Five years later.
Terra — the ruins of the former British Isles.
After long years of brutal warfare, the region had fallen under the dominion of a city-state known as Albayun.
At the heart of this stronghold stood its ruler, a bald giant named Julius. He personally oversaw his men as they executed captives and crippled mutants, their fresh blood channeled through carefully carved trenches into a massive pit prepared beforehand.
Before long, the pit brimmed with blood, becoming a crimson pool.
Julius summoned one of his guards, who handed him a glass vessel filled with a murky violet fluid. As he uncorked it, a strange, faintly sweet fragrance drifted into the air.
The instant he inhaled, a violent thrill surged through his body, an overwhelming desire for slaughter rising unbidden. Alarmed, Julius—an experienced psyker—immediately reined in his mind, resisting the urge to take another breath.
With a hiss of corrosion, the purple liquid spilled into the blood-filled pit.
The once-still surface rippled unnaturally, and within seconds grotesque creatures—amorphous, headless serpents of liquid—slithered into being.
"—Hsss…"
The surrounding soldiers gasped and instinctively retreated. Even Julius hesitated, unnerved by what he had unleashed.
But at last, with grim resignation, he shut his eyes and began chanting in an alien tongue:
"Great Crimson King, your humble servant offers this sacrifice. May your gaze fall upon us, that we may be bathed in your glory…"
This ritual, as profane as it seemed, had been recovered from a sealed cache dating back to the Golden Age. According to its inscriptions, it had once belonged to an alien race annihilated by the Human Federation.
Its promise was simple: call upon a warp god, and receive treasures or power in exchange for sacrifice.
Julius understood little beyond that. Under other circumstances, he would never have dared to attempt such a thing. But with the so-called Emperor advancing across Terra with his invincible giant warriors beneath banners of lightning and the aquila, Julius's defeat was inevitable.
Better to gamble on damnation than face certain ruin.
As the chanting continued, an oppressive aura settled over the battlefield.
Seconds stretched into minutes.
The liquid abominations in the pit thrashed and screamed in shrill unison, their cries piercing the ears of man and machine alike. Defense servitors blared alarms, warning of corruption.
Finally, with a thunderclap, the creatures burst apart into scarlet mist. A blood-red vortex formed above the pit, crackling with lightning. A coppery wind swept outward, filling Julius's lungs with its intoxicating tang.
And then—
"Terra? …It has been some time since I last looked upon this place."
The words resounded faintly in his mind.
A flash of crimson light engulfed him. Julius felt his very soul ripped from his body and hurled through a tunnel, as though he were a liquid rushing through narrow pipes. His vision filled with endless scarlet.
At last he was expelled like a ragdoll, crashing hard onto cold stone.
Before he could rise, a voice cut into him:
"Your wish. Speak it."
His body moved on its own, forcing him onto one knee in supplication.
Through streaming blood he looked up—only to see a crimson figure, roughly two meters tall.
Agony seared his eyes, as if invisible hands were gouging them out. Blood gushed from his sockets, his eyeballs writhing and mutating into squirming tendrils like veins and nerves, spilling from his skull.
The being before him—Orsaga, in his true form—watched Julius's torment with mild disappointment.
"You are too weak," he said flatly.
The mutation subsided; Julius's eyes painfully reformed. Trembling, he dared not raise his gaze again. At last, he understood—before higher beings, one must never look directly.
The Crimson King's tail swept idly across the stone floor as he continued, voice calm but cold:
"Now, back to the matter at hand. Tell me your wish. I will grant it. In return, I will claim payment—measured by the weight of what you ask."
For even as a Chaos God, Orsaga had never abandoned his roots as an abyssal demon—one who bartered, tempted, and profited from desperate mortals.
It was not mere greed. It was amusement. Watching mortals twist in fear, bargain in despair, and pay with their ruin—that was his joy.
Thus his name spread far and wide under many titles. Among them, the mortals of Terra whispered of him as the Crimson King.
In this, he was no different from the other four Chaos Gods. Each delighted in cruelty and irony, taking pleasure in the downfall of mortals.
It was a shared trait that had cursed countless worlds with endless tragedy.
For those unlucky enough to dwell within this universe, existence under the gaze of the Chaos Gods was nothing short of catastrophic.