The silence of the dead system was a deep, resonant thing. It wasn't just the absence of noise—it was the palpable sense of life having been wrung out, leaving behind only cold rock and static dust motes. Planets here were scarred husks, moons shattered like broken teeth, remnants of stars long faded to cinder. A forgotten corner of the galaxy, left to rot.
It was precisely the kind of place Hisoka Morow found… stimulating.
He drifted through the stillness, not in a ship, but enfolded in a warp pocket of his own making—a bubble of unreality stitched together by Slaaneshi finesse and Khornate resilience. His form disagreed with reality itself: an elastic elegance cloaked in ever-shifting colors, like reflections seen through warped glass. His clothes shimmered in hues that didn't quite belong, and his movements flowed like liquid through cracks in sanity.
To the uninitiated, Hisoka might have looked human. But he was no longer just that.
Hisoka was a Champion of Slaanesh and Khorne—contradiction incarnate. From the Dark Prince, he bore an obsession with perfection, sensation, and the artistry of cruelty. From the Blood God, he inherited the raw, unrelenting power that underpinned every graceful twist of violence. Together, these blessings had shaped him into a predator unlike any other.
And today, he was hunting something… exotic.
He didn't feel the usual warp-taint or life-signs. No, this presence was deeper—a wrongness buried in the silence. It wasn't alive in the conventional sense. It was coordinated, vast, and cold. It hummed through the void, a note of psychic unity so alien it tickled the edge of madness.
He followed that note.
Soon, they emerged from behind the skeletal ring of a shattered moon: a vanguard of bio-ships, drifting through the debris like organic submarines. Living hulls pulsed with internal movement, tendrils extended, spore vents flared open and shut in rhythmic silence. A Tyranid scout fleet. A splinter. A taste of something far more immense.
Hisoka felt his pulse quicken.
The Great Devourer—he had heard the name whispered in daemon-tongue and carved in madness on Inquisitorial data-vaults. A galactic predator, consuming all. Beautiful, in its simplicity. But that same simplicity made them… predictable.
Predictability was Hisoka's greatest enemy.
He waited, hidden within an asteroid, then sprang like a question mark tearing through punctuation. With a ripple of warp distortion, he launched himself toward the weakest bio-ship—a vanguard drone. Bungee Gum snapped out, shimmering with psychic malice, catching onto chitin with a sound like tearing sinew. Hisoka wove through the debris, faster than any interceptor, weaving his body through void and vacuum as if air was optional.
The first vessel fell in silence. Then the second.
He boarded the third—a medium cruiser, alive with internal biomass, dripping with mucus and bile. Inside, Tyranid horrors swarmed. Hormagaunts, Genestealers, and bio-luminescent synapse drones moved in perfect coordination. Their claws met only warp-hardened elasticity and the brutal counters of Khornate-infused martial force.
Bungee Gum wrapped them, crushed them, stretched them apart, then held them in a parody of reverence. Hisoka didn't kill—he subdued. He harvested. His strikes were too quick for them to adapt. In the throes of his madness, he giggled, arched, twisted, crushed.
The apex of the ship's resistance came in the form of a Synapse creature—some bloated, psychic conduit of the Hive Mind. Hisoka didn't destroy it. He needed it.
Dragging his captives to a secluded void near the system's edge, he repurposed the living ship into a twisted laboratory. Inside, the air was thick with alien humidity and the stink of bio-acid. Bound in coils of Bungee Gum and stasis fields warped from daemon-thread, the Tyranids waited.
And Hisoka played.
He touched their chitin, sliced it open with a finger, studied the way flesh pulsed and resisted. He admired their efficiency, their evolutionary elegance. But more than that, he sought their thoughts—or what passed for them.
Especially the Synapse creature.
This one was his doorway. Hisoka couldn't overwrite the Hive Mind. That was impossible, even for gods. But perhaps… he could nudge it. A psychic infection. A whisper.
He etched a ritual across the floor of the ship—his own blood mixed with warp-dust and chitin oil, shaped into an arcane geometry that bent light and made reality whimper. This wasn't a summoning of force, but of idea—something far more dangerous.
A tear opened in the warp.
The Lord of Change that stepped through was not one he had met before—but that was irrelevant. They all watched him. This one was vast, avian, cloaked in shifting patterns that made the mind ache. Feathers like burning script. Claws like quills. A hundred eyes blinked as one.
"The Clown seeks to paint the cosmos in new pigments," it rasped.
"Of course," Hisoka replied, his voice languid, delighted. "Why let the galaxy spiral in drab inevitability? Let's add a little twist."
He laid out the plan: not to dominate the Tyranids, but to... suggest. Not destruction, not obedience—just curiosity. A tweak in their hunger. A whisper to seek not just biomass, but challenge. Potential. Intrigue.
"A paradox," mused the daemon. "A devouring species taught to savor? Delicious."
"Will you help me whisper, birdy?"
"In exchange for the delight of watching it unfold? Gladly."
Their hands met—claw and glove—and together, they reached through the Synapse. Through it, into the Hive Mind's whispering network. They did not shout. They did not scream. They whispered in threads of sensation, wrapped around potential, coated in dreams of rare prey. Not commands. Suggestions.
The psychic contact left the Synapse creature writhing. But when it stilled, its signal was altered. Not rewritten. Redirected.
Hisoka released the ship. Repaired what he could with warp-stitching. The Tyranids hesitated—then, astonishingly, retreated. He watched as they rejoined the splinter fleet. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the entire vector of the swarm shifted.
Toward the core of the galaxy. Toward Imperial space.
But not randomly.
They were hunting… something interesting.
Hisoka floated alone in the void, watching the silent exodus. He smiled, lips stretching wide, unnatural and gleaming. He hadn't saved the galaxy. He hadn't doomed it, either.
He had merely tilted the board.
The Tyranids were coming. They would still devour. But now, they sought prey not just for sustenance… but for fascination.
And when they found worthy prey, they would remember the jester who taught them to crave it.
The silence returned to the dead system—but it was no longer a quiet of peace.
It was the hush before a new kind of war.