Above the stage, Bonbon moved one careful paw at a time.

The rafters were a maze of beams, hanging decorations, sugar-webbing, and old ventilation pipes wrapped in pink and blue candy floss. Below her, the playroom glowed softly beneath painted stars and dangling plush planets, but above it was darker—just enough shadow for a tiny panda to disappear into if she stayed small and quiet.

Which Bonbon was very good at.

Usually.

Tonight, there were zombies in the rafters too.

Small ones, mostly.

Sugar Rushers and half-melted candy things with hollow eyes, tangled in hanging decorations like insects caught in lace. One had gotten itself wedged between a fake moon and a support beam. Another crouched on a pipe chewing lazily on what looked like a plastic rocket. A third dragged itself through a curtain of floss on twitching little paws.

Bonbon froze.

The nearest one lifted its head.

For one awful second, Bonbon thought it had seen her.

Then she shut her eyes, pressed herself flatter against the beam, and began to sing under her breath.

Very softly.

Very shakily.

A little Welsh tune her mother used to hum when Bonbon had nightmares.

“Cwsg yn dawel, seren fach,
golau’r lloer uwch dy ben bach...
Paid ag ofni’r nos na’r gwynt,
mae cariad yma, paid â chrio’n dynn...”

Her voice was small and thin, but the mana in it moved like a lullaby through water.

The zombie on the pipe stilled.

The wedged one slumped lower against the beam.

The twitching little thing in the floss gave a sleepy chirr and sagged where it clung.

Bonbon kept singing.

Her paws trembled, but she kept going.

One step.

Then another.

Around a hanging plush comet.

Over a beam dusted with sugar.

Past a dangling cluster of fake stars and beneath a net full of old toy prizes.

The zombies near her softened as she passed, their jerking little movements slowing until they drooped in place, swaying gently as if rocked half asleep by the sound.

Bonbon sniffed.

She did not know exactly what she was doing.

Only that Celeste and the others were trapped, and Ray had done the cutty-hand thing, and strings needed cutting, and if grown-ups were going to be uselessly unconscious or tragically puppeted, then clearly this had become Bonbon’s problem.

Ahead, tucked against the far wall above the playroom set, she spotted a little storage cupboard built into the rafters—cheap wood, one crooked door, a star sticker half-peeled off the front.

Bonbon’s ears perked.

A cupboard meant tools.

Tools meant maybe scissors.

And scissors meant snip-snippy salvation.

She crawled toward it on paws and knees, humming all the while, and carefully worked the tiny latch.

The cupboard creaked open.

Inside was a clutter of old stage bits and maintenance junk: spare ribbons, dust masks, a broken flashlight, some glitter, a crayon tin, a screwdriver, a box of paper crowns, and—

Bonbon’s face lit up.

Scissors.

Silver craft scissors with blue handles.

Bonbon grabbed them in both paws like she had just discovered Excalibur for toddlers.

Below, the lights dimmed again.

The next game was beginning.

Hughes woke to applause.

Not real applause.

Convention applause.

That strange canned burst of clapping piped through event halls when someone won a prize or a panel ended or a mascot did something embarrassing in public.

It echoed all around him in short, distorted bursts.

He opened his eyes.

And for a moment, his heart simply stopped.

He was back at the convention.

Bright booth signs flashed overhead in impossible colours.

Holographic banners advertised manga bundles, prop swords, idol concerts, limited-edition hero figurines, and collectible dice. Candy wrappers crackled underfoot. Emergency lights pulsed red across the ceiling. Broken display screens flickered with static and grinning mascots. Somewhere nearby, someone screamed.

Then the scream cut out and became more applause.

Hughes sat up sharply.

He was dressed in a Victorian ringmaster’s outfit.

Crimson tailcoat.

Gold trim.

A high black collar.

Fitted gloves.

Tall boots polished to a shine.

A little top hat sat crooked on his head as if the room itself were mocking him.

He stared down at himself with exhausted offence.

“Oh, come on.”

A sign lit up overhead in thick candy-floss letters:

FIND THE CHILD.
KEEP YOUR HEAD.
LOSE YOUR BREATH, LOSE THE THREAD.

Then he saw him.

“Basil!”

A small boy in a hero cape darted past the end of the aisle.

Hughes lurched to his feet and went after him at once, heart hammering.

The convention was wrong.

Too bright. Too loud. Too crowded.

Cosplayers ran in circles without getting anywhere. Booth attendants smiled too widely. Mascot costumes stood frozen in the middle of aisles until Hughes looked away, then turned up somewhere else. Stalls sold hero figures with melted faces and comics whose pages looked damp with syrup.

“Basil!”

Another Basil ducked behind a plushie stand.

Another ran toward the arcade machines.

Another clutched a sweet packet and turned a corner just as Hughes reached him.

“Grandad?”

Hughes spun.

There.

A Basil with candy on his cheek stood near a gachapon machine.

Hughes hurried to him.

The boy turned.

It had Basil’s face.

But not Basil’s eyes.

Then it smiled with the Candy Floss Twins’ mouth and chirped,

“Too slow, Grandad.”

The crowd around Hughes laughed.

He staggered back.

And a voice drawled beside him, lazy and amused.

“Look at them all. Could be any of them. Could be none of them.”

Hughes turned sharply.

A second Hughes leaned against a merchandise rack like he was waiting for a bus.

He wore an old soldier’s coat with medals hanging carelessly from one side, gloves tucked into a belt, and a polished cane resting in one hand. He looked relaxed. Unbothered. Almost charming.

Like Hughes if he had decided nothing mattered enough to hurt.

Hughes hated him on sight.

“Where is he?”

The doppelganger shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“He’s my grandson.”

“People lose things at conventions all the time.”

Hughes’s jaw tightened. “Not him.”

“Mm.” The false Hughes gave the crowd a glance. “You say that now.”

Over the convention speakers, a voice crackled.

At first, it was only static.

Then—

“Dad?”

Hughes froze.

The voice came again, distorted by distance and speaker hiss.

“Where’s Basil?”

His son.

Hughes’s chest turned to ice.

“We trusted you.”

The crowd pressed closer.

Basils multiplied.

A boy at the toy stall.

A boy by the escalator.

A boy under a table.

A boy disappearing into a panel room.

“How could you lose him?”

Hughes’s breathing went ragged.

He pushed forward blindly, nearly knocking over a display of hero charms. “Basil!”

Every Basil in sight turned toward him.

“Grandad?”
“Grandad?”
“Grandad?”

Too many voices.

Too many wrong ones.

The convention folded.

The aisle canvas rippled overhead and suddenly Hughes was standing in a tent.

Sawdust beneath his boots.

Red and white stripes above.

Rows of pureblood officers watching from shadowed seats.

At the centre of the ring were two younger soldiers, bound and kneeling.

Hughes.

Bogmaw.

The whip cracked.

Hughes flinched as if the strike landed on his own back again.

Bogmaw—young still, furious, humiliated, burning with a hatred too bright to extinguish—looked at him through blood and sweat and shame.

“They used us.”

Younger Hughes, bleeding and steady, said through gritted teeth, “It’s done.”

Bogmaw snarled. “Done? They ruined us.”

“We need to move on.”

“No. We need to make them pay.”

The doppelganger circled the ring with lazy little taps of his cane.

“There he is,” he said pleasantly. “Good old Hughes. Call it the past. Tuck it away. Smile through the scars.”

Hughes looked away.

The tent snapped back into the convention.

The sudden shift made his head swim.

“Grandad?”

The voice was close this time.

Too close.

Hughes turned and nearly ran.

A Basil in a little cape stood by a limited-edition figurine stand.

Wrong eyes again.

Wrong smile.

The doppelganger stepped beside him and said quietly,

“Let him go.”

Hughes’s voice shook. “No.”

“Say it was chaos. Say the crowd took him. Say no one could’ve helped it.”

“No.”

“You’re good at that, aren’t you? Leaving things behind. Calling them history.”

Hughes’s breathing worsened.

He could hear it now—thin and quick and wrong in his own ears.

“This is different.”

“Is it?”

“This matters.”

The doppelganger smiled.

“So did Bogmaw.”

That one landed.

Because it was cruel.

And because it was not entirely false.

Hughes had moved on because he had needed to survive.

But he had buried a great deal with that survival.

He had called things the past because if he named all of them properly, they might crush him.

The crowd closed in.

Basils everywhere now.

A Basil with a plushie.

A Basil with a blue badge.

A Basil under a cosplay cape.

A Basil in tears.

A Basil laughing.

A Basil reaching.

“Grandad!”
“Help me!”
“You lost me!”
“Why did you leave me?”
“Grandad!”

Overhead, his son’s voice tore through the speakers again.

“How could you lose him? We trusted you.”

Hughes dropped to one knee.

One hand clutched at his chest.

The other caught the floor.

The false Hughes crouched beside him, cane across his knees.

“Say it.”

Hughes squeezed his eyes shut.

“Say it was in the past.”

He shook his head.

“Say you couldn’t help it.”

“No.”

“Say no one relies on you anyway.”

Hughes opened his eyes.

The crowd blurred at the edges.

His chest felt tight.

His hands trembled.

But the floor beneath his palm was real enough.

Solid.

Grounding.

He took one breath in.

Held it.

Let it out.

Then, because there was nothing else to do and panic was making everything worse, he started thinking about Basil properly.

Not the face.

Not the fear.

The child.

“His badge was blue,” Hughes said aloud.

The crowd flickered.

Three false Basils vanished.

The doppelganger’s smile thinned.

Hughes took another breath.

“He hates mascot heads.”

A row of costumed figures dissolved.

“He would not run toward the arcade. Too loud.”

More copies went out like blown candles.

“He hides when frightened,” Hughes said, rising slowly to his feet. “Low places. Under tables. Behind curtains.”

The convention aisle opened a fraction.

The crowd thinned.

The doppelganger stepped in front of him. “Careful. What if you’re wrong?”

Hughes’s hands still shook.

But he did not run.

“Then I look again.”

“What if he’s gone?”

“Then I keep looking.”

“What if your son hates you?”

That one hurt.

Hughes swallowed it.

“Then I answer him,” he said, voice rough but steady, “but not until I find the boy.”

The doppelganger’s expression sharpened.

“You can’t fix everything.”

Hughes straightened as much as his old bones allowed.

“No,” he said. “But I can do the next thing.”

Silence.

Then the convention shifted.

Not dramatically.

It did not explode or shatter or burn away.

It simply… parted.

Like it had been waiting for him to stop trying to search the entire sea and follow the one current that mattered.

At the far end of the aisle, beneath a drooping curtain from a ruined stage booth, a small hand appeared.

Clutching a blue badge.

And then, very small, frightened, and real in the way nothing else had been—

“Captain?”

Hughes’s throat closed.

He crossed the aisle slowly.

Not because he did not want to run.

Because he did.

But because running made the room lie.

Steady.

Useful.

Present.

He knelt and reached beneath the curtain.

His fingers brushed the badge.

Plastic.

Warm.

Real enough.

The doppelganger called after him, one last attempt at poison in his tone.

“Still pretending the past doesn’t matter?”

Hughes looked back over his shoulder.

“No,” he said. “I’m done pretending.”

The curtain blew open in a wash of starlight.

The convention dissolved.

The badge remained in his hand for one second longer before it turned to light.

Sugar-bright strands coiled gently around his wrists, not as restraints this time, but as guides.

They lifted him.

The room spun.

And Hughes stumbled out of the trial just in time to see another door opening across the playroom floor.

Arcade stood at its threshold.

The strings were already curling around him.

And it was his turn next.