Nostramo — a world known as the 'Star of Perpetual Night' — was undergoing a quiet transformation in the aftermath of war.
For the first time in ten thousand years, sunlight pierced the darkness that had long smothered its skies. The frozen earth had begun to warm. When Nyx had drawn upon the star's power in the void, he had unknowingly rekindled the dying embers of its core, granting the planet its first true solar rays in millennia.
But the people of Nostramo, shaped by generations of shadow, had evolved to suit their sunless home. They would need time to adjust to the light.
With the war ended, reconstruction began. The Resistance stood as Nostramo's sole governing authority, and every barrier between the hive levels had been torn down. The Blood God's coming had brought ruin — but it had also been a brutal purge. Almost all syndicate elements had been consumed in the cultists' mass sacrifices, leaving only the long-oppressed underhive workers to inherit what remained.
Nyx left the minutiae of rebuilding and governance to the Captain and Sevatar. Compared to administrative paperwork, he still preferred unwinding with biological experiments. Besides — as the *** of Nostramo, his authority was now absolute.
...Where am I?
Consciousness returned in fragments. The first thing to register was sound.
"Oh? Awake?"
That familiar voice — the one that made every nerve tense on instinct — carried unmistakable delight.
"Congratulations. Your body has fully recovered from the core irradiation," Nyx said, not looking up from his dataslate. "Though it was... touch and go for a while."
—Nyx.
Curze's mind snapped into clarity. He remembered. The void. The star. The feedback that had nearly burned him out from within.
He silently scorned his brother's bedside manner while assessing his condition. Beneath him, the cold touch of a laboratory slab. His strength was returning in sluggish waves. Then he noticed something wrong.
His field of vision seemed... clouded.
"..."
A long, dreadful silence.
"...My eyesight. Why is it blurred?"
A terrible possibility seized him. His voice went taut: "Nyx. Did the radiation damage my optic nerves?!"
He didn't wait for an answer. Instinctively, he reached up—
His fingers met bandages. Wrapped tight around his skull, covering his eyes.
Curze froze.
"You took shrapnel from the core breach,"Nyx said, his tone clinically calm. "The fragments embedded near your orbital sockets. I removed them, but the tissue regeneration is... slow. You'll be blind for at least another week."
"...I see."
His voice was flat. Not the hollowness of despair—but of a man who had learned, long ago, that sight was not required to hunt.
"Then I will wait."
He exchanged a few brief words with Nyx about the current situation. Upon learning that Nostramo's reconstruction was proceeding, he made to rise from the slab—
"Don't." Nyx's stylus tapped twice against the slate. "You'll tear the sutures."
Curze's jaw tightened, but he stilled.
It was the first time in decades he had simply... lain still. No prey to stalk. No execution to deliver. Just the hum of machinery and the quiet scratch of Nyx's pen.
He did not thank his brother. He did not know how.
But when Nyx spoke again—about hive redistribution, about the Captain's insistence on codified law—Curze listened. And responded.
He could not spend another second in that room with its shadows.
Curze's back—stiff, bandaged, still radiating tension—disappeared down the corridor.
"That's quite the limp..."
Nyx chuckled and shook his head. He picked up his stylus and made to mark the 'Post‑Operative Recovery' column on his experimental log.
The moment his pen tip touched the slate, his fingers found the hidden actuator—a contour almost seamless with the wall texture.
BUZZ—
A low mechanical hum. The laboratory floor parted silently, revealing a set of fused‑alloy stairs bathed in cold white light from below.
—His real laboratory.
The Emperor's strike that had driven him to the planet's core had given him the perfect excuse to excavate a 'genuine' sanctum. And now, with his power absolute, Nyx could make this place truly invisible—hidden even from a certain yellow-skinned god.
The stairs ended in an expansive underground chamber.
Precision instruments lined the walls. Data streams raced silently across floating hololiths. In one corner, arrayed with meticulous care, hung several sets of adaptive medical exosuits—experimental designs meant to accelerate Primarch-grade tissue regeneration.
But these were merely the least ambitious experiments in this secret room.
Scattered across the surrounding screens:
'Sisters of Battle Organ Redistribution Protocol (Revised)' ;
'Webway Gate: Reverse-Engineering via Dimensional Splinter' ;
'Orkoid Fungus: Psychoactive Properties & Cultivation Optimization' ...
All of these, however, were peripheral. They surrounded the central master display.
Upon it: Nyx's latest subject heading —
[Primarch Replication Plan — Current Progress: 21.01%]
Collect complete genetic data from all brothers. Cultivate twenty-one perfect specimens with Primarch-grade potential. Build my own —
No. The First Reich.
As for the Emperor...
The corners of Nyx's mouth curved into an almost beatific arc.
He opened another encrypted file. It contained various data streams—recovered gene-seed titers, null-field resonance frequencies, and a single, heavily annotated transcript of Curze's vital signs during the core irradiation event.
Old man, he thought, you should have finished the job when you had the chance.