The next morning, Celeste woke buzzing.
Not frightened, not exactly—not in the sharp, sick way she had the day before. This was different. A restless kind of energy hummed through her, leftover from the night before: the stars, the flight, Marzipan’s warm ribboned mane beneath her hands, the impossible beauty of Clawdiff from above. For the first time since arriving, she had not woken feeling only dread.
She had found a stack of sketchbooks tucked into one of the Egg Tree’s newly formed shelves—probably from one of Marzipan’s strange little capsules, because of course the dragon apparently coughed up art supplies now—and she hugged one close as she padded downstairs, looking for a table and a little quiet.
Celeste, ever prim and proper despite everything, stepped into the kitchen with her usual careful grace, expecting the familiar chaos of morning banter and sugary breakfast.
But the kitchen was empty.
She frowned.
No half-eaten marshmallows. No arguing over the council. Not even Mezzo dramatically complaining about the lack of pizza.
She stepped further in, glancing around, until something caught her eye—
a new doorway.
It had not been there yesterday. She was sure of it.
The arch was carved from striped candy canes, glimmering softly as if it had always belonged there, and yet it was entirely new, grown seamlessly into the wall overnight. Pale sugar-light shone beyond it.
Curious, Celeste tilted her head and stepped through.
The room beyond took her breath away.
It was circular, wide and grand in a way the Egg Tree somehow kept doing without ever warning anyone. The floor was tiled in soft pastel fondant, its surface smooth and faintly pearlescent beneath the light. At the center stood a massive cookie table, perfectly round, as if made for a knightly council out of some storybook dream. Around it sat ornate cookie chairs, each one decorated differently in icing filigree and sugar-glass insets. The air smelled faintly of cinnamon, vanilla, and warm biscuit.
And in the middle of the table was a hollow, bowl-shaped cavity filled with swirling crystallized sugar that pulsed with its own inner glow.
Celeste blinked.
It was not decorative.
She stepped closer.
The sugar reacted at once.
Light ran along the carved runes at the table’s edge as her fingertips brushed them, and the crystal mass lifted in slow spirals, rising into the air like caught stardust. It shimmered, shifted, and formed itself into a detailed three-dimensional map of Clawdiff.
The city turned slowly before her.
Its districts rose in miniature towers and broken streets, shimmering in translucent colour. Their current base glowed softly within Beauty Park, while other zones pulsed faintly around it like dangerous organs inside a body. Tiny banners hovered above moving lights, marking positions.
People.
The others.
Celeste stared for a moment, awed. Then, because her body still preferred gentler things to too much thinking, she pulled out a chair, sat down, opened her sketchbook, and began to draw.
She sketched the map first in rough shapes, then the curve of the dome, then the Egg Tree, then Marzipan in flight over the city, her pencil moving faster as the memory came back. Drawing calmed her. It always had. Even when she was small, even when she was frightened, even when she had no words for what she felt, a page usually gave her somewhere to put it.
She was so focused that Mezzo’s thick Irish voice made her nearly leap out of her skin.
“What’re ye doodlin’ there, princess?”
Celeste gave a startled squeak and jolted so hard her pencil skidded across the page.
Mezzo blinked at her from the doorway, then grinned. “Relax. I’m not a zombie.”
Celeste pressed a paw to her chest, then laughed despite herself. “You absolutely cannot sneak up on people and say that.”
“I absolutely can,” he said, strolling in and dragging out a chair backwards to straddle it. “And I just did.”
He leaned over to look at her sketchbook. His expression softened with real interest. “Aw, stars. That’s us.”
Celeste glanced down, a little embarrassed. “Um. Bits of us. Mostly the tree. And Marzipan. And… things.”
“Things,” Mezzo repeated solemnly, as though it were a perfectly acceptable artistic category. “Strong choice.”
She laughed again, quieter this time.
Mezzo studied her for a moment, grin easing into something more earnest. “How’re ye doin’?”
The question caught her off guard.
Celeste adjusted her glasses and looked down at the page. “Awkwardly… better, I think. Lumina healed me.” She touched her side carefully, almost as if she still expected to find burns there. “No scars at all.”
Mezzo nodded, and the relief in his face was far too genuine to be teased away. “That’s good.”
Then, after a beat, he added, more softly, “I was worried about ye.”
Celeste looked up.
Mezzo shrugged one shoulder, suddenly almost bashful beneath all the swagger. “You’re my favourite one of all the idiots here.”
A laugh burst out of her before she could stop it. “Am I?”
“Aye.”
She tilted her head, smile growing. “So I’m your special idiot?”
Mezzo sat bolt upright. “No, no, no, absolutely not, that is not what I said—”
He flapped a paw dramatically, as though trying to physically bat the implication away.
“You,” he declared grandly, “are a perfect princess.”
Celeste giggled, shoulders rising. “Then I shall be a princess.”
Mezzo pointed at her with mock severity. “You’ll regret being called that.”
“I already do,” she said, still laughing.
“But.You are my favorite in this place,” he muttered into her hair. “Don’t mess it up by dying on me.”
Celeste let out a breathy laugh, part sigh. “You too, huh? That’s… not the first lecture I’ve had.”
Mezzo finally cracked a crooked grin. “Damn it. I was trying to be first.”
He pulled back, then flicked her nose with one finger.
That was when more heads began to appear in the doorway.
Bracer first, silver ears flicking.
Then Hughes, peering in beneath the brim of his cap.
Arcade, already squinting at the room like it had personally offended architecture.
And Ray, who stopped dead and looked around with flat suspicion.
“This room wasn’t here yesterday,” Arcade said.
Celeste glanced up from her sketchbook. “I was looking for a table.”
Ray snorted.
Bracer stepped inside, eyes moving to the glowing map at the room’s center.
Hughes gave the cookie table a long, measuring look. “Huh.”
Skye drifted in last, quiet as ever, took one look at the circular room and the map floating above it, and said in his usual calm, odd way:
“A knight’s table.
“You found one.”
Hughes stepped closer to the glowing sugar map, his weathered face lit in pale pinks and blues. He planted one paw on the edge of the cookie table and squinted down at the spinning shape of Clawdiff.
“That’s Clawdiff, alright,” he muttered. His gravelly voice rumbled through the room. “And if I’m seeing this right… you can see all the zombies too.”
Bracer moved in beside him, silver ears twitching as his eyes narrowed on the shifting red overlays. He leaned closer, the hard edge in his expression sharpening.
“…And the people,” he said quietly.
Everyone looked at him.
Bracer lifted a claw and pointed toward the deeper layers of the map—ruins, collapsed streets, broken towers.
“There,” he said. “And there. And there.”
Tiny dots, faint as candle flames, flickered in the wreckage.
Thousands.
Hiding in ruined flats. Huddled in sewer access tunnels. Packed into shattered warehouses and upper floors where the elevators no longer worked. Tiny green lights against an ocean of red.
The room went still.
Then Lumina wandered in with Bonbon toddling after her, Miss Jellybean clutched proudly in one arm. The moment she spotted Celeste, her whole face lit up and she bounced happily toward the table.
But then she noticed the chair.
Not just any chair—the giant one.
Bigger than all the others, taller-backed, iced in more elaborate swirls and sugar-glass flourishes than the rest, set just slightly apart as if the room itself had decided it was important.
Lumina pointed. “Look! A throne!”
She tilted her head, thinking hard. “All we need is a king.”
Mezzo’s head snapped around.
Before anyone could stop him, he zipped across the room and launched himself into the largest cookie chair, sprawling across it with both feet kicked up.
“Well, obviously it’s me,” he announced, seizing a candy-cane scepter from a decorative holder and striking a dramatic pose. “All hail King Mezzo, ruler of the sugar dome and seven sweets of Clawdiff.”
Arcade’s brow furrowed. “On what grounds do you consider yourself suitable for leadership?”
“On the grounds of vibes,” Mezzo shot back with a grin. He licked the scepter dramatically.
Ray groaned. “Let’s be real. If you were in charge, this place would be a pizza parlour with disco lights by morning.”
Arcade folded his arms tightly. “Better than freezing in battle, wouldn’t you say?”
Ray’s grin sharpened. “You mean the popsicle impression you pulled last fight? Flawless. Really.”
“Enough,” Hughes barked, cane smacking the floor hard enough to make the sugar in the map bowl ripple. His eyes shifted to Celeste, voice dropping into a gruff mutter. “Best get them in line before one of these eejits crowns a gummy bear pope.”
Before Celeste could say a word, the cookie throne creaked ominously beneath Mezzo.
Then it launched him.
He shot out of the chair in a puff of sugar-dust and frosting crumbs, flailing through the air before tumbling to the floor with a startled yelp.
“Betrayed—by a chair?!” he gasped, scrambling upright, icing clinging to his coat. “You dare exile me, Lord of Licks, Sultan of Speed? Treachery! Treason! I’ll have your crumbs confiscated, your frosting revoked—”
Celeste clapped a paw over her mouth to stifle a laugh, then raised one hand hesitantly.
“…O-okay, maybe… um, until someone is actually worthy, we could, ah, stop fighting over furniture? And, um, maybe start planning what we do next?”
The cookie table pulsed at her words.
The sugar map shifted at once—folding inward, then expanding with new layers of detail. Clawdiff zoomed closer. Districts brightened. Entire sectors highlighted in changing colours. New blips appeared across the city: danger zones, possible shelters, strange concentrations of movement, supply caches hidden in forgotten corners.
The room stilled.
Ray arched a brow, unimpressed but intrigued. “Well. That’s new.”
Celeste leaned in, her eyes scanning the holographic candy map with intense focus. She could clearly make out the different districts of Clawdiff, but her heart sank. Everything topside was crawling with danger—the streets were painted red with warning overlays.
“This doesn’t… really show much,” she murmured, rubbing her temples. “It’d be handy if we could see survivors… or, um, the bosses.”
As if the system had been waiting for the thought, the map shimmered.
Dots of green flared across the city—tiny, fragile lights.
Clusters of survivors huddled in the Industrial Sector, hiding behind sugar-rusted machinery and chocolate-steel crates. Others blinked high in the skyscrapers, whole floors dark but a few still alive with peppermint-flare signals.
Celeste’s breath caught as one rooftop survivor waved their flare—
only for the green dot to vanish, replaced with red.
Her claws dug into her sleeves.
At the University District, green markers moved in groups through broken dorms—then blinked out, one by one, mid-step.
No warning.
Just gone.
Then, at the very top of the map—hovering above Clawdiff’s candy-coloured skyline—was the Giant Gumball, a translucent orb the size of a stadium perched at the apex of the dome. Inside it, flickers of movement. Survivors pacing in circles. One appeared to bang on the walls. Another crouched motionless, as if collapsed. Then, as Celeste watched, a tendril of static flickered near them—
and their dot vanished.
Celeste whispered, “They’re… disappearing.”
Ray’s arms folded tight, her jaw hard. “No. They’re being taken.”
Arcade’s fingers danced over the runes, muttering fast. “It’s not random. It’s patterned. The system’s hesitating—like it knows, but doesn’t want to show us. That means it’s being hunted.”
The map trembled, as if it agreed.
Then a pale white sphere appeared at the city’s centre. It pulsed and glitched, unreadable, like a dead pixel in their vision.
Mezzo leaned in, squinting. “What the hell is that? Looks like a bloody snowball someone dropped on the map.”
Celeste’s fur prickled. “Either it’s shielding something… or it’s so powerful the system can’t understand it.”
Before anyone could respond, the sewer layers lit up.
A single yellow blip flickered.
Pitch.
Celeste’s eyes went wide. “He’s alive?”
Ray’s tone was low, grim. “Barely.”
And then—red pulsed beside him.
The centipede. Mandibite.
“No, no, no…” Celeste whispered. “He doesn’t stand a chance.”
The room went silent. They had all seen that monster tear through half a building.
Hughes broke it with his usual blunt gravel. “Well. There’s your next move.”
“Next move?!” Mezzo’s voice cracked, half-hysterical now, both paws thrown wide. “That thing’s a flipping nightmare! We’d need a bloody miracle, not a plan.”
“You’re right,” came a calm voice from behind.
Bracer stepped forward.
He was no longer just the barefoot, battered wolf from the road. He had laced himself into walking boots and patched cargo trousers, his makeshift armour strapped properly now, his posture calmer, steadier—like someone who had finally decided to stand where he belonged.
“But you don’t have to be the miracle,” he said evenly.
His gaze fixed on Celeste.
“Not alone.”
Celeste blinked. “…Me?”
“I need a word,” he said simply. “Balcony. Top level.”
Her ears flicked. “…We have a balcony?”
The faintest smirk touched his mouth. “We do now.”
And with that, he turned and disappeared down a hallway she was fairly certain had not existed yesterday.
Behind her, Mezzo made one more desperate dive for the throne—
and was promptly ejected again in a puff of sugar, landing flat on his back with a dramatic boing.
“This chair has zero taste,” he groaned, brushing frosting off his ears.
Celeste bit back another giggle, then turned to the others. “Um—while I’m gone, could you maybe look into the zombie types? Update the Nommiepedia, if it works?”
Ray grunted her agreement.
Arcade was already buried in the shifting schematics. “Their behaviour’s evolving. I’ll log the changes. If it kills us, I’d at least like the record to be accurate.”
As Celeste slipped toward the hall, she nearly collided with Lumina, who was giggling as she chased Skye around the edge of the room. The little fox darted away, tail flicking, while Lumina stopped short, suddenly shy.
Celeste knelt and smiled softly. “…Thanks, little sis. For looking after me.”
Lumina’s eyes widened, cheeks pinking. She didn’t speak. She just gave a tiny nod and a real, glowing smile.
Celeste ruffled her hair before moving on, unaware that Lumina lingered there afterward—watching her go with a small, proud look on her face.
