They ventured deeper into the hive, and with every corridor the place became less like a monster’s nest and more like a grave wearing sugar for skin.
At first, the walls were exactly what Celeste expected from a giant gumball full of zombies—which was a sentence she hated existing in her life. Thick ropes of gum clung to the ceilings. Licorice-black cables twitched through the walls like veins. Amber resin oozed between panels of stolen Council plating, hardening in glossy layers over sparkshot coils, arcbracer ports, ration scanners, ward anchors, and broken security crystals.
The hive had stripped Clawdiff bare.
It had taken the city’s tools and made them ugly.
Council devices hung half-digested in the walls, still trying to work beneath layers of syrup and sugarfilm. Screens blinked from inside candy growths, their symbols warped by interference. A mana turret had been fused into the ceiling like a rotten tooth. A row of scanner lenses swivelled toward them as they passed, then away again, obedient to some unseen rhythm.
Silver walked beside her in silence, bow lowered but ready.
Celeste kept expecting him to say something clever.
He didn’t.
That worried her more.
The corridor sloped downward.
The candy changed.
The gum thinned.
Beneath it, something pale began to show.
Smooth white metal.
Not steel. Not brass. Not anything Council-made. It curved in long, seamless plates beneath the sugar rot, untouched by rust, untouched by age. Symbols ran along the edges of the panels in thin lines of dormant light, folded into the walls like handwriting left by stars.
Celeste slowed.
Her core gave a small, painful tug.
Not fear.
Recognition.
“Oh,” she whispered.
Silver stopped beside her. “What is it?”
Celeste didn’t answer at first.
She reached toward the wall, fingers hovering above one of the symbols. The moment her paw came close, the mark glimmered faintly beneath the candy residue—blue-white light pushing through amber grime.
The symbol was delicate.
Precise.
Beautiful in a way that made her chest ache.
A memory flashed behind her eyes.
Not hers.
A hall of white stone and living metal. Voices layered together in song. Hands pressing light into walls that breathed. A world where machines did not clank or hiss, but listened.
Celeste snatched her hand back.
Silver’s gaze sharpened. “Celeste?”
“I’ve seen this before,” she said softly.
“Where?”
She swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
That was not entirely true.
She knew.
Or something inside her did.
The deeper they went, the more the hive revealed what it had swallowed. Gum peeled away from archways shaped like ribs of moonlit glass. Candy cables wrapped around pillars carved with old geometric patterns. Doorframes, half-buried in sugar, carried inscriptions in a language Celeste could not read but felt under her skin.
Kymara.
The word rose in her mind before she chose it.
Not as a guess.
As a certainty.
“This is Kymara,” she said.
Silver looked at the walls.
The colour left his face by a fraction.
He stepped closer to one of the panels, studying the buried script with the forced calm of someone trying not to admit he was standing inside a children’s story that had decided to become very real and very murderous.
“That should not be here,” he murmured.
Celeste looked at him quickly. “You recognise it?”
“No.” His voice was too quick. Then, quieter: “Not properly.”
“Silver.”
“I know enough to know it should not be inside a flying confectionery prison.”
“That is very specific and not reassuring.”
“It was not meant to be.”
They moved on.
The ancient structure grew clearer with every step. The hive was not simply built inside the gumball.
The gumball had grown around something.
A buried Kymara facility.
A ruin.
A machine.
A tomb.
Candy-webs crossed over old light conduits, forcing red syrup through channels that had once carried clean mana. Council parts had been bolted crudely over impossible white panels. The zombies had not invented everything here. They had found something old and powerful, then broken it open and taught it hunger.
Celeste’s stomach twisted.
The hive hummed through the walls.
For a moment, beneath that sickly lullaby, she thought she heard another sound.
Fainter.
Older.
A broken song trying to remember itself.
Then the corridor opened toward a viewing platform, and the wind struck them cold.
They hit the next corner.
Celeste stopped without looking.
“Ceiling.”
Silver fired upward.
A Cat-o-Wrap dropped dead before it could pounce.
“Left tunnel,” Celeste said. “Two small. One big. The big one is slow.”
Silver loosed a glowing arrow down the left tunnel. Two Sugar Rushers burst apart. A lumbering caramel brute turned too late before Celeste cut through its knees and Silver finished it with a shot through the skull.
They kept moving.
Celeste ran as if the hive were pulling her forward by the nerves.
Every corridor sang.
Every enemy betrayed itself.
Not because it wanted to help her.
Because it could not stop thinking.
“Right wall,” she said.
Silver ducked as a taffy arm punched through the gum beside his head.
“Low,” she gasped.
He kicked a crawling Rusher aside before it bit his ankle.
“Don’t step there.”
Silver froze mid-stride as the floor beneath his boot bulged, a hidden mouth opening in the gum.
He stepped around it.
“You know,” he said breathlessly, “when I asked for coffee, I did not anticipate psychic horror navigation.”
Celeste didn’t answer.
Her eyes were fixed ahead.
The voices were changing.
Less scattered now.
More painful.
Arcade was nearby.
Not in words.
In sparks.
Static.
Fear wrapped in sarcasm until it cracked.
And beneath it—
Please.
Celeste followed it.
The corridor opened into a laboratory chamber.
There was the table from the monitor.
The restraints still sticky with chocolate casing.
The scanner arm still swinging gently overhead.
Arcade was gone.
But his quill fragments glittered on the floor.
On one of the nearby tables lay a familiar shape.
Celeste froze.
A scorched multitool. Arcade’s. One of his prototypes—the casing cracked, a corner melted where candy-acid had splashed it.
Her breath caught.
“…No,” she whispered. “He’s here.”
Her hand shook as she brought up her arcbracer.
She pinged the tracker.
A response came back immediately.
Steady.
Close.
There.
At the back of the room, slightly elevated, sat a pod unlike the others. Its surface was misted over, opaque with frost and static haze. It wasn’t hooked into a transformation rig.
It was isolated.
Deliberately.
Celeste took a step closer—and her stomach dropped.
Inside the pod, Arcade was suspended upright. Awake, barely—but restrained. Thick cables were anchored into the walls, siphoning energy directly from the static crackling along his quills. The air around him buzzed faintly, charged.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
Thin needles protruded from his chest and shoulders, probing deep—searching. Instruments were clustered near his sternum, readings locked obsessively around one point.
His core.
Celeste went cold.
“They think it’s him,” she breathed.
Silver turned sharply. “What?”
“They sensed one of us has a Kymara core,” she said, horrified. “They thought it was him.”
She looked at Silver, eyes blazing with fear and certainty.
“That’s him. That’s my friend. That’s who I was looking for.”
And she ran.
“Arcade!” Celeste slammed her palm against the pod’s control panel.
Inside, Arcade’s eyes fluttered. He blinked once. Slowly.
Then focused on her.
“Hey… ’Leste,” he murmured, voice rough and distant. “Took your sweet time.”
She laughed—a shaky, broken sound—and pressed her hand to the glass. “I told you not to get caught.”
“You also said it’d be fine,” he replied faintly, eyes drifting. “You lied.”
Silver was already at the console, fingers moving fast. “He’s alive,” he said. “Sedated. Weak—but stable.”
The pod hissed as the seals disengaged.
Celeste barely had time to brace before Arcade slumped forward.
She caught him instinctively, arms around his shoulders, cradling his head as he blinked up at her, unfocused but present.
“Still… got it?” he asked weakly.
“Always,” she whispered.
Arcade lifted one trembling hand and snapped his fingers.
With a flicker of light, C.H.I.P. popped into existence—slightly glitchy, eyes spinning as systems booted.
“Oh good,” C.H.I.P. said dryly. “YOU’RE ALIVE. I HAD A BET RUNNING.”
“Scan the whole base,” Arcade slurred. “Download everything.”
C.H.I.P. hummed. “OH ABSOLUTELY. I LOVE TRAUMA ARCHIVES.”
Arcade’s gaze drifted back to Celeste, urgency fighting the fog. “I watched them work,” he said quietly. “They did messed up things. They turned people, Celeste. But… they’re using notes from somewhere else. Old research. Not all theirs.”
Celeste’s grip tightened.
“We need to find the source,” he continued, words slurring as exhaustion dragged him down. “We need to stop this freakshow. There were children, Celeste…”
His eyes started to close.
C.H.I.P. snapped, “WARNING: IF HE FALLS ASLEEP, I DESPAWN. WHICH WOULD BE VERY INCONVENIENT.”
Celeste leaned close, forehead resting against Arcade’s.
“It’s okay,” she said firmly, voice steady despite the fear crushing her chest. “We’re here. We’ve got you. We’re not leaving you.”
Arcade exhaled slowly.
“…Good,” he murmured. “Didn’t feel like being a battery today.”
His eyes fluttered—but stayed open.
Arcade cracked one eye open and squinted past Celeste’s shoulder.
“…Okay,” he muttered. “Either I’m still sedated, or there’s a very fancy ghost standing behind you.”
Silver blinked. “Excuse me?”
Arcade tilted his head, quills twitching as he focused. “No, wait. You’re real. You look… familiar.” His brow furrowed. “Do I know you from somewhere? Council broadcast? Arrest warrant? Extremely punchable poster?”
Celeste glanced between them. “Oh—right. Arcade, this is Silver. I rescued him on the way here.”
Arcade groaned softly. “You couldn’t rescue bug-cats or something normal?” He sighed. “It’s always another disaster magnet. We’re forming a collection girl.”
Silver placed a hand on his chest, affronted. “I’ll have you know—”
Arcade squinted harder. “Wait. Does he have powers? Because if not, he’s dead weight.”
Silver sputtered. “I just learned how to summon a bow about ten minutes ago!”
Arcade nodded slowly. “Cool. Then get practicing. You’re behind, scrub.”
Silver’s mouth twisted into a sharp smile. “Says the man dressed like a hobo scientist who lost a fight with a toaster.”
Arcade gasped. “This jacket is functional.”
Celeste cleared her throat loudly. “Boys.”
Arcade exhaled, then nodded toward the surrounding pods. “Right. Focus. Let’s get some of these people out.” He gestured weakly. “Before this place decides to turn them into gum-flavored nightmares.”
Silver followed his gaze, expression sobering instantly. “Agreed.”
Without another word, the two of them moved—Silver working the seals with careful precision, Arcade guiding him, pointing out which cables to cut, which locks to override.
Pods hissed open one by one.
People slumped free. Breathing. Alive.
Arcade watched Silver work for a moment, then smirked faintly.
“…Alright,” he admitted. “You’re not totally useless.”
Silver shot him a sideways look. “High praise. I’ll treasure it forever.”
And for the first time since entering the hive, the room felt a little less hopeless—as the team began turning batteries back into people.
