As Elias climbs toward the surface, he begins to feel the city's rot — not just in the walls, but in the very air. Something is wrong with Hive Helsreach. The System remains silent. The Warp is not. The further he ascends, the closer he comes to something that watches… and waits.
----
The roar echoed for a full five seconds before dying out — not into silence, but into something worse.
Stillness.
Elias pressed himself to the wall, heart racing.
Whatever that sound was, it hadn't come from a man.
He could hear the city groaning above him now. Not just the shudder of metal struts or the rush of failing air filters — the city was alive. Breathing in its death throes. Like something huge and blind, choking on its own waste.
Hive Helsreach.
He recognized the name from the vox.
One of the biggest hive cities on Armageddon, if the lore in his head could be trusted. Which begged the question:
How the hell is this real?
A memory clawed at him — a tabletop map, covered in painted miniatures. Flames and chaos tokens. His old friend Dave yelling, "Orks breached Sector 17 again!"
He pushed it down. That was another life. This wasn't a game.
He continued upward.
The stairwell narrowed the higher he climbed, until it became little more than a maintenance shaft. Lights flickered from rusted wall-strips, powered by a failing energy grid that hummed in pulses.
He paused to check a utility sign etched into a nearby bulkhead — Low Gothic, angular script.
LEVEL DESIGNATION: U-573 - MAINTENANCE
ABOVE: SECTOR GAMMA-6 - MANUFACTURORUM ACCESS
He had no idea how far that was from the surface.
But up felt better than down, and right now, survival was measured in direction.
The manufactorum access level was a graveyard.
Twisted loading mechs lay scattered across the floor, limbs snapped and hanging like corpses. Conveyor lines were silent. The floor was layered in ash and soot, and the air stank of melted steel and blood.
Elias kept his weapon raised.
No movement.
But there was something else here. Not noise — not motion — but a pressure. A thrum in his chest. Not chakra. Not the System. It was…
Something watching.
He moved between broken machinery and blackened gears, stepping lightly over slumped bodies in scorched overalls. Workers, gangers, maybe soldiers. He didn't check.
A broken wall ahead revealed a sanctuary alcove — a rusted shrine, half-smashed by debris. The statue in the center was headless, but its body was unmistakably holy.
A robed man, arms outstretched.
The God-Emperor.
Or what was left of him.
The walls were scrawled with graffiti again — not just paint, but carved into the steel.
Words in Low Gothic. And something older.
He stepped closer, flashlight beam cutting through the dust.
The main phrase repeated in blood and rust:
"The Emperor sees nothing. We are free."
Another carving underneath — smaller. Fresher.
"She waits in the walls. She offers bliss."
And beneath that, a spiral, drawn in what looked like nail scratches.
A Slaaneshi spiral.
Elias turned away quickly, bile rising in his throat.
He moved on, passing more signs of a battle — lasburns, explosive residue, flayed corpses hanging from wiring.
This wasn't just a riot. This was something ancient breaking through.
Something familiar, if you'd read the lore.
Chaos Incursion.
He knew the pattern. A whisper, a cult, a slow unraveling. The Inquisition would come, eventually. The Arbites. If they hadn't already.
He had to stay out of sight. Survive long enough to reach someone who wouldn't shoot him on sight.
Maybe.
But just ahead, he found something far more disturbing than cult graffiti.
A man, kneeling in the middle of the floor.
Alive.
His back to Elias. Pale skin. Shaved head. Wearing only a tattered robe soaked in ash.
He was muttering. Whispering a prayer under his breath.
Elias crept closer, careful not to step on the metal debris.
The voice became clearer.
"…her hands are silk, her mouth is fire, her light fills me…"
Elias raised his pistol.
"Don't move," he said quietly.
The man didn't flinch.
"She loves me," the man whispered, "and soon, she will take this whole hive into herself, and we will sing with our tongues torn out."
Elias stopped moving.
The man tilted his head slightly.
"You're not marked," he said. "Not yet."
Elias tightened his grip on the weapon.
The cultist smiled without turning around. "But the Warp knows you. Something new crawled into our garden."
Elias pulled the trigger.
The body slumped forward. One clean hole through the base of the skull.
He exhaled.
No chakra. No powers. Just instinct.
But even as the body collapsed, the words clung to him like barbed wire.
"The Warp knows you."
He left the manufactorum floor behind.
Another stairwell. Another flickering tunnel. He didn't know how high he was now, or how far he'd come.
The System hadn't spoken again.
And that silence, somehow, felt worse than any daemon.
As he stepped through the next bulkhead, a draft hit him — real air. Foul, but moving. Something above was open.
And then — voices.
Not whispers. Not cultists.
Shouted orders. Bootsteps. Flashlights.
Elias froze.
"Sweep left! Any movement, stun first, confirm later!"
Military.
Real soldiers.
Not gangers. Not cultists. Not monsters.
He crept forward.
Just around the corner, down a long corridor, a squad of PDF troopers in flak armor moved in formation. Their armor was worn. One limped. They looked exhausted.
Alive.
One of them — a woman in red-tinted medicae armor — turned and spotted him.
"Contact—!"
Elias dropped the gun and raised both hands.
"Don't shoot!" he shouted.
Half the squad turned, weapons raised.
The medicae hesitated. Looked at his face. Something in his voice — or his expression — made her pause.
"Hold fire!" she snapped. "He's not marked."
The leader stepped forward. Tall. Tired. His lasgun aimed steady at Elias's heart.
"Who the frak are you?"
Elias swallowed hard.
"Name's… Elias Mercer," he said.
"I think I'm very lost."
[END OF CHAPTER 1]