Arcade snorted. “Please. I’d just get bored again. Besides, this is real work. And let’s be honest—hybrids like us? Council jobs don’t exactly grow on trees. I’d be an idiot to turn this down.”

Ray raised a brow, smirking. “Count me in. No way I’m goin’ back to corporate. Last desk job I had, I set the break room on fire.”

Pitch chuckled. “Ha! Yeah, stalls weren’t better. Had to smile at customers all day—never again. I’ll take zombies over small talk any time.”

The lock gave a final click, lights along the frame turning green. The massive door groaned open, revealing the dim heart of the plant beyond—an endless hall of pipes, shadow, and quiet dread.

Hughes adjusted his hat and sighed. “Right, then,” he muttered, gripping his crook. “Let’s see what horrors await us this time.”

As they stepped deeper in, their lights swept across the corridor—and froze. Bodies lined the walls. Mythics. Their armor bore the shattered crest of Brassmane’s order, charred by blast marks and fused with melted candy resin.

Pitch’s ears flicked back. “...What the hell are Mythics doin’ here?”

Arcade crouched beside one of the corpses, his arcbracer flickering as he pulled a cracked comms crystal from the soldier’s hand. “Looks like they were tracking someone. One of their elders got kidnapped—they must’ve come looking.”

Celeste’s eyes softened. “Then we should look for them too. If they’re still out there—maybe helping them will… well… earn us a little goodwill with the Mythics, yes?”

Ray folded her arms, scanning the hall. “After last time? Stars, we could use all the goodwill we can get.”

The doors slid fully open—revealing rows of candy-coated pods stretching into darkness. The air pulsed faintly, as if the plant itself were breathing.

The corridor’s silence broke with the faint, sticky squelch of sherbet underfoot. It clung to their boots like syrup, sparkling faintly under the flickering lights.

“Why does this stuff hum?” Skye murmured, tail flicking uneasily. He crouched, pressing a paw to the sugary layer—and froze. The hum wasn’t just sound. It was alive.

He stood suddenly, backing up. “Uh, guys? The sherbet on the floor… it’s alive.”

Arcade turned, squinting. “What are you talking about, little guy? Alive? What, like—sentient dessert? Fantastic. That’s all we needed.”

He tapped his bracer, scanning. “Maybe it just wants to be eaten. You ever think of that, Skye?”

Chip, perched on Arcade’s shoulder in small mode, chirped dryly. “Correction: I do detect movement. Definitely not pastry-grade behavior.”

Lumina raised her shield, glancing around. “Maybe we should be careful—”

The door behind them slammed shut.

They all whipped around as the sherbet oozed up over the hinges, sealing the frame in a crystallized crust. One by one, the overhead lights flickered—then died—plunging the corridor into syrupy dark.

Celeste’s voice quivered in the gloom, her katanas shimmering into her paws. “A-Arcade… can you—um—hack this? Please tell me you can hack this?”

Arcade’s tone was too calm to be comforting.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll just… ask the haunted pudding for the Wi-Fi password.”

Chip’s eye-light blinked red. “Movement detected. Forward vector. Quantity: too many.”

From the blackness came the faint, horrible chorus of groaning. Dozens of voices—wet, hungry, and wrong.

Pitch backed away, shotgun trembling in his hands. “Okay—okay, we’ve been in worse. I mean, not much worse, but—”

He bumped into something behind him. Something cold and sticky.

He turned.

At first, it looked faceless—a mound of gelatinous sherbet in the vague shape of a body. Then it began to form: a head, a warped grin, hollow eyes swirling with pink foam.

The Sherbet Wraith General. Veloura.

Pitch screamed, firing point-blank. The slug hit—and bounced off. The creature barely rippled, its grin stretching wider.

Veloura’s voice came like sugar poured into acid—slow, lilting, amused. “Such noisy little sweets…”

“Run!” Hughes barked, his crook glowing as time bent around them.

The team bolted, stumbling through the dark corridor, their movements blurred by Hughes’ temporal drag. They crashed into a side passage, slammed the door, and barred it with whatever they could find.

For a few heartbeats, nothing. Just panting, gasping, the echo of their footsteps.

Then—

Scrape.

Hiss.

The pastel sand under the door began to move. It slithered like smoke, threading through cracks, reforming—slowly taking shape again.

Lumina whispered, voice trembling but steady. “Stars help us… it’s not done.”

And somewhere beyond the door, the Wraith’s hollow laughter bubbled through the walls like a nightmare breathing sugar.

The sherbet under the door pulsed like a living wound—and then it peeled itself free, flowing up the stone like steam and taking shape. Where one moment there had been a blob, the next there stood a pale, flickering thing: half-rabbit, half-wisp, sugar-crystal ribs showing through a translucent chest. Its surface shimmered with fizzing light; where a face should be, it wore a borrowed visage—Ray’s mother’s smile, a cruel twist of familiarity.

“Going somewhere, my dears?” it sang, voice like a spoon rasping the bottom of a pot.

Ray’s fur prickled. She felt something ice-deep in her ribs. “Okay. That’s so wrong and creepy,” she managed, voice tight.

The wraith’s grin widened, liquid sugar dripping from its lips. “Creepy?” she cooed. “Oh, darling—flattery will get you everywhere.” It tilted its head, crystalline ears chiming faintly. “I am Veloura, the Sherbet Wraith—the Whispering Kiss of Death.”

The temperature dropped, and even Chip’s sensors flickered. The air grew heavy, thick with the scent of rotting sweetness.

“You shouldn’t be here,” Veloura purred, tracing the air with syrup-clawed fingers. “Sneaky little hybrids, crawling through my realm. The dragon knows this place—knows what it is. A fountain for the Nullborn, a cradle of power for the purebloods who stole it.”

Her gaze darted to Celeste, then to Hughes, eyes like molten sherbet. “And now he wants his punishment delivered. Every bite, every breath… sugar-coated justice.”

Arcade raised his spark-blade, jaw tight. “Justice?” he scoffed. “You’re a chemical spill in a cosplay contest.”

Chip’s optic whirred red. “Insult acknowledged. Accuracy: ninety-three percent.”

Veloura giggled, a bubbling sound that curdled the air. “Then dream sweetly, darlings. I love it when they scream in harmony.”

The walls around them began to drip, candy resin liquefying into tendrils that crawled toward their boots. 

The wraith Veloura chuckled, light fizzing from the tips of its ears. “Ah—little Ray, always running. But there is nowhere to run.” It spread slim, syrupy fingers toward her. “No, not anymore.”

Ray planted her feet and swung Heartbreaker up into a ready arc. “I got a destination in mind now. I ain’t going nowhere.” Her grin was all teeth and phoenix flame; the hammer crackled like a promise.

Celeste felt something warm and fierce bloom in her chest at that—honored that Ray would stand there—then snapped back into focus, katanas humming. She set her shoulders. The light in the blades mirrored the fire in Ray’s eyes.

The wraith drifted forward, and with a casual, terrible flourish it held the limp body of a mythic soldier—one of Brassmane’s men, a werewolf still slick with candy residue. The soldier whined for mercy; sugar crusted his fur like a macabre glaze.

“They thought they could take me down,” the wraith purred, then craned its head toward them. “This place is a maze. Council, civilians, mythics—they all come here for power. I give them comfort from responsibility.” It cushioned the werewolf in a gummy paw. “And I wonder… what will you become?”

Pitch’s jaw hardened. “I prefer responsibility. It keeps me grounded,” he said, but the wraith only smiled and twisted its shape.

In a blink it wore Pitch’s little brother’s face—Jett, eleven and raw with hurt. “Why did you abandon me?” the wraith sobbed in Jett’s voice. “I’m cold. They threw me from the hospital. I’m dying. Don’t you love me?” The mimicry struck like a thrown rock. Pitch’s claws opened and shut; rage and grief tangled on his face.

“You monster—stop wearing his face, bitch!” Pitch shouted, the word ripping out of him.

The wraith’s smile widened, perfectly unrepentant. “Oh? A nerve struck—how delicious.” Its voice softened as it shifted again. “Let’s make this fun.” With a wet pop of sherbet, it shoved a candy chunk into the werewolf’s mouth.

Lumina clutched Celeste’s sleeve, her eyes huge and shining with fear.

“Celeste…” she whispered. “Is he going to change?”

Celeste stared, horror rising in her throat.

She didn’t know.

She didn’t know anything.

The wisp hovered nearby, its little light flickering with eager, awful delight.

Celeste turned toward it, voice shaking. “Please stop. Please, just stop this.”

The wisp did not look at her.

It drifted closer to the convulsing soldier, listening as his bones cracked and stretched beneath the candy-glossed skin.

“Hush, child,” it whispered, almost tenderly. “I want to hear his bones break.”

The werewolf screamed.

Then he swelled fully, fur and fudge mingling into a monstrous frosted sugarglass-wolf — taller, sharper, maw dripping with sticky drool. It roared, a sound like kettles and broken windows.

Her molten-sherbet eyes gleamed. “So here’s my game. Make it to the center of the base—where the power hums and the hearts still beat—and I’ll let you live.” Her voice softened to a purr. “Fail… and you’ll serve me instead. Sounds fun?”

Mezzo grimaced. “Fun? Lady, your definition of fun needs therapy and lady, your therapist quit for a reason.”

Hughes moved like old lightning. He spotted the observation window high in the control alcove and swung his crook—it shattered in a glitter of safety glass. The werewolf locked eyes with the gap and lunged to intercept. Hughes stepped aside at the last beat; the abomination cannoned through the broken pane and slammed into the deck beyond, brittle pipes and dangling cables catching it. The beast thrashed and, for a moment, its own weight and the wreckage did as much damage to it as the knights could.

“Now!” Hughes barked, breath ragged but keen. “Scatter—hit the control grid, find the core, and don’t get eaten!”

They obeyed without thinking. Ray vaulted past the injured werewolf with a growl, Hammer flashing ember-motes. Celeste dove down a side corridor, ribbons streaming, eyes narrowed into knives. Pitch dipped into shadow and flicked out with a Lucky Shot card that sizzled lightning across the floor. Lumina held her shield up for cover, darting between pillars. Mezzo zipped overhead, guitar-axe slamming an incoming droplet of sherbet into crunchy shards. Arcade ducked into a maintenance hatch and started to work the panel, fingers flying despite the hum of fear at the back of his throat. CHIP, in big mode, planted himself in the corridor mouth and bellowed a metallic challenge.

The wraith’s laugh followed them—wet, syrup-sweet, and echoing down the pipes. “Good luck, sweetlings, Do make it entertaining.” it sang, and the word tasted like a dare.

They ran—through steam-vents and service ladders, past the pods where the captured civilians hissed from their candy cocoons—each step a frantic beat toward the heart of the plant. Behind them the power hub thrummed, a living thing with a hunger, and somewhere under that hum the wraith waited, toyed and patient, hunting the way predators do.