Celeste was dragged as she burst through the doors, nearly tripping as she slammed into the corridor beyond.

The hallway stretched ahead, dim and warped, lined with peeling candy-crusted wallpaper and flickering wall-lights that made everything look sickly and unreal. She didn’t dare look back.

Then something huge moved to her left.

A zombie lurched from the side of the corridor—a massive hippo shape, its body already softening and stretching into glossy pink-brown gum. Its maw opened unnaturally wide, jaw unhinging with a wet elastic creak, and before Celeste could properly scream it lunged and caught her around the waist.

“NO—!”

The thing lifted her as if she weighed nothing.

Celeste kicked wildly, claws scraping uselessly against its slick, sticky muzzle as it started lowering her into its mouth. The gum around its jaws stretched and quivered, stringing from tooth to tooth in thick, glistening ropes. Its breath smelled like rotten sugar and mint gone sour.

Celeste flailed in a blind panic.

“LET GO! LET GO OF ME, YOU HORRIBLE—OH STARS—NO, NO, NO—!”

Her boots thrashed. Her wand flew from her paw and clattered down the hall. She beat at its face with both fists, half wailing, half shouting, trying to wriggle free as the creature’s jaws closed around her legs and hips.

Then—

A violent blast of water hit the thing side-on.

The corridor exploded with pressure.

A fire hydrant had gone off somewhere near the wall, the stream slamming into the hippo zombie hard enough to make its gummy flesh ripple and distort. The water pummelled its head, forcing its mouth sideways and making its sticky body lose shape around her.

Celeste dropped to the floor in a soaked, gasping heap.

A husky with glasses stood braced beside the burst hydrant valve, both paws gripping the mechanism with visible terror on his face. He looked like he wasn’t remotely prepared to be doing this, which somehow made the rescue even more heroic.

“Are—are you alright?” he shouted over the rush of water, voice cracking.

Celeste coughed, drenched and shaking, then nodded far too quickly. “Yes! I mean—probably not entirely, but mostly—yes!”

Another husky—darker-furred, eyes sharp with panic—skidded to a stop beside him and grabbed his arm.

“Come on, let’s go! They’re everywhere!”

He looked back at Celeste one last time, still pale beneath his fur, then nodded.

“O-okay!”

And the two of them ran, splashing down the corridor and disappearing into the chaos.

Celeste barely had time to catch her breath.

The corridor was worse.

Screams echoed. Figures staggered and twitched. Some were writhing on the floor, others slamming into walls. Their movements weren’t right—too stiff, too hungry. Like puppets being controlled by someone who had forgotten how to be alive.

Celeste shoved past them, clutching her chest. “Come on—come on—please, where’s the room?!”

The hallway opened onto the indoor balcony above the main hall. She stopped for half a second—just enough to take in the chaos below.

People screamed and scattered around the stage. The once-cheerful con space now looked like a battleground, candy wrappers and prop swords scattered in the stampede. The sky beyond the massive glass windows was still that unnatural, hard pink.

And in the middle of it all, a small mythic colt pixie boy darted frantically through the crowd, his tiny shoes skidding on the polished floor, wings buzzing so fast they were almost invisible. His little jacket was half-torn, and his eyes were wild with panic.

“Grandad?” he cried, voice cracking. “Grandad! Has anyone seen my grandad?! He’s a goat—he’s got the patchy ear and a beared and he was just here—!”

He looked up at Celeste as if she might somehow fix the world.

Celeste’s heart dropped. “I—I haven’t, sweetheart. I’m sorry, I haven’t seen him—”

The boy’s lip wobbled.

Then a squad of soldiers shoved through the corridor below, barking orders as they cut straight through the crowd, and Celeste lost sight of him at once in the crush of bodies and uniforms.

“No—wait—!” she called helplessly, but he was gone.

A pureblood dog officer at the foot of the stairs raised his rifle and fired into the oncoming swarm. Bright shots cracked through the air, punching neat holes through candy-flesh and knocking one zombie sideways. Another lost an arm entirely.

For one hopeful second, Celeste thought it had worked.

Then the arm grew back.

Not slowly.

Instantly.

Sugar strands whipped out like pulled toffee, wrapping and hardening into a new limb before her eyes. Another zombie’s jaw, half-shot away, reformed in a wet crunch of gum and crystal. The rifles weren’t stopping them. Just slowing them down.

“Oh stars,” Celeste whispered. “The guns aren’t doing anything…”

One of the officers shouted, “Keep firing!”

Another zombie lunged. There was a snap of teeth, a curse, and one of the pureblood dog officers staggered back, clutching his forearm.

“I’m fine!” he barked at the others, shoving away a hand that reached for him. “I said I’m f—”

He stopped.

Bright colour began spreading beneath his fur around the bite mark—too vivid, too fast. Pink. Blue. Acid green. It crawled outward in branching veins like somebody had spilled neon paint beneath his skin.

Celeste stared in horror.

The officer stared too.

Then all around him the hall seemed to erupt louder.

Celeste’s eyes snapped away—

And locked on Mezzo.

The dalmatian security guard stood in the middle of the mess, arms out in front of him, trying to reason with a short figure in a mask. The figure growled low and made a sudden snapping motion with its head.

“Alright there, lil’ guy, that’s a fierce costume, aye? Jeez, you’ll win the contest, no doubt. But biting—hah—that’s takin’ immersion too bloody far!”

He reached forward and gently lifted the child’s mask.

What he saw made him reel back with a yelp—then fall flat on his tail.

“Holy sweet Motherlight a’ divine, that’s not a costume!!”

Celeste bolted down the nearby stairs, grabbed his paw, and hauled him up.

“RUN! Stars above, I don’t know what this is, but it’s not cosplay!”

Mezzo stumbled after her, nearly tripping over his boots. “Ye think I hadn’t noticed?! Don’t be orderin’ me about, lass—I’m not even on shift!”

Celeste yanked him along, ears flat, tail lashing. “Then at least run in my direction!”

They turned and sprinted together, darting past candy-warped figures and fallen displays.

Celeste’s only thought:

Find Lumina.
Find her now.

She burst into the gaming room with Mezzo close behind.

But the room was empty.

“Lumina?!” Her voice cracked. “Lumina, love, where are you?!”

Her wide eyes swept the room. “Arcade?! Skye?!”

Nothing.

Just a TV screen frozen on a paused game, and a few open card decks scattered across the floor.

Celeste’s voice broke, small and shaking.

“No, no, no—where are they?!”

She turned—and nearly screamed.

A paw grabbed her wrist.

She spun—ready to lash out—but stopped.

It was Pitch E. Blak.

The grey wolf survivalist from earlier. His trench coat was somehow even more dramatic up close, now flaring behind him as he shoved a toppled table against the door.

“I told you,” he said, voice gravel-deep, eyes steady. “Always be prepared. The world won’t wait for your doubts.”

“Pitch?!” Celeste stammered, wide-eyed. “What are you—why are you here?!”

He planted a chair under the handle, moving with the brisk focus of someone who had been waiting his whole life to be proved right.

“Been tracking this candy rollout for weeks. Too neat. Too viral. Too… engineered.” His lip curled. “Didn’t like the smell of it. Knew it would break bad.”

Celeste shook her head furiously. “We can’t stay here—if Lumina’s out there—!”

“I’m making a stand,” Pitch said flatly, already pulling a tactical flashlight and an energy drink from his coat like sacred instruments. “Always start with light and fuel. Buy time.”

“Bad idea!” Mezzo yelped, jabbing a finger toward the curtain. “Check yer bloody corners, wolf, there’s more in here!”

Celeste turned—

And sure enough, behind the display screen, two figures stumbled forward, slow and sweet-scented.

Their mouths hung open in that same slack-jawed hunger.

One had what used to be a Monster backpack.
The other still held a cosplay prop—a knight’s lance—but its plastic was melting in its hands.

Celeste froze.

Her brain screamed a dozen directions at once.

Fight? Run? Scream?

Her body locked—

But her mana did not.

For a split second, something inside her chest flared—hot and bright and ancient. The rune suppression at her neck strained, and she felt something sharp, like static, surge through her fingertips.

Pitch’s sharp gaze flicked to the glow.

Then to the suppression rune.

He muttered low, almost to himself, “You a fellow hybrid, I see.”

Celeste didn’t answer.

She didn’t know how.

Because her mind wasn’t on magic.

It was on Lumina.

And she was missing.

Then the window exploded inward.

Glass and sugarglass shards blasted across the room in a glittering storm as a body came crashing through the frame, hit the floor hard, and skidded across the arcade tiles in a shower of sparks and broken metal.

Celeste cried out and threw her arms up.

A soldier.

One of the Air Force by the look of him—dressed in dark, fitted uniform leathers reinforced with brass buckles and plated shoulders, a steampunk-style jetpack strapped to his back in a tangle of pipes, valves, and glowing blue exhaust vents. One lens of his flight goggles had cracked clean through, and a flickering holographic interface sputtered above his wrist, throwing up fractured readings and warning sigils that blinked red across his face.

He coughed, rolled onto one elbow, and tried to scramble upright.

Behind him, beyond the shattered window, the whole city seemed to convulse.

Celeste turned toward the opening—

And went pale.

Across the side of the building opposite, thrown huge and warped through smoke and pink light, loomed the shadow of something colossal.

A dragon.

Its outline stretched over brick and glass like a living nightmare, horned head lifted high, wings half-spread across the skyline as it roared somewhere beyond sight. The sound hit a heartbeat later—deep enough to shake the marrow in her bones.

Celeste’s breath caught.

Something in her chest pulled so sharply it hurt.

Not just fear.

A wrenching, aching drag beneath her ribs, like something inside her knew that roar. Like her core was straining toward it, or away from it—she couldn’t tell which. She pressed a trembling paw to her chest and winced.

“Oh… stars…”

Ahead, through the broken window and the chaos of smoke, she could see the distant shorefront flashing with fire.

Mana cannons.

Battery lines from the waterfront were firing in sequence, hurling blazing arcs overhead that tore across the sky above Clawdiff in bursts of blue-white light. Each shot left a shimmering trail that lit the underside of the clouds and painted the city in brief, violent colour.

A second later, the return impact came.

The entire building rumbled.

Arcade machines shook. Loose cards skipped across the floor. The cracked holographic displays buzzed and jumped. Somewhere deeper in the convention hall, people screamed again.

And Celeste stood rooted in place, framed by broken glass, dragon-shadow, cannonfire, and the growing certainty that whatever was happening outside—

it was bigger than the convention.

Bigger than the candy.

Bigger than anything she had imagined.