The corridor ahead curved downward into the earth, vanishing into a gloom that pulsed with deep mechanical breath. Veiss’s body lay still behind them, but his words lingered like smoke in their ears.

  Two paths split from the main hallway—left and right, like arteries leading into separate chambers of something long-dead and dreaming.

  They stopped at the fork. The left path was narrower, carved by tools rather than nature. Its walls bore faint scorch marks and the occasional embedded sensor panel—long dead or dormant. The right path was wider, reinforced with metal beams and faded warning glyphs, partially obscured by dust and time.

  “Well,” Ramm muttered, peering down both, “I vote neither.”

  Brinn grunted. “You don’t get a vote after poking the robot army.”

  Sai stood silently between the two paths, head slightly tilted. “Left first. Feels quieter.”

  Jarek nodded, but turned toward Pepe. “Survey route?”

  Pepe spun in the air with a loud, exaggerated sigh. “Oh great. Send the floaty sidekick into the cave of doom. Again. I’m not even rated for spelunking.”

  “You’re rated for sarcasm and recon,” Jarek replied. “You’ll manage.”

  “Fine,” Pepe said, blinking his lights dramatically. “But if I die, I want my processors buried in a shrine made of Ramm’s shattered dignity.”

  Ramm rolled his eyes. “You’ll be fine, toaster.”

  With a grumble of servos and one last exaggerated huff, Pepe floated down the left corridor, muttering the whole way. The walls narrowed, the light dimmed, and soon, his voice crackled softly over their comms.

  “Alright, team, I’m descending into what appears to be the less bloodstained of the death tunnels. Congratulations on picking the one that probably doesn’t eat souls. So far.”

  The corridor twisted downward, steeper with every meter. Pepe passed a series of heavy cables embedded in the walls—old conduit lines that pulsed faintly with residual energy. Moss-like corrosion coated their sides, and a soft mechanical hum echoed from somewhere deeper within.

  “Visual update: it’s damp, dark, and depressingly devoid of décor. Whoever designed this place clearly hated lighting design and life.”

  Then, the corridor abruptly ended.

  Or, more accurately—it dropped.

  The ground gave way into a vertical shaft, wide enough to fit a small building. The stone and metal walls expanded outward, and the dim corridor opened into a massive abyss. Below, in the deep dark, faint lights blinked—red, blue, and a strange violet hue that shimmered like starlight on water.

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  Pepe paused at the edge.

  “Okay. So... the floor just gave up on being a floor. I am now hovering above what looks like a giant elevator shaft, or the abandoned lair of a particularly minimalist god. Going down.”

  He descended carefully, servos adjusting to the shift in pressure and gravity. The vertical shaft extended a good hundred meters before flattening out into a vast subterranean chamber—and when he emerged, the full scale of what lay beneath hit him.

  “Uh... Jarek? We might have a problem.”

  Before him lay a hangar. Not just large—colossal. Big enough to house a fleet. The ceiling arched like the ribs of a buried beast, struts stretching to the far walls, lined with rusted catwalks and blinking hazard lights. Giant bulkhead doors framed the far end of the room, sealed and untouched.

  Rows upon rows of sleek spacefighters rested on sunken platforms. Each one identical in design: matte black plating, shark-like profiles, and folded wings etched with the same sigil he’d seen on the Black Ring’s control panels—three concentric circles pierced by a downward blade.

  They weren’t arranged haphazardly. No—they were placed like an army at attention.

  Pepe floated lower, weaving between the rows. Dozens. No—hundreds. Wings folded, cockpits sealed. Each fighter’s engine core glowed with faint standby light, like an eye barely open.

  No mechanics.

  No drones.

  No crew.

  Just ships. Waiting.

  “Okay,” he whispered over comms, his usual snark gone. “I’m in what appears to be a ghost hangar. Hundreds of starfighters. Fully armed, fully charged. Zero personnel. Zero maintenance. Zero dust. It’s like they’ve been... sleeping.”

  He floated past a command podium—tall, spiraling, and half-fused to a rail system that circled the entire room. From above, the control scaffolds looked like veins, branching out from the center to connect with every launch station.

  Near the edge of the hangar floor, Pepe spotted something else.

  A massive circular mechanism, sunken into the stone. A kind of vertical lift, designed to carry the ships upward—likely toward a launch shaft unseen from above.

  “No normal person’s getting down here without a ride,” Pepe muttered. “The lift’s big enough to carry a battleship, but the access is only through the tunnel I used. Unless—wait...”

  He scanned the far wall.

  There it was.

  An elevator track—low-profile, nearly invisible against the shadows. The same sigils glowed faintly along its side. A platform rested at the top, dormant. No call panel. No controls.

  “Yep,” he sighed. “Hidden elevator. Meant for ships, not people. Guess it’s one-way unless you’re airborne.”

  He hovered back, scanning again. The room was too quiet. Even with its sheer size and presence, it felt... wrong. Like the calm breath before something exhaled chaos.

  “This isn’t a hangar,” he whispered. “It’s a vault. A war vault.”

  Back on the surface, static crackled briefly, then Jarek’s voice broke through.

  “Pepe. Report.”

  Pepe hovered in the center of the ship rows, lights dimmed slightly.

  “I found their fleet,” he said. “They weren’t bluffing. If these birds ever fly, they won’t need armies. One wing could level a city.”

  A pause.

  Then Brinn: “And no pilots?”

  “No one. No crew. Just weapons. And enough firepower to burn continents.”

  Ramm whistled softly over the line. “So... I guess pushing buttons randomly down here is off the table?”

  Pepe didn’t answer. He was already rising back toward the vertical shaft, gaze still locked on the waiting fighters.

  Waiting.

  Dormant.

  Or maybe just... watching.