The floor began to quake, the air swelling with the roar of something ancient and hungry.

The Sherbet Wraith rose higher, her syrupy arms stretching wide as the sand beneath their feet began to move again—this time violently.

“You think you can defy me?!” she shrieked, voice splitting into several at once. “Then choke on my sweet eternity!”

The floor exploded into color.
Zombies—dozens, hundreds— burst from the walls, floor, and broken pods, all dripping sugar and glowing faintly with mana. The storm howled, the wraith spinning it faster and faster until the group could barely see their own hands.

“Everyone, s-stay together!” Celeste shouted, her voice almost lost to the storm.

“Kind of hard when I can’t even see my own tail!” Mezzo yelled back.

Ray charged forward, hammer out, when a sudden blast from the storm threw her backward. She slammed into a mana conduit, sparks showering around her.
“Ugh—great, just what I needed—”

Her rune flared violently. The phoenix emblem on her collar blazed red-hot, fire rushing out like a tidal wave.
The sand around her hissed, melting into glowing glass.

Celeste shielded her eyes, shouting, “Ray!”

Ray stood—flames coiling around her hammer like wings.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine—let’s finish this sugar nightmare!”

Celeste’s eyes gleamed with inspiration.
“Then—then let’s mix it!”

She spun her katanas, summoning her Starlight Tornado, the air swirling bright and fast. The phoenix fire caught in it, fusing heat and wind together until—

—the sandstorm turned to glass.

A spiraling tornado of molten glass ripped through the zombies, shredding and slicing everything in its path. Their candy bodies shattered like sugar sculptures, raining shards and syrup.

The Sherbet Wraith screamed, her sherbet flesh cracking, hardening into translucent crystal as the glass tornado reached her.

“No—no no NO! This isn’t supposed to—!”

She tried to retreat, her arms fracturing into crystalline shards. The wraith’s body began to solidify, her faceless form splitting down the middle.

“You’ll regret this, Astallan! You’ll all regret this!”

And then—with a sound like glass shattering underwater—she melted into mist, retreating through the vents, leaving only a few glimmering sugar fragments behind.

The storm fell silent.

Only the hum of the reactor and their ragged breathing filled the air.

Ray exhaled, lowering her hammer. “Well… that was a thing.”
She smirked at Celeste. “You did good, kitten. But next time, don’t freeze up like that again, alright? We kinda need you conscious.”

Celeste gave a sheepish smile, rubbing the back of her neck.
“Sorry… I just—there were too many voices. They were all crying at once, and I—I didn’t know which one to listen to.”

Ray clapped her on the shoulder. “Then get better at tuning ‘em out.”
Her tone softened just a little. “You’re the boss now. We follow your lead, remember?”

Celeste looked at her friends—burned, bruised, but alive—and nodded.
“Then… let’s finish this, shall we? Time to, um, turn the power back on—before the ceiling decides it hates us too.”

The room hummed with the pulse of stolen mana—low, heavy, and sickly sweet.
Everywhere Celeste looked, people—mythics, hybrids, even a few purebloods—hung inside the pods like insects trapped in amber, their bodies lit by faint blue veins of power that threaded into the walls and into the grid itself.

Celeste pressed her paw to the glass of one pod. The figure inside twitched faintly, their body half-dissolved into sugar crystal. “They’re alive…” she breathed. “Stars help them—they’re still alive.”

Hughes moved beside her, his tone grim. “Aye. But we don’t know what they’ll be when they wake. If the council used these pods for mana extraction, some of ’em could be volatile—mad even.”

Ray folded her arms. “And if we start cutting people out of council hardware, we’re dead twice over. The minute they check our bracer footage, they’ll know we tampered with containment.”

Celeste’s ears flattened. “I can feel them, Ray. In my core. It’s like they’re all crying at once… and I can’t shut them out.”

Arcade sighed, rubbing his temples. “Feelings aren’t going to save our hides when the council sees this. If we release them, that’s treason. Again.”

She turned sharply, eyes flashing despite the tremor in her voice. “I thought we were here to restore the leylines, not power the city with people! They deserve better than this.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then Mezzo grinned faintly, half grim, half proud. “Ahh, I see where you’re going with this, lass. If we hook the grid to the leylines instead, we can bypass this whole horror show.”

Pitch nodded in approval. “That’s smart. Replace their mana source, nobody needs to die. I’m in.”

Arcade raised a cautionary finger. “Except our arcbracers are still recording. You think the Council won’t notice when their secret battery suddenly shuts off?”

Celeste sighed, shoulders sinking. “…Then maybe we can at least help the ones still in the candy pods. They’re not soldiers. They’re just… lost.”

The team exchanged glances, then nodded—one by one.

They moved fast.
Ray and Pitch smashed open the pods, pulling hybrids free.
Skye summoned gentle water spirits to rinse away the sugar from their skin.
Mezzo and Arcade kept watch by the doors, weapons drawn, while Lumina used her shield light to heal those they could.

And that was when Celeste noticed him.

Behind her, someone moved—not staggering or gasping like the rescued captives, but walking with quiet purpose.

An old man emerged from the gloom. Tall. Straight-backed. His robe shimmered like dusk on water—deep navy and moss-green threads woven with constellations of faintly glowing runes. Every step carried the weight of something ancient.

His skin was pale, almost silver; his hair long and white as frost; his eyes clouded, yet piercing. When he spoke, his voice sounded like wind whispering through mountains.

“Peace, little ones. You need not fear me.”

Arcade froze. “He’s… Tylwyth Teg,” he breathed. “One of the Fae.”

The man inclined his head. “I am Doeth Cyfriniol. The Wise Man. A name given before your Council learned to write. You may call me Elder Arlo.”

Arcade’s visor flickered nervously. “Wait—that’s not just a title. Those guys were banned ages ago. They used to advise entire mythic courts before the Council wiped them out.”

The Fae nodded solemnly. “Banned. Buried. Forgotten. It’s all the same.”

He turned his milky eyes toward Celeste. Even blind, he seemed to see through her.

“You seek truth,” he murmured. “That is good. But truth is not always light in the dark. Sometimes it is a blade you are not ready to hold.”

He raised a trembling hand toward the ceiling. Through the cracked roof, the clouds parted just enough for them to see it—
a vast pink sphere hanging in the sky above Clawdiff, motionless and perfect.

“They call it the Ball,” he said softly. “They say it offers salvation. But I have watched its work… and I tell you now—it does not save. It selects.”

Celeste frowned. “Elder Aldo… w-what do you mean, selection? Who’s being chosen?”

“It was ment for those who remember too much,” Elder Arlo said. “Those who ask questions the Council does not like answered. But now they call it ascension.”

He looked back at the pods. “But it is only a prettier word for harvest.”

The group stared up, the silver glow reflected in their eyes.

Elder Arlo’s expression softened as he turned back to Celeste.

“Be careful, daughter of light and dust. You carry the same spark they feared before—and they will come for you, as they came for us.”

Celeste’s core pulsed faintly in answer, a heartbeat echoing that wasn’t entirely her own.

She looked back at the others, voice trembling but resolute.
“Then... we need to change this.”

The lights flickered and dimmed, throwing long shadows across the shattered control room.
The Elder—his runes flickering faintly like dying stars—stood over the console, his blind eyes glowing with that strange, silvered light.

Celeste took a cautious step forward. “Elder Aldo… what do you know about the dragon?”

The old fae turned toward her slowly, his robe whispering against the floor.

“The dragon that haunts your skies?… he has been taking the lost—the sick, the forgotten—to the Gumball above Clawdiff. Turning them into what you call ‘zombies.’”

A low growl built in Ray’s throat. “That’s impossible. Why would he—”

“Because,” Aldo said softly, “that is what he was made to do.”

The group exchanged alarmed glances.

Arcade frowned. “You’re saying the dragon—the general—is working for the Council?”

Aldo tilted his head, an almost pitying smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“No, child. He was born from them. It was the Council that created the process—long ago, under Clawdiff itself. They learned to break souls from bodies, to filter mana through the flesh of hybrids and mythics. The dragon simply… perfected their craft.”

Ray’s eyes narrowed, her tail flicking. “And how do you know that, old man?”

The Elder chuckled—a dry, wind-borne sound.

“You learn much when you have nowhere left to go, little fox. When the world buries you beneath its own lies, you learn to listen—not with your eyes, not with your hands, but with what remains.”

He moved toward the nearest council pod, fingers brushing over its glass surface. The blue glow brightened beneath his touch.

“These are not the work of your plague,” he murmured. “These… are the work of the Council.”

He turned back toward the controls, his expression tightening.

“They must be freed. These souls are innocent.”

Pitch stepped between him and the panel, hands raised. “Whoa, hold up, your holiness. I get you want to play Saint Salvation, but it’s our necks on the line if you—”

He didn’t finish.

With a subtle flick of Aldo’s wrist, roots burst from the ground, writhing like serpents. They coiled around Pitch’s legs, his arms, then swept through the room, binding the rest of the Knights in place before anyone could react.

Ray grunted, struggling. “What the—?! He’s casting without a rune!”

“Elder, please!” Celeste cried. “You’ll get us all killed!”

“No, child,” Aldo said gently, his voice like a lullaby in a tomb. “You will get yourselves killed if you keep obeying monsters.”

He pressed his palm to the console. The pods shuddered—and one by one, the convicts inside began to wake.
The air filled with groans, gasps, and whispers of half-conscious people regaining breath for the first time in months.

The Elder turned back toward them, blind eyes glowing brighter.

“Tell your Matron this, child of light and dust—tell Lady Umbranox that Elder Aldo sends his regards.”

He smiled faintly. “And tell her the truth always finds a way to bloom.”

Then, with a single word in a language none of them recognized, the pods burst open—and the mana in the room roared alive.

The Knights were thrown to the floor as the freed prisoners stumbled into the shadows, vanishing through the cracked corridors.

When the roots finally loosened, Arcade was the first to speak, voice shaking.
“Stars above… we are so dead. If we didn’t have our recordings to prove that wasn’t us—”

Mezzo groaned, brushing off sugar dust. “Then we’d be fertilizer, lad. Glorious, heroic fertilizer.”

Celeste sat up, heart pounding, eyes fixed on the now-empty pods. The mana still burned in her chest—hundreds of freed souls humming in her core like an echo that wouldn’t fade.

“He freed them,” she whispered, voice breaking with awe and dread. “But… what if they weren’t ready to be free?”