The $_internalConvertBucketIndexStats stage used PauseExecution as a way to signal "skip this document" when an index stats conversion failed. But PauseExecution is not a general purpose skip mechanism, but rather a TeeBuffer-internal signal used solely by $facet to coordinate its sub-pipelines. When this stage is placed before $facet in a pipeline, TeeBuffer receives the unexpected PauseExecution from upstream and hits a hard invariant assertion, crashing mongod.