Clawdiff had always been a city of contradictions.

It was the capital of Caerfaen, a place where old grandeur and brutal progress had learned to live side by side like uneasy nobles at the same dinner table. From a distance, the city looked almost storybook—vast cathedral spires and clocktowers rising through mist, iron bridges arcing over deep streets, grand stone façades wrapped around humming arc-lines and glowing mana conduits. Copper roofs gleamed beneath the moon. Stained-glass windows pulsed faintly with wardlight. Rail lines threaded through the city like silver veins, carrying sleek trams beneath gargoyle ledges and wrought-iron balconies.

Normally, Clawdiff sat like a jewel in a cradle of dark green—surrounded by ancient forests, steep mountain ridges, and the long wild stretches of Caerfaen’s breathless valleys. The trees beyond its edges were old enough to feel holy, and the mountains behind it rose like sleeping kings, keeping silent watch over the capital.

But now, all of that beauty felt caged.

Because the city had changed.

Not all at once. Not in some grand, dramatic instant where the sky split open and everyone understood the world was ending. No—first it had come in whispers. In sugar-slick wrappers scattered across convention hall floors. In laughter that turned to screaming. In the bright, impossible colours of candy handed out at Comic Con by smiling mascots no one could later describe properly.

Then came the biting.

Then the feeding.

Then the rot.

What had begun as a celebration in the heart of Caerfaen had become the birthplace of a nightmare.

Some survivors emerged from the chaos altered but alive, their bodies awakened by the plague instead of consumed by it. New abilities bloomed in them like strange flowers through cracked stone. Their mana twisted, sharpened, adapted. And with that change came something even rarer—immunity. The candy plague could wound them, hunt them, terrify them… but it could not fully turn them.

Not so for the unfortunate.

The Purebloods—born without mana—and the Mythics—so full of it their bodies practically sang with it—had proved horribly vulnerable. The plague devoured both extremes with equal cruelty. Flesh became syrup, bone warped into sugarglass and caramel, and memory was stripped away until nothing remained but grotesque candy monstrosities with hunger where thought had once been. They forgot their names. Their loyalties. Their loved ones. They became soldiers in a new, obscene army, answering only to the distant call of the Zombie Generals.

One of those generals, however, had fallen.

Somewhere below the city, through filth-choked sewer arteries and old, forgotten service tunnels beneath Clawdiff’s gaslamp streets, a ragdoll hybrid had cut through the dark and brought one of the monsters down.

It should have been a victory.

It should have meant hope.

But the rot in Clawdiff had never belonged only to the undead.

For now, the city was quiet.

Too quiet.

Military crawlers and steam-armoured transports still sat abandoned in the roads, half-sunk in sugar sludge and ash, their engines cold, their doors hanging open like broken jaws. Streetlamps flickered against empty barricades. Tram cables hissed in the wind. The grand shopping arcades and manor-lined boulevards stood hollow and watching. Gunfire had stopped. Screams had faded.

But silence did not mean safety.

It only meant something was waiting.

At the centre of Clawdiff, the council district still stood—if “stood” was the word for a place holding itself together through sheer stubbornness. The cathedral-city heart of the capital, with its needle spires, black iron gates, elevated skywalks, and vast gothic halls of government, had sealed itself behind layered mana barriers. Great translucent walls shimmered around the district like pale glass domes, wrapping the Council’s towers, archives, ministries, and chapels in protective light. The barriers threw cold reflections across the stained windows and cast the whole city centre in ghostly blue-white.

They had been raised to keep the Dragon Generals out.

To keep the heart of Caerfaen beating just a little longer.

But even from afar, Velcarius could feel the truth of it.

Those reserves were fading.

The barriers were thinning at the edges, their pulse less steady than before, the mana feeding them growing weaker and weaker with every hour. He could sense the strain humming through the lines beneath the streets. Someone was keeping them alive—just barely.

The Wisp Veloura.

She was testing the barrier.

But it was holding together.

Buying the Council time.

But not much.

And when it fell, the Council would fall with it.

High above Clawdiff, wrapped around a massive pulsating sphere like a grotesque pearl of war, the dragon Velcarius lay coiled in silence. His scales—once brilliant as molten red-gold—had dulled into a rust-dark sheen, as though time, rage, and death had burned the glory out of him. His vast body draped across the broken spires of a ruined tower like some ancient tyrant carved into the skyline itself.

Then—

his eyes opened.

Pale and reptilian, they slit through the dark like dying starlight.

Something had changed.

Something had ended.

One of his generals was dead.

No grief touched him.

Only calculation.

No mourning. Only calculation.

A low growl rumbled out of his chest, deep enough to make the air tremble. In its wake, two wisps of pinkish smoke spun and twisted into being, splitting into two tiny figures.

The Candyfloss Twins—Sweet Fluff and Sour Puff, mice sisters—stepped forth, dresses fluttering like spun sugar caught in a storm.

“Did you feel it?!” Sweet Fluff squeaked, practically bouncing. “Something snapped! Something huge! Like fireworks, but scarier—”

“Like the end of everything,” Sour Puff muttered, wringing her paws. “It was cold and hollow and I hated it—”

“—but we heard it, and we came, because you need us!” Sweet Fluff cut in, eyes wide, voice sparkling with excitement. “You always need us, don’t you?”

Velcarius said nothing.

His silence pressed like stone.

Sweet Fluff giggled nervously, though the edge in it gave her away. “Mandibite was weak anyway. Kenaz couldn’t kill us. What’s this little ragdoll going to do?”

Sour Puff tilted her head, ears twitching. “She does look like him, though. Are you sure it isn’t him?”

That made the dragon laugh.

It was not a pleasant sound.

It came out low and dry, like rock grinding against bone.

“No,” he said, smoke curling from his nostrils. “Too weak.”

The twins fell silent.

“But her mana…” He lifted his head slightly, gaze drifting over the dead city below. “That’s different. Don’t you feel it?”

Sweet Fluff’s grin faded, just for a second. “I feel it.”

Sour Puff shrank in on herself. “I do too.”

Velcarius’s tail shifted against the tower, slow and heavy enough to make the spires groan. “Every time they kill one of us, her power grows. I can feel the pull of it.” His jaw tightened. “And I’m struggling to ignore it.”

Sweet Fluff swallowed, then forced a smile back onto her face. “Well… maybe that just makes it more exciting?”

The dragon’s eyes narrowed to burning slits. “Don’t mistake danger for weakness, girl.”

The twin mice stiffened.

For a moment, the only sound was the distant whistle of wind through ruined steel and broken glass.

Then the dragon spoke again, voice rough with memory.

“Kenaz was holding back. So was Arax. They didn’t want to kill us. I saw it in their eyes. But they fought anyway.” His gaze turned distant, as though looking not at Clawdiff, but through it—through smoke, through time, back to fire and war. “The whole Caerfaen military came for us. Their finest navy ships. Their dirigibles. Even a mana bomb, just to bring us down.” His mouth curled into something bitter, something almost like a smile. “The very Council we obeyed.”

He let the words hang.

“And now they send Kenaz’s shadow after us.”

Sweet Fluff looked up with wide eyes. “That’s funny.”

“That’s awful,” Sour Puff whispered.

The dragon’s laugh came again, softer this time, but crueller for it.

“The irony wasn’t lost on me.”

Sweet Fluff tugged at her sleeve. “So… something bad is coming?”

“Of course something bad is coming!” Sweet Fluff said brightly, recovering herself. “That’s the fun part!”

Velcarius finally shifted, tilting his massive head until his horns scraped the clouds. His gravelly voice rolled out, dry and sardonic, like a storyteller too tired for drama.

“Yeah. Pieces are falling off the board. And when pieces move, the game gets interesting.”

The sisters froze.

Sour Puff’s ears flattened. “That… that doesn’t sound good.”

Sweet Fluff shoved her lightly. “It is good. He said interesting. Interesting means exciting!”

“It means dangerous.”

“Exciting and dangerous!”

“Exciting because it’s dangerous—”

“Girls,” the dragon rumbled, cutting them both off. “Focus.”

They flinched and nodded together, squeaking, “Yes, great one!”

Sweet Fluff leaned forward eagerly. “What do you want us to do? We can do anything! Scare them, chase them, make them dance, ooh, or maybe—”

“Don’t make them dance,” Sour Puff interrupted. “They’ll scream and cry and—”

“Then it’s a screamy dance! Even better!”

Velcarius let out a sigh that sounded like a landslide collapsing into the sea. He lowered his chin against the orb beneath him.

“They’re gonna run. They always do. And when things look bad enough, when they’re scared enough? They’ll head for the mall. Safe, shiny, full of lights. Bet my last scale on it.”

Sweet Fluff gasped. “Oooh, the mall! We love the mall! All the colours and the toys and the—”

“—and the empty halls where hope goes to die,” Sour Puff whispered.

The dragon’s eyes narrowed. “Let ’em run there. Let ’em believe it’s safe. Let ’em feel that hope… for just long enough.”

Sweet Fluff grinned, tail twitching. “This is gonna be so much fun!”

Sour Puff shivered, voice barely audible. “But… it’s going to hurt them.”

“That’s the point, kid.”

The air vibrated with his final word.

“Make them pay.”