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Nightfall.
Fewer than five hundred survivors gathered around the bonfire.
The flames climbed high above them, snapping and twisting in the toxic dusk of Agripinaa Forge World. Burning scrap-metal, broken arena beams, and splintered devotional idols fed the blaze. Each time a gust rolled across the waste grounds, sparks scattered into the ash-heavy air like brief, dying stars.
Beyond the ring of firelight, the forge world stretched into darkness: black manufactorum silhouettes, red furnace vents, poison mist crawling low over the ground, and the distant groan of industrial machinery that did not care how many people had died beneath its shadow.
These were all who had escaped the accursed ritual arena.
Yoan stood among them. Chen Ye remained nearby, silent and watchful. Rod sat closer to the flames than anyone else, slumped against the graceful, inhuman figure draped around him like a lover and a weapon at the same time.
Around them were the other liberated prisoners: guardsmen with broken armor, manufactorum workers still wearing slave brands, pilgrims who had lost their prayer books, children too numb to cry, and men who stared into the fire with the empty eyes of those who had watched too much slaughter to believe rescue meant safety.
Out of the original 8,888 captives, fewer than five hundred remained.
The number hung over the camp without being spoken. It sat in every silence, every bowed head, every pair of hands clenched around ration tins or bloodstained cloth. Some survivors whispered names into the fire. Others had no names left to whisper because everyone they knew had died in the arena. A few rocked in place, lips moving around prayers that had long since lost their words.
Only Rod and the entity embracing him appeared untouched by grief.
Rod looked exhausted, but not broken. His armor was scorched, his posture slack, and even through the helmet his weariness showed in the uneven rhythm of his breathing. Yet there was no mourning in him. No guilt. No solemn respect for the dead. His companion, that elegant female thing of impossible poise and predatory calm, watched the survivors with a faint smile that never reached her eyes.
To the loyal citizens of the Imperium, it was obscene.
To Rod, it seemed normal.
"So…" Rod lifted his chin toward Yoan. His voice came out rough, amused, and dangerously casual. "You're a real piece of work."
The comment came from nowhere, at least to anyone who had not been watching Rod think. He had spent the last stretch of silence staring at the fire, replaying the carnage in the arena and assembling the pieces in his mind. The more he considered them, the clearer the conclusion became.
Yoan was not merely dangerous.
Yoan was someone to be feared.
If he had chosen to do so, Yoan could have stormed the manufactorum alone and torn open the cells before the ritual ever began. He and his demigod-grade warplate were equal to a full combat squad, perhaps more in the right terrain. The shoulder cannon, the armor systems, the precision of his movement, and the cold restraint with which he had waited all pointed toward one truth.
The delay had been deliberate.
The capture had been deliberate.
Even the moment he had chosen to summon his Thunderborn-pattern power armor had been deliberate.
Rod was no fool. With a little thought, he could see the shape of Yoan's gambit. The prisoners had not merely escaped a ritual. They had been part of a baited noose meant for Dark Apostle Khovain. Sabotage the rite at the critical point. Force Khovain to appear in person. Let him believe the ritual could still be salvaged at acceptable cost. Then kill him before he could rebuild it elsewhere.
Efficient. Practical. Ruthless.
Rod liked ruthlessness. He respected it even more when the person using it pretended not to enjoy the taste.
"..." Yoan did not answer him. He stood in the firelight with the stillness of a statue, his armor reflecting orange across its dark plates. Whether he had not heard Rod or had chosen not to dignify him with a response was impossible to tell.
Rod chuckled softly. "So tell me… since you're so powerful, why didn't you protect everyone and fight your way out of the arena from the start? You're telling me the deaths of those eight thousand had nothing to do with you?"
Several survivors stiffened. A woman near the edge of the bonfire stopped whispering her prayer. A former prisoner with half his face wrapped in bandages slowly turned toward Yoan. Even those who had no strength left to stand found enough strength to listen.
Rod already knew the answer.
That was not the point.
Provocation was a pleasure of his, a familiar little art in a galaxy overflowing with fear. Push the right place, say the right words, and men who had survived blades, bullets, and daemons would suddenly tear themselves apart over guilt. Watching that happen warmed him better than the bonfire. Letting such a perfect opportunity pass unused would have felt physically painful.
Yoan finally looked at him.
There was no shame in his gaze. No anger either. Only a hard, measured patience, the kind found in men who had already judged themselves before anyone else tried.
"The enemy was conducting a ritual," Yoan said. "If completed, it would have had catastrophic consequences. Between saving eight thousand lives and stopping the ritual permanently, I chose the latter."
The words landed heavily.
No dramatic defense followed. No appeal to necessity dressed in noble language. No plea for understanding. Yoan simply stated the decision as one soldier might report ammunition expenditure.
The survivors stared at him.
Some looked horrified. Some looked wounded. Some looked as if they hated him and needed a few more seconds to decide whether they were allowed to hate the man who had also saved them. Slowly, one by one, heads bowed again. Grief did not disappear. Neither did anger. But the truth behind his words was too large to deny.
The arena had not been an isolated atrocity. It had been one chamber in a machine of sacrifice. Each solar rotation, thousands more would have been fed into the rite. Blood, fear, pain, souls—fuel for something that would not stop at a single manufactorum or a single district. If Khovain had succeeded, Agripinaa itself could have become a wound.
Chen Ye looked at Yoan for a long moment. His expression was severe, but not condemnatory. After thinking it through, he gave the smallest nod.
If he had been in Yoan's position, he would have made the same choice.
He hated that. But he would have done it.
Rod tilted his helmet. "You used us as bait, didn't you?" His tone remained light, but the words cut cleanly through the firelit silence. "You're powerful enough. Couldn't you have tracked Khovain directly and dealt with him yourself?"
Chen Ye shot him a glare. Funny, he thought. Back in the arena, when he had asked Rod where Khovain was, the bastard had provided nothing useful. Now he spoke as if the answer should have been obvious to everyone.
"I couldn't locate him," Yoan replied. "So I drew him out."
From the beginning, that had been the plan. Enter as a captured soldier. Observe the ritual. Sabotage it when Khovain could no longer ignore the disruption. Reveal enough strength to threaten the rite, but not so early that the Dark Apostle would retreat and rebuild somewhere else.
That was why Yoan had not summoned his Thunderborn-pattern armor at the start.
Khovain had not arrived yet.
Rod gave a disappointed sigh. "No fun at all."
Yoan was immune to guilt-tripping. Worse, he understood exactly what had been lost and still refused to collapse under it. Rod found that deeply inconvenient. With a theatrical slump, he let the moral inquisition die and leaned back into the arms of his companion.
The entity behind him lowered her head toward his helmet. Rod answered her in a low, guttural language that scraped against the ear. The sounds were not merely foreign. They carried the rhythm of things meant to be spoken in places where human lungs were optional.
Yoan narrowed his eyes.
He was certain of one thing. That creature was not merely xenos.
It was a daemon.
The deduction was simple enough. Rod is a Chaos warrior, the vocabulary of the Eye of Terror, and the casual corruption of someone who had long ago stopped pretending the Warp was a danger to be avoided. Some warbands, especially the Word Bearers, the Black Legion, and their countless imitators, summoned daemons as servants, allies, weapons, or lovers.
Rod was clearly one of them.
A Warp-witch. A summoner. A warlock who consorted with the horrors of theWarp.
"Ahem." Chen Ye cleared his throat. The sound was deliberately loud. He turned toward Rod, one hand flexing near his weapon. "You think we forgot about you, huh? Filthy traitor. Just because you put in some effort in the arena doesn't mean we're not still watching you."
Rod sat up, visibly surprised. "I thought we were friends by now."
Chen Ye's stare hardened.
Rod spread his hands. "In the Eye of Terror, a fight is how we say hello. We may belong to different warbands, but once you've bled together, you're bonded."
He said it with such sincerity that, for an instant, it almost sounded pitiful. Hurt, even. As if he truly believed in what he was saying and was genuinely disappointed the feeling had not been returned.
Yoan was about to warn Chen Ye not to trust a single word from a Chaos Marine's mouth, but Chen Ye beat him to it.
"They lie like they breathe," Chen Ye snapped, not looking away from Rod. "Don't believe him." Then he pointed at Rod with open contempt. "Cut the act. You're no saint. You definitely thought about killing us the moment we got out of that arena."
Rod went quiet.
The bonfire cracked between them. A coal collapsed inward, sending a brief fountain of sparks into the night. The survivors shifted uneasily. Some took small steps back. Others gripped weapons scavenged from the arena floor: blades, broken rifles, chains, lengths of rebar, anything that made bare hands feel less helpless.
At last, Rod slowly nodded.
"I did plan to kill you both," he admitted. "But now, I don't want to."
The admission made the air heavier.
The Forge World already reeked of ash, hot iron, promethium residue, old blood, and chemical smoke, even through damaged filtration units and armor seals. Now another scent seemed to settle over the camp: hostility sharpened by exhaustion.
The mutual enemy was gone.
The crisis that had forced Chen Ye and Rod to fight beside one another had ended. Without Khovain and his ritual binding them together, the old truth returned at once. Loyal servant of the Imperium. Warrior of Chaos. Two men who could cooperate under necessity and still be perfectly ready to kill each other the moment necessity expired.
Chen Ye stood.
He moved slowly, not from hesitation, but because every motion was a warning. He stepped away from the bonfire into the open space where the light thinned and the ground was black with furnace soot. His fists clenched.
"Let's settle this."
Yoan stood as well and moved beside him. No speech was required. His allegiance was unmistakable.
The liberated prisoners looked between them and Rod. Many had seen Rod fight in the arena. They had seen him cut through cultists, endure suppression, and help break them free. They were not eager to kill a man who had fought beside them.
But they were citizens of the Imperium. That meant some choices had already been made for them before they were born.
"This doesn't concern any of you!" Chen Ye barked at the crowd. "Stand back. As far as you can."
No one needed to be told twice.
The survivors retreated in a ragged ring, dragging the wounded with them. A few protested under their breath, but no one stepped between the combatants. Gratitude was one thing. Standing between a loyalist in power armor and a Chaos warlock was another.
Yoan's shoulder-mounted cannon rotated with a soft mechanical whine. Its charge coils brightened, the weapon aligning on Rod's center mass. Yoan's eyes flicked briefly to the daemon behind Rod.
The creature had risen to her feet. Bone-blades slid into her hands as if grown from her palms. Her graceful posture shifted into something predatory and ready. She watched Yoan with a smile that had nothing human inside it.
Rod raised one hand.
The daemon froze.
It did not lower its weapons, but it obeyed.
Chen Ye's jaw tightened. "Stand up and fight. I don't kill the unarmed."
Rod remained seated beside the fire. The flames painted his armor in restless gold and blue. "Don't rush, young blood."
Chen Ye frowned. "Young?"
Rod chuckled beneath his helmet.
Chen Ye's voice sharpened. "I've served for eighty-four years."
Yoan blinked. "...What?"
The surprise slipped out before he could stop it. He looked from Chen Ye to Rod, then back again. To the survivors, both armored men seemed ageless in the way soldiers often did when helmets, scars, and war had buried ordinary years beneath violence. Chen Ye did not move like a boy, but eighty-four years of service was still enough to make even hardened men glance twice.
Rod, however, did not seem impressed.
He leaned back, his helmet turning toward the poisoned stars barely visible through Agripinaa's smoke-choked sky. For once, there was no mockery in the gesture. Only a strange, distant amusement, as if Chen Ye had just reminded him of a childhood so far away it belonged to another species.
"Eighty-four years? Ha…" Rod murmured. "How long has it been since I left my homeworld?"
The bonfire cracked again.
Rod's daemon companion lowered herself behind him, silent and watchful. Chen Ye remained in his fighting stance, but his eyes narrowed. Yoan's cannon stayed locked on target, its charge steady and patient. Around them, the survivors held their breath.
Rod continued staring upward.
"Was it in M30.129…" he said slowly, as if searching through a memory buried beneath ten thousand years of war, betrayal, and madness. "Or maybe M30.140…"
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