Celeste hit the first zombie with Ray’s borrowed strength hard enough to send it flying across the cracked street.
It should have felt impossible. She was not built for brute force. Not really. But the moment her shoulder had brushed Ray’s in the chaos, something hot and electric had rushed through her core and into her limbs, and now every swing of her blade landed like a hammerblow. Candy flesh burst in sticky sprays around her boots. Jawbreaker armour cracked. Wrappers tore.
To her left, Ray was a storm.
Heartbreaker rose and fell in savage purple arcs, smashing through clusters of sugar-drenched corpses with the raw, ugly grace of someone who had long ago stopped asking whether violence was fair. Every time her hammer hit the ground, the cobbles split beneath it. Zombies were flung backwards in twos and threes, shattering against ruined walls, only for more to come lurching through the syrup-slick dark.
To Celeste’s right, Mezzo moved almost too fast to follow.
He darted between reaching claws and snapping jaws with a speed that made him blur, ducking low, spinning out, vaulting over a lunging fudge-hound before bringing Infernal Riff down across its spine in a burst of sparks and fire. He fought like chaos dressed up as confidence, laughing breathlessly one second and swearing the next, all motion and momentum and near-disaster somehow held together by instinct.
But they kept coming.
From alley mouths.
From broken windows.
From roofs above.
A scream of heat split the air, and every head snapped up.
The phoenix had landed.
Ashsugar crouched atop the leaning shell of an old department building, vast wings furled close, her body glowing like a furnace banked beneath brittle candy feathers. Molten syrup dripped from her talons and ran down the wall in shining orange streams, hissing where it touched old paint and glass. The building itself seemed to dissolve under her presence—posters bubbling, brickwork blackening, colours sliding away into ugly, melted stains.
She did not attack yet.
She only watched.
That was somehow worse.
Below her, the fight was turning.
Ray’s swings were slowing by fractions.
Mezzo’s breathing had gone ragged.
Celeste’s own arms ached so badly she thought her shoulders might come apart. Every breath scraped her ribs. Every step felt heavier than the last.
Further back, Skye held the line near the car with Bonbon and Lumina.
His card launcher flashed gold-white in the smoky air, each summoned creature blinking into being with a shimmer of magic—small fierce things of light and flame and sharp little miracles. One dove screaming into a cluster of sugar-rats. Another spread itself like a radiant shield in front of Arcade. Healing sprites flickered between them all, too few, too fragile, but trying.
Arcade himself was pale and shaking, still rattled to the bone, but he kept shouting commands at C.H.I.P. and his trembling hands never quite stopped moving. C.H.I.P., in full combat form, blocked the narrow approach to the car with magnetised shields and heavy slams of steel limbs, batting away anything that got too close to the children.
Even so, time was running out.
They all knew it.
The horde was not thinning.
It was folding around them.
And then Celeste had an idea.
It arrived half-formed and desperate, less plan than plea. The kind of thought you only reached for when everything else was failing.
She stumbled backwards, chest heaving, and looked once toward the barrier beyond the chaos—the towering, impossible wall of warped glass-light separating Clawdiff from whatever lay beyond.
Please, she thought.
Please let this work.
She turned, caught Mezzo by the arm with one hand and Ray by the shoulder with the other.
The moment she touched them both, her core convulsed.
Power slammed into her.
Ray’s strength.
Mezzo’s speed.
They rushed through her at once, too much, too fast, so violently that her vision flashed white. Her chest lit up beneath her clothes with a fierce blue-gold glow, bright enough to throw star-shaped reflections across the street. It felt as though someone had shoved a furnace behind her ribs.
Celeste yelped in pain, nearly folding in half.
“Stars—!”
Her whole body shook. Light spilled down both arms, furious and unstable, making her look for one terrible second like a Christmas tree set on fire.
Ray wheeled toward her. “What are you doing?!”
“Cover me!” Celeste gasped. “Please—just—cover me!”
She did not wait to see if they agreed.
She ran.
The world blurred at once.
Mezzo’s speed poured through her legs like lightning. Ray’s strength drove through her bones like iron. She shot across the street in a streak of blue-white light, boots barely seeming to touch the ground as zombies clawed and lunged for her, missing by inches.
Then she hit the barrier.
Her shoulder slammed into it with all the force she had.
The impact rang through her body and the wall answered with a deep, glassy hum that shook her teeth. Pain flared down her arm. The barrier bowed inward a fraction—then held.
Celeste staggered back, panting.
“No—”
She hit it again.
And again.
And again.
Each strike sent shockwaves skittering across its impossible surface. Each blow made her core burn hotter, brighter, crueler.
Please, she begged silently between impacts. Please let the world go back to normal.
Her palms were shaking.
Her shoulder was numb.
Her vision blurred with tears she did not have time to wipe away.
If I get out, I’ll go home.
She slammed into the wall again.
I’ll apologise to Dad.
Again.
I’ll keep Lumina safe.
Again, harder, harder, until her whole body screamed.
Just please—
Again.
—let the barrier break.
Again.
Let me go.
With one final, wild smash, a tiny crack appeared.
It was barely anything.
A thin silver line, no bigger than a scratch in glass.
For one impossible heartbeat, hope tore through her so hard it hurt.
Then the crack resealed.
Just like that.
Gone.
Celeste froze.
Her face crumpled.
“No…”
She drew in a ragged breath, stumbled back, then ran at it again with a half-sob, half-shout and leapt—
Something hot struck her across the back.
Celeste screamed.
Molten syrup splashed over her shoulder blades like liquid fire, and the force of it knocked her out of the air. She hit the ground hard, the breath exploding from her lungs as pain tore through her in one blinding sheet. Her katanas skidded from her hands. Her cheek slammed into broken stone. For a second she could not feel her legs.
Then she smelled burnt sugar.
Heard the slow, wet hiss of syrup hitting the pavement.
Ashsugar had landed behind her.
Celeste rolled onto her side with a choking cry, dragging herself forward on shaking elbows, trying to get behind the broken shell of an overturned car, trying to make herself smaller, trying not to panic, trying and failing and hurting too badly to think straight.
The phoenix’s shadow fell over her.
A soft, terrible laugh followed.
“Oh?” Ashsugar murmured, voice sweet as melted caramel and twice as poisonous. “Were you going somewhere so soon?”
Celeste’s throat tightened. She could not answer.
“That’s not fair,” the phoenix went on, stepping closer, molten heat pouring off her in waves. “If we can’t leave…”
One glowing claw dug into the asphalt.
“…neither can you.”
Celeste sobbed once, quietly, dragging herself another inch.
Ashsugar tilted her burning head, studying her with cruel curiosity.
“So fragile,” she said. “I expected better, Kenaz.”
Celeste’s whole body went still.
“What happened to all that training?” the phoenix purred. “Don’t tell me you got sloppy.”
Fire gathered in Ashsugar’s claw.
Not ordinary fire. Not warm. Not wild. This was concentrated, syrup-thick destruction, coiling brighter and brighter in her talons until the air around it screamed.
She raised it slightly.
“What is it, little soldier?” she whispered. “Do you need a reminder?”
Celeste was crying openly now, breath hitching, vision smeared with tears as she heard the phoenix draw closer across the shattered road.
And there was nowhere left to run.
For one terrible second, no one moved.
Ray and Mezzo stood just beyond the wrecked car, both breathing hard, both staring at the phoenix with the same dreadful calculation rising behind their eyes.
Run.
There was no reason to stay and die here.
Not against that.
Lumina saw it before either of them could say the words aloud. Her little face crumpled, shield flickering weakly in her hands.
“Please,” she begged, voice cracking. “Please help her…”
But she could already tell.
They were backing away.
Behind the overturned car, Celeste burned.
The pain was everywhere—across her back, through her shoulders, in the deep awful ache of her chest where the barrier had thrown her down and the phoenix had nearly finished the job. Her fur was singed. Her skin felt raw. Every breath scraped like broken glass.
And yet—
something strange was happening.
Beneath the pain, under the heat, there was a second sensation. Faint. Cool. Slow.
Healing.
The cover she had dragged herself behind—whatever magic clung to it, whatever bond tied her to the others, whatever strange logic ruled this nightmare—was feeding something back into her. Not enough to save her. Not enough to undo the burns.
But enough to ease the agony by inches.
Enough for her to notice.
And the others felt it too.
A brief wash of relief. A soft pulse through their cores. A flicker of stolen safety.
But before they could make sense of it, Ashsugar rounded the wreck.
The phoenix bent low, molten feathers hissing, and cornered Celeste where she lay half-curled against broken stone.
Then she seized her.
Celeste screamed as the phoenix lifted her by the throat and front of her coat, slamming her back against the wall of a shattered shopfront. The impact jarred her ribs so hard her vision flashed white. Fire licked along the phoenix’s claws. Heat rolled off her body in suffocating waves.
Celeste could smell her own fur singeing.
Ashsugar leaned in, her burning eyes inches from Celeste’s face.
“Oh, yes,” she murmured, voice syrup-soft and cruel. “I can feel your blood pumping.”
Her claws tightened.
“You’re frightened.”
Celeste’s breath hitched uselessly.
“Is it guilt,” the phoenix whispered, “or pain? I can’t tell.”
Celeste’s head lolled weakly. Her voice came out thin and broken.
“P-please… put me down…it’s hot”
Ashsugar’s expression darkened.
“Are you insulting me?” she hissed.
The heat flared hotter.
“I live with this every day. For years.” Her voice cracked with sudden old fury. “And you think it’s hot?”
She shoved harder.
Something in Celeste’s side gave with a sickening crack.
Celeste cried out.
The phoenix’s face twisted with rage. “I should melt you, Kenaz.”
The world began to dim.
Celeste could feel herself slipping.
And the moment she did, the magic failed.
Mezzo’s guitar axe vanished in a burst of red sparks.
Ray’s hammer flickered, then disappeared from her grip.
C.H.I.P. sputtered once and dropped out of combat mode entirely.
Even Hughes’s staff dissolved from his hands like green mist torn apart by the wind.
Everyone stared.
Then Celeste went limp.
Her head dropped forward. Her glow died.
For one awful heartbeat, the whole street seemed to stop.
Then Celeste woke again in a burst of pain, tears streaming fresh down her face as consciousness slammed back into her. She barely had time to gasp—
Hughes moved.
Time slowed.
Not fully. Not for long.
But enough.
The world dragged into syrup-thick stillness as green light burst from Hughes’s chest. He planted his crook, bent the moment around them, and barked one single word:
“Bracer. Now.”
The silver wolf did not hesitate.
He launched an ice-mana grenade with perfect aim.
It hit Ashsugar square in the side of the neck and detonated in a bloom of freezing white mist.
The phoenix shrieked, startled more than wounded, and her grip broke at last.
Celeste dropped.
Hughes was already there.
He caught her before she hit the ground properly, grunting at the weight, then turned and ran with her in his arms as the slowed second shattered and the world came crashing back to full speed.
All around them, zombies surged forward at once.
Bracer vaulted into the driver’s seat of the ruined car, slamming the door and shouting, “Get in! Now!”
Everything became noise.
Arcade stumbled toward the car, one look at Celeste enough to drain the colour from his face.
“She’s not going to make it,” he said, horrified.
Ray glanced over her shoulder and saw Ashsugar pulling herself free of the ice cloud, molten wings spreading wide again.
“The phoenix is catching up!”
Bonbon whimpered from the back seat, tiny paws clapped over her mouth.
Mezzo climbed halfway into the car, then turned back when he saw Celeste in Hughes’s arms.
“Oh my Stars.”
His voice broke.
“She has so many burns…”
Hughes shoved Celeste toward the back as gently as he could manage under the circumstances. Her body shook with every movement. Her fur was blackened in places. Her breathing came thin and ragged.
Celeste’s eyes fluttered open just long enough to look at them all.
Her lips trembled.
“I…” she whispered. “I tried…”
Then her head lolled sideways.
And she blacked out.
