Elias is deployed into the blackened heart of Sub-Sector Nine — a warzone reclaimed by madness. Accompanied by two PDF troopers who know this is a death sentence, he descends into the fog-drenched ruin. Cult symbols cover the walls. Whispers ride the air. And something powerful waits, feeding on the minds of the weak.
-----
The dropship peeled away from the landing pad with a shriek of strained engines and a hissing jolt of retrojets. Elias sat strapped into a bench along the wall, flanked by two men who had yet to speak a word to him.
The hum of the ship's engine filled the silence.
The interior stank of oil and old blood. The floor was scratched with bootmarks, gunpowder burns, and smeared chalk letters from the last squad who'd ridden it down and hadn't come back.
The soldier across from Elias was a lean man with sunken eyes, the whites stained yellow. He hadn't blinked in over a minute. The other was a heavy-set trooper, older, breathing through a rebreather mask that hissed every few seconds like a broken bellows.
Elias kept his hands on his knees, legs steady. Calm. Outwardly, at least.
Inwardly, his nerves thrummed like wires.
The System had said nothing.
That worried him.
A red warning rune flashed above the rear door. The rebreather trooper checked his rifle.
"Touchdown in 90 seconds," he muttered. "No uplink. No overwatch. Pattern is recon-tap-report. If we make it out."
The lean one finally spoke. His voice was hoarse, brittle. "Sector Nine's gone. Been gone. They just don't want to say it out loud."
Elias looked at them both.
"Why send us, then?"
The lean one gave a dry chuckle.
"Commissar wants to see what you do."
Elias didn't ask how they knew.
It was obvious now. Everyone knew. He was being watched. Measured. Weighed.
The dropship descended into a wall of yellow ash-fog, engines straining as it settled between ruined spires and shattered manufactorum towers. The rear hatch opened with a blast of hot, sour air.
Elias stepped out into hell.
Sub-Sector Nine was a ghost grave.
Once a worker district, it had become a shattered maze of collapsed domes and twisted ironwork. The air stank of burnt flesh and incense — like someone had tried to sanctify a mass grave with cheap perfume.
Every surface was scarred: bullet holes, claw marks, sigils drawn in blood.
The symbol of the Imperium was gone, scraped from every door, every pillar. In its place were spirals, runes, and glyphs in a dozen alien scripts.
The rebreather trooper muttered something under his breath — a prayer, maybe. Or a curse.
They moved.
The fog limited visibility to ten meters. Beyond that: just shadows and outlines.
The streets narrowed between broken structures. Twisted support beams hung overhead like crooked ribs. Somewhere nearby, water dripped slowly — too slow. Too regular.
It wasn't water.
Elias crouched beside a collapsed doorway, examining the wall.
Words had been carved deep — long sentences, shaky, like done in panic.
He wiped away the ash with a gloved hand.
"Her voice is music / Her body is flame / We begged / She opened us / We screamed the song."
His stomach twisted.
The lean soldier scanned the corner. "Movement ahead. Multiple contacts."
They ducked into cover — behind a burned-out transport vehicle. Elias drew his revolver and crouched low, chakra already coiling in his gut.
The contacts emerged: five civilians, or what had once been civilians. Their eyes were gone. Their mouths sewn shut with wire. They shuffled in silence, dragging incense burners and bloody banners.
The rebreather hissed. "Cult markers. Zone sanctified. That's not a patrol."
"It's a signal," Elias said.
The lean soldier turned to him. "A signal for what?"
A sound hit them.
Not noise — pressure. Like teeth grinding inside the walls of the world. The fog didn't shift, but the air thickened. The color of everything dimmed.
The civilians stopped.
And then split open.
Literally. Their bodies slashed apart from the inside, ribs cracking outward, as if their skin had been holding something in.
From within, the warp peeled through.
A shape emerged.
Tall. Hooded. Covered in rags that shimmered with psychic static. No face. No hands. Just an aura of crawling, skin-hating wrongness.
A Chaos psyker.
The lean soldier screamed and opened fire — too late.
A wave of invisible force crushed him backward, slamming him into a wall. He dropped like a sack of bones, limbs bent wrong.
The rebreather raised his rifle, but the barrel warped in his hands. Melted. His flesh cooked through the gloves before he could scream.
Elias didn't move.
He couldn't.
His mind was locking up — static burning across his vision, every nerve screaming to shut down.
The psyker turned its head slowly toward him.
And spoke.
But not in words.
Thoughts.
"You are not shaped by the same furnace. You are not theirs. You are a thread from elsewhere. And you will unravel the whole."
Elias fell to one knee.
Blood ran from his nose.
The world split.
> SYSTEM INTERRUPTION
> PSYCHIC DISTORTION DETECTED
> NEURAL STABILITY CRITICAL
> Chakra Buffering…
> [Survival Condition Breached]
> New Skill Unlocked: Shadow Clone Technique [RANK D – Defensive Only]
> Emergency Protocol: ENGAGE
Elias's fingers moved before he understood why.
No hand signs. Just a snap of thought and instinct.
Poof.
A perfect shadow clone shimmered into place — full-bodied, stable, and facing the psyker head-on.
The creature lunged — psychic energy surging forward in a violet lance of mental pressure.
The clone absorbed it, flaring bright and violently as it exploded in a flash of light and smoke.
Elias moved through the cloud, chakra flooding his limbs, vision narrowed to the blur of motion and the scent of ozone and death.
He didn't aim. He punched.
Chakra surged through his fist as he struck the psyker's center mass.
The world cracked.
The thing staggered. Its robes caught fire. Its skin — or whatever hid beneath — split like fruit under pressure.
It tried to scream. No sound came.
Elias grabbed its head with both hands, forcing chakra into the contact point. Not technique. Just power. Raw and brutal.
The psyker convulsed.
Its skull ruptured.
The fog peeled back.
And the silence that followed was pure.
Elias collapsed to one knee.
The rebreather trooper lay on the ground, still breathing — barely.
The lean one was gone.
The psyker was twitching, dissolving into ash.
The System clicked softly in his head.
> Combat Complete
> Chakra Pool: 0.3 / 2.0
> New Skill: Shadow Clone Technique (Defensive Variant) — Rank D
> Progression: 16%
> Reward: Neural Fortitude +1 / Chakra Reserve +0.2
> Recommendation: REST
Elias sat there, trembling.
And for the first time since arriving in this world…
He felt afraid of what he could do.
[END OF PART 3]