The dimensional gate hissed in its final spasms of function. Arcane runes, once radiant, dimmed one by one as silence reclaimed the sanctum.
But silence, Luthar knew, was deceitful.
He approached the stabilizer core—slowly, cautiously. His cracked auspex lens blinked in protest, its proximity alarm a faint, insistent pulse.
Something had not left.
Clinging to the underside of the stabilizer pillar, half-curled like a molten spider, was a small, twisted creature. Barely the size of a cat, yet reeking of wrongness. Its flesh shimmered like oil on water, and a crown of fractured eyes blinked open as it turned to face him.
A fragment. A spawnling. A testing fang.
Luthar didn't hesitate. His left palm opened. A line of binaric cant whispered forth, and a spear of plasma light erupted from the servo-mounted gauntlet on his forearm. The creature screamed—not in sound, but in thought—and disintegrated into ash.
His heart sank. Not even daemon engines of the old wars chilled him .
This had not been a probe.
He turned to the console. The dimensional gate was beyond salvage—corrupted, marked. Whatever intelligence stirred in the sea of madness beyond now knew this place existed.
From the corner of his vision, Freya approached, watching in silence as he pulled runed modules from the console. Sparks arced. Circuits hissed.
"You're going to fix it?" she asked.
"No," Luthar replied, his voice hoarse. "I'm going to burn it."
Freya tilted her head. "You built this with reverence. Just minutes ago, you called it a miracle."
Luthar turned, locking eyes with her.
"Then let it die like one."
He crossed the room to a hidden cabinet and withdrew a long, black case trimmed in adamantine—his most prized possession. He held it tightly as he looked to Liliruca.
"Follow. We leave. Now."
They moved quickly. The lab was already dimming, its once-luminous wards flickering erratically.
At the outer door, Luthar paused. He placed his palm to the control panel—cool metal humming with residual energy—and spoke three words in the binaric tongue of the Mechanicum:
> "Sicut ignis mundatur."
(Let it be purified by flame.)
A low chime answered. Emergency seals slammed shut. Coolant veins reversed. Energy cores surged. Blue, consecrated fire erupted through the walls as sacred flame consumed heretical circuitry.
Luthar stepped into the corridor and did not look back.
The lab—the gate—the sin—became a furnace.
Not because he wanted to forget.
But because he remembered too well.
While all 3 of them made their way to the upper floors, Across the reality, far from Orario, in a place where time boiled and truth unraveled, a demon knelt before its master.
It had no stable form now—memory bound in warpflame, logic undone. Behind it hovered a crystal sphere, fragments of other worlds spinning within. Before it, seated on a throne of obsidian feathers, a Lord of Change watched in contemplative silence.
"You failed," the Lord said—voice like a choir of birds and a blade drawn across stone.
The lesser shade bowed deeper. "Yes, master. The child of iron closed the gate. He knew what he had built—until the end."
The Lord's galaxy-eyes narrowed in thought.
"But he remembered... enough to fear. Enough to destroy."
It extended a claw, tracing light across the crystal sphere.
"A machine from the past... planted in his future. And now the seed has cracked."
The spawnling whispered, "Shall we pursue the others?"
"No. Not yet. Let the mortals panic. Let the Blood-soaked sons guard their altar. We watch. We learn."
It leaned forward, feathered wings stretching into infinity.
"And when he builds again... we shall sing."
as the whisper faded into the Warp's roiling currents, far away—across void and veil—the material consequences of its intrusion smoldered beneath steel and stone.
In the depths of Forge Caldriax, where sacred fire had scoured forbidden truth, the sons of Sanguinius arrived not in pursuit of glory, but of answers.
The flames had long since died beneath the earth, but the ash still whispered.
the air was still choked with residual radiation and the oily scent of burnt ether. At the perimeter of the subterranean vault, Astartes of the Blood Angels stood in solemn vigil.
Brother-Captain Kaelen Dureus knelt beside the blackened entry seal, gauntlet tracing the melted engravings.
"This was no accident," he muttered through his helm's vox. "The ignition pattern is controlled. Ritualized."
Across from him, space marine Varan Osceo examined the charred remnants of a servo-skull—its cogitator core fused, its eyes melted into slag.
"There are signs of... Warp interference. Intermittent. Targeted. Something try to interfere—but was met with resistance."
Kaelen's gaze turned to the scorched console embedded in the wall, its runes burned out.
"A purge protocol, Mechanicum-grade. But there's no sign of internal presence—no footprints, no activity logs beyond the triggering code."
Varan nodded. "A switch. Whoever programmed it... expected accidents. Blow up everything."
Kaelen's tone darkened. "Who is in charge of this place?"
"Luthar Ferranus Cogbane, a tech priest," Varan confirmed".
A third voice joined them.
Malchoir said grimly. "The enemy came for something buried. Something: They broke the differences but couldn't take anything."
He gestured to the still-warm corridor, a thin shimmer of warp residue hanging in the air.
"They weren't trying to steal. If the readings are correct, They were trying to open a gate to somewhere."
Kaelen's brow furrowed. "Then the purge stopped them."
Malchoir hesitated. "Or something else did... and the purge only sealed the aftermath."
Silence fell. Only the distant hiss of cooling vents echoed beneath the forge moon.
Kaelen turned his gaze upward, toward the void above.
"Lock this place down. No scribe, no adept, no priest enters—not without direct order from Baal. And tell the Magos I want answers."
Kaelen's grip tightened around the hilt of his relic blade.
Behind them, servitors sealed the vault. The incense smoke rising through fractured stone curled into silent symbols—unreadable, unresolved.
And far above, the warp pulsed.