The tide of the Warp surged visibly into reality. Arrogant whirlpools distorted the skies, thunder roared with unnatural fury, and a tsunami of greed battered the earth itself. Drizzles of desire wept down like acid rain, caressing the soil with sick affection. At this moment, the barrier between the Immaterium and the material realm thinned to near-collapse. Cracks fissured the high heavens, spreading like a disease through the firmament, and the void groaned under the pressure of madness made manifest.
The Great Speaker's grand design had entered its first, most vital phase.
Millions of tons of blackstone within the Guardian Star Mine—once a bastion of resistance against the Warp—were twisted by the Blackstone Daemon Crown. Once pacifying in nature, the blackstone was now a catalyst, igniting a riot within the Sea of Souls.
Primordial energies descended in torrents from beyond, rending time and space with reckless hatred. Negative Warp energy surged across systems, a devouring storm beyond mortal comprehension.
Those with psychic sensitivity fell to their knees, wailing in agony.
The howling maelstrom of the Eye of Terror reached out and consumed Vigilus. The Blackstone Crowns operated by the Word Bearers sent shockwaves through reality itself. Order collapsed. Logic fractured. Monstrosities walked once more.
The Nachmund Gauntlet, last stable corridor into the Imperium Nihilus, buckled under the pressure. A deluge of daemons spilled forth, seeking cracks in the veil—seeking entry. Seeking blood.
In the shadow of this apocalypse, a fresh atrocity bloomed.
Southern Vigilus. Dotolia.
The war between the Death Guard and the World Purifiers was all but decided. With the Iron Warriors and several warbands supporting them, the Purifiers' defenses collapsed. Factory after factory fell.
Victory seemed assured.
Until it wasn't.
Within the polluted bowels of a captured manufactorum, a blasphemous ritual began. Seven tolls rang from a corroded plague bell—its call thundered through seven vast, toxicized industrial zones. Thick, chemical smoke—laced with seven distinct, hyper-lethal toxins—spilled into the atmosphere, engulfing all.
The Death Guard halted. Something was wrong.
The ritual bore resemblance to sacred rites… but its destination was wrong.
"Seven—the number of Grandfather Nurgle," one Plague Marine muttered, standing amid the desecrated manufactorum ruins. "Yet this ritual is not to Him... but to another."
"This is heresy," growled another. "I smell the stink of betrayal—the rot of one who has drowned in death but not embraced Father's love."
A Death Guard strike team entered the toxic haze.
They vanished.
Their vox-signals were severed moments later. No screams. No gunfire. Just silence—until even the eyepiece feeds went dark.
Like pebbles tossed into a black sea, they made no ripples.
"We must stop it," barked a captain, "We will not watch a ritual of treason take root in Grandfather's name!"
A second team followed, this time under the command of a company captain.
They, too, were devoured by the fog.
Retreat was the only option. Temporarily.
Over the next seven hours, the fog spread anew—seven concentric layers of toxic, dreamlike smoke. Once-proud plague gardens wilted. The fertile rot cultivated by the Death Guard was annihilated by this new toxin. Cities, forests, mountain passes—all sterilized. All erased.
The mists killed everything.
Even the corrupted resilience of Chaos Space Marines proved insufficient. The very children of Nurgle were forced to pull back. Some screamed. Others choked. Many simply died—their blasphemous bodies unable to endure the spiritual poison saturating the air.
And worse... it was not done.
With forced cooperation, the Death Guard and Iron Warriors made another foray into the fog.
The results were... troubling.
Amid the noxious clouds, a figure had begun to take form—tall, misshapen, forever shifting. Unclean. Unstable. Unknowable.
One survivor—half-melted, mind-broken—returned babbling about possession. A being had entered him. He did not return alone.
And so the warbands fell silent. What few reports they received confirmed what they feared: something—someone—was descending into reality. Not summoned. Not bargained. Imposed.
And the Death Guard?
They knew.
They knew more than they said.
They recognized this ritual. They understood who the being was. And they knew why they were the targets.
But they kept it to themselves. Not even fellow devotees of Nurgle were told.
The poison fog continued to expand. Tens of thousands of cultists and traitors perished or went mad. The broken city beneath the haze became a graveyard of forgotten names, its skyline flickering like a fever dream—light and mirage interwoven with unreality.
Every seven hours, the signs intensified.
Nurgle's children raged. Furious, helpless, they marched in vengeance.
A favored champion led the third charge into the sevenfold chemical complex. Flanked by daemon engines and blightspawn, he entered with a roar:
"In the name of Father Nurgle—this heresy will be scoured!"
They never returned.
Their deaths changed nothing.
The Death Guard grew obsessed. For once, their lazy contempt turned to relentless hunger for answers.
"We persist," rasped Captain Hughes, his mucus-choked voice echoing with the buzz of a thousand flies.
He probed the fog's edge alone, drawn by something deeper. Within the chemical haze, he found a circular chamber lined with sealed iron doors.
His insect-swarm squirmed in distress. Something here disturbed them deeply. But Hughes ignored their protests. The Swarm whispered, You are rejecting oneness. Rejecting us. But Hughes moved forward.
He chose a door.
He opened the viewing slit.
Inside, a corpse stared back.
Charred. Hollow. Dead for centuries perhaps—but still upright. Black smoke curled from its blistered lips. Burnt hands pressed against the glass. It screamed without sound.
Hughes was unmoved.
To a Death Guard, such things were beneath fear.
He turned to the next door. But something stopped him.
And the investigation ended.
The stench of life—faint, tempting, and misplaced—tugged at the Death Guard's rotted senses. Hughes turned, drawn by the scent like a maggot to rot.
There, lying collapsed across the corridor's threshold, was a woman's body. Pale flesh wrapped in a white gown, her form was rigid, her face discolored—veins bruised black and skin waxen. Poison had long since seeped into her marrow. She was, by all mortal measure, dead.
And yet…
He smelled it—greed. A hunger for life, not extinguished but buried beneath layers of suffering.
The Plague Marine knelt, his massive frame folding with unnatural grace. He cupped the woman's head gently, as if cradling a child—or a lover.
"You have fought well," Hughes murmured, voice heavy with phlegm. "To defy death so long is worthy of the Father's notice."
Her pupils, wide and unfocused, met his—then twitched. Some final remnant of consciousness clung to the anchor of his presence.
"Wake, sister," the Death Guard said, and parted his decaying lips.
A wet, choking sound followed as he expelled a mass of blackened pus onto her face. It sizzled faintly as it touched her skin, thick with writhing, pale maggots—milky-bodied heralds of corruption. They burrowed greedily into her mouth, nostrils, and even her ruined eye sockets.
She convulsed, violently. Filth poured from her in all directions. But Hughes remained kneeling, patient as a priest at vigil.
"Can you hear me?" he whispered.
She spasmed once more, and then went still. No sound but the wet buzzing of flies.
"I need answers," Hughes said again, low and guttural.
"Rebirth," she finally rasped, her voice a coarse hiss. Flies pushed deeper into her throat, and in their buzzing, she heard something—a door slamming open in the morgue of her soul.
She remembered dying. And choosing not to stay dead.
"What… should I do?" she asked.
"Obey me," Hughes answered, unblinking. "Help me find the truth."
He studied her—a thing reborn through plague, a cadaver animated not by necromancy but by the will to live. Not even the blessings of the Grandfather had twisted her form beyond recognition. Her white dress clung to her slight frame, and her arms were forever crossed, fingertips resting on opposite shoulders. Her skin was porcelain-pale, unmarred save for the tiny, gleaming maggots weaving through her long black hair.
She looked at Hughes, and her eyes—too full, too sad—said more than any words.
Without another command, she accepted her role. Obedient, eager.
"Go," he said, "to the city of the deluded Purifiers. Walk among their broken ruins. Sow the seeds of release. Spread the worm's gospel far and wide, until their souls rot with the truth."
Still clutching herself, the woman ghosted away into the fog. Her movement was graceful, unnatural—gone before her passage could stir dust.
When she had vanished, Hughes turned and summoned two full squads. Fourteen Death Guard. Seven and seven. It felt appropriate.
They moved as one, stepping through the shattered gate of the Purifiers' outer district, into the toxin-wreathed ruins.
The smog was dense, silent. Above, severed iron chains—coated in silvered filigree—swayed from the skeletal remains of collapsed spires. On either side, the city loomed tall and hollow. Once alive with Imperial industry, now hollowed out like a ribcage after a feast.
Within this silence, the Plague Marines sang.
It was a hymn—not to the Emperor, of course—but to Nurgle, the Grandfather of Decay. The melody was slow, dirgelike. The lyrics, once joyful praises, sounded now like mourning songs.
They passed into the shadowed alleys between towering spires, their footsteps muffled by ash and ruin. Hughes led the way, six Death Guard brothers flanking him in a silent, armored wedge.
"Hughes," one muttered beside him, voice blurred by vox distortion through his rebreather helm.
"Speak."
"Why him?" the marine asked. Quiet, but unflinching.
Hughes tilted his head slightly, never breaking stride. "I don't understand you, brother."
The Death Guard's tone sharpened, brittle with restraint. "I know that thing. That presence. I've felt it before. Don't tell me you haven't. You know what it is."
A heavy silence followed. Even the insects had quieted, as if afraid.
"I don't know how to face it," the warrior finally confessed. "Not again."
Hughes said nothing. The Warp-thick fog pressed in tighter, shadows stretching at angles no sun could cast, as if the architecture itself recoiled from their passage.
Some truths, Hughes knew, should never be spoken aloud. Even among brothers forged in rot and resilience.
"Him?!" Hughes barked suddenly, voice full of venom and scorn. He let out a snort behind his rebreather, thick with contempt. "If you truly knew him, brother, you'd understand how pathetic that line of thinking is."
With a sharp motion, he signaled the squad to spread out. Bolters were raised, and the grim ritual of their sweep resumed—precise, disciplined.
Hughes kept speaking, now softer, bitter. "His ambition has always outpaced his wisdom. Always. There's no balance in him. No restraint. Just... endless reach."
"I remember his eyes," one of the brothers muttered. "Starving. Like he was always in chains... even when he ruled."
"His hunger," another added, as if voicing a curse.
"Yes." Hughes nodded slowly. "That fits. That word fits better than any other."
He stood still, visor turned toward the fog-drenched distance, as if listening to memories.
"There were nights—if such things still mattered—when I'd hear him. Screaming. No cause. No pain. Just endless howling. A defiant roar echoing into the void, repeating over and over."
"Was he flaunting his endurance again?" the marine asked, voice tinged with contempt.
"No." Hughes shook his head slowly. "He despised endurance. He called it a curse. He loathed surviving what others could not."
"Then where did he come from?" the warrior pressed. "What pit vomited him forth, Hughes?"
Hughes went quiet. Then, with a voice like grinding bone, he said, "He's always been here. Always beside us. We just never looked closely enough."
The Death Guard exchanged uneasy glances. There was something rare in Hughes' voice—uncertainty. Even pain.
"I've started to doubt what's real," one muttered.
"Whatever you think he is," said another grimly, "he's worse. Don't grieve, Hughes. I've seen—"
"Hughes!" a third barked from up ahead. "Something's wrong. We've stepped into a distortion."
"I feel it," Hughes replied, inhaling deeply as if tasting the Warp-taint. "The air bites differently here."
They had moved through the alley between two towering, corroded spires. Outwardly, nothing had changed. The smog still clung to the ruins, thick and laced with toxins that would reduce a mortal to a suppurating mess in seconds.
But the feel of the world shifted. Solidity faltered. Space shimmered at the edges. The poison on the wind had changed—subtler now, like a sickle drawn across the spirit instead of the flesh.
It itched beneath the ceramite. It gnawed at the soul.
"You may lay your burdens down, brothers," Hughes said quietly, almost reverently. "It is time to face the death that wants us."
The others hesitated.
"Madness," one said. "Such things require belief to have power."
"Then believe!" Hughes snapped. "I do! Now, speak his name!"
"Whose name?" a marine asked warily.
"His! Don't pretend ignorance. Say it. Point to him!"
A moment of silence stretched—thick, coiled with tension. Then, as if guided by a single will, the Death Guard spoke together, their voices thunderous in unison:
"Mortarion, the Betrayer."
The moment the name was spoken, reality shuddered. The air trembled with malignancy.
Then silence.
An instant later, the wind rose—howling, unnatural. Black clouds churned overhead, boiling across the broken sky like rot in a wound. Pale lightning split the heavens, and within it, the flicker of a leering grin—wide, cruel, and full of mocking promise.
Something had heard them.