After his rescue, Yoan collected his payment from the squad leader.
By any ordinary measure, he had done nothing worthy of reward. He had frozen in the face of the mutant spider, disgraced himself before armed men, and never fired a single shot. His hands had shaken too badly even to pretend at bravery.
And yet his mere presence had been invaluable.
Yoan was "Soulless." That was the word the Underhive used when it wanted to spit without wasting saliva. A blank. A void in the shape of a man. Where others carried the faint, invisible warmth of a soul, Yoan carried absence. Psykers recoiled from him. Warp-born tricks frayed near him. The heretic witch who had tried to bring its gifts to bear had found only emptiness where its power expected purchase, and its own mind had unraveled under the strain.
That was the gift.
The curse was everything else.
Even the lowest scumborn dregs of the Underhive avoided brushing against him in narrow passages. Mothers pulled children away. Gangers spat after he passed, muttering warding prayers they did not truly understand. Men who would rob corpses, drink sump-liquor, and knife their own brothers for a clean filter cartridge still looked at Yoan as if he were something less than human.
A thing without a soul was not a man, they whispered.
A blight, even among the damned.
A gift. A curse.
Forty Thrones.
For doing nothing, Yoan had earned more than a PDF soldier's monthly wage.
The squad leader shoved the sealed pouch of Throne Gelt into Yoan's coat pocket. The weight of the coins struck his thigh with a dull, heavy pressure, as if the payment were less a reward than a warning.
"Stay in touch," the squad leader said. He sounded tired, but not unkind. That made the words harder to ignore. "I shouldn't be telling you this, but listen carefully. Don't waste your money on the Devotees. And stop associating with them."
Yoan's smile remained in place. It had survived worse things than unwanted concern.
The squad leader glanced back toward the tunnel mouth, then lowered his voice.
"If the Underhive ever fully reconnects with the lower hive, the Ecclesiarchy will burn the lot of you alive. No tribunal. No patience. No distinction between zealot, fool, or hanger-on. They will hear one wrong prayer, see one wrong shrine, and call it purification."
"Understood," Yoan said.
He smiled. He nodded. The words meant nothing.
The squad leader held his gaze for a moment longer, as if he knew exactly how little had been accepted. Then he sighed.
"Alright. Move out."
He waved his hand, and the others followed him into the tunnel. Boots splashed through oily runoff. Lasguns clinked against armor. The small column vanished into the dim service passage, leaving Yoan alone with forty Thrones, a sore throat, and the familiar chill that came whenever decent advice asked him to abandon the only people who had ever welcomed him.
....
New Kato. South District.
After returning to New Kato, Yoan did not go home.
Home was a narrow room above a machine shop, rented by the week, with a leaking pipe in one corner and walls thin enough that he could hear the neighbors arguing over ration stamps. It was shelter, not refuge. Tonight, refuge lay elsewhere.
He spent ten Thrones at a craftsman's stall in the South District, beneath a rusted awning patched with strips of tarp and devotional paper. The old woman behind the counter had only one organic hand; the other was a crude brass manipulator that clicked and twitched as she sorted through trays of scrap-metal charms, machine tokens, oath-rings, and cheap mourning pendants made for families too poor to buy real memorials.
Yoan chose a simple ring of iron and copper shaped like a cogwheel. It was worn, unadorned, and heavy for its size. The edges had been filed smooth by hand. No gemstones. No inscription. No priestly blessing. Nothing that would attract attention from anyone who did not already understand.
To the Devotees, that was enough.
He slid the ring onto his finger and closed his hand around it until the teeth of the cog pressed into his skin.
The remaining thirty Thrones went elsewhere.
South.
To the tavern at the city's edge.
The building had survived the siege by stubbornness more than construction. Its outer walls were corrugated metal welded over older plastek panels, and its windows had been replaced with armor mesh after the third artillery scare. A faded drink sign still hung above the door, though half the letters had burned out. The air outside smelled of hot dust, recycled smoke, engine grease, and the faint sour reek of the drainage channel behind the district.
Yoan pushed open the doors expecting warmth, bad music, and the dull murmur of tired people pretending they were not afraid of tomorrow.
Instead, he found silence.
Every patron sat motionless. Workers in stained coveralls. Militia fighters with bandaged hands. Underhive women with shaved heads and old gang tattoos cut through by new devotional scars. A pair of PDF veterans still wearing half their armor. All of them stared upward at the flickering vid-screens suspended above the bar.
No one turned when Yoan entered.
The display showed "servitor" convoys crossing cratered battlegrounds beneath a sky stained black by smoke. The footage had been recorded from a high angle, perhaps from a drone or a surveillance mast. There was no commentary. No hymn. No triumphant brass. No red-scripted propaganda crawl promising victory by the Emperor's grace.
Only image and sound.
Ash drifting over shattered streets.
Treads crunching through bone and masonry.
Metal limbs moving with steady, tireless precision.
The "servitors" advanced through the wreckage, reclaiming battlefield materiel with the calm of machines that had never learned disgust. Broken lasguns were sorted from ruined ones. Power cells were tested, accepted, or discarded. Armor plates were cut free from corpses. Heavy weapons were dismantled. Cables, ration tins, optics, shell casings, splintered vehicle plating, even bodies were gathered according to some invisible order.
Including the corpses of fallen heretics.
One "servitor" paused beside a mutant half-buried beneath rubble. The creature still lived. Its chest jerked. One claw scraped weakly against the ground. A sensor cluster lowered toward it, lenses clicking as the machine spirit, or whatever cold intelligence Qin Mo had built into the construct, confirmed vital signs.
A mechadendrite extended.
The mutant died instantly. No drama. No hatred. No satisfaction.
A moment later, the corpse was drawn into the machine's processing intake. Organic matter became resource. Threat became material. Filth became function.
No hesitation.
No waste.
No thought visible to human eyes.
Only the will of their creator, expressed through steel.
The silence in the tavern thickened around the footage. The cold methodical extermination. The unwavering collection of useful material. The absence of rage, pity, disgust, triumph, or fear. The "servitors" did not mourn the dead or celebrate survival. They did not curse the heretics. They did not pray over the loyal. They simply acted.
The footage looped.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Yet no one turned away.
Yoan moved carefully toward the bar. The floorboards creaked under his boots, and the sound felt obscene in the stillness. A donation box rested beside the counter, its surface marked with a hand-painted cog and a rough approximation of Qin Mo's personal sigil. Someone had polished the front until the metal shone brighter than anything else in the room.
Yoan placed thirty Thrones into the slot.
The clink of metal rang louder than any voice.
Then, like the others, he sat and watched.
For two hours, the pict-feed played without interruption.
Only when the last cycle ended did movement return to the room. People shifted in their seats. Someone coughed. A woman wiped at her eyes, caught herself, and forced her hand back down into her lap as if emotion were a breach of discipline.
A PDF officer emerged from behind the bar. His scarred face bore the brutal legacy of the Underhive war. One eye had been replaced by a compact augmetic that clicked softly as it focused; the other remained organic, sharp, and cold. His uniform was clean by South District standards, which meant the bloodstains had been scrubbed down to shadows and the torn places had been patched with matching cloth.
The field tabs on his collar marked him as an officer of the 47th Regiment. Outside this room, he was merely another veteran of a war that had remade the city.
Here, he was something more.
He looked across the assembled Devotees, and the room stiffened.
"What have you learned from this, my brothers and sisters?"
His voice was calm. Detached. Absolute.
In unison, the crowd responded.
"We must learn from the servitors. We must remain rational and cold at all times. We must not succumb to anger, joy, or sorrow."
The call and response moved through the room like a ritual worn smooth by repetition. The Devotees had watched this footage for months. Each viewing ended the same way. Each answer was given with the same flat certainty.
Yoan spoke with them, half a heartbeat late. No one corrected him.
The officer raised his voice.
"We are the Devotees of the Lord."
A shudder passed through the room. Not fear. Not excitement. Something closer to reverence held under a clenched fist.
"Though he denies it," the officer continued, "he is a god."
No one gasped. No one challenged him. The words had been spoken too often in this room to shock anyone present.
"I have seen a fortress rise from dust by his will. I have seen him create the machines that sustain us. I have seen him unleash flame and lightning upon the heretic hordes and reduce them to ash. I served as an officer of the 47th Regiment. I witnessed these miracles with my own eyes."
His tone remained cold, almost administrative. He offered no embellishment, no preacher's flourish, no dramatic trembling. That restraint made the testimony heavier. He spoke like a man reporting ammunition expenditure, casualty figures, and weather conditions. Facts, not wonders.
No one cheered.
No one applauded.
Only solemn nods moved through the room.
Among the Devotees, one did not exult. One did not weep. One did not revel in glory.
One learned.
One refined the self.
One studied the "servitors" and tried to cut away everything weak, wasteful, and human.
Because the founders of the Devotees, like many in New Kato, believed Qin Mo was a god. And a god had created the machines that fed them, armed them, defended them, and turned the corpses of their enemies into ration paste, ammunition components, armor feedstock, and heat.
To the Devotees, the "servitors" were more than machines.
They were teachers.
They were the ideal.
Emotionless. Dutiful. Efficient. Absolute.
The officer's augmetic eye clicked. His gaze hardened.
"Share your insights."
For a moment, no one moved.
Then Yoan stood.
He had not intended to be first. The motion simply happened, pulled from him by pressure too strong to contain. Chairs scraped faintly as heads turned toward him. His mouth went dry. His heart beat hard enough that he felt it in his throat.
"I was saved today," Yoan said.
His voice shook with excitement before he could stop it.
"At my most desperate moment, two emissaries descended from the heavens and rescued me."
The others looked at him with quiet envy. Not the open, greedy envy of the market or the gangs, but something colder. To be noticed by the Lord's emissaries was a blessing. To be saved by them personally was almost intolerable fortune.
The officer frowned.
"Control your emotions."
The words snapped across the room.
Yoan swallowed hard. Shame rushed through him, hot and childish. He bowed his head.
"Forgive me. I am new."
He forced his hands to still. Forced his breathing into a slower rhythm. Forced his expression to flatten into the cold detachment worn by those around him. He straightened his back and let the memory settle inside him like dust over machinery.
The officer watched him for several seconds. Then he nodded.
"It is fine, brother. We all learn. We all grow."
For Yoan, that acceptance was everything.
Outside this room, people recoiled from him. They spat when he passed. They saw a soulless thing and wondered whether killing him would count as murder or sanitation. Even men who paid him for his curse avoided touching his hand afterward.
Here, among the Devotees, no one leaned away. No one made warding signs. No one called him abomination.
Here, he belonged.
The officer stood taller, his gaze sweeping across the room.
"We should have perished."
The words landed with the weight of shared memory.
"Kato was abandoned. The Underhive was abandoned. Our forces were squandered in foolish assaults. Supplies ran dry. The heretics encircled us. The old chains of command broke. The spire forgot us until forgetting became policy."
A pause.
"But we were saved."
A murmur of assent passed through the chamber. Soft. Controlled. Not quite prayer.
"Saved by countless miracles. When we starved, the logistics servitors provided food and weapons. When we were in peril, a single request brought the Emissaries' divine wrath within seconds."
His voice remained as impassive as the machines he revered.
"The Emissaries are chosen warriors clad in the Lord's sacred armor. They cross distance as if the hive itself opens before them. They obliterate the enemy with his fire and lightning. They, alongside the Lord, saved us all."
The room nodded in silent agreement.
Yoan closed his eyes.
He remembered the Siege of Kato.
The heretics had taken half the city. Streets had become trenches. Market tunnels had become aid stations. Hab-blocks burned from the inside. Civilians fought beside gangers, militia, PDF stragglers, and anyone else still able to hold a weapon. The air had tasted of ash, blood, and overheated power cells. Every hour brought another rumor that the western barricades had fallen, the chapel was lost, the south gate had been breached, the water stores were burning.
Yoan remembered the main boulevard.
He had been cowering before a heretic tank, pressed against a shattered curb with rubble digging into his ribs. The vehicle's cannon had turned toward him with slow mechanical certainty. He had known, with perfect clarity, that he was about to die. Not gloriously. Not meaningfully. Just erased by a shell meant for someone more important.
He had felt despair then. Real despair. The kind that made even fear go quiet.
The cannon fired.
The shell struck him.
It did not explode.
It did not even pierce his flesh.
It fell harmlessly to the ground and rolled against the curb with a dull metallic clank.
Then the Lord strode through the smoke.
Qin Mo had not looked like the statues in Ecclesiarchy shrines. He had not looked merciful, golden, or gentle. He had looked like a man walking through a battlefield because the battlefield had failed to earn his caution. Fire crawled around him. Lightning gathered in his hand. The heretic tank's gun tried to adjust.
A torrent of sacred lightning reduced the machine to slag. Metal screamed. Armor ran like wax. The crew died without ever seeing the face of the one who killed them.
Then Qin Mo turned to Yoan and extended his hand.
"Rise, child."
At that moment, Yoan—a sumpborn scum of the Underhive, a soulless thing despised by men who had nothing else to look down on—felt hope for the first time in his miserable life.
....
Even now, Yoan dreamed of that moment every night.
"Yoan."
The officer's voice pulled him from memory.
Yoan opened his eyes. The tavern had returned around him: dim lumens, still faces, the donation box on the bar, the frozen image of a "servitor" on the paused vid-screen.
The officer was watching him.
"Come with me after this."
Yoan blinked. "Why?"
The officer's expression remained unreadable. His augmetic eye clicked once.
"You are fortunate."
He paused just long enough for the room to understand that what came next mattered.
"After reviewing your records, the Lord has expressed interest in meeting you."
Yoan's breath caught.
The world seemed to narrow around those words. The tavern, the Devotees, the officer, the vid-screens, even the weight of the ring on his finger all receded beneath a single impossible thought.
The Lord wanted to meet him.
"R-really?!"
The officer's eyes narrowed.
"Control yourself."
Yoan clenched his hands at his sides until the cogwheel ring bit into his skin. The pain steadied him. He forced his trembling body to still and bowed his head.
"Understood. My apologies."