The Candy Floss Twins moved first.
Before anyone could fully brace, Sweet Fluff’s limbs shot outward with a wet, stretching snap, candy-floss arms elongating far past anything natural. They wrapped around Mezzo’s chest, waist, and throat in a tangle of pink strands, pinning his arms to his sides before he could swing Infernal Riff.
“Mezzo!” Celeste shouted.
He thrashed, boots scraping hard across the candy-glass floor. “Oi—oi, get off me!”
Sour Puff drifted in close, blue pigtails twisting like smoke in water. Her jagged smile widened as she tapped the rune at the back of Mezzo’s neck.
“There you are beneath the lie…”
Sweet Fluff giggled, tightening the strands until Mezzo gasped.
“A mythic dressed as pureblood bright…”
Mezzo went white.
“No.” His voice cracked. “No, don’t touch that.”
The group froze.
Ray’s ears flattened at once. Pitch swore under his breath. Hughes took a sharp step forward, then stopped, clearly terrified to lunge in case it made it worse. Even Arcade—usually so quick with some sharp comment—looked genuinely stricken.
Everyone knew what those runes meant.
Everyone knew what happened when too much mana was trapped too long.
Mezzo bucked harder, panic turning feral. “Don’t! Don’t, please—leave it alone!”
Sweet Fluff’s fingers dug beneath the glowing seal.
Sour Puff’s smile spread wider.
“You wear a pretty little face…”
“But this was never your true place…”
“Stop!” Mezzo screamed. “Please! Please, don’t—!”
The rune tore free.
For one awful second, nothing happened.
Then the world exploded.
A column of fire burst around Mezzo in a roaring spiral of gold-red mana. The candy-glass floor cracked beneath him. The air itself seemed to shudder as power—years and years of suppressed, buried, locked-away power—detonated out of him in a violent, uncontrolled wave.
Mezzo threw his head back with a scream that did not sound entirely mortal.
Wings burst from his back in a spray of ember-light—massive gryphon wings, feathered at the base and edged in heat-shimmering gold. Talons extended from his hands, claws curving sharp and bright. His tail lashed wildly behind him, no longer canine but leonine, tipped in fiery fur. A thick red mane flared around his neck and shoulders like a living blaze.
His whole aura burned.
Not just around him.
Through him.
Mezzo hit the floor hard, rolling, claws gouging furrows through the sugar tiles as wild mana tore through his body too quickly to bear.
“Make it stop!” he cried, voice cracking into something ragged and terrified. “Please—please, help me!”
The Twins hovered above him, delighted.
“This is the real you!”
“The mythic buried underneath the rune!”
Mezzo writhed, wings flaring uncontrollably, fire licking along the floor with each thrashing breath.
Ray went pale. “If all that stored mana ruptures—”
“He could blow himself apart,” Hughes said, horrified.
“No, no, no,” Arcade muttered, staring. “That is way too much too fast—”
Celeste ran.
She didn’t think. Didn’t pause. Didn’t ask if it was safe.
She heard Mezzo say help me, and she ran.
Her core burned blue-hot beneath her ribs, so bright it hurt. Gold and sapphire light rippled out across her skin in waves as she dropped to her knees beside him.
“Mezzo! Mezzo, look at me!”
He was sobbing now, claws digging helplessly into the floor, wings jerking in broken spasms. “It hurts—Cece, it hurts—”
Celeste reached for him.
The moment her hands touched him, the light in her chest flared.
Blue fire poured from her core into his blazing aura—not smothering it, not taking it away, but weaving through it, cooling the edges, evening the rhythm, giving it somewhere to settle. The violent pulses of mana that had been crashing through him began to smooth, then steady, then breathe.
Mezzo’s scream broke into a gasp.
The fire around him dimmed from catastrophic to fierce.
His gryphon wings remained. The red mane still blazed about his shoulders. The talons and lion tail stayed.
But the agony passed.
He collapsed against Celeste, breathing hard, still transformed, still radiant with power—but no longer being torn apart by it.
“There,” Celeste whispered shakily, holding him upright. “There you are. I’ve got you.”
Mezzo blinked up at her, eyes wide, tear-bright, stunned by the fact he was still in one piece. “Cece…”
Above them, the Twins recoiled.
Sweet Fluff stamped one elongated foot in mid-air. “No fair!”
Sour Puff’s face twisted. “No fair, no fair, no fair!”
Sweet Fluff’s smile split wider than it should have.
“We changed when they took us!”
Sour Puff’s pigtails began to unravel into jagged, twitching masses of spun sugar.
“So why does he get to keep his heart?”
Their bodies warped.
Candy-floss limbs stretched longer, thinner, bonier. Their dresses sagged and split into sticky ribbons. Their smiles widened into serrated, glassy arcs. The soft spun-candy pigtails elongated into whipping ropes of razored floss that scraped sparks from the air.
Then they attacked.
Puff twirled forward first, candy-floss arms elongating into bladed whips. Each sweep carved shrieking ribbons through the air, graceful and lethal.
Fluff’s eyes jittered in every direction as she skipped across the battlefield. From her candy-striped satchel, she lobbed hard-candy bombs like deadly party favours, each one bursting on impact into jagged shards of sugar glass.
The Twins shrieked in eerie harmony, their distorted bodies spinning together in a dizzying, grotesque pirouette. Threads of sugar unravelled from their forms in widening spirals until the entire arena shimmered with a whirling cloud of pink.
“Floss Storm!” they howled.
The whirlwind thickened at once.
Sticky floss blasted across the chamber, clinging to weapons, fur, wings, armour, and boots. Every movement grew heavier. Every step dragged.
Celeste slashed furiously at the threads, but each cut only split them into finer webs that wrapped tighter around her blades.
Ray tried to charge and immediately swore as her boots sank into the gooey mass. “Ugh! It’s like fighting in bubblegum!”
Mezzo staggered upright beside Celeste, still half-gryphon, fire flaring down the length of his new tail. He lashed his wings once, scattering sparks—but the sugar strands clung even to his feathers, matting them together and smothering the edge of his flames.
“This is disgusting!” he barked.
Pitch flicked a card into the storm, but it wobbled and veered off course before it reached its mark, dragged down by strands of pink floss. “Accuracy’s gone. Figures.”
The Twins spun faster, laughter rising into a manic carnival screech.
“Don’t stop moving!” Celeste called, ribbons blazing from her twin katanas. “If they wrap us up, we’re finished!”
She blink-dashed through the mist, sliding beneath a whipping strand of candy floss with breathless precision. Her blades flashed.
Attack — Twinkle Pierce.
She drove both katanas forward in a sudden twin thrust. Radiant starlight burst from the strike in a concentrated flash and slammed into Puff’s torso. Cracks spiderwebbed across the blue twin’s glossy sugar shell as the starburst knocked her stumbling backward in a spray of glittering shards.
Fluff screeched and lashed out wildly, but the light lingered in the air, falling in shimmering motes like fragments of a broken constellation.
Celeste landed lightly, breath sharp, eyes locked on them. “Your turn.”
Ray answered with a roar.
Heartbreaker blazed in her grip as she stepped in and brought the hammer down with both hands.
CRACK.
Then again.
BOOM.
Two brutal swings—left, then right—smashed into Fluff’s broadening frame, shaking loose thick clumps of spun sugar. Violet embers exploded on impact, catching in the sticky threads and burning hot.
Ray bent her knees and launched herself upward, hammer raised over her head, mane crackling with sparks.
Attack — Heatwave Drive.
She came down like a meteor.
Heartbreaker smashed into the candy-tiled floor with an echoing KRAK-THOOM, releasing a fiery shockwave that rolled out in all directions. Sugar melted into bubbling syrup. A ring of violet flame spread beneath the Twins, clinging stubbornly to their sugary bodies and forcing them back with shrill, furious shrieks.
Ray ripped her hammer free from the crater with a vicious grin. “Sweet enough for ya now?”
Pitch rolled sideways through the pink haze, coat snapping behind him, and braced Lady Luck under one arm.
“Alright,” he drawled, spinning a coin over his knuckles. “Let’s raise the stakes.”
He flicked it skyward.
It spun once—twice—glinting gold in the light.
Attack — Double or Nothing.
Heads.
Pitch’s grin sharpened. “Jackpot.”
He snapped Lady Luck forward. A spectral playing card burst from the barrel like a bullet, glowing at the edges. It slammed into Fluff’s chest with amplified force, cracking her candied shell wide open in a spray of molten sugar and pink floss.
“Next round’s on you,” he quipped.
Across the battlefield, Skye ducked low and flicked through his deck, cards flaring with layered runes.
“Let’s shuffle the odds.”
He snapped the first card forward—fire.
A blazing arc scorched across Puff’s side.
Second card—light.
It struck her face in a burst like a miniature sun, forcing her to reel away half-blinded.
Third—mental disruption.
The violet-lit card sliced through the web of shared threads between the Twins, and for one crucial instant their perfect rhythm stuttered.
Combo — Trinity Shuffle.
The Twins shrieked in disharmony, movements tangling, their synchronisation collapsing into a jerky, furious mess.
Skye exhaled. “Three of a kind.”
Lumina charged in next, shield radiant, blade gleaming.
A whip cracked against her guard, but she held firm, boots skidding only half a step. She pushed through, rose-light gathering around her as she slammed her shield forward.
Attack — Heart Bloom Bash.
The impact released a burst of heart-shaped light that rippled across the chamber in a brilliant pulse. It hit the Twins squarely, unraveling a mass of sugar threads and knocking both sisters off balance.
Celeste flashed her a quick grin. “Nice save!”
Lumina’s cheeks pinked even in the middle of battle. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you!”
The Twins hissed and lashed out together again.
“Sugar Whip!” they shrieked.
Twin cords of hardened floss whipped across the battlefield. Celeste ducked the first, but the second carved a deep gouge into the floor, sending syrup spraying.
Ray swung Heartbreaker up to block, only for the sugary whip to stick fast to the hammer’s head, stretching like molten glue. “Bloody—get this gunk off me!”
Mezzo surged forward before the Twins could press the advantage.
Still half-transformed, still blazing, he spread his gryphon wings wide. Fire ran down the edges of his feathers as he hauled Infernal Riff into a two-handed grip. His lion tail lashed, mane blazing brighter now that the mana inside him had found a rhythm.
He looked shaken.
Still frightened.
Still too aware that he had almost died screaming on the floor.
But his eyes were his again.
He bared his teeth. “Right then,” he said, voice rough with leftover pain. “My turn.”
He swung.
Fire tore from the blade in a crescent arc, scorching through the sticky whip binding Ray and carving a path through the storm of sugar mist.
Celeste rose beside him at once, blue-gold light still flickering around her core.
The group tightened ranks.
Across from them, the Candy Floss Twins hissed and reeled, monstrous pigtails lashing, jagged smiles split wide.
The storm raged around them.
Carys staggered back as another wave of sticky floss tore across the arena.
She was not a fighter.
That much had become painfully, insultingly clear.
Her arms still ached from the anti-mana cords. Her wrists burned. Her legs felt unsteady beneath her. Around her, the others were throwing fire, starlight, cards, hammers, bells, and apparently whole emotional breakthroughs at the Candy Floss Twins.
She ducked as a shard of sugar glass spun past her ear and cracked against the wall behind her. Bonbon squeaked beside her before Carys hurried over and scooped the little panda into her arms.
“Come here, tiny general.”
Bonbon clung to her instantly.
Carys looked up, searching the ceiling for anything useful.
That was when she saw it.
Above the dangling planets and painted stars, half-hidden by candy floss and old stage rigging, ran a sprinkler system.
Rusty.
But intact.
Carys’s eyes narrowed.
“Water,” she whispered.
Bonbon looked at her. “Dŵr?”
“Yes,” Carys said, already moving. “Exactly. Dŵr. Wonderful child. Terrifyingly competent.”
She spotted a maintenance door near the back of the arena, marked with a faded sign:
FIRE CONTROL / SPRINKLER ACCESS
Carys tightened her hold on Bonbon and ran.
Sweet Fluff’s head snapped toward her.
“Oh, little maid, where do you go?”
Sour Puff’s arms stretched toward them, blue candy-floss fingers sharpening into hooks.
“Running ruins every show.”
The strands whipped across the arena toward Carys and Bonbon.
Then time stuttered.
Not stopped.
Slowed.
The candy-floss hooks crawled through the air as if suddenly trapped in syrup. Sugar shards hung glittering mid-flight. The Twins’ spinning pigtails dragged through the moment in slow, furious ribbons.
Hughes stood with one hand raised.
In the other, his crook had appeared.
Everstill.
The old staff gleamed with pale temporal light, its hooked head chiming softly like a clock heard underwater.
Hughes’s expression was calm.
Too calm, which somehow made it scarier.
“No, no,” he said, stepping forward. “We played your games.”
His eyes hardened.
“Now you play ours.”
He swept Everstill across the air.
The slowed strands twisted away from Carys, missing her by inches as she bolted toward the maintenance door with Bonbon tucked tight against her chest.
Across the arena, Arcade wiped sugar from his cheek and snapped one hand outward.
“C.H.I.P.!”
A burst of blue-white light sparked beside him.
Chip dropped into the air, tiny, cheerful, and somehow already judgemental.
“Combat mode online!” Chip chirped. “Emotional damage detected at catastrophic levels. Suggestion: return trauma to sender.”
Arcade’s eyes locked on the Twins.
For once, his grin had teeth.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he said, electricity snapping over his knuckles. “I’m about to dish some out.”
Chip spun, panels unfolding from his little body as his combat frame began to build around him in sharp, glowing segments.
“Excellent,” Chip said. “Therapeutic violence protocol engaged.”
Arcade glanced at him.
“We’re renaming that later.”
“No promises!”
Behind them, Carys reached the maintenance door and slammed her shoulder into it.
Then the door swung inward.
“Well,” Carys said, ducking inside with Bonbon, “let's see if we can give our friends a hand.”
Behind them, Hughes braced Everstill as the Twins shrieked against the slowed time field.
And the real fight began.
