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The war council chamber deep within the Arbites Precinct was a monolithic structure of steel and stone, its walls lined with gothic engravings of Imperial law and order. At the center of the vast room stood a cold adamantium table, surrounded by the highest-ranking figures of the hive world. The air was tense, suffocating even.
Arbitrator Gideon Roth sat at the head of the table, his black carapace armor gleaming under the flickering lumen-strips. His face was grim, lined with years of unflinching duty. The weight of this crisis pressed against him like a vice, but he refused to let it show. The Hive was dying, and the men and women in this room would decide its fate.
The others sat in rigid silence, their expressions hard, their gazes cold. Canoness Kallista Veyne of the Adepta Sororitas sat to his right, clad in her black-and-gold power armor, the faint hum of its servos the only sign of movement. She was unreadable, her eyes sharp and unyielding. Beside her, General Henrick Vos, commander of the hive's Astra Militarum regiments, exhaled sharply, his uniform crisp but his posture exhausted.
To Roth's left, Archmagos Dain-Kel of the Adeptus Mechanicus remained eerily still, his red robes concealing the majority of his cybernetic form. His augmented optics flickered as he processed the data scrolling across the internal cogitators in his cranial unit. Across the table, Lord Halix Varens, the hive's noble governor, sat stiffly, his fine robes slightly disheveled—his usual arrogance now tinged with a growing unease.
The hololithic projector flickered to life, casting a jagged, blood-red map of the hive onto the table. Symbols marked critical locations—some blinking yellow, others solid red. The red ones were lost.
Roth leaned forward. "We are losing."
The words hung in the air like a death sentence.
"Half my battalions are gone," General Vos muttered. "Entire districts have fallen silent. Not taken. Not occupied. Silent."
Archmagos Dain-Kel's optics pulsed. "Current projections estimate full system-wide collapse within five-point-six standard weeks unless countermeasures are implemented."
Lord Varens paled. "Collapse? You're saying the entire hive will fall?"
"Not just the hive," Roth said darkly. "The planet."
Silence.
The Canoness spoke, her voice steady, resolute. "Exterminatus."
Varens slammed his fist against the table. "Are you mad?! This is one of the Imperium's most vital hive worlds! Its industry, its manpower—"
"Means nothing if it is damned," Kallista interrupted coldly. "If Chaos has rooted itself too deeply, this world must be purged."
Vos rubbed his temple, exhaustion clear in his expression. "Let's not throw everything away just yet. We still have soldiers in the field. We can fight. We just need reinforcements."
Roth turned to him. "And where will they come from?"
Vos hesitated.
Roth continued, his voice hard. "Terra is silent. The astropaths have stopped receiving transmissions. No response from the Segmentum command. No response from any fleet patrols." He exhaled sharply. "We are alone."
The reality settled over them like a suffocating weight.
Archmagos Dain-Kel spoke, his voice a mechanized rasp. "Communications blackout is indicative of external interference. Probability of Warp-based disruption: high."
"The Warp," Vos muttered.
Roth clenched his jaw. "Something is coming. We are not dealing with mere heretics anymore. We are dealing with something far worse."
Varens shook his head, still refusing to accept the full implications. "And what exactly are you suggesting? That we fight a war we cannot win? That we wait for something even worse to descend upon us?"
Kallista narrowed her eyes. "We fight until there is nothing left. That is the duty of the faithful."
"And what of those who are not faithful?" Varens snapped. "The civilians? The workers? Are we to let them all burn?"
"They will burn regardless if we do not act," Roth said. "The only question is whether we burn with them."
Vos exhaled, rubbing a hand over his face. "We need a plan."
Roth nodded. "We do." His eyes flicked across the room. "We reinforce the central precincts. We consolidate what forces we have left. The hive's outer districts are already lost, but if we can hold the core, we might buy ourselves time."
"And if time is all we buy?" Kallista asked.
"Then we use it wisely," Roth said.
Another silence.
Then, the Archmagos twitched slightly, his internal cogitators whirring. "One additional factor must be considered. Ritualized activity has increased exponentially in the lower spires. Patterns suggest a coordinated effort. Unknown objective."
"A summoning," Kallista said immediately.
Vos tensed. "Throne... are you saying they're trying to bring something here?"
The Canoness' expression was unreadable. "Not just something." Her eyes darkened. "Someone."
The implication sent a chill through the room.
Varens leaned forward. "Are you telling me a Chaos Champion is coming to this world?"
No one spoke.
But the silence was an answer in itself.
Roth stood.
"Then we do not wait for them to come to us." His voice was iron. "We go to them first."
Kallista met his gaze. "War, then."
"War."
Vos sighed heavily and rose from his seat. "The Emperor protects."
The meeting was over.
The storm had begun.
—-
Arbitrator Gideon Roth sat alone in his dimly lit office, the weight of command pressing down on him like a millstone around his neck. His body ached—fatigue clawing at his mind, his limbs heavy with exhaustion. The war council meeting had drained what little energy remained in him, but there was no rest for men like him. Not in times like these.
A bottle of amasec sat untouched on his desk. He hadn't even bothered pouring a glass. What good would it do? The world outside was crumbling, and all the liquor in the Imperium wouldn't make that truth any easier to bear.
His office was cluttered with data-slates, stacks of parchment, and cogitator printouts detailing the slow, agonizing death of the hive. Reports of Arbites precincts overrun. Supply lines cut. Entire districts vanishing—not just falling silent, but being erased, as if they had never existed.
And then, there was the void-black silence from the stars.
No word from Terra. No word from Segmentum Command. No response from any fleet. The warp was choked with interference, transmissions distorted, voices lost in an abyss. And worse, no ships were leaving.
That was the part that unnerved him the most.
It wasn't just the hive—it was the entire planetary cluster. No ships had successfully left orbit in weeks. Vessels that attempted to breach the atmosphere simply… disappeared. The Mechanicus called it a warp anomaly. The Sisters called it a divine test. The nobles called it sabotage.
Roth didn't care what it was called.
He only cared that they were trapped here.
The thought made his stomach churn, but he forced it down. He was an Arbitrator. The law of the Emperor incarnate. He would not break.
His tired eyes drifted to the data-slate before him. He exhaled, steeling himself, and turned his attention to the only thing left to do: work.
---
The slate flickered to life, displaying a dossier stamped with the twin seals of the Adeptus Arbites and the Adeptus Mechanicus. The project's designation was sterile, clinical: "Memetic Cognition Augmentation Trial."
A fancy way of saying "we are playing with fire."
The virus was unlike any disease known to the Imperium. It didn't kill, didn't ravage the body—it rewrote the mind itself. A cognitive parasite, latching onto the infected's thoughts, sharpening them, reshaping them. Those who underwent exposure exhibited near-photographic memory, heightened pattern recognition, and vastly accelerated cognitive function.
But there was a cost.
Knowledge became a hunger.
Those afflicted craved information—not just in a way that a scholar might seek understanding, but with an insatiable, desperate need. They would devour every text, every report, every fragment of data they could find, unable to stop themselves.
And in the Imperium… not all knowledge is safe.
Most subjects were quarantined after exposure, deemed high-risk for eventual corruption. They wanted to know things they shouldn't. They asked the wrong questions. And so, every Arbite who volunteered for the procedure was pulled from active duty, locked away in Mechanicus facilities for "monitoring."
Most never came back.
Yet, they still needed more subjects.
A list of new applicants awaited his approval, each name accompanied by a detailed background check. Roth sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose, and began scanning through them, mindlessly rejecting most.
Too undisciplined.
Too reckless.
Too weak-willed.
Too valuable to be wasted.
And then, his eyes landed on a name.
Cassian Vail.
Roth paused.
For a moment, he tried to recall where he had heard that name before. And then, he remembered.
---
It had been weeks ago. Another time. Another life.
A lowly scribe had stood before him, his posture rigid, his expression carefully neutral, but Roth had seen the gears turning behind his eyes.
"The Imperium categorizes Chaos-infested worlds in stages."
A simple lesson. A reminder of the reality they lived in.
Most men would have listened. Most men would have accepted the knowledge at face value and moved on.
But not Cassian.
Roth had seen something in him then. A sharp mind. A hunger for understanding. He was a survivor—not through strength, not through faith, but through sheer, unrelenting competence.
And now…
Now his name sat before Roth, buried among dozens of others, requesting admittance into a project designed to sharpen the mind into a weapon.
Roth leaned back in his chair, exhaling slowly.
He is competent.
He is useful.
And he is expendable.
Loyalty? That didn't matter. No one who underwent the procedure would ever be placed back into service. The moment Cassian walked into that Mechanicus facility, he was as good as dead.
Roth's thumb hovered over the approval stamp.
He wouldn't survive.
But if he did…
A thought whispered at the edge of his mind.
"What could a mind like that become?"
His hand came down.
STAMP.
Cassian Vail was approved.
---
Roth set the slate down, sighing deeply, but his respite was short-lived. Another report flashed onto his desk—a new briefing from his intelligence officers.
Cult activity has reached unprecedented levels.
Rituals in the lower hive are escalating.
Symbolic patterns suggest… a greater purpose.
He frowned, scanning the details. His mind, still sharp despite his exhaustion, began piecing the puzzle together.
Something bigger was happening.
He had thought the cults were simply spreading like a plague, devouring the hive district by district. But this wasn't mindless destruction.
This was preparation.
The markings. The patterns of the attacks. The silence from the warp. The ships unable to leave.
And then… something clicked.
His breath hitched.
"No…"
His eyes darted across the reports, desperately searching for confirmation. He found it in the patterns drawn in blood, in the whispers recorded from dying cultists, in the frantic notes of the few sanctioned psykers still alive in the hive.
They weren't just spreading.
They weren't just killing.
They were building something.
Not a fortress. Not a rebellion.
A stage.
A world-sized altar.
His throat went dry.
If he was right… if this was what he thought it was… then they weren't dealing with a simple planetary insurrection.
They were looking at ascension.
Not just a champion.
Not just a warlord.
A Threshold.
A Crossing point.
The thought sent a shudder through him.
"Throne…"
He reached for the amasec bottle, hesitated, then pulled his hand away.
No.
There was no time for weakness.
No time for despair.
He straightened, jaw clenched.
"I will not let this world fall."
Not while there was still breath in his lungs.
The Emperor's justice would be served.
One way or another.
—-
Word count: 1949
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