"Don't go, Father. Please... please don't leave me behind..."
She knelt beside her adoptive father, clutching his hand tightly, desperately trying to keep his fading life from slipping away.
With great difficulty, her adoptive father turned his head and looked at Gaia, whose entire body was steeped in despair. He wanted to raise a hand and stroke her face the way he had when she was little.
But he no longer had the strength to lift his hand.
He had no regret at all, only sorrow and reluctance to part.
What a pity... he would never be able to see with his own eyes the day his child finally left the Underhive.
His consciousness gradually blurred, and Gaia's sobbing against his chest began to sound distant and unreal.
Using the last of his strength, he turned his head toward Raven, who had been silently watching everything.
Then his trembling mouth formed a single message.
Take her away.
Raven's body gave the faintest tremor.
The fire in this dying mutant's eyes was about to go out, yet within it lay a calmness and a strange kind of strength that Raven had rarely seen.
It was a purity born from the soul, shining from him like brilliant golden light, making Raven lower his head in a nearly instinctive nod.
Seeing that, her adoptive father's gaze softened.
He gave his child one final look, then slowly closed his eyes.
He once heard a Ministorum preacher say that the moment a person was born, they took upon themselves the duty granted by the God-Emperor, and the whole of their life afterward was the process of fulfilling that duty.
God-Emperor... did a life as low and rotten as mine truly fulfill the duty You gave me?
With that question in his heart, he let out his last breath...
...
Within the cold of death, he suddenly felt warmth.
He opened his eyes and found a dazzling golden light shining upon his illusory body.
A cold sun hovered above him, calling to him with the gentlest summons.
With a mere thought, he drifted toward It on his own.
And just as he was one step away from throwing himself into the sun's embrace, a shrill cry came from behind him:
"Father, don't make me live alone in this damned world..."
He stopped.
The cold sun shimmered softly, as if urging him to hurry into Its embrace.
He could feel it too. If he only took one more step forward, he would gain eternal peace.
That was where the Golden Throne stood, the final paradise the God-Emperor granted to His children.
To go there was the highest happiness, and also the highest honor.
He gave a faint smile and turned around without hesitation.
Forgive me, great God-Emperor...
Please allow me to keep watching over my child...
A gaze as gentle as water crossed the boundary between the real and the unreal, broke through the shackles of time and space, tore apart the dark and twisted vortex, and fell firmly upon his child.
Even if his flesh had perished, his soul would remain here in eternal vigil...
...
Gaia wept in anguish.
Scene after scene from the past rose within her heart.
It was her adoptive father who had picked her up from the garbage heap and given her a home.
It was her adoptive father who had tirelessly scavenged to raise her and keep her healthy.
It was her adoptive father who had taught her, letting her understand how to survive in the rotten Underhive.
Her adoptive father was the God-Emperor who belonged to her alone.
Within the grief that was rotting her mind away, towering fury and endless hatred also began to grow in her heart.
She hated fate. Why had it given her her adoptive father only to cruelly take him away again?
She hated the culprits behind all of this. What right did they have to destroy the happiness she had found in this world?
Had she not known the plight of the Master of Mankind, she might even have come close to hating the Emperor seated upon the Golden Throne.
Gaia knelt beside her adoptive father, her body trembling from extreme rage.
Just as that fury was about to consume her, Raven's voice came from behind her.
"Give your father a dignified farewell. Then continue on."
"The one responsible for all of this is right ahead."
Gaia said nothing. Then she slowly rose to her feet and turned to look at Raven.
The gaze beneath her mask was filled with furious brutality and grief-stricken hatred, like a vengeful ghost staring him down.
Raven's hand moved instinctively toward his belt beneath his cloak.
At that moment, he felt a deadly threat from Gaia.
But Gaia did not attack him. She only stood there in silence.
Then she took off her mask, revealing the face that had always been hidden.
She placed the mask on her adoptive father's chest, then gently removed his aquila necklace and hung it around her own neck.
After kissing his cold forehead one last time, she personally set fire to the cart that carried the memories of her childhood.
Beneath the orange-red flames, her adoptive father's body and Gaia's childhood vanished together into the wind of the Underhive.
Her most beautiful memories had come to their end.
A suffocating stab of pain rose in her chest, making Gaia want to cry again.
Though her tear ducts had already run dry from the earlier agony, as she watched those golden memories disappear into the flames, two streams of bloody tears still flowed uncontrollably from the corners of her eyes.
Even after the fire burned out, she remained standing there for a long, long time.
Raven did not urge her again.
Because the pain of losing a father was something they understood better than anyone...
The road ahead was filled with even more despair and oppression.
Not only did wave after wave of enemies continue to harass them, but the First Warband itself also descended into bloody infighting as their berserk symptoms worsened.
But Gaia crushed all of it with ruthless speed.
Fighting with near-savage brutality, she led the First Warband forward without stopping.
Only by personally killing the one responsible for all of this could she extinguish the monstrous fury in her heart, a fury fierce enough to burn everything to ashes.
...
After countless battles beyond number, Gaia led what remained of the First Warband, now with less than one-tenth of its people left, to the core of the West District.
The stench of blood was even thicker here, and the enemies had become incomparably more vicious and powerful.
But none of it could shake Gaia's steps as she walked forward over a path of corpses.
With every step she took, her hatred grew deeper. With every meter she closed in, her anger burned hotter.
They had long since reached the limit of what Gaia could endure, yet she had kept them suppressed with the last shreds of her reason.
Now, when she saw the arena built from human skulls, saw the gigantic monster standing proudly atop it, and saw the skeletal battle banner on its back carved with eight bloody paths, she understood:
It was time to settle everything.
Standing high atop the arena, the "War Dog" Garrick looked down at the battered First Warband with a savage grin. Raising the blasphemous battle axe in his hand, something that looked more like a construct of flesh than metal, he let out a thunderous war cry:
"Your blood shall become an offering to my lord!"
"Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!"
All around the arena, countless mutated freaks roared the same cry:
"Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!"
Raven stared at the Wild Dog Gang leader overflowing with profane power, his gaze settling on the battle axe filled with potent Chaos energy.
"A champion of Khorne..."
he muttered under his breath.
(End of Chapter)
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