Walking through the base's corridors had become somewhat distracting; it was like a specter no one dared to look at for too long. Negotiations with the governor had concluded, and the orders had been given: full access to the records, direct observation of warp signals, and most importantly... absolute silence.
Caerian was efficient, I had to admit. If there was one thing I respected about the Empire, it was its efficiency. In less than an hour, the command cogitators opened their central archive for me. While I reviewed all the records on how Chaos had come to this world.
At best, information was scant; at worst, there was nothing beyond surviving witnesses to the events, but it was generally to be expected from an invasion of this scale. The empire tended to underestimate cults because they grew accustomed to their chaotic and disorderly nature, but one would always arrive with exceptional, rational leaders who could accomplish their task.
That had happened eight months ago. In just eight months, a cult had managed to take down the planet's defenses and communications. Many of them arrived as refugees. Verronus had fallen, and the only planet that could afford to feed millions of refugees was this one.
They infiltrated workers, lower-ranking clerics, and lesser tech-priests who were already showing signs of frustration or resentment toward the Imperium. They used secret sermons disguised as "healing rituals" to instill faith in Nurgle. The conversions began with the most marginalized, many already persecuted by corrupted faiths, apparently believers in me.
They took advantage of my silence, where only a few faithful who remained loyal were persecuted by both sides. Until the Inquisition contented itself with a few mass arrests, only for all the bases containing them to become infected. The infected bases began receiving contradictory orders—caused by corrupt psychics interfering with the transmissions—sending troops to their deaths or into traps.
The terror increased with public executions of loyal officers, carried out by converts within their own staff. Growing rumors of "something in the mountains," impossible beasts, and deformities began to break the fighting spirit. Until a few loyal to me managed to escape. It was there that my calling took place, with the veil already being torn apart by the Nurgle cultists. It was mere chance that allowed me to hear them.
The records contained all the information they had managed to obtain about me. Rites, stories, and even a symbol: a Circle Broken by a Thorn. The confusion was nagging and persistent in my head even though it had been a while since I'd read the reports. It had been a long time since I'd been stuck on a single question: where all of this had come from and how it had a connection to everything.
The image of the symbol still floated in my mind, etched too clearly to be just a crude representation invented by fanatics. It was exact. Too exact. As if the idea had been ripped straight from my innermost thoughts, or worse, as if the idea had existed before I even imagined it.
Had I been the source of his faith? Or had I simply become his catalyst? I didn't know. And that ignorance was unacceptable.
I spent the next few hours immersed in records. Trying to piece together the exact chronology of the infection. The Astra Militarum documents were imprecise, those of the Adeptus Mechanicus confusing. Only the reports from an old scriptorium, handwritten by a now-executed archivist, offered anything more tangible: accounts of dreams shared among the converts, all describing the same figure... tall, shrouded in shadow, with golden eyes and a voice that burned like sunlight.
My voice.
Thariel rejoiced silently. I felt her conscience moving restlessly behind my thoughts, reveling in the fear this revelation generated. To her, the fact that a cult had worshipped me without my consent was proof of our greatness.
I left the cogitators and headed to the window overlooking the rocky chasm outside Kadamtu. The wind whipped the surface violently, rattling the metal plates of the structure. I don't know how long I stood there staring out.
Until a knock sounded behind the door.
I'd asked Emil to find out everything he needed to know about what had happened to the Skitarii. If he had truly been one of my own, it was my responsibility to bring him back. Some people just shouldn't leave.
"Most of the surveillance logs were disabled by 'electromagnetic interference' in the last few hours," he says. "But this fragment was salvaged by the Mechanicus tech-priests. Look at it."
The hololithogram comes to life. I see the eastern forward surveillance post where the Skitarii were sent. There's no audio. Only the static infrared images. A figure... something... bursts into the image. It doesn't walk. It doesn't run. It falls, as if it had descended directly from the sky, or from a vertical ledge.
A burst. Bodies scattered. No sign of a weapon.
"What's wrong?" Emil asks, noticing the hardening of my face.
I didn't respond immediately. The seconds passed with unbearable slowness as I watched the fragment on repeat. Each frame was a condemnation.
"Impossible…"
Thariel murmured in my mind, not just with fear, but with a disturbing mix of surprise and admiration.
"How did it come out? How did the label allow it?"
"He didn't allow it," I thought. "He shouldn't have allowed it."
Even she, who reveled in the chaos of combat, felt the abnormality of it all. The seal... our seal, was made to contain. Guarded not just with strength, but with essence, with my own will. Only I had been able to break it, and that was because I had support.
"So it's not a mistake on the seal."
"No. It was a different will. One that was undermined by my arrival."
The hololithogram showed a different figure than the one we'd encountered before. Not savage. Not irrational. Moving with purpose. Efficiency. Silence. Not gloating over death; simply executing it. And that was worse.
"The last time you faced him you had to rest for millennia."
I didn't respond to his words; I remembered well what had happened. Few personalities had been able to develop more than a primitive consciousness. Five of them, to be specific; the others only imitated intelligence and emotions, which is why it was easy to defeat the previous one; their existences were minuscule compared to the others.
—This is a more stable manifestation than the previous one. It's not just strength or hunger like the creature before. This one... has an identity. Memory. A will of its own.
—And that makes him more dangerous?
—No. It makes him worse than that. He makes him autonomous.
And if he managed to escape the seal without my intervention, then he wasn't looking for me.
He was running away from me.
Kadamtu – South Sector – External Defense Line, that same night
A light acid rain falls on the walls. The automatic turrets buzz like sleeping insects, searching for targets that don't yet dare reveal themselves. A signal rises from the sensor fields: an unidentified contact, moving at inhuman speed, skirting the sensors as if familiar with them.
Rodrik led the squad sent to intercept. Thirteen men. Two armored vehicles.
"Movement in sectors gamma-two and three," the Chimera operator reports as the wheels squeal on the wet rock. "Speed exceeds 70 km/h. No clear biosignatures. Doesn't look like a heavy transport."
"There's nothing common that can run like that through acidic weeds and stay in one piece," Rodrik growls, adjusting his helmet. "Prepare for the worst."
The spotlights swept through the greenish mist that drifted across the ground. The sound of the acid evaporating on the metal sounded like frying in a pan.
One of the soldiers, Brecht, looked through the external peephole.
—There. Movement to the right!
Too fast.
A shadow slips between the twisted trees, cutting the vehicle's field of vision with surgical precision. The turrets try to lock onto the target. They miss. It's as if it knows where not to look.
"Everyone down! In defensive formation!" Rodrik orders.
The men's training forced them to disembark the transport. They formed a fan formation. Two flamethrowers were at the front. The rest, laser rifles in hand, searched for silhouettes in the steam and rain.
Silence.
Then, a sound, a desperate cry from a soldier disappearing into the mist.
Brecht is gone. Only his weapon, spinning in the air before falling into the mud.
—Fire, fire, fire!
The flamethrowers unleash their fury, momentarily illuminating a figure crossing between them. Tall. Thin. Unarmored. Covered in what looks like torn fabric, stuck to its body like a membrane. Where there should be a face, there's only a broken mask, formed of bone or something similar, with a tear at the top.
One of the soldiers, Mikal, falls with a single blow. He doesn't scream. There's no time.
Rodrik fires. Hits. Several times. The target stumbles… and then turns toward him.
"Where is Elaris?"
A voice sounded inside his mind, as if the question had been forcibly injected into his head.
The creature stops in front of Rodrik, motionless. The captain, paralyzed by something beyond fear, stares at it. And in the empty eyes behind the split mask, something stares back.
And then, as if all interest had faded after getting what it wanted, the creature turned around… and vanished into the rain, as if it had never been there. The rest of the squad didn't dare move.
Rodrik fell to his knees, his body shaking, and then he realized he was crying without knowing why, the last of his being fading away.