This place proved him wrong.
The city did not loom.
That was the first thing that unsettled him.
Buildings rose cleanly from the dust, angular and purposeful, their silhouettes sharp rather than oppressive. No buttresses clawed at the sky. No spires begged for divine notice. No skulls leered from every surface, no aquilae demanded obedience. The structures were tall—some very tall—but they did not try to dominate. They existed because they were needed, not because they were meant to impress a god.
Jorren kept his lasgun tight to his chest as the column advanced, boots crunching over fine gray grit that clung to everything. His visor flickered with rangefinding data, hazard runes, squad positioning. All green. That only made it worse.
“This place feels wrong,” muttered Karsk beside him, vox kept low. “Too clean. Too quiet.”
Jorren didn’t answer. He was thinking the same thing.
The streets were wide, laid out with a logic he couldn’t quite grasp. Not the grand processional avenues of Imperial cities, nor the choking arteries of a hive. These were measured. Planned. Built for movement, for function. Vehicles could have flowed through here once—big ones—but there were also walkways, ramps, recessed alcoves that suggested consideration for people, not masses.
And the walls.
Emperor preserve him, the walls.
They were smooth composites, scarred here and there by age or impact, but untouched by corrosion. No rust streaks. No devotional graffiti scratched by generations of desperate hands. Some bore inlaid patterns—subtle curves, geometric motifs, symbols Jorren didn’t recognize. Not runes. Not scripture. Art, maybe. Or memory.
“Anyone else seeing this?” someone whispered over the squad channel.
“Aye,” came a reply. “Like a manufactorum married a scholar and raised a city.”
A few nervous chuckles followed, cut short when Sergeant Halvek barked for silence.
Jorren glanced up as they passed beneath an overhang that stretched impossibly far without visible support. His auspex said it was stable. His instincts said otherwise. He didn’t like trusting things he couldn’t see bolted down.
Every so often they passed devices half-sunk into walls or pavement. Not shrines. Not terminals as he understood them. Dead things now, but once… something else. The Mechanicus teams trailing behind them slowed every time, red optics gleaming with hunger, mechadendrites twitching like restrained serpents.
Ahead of the formation, he could see him.
The castaway.
He walked unarmored through the heart of an Imperial landing force like he belonged there. No helm. No rebreather. Torn, ancient clothing clinging to a frame that made even the goliath ganger look compact. He moved with easy certainty, occasionally lifting a hand to gesture, vox-casting warnings and coordinates that lit up Jorren’s slate before command even relayed them.
“Hazard left, forty meters. Sinkhole masked by surface compaction.”
“Structural instability overhead. Don’t bunch up.”
“Power conduit beneath the street—dead now, but the casing’s brittle.”
Each call was precise. Calm. Unquestionable.
Jorren didn’t like how naturally he listened.
The city felt… aware. Not alive, exactly. But shaped. As if every street corner had been placed by someone who remembered why it mattered. There were signs of habitation everywhere—seating recessed into walls, wide windows meant for light rather than firing arcs, open plazas unmarred by kill zones.
This wasn’t a fortress.
It had never been meant to be.
“That wreck,” Karsk said quietly, nodding toward the horizon.
Jorren followed his gaze.
At the city’s center rose the spine of a ship.
Or what remained of one.
It wasn’t an Imperial design. Too smooth. Too unified. The hull hadn’t shattered so much as folded, vast sections embedded deep into the urban fabric as though the city had grown around the corpse rather than away from it. Towers leaned against its flanks, bridges connected to exposed ribs of alloy, and streets curved to accommodate its impossible angles.
A ship that had not been removed.
A ship that had been accepted.
“Emperor’s teeth,” someone breathed. “They built a city around a wreck.”
“No,” another replied. “Looks like they lived with it.”
That thought settled poorly in Jorren’s gut.
Vox chatter filtered through his feed—other squads trading observations, jokes edged with unease, the usual bravado stretched thin.
“Place gives me the creeps.”
“I’d take a hive riot over this.”
“Feels like we’re trespassing.”
Above it all, Captain Steelheart’s commands cut through with iron authority, positioning units, establishing perimeters, directing armor down routes the castaway marked safe.
And through it all, silence.
No civilians. No scavengers. No beasts.
Nothing moved except them.
Jorren adjusted his grip on his rifle and swallowed.
He’d thought the worst part would be whatever horrors waited inside the city.
Now, marching through streets shaped by a single will over countless years, he began to suspect the truth was far more unsettling.
This place was not abandoned.
It had simply been waiting.
The vox clicked once.
Then his voice entered the channel.
Calm. Even. Close enough that Jorren flinched despite knowing it was routed through his helm.
“There was no they,” the castaway said.
The chatter died instantly. Even the habitual mutter of overlapping squad-feeds fell into an abrupt, reverent silence, as if the city itself had leaned closer to listen.
“There was only me.”
Jorren slowed without realizing it, boots falling half a step out of rhythm. Around him, others did the same. No order had been given. No signal flashed. The voice alone was enough.
“My ship,” the castaway continued, unhurried, “was largely autonomous. It had to be. Most of my assignments were solitary by design. My… condition made prolonged proximity unpleasant for others. Even when restrained.”
A pause. Not hesitation—consideration.
“So I traveled alone. I fought alone. And when I fell here, I endured alone.”
The city seemed to frame his words. Smooth walls. Clean lines. The long, patient geometry of survival.
“What you are seeing,” he said, “is not the work of a population. It is not the residue of a lost civilization. It is the result of time applied deliberately. Gruelingly. One decision after another, made without witnesses.”
There was no bitterness in it. No plea for recognition.
Only fact.
“I will admit,” he added, and Jorren could almost hear the faint curl of a smile, “I take some pride in it.”
A few armsmen exchanged glances. Karsk let out a low breath over the private channel. “Emperor save us,” he muttered. “He built a city.”
“Had to,” the castaway replied, evidently listening despite the channel discipline. “The ship’s primary power source was compromised on impact. Catastrophically.”
Data bloomed across Jorren’s slate without warning—schematics, abstracted overlays, energy flow diagrams so advanced they barely parsed. His visor struggled, runes stacking on runes.
“The neutrino spooler that powered her was never meant to be shut down improperly,” the voice went on. “Once it began to fray, I had two options. Let it cascade and annihilate half the continent… or learn very quickly.”
The slate pinged again. And again.
“I dismantled what I could not save. Rebuilt what I could not replace. Adapted what remained to this planet’s available resources. Geothermal gradients. Mineral lattices. Atmospheric differentials. Crude by my standards, but sufficient.”
Crude.
Jorren stared at a power distribution model that made his teeth itch.
“I had to reinvent most of the underlying systems,” the castaway said lightly. “Not improve them. Not optimize. Simply make them work without killing me.”
That was when the Mechanicus broke.
Binary screeching flooded the vox. Dozens of channels lit up at once, overlapping bursts of binharic cant, data-queries, priority demands, devotional static threaded with barely restrained fervor.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
Jorren winced as his helm auto-dampened the surge. Several armsmen cursed. One laughed, sharp and disbelieving.
The castaway chuckled.
Then, with the casual finality of a man swatting insects, the Mechanicus channels went dead.
Muted.
Silence returned like a held breath finally released.
“I’ll answer your questions,” the castaway said, voice warm again, almost indulgent. “In time. When we are not walking through unstable ground with fingers hovering over triggers.”
A beat.
“And when you are prepared for the answers.”
The march resumed.
Jorren swallowed and tightened his grip on his lasgun as the city opened further before them, streets unfolding with patient inevitability.
For the first time since planetfall, he understood something clearly.
This place was not impressive because it was advanced.
It was terrifying because it worked.
The shift was subtle at first.
Jorren only noticed because the red shapes ahead of the formation began to move too quickly.
The two Magi broke from the rear echelon without orders, robes snapping and dragging as their augmented legs pistoned into motion. Mechadendrites lashed behind them for balance, servo-motors whining as they pushed past armsmen who instinctively stepped aside.
“Oi—!” someone barked, then fell silent.
They were running.
Not toward the perimeter. Not toward cover.
Toward the wreck.
The castaway noticed at the same time Jorren did. His stride slowed, head lifting as the fractured hull of the ship loomed larger, its ancient spine rising from the city like the bones of a fallen god.
The air changed.
Jorren felt it as pressure behind the eyes. A dull ache in his teeth. Vox static crept in uninvited, soft at first, then insistent. Several armsmen shifted uncomfortably, adjusting seals, checking auspex readings that showed nothing wrong.
The Magi reached the ship’s shadow.
And stopped.
Both froze mid-step.
Then, as one, they fell.
Not collapsed. Not malfunctioned.
They knelt.
Metal struck stone with a resonant clang as servo-limbs folded, mechadendrites coiling inward in ritual symmetry. One Magos pressed its augmented forehead to the ground. The other raised trembling limbs skyward, vox emitters spilling a cascade of binharic praise and fractured litanies.
The binary bled through open channels, fervent and uncontrolled.
“By the Throne,” Jorren breathed.
Around him, weapons shifted. A few armsmen made the sign of the aquila without quite knowing why.
Captain Steelheart halted the column with a raised fist, her expression hardening as she took in the display. Annoyance flickered across her features—sharp, contained.
“This is not a shrine world,” she snapped over command vox. “Magos! You will conduct yourselves with discipline or I will have you dragged from your augmetics piece by piece.”
The binharic did not cease.
Her gaze cut to the castaway.
“You,” she said, voice clipped. “If this is your vessel, then we begin extraction immediately. I want assessments—what is viable, what is dangerous, and what will make me rich. Convene with my unit captains. Establish priorities.”
A pause.
“And get them back under control.”
The castaway inclined his head once.
“Understood.”
He moved forward, boots crunching over dust that had not been disturbed in centuries, passing the kneeling Magi. As he drew closer to the wreck, Jorren saw the effect more clearly now—how the ancient hull seemed to drink in attention. Not radiating power, exactly. More like… presence. A gravity of purpose.
The castaway stopped just short of the prostrating figures.
“On your feet,” he said, not unkindly.
The Magi did not respond.
He sighed, reached out, and placed two fingers against the hull.
The reaction was immediate.
The binharic shriek cut off mid-stream. Both Magi shuddered, mechadendrites spasming as if shocked, then slowly, reluctantly, they rose. Their optics burned brighter now, fixed on him with naked intensity.
“Later,” the castaway told them quietly. “You’ll have your communion. Right now, you have work.”
That, at least, they understood.
Reluctantly, reverently, they withdrew, allowing themselves to be herded back toward the Mechanicus teams by shouted orders and the promise of sanctioned access.
The castaway turned back to the captain.
“I will prepare extraction routes,” he said. “There are sections you should not breach without reinforcement. Others are… delicate.”
Steelheart nodded once. “I’ll have my captains meet you here.”
He turned away to begin issuing instructions—marking zones, flagging structures, assigning risk gradients that made seasoned officers pause and rethink their assumptions.
Yet as he spoke, something gnawed at him.
A tension beneath the surface.
He felt it again now, stronger than before. Not warp pressure. Not psychic interference. Something quieter. Subtler.
Anticipation.
The ship loomed above him, silent and patient.
For the first time since the city gates had opened, unease crept into his thoughts.
This was not the feeling of being found.
It was the feeling of being noticed.
The psykers were supposed to be watched.
They always were.
Distance, spacing, isolation—those were the rules drilled into their keepers until they could recite them in their sleep. Ten sanctioned psykers were never to be clustered. Never to be allowed to bleed into one another’s presence unchecked. Never to be left without rigid oversight.
But rules were easier to forget when nothing seemed to happen.
They had been left beyond the city limits, just as ordered. The blank’s influence pressed against the edge of their awareness like a dead zone, a suffocating silence that gnawed at them the closer the main force marched inward. It hurt. It always did. Headaches, nosebleeds, the crawling sensation under the skin, as though something essential had been scraped away.
The guards felt none of it.
They lounged instead.
Carapace armor unbuckled at the throat. Helmets unclasped and hung from belts. A few sat atop supply crates, boots dangling, lazily passing ichor sticks between them. Smoke curled into the ashen sky, thin and bitter.
“Relax,” one of them muttered. “Captain’s miles in now. What’s gonna happen out here?”
Another laughed. “If these witches pop, we’ll hear it.”
Protocol eroded not with rebellion, but with boredom.
To make things “simpler,” they’d corralled the psykers closer together. A tight ring. Easier to watch. Easier to count. Easier to ensure none wandered.
Ten of them stood within arm’s reach.
Normally, that alone would have been enough to make them retch.
Their auras pressed against one another, raw and unshielded, psychic static crackling in the immaterium like crossed wires. Whispers leaked through clenched teeth. Fingernails dug into palms. One wept quietly, rocking. Another stared too long at nothing at all.
They were trained. Conditioned. Shackled by wards and discipline.
But pain made focus slip.
And pain had been constant ever since the castaway entered the city.
The blank’s absence here was not relief—it was imbalance. A pressure differential in the soul. Like stepping too suddenly into thin air.
The psychic noise they bled into the warp was ugly. Fractured. Unintentional.
And it did not go unanswered.
At first, it was nothing more than a sense.
A wrongness threading through the chorus of their minds. A resonance that did not belong to any of them. One psyker stiffened, breath hitching, eyes unfocusing.
“Did you—” she whispered, then bit her tongue until blood filled her mouth.
Another heard it next.
Not words.
Cadence.
A rhythm beneath the pain, beneath the static, aligning itself to their fear. A presence brushing against the edges of their thoughts, curious, patient, listening.
They shifted closer without realizing it.
The guards didn’t notice.
The ichor stick flared as one laughed at a joke none of the others heard.
Inside the circle, a sanctioned psyker let out a thin, strangled sound.
Something leaned closer.
Not bursting through. Not tearing the veil.
Just… answering.
A whisper slipped into the shared psychic space, smooth where their thoughts were jagged, coherent where theirs fractured.
At last, it seemed to say—not in sound, but in meaning. You are loud enough.
Eyes snapped open in unison.
Wards flickered.
One psyker screamed.
The wind changed direction, carrying the smoke away from the guards—away from their sight.
And in the immaterium, something vast and amused began to speak back.
The murmurs deepened.
What had begun as background static—pain, resentment, hunger—took on shape. Whispers threaded through the psychic din, no longer random, no longer merely echoes of their own fractured thoughts. These were directed. Intentional.
Voices, layered and intimate.
They promised relief.
They promised understanding.
They promised an end to the endless pressure, the collars, the chains, the sleepless nights spent holding back a tide no one else could even see. They spoke with the certainty of inevitability and the tenderness of false mercy, naming each psyker’s private agony as if it had always been listening.
Some resisted.
They clenched their jaws until teeth cracked. They recited litanies with bloody tongues. They clung to discipline learned through fear and pain.
But discipline frays when suffering is all that has ever been offered.
One by one, resolve collapsed.
A sanctioned witch sobbed and whispered yes.
Another laughed—high, hysterical—and stopped fighting the current.
The oldest among them, a frail figure whose body had long since begun to fail under the strain of the immaterium, fell to his knees.
Time seemed to stutter.
Reality thickened, like air before a storm.
Something inside him unfolded.
His spine arched unnaturally as the warp answered his surrender, flesh reshaping under impossible forces. From him burst warped extensions—limbs that were not limbs, reaching outward in blinding speed. They struck the others in a perfect, dreadful symmetry, impaling, binding, linking them together in a circle of screaming bodies.
The guards shouted.
Hell pistols barked, molten rounds screaming across the clearing—
—and died against an invisible barrier that shimmered into being, fueled by shared agony and psychic resonance. The impact rippled across it like rain against glass.
“What in the Throne—!”
Too late.
The psykers’ voices merged now, no longer individual. Their moans twisted into chanting, tongues reshaped by syllables that did not belong to humanity. The air vibrated. The ground trembled.
At the center, the kneeling figure’s flesh bubbled and flowed, no longer fixed, no longer bound by form. Above him, the bodies suspended in the ring began to soften, outlines blurring, melting together into a single obscene geometry.
The world thinned.
Something vast pressed against the veil.
The ring of flesh tore open like an eye forced wide, raw and weeping light spilling from within—colors that had no place in realspace, depth without distance, hunger without shape.
The kneeling figure bowed his head.
His voice, when it came, was layered—his own, and many others beneath it.
“Come forth, my brothers,” he intoned, reverent and ruined.
“It is time.”
And the warp answered.