The train travels in complete darkness, the tunnel walls invisible beyond the light spilling from the cart windows. The rhythm of the tracks changes as the engine begins a steady ascent, though the earth overhead does not relent.
After close to an hour, the train begins to slow.
Then the tunnel ends.
The carriage emerges into open air — or what passes for it. They are inside the hollowed-out heart of a dormant volcano, its walls rising on all sides. The train glides to a halt within a sprawling station — multiple tracks, multiple platforms, the scale of it unhurried and deliberate, built for permanence.
Lleuad steps down from the cart, cleaned and composed, the dark green uniform fitting him as though it had been cut with him in mind.
Waiting on the platform is a young man — fair-skinned, dark blond, somewhere in his late teens, dressed in a uniform of the same cut as Lleuad's own. His epaulettes bear a pair of white stripes. His oval face is clean-shaven, his hair cropped in a short military style, and everything about his outward bearing presents the image of a model soldier held carefully in place. But his dark brown eyes carry something that the bearing cannot quite suppress — a brightness, a current of youthful curiosity running just beneath the surface.
"Sir Sulienson," His voice lands somewhere between formal and effortful — like a kid trying to mimic adults. "Welcome. My name is Jean Faure—a cadet. I will be your escort during your stay at Headquarters."
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Jean." Lleuad offers a shallow bow, a small smile settling naturally on his face.
Jean's eyes visibly sparkle, momentarily captivated by the presence Lleuad radiates—a rare blend of profound calm and absolute confidence, tempered by genuine humility. He quickly catches himself, reining in his mounting excitement to maintain his soldierly façade.
"The Director is expecting you, sir." He steps forward with practiced helpfulness. "May I take your bag?"
"Thank you," Lleuad passes it over without ceremony.
— — —
The two set off along the platform, moving away from the crater's edge. Lleuad looks up. The volcano's walls rise sharply on all sides, climbing in rough, dark stone before narrowing toward a rim far overhead, the crater rim at the top a fraction of the vast bowl below it. With the sun now past its peak, the angle of light no longer reaches the floor — the crater is settling into its own early dusk, and the facility's internal lighting has already taken over, casting a steady glow across the stone.
They emerge onto the main square.
It is, in almost every respect, the opposite of what Lleuad left behind in the city. No carved marble, no gilded crests, no fountains with heroes and water flowing from the mouths of Grimm. A few garden beds interrupt the open space — trees, simple flowers, nothing ornamental. The square itself is laid in plain grey stone. The large building ahead, five storeys, presents a face of total austerity: no relief work, no decorative framing around its windows, nothing added to the surface that does not serve a purpose.
And yet.
Across the square — across the building's face, across the crater walls behind it — the stone is moving.
Not shaking, not crumbling. Moving with intention. Sections of the pavement slide and reconfigure, carrying crates of supplies along routes that form ahead of them and close again behind. Openings appear in the building's walls as needed, receiving the deliveries at the shortest possible path, then sealing again once the cargo has passed through. Along the building's exterior, portions of the pavement rise — forming themselves into platforms, climbing the walls, delivering goods to upper floors with the same unhurried efficiency as everything else.
Lleuad watches a section of stone extend from the second floor, accept a crate, and retract. The wall closes. There is no seam.
Lleuad takes a moment to survey his surroundings. The moving walls, he now sees, do not confine themselves to the crater — they extend outward, burrowing into the mountain itself, and tunnel entrances punctuate the rock face in every direction. The scale of it settles over him slowly.
The square itself is filled with people moving at purposeful pace. Most wear the dark green uniform. The others — fewer, but present throughout — wear white: collarless shirt beneath long white vest, the collar edges and buttons trimmed in silver, paired with white trousers and black leather boots cut low.
"I had almost forgotten," Lleuad says, his gaze still moving across the shifting walls, "how different this place is from the outside world. All the movement." A brief pause. "It feels as though the entire volcano is alive."
"This sight never gets old." There is genuine pride in Jean's voice. He straightens slightly as he speaks, his words taking on a cadence that sits somewhere between personal conviction and careful recitation.
"The Headquarters is a reflection of the Everwatch: a vast gathering of people, all working toward a single goal — one greater than any individual. Remnant at perpetual peace. Spanning millennia, many have laid down their lives for this ideal. Without recognition from the masses, who do not even know of our existence."
Jean lands the final words with the particular satisfaction of someone who has reached the end of a passage he was determined not to stumble. Lleuad can detect a trace of self-congratulation lingering in his expression afterward — the quiet pride of a cadet who has not missed a single word and knows it.
— — —
Following Jean, Lleuad enters the central building through the main entrance and finds himself in a large, two-story lobby, filled with people going about their business.
Twin staircases flank the entrance, hugging the left and right walls, each climbing to a hallway on the second floor that looks out over the lobby from its midway point. At the far end of the hall, a reception desk runs the full width of the space from wall to wall, considerably larger than the one at the city hall though far less ornate. Behind it, the clatter of typewriters and the shuffle of paper carry beneath the quiet exchanges between agents in dark green and receptionists in white.
Dominating the upper half of the back wall is a colossal map of the world. Great swaths of the parchment glow with a steady internal light, marking the expansive reach of Everwatch's influence. Red dots are scattered across these illuminated territories, marking the presence of Grimm.
The eastern portion — the Anima continent — is dark. Unilluminated, unmarked. Simply absent.
On the upper half of the left wall hangs a large assignment board: Agent names set against every location marked with a red dot on the map.
The right wall carries something of a different order. Eleven portraits hang across its upper half, each one rendered in such precise and exacting detail that at a glance they might be mistaken for photographs rather than drawings. Eleven faces, each studied and particular, each one given the same unflinching attention by whoever committed them to paper.
Two of them have been crossed out.
— — —
Jean leads the way up the left staircase and into the hallway on the second floor. The corridor is wide enough to accommodate a steady flow of traffic in both directions — people in green uniforms outnumbering those in white, as below — and along its edges the walls and floors continue their quiet work, shifting supplies through the building with the same unhurried efficiency as outside.
As Lleuad rounds the first available turn, he collides with an office worker coming the other way. The impact sends her paperwork scattering across the floor in every direction.
"I am so sorry." She is already crouching, reaching for the nearest pages, her voice tight with a stress that suggests this is not the first difficulty of her day.
"It's alright." Lleuad crouches beside her and works through the remaining scattered pages, collecting them into a neat stack before holding them out to her with a quiet smile.
She takes them — and then does not move. She simply looks at him, as though the gesture requires a moment to be processed. Up close, the signs of exhaustion are plain: sunken cheeks, shadows beneath her eyes that speak of sleep measured in hours rather than rest. Then, slowly, a small smile forms on her face. Uncertain. Relieved.
It dissolves the instant a voice cuts through the hallway behind her.
"What do you think you're doing!?" The tone is loud, sharp, and entirely without patience.
An older woman rounds the corner: grey-haired, deeply lined, her face set in the particular hardness of someone who has spent decades measuring everything, including people, against what they have yet to finish. "There is no time to stand around. Go!"
The girl lowers her head briefly toward Lleuad — a small, wordless thanks — and goes.
The older woman watches her go, then turns to Lleuad and Jean and offers a short bow. "My apologies for the delay."
Jean shifts on his feet, visibly flustered by the sudden friction and struggling to find his words.
"Not at all," Lleuad intervenes smoothly, his tone easy, the smile still in place. "We were glad to help."
Something in his manner reaches her — a slight shift, barely perceptible, before she collects herself and moves on, her attention already elsewhere.
Lleuad watches her go.
"Everyone here is quite busy," he remarks.
"Yes," Jean replies. "There is always more work than there are people to do it."
— — —
Jean continues to lead Lleuad through the building's hallways, up another flight of stairs to the fourth floor, the corridors turning and branching often enough that Lleuad nearly loses his sense of direction. They eventually arrive at the end of a long corridor, before a set of large double doors. Beside the entrance, a counter of the same grey stone as the walls holds a trail of paperwork stacked in careful order.
Jean knocks twice and eases the door open halfway. "I've brought Sir Sulienson."
A voice comes from inside — faint, unhurried. "Bring him in."
Jean opens the door fully and steps aside. Lleuad enters, and the doors close behind him.
The sound of the building disappears.
The room is dim and still, the noise of the hallways sealed entirely away. Bookshelves fill every wall from floor to ceiling, interrupted only by the doors and the darkened window behind the darkwood desk at the far end. In the centre of the room, two couches rest upon an elegant, dark-pile carpet, separated by a low coffee table. A chandelier above the table provides most of the light, casting the rest of the room into a comfortable shadow.
Behind the desk, a lamp illuminates a spread of paperwork and the man working through it. He is frail and ruddy, somewhere in his early forties — or so his face suggests, though something in his bearing resists easy placing. He wears a dark green vest over a white collarless shirt, the vest's trim worked in gold and its buttons in emerald — a garment that draws from both uniforms Lleuad has seen today without belonging entirely to either. There are no epaulettes. In their place, a badge on his chest: a silver sceptre over two emerald gears, one set within the other.
His grey hair is dishevelled, his jaw unshaven, and taken together they give an impression of someone who has long since stopped attending to appearances. At first glance he seems miscast entirely. Then he looks down at the page before him, and his eyes — emerald, flecked with traces of other colours, as though the green has simply settled most recently over something older — move through the document with a calm and absolute certainty that quietly corrects the first impression.
To his right stands a tall man, broad across the shoulders, pale-skinned — and still, in the way of someone accustomed to waiting without effort. His reddish-brown hair and fiery auburn eyes sit at odds with the cold, professional composure of his bearing, as though the warmth in his colouring belongs to a different version of him that surfaces elsewhere. His uniform matches Lleuad's in cut and colour, but his epaulettes carry two gold crossed swords beneath a golden Grimm head, and his badge — a silver sceptre over a single emerald gear — marks him as second in this room.
Neither man speaks. Lleuad waits near the door and watches the director finish his work — the scratch of pen on paper the only sound in the room. After a few minutes, the director sets his pen down, passes the document to the man beside him without looking up, and raises his eyes to Lleuad. His hand rises in a quiet gesture, calling Lleuad forward.
Lleuad crosses the room at an easy pace, letting the stillness of the place settle around him.
As he draws closer, a warm smile rises on the director's face. "Glad to see you in good health, Lleuad. You've grown into a fine man."
"Thank you, Director Norman." Lleuad's voice carries the particular warmth of someone revisiting a memory. "You and Brandur look just as I remember. It's hard to believe it's been four years."
"Please — Isaac," the director insists. "Work makes time pass quickly." A short, sickly cough interrupts him, one hand briefly to his chest. "And time hasn't been especially kind to me. But I manage." A pause. "Thank you for taking the assignment on short notice. Without you, more lives would have been lost before we had someone at the scene. The number of Blighted has been growing."
"It's not a problem," Lleuad replies simply.
"And Gunter?" Isaac's tone shifts — something fonder beneath it at the name. "Still as elusive and unsubordinated as ever? I had hoped he might send word within the first year. But there's been nothing."
"My apologies." Lleuad touches the back of his head. "He's been difficult to keep track of these past few years. I only saw him just before leaving the Empire." He reaches into his tunic's back pocket and produces a letter. "He asked me to give you this personally."
Isaac takes the envelope, gestures for Lleuad to sit, and opens it without haste. He reads in silence. The room waits.
With each line, something tightens in his expression — a gathering weight, a quiet trouble working its way across his features. Then, near the end, it breaks. His face softens, and a single quiet chuckle escapes him into the stillness.
"Yes… Yes indeed," Isaac says, more to himself than the room. "He's unpredictable as always. He always finds a way to crack me up despite these dark times." The smile holds for a moment before fading. He sets the letter down and leans forward, pressing his clasped hands against his face. When he speaks again the warmth is still present, but behind it is something heavier. "And dark they are indeed." A pause. "Had I understood how dire things were, I would have brought you straight here rather than sending you on a side mission first." He studies Lleuad for a moment. "How much did Gunter tell you?"
"Nothing." Lleuad matches the director's tone without effort. "I know only what I observed on the ground."
"Good." Isaac nods slowly. "The fewer who know, the better. I have a plan — and contingencies, given how long Gunter took to reply. I had begun to fear the worst." He straightens. "I'll call you back in a few days. In the meantime, Jean will share your schedule. There are a few things to complete while you're here."
Lleuad nods.
Isaac rolls back from the desk — the wheelchair becoming visible as he does — and comes around to meet Lleuad with an outstretched hand. "For today, rest. We've prepared a place for you. Stop there first and leave your things."
"I will."
They shake hands. Lleuad turns toward the door.
"Lleuad."
He pauses, hand on the door.
"Welcome home."
A moment passes. When Lleuad answers, his voice is quiet and without performance.
"It's good to be back."