The Starport had become a symphony of industrial violence, conducted by the Monarch. Automated fueling arms, thick as ancient trees, swung with impossible speed, smashing Skitarii patrols into the rockcrete. Massive cargo loaders, once dormant, now moved with a predator's grace, their clamp-like hands plucking cyborg soldiers from the gantries and discarding them like broken toys. It was not a battle; it was a machine temple purging itself of its own priests.
The First Knight, a specter of silent fury, had engaged the elite Sicarian Ruststalkers of the Arch-Magos's cohort. Transonic blades hissed through the air, but they could find no purchase on the Knight's shifting, immaterial form. His shadow greatsword, however, cleaved through hyper-alloyed limbs and cybernetic torsos with contemptuous ease.
Through the chaos, the Monarch watched the Arch-Magos. The logic that governed Kovax's existence was fracturing. His sacred machines had become puppets. His prayers of binary cant went unanswered. In the face of this absolute theological crisis, his programming offered only one solution. If the holy vessel could not be defended, it must be offered to the Omnissiah as a sacrifice.
Jin-Woo felt it instantly—a surge of power deep within the light cruiser. A cascade of commands, initiated from Kovax's pulpit, was instructing the ship's plasma reactor to overload. A controlled, yet catastrophic, detonation. The Arch-Magos would rather unmake his god than see it chained.
'Unacceptable,' he thought.
His body dissolved into shadow. One moment he was on the Chimera, the next he was standing directly behind the Arch-Magos on his command pulpit. The air crackled with the ozone of his arrival.
Kovax whirled around, his reaction time machinelike. A dozen mechadendrites—drills, claws, and injectors—lashed out, aiming for the Monarch's head and chest. They all stopped an inch from his body, held fast by an invisible force.
[Command: Ruler's Authority]
The Arch-Magos was paralyzed, only his glowing blue optic sensors able to move, swiveling to stare at the being before him in what could only be interpreted as calculated horror.
"You value your machines," the Monarch said, his voice calm. "You call them holy. You pray to their spirits. But you do not understand them."
He placed his hand on the cold, metallic dome of Kovax's head. He had no interest in the Magos's fears or his faith. He needed the data he held, the keys to this kingdom of iron and plasma. It wasn't the mind he sought to break, but the firewalls of its knowledge.
[Command: Assimilate Information]
It was not a gentle intrusion. It was a data-breach on a conceptual level. He bypassed the litanies and rituals and went straight to the raw information. Star-charts of the Segmentum Pacificus. The complex activation rites for a warp drive. The function of a Gellar Field—a bubble of reality to ward off the psychic horrors of the dimension they called the Immaterium. He saw the ship's 'Machine Spirit' for what it was: a fragmented, ancient AI, belligerent and senile, placated by centuries of rote maintenance and meaningless dogma.
The Arch-Magos convulsed, smoke venting from his augmetics as a lifetime of hoarded knowledge was stripped in seconds. When it was done, the Monarch pulled his hand back. Kovax slumped forward, his systems crashed, his glowing eyes flickering and dying. He was a hollow shell, his data-banks wiped clean.
With the necessary knowledge now his, Jin-Woo turned his full attention to the Spear of Judgement. He reached out with his will, not with the brute force of object domination, but with the precise authority of a true master. He spoke directly to the cantankerous AI at its core, overriding the frantic self-destruct sequence and the layers of Mechanicus dogma. He didn't offer a prayer; he issued a new operating system.
The ship shuddered. The alarming crimson glow from its plasma conduits faded, replaced by a steady, powerful thrum. Then, all along its kilometer-long hull, the external lights changed. The stark white of the Imperium was extinguished, replaced by the deep, silent violet of the shadow legion. With a pneumatic hiss that sounded like a sigh of relief, the main boarding ramp of the cruiser descended, touching the tarmac with a quiet thud. It was no longer a vessel of the Machine-God. It was his.
"Kasran," he projected, his voice reaching the terrified officer in his Chimera. "Board the ship. Bring your men and our prisoners."
As the dazed Guardsmen began to ferry the five unconscious Ultramarines into the cargo bay, the Monarch recalled his army. The thousands of shadow soldiers across the starport dissolved, flowing back towards him in streams of pure darkness and merging into his own shadow, leaving the battlefield eerily empty save for the wreckage of the Skitarii and the silent, puppeteered machines.
Just as the last of Kasran's men hurried up the ramp, a final, defiant shout echoed across the tarmac. "TRAITORS! HERETICS! FOR THE EMPEROR!"
It was Commissar Validus. He and a dozen guardsmen, their faces masks of suicidal fanaticism, were charging towards the ramp, their lasrifles firing wildly. It was a pathetic, meaningless gesture, but one their faith demanded.
The Monarch didn't even turn.
A blur of absolute blackness intercepted them. The First Knight stood before the Commissar, a silent, obsidian executioner. Validus, his eyes wide with hate, aimed his bolt pistol at the Knight's chest and fired. The explosive shell detonated against the shadow-forged armor, the blast absorbed without a trace.
The Commissar's fanaticism finally gave way to a flicker of mortal terror.
The First Knight's greatsword swung in a single, silent, elegant arc.
The last voice of defiance on Kryllus Secundus was silenced forever.
Jin-Woo walked up the ramp and into the cavernous interior of his new warship. The metallic corridors were already bathed in the faint violet glow of his power. His shadow was now the ghost in this machine.
The ramp sealed behind him, plunging the bay into darkness, save for the light that emanated from him. He felt the immense, ancient heart of the ship's reactor beat in time with his own will.
Deep within the Spear of Judgement, systems dormant for months came to life not with prayer or ritual, but with a simple, absolute command. Mooring clamps retracted. Anti-gravitic engines hummed, lifting the colossal weight of the cruiser from its cradle.
On the bridge, star-charts that once depicted a path to a holy shrine world now displayed a single, blazing destination, pulled from the mind of an Ultramarine Sergeant.
A place called Terra.