Inside the Boltfire, the air hummed with restrained energy. Every surface flickered with diagnostic light as the crew went through their final pre-assault checks. Each movement was deliberate and precise, the rhythm of soldiers who had done this too many times to need words. The faint thrum of the ship’s engines filled the air like a heartbeat, steady and alive beneath the silence of preparation.

Vaeliyan stood near the forward ramp, helm tucked beneath one arm, his gaze locked on the view outside the canopy. The fog lay thick across the Wilds, a shifting blanket of silver and green, hiding the forest below and the jagged slope where the Whispering Cave waited. Even from here, it looked wrong, like the world itself was holding its breath around that dark wound in the hillside.

He exhaled once, slow and even. “Alright, before we move,” he said finally. His voice was calm but edged with something heavier than caution. “I need to walk in there first. Hopefully it’ll just look like some random passerby wandering into the cave. Just some random guy taking a detour… even if it’s a massive detour.”

He looked to Roan, who was seated near the rear bulkhead. “People do visit these so called one hundred wonders of Hemera, right? I just want to make sure I won’t look completely insane walking in there alone.”

Roan raised an eyebrow, his fingers pausing over his pad’s interface. “Not really,” he said. “The Whispering Cave’s technically a wonder, yeah, but it’s buried deep in the Wilds. There’s no civilization for miles in any direction. You only get travelers, tourist, tribesmen, or the kind of people who stopped fearing death a long time ago. The Cave does get visitors. Not often. Still, it’s not impossible someone might wander through. You’ll look strange, but not unreasonable. Odds are they’ll tell you to leave if they say anything at all before they try to kill you.”

Vaeliyan smiled faintly. “That’s all I needed to hear. I’ll change over to the real Warren and activate the Ghost Veil once I’m inside. Anyone watching through drones or sensors will just see atmospheric distortion. Even to the naked eye, I’ll be nothing more than a shimmer.”

Roan leaned back, crossing his arms. “You’re sure that’ll hold up against High Commander Ruka’s surveillance? She’s probably going to be watching every second of this.”

“Yeah,” Vaeliyan replied. “They know about my body mod. If anything, High Commander Ruka will assume the distortion is just interference from the cave’s echoing field. The Whispering Cave is a sensors worst nightmare, it seems to mess with sound, light, even perception. If I seem smaller or even fade, they’ll just write it off as a natural effect.” He gave a thin smile. “People always believe the simplest answer if it keeps the world tidy.”

Roan chuckled quietly. “Yeah. Nobody wants to overthink when they can blame the environment.”

“Exactly,” Vaeliyan said, relaxing slightly. “If I go in as Warren, no one will question it. High Command will likely assume I did it to infiltrate the cave without alerting the princedom to what is about to happen.”

He went silent for a long moment, the hum of the ship filling the gap. “I have a task to complete,” he said finally. “It’s tied to that cave. I don’t know what I’m supposed to find, but I know it's important. The rest of you stay sharp. If things go wrong, I’ll make sure every eye is on me before they ever find you.”

Jurpat’s voice came from the side of the compartment. “Understood. You play tourist, we’ll keep the welcome party ready.”

Vaeliyan chuckled once, dry and quiet. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

He stood in place as he active his body mod. The body mod rippled across him, and in an instant, Vaeliyan was gone. In his place stood Warren.

Warren adjusted his hood, as he stepped out of the Boltfire. The ramp lights shifted to white as the hatch unlocked. A gust of cold air swept through the cabin, carrying the scent of rain and stone. The Wilds and the future were waiting for him.

He hesitated only long enough to glance back at his squad. Fenn gave a curt nod, Sylen lifted her chin, and Chime raised a hand in wordless farewell.

He turned toward the ramp. The mist outside was thick, curling in pale sheets that clung to his jacket as he stepped forward. The first footfall hit the soil with a muted crunch. He could feel the damp air pressing against his skin.

He paused, and murmured to himself, “Let them think I’m just passing through.”

Then he walked into the pale light and vanished into the fog. The Boltfire faded behind him, leaving only the whisper of wind and the distant, living pulse of the Whispering Cave ahead.

Warren stepped inside the Whispering Cave, expecting noise or warning, anything that would prove this was the right place. Instead, the silence met him like a wall. No security, no waiting team, no hidden turrets in the dark, nothing. The quiet had weight to it, a suffocating kind that made him aware of every sound his boots made against the stone. He waited, listening, but the only reply was his own breathing and the distant hum of the Boltfire still cloaked somewhere outside.

He took a few more steps, adjusting his balance against the slick floor. “Hello?” he called. His voice didn’t carry the way he expected it to. “Is there anyone here?”

The echo returned, faint and uneven, the way it would in any ordinary cave. He frowned. “Maybe I’m in the wrong place? Is this the Whispering Cave? The one in the list of the Hundred Wonders?” He kept talking just to fill the space. “I’ve been walking for quite some time. I got dropped off in Nelpa, which is a shithole of a town, by the way, and they told me it was this direction. It looks kind of like it. I mean… cave! You’re supposed to echo!”

Still nothing. A faint, dull echo, but not the otherworldly resonance the legends described. Just the simple repetition of his own words dying a second too quickly. Warren stopped and squinted down the narrow tunnel ahead. Maybe the intel was wrong. Maybe they’d stumbled on the wrong landmark entirely. The place felt dead.

He pressed forward, irritation prickling in his chest. The tunnels wound deeper into the earth, spiraling slowly, leading him through passage after passage. Half a mile, maybe more, and still no one. No guards, no scientists, no pilgrims come to hear the echoes of the future. There was nothing. No crystals. Only raw stone and the echo of his boots.

He muttered under his breath, “This better not be another wild goose chase.” The air smelled faintly metallic, sharp in his lungs. Every few meters, his visor adjusted for the light that wasn’t there. The deeper he went, the more the pressure changed, barely perceptible, like standing at the bottom of an empty ocean.

At last, the corridor widened. He came to a door at the very end; a slab of polished metal fitted into ancient rock. Faint lines of light traced along the walls on both sides of the door, pulsing once every few seconds. Not natural.

He pulled the handle. The door swung open without a sound, revealing a metal stairway that led downward. And then he saw it.

The cavern beyond was immense, cathedral-sized, lit by color. Crystals of every hue grew in impossible clusters across the walls and ceiling, throwing back light in reds, purples, blues, and greens. They pulsed faintly, alive in the slow rhythm of a sleeping thing. It was beautiful and wrong all at once.

He scanned the space automatically, expecting movement, sound, anything alive. Still nothing. No guards, no explorers, no machines recording data. The emptiness felt deliberate. For the first time, he wondered if that was the point. Maybe this place was meant to be found alone.

He dropped the body mod for a moment, then released the veil, shifting back into his true self. The change was instantaneous, less than a flicker, but he still felt the pulse of the transition run through his nerves. He stepped forward as Warren, his real self.

The metal stairs rattled under his boots as he descended into the glow. The air thickened, carrying a subtle vibration that resonated inside his chest. When he reached the bottom, he stopped. The ground looked wet, rippling under the colored light, but when he touched it with the toe of his boot, it rang like glass. Not water, a single, flat sheet of crystalline surface that reflected him perfectly. The dust across its surface shifted like pale mist, scattering outward in concentric circles at his step. Each ripple glowed white for a heartbeat before fading back into stillness.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

He crouched and ran a hand over it. Bone dry. The temperature didn’t change. Every part of the cave felt tuned, like an instrument waiting for the first note.

Warren stood again, glancing up at the endless canopy of color above him. The silence pressed harder now. It wasn’t absence; it was anticipation. Something alive was holding its breath.

He opened his mouth to speak again, but before he could, a voice spoke back, his own. It came from everywhere at once, echoing off crystal and air until it became impossible to tell where it had started.

“Hello Warren, this is Warren,” it said.

He froze.

Warren was about to reply to, well, himself, before his future Echo told him, “There's no need for that. You can't really tell me anything I don't know, and I get it now. It's weird now that I'm on the other side. You know what the worst part about this is? You won't even get a sense of relief because you knew somebody else said every single thing you are about to say. So, it sucks. And that line actually sucks the most, because you kind of tell yourself, okay, you know what? Let's start over. Hello, Warren. It's Warren. This is such bullshit.”

He talked to himself. The Echo talked to itself.

“Alright, this whole thing is a massive paradox, and you're going to complete the loop. There's a few things here that you're going to need to know. First off, the mission. Let's talk about the mission. The facility is not in the Whispering Cave. The researchers do research on the cave itself, but the cave is a massive distortion field temporally. So, I'm not even sure how we figured this out, but apparently a version of us will figure out how this works. At least, so I'm told, by me telling you telling me telling you telling me telling you. Gods damn it. Why can't we be concise? This is one of the dumbest conversations I think I will ever have, and it's going to give me an aneurysm one day.”

“Okay, so the facility is used by the Princedom to research this anomaly. You will figure out what it is one day. I cannot explain it to you because it was not explained to me, so therefore you will not know. But you will figure it out is what the future us told me telling you, telling who that was me. You get it. It hurts my head. And the worst part again is the fact that I heard all of this and now I'm saying it. And every single word I'm saying is scripted, but it's real.”

“Anyways, back to the topic. Halfway down the tunnel that you came from, there's a small outcove. Inside that outcove is a stone that looks like every other stone around it, but it will feel different. Press on that stone, and then speak these words: Kilo-7-42-R-Alpha-Beta-2-6-8, Th, 5. A hatch should open beneath your feet, well, at your feet, but don't worry about that right now. What you need to know is that when you get down to the bottom there will be two ways to go. Turn left. The facility is extremely well guarded. As soon as you get down there it will kick off. Go left, go right, go left, left, right, up the ladder, through the crawlspace, down the third left passageway, then down the ladder again, turn right and there's a door. Behind that door is a person in there. That is the asset that you will need to grab.”

“I will explain to you: keep that thing sedated as long as you can because you don't want to deal with it if they wake up. They won't wake up because your going tell Chime to make sure, she heavily sedating it no matter. She has rhino tranquilizers, don't ask, you'll need to have her pump about fifteen of them into the thing to keep the thing down. She'll question that dosage saying it would kill a man instantly, even one as powerful as us, and you will say, ‘That's what I was told, and that's not a man there. That is something completely different. Don't fucking let it wake up.’”

“As soon as you get it back to Commander Ruka, get the fuck out of there. You do not want to know what the fuck that thing is. I truly mean it. When you find out what that thing is, you are going to shit bricks.”

After Warren heard that, he was about to start speaking the words back to himself, but the Echo cut him off once more, voice carrying that odd mix of exhaustion, clarity, and a kind of bitter humor that only came from knowing too much.

“So, that's the easy stuff. The super, super simple, easy thing to deal with. Here's the fucking shit. The stuff that you're gonna have a hard time dealing with. So, the gods can't see this place. They can't see us as Warren. They can’t even comprehend us in this exact moment. And we can't explain how we know this, but the gods themselves are not gods as we know them. They're not divine in the old sense. We've kind of suspected, especially after seeing Switch, that gods are not... they're not gods. They're entities. Things that have pushed beyond the threshold of mortality, of physics, of sanity, until they reached something that might as well be divine. But they're still playing a game that can't be won. And so, we're gonna have to cheat to win. This, right here, is where we start stacking the deck.”

He laughed, though it was the hollow laugh of someone aware of their own cosmic insignificance.

“And this is the first step along that... Well, Deck said it best. Cheating is the only way to win a game that was never meant to be won. They want you to win it, but they can't really help you win it. All they can do is hand you the path they were given. And yes, they were given a path. The only thing they do not realize is that their own path broke during their ascension. So, you will have to forge your own. We will forge our own path to the heavens. To that throne they covet but can never claim again. It’s the one rule we break that they can’t stop us from breaking.”

He paused, and the silence carried a strange weight, like even the air refused to echo what was being said.

“There is a moment where you will ask Steel for a boon. And for the first time in your existence, Steel will grow angry with you. It won’t be the kind of anger you’ve seen before. It’ll be the kind that forges worlds and shatters stars. When you say these words, ‘I ask for the last drop,’ every god will turn their attention to you. The other gods will arrive in her realm and condemn you. Only Switch and Umdar will stand by you, Umdar because he has no choice, and Switch because he’s tired of their lies. Umdar is your benefactor. He would have to defy the other gods for your benefit alone. And Switch, the god who never played and now finds himself playing, will finally lose his patience. He’ll tear through the game just to spite the rest.”

“The last drop is not something anyone is supposed to know about. It can only be told to someone who already knows. And because we know, something told us. But that something can only be us. It’s another thing like The Veil of Souls, you can’t ask for something you don’t know exists, and only someone who already knows can ask. Which means you’ll do what I did, because I did what you will. It’s infuriating, but it’s truth. Even Steel would not wish for you to have it. But we need it. And Umdar will make it possible, using some form of language that only they can speak. They’ll twist their own tongues to hide meaning from us because even their words could reveal too much.”

He sighed. “The gods are on our side, but don’t make the mistake of thinking they’re friends. They play their own game. They are trying to save humanity, I think, but only on their own terms. Most of them, at least. Which means you’ll be playing against them as much as you’re playing for them. That’s the balance of this whole fucking mess. You’re a piece on their board, but they don’t realize you’ve already learned to move yourself.”

He leaned closer to the unseen connection. “Oh, and you’re going to have to, at some point, say that line that Deck wrote, the one that makes me want to throw up even now thinking about saying it. But it does make it better knowing you’re already preparing for it. Also, you should start planning, because I’m planning. We’re both planning. To defeat him. Yeah... I’m gonna throw up.”

The Warren of the moment also felt sick hearing that line. He hated how the words crawled through him like prophecy. He realized that a lot of this wasn’t something he could outthink or fix. It would just sit there, waiting, until time caught up. But before he could speak, the future version of himself cut back in.

“I know what you’re thinking right now because I just thought it in that moment too. Don’t. You’ve got the idea of using one of those new threads of your mind to dissect this conversation. To analyze it like a strategy map. It won’t work. You’ll never figure out how this happened until you reach the moment that explains it all. And trust me, it’s easier to accept this as divine fuckery until then. Because once you know, everything changes. And it’s better to let it change naturally than to try and force it.”

The Echo hesitated before continuing, voice softening. “Alright, Warren. I’m about to go apparently kill a fuck ton of people who actually deserve it, and it’s going to be... fun. Apparently, there’s a surprise waiting for us, something that’ll make all this bullshit feel worth it. So, good luck. I’m about to go enjoy myself. And don’t forget to change back to Vaeliyan. There are security cameras down there. You know what happens if you’re seen.”

“Okay. This is Warren signing off. Good luck, Warren.”

A beat. Then one last echo.

“One last thing before I go. The class idea? Do it. It’s works better than you think it will. Trust in yourself.”

Warren waited for nearly a minute when there finally appeared to be no more echoes coming. The air in the cave felt heavier now, like the silence itself was waiting for him to respond. He drew in a breath, steadying his voice against the creeping unease crawling up his spine.

In his mind, he was seething. This was some fucking nonsense. Every part of this made him want to punch the walls until the cave collapsed. Talking to himself through time? Echoes that already knew what he was going to say? It was absurd, infuriating, and he hated how much it still made sense. He didn’t want to be part of some cosmic loop. He wanted to tell the universe to fuck off and let him breathe.

He began to speak the lines that he had memorized, and he felt it in his stomach that this was bullshit of the highest order. Every syllable came with a sense of artificial weight, like repeating someone else's lie while pretending it was his own truth. The lines themselves made him angry, not because of their meaning, but because he could feel the inevitability in them, the trap of destiny written in his own handwriting.

He couldn't even find the grim satisfaction of feeling the paradox twist around him. There was no clever irony, no intellectual thrill. Just irritation and exhaustion. The words had to be perfect, every pause, every hesitation, every stumble recreated exactly as he had heard them. All the little ums and ahs and moments of awkward human rhythm, he had to force them, to make them real, to make the lie sound alive.

By the time he reached the last word, he realized how much effort it took to sound like himself.