The dining hall emptied slowly.
Not with noise — there had been none to begin with — but with the soft mechanical whir of drones gliding across polished floors. Their silver frames reflected the pale light of the hanging fixtures as they gathered plates and utensils with precise, almost reverent movements. The table where four figures had sat moments ago was restored to immaculate symmetry within minutes, as though no conversation had ever taken place.
Hyppolita remained seated.
Her massive frame felt oddly misplaced against the elegant minimalism of the room. The chair had been reinforced — she noticed that now — subtly modified to bear her weight without creak or protest. Another detail that unsettled her.
Her gaze drifted from the table's spotless surface to the tall, transparent wall overlooking the world beyond. Silver forests stretched endlessly beneath the glow of the planet's luminous moon, each tree swaying in synchronized grace as if guided by a single breath.
Her eyes lifted again — this time to the ceiling.
Wooden floorboards.
Not metal. Not marble.
Wood.
Warm-toned, natural, faintly imperfect.
Every detail in this place — the symmetry, the silence, the careful hospitality — it all pressed against her senses, forcing her mind to focus on the world around her instead of her thoughts.
Her hand rose once more to her scalp. Her fingers brushed smooth skin. No metal. No ridges.
No intrusive, jagged crowns biting into bone.
The absence was louder than the pain had ever been.
She was free.
The thought sent a strange warmth spreading through her chest — light, almost dizzying. Relief unfurled inside her like something long imprisoned finally allowed to stretch its limbs. She could breathe without the constant undercurrent of agitation clawing at her spine. Her thoughts were finally free yet right now, they were… quiet. And that quiet frightened her.
Because beneath relief lay something else.
Fear.
Her mother had said it herself.
It cannot be undone.
The Nails were permanent. The price of her survival. The only way to preserve her life, she had been told. The only way to make her strong enough.
And yet.
These strangers had removed them.
Without killing her.
Without crippling her.
How?
Why?
Her jaw tightened.
Stronger than relief.
Stronger than fear.
Stronger than confusion.
Guilt.
It pooled heavy and suffocating in her chest.
Memories surfaced unbidden — her sons kneeling in forced obedience, their minds broken into singular focus. The times she had punished them for the pain she suffered. The times she had demanded rage because it was all she herself had been forced to accept.
Now that the storm inside her had stilled, she could see the wreckage it had left.
Her fingers curled against her temple.
Worry followed swiftly after.
"Ah, there you are."
The velvety voice cut through her spiraling thoughts with gentle precision.
Hyppolita looked up.
Malachai approached at an unhurried pace, hands clasped loosely behind his back. His pale complexion seemed almost luminous against the darker tones of the room, silver-white hair falling neatly against his nape. His expression remained as it always did — calm, unreadable.
But around him…
Tiny suns shimmered faintly in the air, glinting and fading like distant constellations.
"I was waiting for you," he continued. "Helios suggested you rest for a few more days."
Helios.
The name lingered at the edge of her tongue.
She wanted to ask who — or what — that was. Wanted to demand answers about the reasonings behind their actions, about the power that had swallowed her Legion whole without bloodshed.
But she swallowed the questions.
She was an invader.
An enemy.
She had come to burn this world.
Even if he answered, it would feel… undeserved.
"Is everything alright?" Malachai asked as he stopped beside her.
His purple eyes followed her gaze out toward the silver forest below.
It wasn't.
The words clawed at her throat.
Nothing was alright.
Not the quiet in her mind.
Not the weight in her chest.
Not the memories that now refused to dull themselves beneath rage.
But she could not spill that onto him.
He was a stranger.
"Do they hate you?"
The question came so suddenly that she flinched.
Her eyes snapped to him.
"Your sons," he clarified gently. "Do they hate you?"
"… Of course they do."
The answer left her before she could temper it.
There was no anger in her tone.
Only certainty.
Malachai hummed softly, as though considering the shape of her words rather than their content.
"And why is that?"
Hyppolita let out a dry exhale.
"Because I failed them."
The admission tasted foreign.
For years she had blamed them. Their weakness. Their lack of discipline. Their need for guidance.
Now the perspective had shifted.
"They followed me into slaughter after slaughter," she continued quietly. "They endured the same torment I did. And I repaid them with harsher demands. With punishment. With expectations they could not meet."
Her hands tightened at her sides.
"I told myself it was strength. That I was forging them into something greater."
The silver forest swayed below, indifferent.
"I was simply passing on my own suffering."
Malachai remained silent.
Not interrupting.
Not correcting.
Just listening.
A strange pressure eased slightly in her chest.
"They did not choose the Nails," she added, voice lowering further. "They were given to them because of my selfishness. Because I could not… be what was required of me for them."
She swallowed.
"And now we are free."
The word felt heavier this time.
Free.
"They will see clearly," she whispered. "They will remember clearly. And they will look at me without the fog of shared madness."
Her gaze drifted back toward the drones finishing their work.
"I do not know what I will see in their eyes."
Malachai tilted his head slightly.
The stars around him dimmed, replaced by slow-falling grains of golden sand.
"You assume hatred," he said mildly. "But you do not consider relief."
She frowned faintly.
"Relief?"
"Your suffering was visible," he replied. "Even through the fury. It bled into the air around you. They felt it."
Her brow furrowed.
"They may have resented you," he continued, "but resentment and hatred are not identical. Especially among those who share the same wound."
Hyppolita fell silent again.
The thought unsettled her more than accusation would have.
"What if they do hate me?" she asked after a moment.
"Then you will accept it," Malachai answered simply.
She glanced at him sharply.
"And do what?"
"Move forward."
His tone did not waver.
"You cannot change what you did beneath coercion. You cannot rewrite years of altered perception. You cannot force forgiveness."
The sand around him slowed, then stilled.
"But you can decide who you are now."
Her throat tightened.
It sounded simple when he said it.
"I do not know who that is," she admitted.
"That," Malachai replied softly, "is the first honest thing you have said about yourself since waking."
Her jaw tensed — not in anger, but in reflexive defensiveness.
He was not wrong.
For the first time in decades, she was not being driven by rage, by command, by expectation.
She was simply… uncertain.
The sensation was alien.
Terrifying.
"And what would you have me do?" she asked.
He looked at her fully now.
No stars.
No sand.
Just steady violet eyes.
"Feel it."
She frowned.
"The guilt. The fear. The confusion. Do not suppress them. They are proof that you are no longer bound."
Her fingers flexed unconsciously.
"If you bury them," he added, "you risk recreating the same prison in a different shape."
The words struck deeper than she expected.
Silence stretched between them again, but it felt different this time — less suffocating.
Below, the silver trees continued their rhythmic sway.
Far above, the artificial sky panels shifted subtly to mimic the slow turning of night.
Hyppolita inhaled.
The air felt clean.
Unburdened.
"… Why?" she asked quietly.
Malachai's brow lifted slightly.
"Why remove them?" she clarified. "Why save us?"
A faint shimmer returned around him — soft, distant starlight.
"Because no mind should be ruled by agony," he replied.
Her chest tightened again — but not with guilt this time.
Something gentler.
Something she had almost forgotten how to name.
"… Thank you," she said, barely audible.
Malachai's lips curved faintly.
"You are welcome."
-
The bridge of the Vengeful Dawn had never felt so suffocating.
Hathor stood at its center, framed by towering hololithic displays and cascading streams of tactical data. The void beyond the viewing deck stretched endlessly — a sea of cold starlight fractured by distant nebulae — yet it felt smaller than the walls of a cell.
"... Repeat the report."
Her voice was steady.
It had to be.
The astromancer knelt several meters away, hands trembling faintly as psychic conduits hummed around her.
"My lady… the World Eaters' signal vanished three days ago. Nothing but silence returned. No debris fields. No distress flare." The woman swallowed. "And Talos-VI… it is no longer visible within the projected coordinates."
A flicker of static rippled across the main display.
Empty space.
Where a planet should have been.
Hathor's fingers curled behind her back.
"Explain."
"Our augurs detect gravitational anomalies consistent with a planetary mass," one of the fleet's navigators interjected nervously, "but visually… it does not register. It is as though it has been occluded from standard perception."
Her golden eyes narrowed.
A world does not simply disappear.
An entire Legion does not fall silent.
Not the World Eaters, especially not Hyppolita.
They were not subtle. They were not cautious. They were carnage given form. If they had encountered resistance, the void would be littered with wreckage and screams.
Instead—
Nothing.
The absence was what terrified her.
Hathor turned slowly toward the viewport.
The stars reflected faintly in her luminous gaze.
She bit down on her lower lip without realizing it.
The pressure built until copper filled her mouth.
"What monstrous force," she murmured under her breath, "could swallow a Legion whole?"
Her mind moved rapidly through possibilities.
Xenos ambush?
Warp anomaly?
A relic of Old Night?
Something older?
Her mother had personally delegated this compliance.
That alone had unsettled her.
The Empress rarely did so.
And when she did—
There were reasons.
Hathor's jaw tightened.
What did you see, Mother?
What did you send her into?
The thought was treacherous.
She pushed it aside.
No.
This was not the time for suspicion.
This was the time for action.
"… Set course for Talos-VI."
Her voice carried across the bridge like a blade drawn cleanly from its sheath.
The officers straightened instantly.
"Yes, Mother!"
Engines deep within the warship roared to life, a deep mechanical hymn that reverberated through the hull. Massive thrusters shifted orientation as void shields intensified, bathing the vessel in a faint, protective shimmer.
Hathor stepped closer to the viewport.
The reflection that stared back at her was not the charismatic Warmaster the Imperium saw.
It was a sister.
Fear pressed against her ribs, sharp and relentless.
Hypolita had always been the fiercest among them. The most volatile. The most defiant. But she was still—
Her sister.
"… Increase speed," she ordered quietly.
"My Lady, we are approaching safe limits for—"
"Do it."
There was no anger in her tone.
Only command.
The fleet adjusted formation seamlessly around her flagship, escort vessels aligning like blades in a drawn crown.
If the planet was hidden, she would tear the veil apart.
If an enemy held her sister captive, she would reduce them to ash.
If the void itself had swallowed the Legion—
She would descend into it.
Her golden gaze sharpened.
The bridge lights dimmed slightly as the ship prepared for warp translation.
An officer approached cautiously.
"My Lady… if this is a trap—"
"Then we will spring it," she replied without looking away from the stars.
Her reflection shifted as the Gellar Field activated, faint distortions rippling across the glass.
She pressed her palm briefly against the viewport.
"… I am coming, sister."