The Emperor of Mankind regarded Karesh in silence. Not Vulkan... Karesh.
The Emperor had seen much in his long existence. Perpetuals, of which he was also one, shards of Star Gods, of which he had defeated one, Chaos and the four most powerful representations, which he was fighting against, the rise and fall of humanity, Thunder Warriors, prototypes that had lived and died for the good of Terra, Astartes, their successors and now Primarchs.
But this was... different.
Karesh was not a Perpetual. He had confirmed it the moment his presence touched the young warrior's soul. There was no eternal anchor, no reincarnating thread in the Warp, which he had, or Malchador, Erda, or any of his old friends. And yet... There was something there that allowed Karesh to regenerate from any wound. He was immortal, but only physically, it seemed. The question was, where was the limit to his capabilities?
But that wasn't all. He could tell there was more. One look and probing with his psychic might told him almost all that he needed to know about the mortal named Karesh. After listening to the tale his son Vulkan told him, speaking of endless tenacity and anger toward the Drukhari, as well as the other information he gained from the others' minds, he learned more.
It was a regenerative cycle. He fought the Dark Eldar, sustained injuries that would have killed even some Astartes, regenerated, and then strengthened through the near-death experience. What's even more outrageous is that the Emperor felt no end to his vitality. Then combine that with instinctive battle cognition.
It was not the Warp; the Emperor had made sure and checked it over and over again. It was something internal, inherent only to Karesh. And it was this anomaly that interested him greatly. The sheer potential boons and dangers this could bring...
The Emperor finally spoke.
"He will come with me."
Vulkan stepped forward instinctively and protectively. Karesh, however, seeing the look in the Emperor's eyes, placed a hand on his brother's arm.
"I will go, and I will return."
The Emperor looked at his son and nodded.
"Come, Vulkan, it is time for you to see Terra, humanity's cradle."
.
The lander split the cloudbank above the 'cradle of humanity', as the Emperor had called Terra.
Karesh had seen storms on Nocturne, ash squalls that could strip paint from basalt and leave a man coughing blood for a week. He had grown up used to the harshness of Nocturne, but what he saw now was different. Terra's sky didn't really look like a normal sky. It was a ceiling: a stacked, bruised world of smoke and chemical haze, layers upon layers, lit from within by sickly industrial glow. The sun was there somewhere; they had seen it before diving deeper below the clouds, but now it looked like a pale coin behind grime, reduced to a rumour.
Below, the planet looked... used up.
No oceans could be seen in the distance, no blue, no broad wilderness or vast horizons. There were only structures, mountain ranges that were not mountains, and valleys that were not valleys, but canyons cut between impossibly tall ridges of hab-stacks, state-spires, manufactora, and old war-fortresses welded together over millennia. Only in the deepest parts of the planet did real stone punch through the skin of the world.
But the magnificent ship didn't land anywhere; it moved forward toward the tallest geological feature on the planet, the Himalazian mountains. Then the Imperial Palace came into view.
Karesh had heard the word palace spoken on Nocturne with awe, used for the home of the most wealthy forge-master or a chieftain's hall. But that didn't do the word justice, he realised. This was not that.
This was a country pretending to be a set of buildings.
The Palace sprawled across the Himalazian heights and beyond, an endless geometry of walls and bastions and fortress-cities layered upon fortress-cities—terraces like stepped plateaus, gun-lines like mountain ridges, curtain walls that ran so far they curved with the planet. Whole districts sat behind armoured ramparts the size of Nocturne's cliffs. Towers rose like spears, and the void-shields around them shimmered faintly, making the air look like it was very hot. It was also seemingly the only place with a clear view of the sky.
Even from the ship, Karesh could see traffic in the sky: black dots and bright streaks, transports, escorts, courier crafts, threading through designated lanes. But only around the palace and never directly above it.
Above that, distant and colossal, were orbital structures: plates and platforms like artificial moons, hanging over the world. Some were linked down by thin lines that might have been cables, might have been beams, might have been nothing more than the mind refusing to accept scale. They made Terra feel less like a planet and more like the core of a machine. Karesh felt his mind being blown by the sheer scale of everything, more than his fight against the Dark Eldar.
Vulkan stood beside him, unmoved in that way only Vulkan could be, as if the universe could build any height it pleased and he would still judge it by the strength of its foundations and with the eye of a master craftsman.
Karesh couldn't help staring.
When they touched down, the landing field alone could have fitted a city. It was a broad armoured with plasteel and rockcrete, ribbed with blast trenches and shield pylons, with cranes and lifters moving cargo the way men on Nocturne moved ore—except each "cargo" here was the size of a hab-block. Rows of Adeptus Astartes and Custodes stood in formation in numbers that stopped being 'normal'. Columns of vehicles rolled like metal rivers.
And in front of it all, the Custodians walked, arriving before the Emperor.
Vulkan was led toward the Palace proper along a processional causeway wide enough for thousands of armoured columns of Astartes to march next to one another. Ahead, Karesh saw gates within gates: archways that could have been city walls, each layered with kill-zones and silent weapon nests. This was the moment that Karesh's and Vulkan's paths diverged. Even being here was already a great honour, unthinkable for a mortal.
A different, far, far smaller delegation arrived for Karesh. Not golden this time, but with a mixture of iron and flesh.
They bore the mark of the Mechanicum, red cloth and black steel, cog-toothed sigils, and vox-grilles that released smoke when they spoke. With them came a small cluster of Apothecaries in pale armour and sealed helms. Their gaze lingered on Karesh longer than anyone else's, on his posture, his look, the density of his presence, and the way his eyes tracked threats without seeming to.
"Karesh of Nocturne. By the Master of Mankind's will, you are remanded to the gene-forges for evaluation and induction."
Induction. The word should have felt like an honour, but instead, it felt like a gate he had passed that he would never be able to open again. This was a decision for life and maybe even beyond that. Was he ready? They did not take him through the grand ways that Vulkan had taken earlier. He was a mortal, a nobody, and Vulkan was a prince, the son of the Emperor of Mankind.
Karesh was taken to another area, inside the massive complexes, through the service arteries of the Palace's outer body: corridors that ran for miles in both very narrow and large corridors, lit by hard lumen strips, crowded with trains of servitors, members of the Mechanicus and thousands of other workers. Every surface was marked: warnings in High and Low Gothic, hazard sigils, purity seals, mechanisms with locks the size of doors. The air smelled of antiseptic, machine oil, smoke, blood, and other toxic substances.
The deeper they went, the more the area changed.
They passed through a transit chamber where the floor and walls vibrated with the billions of engines working at once. A void-lift, more like a vertical tunnel for a building to fall through, swallowed them and took them even deeper underground. Karesh felt his stomach turn as they descended and the temperature shot through the roof. No one said anything, no one addressed Karesh, and no one asked questions. They didn't even look at him with interest.
A Mechanicum adept pressed a palm to a reader. Another spoke a string of binary clicks. Something in the wall recognised their specific code, grudgingly, and the thick doors opened.
On the other side was the place where boys became monsters. Not a single chamber or a set of surgery rooms, but an entire district used for transformation and experimentation. Surgical theatres stacked like a honeycomb, hypno-indoctrination halls where hundreds of voices could be heard. Vaults where gene-seed was kept were like the most precious treasures. Training halls with floors scarred by decades of usage and battle.
And everywhere, the smell: sterilisation, nutrient paste, chem-fumes, toxic smoke, blood beneath it all, and the hot humid air, like the air inside an old metal tomb.
Karesh saw aspirants. Young boys of almost the same age. Rows of them, shaven and pale under the flickering lighting, lying with hollow eyes while hundreds of metal arms, needles and other mind-numbing equipment drilled holes into their bodies and performed surgery while they were asleep or even wide awake.
Karesh felt suddenly out of place among them. He was far older than they were.
He watched a servitor wheel a gurney past a viewing panel. On it lay an aspirant strapped down, chest already opened, skin pinned back with surgical clamps. An Apothecary's hands moved with programmed precision, inserting something into the cavity with tools that looked more like weapon parts than instruments. Another servitor held a tray of biological implants.
A Tech-priest turned its skull-faced mask toward him.
"Subject Karesh. Age: Far beyond preferred band. Variance approved by the authority of the highest order."
By authority?... Ah, the Emperor.
Karesh felt the weight of that. Somewhere above all this, Vulkan would be walking toward the heart of the Palace, toward the legacy the Master of Mankind had prepared for him, for him to study and prepare for the endless wars and conflicts that were sure to come. And Karesh... Karesh was here, in the underhive beneath Terra's golden splendour, about to be unmade and rebuilt by cold metallic hands that did not care that he was human. Only an asset.
They brought him to an assessment bay.
It was a room like a shrine to biology and steel. Banks of cogitators lined one wall, suspensor rigs hung from the ceiling like skeletal hands. A slab of black metal waited at the centre, surrounded by lights that could blind the person in front.
An Apothecary approached, his expression underneath the helmet unreadable. But Karesh could read his posture and the way he moved perfectly. It told him of the Space Marine's arrogance and pride and how little he thought of Karesh. But he was too respectful of who ordered him to be here to say anything.
"Remove all clothing. Submit to measurement."
Here, refusal would mean nothing. Your preferences were meaningless in the grand scheme of things. The Emperor commanded it, and so it happened. Terra did not fight you like an enemy, for everyone and everything were tools for the Emperor to use how he wished. Everyone and everything was expendable. So you had better submit and do what you were told, otherwise you were useless and discarded. There was little that was worth less than human lives, as ironic as that was.
Karesh removed his clothing and stepped onto the slab. Cold metal met his feet, restraints rose on servo arms, hovering near his wrists, ankles and stomach without touching, waiting for permission. The Apothecary leaned in, scanning him. The auspex wand passed over Karesh's sternum, his spine, the thick cord of muscle in his neck. The Apothecary paused at the dense tissue, evidence of a body that had been through a lot but was still pristine.
A moment of silence, as the Apothecary studied the dataslate. Then, quietly, with a tone that was almost—almost—curiosity asked.
"You have seen death before."
Karesh's eyes lifted, staring into the red lenses of the Astartes' helmet.
"Yes."
The Apothecary's head tilted a fraction and then nodded sharply.
"Good. You will again."