The white dragon led them through the broken streets of Clawdiff like a silent moon drifting through ruins.

She never rushed. She simply moved ahead in long, graceful sweeps, her shimmering white scales catching the pink light from the sky, her ribbon-gold mane trailing behind her in soft, floating arcs. Every so often she would glance back, yellow eyes bright and watchful, making sure they were still there. And each time the others hesitated, her answer was the same: a low, warm purr that rumbled through the road beneath their feet.

So they followed.

Past shattered tram lines and half-collapsed arcades.

Past council barricades melted into sugar heaps.

Past overturned mechs and cracked military crawlers, their armour split open like brittle shells. In some streets, the dead still moved—but not like the monsters that had attacked them before.

These were smaller.

Drone-like.

Thin little candy-zombies skittered between rubble on spindly legs, their bodies twitching with strange mechanical purpose. Some climbed walls like insects, pressing glistening lumps of syrup and hard candy into cracks in the stone. Others squatted in clusters around smashed cars, shaping glittering sugar around twisted metal frames as if building something. One of them paused beside a ruined lamp post and spat a neat stream of molten caramel into place before smoothing it with disturbingly delicate hands.

Arcade slowed, staring.

“That’s weird,” he muttered.

Mezzo glanced at one that was carefully wrapping liquorice strands around a broken bus stop. “Everything here is weird.”

“No, I mean weird weird.” Arcade adjusted his glasses, frowning harder. “They’re not just wandering. They’re growing it. Expanding it. Look—they’re making more candy.”

Skye peered up at a cluster of tiny sugar-things weaving crystalline threads between two buildings. “Like spiders,” he mumbled. “If spiders were designed by a child with a fever.”

Ray wasn’t there to make a comment this time.

The absence of her felt strangely loud.

Celeste tightened her hold on Bonbon and kept Lumina close as they moved on, stepping around glossy puddles of syrup and strange gummy growths that pulsed faintly underfoot. The deeper they went, the less Clawdiff felt like a city at all.

It felt as if something was digesting it.

Ahead of them, the skyline shifted.

Through the candy-choked trees and leaning lamp posts, the old silhouette of abandoned Clawdiff Castle rose on its hill at the edge of Beauty Park—dark, cracked, and half-swallowed by twisting vines. Its towers stood broken against the pink sky, windows black and empty, as though the city’s old heart had simply given up and let the sweetness consume it.

The white dragon slowed.

Then stopped.

She stood near the grounds below the ruined castle, in a patch of half-dead earth where the grass had not yet turned fully to sherbet and sugar. Her head tilted once. Then, to everyone’s confusion, she began to dig.

Mezzo blinked. “Is she… burying us?”

“Don’t joke,” Celeste whispered.

The dragon dug with deliberate care, great pastel claws tearing through the soil as though she knew exactly what she was looking for—or where it ought to go. Dirt and old roots flew behind her. She purred all the while, a deep, contented sound that seemed completely at odds with the broken city around them.

Then she paused.

Lifted her head.

And coughed.

Something bright and smooth dropped from her mouth into the hole.

It was a capsule, pale and gleaming, shaped almost like an egg. Not candy. Not quite metal. Its surface shimmered with that same pearly, folded iridescence as her scales, and faint lines of pastel light ran beneath its shell like sleeping veins.

The group stared.

Mezzo opened his mouth.

Closed it again.

The dragon lowered her head and nudged the capsule more carefully into place. Then she began pushing the soil back over it with almost reverent gentleness, burying it completely. When the earth was smoothed over, she placed one great paw on top of it and bent her head low.

She made a small sound then.

Not a roar.

Not a growl.

A soft, almost absent little meow—like something spoken to herself.

Celeste felt her chest tighten.

The earth shuddered.

At first it was only a tremble beneath their boots. Then the ground split with a low crack. A shoot pushed upward from beneath the dragon’s paw—pale white at first, translucent as sugar glass. It thickened as they watched, swelling into a trunk in seconds, bark spiralling outward in ruby-red curls and ribbon-like ridges. Branches burst from it in a whirl of motion, unfurling high above them. Cotton-candy leaves bloomed in clusters of pink and silver. Sugar-glass blossoms opened like stars, catching the warped sky in their mirrored petals.

And the tree kept growing.

Higher.

Wider.

Its roots spread beneath the ruined park, pushing through caramel grass and liquorice ferns until it towered over them all, radiant and strange and impossibly alive beside the abandoned castle.

The white dragon stepped back, watching it with quiet satisfaction.

Then she turned her yellow eyes to them, as if to say: There. Safe enough.

As they ventured deeper into Beauty Park, Celeste couldn’t help but marvel at the surreal beauty of it all.

The once-familiar green lawns were now shades of sherbet orange and lime green, and the trees had been overtaken by twisting candy canes and rainbow-coloured vines. In the air, glittering butterflies with crystal wings flitted between flower petals that shimmered like gumdrops. Strange jelly frogs, translucent and wobbly, bounced between oversized peppermint lilies, croaking softly in musical tones.

Bonbon and Lumina ran ahead, giggling as they chased after the glowing creatures. Their laughter echoed through the sweet-twisted forest, the sound like sunlight piercing through the strange world around them.

Then they saw the tree stop growing.

Now, In the centre of the park, nestled in a glade of caramel grass and liquorice ferns, stood a giant candy egg—easily the size of a four-storey house. It shimmered in pastel hues, wrapped tightly in the winding limbs of a liquorice tree, its bark ruby red and studded with glistening sugar-glass blossoms, each one reflecting the sky like a mirror. Its cotton-candy leaves rustled gently, sending threads of sweetness floating on the wind.

Biscuit steps, soft but sturdy, led up to a crack in the sugar-shell egg—just wide enough to slip through.

“Ohh… it’s… it’s really lovely, isn’t it? Like—like something out of a storybook, only you can actually touch it.”

Mezzo bounded up beside her, tail swishing like mad, his grin contagious.
“Feckin’ hell, this is brilliant! Like a secret base. Y’know, the kind you swore you’d build in the back garden when you were ten, with, like, biscuit walls and no parents allowed.”

Celeste giggled, covering her mouth with one paw. “Yes! Exactly that! Oh, it’s—oh dear, I want to see inside right now.” She bounced on her heels, then darted up the cookie steps, brushing her hand over the sugar-glazed railing like it might vanish if she didn’t.

Mezzo raced after her, boots clacking, practically vibrating with excitement. They stopped at the entrance together, breathless, wide-eyed.

“Ready to explore?” Celeste asked shyly, voice small but bright.

Mezzo smirked, tail flicking. “Always. If we die in here, at least it’ll be tasty.”

As the group prepared to step inside, the sugary wind rustled through the candy trees behind them—as if the park itself was watching.

Arcade, last up the steps, adjusted his glasses with a tired sniff. He looked from the giant egg, to the impossible tree, to the dragon, to the glowing park beyond, and gave a helpless little shake of his head.
“I have no idea how I’m supposed to keep up with all this.”

As if in answer, the white dragon made a strange face.

Then she coughed.

Not delicately, either. A proper, chesty dragon cough.

Something shot from her mouth in a glittering arc and landed on the biscuit steps with a soft tok.

Everyone stared.

It was a capsule—smooth and egg-shaped, pale and iridescent, its shell gleaming like folded pearl paper.

Celeste blinked. “Oh. Alright.”

The dragon nudged it toward her with one pastel claw.

Very carefully, Celeste crouched and picked it up. The thing was warm in her hands, almost humming. She pressed at the seam and it clicked open like a locket.

Something dropped out into her lap.

A book.

A heavy one.

Its cover looked as though it had been made from compressed biscuit crumble polished smooth, inlaid with tiny gemstones that caught the light in sugary little sparks. Along the edges ran a licorice-red trim, rich and glossy as sealing wax. The whole thing looked half sacred relic, half children’s annual.

Arcade leaned over her shoulder at once.

On the front, embossed in cheerful, unapologetic lettering, were the words:

Nommiepedia

Arcade stared at it for a long second.

Then he deadpanned, “That is such an obvious title.”

The dragon gave a faint shrug, as if to say: yes, and?

Mezzo burst out laughing. “I kinda love that she coughed up a manual.”

Celeste ran her fingers gently over the cover. “It’s… oddly comforting?”

Arcade took the book the instant she let him and flipped it open with the hunger of someone who would absolutely trust a mystery encyclopedia before trusting his own instincts.

The pages shimmered.

Then the inside changed.

Instead of text, a glowing display unfolded across the paper—part map, part menu, part something Arcade could not immediately classify. A little image of the base appeared first, rendered in tiny glowing lines: the great candy egg, the surrounding tree, the park, and the nearby grounds laid out as if the book had already claimed it all.

Arcade’s ears twitched. “That’s new.”

The page shifted again.

A heading appeared:

PARTY MEMBERS

Below it, names began arranging themselves in neat glowing rows.

Celeste
Mezzo
Lumina
Bonbon
Arcade
Skye
Pitch — Out of Range
Ray — Out of Range

Arcade frowned.

Mezzo leaned over so far he nearly headbutted him. “Wait, Tay’s on there? And Ray?”

“They’re not here,” Lumina said quietly.

“I can see that,” Arcade muttered. He tapped the words Out of Range with one claw. They pulsed once but did not explain themselves. His frown deepened. “I don’t know what that means.”

Skye peered at the page from under his fringe. “Maybe it means too far away.”

Arcade gave him a look. “Thank you, oracle of the obvious.”

Mezzo grinned. “Says the lad reading a book called Nommiepedia.”

Arcade ignored him, still staring at the page. For all his sarcasm, there was something uneasy in his voice now. “No, I mean specifically. Out of range of what? The base? The system? Celeste? Why are they still listed at all if they’ve gone?”

That took the bounce out of the moment.

Celeste hugged her arms around herself, glancing back toward the park beyond the steps. “At least they’re still… somewhere,” she said softly. “If it can still find them.”

The dragon let out a low, reassuring purr behind them.

Bonbon, who had been peering up from Celeste’s side with wide eyes, pointed at the glowing page and whispered, “Book know friends.”

No one had a better explanation than that.

Arcade slowly closed the cover halfway, still frowning at it like it had personally offended science. “I hate everything about how useful this is.”

“Well,” Mezzo said, clapping him on the shoulder, “congratulations, egghead. We’ve got a base, a dragon, and a haunted cookbook with social tracking.”

“It is not a cookbook.”

“Yet.”

The group stepped inside the giant egg, and immediately a wave of sweet warmth and subtle vanilla hit them—not overwhelming, but oddly comforting. The walls were a pastel chocolate, soft in hue but oddly firm and warm to the touch, with the grain and polish of wood, defying all known material logic.

Arcade ran his fingers across the surface, then glanced down at the book in his hands, then back at the room.
“This… shouldn’t be possible,” he murmured. “Candy with structural integrity and wood-like properties? A living base? A dragon-delivered encyclopedia? This breaks every law I know.”

Mezzo snorted. “Maybe the laws are takin’ the day off.”

Arcade looked at the walls, the book, the glowing map, and the impossible safety of the place around them.

Then he sighed.

“I really, really hate it when he’s right.”