The streets of Clawdiff were never quiet — not really — but tonight they felt hollow.
Shadows stretched where buildings had fallen.
Neon signs flickered like tired hearts.

Lumina and Skye pressed close to the walls as they moved, keeping to alleys and fallen scaffolds, Lumina humming under her breath whenever she got nervous —
hmm… hm-hmm… hmm…

A pair of Sugar Rushers scurried across a rooftop.
A Cat-o-Wrap swayed from a broken lamp post, its striped lollipop tail glinting under the streetlight.

They avoided them all.

Until one didn’t avoid them.

A groan echoed behind a collapsed tram car — low, wet, hungry.

Lumina stiffened.
Skye whispered, “Don’t turn around.”

Lumina turned around.

A Gumripper zombie — all stretched candy sinew and snapping jaws — lurched toward them.

“SKYE!” Lumina squeaked.

“I said don’t turn around!”

“It’s RIGHT THERE, HOW WOULD THAT HELP—?!”

The Gumripper lunged.

Skye shoved Lumina aside, gripping his Aurex Arcana with trembling paws.

A blast of violet mana shot out — shaky, unfocused — but enough to stagger the creature.

Lumina, heart hammering, summoned her Roselight blade.
“HEY! GUM-BUTT!”

She swung with all the force her tiny hybrid arms could muster.

THUNK.

The zombie’s jaw spun nearly 360°.

It toppled like a dropped marionette.

Skye stood frozen, still holding his launcher out like it might explode.

Lumina panted.
“Okay… okay… that was… hmmhmhmhmmmm… really gross.”

Skye swallowed, ears trembling.
“Lumina… this is too dangerous. We should go back. We should… tell someone. Tell Carys. Tell Celeste. Tell literally any adult.”

Lumina glanced at her Arcbracer, watching the blinking dot pulse brighter and brighter.

“But we’re so close,” she whispered.
“Maybe just a quick peek? And then we go back. Promise.”

Skye rubbed his arm.
“I… I hope so. There’s a storm coming. I can feel it.”
His voice got even smaller. “Mana storms make my head hurt.”

Lumina didn’t answer right away.

She was staring at a faded poster peeling off a brick wall.

It showed fireworks. Lanterns. A festival in the park. Little cartoon dragons danced across the bottom border, holding sparklers in their mouths while smiling children waved flags beneath a glowing moon.

The colours had faded badly, the paper split down the middle by rain and age, but a date still clung to the corner in peeling gold print.

“Hey,” Skye said softly, “what’s wrong?”

Lumina kept humming—a sad, thin tune.

“Hmm… mmm… hmmm…”

“That,” she said. “Celeste told me we went to that festival together. But I don’t remember it. At all.”

Skye blinked.

“And it’s like that everywhere,” Lumina went on, voice small but angry.
“Ever since the car crash, she remembers everything and I remember nothing. And it’s not fair. I hate it.”

She kicked a shard of pavement so hard it skittered across the road.

Skye stared at the ground.
“I know. But… at least there are bad things you forgot too.”
He hesitated.
“I wish I could forget some stuff.”

Lumina sighed, wings drooping.
“You don’t get it, Skye. I don’t remember my mother.”
Her voice cracked. “Dad refuses to talk about her. And all I have are Celeste’s memories to go by and—well—you know how she is.”

Skye let out a tiny, reluctant laugh.
“…Very dithery.”

That made Lumina smile — just a little.

“But the more I think about it,” she whispered, “the more I think Celeste hides things. Important things. About herself. About us. These coordinates? Maybe it’s something she doesn’t want anyone finding.”

Skye fidgeted.
“I know she keeps a cube under her bed. She… um… keeps it in her bag.”
His ears burned.
“I didn’t mean to see it. We were playing hide and seek. I fit under beds easily.”

Lumina blinked at him.
“Huh. That explains why your tail was dusty.”

Skye shrugged.
“It feels wrong. She isn’t bad. She just… doesn’t like worrying people.”

Lumina clutched Miss Jellybean closer, humming anxiously.
“Well, it is worrying me.”
Her voice sharpened.
“And maybe my memory stuff is why they keep leaving us at base. Like we’re not ready to fight like the grown-ups.”

Skye squeezed her hand.
“You are ready. Even if they won’t say it.”

Lumina inhaled, humming deep in her chest to steady herself.

Then he looked at the poster again.

“Are you sure?” he asked carefully. “That poster says it was nine years ago. Aren’t you, like… six?”

Lumina whipped around, cheeks puffing.

“I’m seven.”

Skye’s ears flicked back. “Oh.”

“I turned seven on the seventh of Sevriniel,” she said, very firmly, “which was a month ago.”

Skye hesitated.

“Two months ago.”

Lumina opened her mouth.

Then closed it.

Her cheeks slowly deflated.

“Oh.”

The little hum in her throat faltered.

She looked back at the poster, suddenly smaller.

“I’m forgetting time now.”

Skye’s face softened.

The street around them groaned faintly in the wind. Somewhere far off, metal creaked against metal, and a Sugar Rusher chittered on a rooftop before vanishing into the fog.

Skye rubbed one sleeve against the other.

“I miss school,” he said quietly.

Lumina glanced at him.

“You do?”

He nodded, embarrassed.

“Not the boring bits. Or the maths. Or when Miss Perrow made us practise handwriting until my paw cramped.” He paused. “Actually, maybe even that a bit. It was… normal.”

Lumina looked down at Miss Jellybean.

“I never went.”

Skye stared at her. “Never?”

She shook her head.

“Orbal taught me things at home. And Celeste. Sort of. She mostly taught me drawing and how not to put glitter in tea.” Lumina frowned. “Which I still think depends on the tea.”

Skye gave a tiny laugh.

Then he grew quiet again.

“When the zombies are gone,” he said, “we can go together.”

Lumina looked up sharply.

“To school?”

“Yeah.” His ears warmed beneath his fur. “I can show you where everything is. The library. The lunch hall. The classroom with the wobbly chair nobody wants. The cupboard where they keep the paints.”

Lumina’s eyes shimmered faintly.

“Promise?”

Skye swallowed, then squeezed her hand.

“I promise.”

Lumina kept humming, happier this time.

Skye blinked.

“…Oh.”

“Should we keep going?” she said. “Just until the next corner.”

Skye nodded quietly.
“…Okay.”

Clawdiff’s skyline loomed like the ribcage of a fallen titan — broken, hollow, and half-swallowed by fog.
But the closer the kids crept toward the castle district, the more one structure rose above the rest.

A colossal tower of silver and rose-gold metal.
Its upper spire shimmered faintly with mana residue.
An enormous sign — half shattered — still read:

SWEETTOOTH HARMONICS
Purveyors of Mana Engineering & Arc-Resonance Technology

Lumina stopped humming for a moment, wide-eyed.

Skye stared up at the building with a tight, knowing swallow.
“Oh… it’s this place.”

Lumina blinked. “You know it?”

Skye nodded once — blunt, factual.
“Our class did a field trip here. Before everything fell apart.”
He pointed up at the architecture.
“They used to manufacture mana suppressors. The piece that fits around a hybrid’s rune — it regulates flow and stops overload.”
Another small swallow.
“…Or stops everything completely.”

Lumina shivered, hugging Miss Jellybean tight.
“I’ve never been to Clawdiff before the zombies. So I wouldn’t know.”
Her hum returned — soft, uneasy — hmm-hmm-hmmm…
“But… it looks like the zombies really messed this place up.”

Above them, the Arcspire jutted into the sky — a gleaming metal tower shaped like a fork of lightning frozen mid-strike.

Skye lifted his Arcbracer to scan it.
“I’ve seen these too. Arcspires collect ambient mana from the atmosphere. And… sometimes from hybrid cores. Remotely.”
His voice grew even quieter.
“Mythics can have cores, but most don’t. Cities are too… loud for them.”

Lumina nodded. “Yeah, I almost never see Mythics with cores. I guess I understand why.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“But still… why would Celeste have coordinates to this creepy place?”

Skye shrugged helplessly.
“I don’t know. It feels… wrong. Maybe we should—”

“—go?” Lumina finished quickly. “Yes. Agreed. We found it. That’s enough. We should—”

A moan echoed behind them.

A long, awful chorus of hungry voices.

They turned.

A massive zombie horde shambled across the plaza — dozens upon dozens of twisted candy creatures pushing through the fog.

Lumina squeaked.
“NONONONO—Skye, they’re coming—!”

Skye grabbed her sleeve.
“Side alley!”

They sprinted, Lumina humming in terror — hmmmHMMMHHHMMMMM!! — as they dove under a sagging chain-link fence.

The horde crashed closer.

Lumina panted, “Skye—Skye—they’re too many—!”

Skye scanned frantically.
His eyes fixed on a broken window two metres up the Sweettooth wall.

“There!” he said sharply. “Up. Now.”

He crouched, pushing Lumina upward with all his strength until she caught the sill, scrambling inside with Miss Jellybean clenched in her teeth.

Then Skye jumped — grabbed — slipped — panic rising—

Lumina grabbed his wrist, bracing her feet.

“Come ON—!” she strained.

Skye tumbled in beside her just as the first zombie hand scraped the stone beneath the window.

The kids collapsed onto the dusty floor, panting.

Outside, claws scratched at the wall.
Teeth gnawed the metal frame.
But the window was too high for them to reach now.

Inside…

Darkness.

Silence.

A place that should have been humming with machines…
but instead felt like a tomb.

Lumina whispered into the gloom, her hum soft and trembling:
“…Skye? I don’t like it in here.”

Skye squeezed her hand.
“I know. But we’re okay. We’re… inside.”

Something metallic pinged deeper in the building.

Lumina froze.
“…Skye?”

“Yeah?”

“Please tell me that was the building settling.”

Skye shook his head, voice small and blunt.
“No. Something’s moving in here.”

The deeper they went, the colder the air became.

Concrete corridors stretched endlessly, most of the facility buried beneath Clawdiff like a secret the city didn’t want remembered. Their Arcbracers cast thin cones of pale light — flickering, trembling.

Skye walked close to Lumina, paws tight around his bracer strap.
“I… don’t like it down here.”
His voice was small, flat with fear.

Lumina hummed shakily — hmm… hmmhmm… hmm…
“Me neither.”

They turned a corner and froze.

Rows of ID screens lined the wall — cracked, dust-coated holograms flickering feebly in the dark.
Each screen showed a different hybrid waiting for an Arcbracer installation.

Children.
Refugees.
New arrivals with nervous eyes.

Nobody exempt.

Lumina’s hum faltered as she whispered, “I didn’t know they… chipped everyone.”

Skye stared — then frowned.
“Lumina… your suppression rune… it doesn’t look like these.”

Lumina blinked.
“What do you mean?”

He lifted his bracer to throw a dim reflection across the smooth metal plating at the base of her skull.

Her rune glimmered.

Not industrial.
Not standard.
It looked almost arcane — swirling lines, grooved circles, like a tiny enchantment carved just for her.

Lumina touched it, breath catching.
“Mine is… different.”
Her hum returned — soft and troubled.
Hmmhmm… hmm…

But they kept moving — unaware of the importance of what they had just seen.

A flicker of metal caught Skye’s eye in a debris-choked corridor labelled:

ADMINISTRATION — SECTOR C

“There,” he whispered, pointing. “Something shiny.”

Lumina crouched and tugged a keycard from a half-crushed locker.

LEVEL 4 ACCESS — EXECUTIVE USE ONLY

Skye hugged his backpack.
“Are we sure we want to keep going?”

“No,” Lumina whispered honestly.
Then she gestured behind them.
“But the zombies are still outside.”

The card unlocked a final door with a suctioned hiss.

Inside was a wide executive office — motionless, stale air greeting them like a forgotten tomb. Filing cabinets, cracked monitors, an observation window overlooking a lab in ruins.

A desk in the centre held:

— dusty keycards
— two USB drives
— three external hard drives
— a sealed folder labelled:

CANDIDATE: TEMPEST // SUBJECT CA-70

Lumina grabbed everything, stuffing it into her bag.

“We should go. Arcade will know how to—”

creeeeeaaaak

The director’s chair turned toward them.

A corpse sat in it.

Except—

Not dead.

Not alive.

A candy zombie made from something that once resembled a gerbil… warped and glossed like a gumball, fur half-melted into marshmallow flesh.
Cracked plastic lenses framed its beady pink eyes.
Its ID badge read: Lead Research Assistant… though half the name was rotted away.

It tilted its head at them.

Sniffed.

Twitched.

Like it had been waiting.

Skye yelped, stumbling backward into the desk and knocking over the dust-coated cup full of pens.

Lumina screamed, “RUN!”

They sprinted.

Feet slapping the tiles.
Breath ragged.
The gerbil-creature scrambled after them on jittering limbs.

Skye tripped.

His Arcbracer clipped a wall panel.

WEEEOOOO—WEEEOOOO—WEEEOOOO

Alarms ignited through the entire underground.

And as the red lights flickered to life…

Shapes rose from the floor.

Zombies they hadn’t noticed — lying dormant, in pieces — snapped awake as the alarm activated their corrupted candy cores.

Lumina attempted to summon her sword and shield.
Skye his card launcher.

Nothing.

Skye’s voice cracked.
“It won’t work! She—she’s not close enough—Celeste isn’t here—she doesn’t even know we’re—”

Lumina grabbed his paw.
“RUN!”

They bolted into an observation chamber and slammed the door behind them — locking it with a trembling swipe of Lumina’s card.

The room fell silent.

Silent except for:

— the pounding fists on the glass
— the dragging limbs outside
— the gumball-lens eyes peering in

Skye collapsed against the far wall, breathing fast.
“Nobody knows we’re here…” he whispered. “Nobody…”

Lumina hugged Miss Jellybean so tight her knuckles turned white.
Her hum trembled like a frightened heartbeat.

Hmm… hmmhmm… hm…

“We’re trapped, Skye.”

Outside, the zombies crowded the window, tapping, sniffing, clawing —

knowing their prey couldn’t escape.

Inside, the two children — alone in a place built to suppress hybrid power — had no weapons…

No backup…

And no one at base even knew they were missing.