“Some recipes are locked for a reason. Some fires were never meant to be relit.” The chamber pulsed. Orange. Blue. Orange. Blue. Deep beneath Pastrypolis, the ancient oven—forgotten by most, buried by design—was waking. And the beat was getting faster. Aboveground Briefing At CES HQ, Captain Crumble stood before a flickering holo-map. Every dessert district glowed a shade warmer than it had the day before. “We’re looking at a citywide destabilization of the bakeplane.” Whip S

“Every dessert breaks differently. It’s what holds afterward that counts.” The map glowed. Five dessert sectors blinked red. The city’s crust wasn’t just cracking — it was thinning. And it started with the fillings. The First Collapse Sector 7 — Nougat Heights  — was the first to go. What began as a minor bubble in a crème brûlée surface became a sinkhole. A tart delivery cart vanished. The ground oozed caramel. CES was on-site in minutes. Crumble’s boots stuck to the syrup-s

“Glaze doesn’t lie. It reveals what’s beneath.” The light between Strawbrawler and Blue Bulk shimmered for hours. No words. No movement. Just presence. Pastry carts detoured. The crowd gave them space. Even the syrup lines beneath the street ran quiet. It was Strawbrawler who spoke first. “You felt it too, didn’t you?” Blue Bulk nodded once. “A fracture in the bake. Center-deep.” “You came down the mountain for this?” “I come down only when the core is out of balance.” A sile

Long before he was Strawbrawler, he was just another slice waiting to be discarded. It was late afternoon in Pastrypolis , and the food...