Warren changed back to Vaeliyan and then brought up the body mod, putting the false Warren on top of Vaeliyan's frame. The transition was clinical and practiced, the kind of quiet monstrosity he no longer questioned. As he pushed out of the Whispering Cave, the echoes from his future self chased him like ghosts down the dark stone walls. Every word carried weight, and every weight he refused to carry. Prophecy was a pile of steaming bullshit, he reminded himself again, because it was easier than thinking about what might already be written.

Outside, the world waited with the smell of ozone, wet soil, and engine oil. The rain had tapered to a mist, thin enough to bead on the air, thick enough to keep secrets. Vaeliyan’s boots sank into the muddy slope as he crossed toward the cops where the Boltfire waited. The invisible ship shimmered faintly against the damp air, like a heat mirage pressed into shadow. He found the spot by memory, knocked once, and the sound disappeared into a dull hum. A second later, the hull folded open and Torman leaned out, his grin too casual for what they were about to do.

"So, what's the deal, Captain?" Torman asked, voice full of mock ceremony. He had a knack for taking every dangerous mission like it was the setup to a joke.

Vaeliyan raised an eyebrow. "So that’s the thing now? No Vael, no Vaeliyan, just Captain?" he said, wiping moisture from his brow.

Torman shrugged, the grin only growing wider as he said. "Yeah, it fits. You're kind of the Captain. The whole dark, brooding, probably-going-to-get-us-all-killed vibe really sells it."

Vaeliyan gave him a look that promised violence, but the smirk stayed on his lips. "You volunteering for first contact duty?" he asked dryly. "Anyways isn't Chime really the Captain of the ship?"

Before Torman could answer, the intercom crackled. Chime’s voice cut through, smooth, sharp, and dangerous. "No, no, let’s be clear. This is my ship. I’m the pilot. If anyone says otherwise, I will murder them and hide the bodies. This is my baby. But… in the end, yeah, you’re the Captain, Vael," Chime said.

Vaeliyan shook his head and stepped inside the ship, boots clanking against the metal deck. The interior lights flared to life in a cascade of gold and white. He looked over his squad, the Complaints Department, already geared up, simply buzzing with excitement. Jurpat checked his lance, Wesley argued with Xera something stupid, and Lessa sat quiet beside Momo’s compact form.

Vaeliyan’s tone turned commanding. "We’re moving out. I got what I needed. Operation starts now. We’re going in extremely hot. They’ll probably lock the facility down the moment they see us. We’ll come out of the mist in full Legion armor. Look sharp. Walk like High Imperators come to ruin everyone’s day," he said, his words steady, calm, and promising fire.

He looked over them all, the ghosts of their run in with the Neuman flickering behind his eyes. "As far as I’m concerned, everyone down there deserves what’s coming. Let’s go hand out some complaints."

A chorus of movement followed. "Let’s go, Captain!" the squad shouted in unison, their voices overlapping in a chaotic anthem.

Vaeliyan grinned and called toward the bridge, "Chime, you got any Rhino tranquilizers?"

Chime’s voice answered with amused disbelief. "Yeah, I’ve got them. Why? Planning to wrestle something again?"

Vaeliyan snorted. "Apparently, we’re going to need to sedate the asset. Fifteen doses, minimum."

That earned a pause long enough for even the ship’s air systems to sound nervous. "Captain, five would kill it. Hells, fifteen will kill us," Chime said, half laughing, half terrified.

Vaeliyan leaned against the bulkhead. "I know. But that’s what it’ll take to keep it down. We don’t want this thing waking up mid-op."

Chime sighed, exasperated and a little impressed. "All right, whatever you say, Captain. I’ll prep the injectors."

Vaeliyan nodded once. He turned back toward his squad. "All right, everybody. What are we?"

The response came as a roar, half laughter, half battle cry. "We are the Complaints Department!"

He felt it through the bond, the madness, the conviction that somehow this was what family looked like for people too broken to live normal lives. Vaeliyan smiled, sharp and tired. "Let’s go have some real fun," he said.

Vaeliyan and the Complaints Department stepped out of the Boltfire and into the mist, then pushed through the thin curtain of the Whispering Cave. The air inside tasted like cold stone and old promises. The living metal of their armor rippled faintly in response to the cave’s damp air, flexing like muscle as it adjusted to temperature and pressure. Footsteps were muffled; voices were swallowed. It felt like the world had taken a breath and held it.

"Hold up, I hear something. There's an alarm going off," Jurpat warned over the comms, voice tight and small at first.

"I don't hear anything," Wesley said, craning his head as if he could find sound the same way some people found maps.

Vaeliyan pulled his helmet back enough to laugh without sound. "That's one of Jurpat's new skills," Vaeliyan said. "His hearing is a lot better than ours. Helps him with his Soul Skill, I think."

Jurpat's reply was a short nod, even though no one could see it. "There should be a frequency you can all turn to, but it's probably not worth it. It's just an alarm. They know we are here," Jurpat explained.

Vaeliyan's grin went flat. "Good. We kind of are. Hopefully they are not calling for backup, but let's get the fuck down there. I want to hit something. That Neuman mess still has my blood boiling and I do not want to sit with that right now," Vaeliyan said.

"You mean we can hurt these guys without feeling bad about it?" Lessa asked, voice small and eager.

Vaeliyan shrugged. "Yeah. We can hurt them and still sleep tonight. My information is solid on this."

He pointed toward a shallow alcove in the cave wall. "This is the alcove. We just need to find a stone that looks like the others but feels different to the touch," Vaeliyan said. "It will take us a bit. Like looking for a needle in a bigger pile of needles."

Wesley ran his fingers along the nearest stones. "You know, that area-ping skill would be useful right now," Wesley said, annoyed.

Vaeliyan groaned and rubbed his temple. "Yeah, it would. We could requisition it from the Legion, but I did not think to ask. It is not on Dr. Wirk’s list of what fragments we should be looking to craft or obtain," Vaeliyan said.

They moved, methodical and cramped, thumb-sized lights cutting pale wreaths on the stone faces. Time slipped, measured in scraped palms and the soft curse of someone who missed a grip. It took longer than anyone wanted.

Suddenly, Sylen's hand slid along a stone she had not meant to find. She had been leaning to press against the wall, annoyed and impatient, and her palm skated off the smooth surface. The stone tilted under her touch in a way the other stones had not. It hummed a fraction of a degree lower and caught at the seam of her glove.

"Cousin?" Vaeliyan asked.

"I slipped," Sylen said, breathless and small, then without looking up she hooked her fingers and pushed. The whole block rocked. The space behind it breathed out like it had been holding its breath for years. A narrow passage opened, half-hidden in shadow.

"Nice work," Jurpat said, hitting the comms with a soft laugh.

Sylen wiped her hand on her thigh, annoyed and pleased at the same time. "I did not mean to. Stop acting like I planned it."

Vaeliyan raised a hand before they descended. "I'm taking point," Vaeliyan said. "Elian, Sylen, you're with me. Lessa and Ramis, prep demolitions. Chime, asset recovery."

"Yeah, I'm good with that, just send over the coordinates." She relied.

"Here you go." He flicked a ping from his AI to her. "Coordinates from my future self," he added, under his breath to low for anything to pick up.

Chime nodded. "Got them. I can follow this feed easy enough."

Vaeliyan tilted his head. "Roan, I have no idea how you’re going to get down here, though."

Roan looked at the incline, his voice low and miserable over the comms. "Yeah, this kinda sucks. I love my armor, but having four legs makes it difficult to go up and down stairs or ladders or… really anything designed for bipeds."

Lessa barked a laugh and turned toward him. "Your armor doesn’t have a different mode?"

Roan hesitated. "Honestly, I never really checked because it wasn’t that much of an issue before this."

Lessa slapped her helmet so hard it rang through the channel. "You’re a moron."

Roan groaned. "Okay, how do you do it then?"

Lessa lifted her arm and flexed her fingers. "I just think that I need my arms to switch, and they do. Try it."

Roan focused, thinking the same way. His armor twitched, a deep mechanical groan vibrating through the metal. The two hind limbs shifted first, plates folding like petals in reverse. The central housing that connected those hind legs split open, sliding forward and locking around his chest with a heavy magnetic clamp. The frame sealed over his torso, thickening the armor across his shoulders and ribs until he looked heavier, more reinforced. The two hind legs now hung folded against his back, jointed and motionless, their plating overlapping like dormant machinery. He looked bulkier now; a tank built to stand and crush rather than run.

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"Okay," Roan said after a long pause. "I am really, truly an idiot."

Xera crossed her arms. "I will be immortalizing this moment for posterities sake."

Roan’s voice cracked in alarm. "Please, please don't."

Sylen grinned beneath her visor. "Oh no. We’re remembering this forever. This is the best part of the day."

The rest of the Complaints Department agreed over the comms, laughing as Roan groaned audibly and trudged forward, armor clanking with every step.

As Vaeliyan spoke the code to unlock the hidden hatch, a low mechanical tone rolled through the cavern wall. The stone responded like something alive, seams splitting and sliding aside until a shaft yawned open before them. The stale air that rose out smelled like rust and rot, a breath from a buried world. Vaeliyan’s expression didn’t change. “Let’s see what kind of welcome they’ve got for us,” he said, and stepped onto the first rung of the ladder.

They descended one by one, armor gleaming dully in the red light that pulsed along the shaft. The sound of their movement was swallowed by the mist. Lessa climbed carefully, Momo’s compact body clinging to her back like a small mountain of fur and rock. Bastard balanced on Vaeliyan’s helmet, his tail flicking once every few seconds, calm in a way that only something inhuman could be. The living metal of their armor flexed subtly with each step.

Elian went second, close behind Vaeliyan. His Soul Skill pressed against the air, an invisible pressure that made the space around him heavier. Everyone felt it, the field that bent movement itself to his will. No one spoke as they descended, each step slower, steadier, like approaching the heartbeat of something sleeping beneath the world.

Halfway down, the air thickened. A vibration rippled through the shaft, a hum of weapon capacitors waking up. Vaeliyan raised a hand in warning just as the first barrage launched upward.

A storm of flechettes cut through the air, a silent wave of silver streaks moving faster than sight. The lances made no sound when they fired, just motion, clean and absolute. But not a single round reached the squad. Elian’s field expanded, catching the entire swarm mid-flight. The flechettes froze, hanging in perfect stillness before falling as a dull cascade of metal that clattered softly against the walls and floor.

Vaeliyan’s boots hit the bottom first. He looked across the hall, the red light of the facility flickering against the smooth black of his armor. Princedom guards crouched behind barricades, faces tight with tension and weapons still raised. They had expected to shred anything that came down that ladder.

Elian dropped beside him, his field still radiating that same invisible weight. “All intercepted,” he said quietly.

Ramis tilted his head toward the huddled Princedom guards and called out, voice dripping with mockery. “So that was it? You boys gonna try something else, or was that your best shot? Because that was garbage.”

A few of the guards twitched behind cover. Then another burst came, completely soundless, a wave of motion slicing toward the squad. Elian caught them again, freezing every flechette in midair before letting them drop into a growing pile at Ramis’s feet. The only noise in the corridor was the metallic patter of spent ammunition hitting the ground.

Elian looked at them, his tone dry. “Can you just give us a fucking moment? We’re obviously going to kill you all. It’d be better if you just stopped or ran.”

The silent barrage finally tapered off. The guards shifted behind their barricades, realizing they were achieving nothing. Even the man with the experimental lance deeper in the hall was still firing, his weapon whispering rather than roaring, silent beams that Elian caught and dropped like dust.

Ramis laughed and shook his head. “You lot are pathetic. Don’t get cute, hand over that lance and we might let a few of you walk away. Otherwise, we’ll take the whole damn pile.”

Elian watched the man with the lance in the distance, then shrugged. “That lance is interesting. We should take some home. Remember to grab them on our way out.”

Vaeliyan’s next words were quieter, almost private. “If there’s nothing truly heinous down here, I might let you live. But if there’s something we can’t let walk free, that changes everything.”

The guards exchanged nervous looks. One of them, a bigger man near the rear, stepped forward just a little, chest puffed, pretending confidence. He met Vaeliyan’s visor with eyes that were too wide.

Vaeliyan studied him. “You gonna let us into the facility, or are we all going to get messy?”

The big man swallowed. His jaw worked. He nodded once, quick and shaky, and then wetness soaked the front of his trousers. He dropped his lance, punched in the code to the door behind him, and he and his team politely excused themselves with an insane amount of speed.

The squad’s laughter was ugly and short. “Good choice,” Ramis said.

As they entered the heart of the Princedom facility, the corridor stretched forward, long, clean, and impossibly sterile. The air was filtered to perfection, the walls seamless and bright beneath the faint pulse of embedded light lines that ran along the edges like veins. Every step echoed with mechanical precision.

Sylen slowed her pace, boots whispering against the pristine floor. Behind her came the faint clatter of metal, soft but constant, like wind chimes in a windless room. She turned slightly, glancing over her shoulder at Fenn, and stopped just short of laughing. He trudged forward several steps behind, struggling under a ridiculous load of commandeered princedom lances. They hung from him at every angle, a tangle of polished psyro glass and steel, swinging against his armor as he walked. The sound of it carried down the hall, sharp, rhythmic, and painfully out of place in such a silent space.

He looked less like a Legionnaire and more like a coat rack that had decided to go on a mission. Every time one of the lances bumped his shoulder, he muttered something under his breath that was halfway between a curse and a prayer.

Sylen finally spoke, her tone dry enough to leave scratches. “So, you brought a long-distance thunder lance into a facility that’s nothing but corridors and turns?” she asked. “You realize there isn’t a straight line of sight anywhere down here, right?”

Fenn adjusted his hold, careful not to let one of the lances clatter to the ground. “You don’t know what’s down here,” he said, his voice defensive but calm. “Could open into a cavern. Could be a vault. Could be a mech knight waiting to wake up. And if there is, I’m gonna need Betty.”

Vaeliyan slowed his stride and turned, eyeing the overloaded spectacle of a man behind him. “It might happen,” he said evenly, the corner of his mouth twitching. “But how exactly are you planning to fire her while you’re carrying all of those?”

Fenn stopped, looking down at the pile of lances crisscrossing his chest and arms. His shoulders sagged a little. “...Working on it,” he muttered.

Lessa walked past him, shaking her head. “You’re not going to get Betty’s frame lined up for a clean shot down here. These halls curve every ten meters.”

Jurpat, walking just behind her, gave a low chuckle. “Betty deserves a real target, not some hallway fight.” His voice was steady, but there was respect in it.

Sylen gave a small smirk but didn’t add anything.

Fenn adjusted his grip again, shifting his balance as one of the lances tried to slip from his arm. “You’ll all regret laughing when she’s the reason we walk out of here,” he said. “Betty doesn’t miss.”

Vaeliyan chuckled softly, a rare sound, and gestured for the group to keep moving. “Let’s just hope there’s something down here worth using her on. Until then, try not to take out any walls or teammates by accident.”

Sylen fell back in step beside Fenn as they advanced, the echo of their boots falling into rhythm. The corridor seemed endless, bending in perfect ninety-degree turns every so often, each stretch identical to the last.

Lessa glanced around and muttered, “This place doesn’t even look used. It’s like they built it for people who were never supposed to touch it.”

Ramis grunted in agreement. “That tracks. Nobody builds something this clean for living things.”

Vaeliyan didn’t answer. He was watching the floor ahead, eyes sharp beneath his visor. There was something unnatural about the stillness, as if the air itself was listening. He finally said, “Eyes up. Keep your spacing. If it looks too perfect, it usually is.”

Fenn adjusted one last lance, the metal clinking softly. “If it comes down to it,” he said, “Betty’s got us.”

Varnai snorted. “We are not worried about you needing Betty, Fenn. We are worried about you not even being able to draw her. You have six lances in your arms and you look like a walking coat rack.”

Torman barked a short laugh. “This is how I die, by being smothered in someone else’s loot. You’re a pack rat with lances, and I swear, one wrong move and we’re all pinned under your inventory.”

Vaeliyan’s voice cut in, calm and sharp. “Drop one or two, reorganize. You can collect everything on the way out if it’s still there. Right now, don’t be the reason we can’t react.”

Fenn bristled, then sighed and shifted the weight, redistributing a couple of lances so his hands were freer. “Fine. I’ll pare it down,” he muttered.

The squad moved on in silence, the sterile corridor swallowing their sound. Only the faint click of the remaining lances followed them, like a heartbeat made of steel.

After another long stretch, Chime chimed in. “Vaeliyan, the coordinates you gave me don’t match up. There haven’t been any right turns or left turns, just this one stupidly long, winding hallway we’ve been walking down for five minutes now."

"I don’t even think we’re in the main facility yet." He replied. "Also, this is giving me the same feeling as those Green Zone stairs. I think I hate hallways now.”

Vaeliyan’s AI pinged begrudgingly in response, the tone almost sarcastic even without a voice. The display across his vision a simple text readout: No dream training for endless hallway is required.

The hallway finally ended, opening into the true heart of the Princedom facility. The air changed as they crossed the threshold, colder, stiller, too clean to feel natural. On either side of the long chamber were glass-walled rooms, each one lit from within by a pale white glow. Inside them hung rows of bodies suspended from metallic frames. The corpses swayed faintly, the slow motion of meat without breath.

Sylen stopped first. “What the hells...” she whispered.

They moved closer. The rooms were silent except for the low hum of unseen machinery. At the far end of each chamber, mechanical arms were pushing the bodies toward something that looked like a gateway, a circular frame filled with a haze that shimmered like heat off stone. Whatever process had started there was frozen mid-cycle. The first few bodies were half through, their faces turned to dust while their lower halves were still intact, clothes and bones crumbling into powder that drifted in the light.

Ramis muttered, “They’re not burning. They’re... aging.”

Before anyone could answer, movement flickered across the catwalks. Princedom soldiers snapped up from behind cover; lances aimed in perfect formation. The first volley hit the walls near Vaeliyan’s team, shards of glass scattering into the corridor.

“Contact!” Vaeliyan barked.

Fenn dropped the extra lances he’d been carrying, two of them clattering to the floor as he brought Betty into position. The air pulsed once, heavy with the promise of recoil.

Ramis fired first, his lance cutting a streak of white through the clean air. The soldiers fired back, the room exploding in flashes of light and moving shadows. Elian’s Soul Skill flared, catching the first wave of flechettes midflight, freezing them before they could touch the team.

“Take positions!” Vaeliyan shouted.

The sterile calm of the facility shattered under the storm of their assault.

Vaeliyan didn’t hesitate. “Xera, Wesley, Vexa, Leron, Ramis and Sylen. You’re with Chime. You know the plan!”

Chime’s voice came sharp and quick over comms. “Copy that. Styll, you’re with me.”

The silverback ferret bounded up onto her shoulder, eyes gleaming like moonlight on water. Chime and her team peeled off toward the right corridor, their armor lights vanishing into the glow of the facility.

Behind Vaeliyan Momo’s compact form expanded, her fur rippling into stone. Bastard followed, his black scales hardening to armor, his frame doubling in size until the air trembled around him.

Lessa’s voice cut through the flechette fire. “Momo clear the front!”

Vaeliyan call out to Bastard over the bond. “Help Momo push them back!”

The command was unnecessary. The bonds were already moving. Momo slammed forward, her pawprints cracking the floor as she charged the nearest line of guards. Bastard leapt after her, silent as night and twice as fast.

With Chime’s unit gone and the beasts unleashed, Vaeliyan shifted his stance. “We clear the entrance,” he said. “No one gets through until they finish their end.”