Mixie tried to grab the ladder rung, and their fingers passed straight through it. That was the problem with being half-ghost. Mixie was a small gremlin in a tattered tutu, wavy and see-through, gripping a spear that always felt more solid than they did. Every morning the hive climbed. The higher tiers held the workers who mattered, the ones the queen actually noticed. Mixie wanted that more than anything. They wanted the hive to see they existed. But their kind lived at the bottom, unseen, because their hands slipped through every handhold. Mixie stood at the base of their woven hive, a lumpy dwelling of glass bubbles and drifting wisps. Above, the higher tiers rose out of reach. Mixie jumped. Their hand went through the rope. They landed, jumped again, and fell right through a knotted branch. A worker climbed past overhead, never looking down. Mixie's throat tightened. Nobody looks at a thing they can't touch. Then Mixie saw the vine. It grew beside the hive, tall and skinny, a twist of bright purple stalks crowned with sharp tendrils. Real vines needed real hands. But snagged in its highest tendrils, something white caught the light. A grappling hook. It was built from bones, lashed together with cord, its hooked points curved and sharp. A creature must have dropped it, some climber from the solid world. Mixie stared. Bone was heavy, dense, old. Maybe old dead things held what living hands could not. Mixie's spear could reach it. They stretched up on their toes and hooked the spear tip under the grapple. It wobbled. Mixie's arms shook. Then the bone hook slid free and dropped. Mixie caught it. And the bones did not fall through. Their wavy fingers closed on the cord, and it held. Mixie's whole body jolted. For once, something stayed in their grip. High above, a screech split the air. A drake burst from the top tier, a butterfly-bird with spiked wings, flame curling from its beak. It swept low over the hive, hunting. Its fire lit the tiers gold. Workers scattered into their bubbles. Mixie should have hidden too. Instead they gripped the bone grapple and swung it up. The hooks bit into a knotted branch on the second tier. Mixie pulled. The cord stayed taut in their hands. They climbed, hand over hand, past the rung that had failed them, past the branch, up onto a tier they had never touched. Mixie stood on the second tier, breathing hard, the grapple warm in their fist. Then the drake turned. Its red eyes found the small ghost-gremlin standing where no ghost-gremlin belonged. It had noticed Mixie. And it opened its burning beak. Mixie had wanted to be seen. Now something was seeing them, and it was made of fire.