In the days following the bloodshed on the Tyrok Fields, Qin Mo received several encrypted transmissions from Klein through Talon's faster-than-light communications network.
Creed had officially assumed the mantle of Lord Castellan of Cadia. The Volscani betrayal had torn holes through the fortress world's command structure, and someone had needed to take control before grief, suspicion, and competing chains of authority paralyzed the defense. Creed had stepped into that void with the same grim practicality he brought to a battlefield.
Not everyone welcomed his elevation. Surviving Castellans, officers from powerful Cadian families, and commanders backed by influential regimental blocs all possessed their own claims, ambitions, or grievances. Under ordinary circumstances, Creed might have spent months defending every appointment and deployment order before councils more concerned with precedent than another Black Crusade.
These were not ordinary circumstances.
Every officer on Cadia could see that the Volscani betrayal had been an attempt to weaken them. Patrol fleets were vanishing. Astropathic messages arrived mangled or did not arrive at all. Refugees spoke of cult uprisings, unnatural storms, and warships bearing the Eye of Horus. Whatever political battles waited for Creed, even his rivals understood that beginning one now would be an act of suicide.
His orders were obeyed without open dissent or meaningful delay.
The Imperium was pouring warships, soldiers, and matériel into the Cadian Gate on a scale without precedent. Adeptus Astartes strike forces translated into neighboring systems. Convents of the Adepta Sororitas emptied their fighting Orders into troopships. Astra Militarum troops arrived by the million, followed by armored brigades, siege artillery, Munitorum supply flotillas, the transport and support vessels of entire Titan Legions, Mechanicus repair ships, and enough civilian transports to turn every orbital lane into a logistical nightmare.
Cadia had always been a fortress. Now it was becoming the assembly ground for a war large enough to consume sectors.
Creed's final message to Talon was a brief personal statement.
"The moment I became Lord Castellan, I understood why you placed such faith in me. Cadia stands, brother."
Qin Mo read the last sentence twice. Creed was not given to sentiment, especially when military traffic might be intercepted. That made the word brother carry more weight than a page of praise. Then Qin Mo closed the message and returned to work.
Cadia might decide the fate of the Imperium, but it was not the only responsibility demanding his attention. The Talon Sector continued to expand, manufacture, trade, fortify, and attract scrutiny. Fleet construction schedules required approval. Blackstone experiments produced findings that did not always agree with earlier tests. New dimensional relays needed calibration, and several neighboring systems had submitted requests for defense guarantees that were, in practice, requests to become Talon protectorates without admitting it.
Most routine administration no longer reached him. The Men of Stone and Overseer KIs handled industrial quotas, transportation networks, food allocation, and millions of smaller decisions whose combined weight could bury any human government. They were faster than mortal bureaucrats, less corrupt, and almost entirely immune to exhaustion, flattery, or outside influence.
They still possessed limits.
A machine could compare treaties, evaluate fleet strengths, model hostile intent, and calculate the probable cost of accepting a foreign envoy. It could not always decide how much weight to give a prophecy delivered by an alien whose species treated plain speech as an unfortunate last resort. When logic produced several equally defensible conclusions, the matter was escalated to Qin Mo.
Today, one such problem arrived.
An Aeldari vessel had entered the remote Solitary System and stopped just outside Talon's outer defense boundary. Against the system's dead planets and the ashen light of its star, the ship appeared unnaturally clean: a narrow, pale hull with sweeping fins and no obvious engine housings. It moved without visible thrust and altered its heading before Talon's patrol flotilla completed its interception maneuver, suggesting that its crew had detected the trap forming around them almost as soon as the patrol commander conceived it.
The Aeldari did not attempt to flee. They powered down their primary weapons, held position, and transmitted a formal request for contact.
One of the representatives claimed to be an old acquaintance of the Lord of Talon. Both wished to board a Talon escort frigate and deliver information of critical importance directly to him.
The patrol commander forwarded the request along with a tactical recommendation: deny entry, maintain weapons lock, and prepare to destroy the xenos vessel if it crossed the border. The Overseer KI appended a second assessment. The Aeldari's behavior did not match a reconnaissance probe, raid, or conventional infiltration attempt. Refusing contact would gain Talon nothing except ignorance.
Qin Mo authorized the meeting.
The patrol flotilla directed the Aeldari vessel into a controlled holding position. Two frigates kept their spinal weapons aligned with its hull while interceptor craft circled beyond the Aeldari vessel's immediate weapons range. A third frigate extended a sealed boarding passage and admitted the envoys into an isolated receiving compartment monitored by armed crewmen, suppression fields, gravitic restraints, and enough automated turrets to turn the chamber into a metal-lined grave.
The Aeldari were then connected to Qin Mo through a dimensional communications relay. The signal crossed thousands of light-years without entering the Warp, carrying their voices and images with only a fraction of a second's delay.
The display in Qin Mo's laboratory brightened.
A male Aeldari stood at the center of the image. He was tall even by the standards of his species, narrow-faced, and dressed in layered armor beneath a dark mantle. His movements possessed the unnerving precision common to the Aeldari, as though every gesture had been considered before it began.
"Lord of Talon."
The Aeldari crossed his hands over his chest in a nearly perfect imitation of the Aquila. His High Gothic was flawless, though the careful formality made the salute feel faintly mocking.
Qin Mo's expression tightened. He knew the Aeldari.
Saal had commanded the xenos force that assisted the resistance on Talon II during the Unification War. He was not an ally in any dependable sense, but neither was he a stranger. His intervention had saved Talon time and lives, even if his reasons for intervening remained buried beneath layers of foresight, self-interest, and Aeldari condescension.
Qin Mo disliked psykers on principle. A psyker was a living breach point in the wall between realspace and the Warp, one bad decision, one moment of panic, or one lapse in control away from becoming a disaster everyone nearby would have to solve with gunfire.
That dislike had sharpened as the C'tan power within him grew stronger. The Immaterium had always offended his preference for measurable causes and repeatable effects. Now his material nature reacted to psychic power with an instinctive revulsion deeper than reason. Even seeing the signs of it in another being: a rune, a spirit stone, or the distant focus behind a seer's eyes, made his muscles tense.
Fortunately, Saal was thousands of light-years away. Talon's relay transmitted light, sound, and data, not psychic presence. Qin Mo could speak to him without feeling the pressure of the Aeldari's mind against realspace.
He acknowledged the salute with a curt nod.
"You said you had something important to tell me. Speak."
"There is no need to sound so displeased." Saal's mouth curved into the restrained smile of someone who found irritation entertaining. "You know, I rather admire you."
Qin Mo stared at him without answering.
Saal continued, apparently deciding that silence counted as permission. "Had I not revealed the traitor governor's refuge during the campaign on Talon II, your forces might have wasted days searching for him. Several Farseers censured me for that decision. They believed I had interfered too directly in a human conflict."
Qin Mo suspected Saal was telling the truth. Aeldari rarely offered genuine respect to a "mon-keigh," and even more rarely admitted that they had been criticized for helping one. That did not make Saal trustworthy, and it certainly did not make Qin Mo interested in friendship.
"Warp-tainted creatures are like vermin in a food cache," Qin Mo said. "Once you know what traces to look for, finding the nest is only a matter of time."
Saal's smile weakened. He exhaled slowly through his nose, then abandoned the attempt at familiarity.
"Very well. I came to share a prophecy."
"What kind of prophecy?"
"You have heard reports of a certain sorcerer conducting a ritual across several sectors, have you not?"
Qin Mo's posture changed by a fraction. The Aeldari understood the Warp better than nearly any species still active in the galaxy. Their interpretations were burdened by pride, self-interest, and an almost religious aversion to plain language, but their warnings could not be ignored simply because they were unpleasant to hear.
"Go on," Qin Mo said.
Saal inclined his head.
"Very well. This is the vision as it was given to me."
He paused, arranging the words with visible care.
"There is a vessel filled with water. At the bottom lies clear water, cold and still. Above it floats filth, oil, sludge, rot, and everything discarded by creatures that no longer remember the water was ever clean. Between the two layers rests a pane of glass. It is thin, but whole, and so long as it remains whole, neither layer may consume the other."
Qin Mo said nothing.
"One day," Saal continued, "caliper beetles gather upon the glass. They are small creatures with hooked mandibles, born in filth and nourished by decay. A single beetle cannot damage the barrier. Its jaws leave no mark that the creatures beneath can see. But the beetles do not work alone."
Saal raised one elegant finger.
"They spread across the pane. They measure its thickness. They scrape at a thousand points. When one dies, another takes its place. The creatures in the clear water look upward and see only shadows moving through the sludge. They believe themselves safe because the glass has always protected them."
Another finger rose.
"Then the scratches meet. A crack becomes ten cracks. The filth does not enter through one opening that can be sealed. It pours through everywhere at once, and the creatures below finally understand that the beetles were never trying to make a single hole—"
"Either make your damned prophecy clear," Qin Mo snapped, "or get off my vox-net."
Saal stopped. For the first time, he looked genuinely tired.
"I wish I could. That is precisely how the Farseer relayed it to me."
Qin Mo leaned slightly toward the display. "Captain."
A Talon officer in a black void-uniform stepped into view behind Saal. He had remained outside the relay's field of view but within arm's reach of both envoys. At Qin Mo's summons, he came to attention and saluted.
"Lord Commander."
"Get him off my ship."
The captain drew his laspistol in one smooth motion and pressed the muzzle against Saal's temple. Around the chamber, automated turrets adjusted their aim, tracking the Aeldari's shoulders, knees, and hands.
Saal looked sideways at the weapon. His expression suggested that he considered it insulting, primitive, and, under the circumstances, sufficiently persuasive.
He raised both hands.
"Your hospitality has not improved."
"Move," the captain ordered.
Saal began to step away from the communications terminal. Before the captain could escort him out, the second Aeldari envoy moved forward from the edge of the chamber.
This one had remained outside the primary light, silent and motionless while Saal spoke. The moment he entered view, Qin Mo understood the arrangement. Saal had been the messenger. The second envoy was the reason the Aeldari had risked coming this far.
He wore layered robes of black and bone, their high collar framed by polished spirit stones and the runic markings of Craftworld Ulthwé. A tall helm enclosed his narrow head. In one hand he carried a long staff covered in intricate runes, each symbol set into the material with the precision of something shaped by thought rather than tools.
Age showed in the deliberate economy of his movements rather than weakness. He did not project authority through size, ornament, or threat. He simply behaved like someone accustomed to watching kings, generals, and entire civilizations make mistakes he had foreseen centuries earlier.
The captain shifted his laspistol toward him. The newcomer did not react.
"You may call me Ulthran," he said.
Qin Mo recognized him before the introduction had finished. He was one of the handful of Aeldari Games Workshop had allowed out of the studio basement often enough to become recognizable beyond a codex footnote. Apparently surviving the Fall and ten thousand years of galactic catastrophes was easier than securing regular attention for an alien who was not an Ork.
Eldrad Ulthran. Farseer of Ulthwé.
Even among the Aeldari, Eldrad was ancient. He had spent more than ten thousand years reading the paths of possible futures and manipulating events so that his dwindling people survived them. Wars had begun because he judged one outcome preferable to another. Human worlds had burned because their destruction diverted a threat from a craftworld. He had attempted to warn Fulgrim of Horus's betrayal while the Heresy was still young and would one day speak with the returned Roboute Guilliman about the survival of both their species in a galaxy growing darker around them.
None of that made him a friend of humanity.
Eldrad's loyalty belonged to the dying Aeldari race. If he protected humans, it was because their survival served some larger design or because their extinction would leave his own people facing something worse.
Qin Mo studied the Farseer through the display. The absurdity of meeting someone he had once known as a painted miniature did nothing to soften the practical question of why that someone had crossed half the galaxy to reach him.
"Are you here to explain the prophecy clearly, or are you going to give me another lecture about insects?"
Saal looked offended. Eldrad did not.
"I will be direct," Ulthran said. "I foresaw a sorcerer conducting a ritual of galactic scope. The ritual is not confined to one temple, one world, or even one sector. Its components have been scattered across inhabited space so widely that most participants do not know they are part of it."
The Farseer lowered the base of his staff against the frigate's deck.
"Its purpose is to weaken the Veil, the barrier separating the Materium from the Sea of Souls, which humanity calls the Warp. The beetles in Saal's account represent innumerable minor psychic disturbances. Each one is insignificant in isolation. Together, they erode the same boundary from thousands of locations."
Qin Mo's irritation disappeared.
"One sorcerer is coordinating all of them?"
"One will directs the pattern," Ulthran replied. "But trillions of lesser minds give it weight. Cultists perform fragments of rituals they do not understand. Psykers suffer failures they believe are their own. Populations are driven toward fear, hatred, despair, and religious frenzy. Every disturbance strikes the Veil like a tool against glass."
"And none of the pieces look important enough to reveal the whole," Qin Mo said. "A murder here. A riot there. A failed Gellar field, a burned-out astropathic choir, a preacher driving a city into hysteria. By the time anyone recognizes a pattern, the damage is already resonating across half the Segmentum."
Ulthran regarded him in silence for a moment. "You understand quickly."
"I understand distributed systems," Qin Mo said. "Unfortunately, so does your sorcerer."
"What happens when the Veil weakens?" Qin Mo asked.
Ulthran's fingers tightened slightly around his staff. It was the first visible sign that the subject troubled him.
"I cannot see the exact result. Beyond a certain point, the possible futures multiply too rapidly. Causes lose their clear relation to consequences. However, every path I can still follow leads to catastrophe for the defensive perimeter you are constructing around the Cadian Gate."
Qin Mo understood the implication.
He knew what a weakened Veil meant. It was not a physical wall, but the distinction that kept realspace governed by matter, energy, and consistent laws. If it thinned, the consequences would reach far beyond daemons crawling out of summoning circles.
Possession would become easier. Untrained psykers would lose control. Astropathic choirs could burn out or turn upon themselves. Warp storms could swallow reinforcement routes. Soldiers already living beneath the Eye of Terror's glow might hear voices in their sleep, see enemies among their comrades, or open doors that no conventional fortress design could defend.
Cadia's walls and guns were designed to stop armies arriving from the Eye. A weakened Veil could place the enemy inside the minds of the people manning the defenses.
"Can the ritual be stopped?" Qin Mo asked.
"In theory," Ulthran said. The qualification carried more warning than reassurance. "To stop it by force, you would need tens of millions of voidships and nearly a trillion soldiers. You would have to spread them across the worlds, stations, migration routes, and inhabited corridors between the Segmentum Obscurus and the Talon Sector. Every contributing disturbance would need to be identified, isolated, and extinguished before its effect resonated with the others."
Ulthran paused.
"Even then, success would not be assured."
"Because fighting the participants would create more emotion," Qin Mo said.
"Correct. Fear of invasion. Hatred of the enemy. Grief for the dead. Faith sharpened into fanaticism. The desire to survive and the desire to kill. All of it casts a reflection into the Sea of Souls."
The Farseer's voice remained calm, but there was no detachment in it now.
"This is no warlock's conjuring circle that can be broken by killing twelve chanting servants around an altar. The ritual is being shaped through trillions of living minds. Most are unwitting participants. They need not know it exists. Their emotions are sufficient."
Qin Mo fell silent. The scale of the problem assembled itself in his mind.
Talon possessed fleets capable of overwhelming conventional defenders. The Celestial Engine could dominate an entire star system. Dimensional engines allowed his forces to bypass Warp routes, and teleportation could place armies directly onto a battlefield. None of those advantages solved the fundamental problem Ulthran had described.
A weapon could destroy a target only after the target had been found. An army could occupy a world, but not ten thousand worlds simultaneously. The Celestial Engine could not be present in every system between Talon and the Eye of Terror, and killing populations to suppress psychic unrest might feed the very phenomenon he was trying to stop.
This was not a campaign against a fortress or a fleet. It was a war against distance, population, and the accumulated emotional pressure of entire sectors.
Worse, its architect had turned the Imperium's greatest habits into weapons against it. Every purge bred terror. Every sermon sharpened belief. Every mobilization produced grief, anger, and desperate prayer on an industrial scale. The same brutality that allowed the Imperium to survive could help crack the barrier protecting it.
His eyes narrowed.
"Why are you telling me this?"
Ulthran waited.
"You crossed Talon's border, placed yourself aboard one of my warships, and revealed a prophecy your people could have kept to themselves," Qin Mo continued. "You would not take that risk merely to be helpful. What do you expect me to do that the Aeldari cannot?"
For several seconds, no one in the frigate's receiving chamber moved. The captain kept his laspistol trained between the two envoys. Saal's raised hands had lowered, though the nearby turrets continued tracking him. Ulthran stood before the terminal, his dark robes motionless in the frigate's recycled air.
When the Farseer answered, his voice was quiet.
"Because those of Talon have no past, and I can find no future that properly contains you."
Qin Mo did not interrupt.
"When I search the skein for your origin, I find absence. When I follow the consequences of your actions, paths divide where no division should exist. Some threads fray. Others vanish. Predictions that should be certain become possibilities merely because Talon has touched them."
Ulthran regarded Qin Mo through the display with an expression that was not quite fear or reverence, though neither was entirely absent.
"You exist outside the natural rhythm of fate. The threads of time refuse to entangle you as they do other beings. You are a splinter lodged within the pattern, an anomaly."
He inclined his head by the smallest degree.
"And that gives your… kind an advantage no others possess."
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