The fire kept building around him, crawling up his arms, roaring over his mane, turning his wings into blazing arcs of gold-red light. His claws dug into the table as he lifted his talons to strike another chord.
“No,” Hughes snapped. “He’s gone past control.”
Skye slammed a glowing card to the floor.
“Summon: Iron Warden!”
A huge armoured guardian burst from the light, heavy and broad, its chains forged from silver-blue mana. It lunged at Mezzo and wrapped both arms around him from behind.
Mezzo roared, thrashing, wings beating hard enough to scatter embers across the arena.
“Let go!”
Skye gritted his teeth, both paws shaking as he held the summon in place. “Pitch, hurry!”
Pitch darted through the fading flames, coat snapping behind him. “I’m trying not to get roasted, thanks!”
He leapt onto the table, caught Mezzo by the shoulder, and slapped the suppression rune against the back of his neck.
For one heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the rune flashed.
Mezzo gasped.
The fire collapsed inward.
His gryphon wings dissolved into sparks. The talons shrank. The lion tail faded. The red mane guttered down into his usual wild hair as the roaring aura sealed itself behind the rune once more.
Mezzo crumpled.
Pitch caught him before he hit the floor.
“Easy, rockstar,” he muttered, lowering him down. “Encore’s over.”
Mezzo blinked, dazed and shaking, back to himself.
Mostly.
Smoke curled from his sleeves. His eyes were wet. His grin tried to form and failed halfway.
“Did we win?”
Ray looked across the arena.
The music had stopped.
The fog cleared.
The room was quiet at last.
Then a shimmer burst above them.
LEVEL UP!
➤ Level 5 Achieved!
- Cake (Rare Drop)
Arcade stared at the glowing notification.
Then at the ruined arena.
Then at the rare cake slowly materialising in the middle of the battlefield.
He pointed at it.
“If that cake is also traumatised, I’m leaving.”
The last of Cottonwrath collapsed into the soaked arena with a wet, sugary hiss.
For several seconds, no one moved.
The great candyfloss titan was gone. Its towering body had unravelled into clumps of pink and blue fluff, puddles of syrup, shattered porcelain, and twitching strands of sugar thread that steamed beneath the sprinklers.
Then something shifted.
Celeste tightened her grip on her katanas.
Ray lifted Heartbreaker.
Pitch raised Lady Luck.
From the centre of the melted mess, two tiny shapes began to reform.
Not Cottonwrath.
The twins.
Sweet Fluff lay curled on the candy-slick floor, her pink candyfloss body barely holding together. One pigtail had burned down to a limp, frayed coil. Her button eyes flickered weakly, one dimmer than the other. Every attempt to move made her body come apart at the edges.
Beside her, Sour Puff dragged herself forward.
The blue mouse was only half-formed, one arm too long, one leg little more than a ribbon of floss. Her dress hung in wet, sagging strips. Her face kept warping between mouse, doll, and something far older and more frightened.
She crawled to Sweet Fluff and shook her.
“Sister,” she rasped. “Sweet… move. Please move.”
Sweet Fluff made a tiny sound.
Not a laugh.
Not a rhyme.
Just pain.
Pitch’s shotgun clicked.
Ray charged.
“Ray!” Celeste shouted.
Sour Puff spun around, throwing herself over Sweet Fluff’s broken body.
“Stop!” she cried.
Ray didn’t stop.
Heartbreaker burned in her paws, violet flame catching along the hammer’s edge as she crossed the ruined peppermint tiles.
Skye darted in front of her.
Ray nearly shoved him aside on instinct, but he planted both feet and raised his arms.
“Wait.”
Ray’s eyes flashed. “Move.”
“No.”
“Skye.”
“Let’s hear what they want.”
Ray stared at him like he had lost his mind. “What they want? They tried to turn us into puppets.”
Skye swallowed, but he didn’t move. “I know.”
Sweet Fluff’s broken mouth twitched.
Her voice came out faint and trembling, but the rhyme returned in fragile pieces.
“Kill me if you must, if debt is due…
but let her live. I beg of you.”
Sour Puff clutched her tighter, tears cutting damp tracks through the blue sugar of her face.
Ray’s lip curled. “Live? What kind of life is that? You’re zombies. You’re losing your minds. You turned people. You dragged survivors to that machine.” Her voice sharpened. “And you think that’s forgivable?”
Sour Puff trembled.
“We were doing what we were programmed to do,” she whispered. “What she told us to do.”
Hughes stepped forward slowly, Everstill still in one hand. “Who?”
Sour Puff’s face twisted.
Her button eyes flickered red, then blue, then briefly something almost natural.
“I don’t remember.” She pressed one paw to her head. “Only pieces. Her mana was old. Powerful. Like what was in Kenaz’s chest.”
Mezzo, still pale from his own ordeal, frowned. “You mean Celeste.”
Sour Puff looked at Celeste.
For a long, awful moment, her eyes did not seem to know where to settle—on Celeste’s face, her core, her blood, her mana, the ghost of Kenaz she kept seeing through her.
“It’s all the same to me now,” Sour Puff said. “I see blood and mana. She is both.”
Celeste’s stomach twisted.
Skye lowered his arms slightly, though he still stood between Ray and the twins. “Why can you talk now?”
Sour Puff looked down at Sweet Fluff.
“There are moments,” she said. “Clear ones. Then loss of control. Hunger. The song. Always the song.” Her voice shook. “We answer to the song.”
Pitch’s grip tightened on Lady Luck. “The dragon’s song?”
Sour Puff nodded slowly. “He found a way to use it himself.”
She paused.
Her face flickered.
Then she whispered, “Yorath.”
Celeste went still. “Is that the dragon Velcarius?”
Hughes’s eyes narrowed. “What does Velcarius actually want?”
Sour Puff’s pigtails twitched, dripping sugar water onto the cracked floor.
“To help,” she said.
Ray gave a sharp, humourless laugh. “That’s a funny word for all this.”
Sour Puff’s expression crumpled with confusion, then hardened again. “He helps the hungry ones process pain. Move past it. Accept what they are.”
Celeste’s ears lowered. “They remember?”
“Parts,” Sour Puff said. “Broken parts. Pain parts. The confusion takes away purpose. We help guide them through it.”
Lumina’s grip tightened around her star bell. Her voice was small. “That sounds almost… comforting.”
Ray rounded on her. “Lumina.”
Lumina flinched. “I said almost.”
Sour Puff stroked Sweet Fluff’s fraying pigtail with one shaking paw. “The dragon is simply choosing to ignore the old one. Doing what we were programmed to do, but against the Council. Until they notice.”
Hughes went very still.
“Notice what?”
Sour Puff’s button eyes lifted to him.
“What they ignored,” she whispered. “And what they allowed.”
The arena fell quiet again.
Then Sour Puff’s gaze slid back to Celeste, wide and wet and distant.
“Oh, Kenaz,” she said softly. “You looked so sad last time.”
Celeste’s breath caught.
“You really wanted to help us,” Sour Puff continued. “What happened? Why didn’t you come back?” Her voice cracked. “We waited for so long. We were excited. You never let us down. Always fun. Always loyal. Always sweet to us.”
The arena fell quiet.
Even Ray stopped breathing hard for a second.
Celeste’s grip on her sword loosened.
“I’m not him,” she said gently.
Sour Puff blinked at her.
Then looked away, as if the correction hurt too much to hold.
Skye’s voice was careful. “If you go, what will you do? Won’t the dragon find you again? Make you hurt more people?”
Sour Puff pulled Sweet Fluff closer.
“I’ll take her deep underground,” she said. “Far away from the song. Far away from the gumball. Maybe we finally go crazy together.” She looked down at her sister, and for one second her grief was horribly sane. “Or maybe we endure.”
Celeste’s ears lowered.
“Maybe there’s a cure,” she said.
Ray snapped her head toward her. “You are not serious.”
Celeste looked at the twins. “Maybe we could find one. Or if we do, we could tell you.”
Ray gave a harsh, incredulous laugh. “No. Absolutely not. These things put us through the ringer, Celeste. They nearly killed Pitch. They puppeted us. They used our worst memories like toys.” She pointed Heartbreaker toward the twins. “And you’re thinking of letting them just go? Like, ‘Off you trot, have a lovely evening, try not to emotionally vivisect anyone on the way out?’”
Celeste flinched.
Ray’s voice hardened. “Think. What did I tell you about being weak?”
Celeste’s face fell.
“But look at them,” she said softly. “They look…”
“Pathetic,” Skye said.
Celeste glanced at him.
Skye’s ears lowered a little. “You were thinking it.”
“You don’t have to say it out loud,” Celeste murmured.
Pitch exhaled through his nose and lowered Lady Luck only a fraction. “I’m with Ray.”
Mezzo looked pained, one hand pressed to the back of his neck where the rune had been restored. “Aye. I don’t like it, Cece, but… they’re dangerous. If the dragon can call them back, we’re just sending the problem underground.”
Hughes was quieter. He studied the broken twins with weary eyes. “Dangerous, yes. But not entirely gone.”
Ray turned on him. “Don’t tell me you’re siding with her.”
“I am saying execution is not the only answer,” Hughes replied.
Lumina stepped beside Celeste, still clutching her star bell. “They’re scared.”
Ray’s jaw tightened. “So were we.”
Skye nodded faintly. “And we’re still people when we’re scared.”
Carys, who had been standing near Bonbon, looked from the twins to Celeste. Her face was pale, but steady.
“Let them go,” she said.
Bonbon tugged at Carys’s sleeve and looked up at Celeste.
“Gadewch iddyn nhw fynd,” Bonbon said softly.
Let them go.
Arcade said nothing.
He stood with Chip hovering near his shoulder, arms folded, eyes fixed on the twins. His face gave away almost nothing, but his jaw was tight. Not agreement. Not refusal.
Just conflict.
Celeste looked at each of them.
Ray, burning with fury.
Pitch, guarded and grim.
Mezzo, afraid and unhappy.
Hughes, tired but thoughtful.
Lumina, pleading.
Skye, quiet and certain.
Carys and Bonbon, gentle but shaken.
Arcade, silent.
Then Celeste turned back to the twins.
Sweet Fluff stirred weakly against Sour Puff’s arms.
Sour Puff watched Celeste as if expecting the blade to fall anyway.
Celeste lifted Starlight.
Ray’s shoulders eased, just slightly.
Then Celeste lowered the blade until its point touched the wet floor.
“If I let you go,” Celeste said, voice trembling, “you do not come back.”
Sour Puff blinked.
Celeste’s eyes shone, but her voice steadied. “You don’t come near the Egg Tree. You don’t take anyone else. You don’t answer the song if you can help it. And if you hurt people again…”
Her grip tightened.
“I’ll do the same thing again.”
The sprinklers dripped steadily overhead.
Sour Puff stared at her.
Then, slowly, she bowed her head.
Her voice slipped back into rhyme, broken but grateful.
“Mercy given, mercy heard…
we will vanish without word.”
She gathered Sweet Fluff into her arms with a shuddering effort.
Sweet Fluff opened her dim eye.
“Sister?”
“I have you,” Sour Puff whispered.
She dragged her sister toward the ruined edge of the arena, their candyfloss bodies leaving wet trails behind them.
Ray moved.
One step.
Then another.
Pitch caught her arm.
“Don’t.”
Ray rounded on him. “Let go.”
Pitch didn’t. “She made the call.”
“It was the wrong call.”
“Maybe.” His voice was quiet. “But it was hers.”
Ray stared at him, furious enough to shake.
Then she ripped her arm free.
The twins slipped into the broken dark beyond the arena, pink and blue forms fading into the sugar mist.
Gone.
For now.
Ray turned on Celeste.
“I swear to God, Celeste,” she said, voice low and dangerous. “It’s a zombie. You should have killed it.”
Celeste swallowed.
Ray’s eyes were bright with anger. Maybe fear too. Maybe both.
“Next time your mercy gets someone hurt,” Ray said, “that’s on you.”
Then she stormed off across the ruined arena, boots splashing through syrup and water.
No one stopped her.
Celeste stood very still, Bonbon pressed against her leg, Lumina close at her side.
For a moment, the room felt bigger without the twins in it.
Colder too.
Celeste looked toward the dark where Sour Puff had disappeared with her sister.
Her voice came out barely louder than a breath.
“It’s still a person underneath.”
She wiped at her eyes.
“Even if it forgets.”
