The elevator cage rattled upward, chains grinding in protest, each clank echoing like a hammer blow through the frozen shaft. The ascent dragged on with a punishing rhythm, every groan of metal a reminder of how deep they had descended. The cage swayed against the walls, its weight straining the pulleys until sparks of frost fell from the beams above. By the time the doors finally clanged open, the wait had become an ordeal. Daylight burst through, harsh and white, cruel against eyes accustomed to the dark below. Cold surged in like a living thing, cutting across bare faces and forcing breath into sharp clouds. Snow slid across the landing strip in thin currents, curling along the edges of steel and stone until it seemed the entire world had been stripped down to wind and frost.

Helen stood waiting as if the cold itself would not dare touch her. Her poise was rigid, posture flawless, one hand holding the pad against her chest with a precision that suggested nothing could pry it loose. The air tugged strands of her hair free, but she did not falter or blink. She was stillness carved into the emptiness. The cadets stepped forward with Kasala moving among them, not ahead or apart, but within their line. His presence gave weight to the group, grounding them in the open cold. Helen tapped her pad, and the green glow spilled upward, painting the hard angles of her face against the glare of snow and sky.

"I am transmitting coordinates to your AIs now," she said, her tone sharp and precise, every syllable clean despite the rasp of wind. "Three klicks west of the Antilies' outer peaks. There is a ridge there, scarred by the ruin of a Legion outpost. It was destroyed. That was the last confirmed sighting of the Red Widow. You will hold your meeting there."

The name dropped like a blade. The bond had not been silent since the briefing below, when Ruka had first spoken it aloud. The Red Widow. The thought of her had detonated through all sixteen cadets in a single moment, and the tremor of it had never gone still. The shared current buzzed under their composure, unrelenting, threading between them like lightning with nowhere to strike. Panic was in it, disbelief was in it, dread was in it. No cadet could force it quiet, though each kept their faces impassive, their movements as exact as training demanded. The weight of her name gnawed at the bond, heavy and unresolved. They had no plan for her. They had no answer. All they had was the storm inside them, and it would not leave.

Kasala did not feel the bond, but the moment he had heard the name he had stiffened. His thoughts ran cold, sharpened to a line: this was suicide. It did not matter how carefully the orders were dressed, how many words wrapped around the logistics. There was no trial here. No lesson. It was a death sentence disguised as strategy. He kept it behind silence, swallowed his judgment, allowed no betrayal but the faint narrowing of his eyes as Helen's voice continued.

"At that ridge, you will rendezvous with Imperator squad Tetra-3R92," she said. "Twelve of them, already in position, observing the ground. They do not know you, and you do not know them, but you will be forced to move as one. The Princedom's detachment will also be present: thirty-five Mech Warriors and a single Mech Knight. From that ridge, you advance together. Do not mistake their numbers for faith. They do not trust you. They expect you to follow, not to lead."

Her voice lingered in the air after each phrase, as though the emptiness itself carried her words and stretched them thin across the frozen strip. The pad's green light dimmed, then died, leaving only the harsh brilliance of snow reflecting against steel. Helen lowered the device without ceremony. "You will go on foot," she continued. "No tracks for others to find. No vehicles to betray your movement. This mission will never be entered into record. If you fall, there will be no reinforcement, no retrieval, no recognition. No one can ever know you were here."

Her gaze moved across the cadets, steady, cutting into each of them in turn before fixing on Kasala. "That concludes your logistics. The rest belongs to you."

For a heartbeat, there was only wind, tugging hair into their eyes, dragging at the edges of cloaks, rattling loose frost from the strip. Then Helen moved. With crisp precision, she raised her arm in the Legion salute, hand holding the pad pressed against her chest while her other hand carved skyward. The gesture cracked like iron through the air. The cadets and Kasala answered instantly, their own salutes snapping into place in perfect unison, the impact of fists against armor swallowed by the cold around them. For a moment, all of them stood locked in that salute, a wall of discipline against the empty expanse.

Helen inclined her head, the faintest acknowledgment, then lowered her arm. She turned without pause. Snow curled faintly around her ankles as she strode across the strip, heels striking in a steady rhythm against frozen steel. Step after step, the open air closed behind her until distance swallowed her figure, leaving only the echo of her departure behind.

The strip lay quiet again, snow edging across steel in restless sheets. None of the cadets moved. The bond still writhed beneath their composure, jagged and relentless, a shared pulse that refused to die. They held their silence, outwardly unshaken, yet each of them could feel it tearing inside, the undeniable truth of what they faced. The emptiness outside pressed in, but it was nothing compared to the storm burning through the link they could not escape, unbroken and unending.

Kasala's voice carried across the cold expanse, firm and without hesitation. "We move out."

The order set them in motion, boots grinding frost as the cadets fell into line around him. All sixteen were in full Legion armor, helms sealed, their visors catching the pale light as the Antilies loomed ahead like a wall of pale fangs. Their gear clinked faintly with each step, the heavy rhythm of a unit marching to war. Lessa carried Momo close against her chest, the small form tucked carefully into her arms as she walked, speaking steadily despite the weight she bore. Bastard sprawled lazily across Vaeliyan's shoulders, his silver eyes half-lidded, tail swaying with each of Vaeliyan's steps, while Styll remained cradled in his grip. The bonds were present, and so were the burdens they carried, every one of them walking armored into the unknown.

The Antilies rose jagged and endless, ridges carved by centuries of pressure and silence. The expanse stretched farther than sight could follow, the frozen mass stark against the sky. The peaks carried no warmth, no softness, only the severity of their ice. The wind knifed through the narrow passes, cutting sound down to a hollow murmur. The mountains were older than memory, and standing before them felt like standing at the edge of a frozen sea turned vertical, waves frozen mid-crash. Kasala's gaze swept the range without admiration, his thoughts weighed down with calculation. On paper, this group looked like bait: cadets and a single High Imperator with only a handful of Imperators beside them. Weakness written in the numbers, weakness the Princedom would not fail to notice. Perhaps that was intentional, a lure to provoke action, but to Kasala it felt like waste. A needless gamble. If the Princedom struck, blood would spill, and though the Legion might still crush them, the massacre would scar more than the ground. He wondered if Ruka even understood the danger, or if she had simply accepted the risk. What would happen if the Red Widow reached Graveholt? Could the city even withstand the weight of her destruction? Could any of them? His jaw clenched behind the helm, the thought gnawing at him with every step.

Lessa's voice came clear through her helm, steady, almost eager despite the tension. "The Antilies. Most call them mountains, but they aren't. They're glaciers, frozen straight through. No stone at the heart, not in this range. You don't climb rock here, you climb ice. It's solid enough that it won't slip under you, cold enough to hold you, but it's never the same as stone. There's no thaw to account for, no shifting beneath your feet. Just walls of ice, all the way up. A climb like nothing else in the world." She tilted her head back as she spoke, visor glinting as she traced the skyline. "I always wanted to try it."

Her words carried a strange reverence, as though she were describing an old friend. She adjusted Momo gently in her arms, the small creature's quiet presence at odds with the severity of the landscape.

"Try dying, you mean," Fenn muttered with a grimace. "Count me out."

Jurpat gave a crooked grin, visor turning toward him. "You wouldn't last two spans up the slope."

"Two spans is generous," Vexa said with dry finality, and Leron's soft laugh followed, the two perfectly in sync as always. Their voices were so alike through the comms that it was hard to tell one from the other, yet the cadence was seamless, eerie in its unity.

Wesley adjusted the strap across his shoulder, shaking his head. "Better you than me. I'll stay on solid ground."

Roan gave him a sharp look. "There is no solid ground here. Not when we know what's waiting."

Ramis grunted, his tone thick. "Climbing frozen cliffs would be mercy compared to what's ahead."

Chime huffed out a breath, her tone tight and bitter. "Let's not start making it sound worse than it already is."

Sylen walked silent, but her visor tilted upward as her eyes followed the peaks as closely as Lessa's, a quiet fascination buried beneath the bond's pulse. She seemed to drink in the sight, though her silence spoke louder than words.

Kasala grunted, but his mind was elsewhere. The cadets' chatter washed over him without slowing the weight of his thoughts. He shifted until he walked beside Vaeliyan, Jurpat, Elian, and Xera, his eyes scanning the horizon as though he could read its secrets. He spoke low, his words carried across the comms only to them.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

"You see it as well. This mission is not clean. Not simple. You are all strong, stronger than most, perhaps stronger than any. I will not deny that. But the way this has been arranged… you are being set up as prey. The Princedom has been given reason to believe you are weak. They will test that belief the moment they see an opening."

Elian's jaw tightened until the muscle twitched. "So, we are fight two enemies instead of one."

Kasala inclined his head once, the gesture curt. "Yes. And even if the Princedom can be handled, the Red Widow still waits. None of us can say how she will move. No one knows. This is a gamble. A dangerous one."

Jurpat's expression hardened behind his visor, eyes narrowing as his shoulders rolled. He said nothing, but the bond carried his resistance, sharp and defiant. He was already imagining the fight, already eager to prove Kasala wrong.

Xera muttered under her breath, "Orders."

"Orders," Kasala echoed, bitterness rough in the word. "The Legion demands obedience. That is fine for regular legionnaires. But this… this is not how you make a request of a High Imperators. Requests are made, and High Imperators choose to act or not. Orders may come in the end, but that is the final measure, never the first. And yet here we are, on a mission I would never have chosen for you, handed down past my own command."

Vaeliyan said, "For whatever reason they did not even speak to Julian. We were supposed to meet him; he was to be our liaison. But he never appeared."

Kasala turned his head slightly, helm angling toward Vaeliyan. "Julian? I don't even know the name. But it makes sense. They would not have wanted someone of his level involved. I am guessing he is a cadet? It is highly unusual for you all to have a liaison this early. Knowing what I do about you, I assume he is, but that absence is deliberate. They bypassed him because he would have been a problem for them. He is not high enough in command to stop this, but he could have made noise. They do not want noise. This mission is most likely being kept from the rest of High Command."

Vaeliyan's helm tilted slightly, but his voice stayed even, his presence firm. "We'll endure it." The bond shuddered hard at his words, the ripple of Kasala's truth cutting through all sixteen at once. No one broke stride, yet every cadet felt the weight of it settle heavier across their shoulders. Each step carried them deeper into the shadow of the Antilies, the march unrelenting, the ruin waiting ahead like a wound torn into the ice. They were armored, armed, and bound together, but the silence that followed rang louder than steel, every one of them haunted by what was to come.

The outpost at the outer edge of the Antilies came into view like a wound cut into the glacier. What should have been a functioning fortress was nothing more than a graveyard frozen in silence. The gates sagged inward, Kalacrete walls cracked and broken as though something inside had pushed outward with impossible strength. Whole sections of the fort had collapsed, jagged remnants jutting from the ice like shattered teeth. Towers leaned at impossible angles, their supports groaning under the weight of accumulated frost. And everywhere, everywhere, were the dead.

Legionnaires lay scattered across the grounds and pinned into the ruins, bodies frozen in impossible angles, limbs twisted, faces contorted in silent screams. Some were embedded in the walls as though hurled there and left to stick like grotesque decorations. Others were locked mid-motion, caught as if still reaching for their lances. Not a single corpse bore blood. There were no splashes across the snow, no stains on the shattered concrete. Every body was drained, bloodless, hollowed out. Flechettes littered the ground in dull drifts, half-buried in snow, useless scraps of battle lost to silence. The air held no scent of fire, no scorch marks marred the ruin. This was not destruction by flame or siege. This was something colder, hungrier, deliberate in a way that set teeth on edge. And it had left nothing human behind.

The cadets marched through it in silence, bond rattling beneath their armor, a heavy current of dread threading through all sixteen. Each face behind a helm carried the weight of the sight, though none gave it voice. Even Fenn, usually quick to break tension with a muttered joke, said nothing. Kasala's stride did not falter, but his jaw was locked tight, every line of his posture taut as he scanned the ruin.

They reached the junction where the meeting was marked, a broken courtyard at the heart of the devastation. There, life stirred. A man lounged on a wall, boots kicked up, idly clipping his toenails with a small blade as though oblivious to the massacre surrounding him. A woman sat on a crate nearby, picking her teeth with the point of a knife, spitting shards of food into the snow like she owned the place. One Imperator perched atop an open hauler, a lance spread across his lap as he stripped it apart and put it back together piece by piece, the steady rhythm of his hands almost meditative. Another leaned against a post with a smoke clenched in his teeth, a thick wad of black spit landing dark on the snow between his boots with every drag.

Their armor marked them as Legion, but muted compared to the cadets' gleaming sets. Older plates, scarred and dulled, no soul-skill expression running across the surfaces. Helmets dangled loose from straps or sat on the hauler benches, ignored. Their gear looked lived in, battered by years, while the cadets' shone with the newness of fresh issue. Twelve Imperators, waiting, watching. Among them one carried himself differently, the leader by the way the others shifted around him, their casual mockery softened in his shadow.

"What the fuck," the man sitting on the roof of a hauler muttered, glancing up as the cadets came into sight. "What in the hells are those?"

The woman picking her teeth gave a sharp laugh, flashing steel between her fingers. "Cadets. Look at that armor. Fresh off the line. Shiny new skins while we're still sweating in the old cuts. How long you think it'll be before they hand us gear like that?"

"Never," the smoker said around his teeth, spitting again. "We're just Imperators. They're cadets. Citadel brats. Spent their days training while we've been dying out here. And now they drop them on us like backup." His eyes narrowed as he caught sight of Roan's form. "Look at that one. Four legs. How the hell do you even move in that?"

Another Imperator jerked his chin toward Vaeliyan. "Or that. Little bug-looking bastard. How's that supposed to help us?"

The wall-clipping man grunted, voice flat. "At least they gave us a real High Imperator."

"Yeah," came the reply from the hauler, his hands never stopping their work. "But only one."

Their voices mixed into a low rumble of complaint and banter, half jest, half bitterness. Talk of wasted resources, of cadets getting polished gear while the front bled dry. Gripes about the Citadels, about training that never equaled fighting, about the unfairness of brats walking in with armor worth more than entire squads had been issued in years. It was the casual, cutting tone of legionnaires who had lived too long in the field, their words crude and sharp as the snow swirled faintly through the ruined outpost. Some of them smirked as they spoke, others scowled, but none lowered their voices. The disdain hung heavy, filling the air as surely as the stench of the smoker's spit.

The cadets stood silent under the weight of their gazes, bond taut but unreadable behind their helms. Vaeliyan's posture remained steady at the front, Styll cradled in his arms, Bastard lounging across his shoulders with unbothered poise. Lessa adjusted Momo against her side, her helm tilted toward the glacier walls, refusing to give the Imperators the satisfaction of a reaction. One by one the cadets squared themselves, steel in their silence. Kasala stood with them, a grim presence, horns rising above duller armor, hook-swords crossed at his back. The tension thickened, the ruin around them heavy with the reminder of what waited beyond.

Then the Imperator who carried himself as their leader snapped upright, voice cracking like a whip across the courtyard. "All of you shut the fuck up. High Imperator present. Line the fuck up, now."

The casual slouch of the squad broke at once. Boots thudded as Imperators scrambled into formation, smoke dropped and knives tucked away. The banter died sharp in the cold air, leaving only the echo of their movement and the sight of hardened veterans snapping into place under the weight of Kasala's rank. The silence that followed was jagged and raw, the kind that left space for judgment to fall heavy.

The Imperator leader snapped a salute the moment Kasala stepped into the courtyard, fist driven to chest, other hand slicing the air. The rest of his squad answered with perfect, tired precision, an allegiance salute that looked practiced enough to be a ritual.

"High Imperator," the leader said, and this time the respect was real. Their voices carried a weight that cut through the casual banter, full of deference for Kasala's rank.

They answered in unison, rough and unpolished. "We are Tetra-3R92."

The leader barked a short laugh. "You can call us Theo's boys."

A woman beside him cut in, voice lighter. "Theo's squad. Get it right."

Kasala watched them with unreadable eyes, then turned slowly to the cadets. "Tetra-3R92," he repeated. "Meet the cadets. Do you have a squad name?"

There was a beat of silence. Lessa's helmeted head tilted; she blinked, as if surprised anyone had bothered to ask. "The Mountain's Doom," she said before she could stop herself, the words rolling out with a half-joke that tasted older than she meant it to be.

A gloved hand cracked against her helm as one of the twins, Leron, gave her a quick, affectionate smack. "No," he hissed into his comm. "We are not called that."

"Relax," Vexa snorted. "We didn't even know naming was a thing. We were too busy surviving classes."

Vaeliyan stepped forward, voice steady. "We don't have a name yet."

Kasala added without pause, "Well then, Tetra-3R92, meet Vaeliyan's squad, fresh out of the Red Citadel. All of these cadets are High Imperator candidates."

The Imperators traded looks, amusement and contempt mixed on their faces. The leader, Theo, raised a brow. "From the Red Citadel? High Imperator candidates?"

Kasala answered before Vaeliyan could. "Yes. Vaeliyan here has completed his squad command certification. They're all on track."

The leader barked a short, incredulous laugh that held no humor. "You're telling me this bunch of kids from the Red Citadel is about to become a full squad of High Imperators? You're pulling my leg, sir. When's the last time the Red Citadel turned out real High Imperators?"

Kasala's reply was even, firm. "Every High Imperator is real. The Red Citadel graduates just as many as the rest, excluding Green and Black. This crop, however, is far more advanced than you might be used to. Each of them will graduate as High Imperators if we succeed at this mission."

"Sir," Theo said, stepping forward, voice low and worn. "I don't know if you've noticed but this mission is a suicide run. They're going to hit us. They've been waiting for you to show so they can ambush everyone at once instead of taking potshots while we're still arriving. We all fucked up to get here. There's a reason we call ourselves Theo's squad. I'm not the first. I'm the one who didn't die long enough to keep the role. people drop like flies on our runs."

Kasala's helm turned, unreadable for a beat, then he answered steady. "Yes. We are prepared. It's obvious they expected us to be cattle, to be driven into the Widow as bait. That was their idea. That plan will fail. Knowing who these cadets are, that gamble will backfire. We will use them as the vanguard on our terms. When they move, we cut them down. Lances blazing. We drive them like they would have driven us."

Theo's jaw set. He snapped his salute crisp. "Understood, sir." The rest of his squad echoed the motion, firm and quick. "Good to not be totally fucked right now, at least. We'll see how it goes when we get to the Widow."

Kasala allowed a thin, humorless twist to his mouth. "All right, Theo. Try not to die."

They stepped forward together, a single unit moving with grim resolve, heading toward a death trap that they could only hope would, at the very least, be of their own making.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.