to her knees and gathered her close.
“Hey, hey, sweetheart. I’ve got you. I’ve got you,” she whispered, pressing Bonbon’s head beneath her chin. “Deep breaths. That’s it. You’re safe.”
Bonbon whimpered, her ears flattened.
Above them, another pulse tore through the sky.
The walls groaned.
Dust sifted from the ceiling.
Carys looked down over the railing, voice sharp despite the panic clawing at her throat.
“Arcade! Is there anything else you need?”
Arcade was half-buried in wires, cables, cracked crystals, and scavenged speaker parts, his goggles crooked on his face. “Yeah! Mezzo, fetch a speaker!”
Mezzo spun toward him, splattered in zombie muck and already breathing hard. “What did your last slave die of?”
Arcade didn’t even look up.
“Answering back. Now hurry up, you’re supposed to be the fast one.”
Mezzo opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Pointed at him.
“Rude.”
Then he bolted.
Carys held Bonbon tighter as another shudder rippled through the hideout. Outside, Marzipan’s roar answered Celeste’s scream, two voices twisting together in fury and pain.
Mezzo came back inside moments later, hauling the speaker against his chest. It nearly slipped from his hands as he skidded across the floor.
Mezzo’s grin fell into a determined line. “Right. Get that speaker up. Plug it into the amplifier. If Arcade’s plan works, I’ll sing like a lunatic myself. Worst audition of my life, innit?”
Arcade’s jaw tightened as he worked. “Do it, then. Quick and clean. We have one window before the leyline overloads the whole block.”
Outside, the storm pulsed again.
Pink and violet lashed the skyline.
For a moment, time thinned to the work at hand.
Wire.
Sound.
A desperate hope that a sister’s voice might anchor a girl who was tearing the world apart.
Carys crouched low, ears twitching, eyes alight with that mix of motherly instinct and iron.
“Bonbon. Sweetheart. Remember that lullaby? The one you sang for Celeste? It calmed her. If we loop it, push it through the relic, it might hold her steady long enough for Mezzo to get close and set the rune back.”
Bonbon stared at her through tears, not understanding. Her tiny paws clenched around her plush unicorn.
Mezzo looked between Bonbon, the microphone, and the storm raging outside.
“Me?! Are you crazy? Oh, brilliant. Aye, so the plan is me, running straight at a bleeding starstorm with a bloody song blaring out my chest? Perfect! What could possibly go wrong?”
Carys’s stare didn’t budge.
“You’re fast. You’re reckless. And you’re the only one mad enough to actually make it. Kirrin can get you in—low, sharp, fast.”
Kirrin folded her wings with a grunt, rolling her shoulders.
“Aye, I’ll carry ye. Low an’ tight. Pegasi’ll screen the way out. You just hold on, laddie.”
Carys’s quiet voice cut in, steady but raw.
“This is better than hurting her. Better than knocking her out.”
Mezzo shook his head, backing up a step.
“I’m sorry, but I didn’t sign up to die. I can’t get close to her.”
Arcade slammed a hand down on the relic, his voice rising.
“Neither did we, Mezzo—but we can’t escape Clawdiff if she detonates above a leyline. We’ll all be ash. If we go with my plan, I’m going to have to get close myself and…”
He trailed off, his eyes dark behind his goggles.
“I may not make it back either.”
Carys’s face fell.
The room seemed to shrink under the weight of his words.
Even the storm outside seemed to pause for half a breath.
Arcade jabbed a finger at Mezzo.
“At least you can outrun them. You’ve got a better shot than any of us.”
Mezzo froze, jaw tight, speaker clutched to his chest.
Bonbon stirred in Carys’s arms. Her little eyes glowed faintly pink, tears shining in them like tiny stars. She looked toward the window, toward Celeste’s flickering shape in the sky.
Then she whimpered in Welsh.
“Mam… mae Mam yn brifo.”
Mezzo’s breath came hard and shallow.
He looked at Bonbon.
Then at the window, where Celeste flickered like a dying star.
He closed his eyes.
“Ah, for fuck’s sake... Fine! Tell me exactly what I’m doing before I lose my nerve.”
Arcade’s shoulders slumped.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Mezzo muttered.
Arcade turned to Skye, voice low but firm.
“Help me get this ready on the balcony. This is going to be difficult.”
The building trembled as another pulse from Celeste washed over them, rattling the walls like the beat of an alien heart.
But the pulse kept building.
Louder.
Deeper.
Not just sound, but pressure.
A heartbeat that wasn’t her own, synced to something older.
Something deeper.
Every time Celeste’s aura surged, the equipment shuddered in their hands. The floor buzzed with unstable resonance. The lights flickered pink, then white, then black. Cracks spread along the ceiling and sealed themselves again as if reality couldn’t decide whether the building was meant to fall.
Bonbon writhed in Carys’s arms, eyes glowing like twin stars.
Tiny butterfly wings phased in and out from her back, shimmering with soft rainbow light before vanishing again. Freckles like little rainbow sparks flickered across her skin.
Carys sucked in a frightened breath.
“Oh, sweetheart…”
But it wasn’t only Bonbon.
Arcade hissed as his quills snapped longer, sharp and electric, his fangs lengthening before suddenly shrinking back. Sparks crawled along his arms, wild and uncontrolled.
Mezzo looked down in horror as his paws briefly transformed into scaled talons before reverting.
“This is insane!” Mezzo bellowed over the resonance, voice cracking. “What the bloody hell is she doing to us?!”
Arcade grit his teeth, wires sparking in his fingertips.
“It’s her core! Whatever’s leaking out—it’s syncing with our mana. She’s overriding us, Mezzo! Our runes can’t stabilize with that much power in the air!”
Mezzo looked up at the crackling sky beyond the shattered balcony doors.
“So… this is gonna get worse, isn’t it?”
Arcade’s mouth twitched in a grim smile.
“If we sit on our arses? Absolutely.”
He bent over the relay again, paws moving faster. The soldering iron flared blue-white as he sealed the last wire into place. The relic Brassmane had given them pulsed at the centre of the device, wrapped in scavenged copper, microphone wire, and what looked suspiciously like parts from three different kitchen appliances.
Arcade hissed as the final spark snapped across his claws.
“Right. Done. Fetch the panda. Now.”
Carys carried Bonbon down the final few steps, still holding her close.
The little panda stood near the stairwell once Carys set her down, confused by the storm of flickering lights and shouting voices. The relay’s hum vibrated through the floor like the world itself was about to crack open.
She clutched her plush unicorn tighter.
Arcade adjusted the mic, voice dry but tight.
“We need her voice. If anything cuts through this mess, it’s her.”
Bonbon blinked, lost. Her tiny voice barely squeaked out.
“Dw i ddim yn deall…”
Arcade froze.
“What’d she say?”
Mezzo’s face went pale.
“She… she doesn’t understand.”
“She only speaks Caerfaenic!” Carys blurted, panic blooming in her chest.
Mezzo froze.
Then bolted.
“Wait—I’ve got it, I’ve bloody got it!”
He tore through the hideout, scattering half-burned tech and broken boxes as he went.
“Where—where’s that notebook—pink, stars, stickers—ah, come on!”
He yanked open a drawer. Nothing.
He kicked aside a cracked storage crate. Still nothing.
Another pulse rocked the building, nearly throwing him into the wall.
“Not now!” he barked at the universe, because apparently that was where his life had got to.
Then he saw it.
Wedged beneath a pile of old blankets and broken craft supplies.
A battered pink journal with sticky notes jutting from the sides, stickers on the cover, and little doodles scrawled in every margin.
Celeste’s Caerfaenic book.
Mezzo snatched it up and flipped through the pages so fast several sticky notes fluttered loose.
“Come on, come on, come on…”
Then—
There.
Canu — to sing.
Circled in pink.
Beside it was a doodle of Bonbon with musical notes around her head.
Mezzo stared at the word, chest tight.
“That’s it…”
He whispered it aloud.
“Canu.”
With a shadow-jump crack, he vanished.
And reappeared atop the base.
Wind howled.
Violet lightning cracked across the heavens.
Below, Celeste hung in the air like a goddess of entropy, glitching in and out, howling between worlds. Marzipan circled her in wide, protective arcs, smoke pouring from her jaws, green blood streaking from her mouth every time Celeste pulsed.
The zombie generals waited below, gathering at the edges of the fractured plaza.
Mezzo held Bonbon gently against his side as Kirrin landed nearby, wings spread against the gale. Arcade and Skye dragged the relic-speaker beacon into position, planting it at Mezzo’s feet like a flag against the end of days.
The device whined.
The microphone sparked.
Arcade slapped the side of it.
“Don’t you dare die on me now, you glorified biscuit tin.”
The relay steadied.
Mezzo lowered the mic to Bonbon’s lips, voice thick.
“Bonbon. Canu.”
Bonbon blinked up at him, still trembling.
But the word stirred something in her.
A song.
“Canu?” she whispered.
Mezzo nodded once, hard.
“Please. For her.”
The world cracked.
Celeste’s scream tore the clouds apart, a shockwave flattening rooftops and sending loose bricks exploding into the air.
And Bonbon began.
A soft, melodic tune.
Gentle.
Familiar.
Safe.
It slipped into the broken air like sunlight through shutters.
A lullaby remembered by the soul before the mind.
Reality stuttered.
But not from pain.
From recognition.
From the rooftop, Bonbon’s voice floated outward—gentle, steady, innocent. It pierced through the static of the unraveling world like a lullaby sung to a storm.
And finally…
Something broke.
Celeste faltered mid-air.
Her body spasmed violently, limbs jerking like broken strings. Her head snapped back, pixels tearing at the edges of her form.
Then her voice ripped through the night.
Raw.
Fragile.
Half a sob.
Half a scream.
“It… it hurts… oh stars, it hurts… please—make it stop…”
She collapsed, folding at the waist.
Still floating.
But on her knees now, as if gravity had remembered her only halfway.
Her hands clutched her head, fingers twitching as the storm inside her began to swallow her whole.
And deep inside her mind—
Memories bled in.
A white room.
Needles.
Bright lights that screamed in silence.
Chalkboard voices speaking in data code.
And a man’s voice.
Crying.
No.
Pleading.
“Stop. She’s just a child. She’s—please! Stop this!”
Then—
Nothing.
A hallway of shattered dreams.
A cage that smelled like metal and despair.
The soft jingle of her sister’s laugh echoing through the vents.
The voices of the others.
The escape.
The candy.
The change.
Mezzo’s eyes widened, fury and fear colliding across his face.
“Bloody hell—she’s breaking apart right in front of us!”
Kirrin snapped her wings open, voice sharp, rolling in her thick accent.
“Then quit gawkin’, laddie! This is yer chance!”
Arcade clutched the buzzing relic tighter, sparks dancing around his paws.
“Yeah, yeah—go on, hero! Try not to trip over your own ego on the way down!”
Kirrin hooked her talons under Mezzo’s arms.
“Hold on tight!”
“Don’t drop me!” Mezzo barked.
His words were almost lost as she hurled them both into the storm.
Arcade shouted after them.
“Good luck, you reckless lunatic!”
Kirrin launched from the rooftop with Mezzo clutched beneath her.
They dove through chaos.
Burning debris spun past.
A flaming street sign narrowly missed them as they spiralled between pulsing beams of broken mana. A whole chimney stack flickered in and out of existence beside them, briefly becoming glass, then ash, then brick again before exploding apart.
Below, the streets warped like melting sugar.
Marzipan swept past them, roaring as she slammed into a wave of zombies trying to break through the plaza. Her claws carved another trench through the ground, throwing undead aside like rotten dolls.
Celeste’s scream rippled again.
The force of it punched the air from Mezzo’s lungs.
Kirrin cursed, wings buckling.
“I cannae hold this angle!”
She released him just above a ruined plaza.
Mezzo hit the ground hard, tucked into a roll, and ran.
His speed ignited like a fuse.
Legs a blur.
Heart hammering.
The world narrowed to a tunnel of light, flame, and screaming magic.
Zombies turned toward him.
Too slow.
He wove between them, every heartbeat a new direction.
A burst left.
Vaulted off a crumbling awning.
Slid beneath a collapsed skybridge.
Go, go, go.
Above him, Bonbon’s lullaby continued through the relay, trembling but steady.
Celeste’s sobs tangled with it.
“It hurts… please…”
Mezzo’s jaw clenched.
“I know, lass,” he muttered, sprinting harder. “I know.”
Then he saw him.
The Minotaur General.
Massive.
Rotten.
Watching.
The general raised a hand, silent and precise.
His undead soldiers jerked into motion behind him, shuffling toward Mezzo like a tide.
Mezzo twisted his path, weaving wide.
“Too slow, horns!” he shouted.
Then his foot caught.
WHUMP.
His ankle tangled in something soft and sticky.
He looked down.
Hippogum.
The pastel-pink zombie’s gummy flesh stretched around his boot like melted toffee, its sleepy eyes blinking wide in surprise.
Then delight.
“Aw, stars—seriously?!” Mezzo thrashed, yanking and kicking.
But the Hippogum smiled.
Its sticky flesh stretched upward, pulling at him, jaw unhinging in a wide, toothless maw.
“Not today, sweetie!” Mezzo roared, fighting against the pull, panic edged with fury.
Another pulse erupted from Celeste, stronger than before.
It hit Mezzo like a shockwave.
His mana flared in response.
His feathers bristled.
His hands ignited with gryphon fire.
Snarling, he dropped down, talons crackling with heat. He grabbed his trapped foot and burned the Hippogum’s flesh away.
“Right then, ye sticky bastard,” he snarled, dropping low. Heat flared as he seized his own trapped foot, burning the Hippogum’s gummy flesh away.
The creature wailed — a horrible, squeaky gurgle — as its body boiled back on itself.
Mezzo wrenched free, flipped backward, boots hitting hard.
He didn’t stop.
He ran.
Fast.
