"..This is the Thirteenth District, the territory of the Dying-worshippers."
Reyna's expression twitched slightly as she looked at the scene before her.
The Thirteenth District was completely different from other Lower Nest districts.
It exuded a sense of emptiness and silence; the streets of the entire district seemed devoid of people, yet the ground was very clean, without a single stain. Only an occasional cold wind blew through, bringing with it the pale scent of corpses.
The exterior walls of the surrounding buildings were a desolate grey-white, but the bloodstains hanging on them were chilling.
These bloodstains had settled into a reddish-brown, forming various strange shapes.
If one looked closely, it seemed possible to discern patterns of skulls, Aquila, skeletons, thrones, fallen angels, and more.
Reyna couldn't help but look up, following the bloodstains.
The streets were indeed clean and empty, without a single soul in sight.
However, many people were hanging above the streets.
On the high parts of buildings bordering the streets, from metal poles extending outwards, hung numerous nooses.
From each rope hung a pale, fleshless skeleton.
Their necks rested in the ropes, their pale skulls, symbolizing human purity, faced Alexander and Reyna.
These bones were densely packed together, layer upon layer, like pale clouds.
Occasionally, blood dripped from recently deceased skeletons, like falling raindrops.
Reyna's expression was quite vivid.
Alexander, standing beside her, couldn't help but take a deep breath.
He closed his eyes as if in ecstasy, feeling the surrounding atmosphere with his body.
Then, Reyna heard Alexander murmur with a sense of comfort...
"What a wonderful place."
Reyna looked as if she had seen a Warp Great Demon, her face filled with terror, and she quickly put some distance between herself and Alexander.
Alexander noticed Reyna's horrified expression and couldn't help but shrug.
It wasn't his fault.
As soon as he entered this Thirteenth District, looking at the eerie white bones hanging above and feeling the deathly aura pervading the city, he felt inexplicably comfortable.
It was as if the death that had accumulated for countless years was pleasing him, nourishing him, making him stronger and stronger.
The blessing that had been dormant within Alexander also seemed to become more active.
Alexander's throat moved involuntarily.
In Reyna's eyes, Alexander seemed to be swallowing the surrounding death.
"Are you... are you alright?" Reyna asked tentatively.
"I'm fine." Alexander looked genuinely at Reyna, his tone as calm as death as he said, "Don't you think it's very quiet around here, with no disturbances, and everything feels settled, making it very comfortable?"
Alexander said this from the bottom of his heart, and he knew it was almost certainly the result of the weasel's blessing.
But the comfort was truly real, as if the clamor of the hive city had vanished in an instant.
Reyna couldn't help but swallow, she could only follow behind Alexander, step by step, towards the distant church.
As the grey-white church gradually became clearer, Reyna finally couldn't help but ask in a low voice:
"Are you sure these people are reliable? They won't hang us up too, will they?"
Reyna pointed to the eerie white bones hanging above their heads as she asked.
"Don't worry, the Emperor, that old man, protects me." Alexander shrugged and said, "Besides, this place is pretty good."
"Quiet, peaceful, and the people also have a great sense of relaxation and distance."
Alexander pointed to the pale skeletons hanging on the surrounding walls.
"..If they didn't have a sense of distance, that would be a horror story." Reyna's eye twitched as she said.
Suddenly, Reyna froze.
She realized she had actually seen a living person!
It was a young man, squatting by the roadside, untangling a synthetic fiber rope with one hand.
His right arm was severed, now only a small, gruesome stump, seemingly torn off by some machinery.
The man saw Alexander and Reyna, his eyes immediately lit up, and he eagerly walked up to them.
"Sorry, I can't untie this synthetic fiber rope anymore."
The man waved his stump apologetically:
"It's always a bit inconvenient with one hand."
Noticing that the person opposite was a normal human, not some strange Dying-worshipper, Reyna immediately breathed a sigh of relief.
"Can you help me untie this rope?" the man asked hopefully.
Reyna instinctively wanted to reach out to help,
But Alexander blocked her way, taking the rope first to help.
He quickly untied the rope and handed it to the one-armed young man in front of him.
The man was full of gratitude, and after taking the rope, he said excitedly, "Thank you, thank you, may your souls return to the Golden Throne after death."
"You're welcome, it's what I should do." Alexander smiled gently and said.
"..Unique gratitude." Reyna's mouth twitched as she said.
Then she watched in bewilderment as the young man walked to the wall of the dim building.
He threw one end of the rope onto a metal pole in mid-air, tied a slipknot on the dangling end,
Then, with a single arm, he pulled, and the rope was firmly hung on the metal pole.
Then he tied a knot with one hand, forming a noose at the bottom of the rope, hanging in mid-air slightly above his head.
The young man noticed Reyna and Alexander looking his way.
He waved to them, a gentle smile on his lips, as if greeting friends.
"May my death nourish the Emperor, may my martyrdom support the Imperium, I shall return to the Golden Throne."
Then, under Reyna's stunned gaze, he lightly jumped, letting his neck fit perfectly into the noose.
The synthetic fiber rope tightly constricted the man's neck, leaving a purple mark. His face turned red, and his body instinctively swayed in the air.
In a moment, his eyes rolled back, and he died.
Under Reyna's increasingly dazed gaze,
A woman in white leather, her face covered, emerged from the shadows of the house at some unknown time.
Her fingertips slid, and a slender, needle-like rapier appeared in her hand.
After approaching the hanged man, she began to strip his flesh inch by inch with the rapier, seemingly intending to reduce him to bare bones.
Now Reyna knew how these bones came to be.
"A small door to the Golden Throne." Alexander murmured, looking at the noose with the young one-armed man hanging in mid-air.
Reyna's face became increasingly distorted as she looked at Alexander.
Alexander shrugged.
He felt that this man might really have returned to the Golden Throne.
Because the moment the man died, Alexander felt that the strong deathly aura in the air intensified slightly.
He vaguely felt that within this pale deathly aura, a certain gaze also became slightly clearer and more powerful.
That was almost certainly the Emperor's gaze... one person's death truly strengthened the Emperor's power.
"No, buddy, you're not going to be born as the God of Death in the Warp after the death of all humanity, and solo a certain Chaos God, are you?"
Alexander couldn't help but complain, the Emperor's current feeling to him somewhat overlapped with the Eldar God of Death's 설정.
"..The Imperium we wanted to create, our glorious father, how did it become like this ten thousand years later?" Sanguinius murmured.
Alexander was about to respond to him, but suddenly his eye caught a glimpse of a grey-clad, hooded woman silently approaching him from the shadows.
"Hey." Alexander reached out and greeted her.
The woman froze rigidly in place.