The game was still going when the screaming started downstairs.

Not stage-cheering this time.

Real screaming.

It bled up through the floorboards beneath the arcade music and chiptunes—thin at first, then louder, tangled with the pounding of feet and the sharp bark of security trying to herd people somewhere. The console in front of Celeste flashed with glittering power-ups and rank banners, but the sound from below turned her stomach colder than the candy had.

Celeste lifted her head, controller drooping in her paws. “What is that?”

Melody, sprawled half-sideways in her beanbag with one paw still on her controls, answered too quickly.

“It’s that thing—y’know, the bonbon crossover deal.” She managed a wobbly grin. “Posters everywhere. Country’s been eating it up.”

Celeste raised an eyebrow. “What—like a game?”

“Yeah. You scan the barcodes, get a shiny zombie or knight in your collection. There’s even a leaderboard.” Melody gave a weak laugh. “Nommie Zombies: Mythic Reckoning. Tacky as hell. Fun though.”

Two convention security staff rushed past the arcade doorway at a run. Right behind them came a pair of police officers in dark coats, not even glancing into the room.

Celeste sat up straighter. “That doesn’t sound like a game.”

Arcade had torn open one of the wrappers, holding it up to the light with an intensity better suited to relics.

“There’s no ingredient list,” he murmured. “No allergy warnings. No manufacturing stamp. Just the Zygurr logo and a grinning skull telling you it’s Nommie Approved. Thoroughly dystopian.”

Celeste’s stomach tightened, ears flattening. “That doesn’t… sound very safe at all.”

A crashing thud echoed from the hallway. A chorus of startled yelps followed.

Celeste shot to her feet. “Oh stars—I should, um—I should check that out. I think maybe we ought to go now—”

But before she could move, Melody leaned forward and grabbed her hand.

“Wait, wait—one more round,” she said, forcing a grin. “Come on. If we run every time a convention starts sounding haunted, we’ll never get anywhere.”

Her comm crystal lit across her wrist.

A message flashed over the surface.

Melody looked down at it—and for one brief second, worry cracked straight through the performance. Her pupils widened. Her jaw tightened.

Then Celeste looked at her, and Melody smiled too brightly.

“Seriously. One more round. Then dramatic escape.”

Celeste hesitated.

Melody gagged.

All the colour went out of Celeste’s face.

“Melody?”

Melody clapped a paw over her mouth, eyes watering. Her ears drooped, and her shoulders curled inward as though her whole body had suddenly become too heavy to hold up.

“Whoa—no, no no—Melody?” Celeste knelt beside her instantly.

“I think... I’m gonna hurl,” Melody mumbled, her voice barely above a whisper. Her whole body was shaking now. Beads of sweat clung to her fur, and her eyes fluttered like she was fighting to stay present.

“That’s it,” Celeste said, voice soft but firm with an edge of desperation. “We need to get you some fresh air, love. Come on.”

She turned to the table, fumbling for steadiness. “Lumina—um—stay right here, sweetheart. Play a little longer with Skye for me, alright? I’ll be back before you notice.”

Lumina gave a tiny hum, nodding, though her ears twitched nervously. “’Kay. Don’t be gone forever.”

Skye looked up, blinking. “She’s overheating. Skin temperature up. Breathing irregular. Not sugar. Not just sugar.” He frowned, then added quietly, “Hallway’s bad, too. Loud. Dangerous.”

Arcade flicked his paw in a dismissive wave, still smirking faintly. “Unsportsmanlike to abandon mid-race, you know. But by all means—be heroic. Just don’t faint dramatically in the doorway; it’s tacky.”

Celeste supported Melody under the arm, helping her up. She felt like she was holding onto a furnace wrapped in trembling fluff. Each step toward the arcade doors felt heavier than the last, like the air was thickening with invisible syrup.

The corridor outside was worse.

People pressed along the walls in clumps—some pale and sweating, some sitting on the floor with their heads between their knees, some clutching their stomachs or half-eaten candy bags with shaking paws. A few were trying to laugh it off. Others looked genuinely frightened.

“Did you see what’s happening in the royal quarter?” someone whispered as Celeste passed.

Another voice answered, shaky and disbelieving, “Do you think it was real? Or some hologram?”

A third person gagged into a paper cup.

Farther down the corridor, more security were shoving through the crowd, and another pair of police rushed past at speed. Somewhere below them, from the lower levels of the convention, came another ragged burst of screams.

Celeste’s grip tightened around Melody. “Oh stars.”

Melody’s head lolled slightly, but her eyes kept darting toward her comm crystal.

When they reached the balcony doors and pushed through into the open air, the con’s artificial lights gave way to the cold sting of natural wind—but it didn’t help.

Because they weren’t alone.

The balcony was dotted with others—maybe a dozen con-goers, slumped against the railing or sitting in silence. Some clutched candy bags. Others just stared blankly at the skyline of Clawdiff.

Melody looked around sharply.

Not vaguely. Not dazedly.

Frantically.

Her gaze kept flicking from one corner of the balcony to the next, then toward the stairwell, then back to her comm crystal, like she was waiting for someone to come through the door and tell her this was all still under control.

Celeste noticed.

“Mel?”

Melody jumped, then forced a shaky little laugh, though her voice trembled at the edges. “I feel… really off. Like—worse than ‘oops-too-much-sugar’ off. What if I go full zombie right here? That’d be so meta.”

Celeste forced a soft chuckle, trying to keep her hands steady as she braced Melody’s weight. “Please don’t, love. I haven’t the constitution to be a main character in a survival horror.”

“Pfft. Imagine it though…” Melody wheezed, grinning faintly. “Me, the undead queen of ClawdiffCon. I’d still make it look cute.”

Celeste smiled at her—

Until the wind changed.

No.

Not a wind.

It hit like a wall.

A pulse.

A screaming, vibrating pressure—like a whistle from the sky had pierced the clouds and was now inside her head.

The sound was more than sound—it was static and electricity and dread, all rolled together. It seared through her fur and bones and set every hybrid cell inside her sparking.

Then silence.

A sudden, dead, choking silence.

Celeste’s knees buckled. She hit the floor with a gasp, hands bracing herself against the concrete tiles. The sky above—once grey with summer haze—was turning. Hardening. The clouds melted into a strange pink sheen like crystallized glass. And from somewhere across the skyline, a roar echoed out—inhuman, unrelenting, like the entire sky was screaming.

Celeste clutched her chest. Her insides twisted. Her magic, long buried beneath the microchip’s suppression, flared against her will—like it wanted out.

“Melody?” she croaked, turning.

Melody wasn’t speaking.

She wasn’t blinking.

“Mel?” Celeste reached out, tapped her friend’s shoulder.

Melody turned.

Her mouth hung slightly open.

Drool—thick, glowing, and blue—dripped down from the corner.

Her eyes—pure white. Glassy. Like the soul behind them had packed up and left.

“...Mel?”

Celeste backed up a step.

All around them, the others on the balcony were shifting in place.

Mouths slack.
Eyes wide and glowing.
Like something inside them had been... rewritten.

The promotional bonbons sat at their feet. Half-eaten. Glinting faintly in the hardening light.

Celeste’s breathing caught.

She didn’t whisper it—but she thought it, screamed it inside her head:

What is happening?

“This isn’t funny, Mel—p-please, come on now,” she begged, voice trembling as she backed away.

But Melody didn’t move.

Her white eyes shimmered under the warped pink sky, and that eerie, sticky drool was still sliding down her chin. Celeste’s foot hit something—an abandoned lanyard, maybe—and she stumbled.

That’s when the dog turned.

He’d been standing hunched over near the balcony railing, twitching violently. His fur had begun to change colour—his black and white spots were warping, darkening, melting into a glossy texture.

Celeste blinked—and realised his body was solidifying, like wax or... licorice?

His snout opened unnaturally wide.

And he lunged.

“NOPE!” Celeste squeaked, darting sideways as teeth snapped where her neck had been. She bolted for the doors, heart battering her ribs.

But before she could reach them, hands grabbed her wrists and slammed her against the wall.

“Mel—!” Celeste’s breath hitched.

Melody’s face was inches from hers, lips peeled back in a snarl. Her skin shimmered—crinkling, tearing—as if layers of gaudy wrapping paper were peeling across her arms.

“Snap out of it!” Celeste begged, struggling. “Please, Mel, fight it!”

For the briefest second, Melody’s jaw trembled. Her eyes flickered, the monster’s glaze breaking into something raw. Her voice cracked through the paper crinkle of her skin.

“H-help… me…”

A shadow loomed. Another zombie—its jaw dripping caramel strings—stumbled toward Celeste, maw opening.

“No!” Celeste twisted violently, shoving herself sideways, wriggling free of Melody’s grip just as teeth snapped shut where her shoulder had been.

She staggered back toward the balcony doors—

And the sky answered with a roar.

Not from the zombies.

From above.

Celeste looked up just in time to see Council dirigibles sweeping over Clawdiff’s skyline, their iron bellies lit with harsh searchlights, propellers snarling through the pink-hardening air. Their silhouettes loomed huge and cathedral-like against the warped clouds, black and gold and terrible, like floating fortresses dragged out for war.

Another roar shook the city.

Then something enormous flew across the street below.

A great gumball—bright, glossy, absurdly huge—whistled through the air and smashed into the side of a building with a deafening crack. Glass exploded outward in glittering sheets. Brick and sugarglass rained down into the road. Parked cars jolted, then were flung sideways as if kicked by an invisible giant, tumbling and screeching down the street below in sprays of sparks.

Celeste stared, breath caught in her throat.

Then—

A side door in the building below burst open.

A figure shot out into the open air.

A ragdoll hybrid.

Broad-shouldered. Fast. Horned.

For one impossible, wild heartbeat, Celeste was certain.

“Dad—?!”

The word tore out of her before she could stop it.

The figure arced through the chaos below, half-obscured by smoke and falling debris, and Celeste lurched forward, one hand already reaching—

Only for a pair of clawing hands to seize her from behind.

Zombies.

They dragged at her arms and coat, yanking her backward toward the balcony.

Celeste screamed.

“NO—LET GO—!”

Her fingers scraped uselessly toward the skyline, toward the street, toward the shape she had already lost in the chaos below.

Then the doors slammed shut behind her with a heavy, echoing bang.

The sound cut her off from the city.

From the dirigibles.

From the falling glass and screaming streets.

From whoever—or whatever—she had just seen.

And suddenly she was back in the corridor, breathless and shaking, with monsters closing in and no idea if she had truly seen her father—

or only wanted to.