817.M30, Segmentum Pasificus, Sabbat worlds, Verghast
The fall of Karth Vire was not a clean break, the guild, the trooper, even the regular mortals, fought for their survival with everything they could.
Some of them had just escaped a world that suffered the blight of witch madness, and they were not about to suffer the same here. This time it had come in waves, making everyone think containment was an option.
They had been wrong.
In the high-altitude glass towers of the guild board, where the air was scrubbed of the lower-hive's metallic tang. Analysts watched the descent with a sterile dread they called progressive fragmentation.
It was a polite, mercantile term for a world eating itself from the inside out. To the men in the trenches, it was simply the certainty of getting unlucky in the same direction too many times.
The hive degraded in stubborn, denial-filled stages, with each manufactorum and transit hub convinced it could function until the atmosphere processors choked on iridescent ash.
Sector Aurek Spine was a graveyard of bureaucratic intent.
Line Company 14-B had been absorbed into command operations without a ceremony or a payroll adjustment, deemed statistically resilient enough to serve as a vital buffer for the Board's retreating assets.
Jorren Nox stood among them in his pockmarked hazard-plate, his posture a perfect, haunting imitation of a standard-issue infantryman.
He had turned 18 some months ago, with no celebration or ceremony, his was that of planning and objective reviews.
He now fully embodied the role of a soldier, but what he did not expect was the change in his mind.
The more he fought, the more stable his mind became. It also allowed him to understand the need for constant reinforcement of mental toughness meant for psykers.
Without it chaos invades, without it, abilities explode out of control.
This is why he made Taren join the troopers. His control has gotten better, but his mind still fluctuates unsteadily.
No one questioned Jorren or Taren's serial number or his presence in a world of screaming anomalies, being perfectly average was the ultimate camouflage. A chance to learn, grow, and plan for the future.
Taren followed ten paces behind the formation with an unspoken range around him. The other troopers had some fear about him, but the guild felt no such thing.
He was an asset that could be exploited, yet was also a defined hazard. They treated him with the same tolerance one would of radioactive material.
Not with fear but with care, with the view of its usefulness outliving its danger.
He watched the mutating hive-walls too quietly, his eyes reflecting a light that didn't exist in the corridors.
Blue-white fire occasionally sparked at his fingertips when the hive's metal skeleton groaned too loudly.
Though it remained a reaction, something that had stayed with him since young, his reflex had stayed with him for the most part.
The sergeant checked his flickering data-slate, his voice buzzing through a cracked vox-unit as he announced,
"Confirmed. We're attached to the forward cadre now. Don't unpack…we move in five"
At Relay Node Sigma-4
Breakdowns became a consistent friend to the node, it was assumed the enemy was trying to box them in this location. Before any further information could be dispensed, organization began to collapse.
The command-net began screaming contradictory directives, each carrying a valid authorization code and a high-priority timestamp.
The sergeant stared in frustration as the vox-unit while he demanded they hold the outer breach. To withdraw to the inner corridor and reinforce the junction all at once.
"I've got three priorities on the net! I don't care about the junction, hold the breach!"
The system through a surplus of conflicting certainty, commands were given in ways that were physically impossible to execute. Units across the sector began making independent decisions based on necessity rather than the board's logic.
Understanding also washed over them that command may have been either compromised, or information relayed through vox channels had been tampered with.
Either way to trust commands' decisions at this point would put the lives of the troopers at greater risk than they could handle.
Jorren did not react outwardly to the chaos, he was tracking the pattern, he knew that command was losing its ability to function and now…
Collapse was imminent.
The enemy had changed their doctrine, moving away from spectacles toward something far more practical. They began a systematic purge of the Guild's nervous system, hunting signal runners, relay technicians, command escorts, and map coordinators with predatory intelligence.
They were dismantling the structure from the top down, acting as an entity that understood the Guild's dependency on logistics and communication.
One engagement near a rail junction proved this lethal shift.
A Guild squad advanced into a breach point, but the enemy came in their fast-moving infantry with elongated limbs and armor that shifted between states of metal, they ignored the firing line entirely.
They pushed through the gaps in real space just to tear the signal relay apart, leaving the soldiers functionally blind and dead to the Board's oversight.
As they moved toward the command-adjacent zones, an explosion rocked the deck three levels above. The shockwave rattled the floor-plates, and Taren flinched, a burst of uncontrolled fire sparking from his palms and blackening the corridor wall.
A trooper jerked his rifle toward the boy, his face slick with sweat and panic.
"Control your asset," he muttered, his finger whitening on the trigger.
Jorren didn't turn his head or break his stride. "He is controlled,"
The trooper accepted the statement because arguing required an effort he could no longer afford to spend.
They fought through the hail of blue-purple fire, through gases that would ignite upon contact with armor.
When they eventually reached the Sigma Command Annex, it was a fortress of scavenged plating and emergency shielding
Clerks and officers frantically drafted transit schedules for ships that likely didn't exist.
Jorren entered with his unit, his presence accepted simply because he was already there in enough prior systems to be assumed continuous. A commander looked at him briefly over a flickering holomap and asked,
"You lot... still with 14-Bravo? I thought your unit was scratched hours ago" Jorren nodded once and said,
"Yes, Sir"
There were no further questions. A war was exhausting to the memory of the survivors, and identity no longer a luxury they wanted to try for.
Khoras Veyl, far below in the dark heart of the mutating hive, stood before an altar of crystal, glass, and metal, all fused together in an unnatural unity.
He bent to the floor on his knees whispering words that could not be heard, with his lips unmoving. The altar began to split open, a screeching sound echoing as something came out of the tear.
He smiled as he looked at the present he had received from his master. A disc floated in front of him as it screamed with a grating noise, as the grinding of chalk on the board. It floated towards him as he caressed it.
He had noticed the change over time and the future. The master's plan was being challenged by his unruly son. A boy who had received all yet refused to pay his dues.
It began planning for the final stage of the design, giddy with the thought of what could finally happen when the plan was completed.
The guild had already received the reports of him. But they could not confront him in the bowls where he stood.
On another side of the galaxy another fragment was experiencing their own war.