Chapter 174: The Others
The world was dim, drenched in rain and shadow—no day, no night, no direction. The downpour was like a shroud, swallowing everything in its path.
On the mud-soaked ground, toxic crystal residue was washed away, diluted into a foul slurry that slithered into the great rivers like some wounded creature.
Scarlet warning lights pierced through the torrential curtain of rain. The wail of industrial sirens echoed as the first wave of heavy industrial machines thundered down from the sky, crashing into the sodden earth.
Engines roared. Gears churned. Drenched crimson robes clung heavily to the frames of the Mechanicus adepts, who staggered down from their colossal machines. Rain-soaked fabric dragged at their steps. One of them looked toward the horizon, muttering a prayer—and then, without hesitation, dropped to his knees in the toxic sludge, bowing his head low until it touched the filthy ground.
"Praise be to the Omnissiah."
The downpour almost drowned his frail figure. After his simple act of worship, the adept turned away, though he glanced back a few times, reluctant to leave the sacred site. Eventually, he turned fully and began directing the operation, ordering the colossal water pumps to begin their task.
This same scene unfolded beside every machine.
Every Mechanicus member who had waited high in the upper atmosphere of Barbarus had, in a single planetary day, witnessed something that defied comprehension.
Though simulations had prepared them for every step, nothing could have matched the reality—when, from beneath the dense clouds, immense arcs of green lightning erupted, coiling upward like serpents, nearly brushing the hulls of their atmospheric craft.
Awe. Terror. Reverence. Emotions burst forth, primal and pure—the reaction of humanity in the face of the miraculous.
But it wasn't only emotion. There was logic, too—a perfect clarity of thought as if the storm had burned away distractions. Desire and stray thoughts faded. Even the gods of indulgence and compulsion were banished from this place.
And now, thought and calculation would operate unimpeded, as they had in the beginning.
It was only when the first raindrop touched the ground that the tech-priests closest to the anti-psyker field finally emerged from their stupor.
Those whose eyes had never been augmented were already weeping.
Tears fell freely.
They looked at one another in disbelief—as if unable to believe what they had just witnessed.
"Praise be to the Omnissiah!!!"
Elsewhere, atop the auxiliary tower nearest the main structure, Nera, one of the Sister of Silence, stood in stunned silence.
The savage green had burned itself into her pale blue eyes.
The crushing pressure had suddenly lifted.
For the first time, Nera understood what mortals felt in the presence of Blanks—those cursed beings who blotted out the warp itself.
Even as a member of the Anathema Psykana, even within a near-complete null-space zone, she felt suffocated.
But she was trained. She was Imperial.
She straightened her back.
Bracing herself with her executioner's greatsword, she stood tall once more.
Her duty was to witness all of this.
To ensure it could be restored, if ever necessary.
She felt a small tug at her cloak—it was Little Herila.
After meeting the Sister of Silence, Hades had entrusted Herila to them with little hesitation.
After all, the Death Guard was still filled with Astartes—towering warriors steeped in outdated and brutish traditions. Hades, with his conservative mindset, couldn't bring himself to let Herila spend her days surrounded by half-naked musclebound giants wrestling in the dueling cages.
Though, admittedly, no one else seemed to mind—except Hades.
The Mechanicus educators hadn't been a good fit either. Hades had already warned Jin to stop trying to persuade Herila to have her uterus removed to make room for a second brain-wetware implant.
Yet Jin had confided in Hades, visibly concerned.
He suspected that little Herila's intelligence hadn't quite reached the standard threshold. Hades could only sigh and explain, again, that the girl just didn't like reading—not that her brain was malfunctioning, and certainly not something that warranted installing a second one.
It was in that moment that Hades fully realized: the Death Guard was no place for a child to grow up.
At least, not in the eyes of someone with a conservative, old-school mindset shaped by the dark millennia of the 30th millennium.
And with Herila's unique physiology, Hades couldn't just send her to a regular school either.
So when the Black Ship finally arrived—not to collect Herila, but to extract black-tower tech—Hades didn't hesitate. He handed Herila over to Sister Nera for her education.
Having been thoroughly trained by the Sisterhood, Nera was far more adept than Hades at identifying female pariahs. Her insights far surpassed those of the former Astartes, and she immediately recognized something in Herila—a rare and exceptionally potent Blank potential.
Thus, Nera decided she would take personal responsibility for Herila's upbringing.
She would guide this child to become a Sister of Silence worthy of the Emperor's will.
The wild green lightning still raged across the sky, roaring like a celestial tide. Nera steadied her mind.
The towering sister knelt slightly, lowering her head to meet Herila's eyes.
Those deep brown eyes now brimmed with moisture.
Even with her immense potential, this null-psionic domain was more than Herila could bear.
"Feeling unwell?" Nera signed gently.
Herila shook her head. Her gaze turned toward the horizon—the same direction she had often stared toward in the past.
Toward the South, toward that familiar presence.
"Will brother Hades be okay?"
She asked the question quietly, but it echoed like a thunderclap in Nera's heart.
That cheerful man, always with a gentle grin—could he really be the source of such terrifying power? The kind that shattered the sky and burned through the very laws of reality?
Was he still the same Hades she knew? Or had something else taken his place?
Nera shook her head slowly.
"In the Soulless Realm… the Lord of the Underworld will not fall."
But that was not the truth.
Too much water would break a vessel.
And besides, the Emperor had already made preparations to handle his domain.
Nera thought of it silently.
Yet what the Sister of Silence didn't know was this:
The Emperor's bindings on the Black Domain had already begun to loosen.
And this enormous planet-consuming null field was not solely the work of the Black Tower.
Both the Sister of Silence and the Custodian had mistaken this apocalyptic-scale null field for a technological feat of the tower alone.
Yes, under the hand of a pariah, the tower could produce a psionic dead zone.
But never at this magnitude.
. . . . . . .
High above the world, in orbit, silence reigned.
Mortarion stared down at the planet beneath his feet.
Once a vibrant green world, Barbarus was now wilting.
The lush forests and living mist were being choked beneath rising plumes of ash and dust. The clear skies had turned into swirling clouds of filth and decay.
Mortarion could imagine what was happening below.
He knew that storms of biblical scale were ravaging the surface.
Rains that could drown mountains.
Lightning that split entire ranges apart.
The atmosphere itself is in violent upheaval.
Earth shattering. Skies twisting.
And yet, from space, it all looked so… calm.
As if it were nothing more than a reaction inside a beaker, deep in some laboratory.
A simple chemical precipitation.
But Mortarion knew—no one would dare underestimate what was happening on Barbarus.
The reason was simple—
Any being with a soul, even if they merely cast a glance in that direction, would feel a jolt of pure horror erupt from the deepest part of their being.
Their souls would scream—boiling, writhing, begging them to flee, to turn away from this hellscape upon the earth.
The pain of the soul was so overwhelming, it even dulled the ache of emotional absence. Feelings that once had focus now lost their anchor, leaving behind a surplus of disoriented, aimless emotion.
Mortarion blinked.
Even for a Primarch, it took an immense force of will to withstand the revulsion that gripped him. Only after conquering that visceral disgust did he allow his gaze to remain locked on Barbarus.
He knew what this was.
This was Hades' power.
Without much expression, Mortarion cast a glance toward Vorx, the native of Barbarus who had been so eagerly pushing for this plan.
Vorx had already turned his eyes to the floor, shaking uncontrollably.
He felt as if one more look would cause his brain to melt, screaming in agony.
Mortarion did not rebuke him.
Instead, he resumed his unblinking vigil upon the world below.
He wouldn't allow himself to miss even the faintest of details.
For all his calm, Mortarion wanted the warp-strangled air of Barbarus cleansed.
He had always desired it. He still did.
And now, standing silently amid his garden—or what was once a garden—Mortarion heard it.
The whispers.
Accusations. Bargains. Prayers and curses, carried through the warp.
He heard promises of jewels eternal, of boundless dominion, of galactic authority over life and death. All he had to do was nod. A simple acceptance—and he would be made a god.
He did not move.
He stared at Barbarus.
The once-lush garden around him had grown barren, illusory. Through the mirage, he could see the bone-white steel floor of the Endurance beneath his boots.
It was trying to reach him again.
+What do you desire, my child?+
A voice slithered through his thoughts.
Vines broke from the muck, snaking up from the mire below.
They crept along his armor, coiling gently, as if begging him to stay.
Mortarion finally opened his mouth.
"I want you dead."
A thunderclap shattered the illusion, rending the false world to ash.
And still, Mortarion watched Barbarus, unmoving, unblinking.
He could hear the laughter now, echoing through the Immaterium—wild, mocking, furious.
But he also knew:
All of it would soon be swallowed by Hades' black domain.
And it was.
The laughter faded.
All that remained was a space of weak, desperate souls and the unshakable dominion of physical law.
. . . . . . .
Vorx still stared at the floor, oblivious to everything his Primarch had just endured.
He had no idea what had passed, what had been rejected, or what had just been silenced forever.
Mortarion let it go. Vorx's failure, like so many others, would be tolerated—for now.
. . . . . . .
And then, as the final tainted crystal sank into the corrupted soil, in the medical bay of the Death Guard, a long-silent soul stirred.
From the depths of a chaotic, fragmented dream, an old comrade finally awoke.
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