Saff stood with one arm locked around Lumina, using the little rabbit-cat as a living shield.
Lumina was crying now—small, frightened sobs she was trying and failing to swallow. Her paws scrabbled weakly at Saff’s wrist, ears pinned back, pink eyes wet and wide. Saff looked more annoyed than sympathetic, her mouth drawn into a thin line as if Lumina’s tears were an inconvenience rather than a warning.
Celeste stood frozen a few paces away, every part of her trembling.
“What… what do you want me to do?” she asked, voice tiny and shaking. Her eyes darted from Lumina to Skye, then to Ray and the others. “I just want my sister and my friends to be alright.”
Saff’s expression softened—but only into something colder.
“They will be,” she said. “Once we figure out your core.”
Celeste swallowed hard. Her paws twisted in the sleeves of her hoodie-dress.
“I—I’m curious,” she admitted, the words stumbling out of her. “I do have this… thing that happens sometimes. I don’t know what triggers it.” Her ears drooped. “If I could learn… maybe I could control it.”
Saff’s smile was all teeth and promise.
“We can figure it out,” she said, stepping closer so the violet halo of her gauntlets painted Celeste’s face. “Join us. Learn to command your mana. Help us put the Council on their knees. You help us, and we give you freedom.”
Celeste’s eyes widened. She inhaled, words tumbling out in a rush. “The Council? I—I don’t think that’s a great idea. I mean, I can kill zombies, but… aren’t they the law? Don’t they keep people safe?”
Saff’s laugh snapped like a whip.
“That’s exactly the point, numbskull.” She jabbed a finger at the nearest mythic still trying to look civilized. “They call it law when it suits them. They call it control when it suits us. Wake up.”
Saff spread her arms wide, voice like a blade cutting the air.
“The Council controls everything. Who lives, who dies, who fights their wars. Who breeds, who marries, who eats and who starves. They don’t rule through wisdom—they rule through fear. Aren’t you tired of it?”
Ray snarled, hammer biting into the ground with the force of her grip. “All hybrids are tired of it. Every last one of us. But what you want? You’re talking about throwing mythics into the fire and dragging hybrids along for the ride. That’s not freedom—that’s a slaughter.”
Brassmane’s voice cut through the chaos, dry and steady as old stone. “You are reckless, Saff. This… scorched theatre you propose will burn more than tyrants. You would risk everything we have preserved for a temper you call justice.”
Saff’s laugh was sharp, hot as snapped wire. “Reckless? Maybe. I’m simply tired of begging for scraps while the Council plays god. I’ll make the mythics a force to be feared again—not quietly, not politely—and one day you’ll thank me for it.”
Kirrin’s feathers ruffled with a bark of laughter. “Och, the irony—yer the one swingin’ for a throne and callin’ others soft!” she cried, voice sharp with Scots amusement.
Saff’s gaze cut to the gryphon, venom quick. “You’re next, feathered ass—always Brassmane’s eager little diplomat. You’ll clap and preen and tell us why the old ways are fine.”
She turned back to Celeste, impatience like a blade.
“Time’s ticking. Make up your mind before I decide for you.”
Celeste swallowed, trying to steady herself. “I—um. I think I can figure my mana out myself. Watch.”
She concentrated, tiny breath held.
Her katana shimmered into being beside her—then blinked out, dropping back to the stone as if it had never been summoned.
For a second she looked startled.
Then embarrassed.
She bent instinctively toward the hilt.
Saff’s hand snapped out like a shadow. Lumina broke free running to Pitch. Saff clamped her fingers around the back of Celeste’s head with iron calm. Her gauntleted touch was cool and firm.
“Wrong answer, cat,” she said, voice low and dangerous. “You don’t get to practice. Not here. Not now.”
Celeste froze, the bag at her side rustling as the hidden cube shifted, and the courtyard held its breath.
Saff’s gauntlet pressed harder against Celeste’s throat, her other hand clutching her scruff like a cornered animal.
“One wrong twitch, cat, and I slit you open.”
Celeste wriggled helplessly, tears spilling over. Her voice cracked, raw and pleading.
“P-please—don’t—! I don’t know what it does, I don’t want to hurt anyone—please don’t pull it out!”
Saff sneered, eyes sharp as knives. “Relax. It just shows us what you really are. Not this watered-down Council pet act.” Her mouth curled. “I want to see the weapon you’ve been hiding. My weapon.”
She jerked her chin.
“Do it.”
The yeti teen shuffled forward, trembling. His massive hands dwarfed the little chip at the base of Celeste’s neck. He hesitated, wide eyes darting to hers.
Celeste whimpered, barely above a whisper. “Don’t… please, I can’t—”
“Now,” Saff snapped, venom dripping.
The boy twisted it—not pulling it free, only loosening it.
The rune glowed violently.
Celeste arched back with a scream as her chest seared with light. Her hoodie scorched, celestial markings branding her skin in glowing spirals. Her body convulsed against Saff’s grip, sparks of pink and blue bursting like fireflies from her shoulders.
“No—Celeste!” Ray shouted, hammer shaking in her grip.
Arcade cursed under his breath. “Bloody idiots, you’ll kill her!”
Hughes lurched forward, but the blast of heat shoved him back. “Stars damn it—!”
The yeti froze, horrified, as arcs of wild mana spat off her like lightning. He fumbled, twisting the chip again. Not out—just loose enough. A spark cracked, searing his palm.
Celeste’s eyes dimmed slightly, her breathing ragged but less frantic.
Not free.
Not controlled.
Balanced on a knife’s edge.
Then it broke.
A pulse of radiant azure tore through the chamber.
Silent.
Blinding.
Absolute.
Celeste’s eyes turned molten white, her scream rising into a soundless wail as the rune shattered, fragments scattering like stardust.
The walls groaned.
The ceiling split with glowing fractures.
“GET BACK!” Pitch barked.
He dove into the shadows, reappearing in a blink beside Ray, Skye , Plum, Mezzo, Lumina, Hughes, and Arcade. With a sweep of his scarf, he dragged them out of the searing light.
“EVERYONE OUT!” His voice thundered through the chamber.
The mythics panicked, scattering for the exits. Even Saff staggered back, gauntlet trembling against the tidal force, her snarl cracking into disbelief.
Celeste floated, barely off the ground, hair lifting in a halo of burning threads. The markings across her skin burned brighter, alive with untamed mana, tendrils of blue fire curling around her like fate made visible.
And then—
Light swallowed the room whole.
Outside, the gang reappeared in a rush of black flame—Pitch coughing hard, his chest heaving.
“Didn’t—pant—didn’t know I could drag people with me,” he rasped. “Guess… that’s a thing I can do now.”
They hit cover as fire and mana bolts stitched the air. Wizard guards and mythic defectors alike still pressed the fight, desperate and disorganized.
Arcade dropped to his knees behind a heap of scrap, yanking parts out of his pack. His paws blurred over wire and rune-carved metal.
Pitch stared at him like he’d lost his mind. “Mate—seriously? This is not the time.”
For a moment there was nothing.
Just pressure.
Then Mezzo froze, eyes wide. “Wait, what do you—”
The scream cut him off.
Inhuman.
Deep.
Guttural.
A sound that vibrated in their ribs, wrong on every level.
Then the first explosion shook the base.
Fire blossomed across the street, tearing through stone and steel. The shockwave hurled Mezzo and Skye back, Lumina squealing as she tumbled into the dust—Pitch catching her just before she hit the ground.
They scrambled for the walls.
Through the flames and smoke, a silhouette emerged.
Hair wild.
Hoodie scorched.
Eyes burning white-hot, blank as stars.
The glass hummed with the pressure of her presence.
Celeste.
Not herself.
Not even close.
Mezzo’s voice cracked, stripped of its usual bravado. “Oh… stars above. That’s Celeste.”
She stood in the crater, at the heart of the wreckage, and the world held its breath.
The wind had died.
Smoke curled back from her like it was afraid, flames guttered into silence. Light didn’t bend around her—it sank into her. Pulled in. Devoured.
Celeste—or the memory of her—no longer looked like a girl at all.
A gem blazed in her forehead, crystalline, catching stray light as if the stars themselves had been dragged down into it. Four horns curved back from her head, dragon-bone crowned with fire and static glitches. Her long pigtails were gone, hair spilling free in a storm of moonlit white streaked with sky-blue, snapping and flowing like water caught in a storm.
Her wings—impossibly vast—shivered between angelic and ruined, every beat scattering feathers that dissolved into nothing before reforming again. Her tail lashed, fractured, glowing crystals jutting sharp from its length and her spine, pulsing with a rhythm that looked painful just to watch.
Her body was veined with shifting runes—blue, white, alive, crawling like code across her skin. Her aura burned. Reality buckled. And yet, beneath her heels, flowers bloomed in cracks of glass, only to be seared away again in the same breath.
Life.
Death.
Over and over.
She wasn’t just changed.
She was change.
A cycle with no end.
And then the sound came.
Not a scream.
Not even a cry.
A pulse.
A frequency.
Mana lamps burst, circuits fried, machines died in its wake. The city itself flickered, as though struggling to exist in the same world as her.
When she stepped forward, the ground beneath her fused into black glass before fracturing into moss and stone.
Contradiction walked on two legs.
From the factory walkway, Mezzo gripped the railing like it might save him, eyes wide. “Holy shit. That’s not her—that’s not her! That’s—stars, what the hell is that?!”
Skye’s voice was soft, flat, almost detached—but his hands were locked white around the rail. “That’s Celeste.” A pause. “It looks like her. But it isn’t… right.”
Mezzo shot him a look. “Not right? It’s bloody wrong! She looks like—like a glitching goddess ready to fry us all!”
Arcade’s voice slammed through, raw and breathless.
“Shelter. NOW. Whatever Saff pulled—she lost control of it. Celeste isn’t stable. She’s not herself! MOVE!”
A burst of static cut him off, then another sound ripped through the air.
Not anger.
Not rage.
A scream.
Celeste’s scream.
It broke on grief and fury both, shattering windows for blocks.
The world shivered in answer.
Then Celeste burst upward—not destruction exactly, more like reality folded outwards to allow her to pass. The shape she left behind warped weirdly below, and everyone panicked.
Lumina whimpered and shrank back, tiny paws clutching at Pitch’s sleeve. Her wide pink eyes shimmered, reflecting the fractured light spilling from Celeste’s body.
Skye pulled her close, shielding her with one arm. His voice, steady despite the tremor in his throat, cut through the chaos.
“It’s fine. I’ve got you. Just stay behind me. Don’t… don’t look too long at her. It doesn’t help.”
And then something stranger happened.
Tiny wisps began to lift from the ground.
At first they looked like steam, pale and thread-thin, curling up from the cracks in the street, from the broken walls, from the factory floor and even the dead grass at the roadside. But they did not drift aimlessly. They moved with purpose—drawn toward Celeste in slow, reverent spirals, as though the world itself was breathing out and offering something back to her.
Above her, the sky shivered.
Three faint veins of light became visible far overhead, stretching across the dark like glowing river-channels beneath skin. They were barely there—silver-blue and ancient, almost hidden behind cloud and smoke—but they all seemed to bend toward Celeste, reaching for her.
The elder mythics saw it first.
Several dropped to one knee outright, whispering frantic prayers to Mamgoleni under their breath. Others stared in speechless awe, hands shaking as they clutched their charms and beads. One old mythic stag gave a broken gasp, swayed, and then fainted dead away onto the stone.
As he went down, he cried out, voice cracking with terror and reverence.
“Y Wehyddu… y Tair Afon… maen nhw’n wir… maen nhw yma!”
Hughes went still at once.
Not frightened in the way the others were.
Concerned.
Deeply, grimly concerned.
His grip tightened on his crook, eyes fixed on the sky and then on Celeste, as though he understood just enough for that to be very bad indeed.
Celeste flickered.
One heartbeat she was there in the crater—another heartbeat she wasn’t.
Each time reality snapped to catch up, buildings groaned and cracked, trees bent as if bowing before a storm, and the ground split in fault lines that healed only to rupture again.
Even the zombies scattered, their blank eyes darting, uncertain whether to fight, flee, or simply crumble in the presence of something that should not exist.
High above, the Dragon General hovered on vast wings, watching with a predator’s amusement. His eyes gleamed like molten gold as he tracked her fading form.
To him, this wasn’t horror.
It was spectacle.
No matter where Celeste flickered—roof, sky, street, horizon—the world convulsed around her. She was gravity undone, a singularity stitched in flesh and mana.
Mezzo leaned over the rooftop edge, cupping his hands around his mouth. “CELESTE! It’s me! Your favourite pain in the arse! Snap out of it before you level the whole bloody block!”
But her head only jerked, eyes flickering between recognition and something far stranger.
Each time she faded, the city flinched.
She didn’t even look his way.
