Anathor moved first.
Too fast for a Knight—
yet he did.
The fused colossus crossed the torn deck in a blur of iron and shadow, gauntlet sweeping down in a killing arc meant to pulp the daemonhost outright.
The creature slid aside like smoke fleeing a torch.
Its form rippled—half-man, half-warp, half something that hated being seen.
—
From behind Anathor's greave burst Obol.
He slid low under the titan's stride, one hand dragging a line of flame across the deck as Isera's spear roared to life—
promethium igniting in a white-hot tongue.
His other arm braced the compact shotgun against his hip.
BOOM-BOOM-BOOM—
The slugs tore through the daemonhost's silhouette, each shot staggering it but doing little more than irritate the thing wearing stolen flesh.
But the spear—
the spear burned it.
The daemonhost recoiled, its stolen face blistering in the wash of holy fire.
It drifted back, weightless, retreating an inch—
—and Anathor's fist came down.
The strike hit with the force of a collapsing bulkhead, metal shrieking under the impact.
But when the titan lifted his gauntlet, nothing waited beneath it.
Only a fresh dent in the deck, steaming and warped.
The daemonhost was gone—
And instantly,
Anathor shoved Obol aside, a violent sweep of his greave—
—just as the daemonhost materialized behind him, claws closing around empty air where Obol had stood a heartbeat earlier.
Obol rolled with the shove, boots skidding across the tilted deck.
Isera's spear screeched against the metal, dragging a spray of white sparks as he hooked it to stop his momentum—
—and then he launched forward again.
The daemonhost twisted toward him—
—and from the opposite flank Anathor's fist swung in, a massive hammerblow aimed to crush the abomination between Knight and Scion.
"You cannot kill what does not live."
The daemonhost's voice came from everywhere at once.
Its shape unraveled like smoke—
—then vanished entirely.
—
"I doubt dirt would go around saying it is dirt."
Obol snarled, pressing his back against Anathor's towering gauntlet, eyes scanning frantically for the thrumming blur of the daemonhost's return.
A loud creak from above—
Metal groaned like a dying beast.
Anathor reacted instantly.
The titan's massive gauntlet swept down and shielded Obol, plating locking into a braced stance.
BOOM—BOOM! BOOM!
The ceiling ruptured.
A cascade of torn panels and shattered framework exploded downward, hurtling toward them in a storm of metal and burning insulation.
Anathor's palm flared with impact.
Debris smashed against the Knight's hand and forearm, ricocheting off in screaming arcs, showering them both in sparks.
Obol felt the shockwave hit like a hammer—but Anathor held firm, absorbing the entire collapse.
Behind the wall of ceramite fingers, Obol exhaled once, shaky and furious.
"For something that isn't alive…" Obol hissed through his teeth, stealing a glance past Anathor's fingers.
"…you're sure as hell afraid of him."
His grip tightened on the spear.
"Why?"
—
The daemonhost did not appear.
But its voice detonated inside Obol's skull, a psychic boom that sent white-hot needles ringing behind his eyes.
"It is only natural,"
the words slithered through his mind—
"for lesser creatures to cower before the aura of the Dark Master."
Obol grimaced, blood beading at his nose.
"You will, too." It said.
—
"What is it talking about?" Obol pushed the thought through the link, jaw clenched against the psychic ringing.
—
"I… do not know," Anathor replied, tone flat, unhelpfully honest.
—
Obol swallowed hard.
"First prince. Dark Master. Scent…?"
His mind raced—unbidden images flooding back:
The battlefield.
The towering figure behind the gate.
The pale chest carved with the eight-pointed star—glowing like a wound in reality itself.
His breath hitched.
Could that thing… be the Dark Master it fears?
Another memory followed, sharper and more violent:
The moment the gate exploded—
the shockwave hurling him across the field—
the way Cinerion and Thanatos were torn, folded, fused—
—and something else caught in the blast.
Not human.
Not machine.
Not of this world.
"The sword…" Obol realized, pulse spiking.
"The tipof that blade was still in the field when the breach imploded."
Anathor said nothing.
But Obol felt it—a faint stirring in the link, as if the Knight recoiled from a truth it hadn't known it carried.
—
"But why is it afraid…?" Obol thought—though in the link, there was no such thing as privacy.
—
Anathor heard it as plainly as speech.
There was a pause in the fused Knight's presence—
a hesitation that felt almost human.
Then.
"A primal fear," Anathor answered.
"The instinct all beings share before a stronger entity"
A faint rumble of thought passed through the link, like distant thunder.
"Death."
—
Obol grinned.
A flicker of shadow—
and the daemonhost reappeared, materializing behind a drifting slab of torn plating, claws flexing as it lunged straight for Obol's throat.
Anathor moved first.
The titan's fist swung in a blur of blackened ceramite, forcing the creature back in a ripple of distorted flesh.
Obol vaulted up the gauntlet in the same motion, boots striking metal once, twice—
and then he climbed onto the Knight's open palm.
He planted his feet.
Grinning wider, fire-lit eyes locked on the writhing horror.
"This means," Obol said, breath steady despite the chaos around them—
"you can kill it, Anathor."
—
Anathor's fingers tightened—
FWUMP
—and he hurled Obol forward like a hammer thrown by a god.
Obol shot through the air, cloak trailing, spear igniting in a white arc of fire.
This time, the daemonhost didn't flee.
It launched upward to meet him, limbs unfolding in impossible directions, mouth tearing open in a soundless scream as it streaked toward him like a streak of shadow given hunger.
Two shapes—
one mortal, one damned—
hurtling toward collision in midair.
"You were made by a sword—
so a sword you are, Anathor!"
Obol roared as he flew toward the daemonhost.
Below him, Anathor straightened.
The fused Knight lifted his arm—
fingers aligning, joints locking—
as if the gesture had always been part of him.
A single point of darkness gathered at the tip of his extended finger.
Then—
SHRRRAKK—
A beam of black light erupted, a needle of void that tore through the air and punched clean through the daemonhost's shoulder.
The creature shrieked—a noise that wasn't a scream but a distortion, like reality itself being scraped raw.
It spun off-course, one limb hanging loose and twitching where the darkness had burned straight through it.
The collision never happened.
Obol soared past the flailing creature, sparks trailing behind him as he hit the deck and rolled.
Behind him, Anathor's optics burned.
—
"Your deaths are certain," the daemonhost hissed, voice splitting into a dozen overlapping tones.
"I am eternity."
The limb Anathor had pierced hung limp for a heartbeat—
then twisted.
Bone cracked.
Flesh folded in on itself.
Tendons rewove like wet rope being braided by invisible hands.
And the ruined arm reshaped, stretching into a new, taloned limb—longer, sharper, wrong in every direction at once.
The daemonhost flexed its new claws with a sound like tearing silk.
Then,
it rose—
The daemonhost floated high above them, its new-grown limb flexing downward.
Flesh split.
Sinew unraveled.
Shadows bled from between the seams as the arm broke apart into a fan of writhing appendages—
PHEW—PHEW—PHEW!
A storm of shadow-bolts erupted downward like a barrage of living bullets.
Anathor braced, raising a plated forearm.
The impacts hammered against his gauntlet, hissing, melting, scoring deep black grooves into the metal.
Then—
The daemonhost's other hand rose.
Toward Obol.
Invisible force clamped around his throat.
He was lifted off his feet—
kicking, choking, fingers clawing at nothing—
as the air was crushed out of him.
A strangled gasp escaped him as he hung there, suspended in the daemonhost's grip like an offering.
"Even if this flesh falls," it hissed, its voice scraping against Obol's skull,
"I will remain."
It reeled him closer by the throat, dragging him through the air while its other limb still battered Anathor with shadow and force.
—
"So… you're a parasite."
Obol grinned through clenched teeth, letting his arms hang loose as if resigned.
"A talking parasite."
He laughed—short, sharp, mocking.
Then his hand snapped up again—
closing around the daemonhost's throat.
"Now, Anathor!"
The daemonhost jerked, unable to turn—
unable to even see the strike coming.
CLEAVEEEE!
A force like the swing of a god tore through the air.
Something unseen parted the daemonhost clean down the middle.
Obol released his grip.
The sundered form fell, its halves turning in slow, weightless drift—
—just in time to see Anathor standing below, utterly untouched by its onslaught.
Obol stepped forward, voice low.
"Parasites should keep quiet… feed, hide, and never show themselves."
He bent, scooped up the spear.
Promethium hissed to life—white fire licking along the twin prongs, casting his face in hard, unwavering resolve.
"But you?" He chuckled.
"You couldn't stop talking."
He leaned closer.
The flame hovered a breath away from the daemonhost's distorted face.
"You're not even good at your job."
A final whisper—cold as a tolling bell.
"Disappear."
—
As the blazing spear descended to finish it—
—the daemonhost shrieked.
No sound left its sundered mouth.
No vibration touched the air.
Yet the scream hit like a hammer inside the skull.
Obol was thrown backward, slamming against the tilted decking.
His vision burst white.
His ears bled instantly, a warm trickle running down his jaw.
He forced himself upright, hand clamped to his temple as the psychic pressure rattled bone.
"Crying is… not going to save you!"
he shouted through gritted teeth, spitting red.
His fingers dug into the floor for purchase as the scream gnawed at the edges of thought—
—but he rose anyway.
Across the deck, the daemonhost's upper half writhed, dragging itself by splintered bone and sinew, shadows knitting feebly around the torn stump as it clawed for escape—
PLASH!
Anathor's heel came down.
The impact shook the entire hangar bay, metal bending under the colossal weight.
The daemonhost's torso burst like rotten fruit—shadows splattering, limbs spasming, its stolen ribs snapping under the grinding pressure of the titan's weight.
What remained let out one last wet, choking rasp—half a breath, half a curse—
before the Knight pressed harder.
—
Obol scanned the ruined hangar—
and then he saw it.
The lower half of the daemonhost lay slumped against a wall, twitching faintly, as if clinging to existence through sheer malice alone.
He approached cautiously, Isera's spear held low but ready, its twin prongs glowing with building heat.
Promethium hissed up the line, a thin plume of chemical smoke curling through the air.
"Everything you have done…"
it rasped, voice bubbling with wet ruin.
"…is pointless."
—
Obol didn't answer nor hesitate.
He drove the spear down through its stomach.
FWOOOM—
Promethium surged, engulfing the abomination in a column of white fire.
It convulsed once—stiff, almost puppet-like—
then collapsed inward as its flesh shriveled to charcoal.
Cracks split across its surface.
A brittle, papery sound whispered through the hangar—
—and then the daemonhost's remains disintegrated into drifting ash.
Obol exhaled, wiped the soot from his brow, and turned away.
He stepped into the thinning smoke, spear still glowing, and rejoined Anathor.
—
"It is not done, Obol Kharon."
Anathor's voice cut through his skull like a chime of cold iron.
The Knight's gauntlet was raised—directly at the far wall.
Obol followed the gesture instinctively— every nerve in his body bracing.
His stare locked onto the metal bulkhead,
where a smear of char and shadow pulsed faintly, as if breathing.
A chill tightened around his spine.
Obol lifted the spear again, flame guttering along the tines.
The wall…
moved—
BOOM!
Metal detonated outward.
A shockwave of shrapnel and ruptured plating screamed across the hangar—razor shards and molten debris hurled with killing force.
Obol barely had time to flinch.
Anathor didn't hesitate.
The Knight's gauntlet swept down, scooping Obol against his chestplate—
then the world lurched.
Plates folded, locked, sealed.
A heartbeat later—
Obol was no longer in the hangar.
He was inside the Throne.
The cockpit slammed shut around him, armor plates sealing like the jaws of a beast.
The throne's conduits flared to life, black lightning skittering across the interface as Anathor's consciousness merged with his own.
Then.
Within the breach, a shadowed shape dragged itself into view.
Obol saw it through Anathor's vision.
His breath hitched.
Nausea coiled hard in his gut—an instinctive revolt,
flesh rebelling against something the mind refused to accept.
"Damn parasite," Obol hissed.
—
Seraphine's body drifted closer, no longer bound by gravity—or mercy.
Her robes hung in scorched tatters, stiff with dried blood.
Where her head should have been was absence.
A knot of black light burned there—dense, inverted, wrong—swallowing illumination instead of reflecting it.
The lumen-strips dimmed as it passed, shadows bending inward, as though reality itself were being pulled to its knees.
Around that void, fragments orbited in a slow, reverent procession.
Shards of skull.
Broken teeth.
Splinters of sanctified augmetic.
Torn scraps of her veil, still dark with blood.
They turned as if caught in the gravity of a dead star—each piece precise, measured, obedient.
Then the corpse's arm moved.
Too fast.
Its hand snapped upward and clutched at the place where Seraphine's third eye had once been—fingers closing on nothing, grasping at absence made real.
A ripple passed through the orbiting fragments, the void dimpling inward as if reacting to pressure.
"Your tech-priest's interference," the voice said, no anger in it now, only mild reproach,
"may have ruined this perfect vessel."
The hand lowered. The corpse stilled.
Then the black void where her head should have been tilted.
It aligned—
locked—on Anathor's helm.
For a fraction of a second, the hangar seemed to lose depth, edges flattening as if reality itself were bracing—
Then the void flared.
A single beam of violet light lanced outward—silent, absolute—
a line of pure warp-pressure that screamed inside the mind.
The entire hangar reacted like a living thing.
Loose crates, tools, shattered plating—
all of it recoiled from the beam's passing.
Objects tore free from the deck, hurled outward as if gravity had been inverted in a dozen directions at once.
Metal shrieked.
Walls dented.
Panels buckled.
A grinding, bone-deep howl filled the chamber as matter fought against something it was never meant to withstand.
And underpinning it all—threaded through the violet lance like a cursed filament—came voices—
human voices.
Screaming.
Begging.
Obol staggered.
Pain detonated behind his eyes, sharp and hot, as if something were clawing through the front of his skull.
He grabbed the side of his head, breath hitching, vision splitting at the edges.
The scream wasn't just heard.
It was felt—
—as if the daemonhost were pouring every death it carried straight into his mind.
Anathor did not move.
The violet beam broke against him like a storm against a mountain.
His fused chestplate bore only scorched sigils, lightning crawling briefly across adamantium before fading into nothing.
Slowly, deliberately, Anathor lowered the Reaper sabre.
Then he slashed upward.
The blade did not merely cut air—
it tore through it.
A shockwave of black lightning exploded from the rising arc, reality cracking along its path like glass struck by a hammer.
The deck buckled beneath the force, scorched lines spiderwebbing outward from the blade's passage.
The daemonhost reacted instantly.
Its form split apart—
divided, halving itself into drifting silhouettes that slid past the strike as if space had briefly forgotten how to agree with itself.
For a heartbeat, there were two.
Then—
They folded back together.
Flesh rewove itself with an obscene wet sound.
Bone fragments snapped back into orbit.
The knot of void-light stabilized once more at its center, pulsing faintly—as if irritated rather than wounded.
It hovered there, whole again.
—
Then, the bay erupted.
Anathor moved first.
His Reaper sabre screamed as it tore free arcs of black lightning, each slash hurling ruptures of condensed warp-energy across the hangar.
The air split and detonated wherever the blade passed, thunder rolling through the deckplates like the tolling of iron bells.
At the same time, his gauntlet flared.
Coils of void-black force burst from his palm—compressed, violent—slamming through machinery, shredding bulkheads, and turning deck fixtures into lethal shrapnel.
The daemonhost did not meet the attacks.
It slipped.
Its form blurred and folded through impossible angles, drifting sideways through space rather than traveling across it.
Violet lances snapped from the void where Seraphine's head had been—silent beams that struck not flesh, but thought, screaming inside the mind even as they missed their mark.
Each near miss rattled Obol within the Throne, pain blooming like migraines made of knives.
He tasted copper. Heard voices that were not there.
Then the daemonhost retaliated.
The entire hangar groaned as invisible hands seized it.
Cargo crates tore free from their restraints, screaming through the air.
Heavy chains snapped taut, flung like whips.
The floor itself buckled and rippled as telekinetic pressure crushed downward, forcing Anathor's greaves to dig deep into deformed plating.
A shriek tore from the daemonhost—no sound, yet every sound at once—human agony layered atop warped laughter.
Anathor answered with silence.
He stepped forward through the storm.
Lightning crawled across his frame, black and gold interwoven, bleeding off him in streaming arcs that grounded into the deck.
Each step left molten footprints behind.
Another slash.
Another impact.
The hangar became a cathedral of ruin—steel screaming, lights shattering, gravity stuttering as two impossibilities tore at the same space.
"The entity is using its host's psychic energy, High-Scion."
The vox-bead in Obol's ear hissed with static.
He recognized the voice instantly—Thale.
"It was feeding through the station's astropathic resonance,"
the Magos continued, tone clipped but strained,
"but now it has claimed a Navigator.
Lady Seraphine's lineage grants it far greater access to the Immaterium."
Obol gritted his teeth as another pulse of warp-pressure rolled across the deck, rattling his skull inside the Throne.
"We will kill it," he stated.
—
A beat.
"I strongly advise against the concept of killing it," Thale replied at once, his vox stripped of all ornament.
"The entity is actively seeking psyker vessels. Destruction of its current host-body will not constitute termination."
—
"It will simply find another," Obol finished flatly.
—
"Correct."
Static hissed, then Thale spoke again—slower this time, careful.
"And the only viable psyker remaining in the immediate operational sphere is—"
—
"Lord Lysan," Obol muttered, dread settling cold in his gut.
"Got it."
Across the hangar,
the daemonhost drifted higher, the void where Seraphine's head had been burning brighter.
"I will not risk it boarding the Psicopompos," Obol said, voice hardening into iron.
"And I will not sacrifice another Orpheon to contain my mistake."
—
Anathor felt the words through the link.
A decision had crystallized—heavy, final, dangerous.
The daemonhost reacted at once.
A blur of shadow and broken flesh hurled itself straight toward Anathor as if flung by the gravity of hatred itself.
The Reaper sabre came down in a clean, merciless arc—black lightning screaming along its edge.
The strike hit.
And the daemonhost came apart.
Its form split into shards of meat, shadow, and bone, each fragment peeling away mid-flight—
—but instead of falling—
they kept moving.
Pieces slammed into Anathor's frame from every angle. Shadow-flesh wrapped around his pauldrons.
Warp-matter splashed across his chestplate like oil in zero gravity.
Fragments hooked into joints, seams, cable-runs—clinging.
They did not try to reform.
They tried to anchor.
Anathor's systems screamed—then locked.
Servos seized mid-cycle. Actuators froze in dead angles.
The Knight stood rigid, one foot half-raised, Reaper sabre stalled in the air as if time itself had caught him by the joints.
"—MOTION INHIBITED," Anathor reported, tone unchanged.
But Obol felt the strain beneath it—the fusion inside him pressured, pinned, held in metaphysical vice by things that were no longer flesh and not yet thought.
The attack did came from everywhere.
Voices exploded inside Obol's skull.
Every scream that had ever echoed through the station.
Every dying prayer. Every betrayal whispered into metal corridors.
They came layered, overlapping, out of phase—men, women, children, officers, astropaths—some begging, some accusing, some laughing.
His vision fractured.
Blood burst warm from his ears as he screamed and dropped to one knee inside the Throne, hands clawing at the armrests.
"You failed them.
You wear their dead like armor.
Knight-Commander.
High-Scion.
Murderer."
The psychic assault hammered through the Cognis-Braid, raking it raw.
Obol tasted copper and ash.
His thoughts scattered like birds under gunfire.
The daemonhost's presence pressed closer, now a single, towering will behind the storm.
"You are hollow,"
it hissed, voice threading through the screams.
"You are nothing.
Now kneel!"
—
Obol's vision dimmed at the edges.
"Anathor...." Obol muttered through pain, unable to hear his own voice, so he said it again.
"Anathor, launch me upward." He breathed through his mouth, thick saliva dripping from the edge of his mouth.
Anathor didn't answer,
just obeyed.
His frame folded inward like living metal.
Obol was torn free of the deck in a brutal arc, hurled upward as if cast by a god's hand.
The hangar spun beneath him—fire, debris, shattered luminars blurring into a single streak of ruin.
Black lightning coiled around his body, holding—a rigid sheath of force wrapped in jagged halos.
The daemonhost's psychic pressure slammed into it and slid away, shrieking as it met something older and colder than itself.
Below,
Anathor staggered.
Chunks of stolen flesh tore free from his upper frame, sloughing away as the daemonhost reclaimed them in midair—wet, snapping sounds echoing as bone and shadow knit together again. But not all of it escaped.
What remained clung.
Fibrous tendrils and blackened sinew still locked into Anathor's leg joints, threading through armor seams, rooting into pistons and servos like parasitic anchors.
Above him,
Obol reached the apex of the launch—weightless for a single, impossible heartbeat.
The daemonhost surged after him, a comet of violence and will, violet light blazing from the void that had once been Seraphine's face.
Obol twisted in midair, muscles screaming, shoulder flaring white-hot with pain as he forced his body to obey.
His hand closed around the spear.
The flame guttered violently in the thin air, then roared back to life as he thumbed the ignition rune.
Below,
the station lurched again—gravity tearing sideways as the dying structure bucked under its own descent.
Bulkheads folded.
A distant explosion rippled through the skeleton of the place, shaking even the void.
The daemonhost closed the distance, claws outstretched, void blazing—
—and Obol fell toward it, spear-first, wrapped in crackling black light, screaming defiance into the oncoming dark.
Behind the abomination,
Anathor's gauntlet extended fully.
Black lightning leapt from his palm—seeking.
The arcs found Obol mid-descent.
They locked.
A lattice of void-black energy snapped into being between Knight and man, lightning threading around Obol's body and then closing, folding inward.
A cage.
The daemonhost shrieked as the geometry sealed.
"You have a third eye," Obol roared, teeth bared,
voice tearing from his throat as gravity and fury carried him down,
"Must hurt—to see inevitability."
He hit it like a living comet.
The spear punched through corrupted flesh, holy flame screaming as it burned a tunnel straight through the daemonhost's torso.
Chunks of shadow tore free, some trying to shear away—
—but the lightning cage denied them.
Anything that touched its bounds turned to ash.
The daemonhost convulsed, its scream spiking into an incoherent wail as its borrowed body burned from the inside out—
—and then it tried to retaliate.
The void where Seraphine's head had been flared violet.
A lance of warp-light began to form—
THOOM!
Anathor's fist came from behind like the judgement of a god.
The blow caught the daemonhost mid-concentration and smashed it bodily into the deck.
The hangar shook as it impacted, plating buckling, scorched steel folding inward around the crater.
The violet beam died unborn.
The lightning cage collapsed inward, detonating in a final concussion that slammed debris outward in every direction.
Silence—brief, ringing and unreal.
Anathor lowered his hand.
Obol dropped neatly into the Knight's open palm, boots skidding once across adamantium before finding purchase.
He straightened there, smoke rising from his armor, one shoulder screaming in protest, the spear still humming with residual heat.
Below them,
the daemonhost writhed weakly in the crater, its shape no longer coherent—just twitching remnants of flesh and shadow trying to become whole again.
Obol looked down at it, chest heaving.
His fingers tightened on Isera's spear.
"What are you," he asked coldly,
standing atop Anathor's hand like an executioner upon a scaffold,
"parasite?"
—
The thing did not answer at once.
It rose—slowly, laboriously—dragging itself upright on no true axis of balance.
Shadowed sinew peeled free from Anathor's immobilized joints, ripping loose with a sound like wet parchment, and slithered back toward its core.
Flesh reassembled without regard for form.
Arms stitched themselves where ribs should be.
Legs fused at impossible angles.
Bones pressed through skin only to be swallowed again.
Fingers—too many, too long—reached upward, crawling over the ruined stump of Seraphine's neck, folding inward to cover the void where her third eye had once opened.
They interlaced there, trembling, forming a mockery of a veil.
The thing hunched, swaying, barely holding coherence—its body a collapsing argument against anatomy.
Then it spoke.
"We are unreal," it hissed—its voice splintering into a hundred overlapping tones:
male, female, child, corpse—each syllable clawing at the air like broken glass dragged across steel.
"While you exist in realspace, we are your shadows… your desires."
The void beneath its woven fingers pulsed faintly—restrained now, wounded, yet still aware.
A cold gravity tugged at the light around it, bending perception, warping depth.
"Your wills create us, your emotions give us form."
Its arm twisted upward with impossible fluidity, fingers pointing toward Anathor.
The void at its neck pulsed once—hungry, knowing.
"You, construct," it crooned, voice cracking into overlapping echoes,
"wielding stolen powers from Immaterium."
Obol's spear angled downward, flame guttering, ready.
The daemonhost's voice sharpened, triumphant and accusing.
"You are one of us."
—
"Wrong," Anathor replied.
The word landed flat, without emphasis—a statement, not a defense.
"I am not."
—
A ripple passed through the daemonhost's warped form.
Its laughter fractured, the sound splitting into several overlapping registers—some mocking, some shrill, some almost panicked.
"Denial," it hissed.
"Your denial is akin to ours. You wear stolen power and refuse the truth of it."
—
For the first time, something new stirred in Anathor's tone.
Irritation.
"Obol Kharon," he said through the link, voice tightening by a fractional degree,
"I find this creature objectionable."
—
The daemonhost recoiled—just a step, just enough to notice.
"You feel it," it pressed, louder now, urgency bleeding through the confidence.
"Annoyance. Division. Self-definition. These are the seeds—"
—
"No," Anathor interrupted.
His sabre lowered—in dismissal.
"You persist in error."
—
"High-Scion," Thale intoned over the vox, static biting at the edges of his words.
"The station has entered uncontrolled orbital descent."
A brief pause—data cascading through his processors.
"Estimated time to atmospheric interface: ninety-eight seconds."
The deck lurched beneath their feet as the distant groan of metal began to rise—
an inevitable protest of a structure being claimed by gravity.
—
"Thinking of fleeing, mortal?" It laughed, trying to provoke Obol.
Clearly not working.
—
He just turned around, looking at Psicopompos and pressed his Vox beads.
"Just to be safe, let's eliminate any chance it will board." He turned slightly.
"I need Psicopompos to micro jump,
the Gellar field should force it here and the distance away from Lord Lysan should help."
"Any objection, Magos?"
—
The daemonhost laughed.
Desperate.
"Coward," it crooned, its voices braiding into something almost playful.
"You dress fear as strategy. You flee because you know—"
—
"I calculate no viable objection," Thale replied calmly.
His mechadendrites unfurled, connecting to the nearest command relay. Runes cascaded across his optics.
"A micro-jump of sub-light translation will establish a hardened Gellar envelope around the Psicopompos."
—
"You cannot escape!"
the daemonhost hissed, drifting closer, void burning brighter.
"The Dark Master marked you before you knew your own name"
—
"Distance set to minimal safe offset," Thale continued, unfazed.
"Gellar harmonics synchronized. Warp-shear probability acceptable."
—
"Listen to me!" the daemonhost snarled, its voices collapsing into one, raw and cracking.
"We are inevitability—!"
—
Anathor's gauntlet swept downward.
There was no ceremony in it.
No declaration.
Just mass and will.
The blow smashed the daemonhost into the deck, shadow and bone buckling under the impact as the thing screeched—cut short by pressure it could not outrun.
Obol leapt down beside the Knight, boots striking metal hard.
Anathor spoke through their link, voice steady, cold.
"It is effective, Obol Kharon.
The entity is destabilized.
Anger and desperation have degraded its coherence."
—
The daemonhost thrashed beneath the descending weight, its form unraveling in violent, panicked spasms.
"Good," Obol said, not looking away.
He turned his head slightly, vox-bead flaring.
"Jump now."
A breath—then sharper, absolute:
"Psicopompos."
The order cut through steel, gravity, and fate alike.
Reality began to give way.
Not with sound— but with absence.
The low, constant pressure that had held boots to deck, weapons to hands, blood to veins—
vanished.
For a single, impossible heartbeat, nothing had weight.
Then the universe corrected itself.
The hangar lurched violently as the Psicopompos tore free, its grav-projectors snapping dark in the same instant the Gellar field ignited far beyond the hull. The artificial anchor that had aligned the station's gravity to the ship was gone—
—and the station remembered where it was.
Metal screamed.
Loose debris tore free, slamming downward as orbital pull seized the structure.
Crates, shattered plating—all slid as one toward a new down, scraping, tumbling and accelerating.
—
Obol was wrenched from his stance, boots skidding uselessly across the deck as momentum flung him hard toward the hangar's far wall.
The daemonhost did not fall.
It hovered, untouched, robes and ruin floating around it like carrion caught in a currentless sea—headless void blazing brighter as if in sudden recognition.
Anathor moved.
The Reaper Sabre drove into the deck with a thunderous shriek, adamantium biting deep. The Knight braced, plating buckling under the strain as the station groaned around him, becoming the only point of stillness in a world that had chosen a new direction.
Obol slammed into him—
—and black lightning wrapped around the Scion as Anathor's gauntlet closed, hauling him bodily against the Knight's chest.
Gravity reclaimed its claim.
The station began to fall.
And the daemonhost screamed—not in triumph.
—
"You're a disappointment," Obol said.
The words were flat. Measured. Final.
"Those mindless warp-spawns that clawed their way through the Gate…"
his gaze never left the floating abomination,
"…they were far more worthy of Kharon's toll."
—
The daemonhost shrieked again, its form unraveling at the edges—bone fragments whipping faster now, orbit tightening around the void where its head had been.
"You dare—!" it howled, voices stacking atop one another until language itself broke.
It lashed out.
Cargo crates, torn plating, shattered servitor parts ripped free and hurled forward in a screaming storm, violet lances punching through the debris like needles of hate.
Anathor did not flinch.
His Reaper sabre remained sunk deep into the deck, anchoring him against the falling world, while his free gauntlet thrust forward.
Black lightning erupted.
The debris disintegrated mid-flight—metal flash-vaporized, stone split to ash—warp-fire strangled and devoured by something colder, heavier.
Obol stood unmoved within the cage of crackling shadow.
"You want recognition," he continued, voice carrying effortlessly through the chaos.
"You seek attention."
The daemonhost's form jittered, its advance stalling for a fraction of a second.
"We learned that from your kin," Obol said.
"From the ones that screamed louder than you as they died."
—
The violet light around it flickered.
"A mere human—" it began again, the voices layering thickly, trying to recover dominance.
"You cannot comprehend true extend of the warp—"
—
"Then explain it," Obol cut in calmly.
The Throne hummed around him, sympathetic, alive.
He leaned forward, fingers resting loosely on the armrests, posture relaxed—predatory.
"You needed a gate," he continued, almost conversational.
"I saw it. A wound. An invitation."
The daemonhost's orbiting fragments slowed, their rhythm breaking.
"Every time we cut one of your kin down," Obol said,
"they come back—because the door is still open."
A pause.
"But you," he murmured, tilting his head slightly.
"You're different."
The black light where its head had been pulsed once, violently.
"I don't see a gate," Obol went on.
"The breach in the engine room was gone."
Anathor felt it then—the tightening, the pull—as the thing instinctively recoiled.
"You already served your purpose," Obol said softly.
"A parasite feeding on a frontier station."
—
The daemonhost's voices overlapped faster now, less coordinated.
"You speak ignorance dressed as insight—"
—
"Answer me," Obol pressed, voice sharpening at last.
"If there's no gate…"
He leaned further forward.
"…what happens when you die?"
Silence fell.
Even the hundred voices layered into the daemonhost's scream faltered—cut short, trapped mid-utterance like a breath held too long.
Gravity roared.
The station plunged, its structure shrieking as atmospheric friction began to claim it. Heat bloomed along the hull in crawling lines of fire.
Obol's voice cut clean through the chaos.
"Realspace is ours."
—
Anathor moved.
His gauntlet tore into the Knight's own arm, ripping the Reaper Sabre free in a single brutal motion.
With no hesitation, he hurled it.
The blade crossed the hangar in a blur of black lightning—
—and pinned the daemonhost to the wall, piercing warped flesh and ferrocrete alike.
Reality screamed as the weapon embedded itself, locking the entity in place.
"Take that," Obol said coldly,
"as a souvenir."
—
Using the force of the throw, Anathor pivoted and launched.
Knight and Scion burst from the hangar into the void beyond, torn free from the dying station as gravity lost its grip.
Before them,
the daemonhost thrashed, nailed to the wall of a world already lost.
"The First Prince will come to claim you!" it shrieked, its voice breaking into raw desperation, into prophecy turned threat.
—
"Let him come," Anathor replied.
Below them,
the station vanished—
consumed by fire as it entered low orbit, a falling star screaming its way into planetary death.
—
They drifted in silence for a time.
The station had become a falling wound—fire blooming across its skin as atmosphere stripped it down to screaming metal.
Above,
only the vast indifference of space, stars cold and watching.
The Psicopompos was gone from sight now, holding distance, letting gravity and flame finish what had already been decided.
Only then did Anathor speak.
"The First Prince."
The words did not echo. They settled—heavy, deliberate.
—
Obol rested back against the Throne's restraints, his breath finally slowing.
"If that parasite knew of you," he said quietly,
"then whoever this Prince is… he knows as well."
—
"Yes," Anathor replied, without denial.
"Awareness implies provenance."
A pause.
"What if this was designed?" Anathor continued.
"Our existence—"
—
Obol closed his eyes for a moment,
seeing again the gate, the sword-tip, the way fate had folded inward instead of breaking.
"That First Prince was watching," he said at last.
"Observing."
He opened his eyes and looked at Maeric's skull—fused into the Throne's panel before him.
"The sword was coming through as Maeric detonated the Gellar box," he sighed.
"I doubt the Prince knew what would happen."
"He knows you exist now," Obol continued.
"Perhaps he could erase you, if he chose."
An optic lens within Maeric's skull dimmed, listening.
"But we still have an advantage."
A beat.
"Time."
He exhaled.
"Time… and the chance to find a way to sever him from you."
—
After a while.
Reality stitched itself back together with a soundless violence.
Where the void had been empty, Psicopompos re-emerged—
a cathedral of iron and fire tearing itself free from unreality.
Its silhouette bloomed against the stars.
Gellar pylons flared into full brilliance, cycling as the ship stabilized, and then—
A column of white radiance speared downward.
A retrieval beam.
It washed over Anathor, pinning the Knight in a lattice of force.
Void-frost crystallized briefly along his warped plates as the field locked to mass and geometry that should not have existed.
Anathor did not resist.
Obol felt the pull through the Throne, a pressure behind the eyes, like gravity remembering him.
Below them,
the ruined station vanished into cloud and flame as atmosphere finally claimed it—
a falling pyre no longer worth watching.
—
The hangar decks of Psicopompos received them in thunder.
Grav-fields engaged. Mag-locks clamped.
Warning sirens howled—then cut sharply to silence.
Anathor settled onto the deck like a god kneeling.
Venting steam clouded the air.
Servitors froze mid-step, logic-loops screaming at what they were witnessing, until overridden by hard-coded obedience. T
ech-adepts halted, optics flaring in sacred confusion.
Thale met him first, his gaze fixing on Anathor, critical.
"You realize that thing is Abominable intelligence, High-Scion?"
—
Obol sighed, commanded Anathor.
"Get back to the tomb, and don't cause any trouble."
—
Anathor optic dimmed and he moved as instructed.
Everyone made way, avoiding the Knight.
Left gauntlet hanging on his side while his right arm is torn.
After he entered the ruined bulkhead of the tomb, Thale continued.
"Explain your intention"
—
Obol didn't answer at once.
The echo of Anathor's retreat still rang through the vault—each ponderous step fading into the tomb like a lid sealing on a sarcophagus.
Only when the bulkhead groaned shut behind the fused Knight did Obol turn back to Thale.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
"He is not Abominable Intelligence," Obol said at last, his voice low but controlled.
"He is not self-willed logic born of code nor does he seek optimization, replication, or dominion."
—
Thale's optics narrowed, red flickering through layers of analysis.
"It speaks. It acts without a machine-spirit.
These are disqualifying traits."
—
"He obeys," Obol replied immediately.
"He chooses to obey. That distinction matters."
—
A pause.
Thale's mechadendrites twitched, cogitators cycling hard.
"Its existence alone pose great risk, to you and your house." he said.
"And It is connected, linked to the warp."
He paused, his optic more critical.
"Are you compromised, High-Scion?"
"You were in the Cognis-Braid, How can I be certain that this is you.
Lord High-Scion Obol Kharon V."
—
"How about this, if he ever become a threat. You can eliminate us both." Obol answered.
Thale did not respond at once.
—
His mechadendrites slowed—then stilled entirely, as if even their background rites had been suspended. Optics dimmed, cycling inward, running probabilities that had no comfortable outputs.
"You would offer yourself as collateral," he said at last.
—
"Not collateral," Obol corrected.
"Accountability."
—
A faint shift passed through Thale's posture—minute, but telling.
"You bind your fate to a construct you yourself admit carries warp provenance," Thale said.
"That is not a calculation. It is a vow."
—
Obol inclined his head a fraction.
"House Kharon was founded on vows that logic alone could not justify."
Silence stretched.
—
Then Thale spoke again, slower now, each word weighed.
"If the entity designated Anathor demonstrates loss of restraint, escalation of autonomy, or predatory divergence—"
He raised one mechadendrite, its tip splitting into a trinity of injector-spines.
"I will initiate total purgation protocols."
Obol did not flinch.
"Of the construct," Thale continued, optics fixing on Obol now, unblinking—
"—and of High-Scion Obol Kharon V, without delay."
A breath passed.
—
"Accepted," Obol said.
—
"What is going on?"
A voice laced with anger and confusion pierced Obol's ears,
he turned around.
—
"Vaeleen—" Obol spoke, calmly.
"Yes, I am Vaeleen Dolmarch." She shot back,
"What are you thinking?
Maeric died... turned into that thing,
and you kept this a secret from us?"
"Auntie Isera almost died!"
"Why, uncle Obol?" She asked again.
Obol did not turn away.
He faced Vaeleen fully—no Throne, no vox-mask,
no command-voice to soften what was coming.
She stood rigid, hands folded before her as if at court,
but the tension in her posture betrayed her calm.
When she spoke, her voice was low, even—far more dangerous than fury.
"Why," she asked simply.
Not accusing.
Not shouting.
Just the question—bare, surgical.
"Why, uncle?"
—
Obol held her gaze.
"Because if I had told you," he said quietly,
"you would have tried to stop me."
—
A flicker crossed her eyes—not anger, not yet, but pain disciplined into stillness.
"You're assuming," Vaeleen replied, voice tightening by a fraction,
"that we would choose to abandon you."
She took a step forward.
"We are your blood," she said.
"At least allow us to share the weight you carry."
Her fist clenched.
For a heartbeat, it looked as though she might strike him—not in rage, but in grief given form.
She moved.
—
Steel snapped through the air.
Thale's mechadendrites uncoiled with sudden speed, intercepting her wrist inches from Obol
"Lady Dolmarch," Thale intoned, his voice clipped down to pure function,
"your emotional state is impairing strategic judgment—"
—
"Do not speak to me of judgment!" Vaeleen snapped, wrenching against the metal grip,
her eyes flashing toward Thale.
Her voice rose—not loud, but sharper, honed to cut.
"I don't care about the circumstances. Uncle Caldrin told me,"
she said, each word deliberate.
"You killed an Orpheon."
A beat.
"Do you understand the consequences?"
She gestured violently toward the viewport, toward the black beyond.
"You are both alike—more than you care to admit," she continued.
"Cowards, hiding behind pretty words."
She took a step back, her breath suddenly uneven.
One hand rose to clutch her temple as the weight finally broke through her composure.
Without looking back, she turned and walked away.
"Gah… men," she muttered bitterly.
"Stupid men."
—
"Please… forgive her outburst, my lord," Thrykos said quietly.
He had followed Vaeleen only as far as the doorway she had exited through, watching her retreat before turning back.
"She is young, although not as free spirited as you were."
His voice carried no rebuke—only concern.
—
"No," Obol answered.
He stepped past Thrykos and lowered himself into a nearby chair, the metal creaking softly beneath his weight.
For the first time since the station, his posture slackened—not in weakness, but exhaustion long held at bay.
"But she is correct."
Silence settled in the chamber.
Obol rested his forearms on his knees, fingers interlaced, gaze unfocused.
"We did hide behind words," he continued, voice low.
"Duty. Necessity. Logic."
A breath out—slow, measured.
"And we called it righteousness."
—
He looked up then, meeting Thrykos' eyes, pleading for forgiveness.
Thrykos just smiled,
"You owe me no explanation, High-Scion."
—
Obol sighed, then asked quietly.
"How is Isera?"
—
"Stable," Thrykos replied, lowering himself into the seat beside him.
"Her wounds would have been fatal—but we reached her in time."
He paused, eyes distant.
"All because of the Knight's intervention."
Obol said nothing.
"And if that thing had taken hold of Lady Seraphine…" Thrykos continued,
his gaze shifting toward Thale across the chamber.
"How many would we lose?"
The implication hung unspoken.
—
"But Lady Dolmarch is correct," Thale said, his voice cutting in with cold finality.
"Lady Seraphine's death will bring complications to the relationship between
House Kharon and House Orpheon."
—
Obol sighed again, rubbing a hand across his brow.
"Has Lord Lysan been notified?"
—
Thrykos's expression shifted—subtle, but telling.
"He notified us," he corrected.
"Said he felt her death.
Abrupt. Violent.
Like a cord severed mid-thought."
Obol's fingers stilled.
"He reached the brig moments later," Thrykos continued,
"but we were still on the station."
A pause.
"He did not shout. Did not accuse."
That, somehow, made it worse.
Thrykos rose to his feet.
"He demands audience with you, High-Scion," he said carefully,
"And with Magos Dominus as well."
—
Obol leaned back in the chair, eyes closing for a heartbeat.
"Very well," he said at last, opening his eyes.
"Summon him to my quarters."
—
Obol's quarters were silent.
Not the comfortable, meditative silence of a command suite—but the brittle, waiting silence of a room braced for impact.
Obol sat in the high-backed chair at the center, posture controlled, hands folded loosely atop his knee.
His cloak rested around him like shadowed armor.
The low lumen-strips cast a thin amber glow across his features, sharpening the lines of exhaustion and determination both.
To his right,
Thale stood perfectly straight—no sway, no idle motion—mechadendrites furled like a restrained predator.
Only the faint ticking of internal cogitators betrayed the Magos's heightened processing.
To his left,
Thrykos kept a more human stillness, though his jaw clenched now and then.
His hands were folded behind him, boots together, as if holding a vigil instead of standing guard.
All three faced the sealed door.
Nothing moved.
Nothing breathed too loudly.
Until—
THUNK.
The outer lock cycled.
Thrykos subtly shifted his stance.
Thale's optics dilated by a fraction.
Obol didn't move.
A second locking bolt slid free, followed by the hiss of a pressure seal releasing.
The door began to open.
First the sliver of cold corridor light.
Then the silhouette.
Then—
Lord Lysan Orpheon stepped inside.
His robes were disheveled, hair loose from its usual binding—not wild, but clearly touched by haste and grief.
A Navigator's veil hung crooked across one cheek, as if he had put it on mid-run.
His third eye was shuttered, but Obol felt the pressure of it—an emotional resonance sweeping the room like a cold tide.
Behind him, the door sealed shut.
Lysan took a single step forward. His voice when he finally spoke was quiet—
—but there was nothing soft in it.
"High-Scion Obol Kharon," he said.
He did not look at Obol when he said it.
He turned—slowly, deliberately—to Thale.
"It was your idea, was it, Magos?"
—
"Affirmative," Thale replied, unblinking.
—
Lysan's jaw tightened by the smallest fraction.
"And why?"
His tone never rose.
No tremor, no crack.
Only a blade honed too fine.
"Because she was more capable than I am?"
The question was not disbelief.
It was confirmation.
—
Lysan waited for Thale's answer.
The Magos inclined his head, optics narrowing in calculation—
But before a single syllable left him, Obol spoke.
"It was my decision."
The words landed with the weight of a blade placed on a table—measured, deliberate.
Lysan's eyes finally settled on Obol.
"Your decision," he repeated—then gave a short, humorless chuckle.
"But she could have refused."
His tone turned brittle, almost mocking.
"And do you know why she didn't?"
He lifted a hand and pointed directly at Obol.
"Because of that, High-Scion.
Your vaunted virtue.
Your righteousness.
You shift blame from the Magos onto yourself as if that absolves the choice."
He exhaled slowly — not calming, but conceding to inevitability.
"She was in love with you," Lysan said, voice tightening around the edges.
"Madly."
His eyes hardened.
"And that devotion cost her her life… and you."
A pause — thin, trembling, yet controlled.
"Foolish girl."
"Mixing personal feelings into a bloodline pact."
—
"We understood the risk," Obol said,
voice level but carrying the weight of command and guilt alike.
"And as her betrothed—as Master of Kharon—her death falls upon me,
regardless of the choices made along the way."
—
"You have two choices, High-Scion," Lysan said, each word precise as a scalpel.
"Send me back to Orpheon…
or step down and appoint a female heir to House Kharon.
The marriage pact will fall upon me—and whichever unfortunate dame you select."
He did not wait for a reply.
Lysan turned, steps measured, almost ceremonial, until he paused beside the bulkhead to the Knight vault.
"And that thing behind this wall…" he added, touching the metal with two fingers.
"You should get rid of it before we reach Mars."
—
He turned to leave.
"I will consider your words, Lord Lysan," Obol said at last.
Lysan paused only long enough to incline his head—neither in respect nor dismissal—
then stepped through the doorway.
As he exited,
another figure brushed past him with a stern look and a stiff, almost hostile bow.
—
Vaerin stepped inside, the door hissing shut behind her.
Her hands were folded before her—proper, disciplined—but the tension in her shoulders betrayed the storm under the calm.
"High-Scion," she said, bowing her head just enough to honor formality.
"My sister seemed… angry."
A faint tremor cracked the edges of her composure—barely there, but undeniable.
"Did she do something rash?"
—
Obol turned briefly to Thrykos.
The Ossivane lord gave a small, steady nod.
Obol drew a slow breath, then faced Vaerin fully.
"No," he said softly.
"She hasn't done anything wrong."
Her shoulders eased by a fraction—just enough to show she'd been holding her breath.
"I'm sorry for not telling you," he continued,
lifting a hand toward the bulkhead that sealed the Knight's vault.
—
Vaerin's gaze followed his gesture.
A shiver went through her.
"Is that thing safe, High-Scion?" she asked.
A beat—then, more quietly.
"…No.
Uncle."
—
Obol allowed a small smile, warm despite the weight on him.
"You don't need to fear it," he said.
"And you only have to trust me—just as you always have."
—
Vaerin swallowed once, the tension in her voice barely visible.
"I do," she whispered.
"But the others are scared.
And now… the ordeal with Orpheon."
Her eyes lifted to him—steady, loyal, determined to help even if she didn't fully understand.
"Is there something I can do?"
—
Obol didn't answer immediately.
He looked at her—truly looked—saw her earnestness, her fear,
her readiness to bear a piece of the weight he carried.
And he would not allow it.
He closed his eyes briefly, drawing a slow breath that grounded his resolve.
When he exhaled, his voice came out steady—gentle in a way that felt almost fragile.
"Thank you," Obol said.
"But nothing at the moment."
Vaerin nodded twice, a small, uncertain motion.
She wanted to believe him.
She chose to believe him.
He added, softer still,
"I'll let you know if there's anything."
A promise spoken like truth.
A lie he wished were true.
Vaerin nodded once—small, trusting—and slipped out of the chamber.
—
The door sealed.
Silence settled, heavy and unkind.
Only then did Obol exhale, long and controlled, and turn to the two men who had stayed.
Thale stood rigid, mechadendrites folded tight.
Thrykos watched him with quiet worry.
The shield of courtesy was gone.
Now came the reckoning.
"What are your assessments?" Obol asked.
—
"I take it you do not intend to accept Lord Lysan's proposal, High-Scion?"
Thrykos asked quietly.
—
Obol didn't answer immediately.
He simply lowered his gaze, rubbing a thumb across his palm—
an unconscious gesture from stress he never showed in public.
Then he sighed.
"We can delay this until we reach Mars," he said at last.
"I will give him an answer then.
But I will not barter my kin to repair my mistake."
He lifted his eyes again, steady, resolute.
"I would sooner suffer the consequence myself."
—
"And those consequences," the Magos replied, the red of his optics tightening to a point,
"may fall upon your House as a whole, High-Scion."
—
A silence followed—one that felt like a verdict waiting for a signature.
"Remind me the terms of our pact, Magos."
—
Thale inclined his head a fraction, internal cogitators adjusting as he recited:
"House Orpheon grants House Kharon guaranteed passage through their Warp-lanes,
Navigator support, and first-call rights on their sanctioned routes."
His tone was clinical—surgical.
"In exchange, House Kharon binds its ruling line to theirs by marriage.
The High-Scion must take an Orpheon spouse."
A brief pause.
"The pact is not symbolic.
It ensures Kharon may continue to field Knights across the Imperium
without dependence on external Chartist fleets or vulnerable routes."
He folded his hands behind his back.
"Lady Seraphine's death does not void the pact.
It simply places the obligation—
and the scrutiny—
back upon you."
—
"Who do we have on Mars?" he asked.
—
Thale answered without hesitation.
"Your mother, High-Scion.
High-Matron Elyndra Orpheon-Kharon
—representative of both Houses."
—
Obol exhaled, long and weary.
"She is going to hate my housewarming gift."
The chamber dimmed as the red lumen strips shifted to night-cycle, and the hum of the ship's core settled into a low, steady throb.
—
Outside the sealed door,
Vaerin moved down the quiet hallway, her steps light, almost hesitant.
She had expected to find calm after speaking with Obol—reassurance, perhaps.
Instead,
she found Lysan.
He stood alone in the center of the corridor, hands folded behind his back, posture straight and still as carved marble.
The lumen-strips overhead cast long shadows across his face, sharpening the already-unnatural stillness of a navigator's features.
He was waiting for her.
Their eyes met.
"May we speak?" he asked, voice so controlled it bordered on expressionless.
He inclined his head a fraction.
"My lady."
Then,
the scene faded to a swirling ocean of impossible colors, a psychic sea where hues that did not exist in realspace bled into one another.
Ghost-images of the Psicopompos rippled outward on both sides—one stretched thin as a memory not yet born,
the other warped as a future already abandoned—mirrors of past and future flickering across the tide.
For a moment, the ship drifted between itself.
Then—
A violent BOOM tore through the void, a thunderclap felt more than heard, as the flying cathedral shuddered violently—
the Psicopompos burst out of the warp-lane and into realspace.
—
Somewhere else,
a doors parting with a soft hydraulic growl and Vaerin entered quietly,
her conversation with Lysan remained unknown—for now.
Caldrin and Isera's chamber was dim—lights lowered to a gentle amber glow to ease Isera's breathing.
Her twin sister—Vaeleen was already there, seated beside the bed, one hand resting over Isera's.
She turned at the sound of Vaeleen's steps—her expression drawn, shaken but composed.
"Is she—?" Vaerin began.
—
Vaeleen answered softly. "Sleeping."
Relief flickered across Vaeleen's face—brief, fragile.
—
Then Caldrin, who had been standing near the viewport spoke in a strained whisper.
"Emperor's grace..."
Both turned toward him.
Toward the window.
And froze.
The viewport framed the newborn realspace like a painting—
but instead of the calm, orderly void they expected…
Sol burned.
Warp-light pollution clung like bruises along the system's edge.
Mars was ringed with fire—distant detonations blooming like red flowers across its surface.
A massive ship lay in two broken halves, venting atmosphere in a slow, corpse-like drift.
Vaerin's hand flew to her mouth.
Vaeleen's breath hitched, eyes widening as the impossible vista burned across the viewport—
Mars wreathed in flame, ships drifting in broken orbits like butchered titans, the void stained with warp-scars still fading.
Then—
BRRRK—
The ship-wide vox cracked alive, drowning the chamber in static and terror.
"—Istvann V has fallen—"
A scream in the background. Gunfire. Someone praying.
"The Warmaster—betrayed—US."
The transmission tore apart into white noise, then died.
—
Date :
006.6.M31
Horus Heresy.