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Inquisitor Horst sat alone in the dim light of his spartan quarters aboard the Ascendance, the Navis Imperialis scout frigate that had brought him to the edge of Imperial space. The pale glow from the cogitator screen flickered across his sharp features, but his eyes weren't on the data displayed. They were fixed on the reports scattered on his table.
The transmission from Arx had arrived early in 139.M41. A desperate, fragmented telepathic call from the station's elderly astropath cryptic, garbled, and cut short by static. No clear identity of attackers. No warning.
By the time reinforcements arrived, four solar months later, there was nothing left but ruin.
The 122nd Borlian Regiment's reports confirmed the worst: every Imperial Guardsman was dead. Their bodies mutilated beyond recognition, scattered and torn, picked clean by Arx's wild dogs the only predators left alive on that desolate planet.
At first glance, it looked like a savage raid by unknown xenos, or perhaps Chaos cultists. But no bodies were found. No warbands or vessels claimed the kill. Just silence.
Horst poured over the scant reports, documents, and intercepted transmissions using the training he had received from Ordos hereticus, to pick up any trail he could.
His deduction began with what was present: no evidence of known Chaos iconography. No spores or corrupted biomass typical of Tyranid attacks. No chemical or plasma signatures matching common Ork weaponry. The ferocity was clear, but the method it was unknown.
Then, something new started sprouting on Segmentum Obscurus.
Over the next three years, reports surfaced from star systems neighboring Arx raids of identical cruelty, the same disappearance of assailants, the same eerie silence where enemies should have been.
Horst's mind worked through them trying to catch a trail.
If these were isolated raids, disconnected from one another, there would be no pattern.
But the attacks formed a sequence, a spreading wave moving outward, like ripples in a dark pond.
That suggested coordination deliberate, planned strikes.
Yet, the Imperium's greatest intelligence networks had failed to intercept any chatter, any signature, any hint of these assailants' identity.
Horst suspected something beyond simple raids something larger was coming, his intuition was warning him.
But suspicion alone was useless without evidence.
His instincts, honed by decades of investigation, refused to accept guesswork.
He cataloged every shred of data:
The victims were always Imperial Guards or planetary militia, isolated, without heavy support.
The attacks were precise no pointless slaughter beyond what was necessary.
The mutilation suggested a psychological tactic: terror, demoralization, sending a message beyond physical destruction.
No tech or weapons recovered from the battle sites indicating either scavenging by the attackers or highly advanced technology beyond current comprehension.
Horst's conclusion was simple: this enemy wanted to stay invisible. They struck, then vanished, erasing all traces.
That made direct confrontation impossible, and intelligence gathering difficult.
His next logical step was to watch and wait.
He stationed himself near these troubled systems, studying ship movements, warp fluctuations, and unusual psychic disturbances.
He cross referenced every anomaly with past attack locations.
He ran simulations on the timing and trajectories.
The emerging pattern hinted at an enemy with intimate knowledge of Imperial routines and a deep understanding of psychological warfare.
Horst knew his role was not to charge blindly into the dark, but to bide his time and be patient.
His analysis led him to one chilling hypothesis: the attackers were not a chaotic rabble, nor simple xenos marauders.
They were something else possibly a secret faction or corrupted Imperial force, leveraging stealth and terror as weapons.
Yet he lacked proof.
Frustration gnawed at him. The Emperor's enemies were hiding, and Horst could do nothing about it, It was annoying.
He pulled the data back up, his fingers tapping out new queries.
"Let's watch and wait" Horst murmured.
Rubbing his forehead to relieve some tension.
—
11 Months later
Horst's eyes narrowed as the reports came in from the Athena Sector. The scene was becoming darker, more complicated.
Imperial patrol vessels had stumbled on drifting hulks merchant ships and warships alike ghosts of the fleet. One of them an Emperor-class battleship, the pride of the Imperial Navy, aimlessly floating through the void.
Boarding teams found carnage.
The crews were dead. Some slumped over controls, others sprawled in narrow corridors. Their bodies had been ravaged by diseases foul infections that reeked of rot and decay. Some still gripped their weapons, others sat frozen in final moments of confusion.
Signs of battle scarred every hull, but oddly, no enemy bodies were recovered. The ships had been boarded, but the invaders had vanished without a trace.
Horst reviewed the autopsy reports and tactical analyses with methodical care. He didn't jump to conclusions. Disease could be natural, but the precision of the attacks and the absence of survivors made it suspect.
His acolytes whispered a rumour gaining traction among the Navis Imperialis: an ancient Chaos warship the Plagueclaw had returned.
A vessel long thought myth, devoted to Nurgle, the Plague Lord. For nearly 4,000 Terran years, it had been a ghost story told to frighten cadets. Now it was a grim reality.
Horst's mind did not accept myths. But when combined with the evidence of infected crews and the sudden sacking of the Hive World Morganghast by the Death Guard the Chaos Space Marines loyal to Nurgle it painted a dire picture.
It was no coincidence.
Horst's logical deduction was clear.
The Plagueclaw's reappearance and the Death Guard's actions were coordinated. There was something larger happening.
He knew the significance of this better than most. So, he acted better to have false alarms then be unprepared.
Orders went out swiftly.
Watchposts were tightened, Navis Imperialis vessels recalled and dispatched, entire fleets rerouted to reinforce the perimeter.
The space around Cadia became a fortress.
Horst stared at the hololithic map projecting the Cadian system's defensive grid. Every ship, every satellite, every sensor was accounted for. But he didn't feel comforted.
He'd seen enough battles lost because commanders put faith in walls and numbers instead of understanding the enemy.
His instincts screamed that Chaos was evolving its tactics, becoming smarter, more insidious.
He needed to know more information.
He tasked his acolytes to scour every scrap of data they could find old logs, whispered legends, forbidden texts. To understand the ship's signature, its weaknesses, its patterns.
While he himself began covertly investigating the Imperium's structure, weeding out corruption and heresy. As both were an inside jobs that he needed to get to the bottom of.
—
Omnipresent pov
Whilst Inquisitor Horst investigated the Chaos activity around Arx and its neighboring star systems, events turned even more sinister in the Gothic Sector of the Segmentum Obscurus, 2,500 light years away.
The Warp became unstable. Navigators reported increased turbulence, more frequent storms. Messages went out slower. Ships missed arrival windows. Some vanished entirely. On worlds that depended on timely shipments, food riots started. Some were crushed fast. Others dragged on, spreading into cult violence.
Word got out. The Warp was turning foul. And people started to panic.
On dozens of Imperial worlds, the fear twisted into fanaticism. Preachers screamed that the Emperor was angry. That the Warp storms were punishment. That this was the end. Many believed them.
Flagellant cults formed overnight. On Veridan Prime, three thousand people marched down the central avenue of Hive Solace, naked except for bloodstained prayer scrolls nailed into their flesh. Some collapsed and were trampled. None stopped. They lit a pyre at the foot of the Administratum dome. Forty seven officials were thrown into it alive.
Local Arbites did nothing. They'd already deserted their precinct.
In mining colonies, people begged to be whipped clean of sin. Children were beaten to death by their own families, who called it purification. On Nandor's Rest, an entire hab block burned after its residents were accused of heresy. The fire was started by a preacher who claimed to hear the Emperor's voice. When the flames reached him, he didn't move. He just kept screaming litanies until his lungs boiled.
The mobs didn't go away. They multiplied. They armed themselves. They stopped waiting for the Ecclesiarchy and made their own judgments.
People started disappearing. At first it was quiet suspected psykers, mutants, off worlders. Then came the lists. Entire neighborhoods were declared "impure." People were dragged from their homes and butchered in alleyways. Makeshift gallows sprang up in hive city plazas. On some worlds, corpses hung like banners for blocks.
The Ecclesiarchy tried to regain control. Some priests were torn apart by the same mobs they once preached to. Others gave in and joined them.
On Cindara, an entire planetary council was flayed alive on live holofeed, accused of consorting with "the corrupt void." The man who led the mob wore a stolen priest's robes and spoke with a voice that shook with spit and static.
And beneath all of it, in the cracks and tunnels and void-black basements real cults moved.
The panic gave them cover. The flagellants burned libraries. The mobs destroyed records. Nobody noticed when a few thousand people started worshipping something else. Not the Emperor. Not any god they dared name. Just the promise of survival. Of power. Of being spared.
In the ports, ships exploded. The Navy called them accidents. Reactor failures. Unstable plasma. But too many. Too close together. Too timed. Nobody wanted to say sabotage, but everyone thought it.
At the Segmentum command level, orders were scrambled. Half the fleet was stuck in rerouted warp travel. The other half was trying to reinforce Cadia. The Gothic Sector was being pulled thin. And nobody knew where to send reinforcements, because the chaos wasn't coming from one direction. It was everywhere.
The Inquisition issued kill orders. The Ordo Hereticus mobilized squads across key systems. But they were late. Every time they landed, they found mass graves, blood altars in the sewers, or hives sealed off by barricades of bone and scrap.
By the end of the year, entire planetary governments had lost control. Mob rule replaced law. The Ecclesiarchy was fragmented. And for every Chaos cult discovered and purged, two more went unnoticed.
The Warp storms didn't stop.
And the Imperium, for all its fleets and firepower, could only watch as its people burned each other alive.
—
Word Count: 1720
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