Back at the base, time slowed into something almost… normal.
Almost.
Pitch had reappeared before breakfast with mud on his boots, his coat smelling faintly of rain, and the expression of someone hoping nobody would ask sensible questions.
Ray did, immediately.
“Where did you vanish to yesterday?”
Pitch dropped into a chair, stretching like a cat who had done absolutely nothing suspicious in his entire life.
“Walk.”
Ray stared at him.
He picked up a piece of toast. “Long one.”
“That’s it?”
“I’m very committed to cardio.”
Silver, standing near the end of the table, looked at him sharply.
Pitch did not meet his gaze.
Not once.
Instead, he buttered the toast with exaggerated concentration, as if breakfast required the full force of his tactical mind.
Silver’s eyes narrowed.
Celeste glanced between them, missing about half the tension and sensing the rest badly. “Well… I’m glad you came back.”
Pitch’s mouth twitched. “Yeah. Me too.”
He still didn’t look at Silver.
Ray noticed.
So did Hughes.
Neither said anything.
Yet.
They sat clustered around the long root-table while the Egg Tree’s glow pulsed softly above them, rain pattering against bark and leaf. Caerfaenic rarebit steamed on chipped plates, the cheese thick and bubbling, bread soaking it up like it had been born for this exact purpose.
Topsy had somehow gotten it on her nose.
“This,” she declared, licking her fingers, “is proof the apocalypse has some upsides.”
Silver dabbed his mouth delicately with a napkin that looked suspiciously like it had once been a curtain. He glanced at Celeste, expression tight.
“We need to talk,” he said, measured. “About the investigation.”
Celeste stiffened a little but nodded. “Okay.”
Silver folded his hands. “Until we have evidence—real, undeniable evidence—we are walking a very fine line. The Church is already hostile. The Council is watching. One wrong step and they will come down on you. On all of you.”
Mezzo scoffed around a mouthful of toast.
“And who put you in charge, sunshine?”
Silver shot him a glare. “I am trying to keep her alive.”
Ray leaned back, arms crossed. “Funny. Sounds a lot like telling her to stay quiet and behave.”
“That is not what I said.”
“It’s what it means,” Mezzo snapped.
Voices rose. Overlapping. Frustration spilling sideways.
Celeste raised both hands.
“Hey—hey—no, stop. We’re not doing this.”
Silence fell, surprised into existence.
She swallowed, ears flicking. “We vote.”
Silver blinked. “You… what?”
“We vote,” she repeated. “Like we agreed. Everyone gets a say.”
Hughes nodded slowly. “Fair.”
One by one, they weighed in.
Ray: keep digging.
Mezzo: absolutely keep digging.
Arcade: pause, collect data, don’t poke the bear yet.
Pitch: drop it—for now.
Lumina: hesitant, but… drop it.
Skye: quiet, conflicted… drop it.
Topsy: “I don’t like secrets, but I also don’t like prison. So… pause?”
All eyes turned to Celeste.
Tie.
Her stomach twisted.
She took a breath. Long. Steady.
“…Alright,” she said softly. “We drop it. For now.”
Mezzo opened his mouth, then stopped when he saw her face.
“Not because it’s right,” she added quickly. “But because I don’t want anyone hurt while we’re blind.”
Silver let out a slow breath, relief and tension tangled together. “Thank you.”
The decision settled over the room like dust.
Then—
BZZT—CRACKLE—
Every arcbracer on the table lit up at once.
Static tore through the air, sharp and ugly. The image that resolved was warped, off-angle—stone walls slick with moisture, light flickering like it was dying.
A voice cut through.
Broken. Panicked.
“…please—anyone—if you can hear this—”
A shadow passed over the lens.
Metal scraping on stone.
The scream cut off into static.
Then—movement.
Candy zombies flooded the frame, their sugar-glass bodies reflecting the dying light as they swarmed the space where the sender had been.
The feed ended.
Silence crashed down hard.
No one spoke for a long moment.
Celeste’s hands were shaking.
“That,” Topsy said quietly, for once not joking, “was not a prank.”
Silver’s jaw tightened. “It could be bait.”
“It was a last message,” Lumina whispered.
Arcade was already moving, fingers flying over his rig. “I can trace the signal. It’s weak, but… whoever sent it didn’t want to be found easily.”
Celeste looked at Silver.
He met her gaze—and for once, there was no condescension there. Just worry.
“…I still don’t think it’s our business,” he said carefully. “But—”
“But?” Celeste asked.
“But if someone reached out like that,” he admitted, “they had no one else.”
Arcade looked up. “I’ve got something. It’s coming from underground. Old stone. Pre-Council architecture.”
Celeste closed her eyes for half a second.
Then opened them.
“Track it,” she said.
Arcade hunched over his console, cables everywhere, brow furrowed so hard it looked like it might achieve sentience.
“Okay, C.H.I.P., if we triangulate the mana echo with the distortion curve—”
“I ALREADY SUGGESTED THAT,” C.H.I.P. chirped.
“Yes, but your suggestion was bad,” Arcade snapped. “It’s like your logic core was assembled by a drunk toaster.”
There was a pause.
A very offended pause.
“I SEE,” C.H.I.P. said coldly. “INSULT MODE ACTIVATED.”
“Wait—no—”
Pfft.
C.H.I.P. vanished in a sparkle of light.
Arcade stared at the empty space.
“…You smug little tin can.”
From across the room, Ray didn’t even look up.
“Congratulations. You’ve been ghosted by your own robot.”
Arcade slumped back in his chair. “This may take a while.”
Celeste, who had been hovering awkwardly nearby, cleared her throat.
“Um. Okay. While that’s… happening…”
She looked around, tail flicking.
“Mezzo? Do you maybe wanna hang out for a bit?”
Mezzo, currently perched on watch duty near the upper branches, sighed dramatically.
“I want to. Spiritually. Emotionally. Deeply.”
He gestured to the perimeter. “But alas, I am chained to responsibility. Guard duty calls, and she is a cruel mistress.”
Celeste nodded, understanding. “Okay!”
She turned. “Lumina?”
Lumina smiled apologetically, already elbow-deep in a stack of books.
“I promised Skye I’d help him reorganize his shelves. Apparently they’re sorted by vibes right now.”
Skye, from his doorway, looked mildly ashamed.
“It made sense at the time.”
Celeste blinked. “…It still kind of does.”
She turned again—and nearly bumped into Silver, who had been standing there with suspiciously perfect posture.
“I appear,” he said smoothly, “to have an opening in my schedule.”
Celeste’s ears perked. “Oh! Well—there’s this amazing shop nearby. It sells manga. Like, really good manga. We could swing by and grab some if you want?”
Silver paused.
Manga.
He searched his brain. Political treatise? No. Military manual? Unlikely. Was this a test?
Dragon instincts whispered: It’s a trap.
Cat instincts countered: Say yes, you idiot.
He smiled, effortlessly charming.
“Lead the way.”
Celeste beamed. “Yay! Okay, um—fair warning, it’s a little cramped and the owner yells affectionately.”
“…Of course they do,” Silver said, already bracing himself.
As they headed toward the exit, Arcade called after them without looking up:
“If you see a robot-shaped grudge out there, tell it I’m sorry.”
C.H.I.P.’s voice echoed faintly from somewhere in the tree.
“I WILL CONSIDER IT.”
Celeste giggled.
Silver watched her for a moment longer than necessary.
He had expected mud, danger, humiliation.
He had not expected… this.
And somehow, that unsettled him far more.
The light beneath the Egg Tree filtered down in fractured gold, catching in Celeste’s ribbons as she stepped down from the roots.
Silver followed a pace behind her, hands clasped loosely behind his back in that composed, almost princely way he carried himself when he was thinking too hard.
A shadow passed over them.
Fast.
Large.
Silver reacted instantly—ducking low, one hand already reaching for Windswept.
Above them, a massive white candy dragon swept across the sky, wings crystalline and sugar-glass bright, body stitched with glowing seams where frosting met bone. Its hollow eyes burned soft blue instead of the usual feral pink.
Silver stayed crouched. “Hostile,” he said flatly. “That is a zombie dragon.”
Celeste giggled, the sound bright against the hum of the park. “It’s alright. Thats Marzipan she’s friendly.”
“Friendly,” he repeated, still low to the ground. “It has paper scales.”
“She’s saved us a few times now,” Celeste said, watching the dragon circle once overhead before drifting toward the skyline. “She carried Lumina out of a collapse once. And she scared off a swarm near the docks.”
Silver slowly stood, brushing invisible dust from his coat, eyes still scanning the sky.
“If you say so,” he muttered. “But I remain suspicious of anything described as a ‘good zombie.’”
Celeste bumped his arm lightly. “You’ll get used to the weirdness.”
“I doubt that.”
They walked on.
The park gave way to the survivor buildings—converted pavilions, patched greenhouses, tents reinforced with scrap metal and rune-wire. Mana lanterns hung from tree branches. Laundry fluttered from lines strung between statues.
Children ran past them—mostly hybrids. Fur, feathers, scales. A fox-eared girl dragging a wheeled crate. A lynx boy helping an elderly mythic with a cane.
Silver slowed slightly.
His gaze sharpened.
“Why,” he asked carefully, “are there mostly hybrids here?”
Celeste followed his line of sight. “The Council turned them away. Said they didn’t have space in the protected pureblood districts.”
Silver’s jaw tightened.
“Mythics and hybrids stay here,” she added. “Although there are some purebloods too. People who couldn’t pay for inner permits.”
A gust of wind rattled the loose tin roofing.
Silver looked across the makeshift settlement.
There was something complicated in his expression.
Pity.
And something colder.
Celeste noticed.
“Why do you look at them like that?” she asked quietly.
Silver’s polished charm snapped into place instantly, smooth as silk. “Like what?”
“Like they deserve this.”
He gave her a faint, diplomatic smile. “I simply observe.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He glanced at a hybrid carpenter repairing a door with mismatched planks.
“Perhaps,” Silver said evenly, “if they worked harder to integrate, the Council might have accepted them into the pureblood districts.”
Celeste stopped walking.
The air shifted.
“Or,” she said softly, “maybe they are working. And the purebloods don’t want them there.”
Silver’s ears flicked.
“Be that as it may,” he replied, tone cool, measured, “in two thousand years hybrids remain in precisely the same social position. At some point, responsibility must enter the conversation.”
The words landed heavier than he intended.
A little hybrid kitten darted past them, laughing, chased by a dragon-scale adolescent who moved with careful restraint so as not to knock over the lantern posts.
Celeste’s shoulders lowered.
“You think they choose this?” she asked.
“I think,” Silver said, voice steady, “that systems do not stagnate without participation.”
“And I think,” Celeste replied, meeting his eyes, “that systems don’t change without someone letting them.”
Silence stretched between them.
Silver’s expression tightened. “I think reality is rarely kind enough to be solved by moral outrage.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No,” he said, voice cooler now. “You asked whether I think they choose it. And no, Celeste, I don’t. Not all of it. Not most of it.”
That caught her off guard.
Silver looked out across the patched tents, the children in oversized coats, the lanterns hung from broken statues, the old mythic trying to repair a kettle with shaking hands.
“I endured years to fit in,” he said quietly. “Years learning how to speak, stand, bow, smile, threaten, flatter, and bleed in ways Purebloods would tolerate. And even then, it was never enough. It is never enough.”
Celeste’s ears lowered.
“But you,” he continued, glancing back at her, “are doing well. Better than you think. They watch you. They listen. You are becoming something they cannot easily dismiss.”
Celeste looked down at her hands.
“I’m lucky.”
Silver blinked. “Lucky?”
“So are you.”
His brow rose, a warning and a question at once.
Celeste didn’t retreat from it.
“You were born noble,” she said softly. “And I have a magic core in my chest that can kill zombies. That makes people notice us. It makes them need us.” She looked back toward the survivor buildings. “Do you think they would care about us if we were ordinary Hybrids?”
Silver was silent.
For once, too silent.
Celeste’s voice stayed gentle, but there was something painfully clear beneath it.
“If I couldn’t make the zombies stay dead, would the Council have given me a badge? Would the Church have sponsored us? Would anyone powerful have cared what happened to me?”
Silver’s jaw tightened.
“We are an established unit now,” he said. “If we were in trouble, they would save us.”
Celeste said nothing.
Not arguing.
Not agreeing.
Just looking at him.
The silence bothered him more than disagreement would have.
“They would,” Silver insisted. “We are greatly useful to the Council. To the Church. To the city. That matters.”
Celeste’s eyes softened, sad rather than cruel.
“I know it matters.”
Silver held her gaze.
He was convinced.
He had to be.
Because if usefulness did not buy safety, then what had all those years of surviving bought him?
Celeste stepped forward again.
“Come on,” she said gently. “There’s more weirdness to see.”
Silver exhaled slowly and followed.
Still wary of dragons.
And perhaps, now, of himself.
