The Blackstone Prison
Beyond the one-way armored glass, the observation chamber had fallen into a killing frost.
"What have you done?!"
Silence Chamber Seven was no ordinary cell. It had been constructed in the aftermath of the Horus Heresy to contain dangerously unstable psykers and captured sorcerers—its walls laced with noctilith, its structure layered with hexagrammic wards designed to blunt warp phenomena. Even a Primarch, unarmored and unarmed, would not shatter it instantly.
Seized by an Ultramarine, Inquisitor Herman still kept his hand pressed against the crimson activation rune. His face was ashen, sweat cutting lines down his cheeks—but he did not release it.
"This is necessary," Herman forced out, refusing to meet Roboute Guilliman's blazing stare. His eyes remained fixed on the feed from within the chamber. "Against entities of that magnitude, standard tests are meaningless. The warp deceives. It deceives seers, psykers—perhaps even you."
His voice trembled, but conviction hardened it.
"Only on the brink of death will a daemon shed its disguise."
Cole's halberd flared to life, a crackling disruption field casting blue light across his helm.
"You will answer for this."
"If she is innocent," Herman rasped, "then my life is a trivial price. If she is not—then I have prevented another Gataramor."
---
Inside the chamber—
The chained psyker roared.
Warp-lightning crackled over scarified flesh as he lunged, restraints straining. A sphere of condensed psychic force formed in his palm—small, but more than enough to annihilate a child.
Eileen's pupils shrank.
Time slowed.
Old Joe's voice echoed from memory—the one-eyed veteran who had once shared scraps of wisdom between coughs of recaff.
"Don't look at their face. Don't look at the weapon. Look at the throat. The spine. The part that makes them fall."
"You can't block. So don't try. End it before they end you."
The golden warmth within her—residual Emperor-blessed power refined earlier—flowed into her limbs. Not as spectacle. Not as miracle.
As reinforcement.
Muscle fibers tightened. Bone density hardened.
She was not trained. Not elegant.
She was a hive survivor.
The lightning bolt tore toward her.
She threw herself left in a desperate roll—ugly, graceless.
A lance of violet energy grazed her shoulder. Silk ignited. Pain seared through skin.
She did not scream.
Using the momentum, she surged upright—now inside the creature's reach.
The psyker snarled, surprised.
That moment—
Eileen bit her lip until she tasted blood.
She raised the jagged marble shard.
"Die!!"
Not a knight's strike.
A street child's execution.
She brought the stone down with everything she had onto the juncture beneath the skull—where spine met brainstem.
Crack.
Bone shattered.
The marble disintegrated in her hand.
The psyker convulsed once, a broken sound escaping his throat—
—and collapsed, lifeless.
Silence returned.
Only the low hum of noctilith suppressors and Eileen's ragged breathing remained.
She stood over the corpse, soot-streaked, shoulder burned, dust clinging to her fingers.
No miracle.
No psychic flare.
Just grit.
---
In the observation room—
Guilliman's fist, raised to strike the glass, halted mid-motion.
Cole froze.
Herman pressed forward, disbelief overtaking fanaticism.
"Impossible…"
His mind raced.
"Under blackstone suppression… no warp fluctuation… she severed a berserk psyker's cervical spine with raw strength?"
Terror replaced certainty.
"Mutation. Physical corruption. Gene aberration. This is not human."
His trauma twisted reason into paranoia.
He drew his bolt pistol.
"Activate purification! That thing is no child—it's a monster!"
Boom.
The chamber doors did not open.
They were cleaved.
Sergeant Varro burst in with Honor Guard, while Cole's halberd swept cleanly across Herman's weapon—severing it in a single strike.
Guilliman's voice followed, low and lethal.
"Pull that trigger, and I will throw you into that cell. With two more berserk psykers."
Herman collapsed to his knees—but still pointed downward, hysteria clawing at him.
"Regent! She killed it! With physical force! That is not human!"
---
Below—
Eileen heard the shouting.
She lifted her head slowly.
Her shoulder throbbed. Her arms trembled from exertion.
She saw Herman through the glass—saw him pointing, condemning.
Moments ago, he had spoken of fear and humanity.
Now he wanted her dead.
Why?
She had complied.
She had endured.
She had fought only to live.
What had she done wrong?
The hurt inside her twisted.
Grievance hardened into something hotter.
Not childish frustration.
Righteous fury—the kind born when the weak are cornered and still accused.
Like the day gang enforcers had broken Old Joe's door.
The emotion struck something deeper.
[System Log: Emotional threshold exceeded.]
[Blackstone Suppression: 99% capacity.]
[Overpressure detected.]
My voice forced through interference, fragmented but urgent.
[He wants a monster? …Very well.]
The noctilith suppressors began to vibrate violently. Their harmonic hum destabilized.
Eileen did not move.
She did not retrieve her fallen blade.
She only stared upward.
Her pupils widened—
—and molten gold began to bleed through the brown, devouring it.
"I… am not… a monster."
Her voice was soft.
Yet it did not travel through air.
It struck directly into minds.
Crack.
One suppressor shattered outright.
The others flickered, shrieking under impossible strain.
A pressure—vast and sovereign—pressed outward from her small frame.
Not chaotic.
Not warped.
Authoritative.
The air trembled.
A storm of golden radiance began to gather within the Blackstone prison.