The Silent King was horrified to discover that the three living-metal constructs he had forged to imprison the Star-Gods were… changing.
From the site where the psychic arrow had struck, patches of raw, crimson flesh were sprouting—grotesquely budding out of the cold, lifeless metal.
It was as though the living-metal were becoming bone, and the spreading flesh sought to wrap around it as muscle and skin, reshaping the constructs into something alive.
For the Necrons, there was no attack more terrifying. None.
"Damn you! What have you done?!"
In a panic, the Silent King cast aside his reins, terrified the spreading contagion of flesh might infect him as well. His hand instinctively went to his own chest—where Roya's arrow had struck.
There, in his body of super-living-metal that had been cold for tens of thousands of years, a faint trace of warmth now stirred—something only creatures of flesh and blood should possess.
Worse, a maddening itch bloomed at the wound, spreading rapidly outward.
The Silent King's heart sank.
He had paid a terrible price, sacrificing his entire race, just to transcend the wretched state of flesh and blood, to ascend into the immortal form of the Necron King. How could he now regress, inexplicably, back into that despised, fragile state?
"What trick is this?! Illusion—or a curse?!"
"No… no, it can't be a curse. Even the most powerful Demon Lord of Flesh could not make his accursed fleshcraft take hold of me! Impossible!"
Like a serpent struck at its vital seven inches, his composure shattered.
Roya regarded the unraveling king with cold disdain.
"This is no flesh-curse of the Demon Lords. It is the Blessing of Life—crafted especially for you."
When Roya had dissected that fallen god, he learned the truth: the entity belonged to the dreaded race of Flesh Demon Lords.
They were few in number, scattered across the vast galaxy. But each was a ravenous devourer of living tissue.
To satisfy their endless hunger, they had evolved a terrifying gift—the Curse of Flesh. With awakened psionic force, they could channel the warp itself to twist the laws of life in the material world, reshaping any form of existence into one of flesh.
Even beings of pure elemental essence could succumb, transfigured into grotesque flesh if they could not resist.
From analyzing this curse, Roya had devised its inverse: a Blessing of Life, tailored against the Silent King.
He turned the warp not into corruption, but into a force of life itself—infused into the target's body.
For creatures of flesh, it became a boon, strengthening the body's resilience. But for Necrons, it was a nightmare greater than any curse: a forced reversion into the mortal state they had abandoned.
And within Roya's soul projection, the golden light amplified this divine art threefold, making it far stronger than the original curse.
This was why he had no need of alliance with the treacherous Star-Gods.
Now, with the Silent King's psionic essence fully parsed—his mastery over the Fearless Ones' collective will laid bare—Roya's Blessing of Life struck true. One arrow, one wound, immediate effect.
Once more, his fingers glimmered. With a subtle shift, he refined the warp energies in response to the feedback from the Silent King's body, and loosed another arrow.
"If you were so desperate to escape the shackles of flesh that you sacrificed your entire race, then I shall return you to it—so you may pay for your sins!"
Not only his body—his very soul would be condemned.
Roya loosed the arrow. It flew faster, sharper, utterly inescapable.
The Silent King had only just managed to suppress the spreading infection at his chest. Raising his head, shaken, he saw the new arrow hurtling straight toward his brow.
"Wretch!"
He roared, no time left for finesse. Only desperate measures remained.
His massive body flipped backward, hiding behind the colossal skull of his necrodragon.
The arrow punched straight through the dragon's head. At that instant, the Silent King triggered his failsafe.
The super-living-metal body—capable of withstanding thirty stellar detonations of physical and psionic force—he abandoned without hesitation.
From the back of his skull, a small aperture opened. Out slipped a sphere the size of a fist, gleaming with runes etched like the folds of a human cortex, glowing with eerie green light.
Lines of power coursed through the runes in ceaseless currents, subtle and inscrutable.
This was the Silent King's true core. His true body. The vessel of his soul.
"Playing at molting like a cicada? Don't even dream of it!"
Roya's voice was like iron. The psychic arrow ignored the discarded husk and veered after the fleeing core.
It was locked onto his soul. No trick could shake it. Not until its energy was spent.
And with Roya's spirit-domain spread across the entire starfield, the arrow could draw power endlessly, its pursuit unbroken.
Though Roya's soul projection was weaker than the Silent King's, his psionic nature gave him one decisive advantage: he could channel energy from the warp at will, across any distance.
Unless he himself died, the arrow would never falter.
Freed from the burden of its towering body, the Silent King's core moved with blistering speed. But when he saw the arrow closing again, he abandoned even the plan of reaching his tomb-pyramids to claim a spare shell.
With a sudden jagged turn, he fled toward the edge of the barren starfield.
"Run? Do you think you can escape?"
Roya's psionic threads, long woven in secret, snapped taut.
A vast web closed shut around the starfield.
The Silent King, core and all, slammed straight into it. Trapped.
"Impudent child—you press me too far! Then we shall perish together!"
The sphere blazed with emerald fire, runes erupting into light more than a foot high, its frantic surges straining against the net with a sudden, explosive force.
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