Hey everyone! Author here — sorry I've been away for a while. I've been working on taking my writing to the next level and experimenting with a Warhammer-themed story. Let me know what you think of this chapter! If you enjoy it, I'll turn it into its own full story.
The city at dusk was a corpse of iron and glass. The half-set sun bled through the skyline, casting shadows too long and too sharp to belong to anything human. Silence pressed against my ears like deep water. The streets, the towers, even the air itself felt hollow, as though I walked inside the ribcage of some long-extinct god.
I clutched the box tighter. Ku'gath Plague Father — the final piece of my Death Guard army — nestled inside like a relic. The thought almost made me laugh. I loved Warhammer 40k, but no sane soul would ever want to live there.
Halfway home, something stopped me.
On the cracked pavement lay the rotting body of a dog. Its fur had thinned to greasy patches, skin mottled green and black. Flies swarmed in a cloud above it, and the stench was sweet and clinging. As I stared, the carcass twitched. Maggots wriggled in and out of its open mouth. For a heartbeat, I swore its milky eyes turned toward me — not accusing, but inviting.
A whisper moved through the still air, like a sigh from a cavern, and I shivered so hard my teeth clicked. When I blinked, the dog lay still again, nothing but meat and ruin.
I hurried on, clutching the box closer.
When my door closed behind me, the silence changed pitch, a low vibration crawling up my spine. My hands tore open the box without conscious thought. Plastic pieces spilled out like pale teeth. I began assembling, painting, detailing, every motion guided by an impossible steadiness. My mind floated somewhere above me, watching as the miniature came alive under my brush.
The last stroke landed.
And the world tore.
My muscles locked. My arm froze midair, model in hand. The miniature softened, then melted, colors running like blood into my palm. The air smelled of rot and ozone. Heat licked my skin, but it was a heat without source, as though reality itself was burning away.
Molten plastic crawled across my fingers, blistering the flesh. Blisters split open. Skin sloughed off. Beneath it, something moved — shapes that were not veins, not tendons, but writhing glyphs. Maggots erupted and crawled into the flesh that clung to bone, only to hatch into metallic flies with faceted eyes like galaxies. They whispered in a language my mind tried and failed to parse.
Fungus bulged from my arm, thick and veined with phosphorescence, pulsing as though breathing. Each pulse sent a shudder of alien hunger up my spine. My bones bent at wrong angles. My vision splintered, and for a heartbeat I saw the thing behind all things — an ocean of rotting light, infinite wings, and a mouth big enough to swallow stars.
I tried to scream. My teeth fell out instead, tumbling like dice onto the floor. The rot consumed my face. My eyes curdled to white.
And then—
I stood in a garden.
It stretched on without end, a labyrinth of gnarled trees with bark like blackened bone and blossoms of mold and pus. Flowers drooped heavy with spores, their petals slick with rot. Swollen fruit burst open to spill writhing worms that burrowed back into the soil. Rivers of thick green sludge coursed between the roots, carrying bloated corpses that grinned as they bobbed along.
The air was sweet and foul at once, thick with buzzing flies the size of sparrows. They sang in chittering harmony, a choir of decay. Mushrooms towered higher than any man, dripping spores like rain. Everywhere, life and death mingled until they were one — a paradise of rot.
And from the heart of that garden, I felt Him.
The air grew heavier, thicker, warm like a sickbed blanket. A laugh rumbled through the roots of the world, booming and wet, yet impossibly kind. From behind the swollen trees He emerged: vast, corpulent, covered in sores that wept with joyous abundance. Maggots tumbled from His folds, nurglings played at His feet, and His flies blotted out the sky.
Grandfather Nurgle.
My body bowed though I did not command it. My rotting flesh sang to His presence.
"Ahhh," the voice came, bubbling with warmth and plague, "my sweet little child. At last you've come home."
His vast, rotting hand descended. Fingers the size of tree trunks brushed my head with infinite gentleness. The touch burned and soothed at once, as though every wound was a gift, every rot a blessing.
For a moment, His laughter softened to a low tremor, almost a sigh. "I watched you," He murmured, voice thick with something like pride. "Alone. Searching. I planted My seeds in your dreams, hoping you'd find your way here. And now… here you are."
His eyes — black pits swimming with spores — glistened as though they held tears that would never fall. "You are mine now," He whispered, his tone that of a doting parent. "My son, my blossom of decay, my newest joy. Walk My garden, spread My love. Together we shall make the galaxy bloom."
The huge hand curled around me, not crushing but sheltering, warm as compost and strong as the roots of the world. His smile split wider, and the flies lifted in a spiral above us, their wings a hymn of praise.
And as His laughter — softer now, almost tender — rolled across the festering fields, I felt my soul unravel and take root.
I was no longer lost.
I was home.