Celeste stood stiffly in the center of the room, hands folded in front of her like a schoolgirl called to the front of class. The eyes boring into her only made her tail twitch more.
Carys, sensing the weight of it, stepped forward, her nervous fingers brushing her nose. “So, um—how have you been holding out, then?”
Celeste blinked, then smiled too quickly. “Oh! Oh, um, great—wonderful, really. I mean, not wonderful because, you know, zombies and syrup and everything melting all the time, but—um—I made some new friends. We’ve got this secret base in the park. Which, er, sounds much better than it is. Less secret fortress, more… well… egg.”
She hesitated, then added in a rush, “And the base has a dragon called Marzipan. Well—not like a normal dragon. A huge one. Like from Kymara stories. And it guards it. I mean, it makes no sense, but it will if you go there. I know I sound silly now, don’t I?”
Carys let out a small laugh, her voice carrying that warm, slightly breathless quality of hers. “That actually sounds rather delightful.” She sighed, rubbing her arms. “I just… I really want to get back to the university soon. All my things are still there—my books, my notes, my sketches. Everything.”
Celeste’s ears drooped. “Same. I keep thinking about my sketchbooks. My plushies. They’re probably all soggy now.”
Carys’s nose twitched again as her voice lowered. “I couldn’t even get there. When that… noise happened.”
Celeste tilted her head. “Noise?”
“The… the strange pulse,” Carys clarified, shivering slightly at the memory. “It shook everything. And then this… dragon—a huge red dragon—burst out of the ground. And the monsters came with it.”
Celeste froze. “…The pulse.”
Carys nodded quickly. “After that, everything just… broke. The Council announcements started almost right away. They wanted purebloods to head to the Royal Quarter, but it’s impossible to get there.” Her mouth tightened. “And hybrids and mythics were told to go to the Warrens, but that place is overrun with zombies.”
She swallowed hard.
“They seem to like the dark. And they’re taking hybrids.” Her voice shook. “I haven’t seen any hybrid turn into a zombie, but…” She paused, looking down at her hands. “Some of my pureblood and mythic friends… they weren’t so lucky.”
Celeste went still.
Carys’s eyes glassed over. “One bite, and within hours they start changing. Some fast, some slow. They know they’re changing too.” Her breath caught. “It’s horrifying.”
Celeste’s smile had vanished completely now. “Oh… stars.”
“Yes,” Carys said quickly. “And then the military arrived. They tried some kind of… mana bomb, I think? But it missed. Hit their own men instead.” Her voice faltered. “After that, it was just ten warriors against the dragon. Just ten.”
Celeste stepped closer, hardly breathing. “Ten… warriors?”
Carys nodded, her voice hushed but animated. “One of them… oh, I’ll never forget it. A ragdoll cat. With this massive sword.” She mimed the length with her hands. “It shimmered like fire, but blue. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Celeste’s heart slammed against her ribs. Her throat went dry. “…Was it… an odachi? With—blue flames?”
“Yes! Yes, of course—that was it exactly!”
Celeste surged forward, grabbing Carys by the shoulders, eyes wide, nearly shouting. “What happened to him?! Did he die—did he go somewhere—what happened?!”
Carys flinched, tears springing as she stammered, “I—I don’t know! That dragon—the white one—it picked him up, and the others who were still alive. They were carried outside Clawdiff, and then… then the barrier appeared. And the fighting stopped.” Her lip trembled. “That’s all I know. Why? Was he—was he someone you know?”
Celeste’s grip loosened. She looked down, her breath uneven, her expression shifting between thoughtfulness and a storm of something Carys couldn’t read—fear? Anger? Longing?
Finally, Celeste whispered, almost to herself:
“I think… that was my dad.”
From the far side of the room, a sharp scoff broke the fragile hush.
A pureblood penguin, his feathers slicked back and his vest far too polished for the sewers, folded his flippers with smug precision. “Couldn’t be,” he muttered, voice nasal. “You’re a hybrid. Hybrids don’t lead military units. They haven’t earned the right.”
Celeste stiffened, ears dipping back. “I—”
Before she could say more, Carys stepped in, her tail flicking indignantly. “Oh, mind your own business, Gordon,” she said, her polite voice rising like a schoolteacher snapping at a rowdy student.
But Gordon leaned forward, smirk curling. “No, no, if what she says is the truth, then she ought to have the paperwork to prove it. A pedigree.” He pulled something from his satchel with a theatrical flourish—a laminated scroll with golden trim. “Lovely, isn’t it? Complete lineage, fully registered. Even comes with marriage and breeding rights, sanctioned by the Council.” He wagged it like a trophy. “Do you have one, girl? I doubt it.”
Celeste’s cheeks burned. Her eyes dropped to the floor, hands tightening against her sleeves. The shame twisted in her chest before she could stop it.
But Carys’s nose twitched furiously. “Honestly, Gordon, do you ever hear yourself?” she said, flustered but sharp. “Waving your laminated… mating licence about in mixed company—how utterly embarrassing. I think half the room just lost their appetite.”
A few stifled laughs escaped the survivors. Gordon’s beak snapped open, sputtering. “It is not—this is a mark of legacy! Of legitimacy! Of—”
“No one cares who your great-grand-aunt was married to,” Carys interrupted sweetly, smoothing her hair. “And I do mean no one.”
Then another voice cut in.
Ted.
The stocky turtle rose from where he’d been sitting, his heavy shell scraping faintly against the wall. His eyes fixed on Carys with the kind of severe disapproval that seemed to be his resting expression.
“You’re insane,” he said flatly. “Letting hybrids in here.”
Carys blinked at him. “Ted—”
“No.” He jabbed a claw toward Celeste. “If they absorb too much mana, they explode. Everyone knows that.”
Carys stared at him, then let out a sharp breath through her nose. “Ted, hybrids’ suppression runes are power conduits. They keep our lights on, and they make it so they don’t explode. It’s been, what—fifteen years now since the Council poster child had the first mana suppression rune? We haven’t had a single hybrid explode since.”
Ted folded his arms. “Yes, but that’s not to say it couldn’t still happen.”
He looked pointedly at Celeste, then toward the wolf.
“I’d stay away, just in case. If she or that wolf explodes, it may attract the centipede.”
The room went colder somehow.
Carys looked openly appalled. “That is a horrible thing to say.”
Ted only sniffed. “Horrible things are usually the sensible ones.”
Celeste forced a small smile, but the sting remained. Her heart ached with a quiet longing she couldn’t voice here—not when the eyes of the room still weighed on her.
She did want a family someday. To marry, to have children. But the Council would never make it simple. For a hybrid like her, they’d build hoops so high she could never jump them all.
And Ted and Gordon’s smug words made her feel it more than ever.
The door slammed open, nearly ripped off its hinges. Pitch stumbled through, panting, blood spattered across his jacket.
“Change of plans—we need to move!” he barked, reaching for the latch again—
—but it was already too late.
Sugar Rushers, dozens of them, poured through the cracks in the door and broken vents like a living tide of snapping teeth and jittering claws. Their tiny voices chattered like a broken music box.
Pitch yanked out a knife, slashing furiously—but the blade barely slowed them. “Damn it—too small, too fast!”
Celeste’s heart spiked. She surged forward on instinct, aura blazing. Her hands shook as the twin katanas burst into light—summoned in a shimmer of fractured glyphs. With a panicked cry, she swept them wide, slicing through the first wave. Candy-blood sprayed the walls as the swarm shrieked.
Then it happened.
A light—brilliant, burning—reacted in her chest. Her core pulsed once, twice, then flared. The energy leapt outward, a tether of heat and memory snapping into place.
Pitch staggered, his claws clenching as a glow surged into his arms. And then—crack!—a weapon appeared. A long, double-barrelled shotgun, its frame etched with spade and heart symbols, humming with shadowed mana.
Pitch froze. His breath hitched. “…Lady Luck,” he whispered, voice raw. His hands trembled as he held it, reverent, like it was a relic pulled from the grave. “You’re back. I thought I’d never see you again.”
The room held its breath as he fired—BOOM!—and two Sugar Rushers exploded into syrupy chunks. Celeste darted beside him, blades flashing, finishing the rest. Together, in rhythm, they cleared the last of the swarm.
The silence after was deafening.
Celeste panted, eyes darting between the glowing shotgun and Pitch’s stunned face. She swallowed hard. “I—I think… for some reason… you need to be close to me. For it to work.”
Pitch lowered the gun, staring at her with wide eyes, then let out a humourless laugh. “Makes sense. After I left you… I could never summon them again.”
The final Sugar Rusher squealed, then went limp under his boot. The fight was over.
Then came the gasps.
The survivors—all of them—stared at Celeste. At her swords, still shimmering faintly. At the glow in her chest. At Pitch’s weapon reborn in her presence.
Dozens of eyes. Suspicion. Fear. Awe.
Celeste shifted on her paws, her ears flattening, her tail curling tight against her leg. She forced a nervous little laugh, voice trembling.
“Um… s-sorry?”
The room was thick with silence after the last Sugar Rusher fell. Then the whispers began.
Pureblood voices, sharp and frightened:
“They just conjured weapons—out of nothing—”
“Hybrids aren’t supposed to—”
“Dangerous. It’s dangerous.”
Some scrambled toward the walls, others clutched at each other like Celeste’s glow might burn them if they stayed too close.
One survivor—a young mythic, a blue-scaled dragon with shaggy blonde hair—stepped forward, his claws fidgeting. His voice was curious rather than cruel.
“How did you… do that? Weapons like that? I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Celeste’s ears drooped. She shifted from foot to foot, tail curled tight. “Oh, um, well—I-I don’t really know. I just sort of… figured out I could, I suppose? By accident.”
Pitch leaned on Lady Luck, scanning the crowd. He looked tired but proud.
That’s when Ted’s heavy voice cut in again.
“Abominations,” he spat. “That’s what you are. The Council would never allow unsanctioned magic. Those rules exist for a reason.”
Pitch growled, stepping forward. “Knock it off, Ted. It’s the apocalypse. Rules don’t mean a damn thing anymore. Survival does. And if survival means we use mana? Then we use mana.”
Ted rose to his full, lumbering height, chin raised as if he were back in some Council chamber instead of a half-broken sewer. “Survival without order is just chaos. I won’t stand by and watch unstable hybrids play god. I’m not staying here. Anyone with sense will leave with me.”
He marched toward the door.
Half the room followed. Purebloods clutching their belongings, muttering about curses, corruption, contamination. The sound of footsteps echoed until the door slammed behind them, the crowd split in two.
Pitch cursed under his breath, eyes narrowing. “Idiots. They’ll get themselves killed—or worse, taken.”
But they didn’t listen.
And in the middle of it all, Celeste stood frozen, the glow in her chest dimming, shame weighing her down like lead.
