The Grand Archive of Clawdiff towered over them—foreboding and silent. Its statues, once dignified representations of Clawdiff’s founders, were now smeared with gum, candyfloss, and congealed caramel. Like everything else in the city, it had been warped by the sweet corruption.

Inside, the building was eerily abandoned. Rows of old terminals blinked lifelessly. Papers littered the floor, and the faint smell of burnt sugar hung in the air.

Arcade marched straight to the central console, muttering under his breath. He jabbed the screen. Dead. Flipped a manual switch. Still dead.

“Of course,” he sighed, voice dripping with dry disdain. “Why would anything in this candy-coated hellhole work the first time?” His quills snapped faintly with static, irritation bleeding into sparks.

Then—bzzt. The console flickered, lights stuttering to life.

Everyone turned.

Skye tilted his head, ears twitching. “...Did you just… tase the computer back awake?”

Arcade blinked, then smirked. “Apparently. Add ‘defibrillator’ to my CV.”

Without missing a beat, he bent over the console, claws flying across the interface. What should’ve been a labyrinth of broken code and firewalls dissolved like wet paper under his touch.

Celeste watched, her hands fidgeting with her sleeve hem. “That looks… complicated.”

Arcade snorted softly. “For anyone else, sure. For me? It’s like sudoku for toddlers.”

He didn’t look up, but his muzzle twitched in amusement. “By the way… you strike me as the kind of girl who plays the worst romance routes in every game. All the tragic ones. Am I wrong?”

Celeste blinked, then let out a surprised, soft laugh. “Oh—oh, Stars, no, you’re… you’re right. Absolutely right.”

Arcade grinned sideways. “Thought so. Anime.”

She tilted her head, confused. “Anime…?”

“That’s your nickname now. What I’ll yell when you inevitably mess something up.”

Celeste’s eyes widened. Her tail flicked nervously. And then—without thinking—she gasped. “Y-your nickname should be Static!”

Arcade froze mid-command. His goggles lifted just enough for her to catch the flicker of surprise in his eyes.

Celeste flushed red, words tumbling over each other. “S-sorry! I only meant, um—you zapped the system, and it worked, so… Static. It made sense in my head—”

Arcade chuckled. A short, genuine sound. “No, that’s actually clever. Static. Huh. I’ll allow it.”

Celeste’s breath caught, then she smiled shyly, hope blooming behind her embarrassment. Maybe… just maybe… she’d made a new friend.

Of course, Mezzo ruined it by leaning over with his usual grin, tapping her nose with a paw. “Oi, hang on—where’s my nickname, princess? Don’t leave your favourite dalmatian out.”

Celeste giggled, eyes darting away bashfully. “Um… Spots?”

Mezzo reared back like she’d stabbed him. “Spots?! Ach, that’s bloody obvious! Predictable as shite!” He paused, grinned. “...I’ll take it anyway. From you.” He winked, tail flicking smugly.

Celeste covered her mouth as she giggled again, cheeks pink.

For the first time in hours, the air felt lighter. Almost normal.

But the archive itself was a nightmare. Shelves toppled, databanks mislabeled, corrupted memory feeds stacked like spaghetti code.

Arcade groaned, throwing up his hands. “Of course. It looks like someone let toddlers drunk on sherbet design a filing system.”

He tapped his wrist. With a shimmer of light, his little robot unfolded, antenna spinning.

“Chip, catalogue by keyword priority: city layout, power grid, dimensional rifts, anomalies. In ascending order of not killing us instantly.”

C.H.I.P. beeped cheerfully. “Ah, yes. Just a light errand through the apocalypse. I’ll try not to die before I alphabetise it.”

Then he waddled off into the chaos.

Celeste folded her arms, sighing. “Do I ever get any privacy again?”

C.H.I.P. smirked without looking up. “Not while I’m in the room, Anime.”

Celeste rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth curved upward as she found an old wooden chair intact. She gently set Bonbon in it. The toddler yawned, curled up with her mask, and drifted off instantly—oblivious to the storm around them.

Ray the fox leaned against the wall, clearly uninterested in the whole operation. She scrolled aimlessly through her dead coms crystal, more out of habit than hope. Every so often, her violet eyes flicked toward the entrance as if she were planning an escape. She kept tugging at her loose necktie, fidgeting restlessly.

Arcade, meanwhile, was in his element. His fingers danced over the dusty keyboard, eyes darting between screens. He summoned his robot companion, C.H.I.P, which beeped steadily beside him with each uploaded file, its mechanical arms organizing data faster than any of them could.

Celeste lingered by the shelves, fiddling with a loose ribbon on her sleeve. She glanced over at Mezzo—who was standing on a desk, tossing papers into the air like confetti.

“You’re… really not helping,” she said gently, a little exasperated.

Mezzo grinned, wagging his tail. “Sure I am, lass. Helpin’ morale. Everyone loves a paper storm!”

Celeste pressed her lips together, fighting a smile. “You’re insufferable.”

“Thank ye kindly.”

In the far corner, Lumina hugged her knees, her voice small. “I miss home…”

Skye sat cross-legged beside her, flipping a card through his fingers. “Yeah. I miss my Grandma.”

Lumina tilted her head. “What about your mum or dad?”

Skye froze. His ears twitched, eyes going distant, shutters slamming down behind them. He said nothing—didn’t even blink—until Lumina hummed softly and changed the subject.

Mezzo flopped back into a chair, stretching like he’d just run a marathon. “So then…” he said, wagging his brows at Celeste, “what d’you reckon Ray’s nickname oughta be?”

Ray didn’t even glance up from her corner. “Don’t. Even. Think about it.”

Celeste leaned toward Mezzo, covering her mouth with her paw like a conspirator. “...Sunshine.”

Mezzo blinked. “Sunshine?”

Celeste giggled softly. “Because she’s like… a ray of sunshine.”

Ray’s eyes snapped up, glowing faintly violet. “Say that again, and I’ll show you exactly where to shove the sunshine.”

Mezzo barked a laugh. “Ooooh, that wasn’t a no! Progress!”

“Try it, Spots,” Ray growled, “and you’ll be coughin’ glitter for a week.”
But the twitch at the corner of her mouth betrayed her. She didn’t quite hate it.

At the main console, Arcade stopped mid-command, his eyes narrowing. He muttered something to himself before pulling a batch of decrypted files into order. He tossed them onto the table with a flick of his wrist.

“Alright,” he said, adjusting his glasses as the screens flickered across his face, “the Council stopped all outgoing transmissions just after three p.m. Sharp cutoff. Total blackout.”

That got everyone’s attention.

Even Ray looked up.

Arcade tapped the screen again, pulling up fractured bits of video and half-corrupted reports. “From what I can gather, there was some kind of diplomatic meeting in Clawdiff today. Delegates from all over Prydain. Apparently they were discussing unifying against a threat.”

Ray popped a piece of chewing gum into her mouth, jaw working lazily. “What threat?”

Arcade frowned. “I’m not sure. Whatever it was, they knew something we didn’t.”

Mezzo stopped mid-paper toss. “That’s comforting.”

“It gets worse,” Arcade said flatly. “All the noble houses had sent representatives. Big names. Important ones. Which means whatever this was, it mattered.”

Celeste felt her stomach tighten.

Arcade kept going, eyes scanning the feed as C.H.I.P. helpfully projected bits of recovered footage beside him. “Then the Silver Arrows were called in from training. According to the logs, they were sent to retrieve something. Or someone. The records cut around there.”

“The Silver Arrows?” Celeste said, suddenly pale.

Arcade glanced up. “You know them?”

Celeste swallowed. “I… I think my dad is one.”

Arcade blinked.

Then, to Celeste’s obvious confusion, he gave a short incredulous laugh.

Mezzo looked between them. “Wait, are they a band or—?”

Arcade dragged a paw down his face. “No. Special ops. They work for noble houses. Hybrid unit. The only one allowed to keep their features because they’re useful.” He flicked his gaze toward Celeste. “But you’re a hybrid, so your dad’s probably a mythic in the Bronze Arrows or something similar.”

Celeste frowned at once. “Are you sure? I’m sure my dad is one.”

Arcade sighed, already turning back to the terminal. “We came here to find answers, so fine. I’ll look at anything related while I’m here.” He paused, fingers poised above the keys. “What’s your last name again?”

“Astallan,” Celeste said quickly. “Celeste Astallan.”

Arcade’s ears twitched. “No problem. I’ll search that first.” His voice softened by a fraction. “And I’ll look for the panda’s mum after that.”

Bonbon stirred sleepily in the chair, hugging her mask tighter.

Ray leaned her hip against the wall, arms crossed. “Anything else cheerful in there?”

Arcade’s expression darkened as he brought up one last broken clip. “There’s one more thing.”

The room went still.

He enlarged the footage. The picture was almost unusable—grainy, flickering, barely holding together—but it showed the bay, the water churning violently, the whole city shaking.

“Then those zombie generals burst out from under Clawdiff Bay,” Arcade said quietly.

Lumina made a tiny frightened sound.

Arcade leaned closer to the screen, eyes narrowing. “And right before the feed cuts out…” He pointed. “There. Someone was standing near the waterfront. They had some kind of device. I can’t tell what it was. But it looked deliberate.”

The screen glitched.

Fizzed.

Died.

“And then the feed cuts off,” Arcade finished.

Silence pressed over the archive for a moment.

Skye’s card slipped from his fingers and landed face-down in his lap.

Mezzo let out a slow breath. “So basically, the city exploded, the nobles hid, the military got flattened, and some mystery eejit was pressin’ buttons by the bay.”

“Broadly speaking,” Arcade said, “yes.”

Celeste wrapped her arms around herself. “If my dad was there…”

No one finished that thought.

Arcade looked back to the darkened windows, where the sugar-stained twilight was giving way to night. “Anyway,” he said, brisker now, like he was trying to outrun the mood, “I say we head somewhere safe. It’s getting dark now.”

Ray snorted softly. “Safe. In Clawdiff. Cute.”

Mezzo hopped off the desk, brushing paper from his coat. “Mall still sounds less murdery than outside.”

Lumina edged closer to Celeste. Bonbon snored faintly in her chair.

Arcade shut the file with a hard tap. “Then we move while we still can.”

Quietly slipping away from the others, Celeste stepped onto a narrow balcony overlooking the lower floor of the archive. The night air was still, sticky with the scent of sugar and something sour beneath it. She placed her hands on the cold railing and sighed.

That’s when she saw it.

A flicker of movement in the distance.

Just beyond the edge of the ruined mall, through the cracked sugar-glass windows—stood a figure. Cloaked in shadows, its feline form unmistakable. Sharp ears, tufted face, a long tail. A lynx. Watching.

Their eyes met, and for a brief moment, Celeste swore the figure tilted its head in recognition—then it was gone.

Her breath hitched.

She backed away slowly, the weight of missing records, altered memories, and now strange observers pressing in around her.

She was being watched.

Celeste’s eyes widened.

That lynx… it wasn’t just familiar—it was the lynx. The one that had vanished from the convention just before all of this began. Before the candy, the monsters, the madness.

Without thinking, she broke into a sprint, boots echoing against marble-sticky floors as she rushed down the hallway where the figure had stood. The scent of caramel and dust clung to the stale air. But the hallway was empty—no sound, no shadow. The lynx had vanished again.

“Oh bother,” she whispered, scanning every corner, listening for even a footstep.

Her eyes fell to something on the floor.

A folder.

It hadn’t been there before. Carefully, she picked it up, brushing off a sticky smudge of jelly residue. Across the front, stamped in worn red ink:

TEMPEST

Her heartbeat quickened. That word sparked something—she wasn’t sure what. A memory? A warning?

She flipped the folder open.

Empty. Except for a single slip of paper. On it, written in crisp, mechanical type:
Coordinates: 51.4816° N, 3.1791° W

Underneath, scribbled in faint graphite, a second word:
“CA-72.”

She stared, mind racing. The coordinates... they were familiar. Arcade might be able to trace them, but she had a gut feeling—they led somewhere important.

She glanced back down the hall. No sign of the lynx. No sign of anything.

Just questions piling on top of questions.

Celeste tucked the paper into her bag and rejoined the others, eyes darker now, jaw set.

Something was coming together. She didn’t know what Tempest meant yet—but it was tied to her, to this twisted version of Clawdiff, and to whoever—or whatever—that lynx was.