Ash still drifted on the dead wind.
The battlefield lay quiet now—silent but for the slow groaning of cooling wreckage and the soft hiss of steam rising from the fused Knight standing like a broken monument at the Gate's corpse.
Obol's boots crunched against the glassed earth as he forced himself upright, eyes fixed on the silent titan that had once been two.
Then the shadows changed.
The light dimmed—not from clouds, not from ash—but from something far greater.
He looked up.
A colossal silhouette rolled across the heavens, blotting out the rust-red sky in a single sweeping eclipse.
The Bastion—Psicopompos—The Conductor of souls had come.
Its armored underside crawled with cathedral-buttresses and plasma vents the size of city towers. Gellar pylons glowed along its flanks like a second spine, flickering in wounded pulses.
As it descended from high orbit, its shadow swallowed the battlefield whole—night falling in a perfect square as a massive hangar hatch opened beneath its belly.
A slab of pure light poured downward.
Not sunlight nor fire.
It was a landing corridor—straight, vertical and absolute.
The Covenant of Ending lifted their eyes as one.
—
A thunder of engines followed.
One by one, the landers emerged—each a steel titan shaped in the heraldry of the Knight it served.
TIZZZZZ!
A sharp burst of vox-static cut across the battlefield.
"High-Scion, confirmation of Knights retrieval,"
came the voice from the lead-lander, its tone clipped, ceremonial.
The lander descended first through the ash-dark sky—
black and red armor plating, trimmed in dull gold,
with a hooded golden skull carved over its prow.
Scale-plates hung beneath its wings like chains of penance.
As it lowered, the vox-horns tolled a single, mournful chime—
the toll of Thanatos.
Obol felt the sound in his bones.
This was Thanatos' lander.
His lander.
—
He exhaled sharply, a breath half grief, half self-rebuke. One hand lifted to his vox-beads, the other unconsciously gripping the hilt at his side.
"High-lander, retrieval acknowledged."
His voice carried steady—
only the furrow in his brow betrayed the weight behind it.
Then his gaze shifted past the first lander.
The second descended in its shadow—
grey and black streaked, wings etched with a crowned skull turned to ash,
its coronet half-melted, dripping gold.
Cinerion's lander.
Obol's breath hitched in his throat but he forced himself to speak again.
"Send Maeryss lander back.
…Cinerion and Maeric are lost."
The words tasted like iron.
His eyes drifted to the fused Knight standing motionless behind him.
The warped titan's lenses flickered once, almost as if acknowledging him.
—
The vox remained silent for a moment.
Then the lead pilot answered softly.
"Understood.
The toll came for Cinerion and Maeric of Maeryss."
A pause—
then every lander's vox-horns blared simultaneously.
A single low hum rolled across the battlefield,
a mourning-note that reverberated through dust and steel alike.
The Covenant of Ending had accepted their loss.
—
Obol remained seated beside the fused Knight, the colossus looming over him like a statue of a fallen god.
One by one, the landers descended—
steel behemoths shaped in the heraldry of each Knight.
Servitors guided cables, mag-locks engaged, and the giants of Kharon were lifted heavenward in plumes of dust and light.
Then—
Thanatos' lander touched down beside him, its prow bearing the hooded golden skull.
Obol rose slowly, gaze fixed on the fused machine before him.
"You are...," he murmured, voice barely more than breath, then shook his head.
—
The amalgamation stirred. Servos whispered. Optics flickered.
And the fused helm tilted down toward him, waiting for his answer.
Obol swallowed hard and stood fully, the lander's personnel beginning their approach behind him.
He placed one hand against the scorched plate of the Knight's leg—
a gesture both command and farewell.
"Hide yourself," he said quietly.
"Do not speak to anyone but me."
The fused Knight did not move.
But its optics dimmed once in acknowledgment—a single, silent vow.
—
The great doors of the Psicopompos' forward hangar yawned open, spilling blinding white light across the returning war party.
Lander engines screamed overhead as the Covenant of Ending was lowered into the cradle of the ship. One by one, the hulking machines were guided onto their mooring rails—scarred, battered, steaming with the dust of the dead world below.
The fused Knight came last.
Two silhouettes merged into one, half-sundered plating welded by impossible force; twin helms collapsed inward into a single warped visage; limbs that once belonged to two ancestors now bound in a single, unnatural frame.
A machine that should not exist.
A relic that defied every rite of Mars.
—
Whispers traveled through the hangar crew. No one dared speak openly, but all eyes followed the aberration as it was lowered onto the deck.
"Thanatos… and Cinerion… fused?"
"The warp spared nothing…"
"Are the machine-spirits… gone?"
"Two Thrones—one frame?"
Tech-adepts made the sign of the Cog, several turning away in fear of contamination.
The Knight did not move. It stood like a petrified god—
inert, silent.
Dead, to all appearances.
Except to Obol.
He stood beneath its shadow—helmet removed, soot and blood smudging his brow—looking up into the warped helm.
Then—
A presence brushed the inside of his skull.
Not a voice in the air.
Not vox nor machine-chant.
A thought not his own.
"Why do they fear us, Obol Kharon?"
His breath hitched—Instinctively, he reached for his ear.
No vox-beads. No MIU link.
Nothing.
A cold realization crawled up his spine.
Slowly, he lifted his gaze to the Knight.
Its amber lenses glimmered faintly with attention.
"…The Cognis-Braid," he whispered, heart pounding.
"The link… it's still active."
—
The reply didn't echo—it unfolded, like a thought layered over his own.
"We never left it."
Obol's breath froze.
This wasn't Maeric's voice.
Nor Thanatos'.
Nor Cinerion's.
It was all of them—
a quiet merging of wills, residual code, and something older, darker, left behind by the blade that had pierced the breach.
A single mind woven from three.
"We are bound, Obol Kharon," it murmured.
"As you breathed, we breathed.
As you thought, we felt."
—
He steadied himself, his lips sealed but his inner-thought aloud.
"Listen to me.
Do not speak aloud.
Do not reveal yourself to anyone."
—
The Knight's presence dimmed—
submitting, withdrawing, but never leaving.
"As you will.
We remain with you."
A chilling comfort.
A terrible truth.
The mind-link had not been severed.
It had become permanent.
—
Metallic footsteps approached—measured, precise, unhurried.
"High-Scion."
Thale's voice cut through the hangar's noise like a scalpel.
Obol turned, jaw clenched, shoulders squared.
—
Obol exhaled, nodding once.
"I remember what I said," he answered.
—
The servo-skull drifting at Thale's shoulder extended its quill-limb, parchment unfurling with a dry snap.
Runes crawled across its eyesockets as it prepared to record.
Thale began.
"High-Scion Obol Kharon V," the Magos intoned,
"you now stand under Censure Provisional,
pending formal tribunal before the Red Conclave."
The quill scratched rapidly.
"For violations against the Omnissiah's will."
The servo-skull rolled the parchment and unfurled a fresh sheet as Thale continued, optics burning with cold, unwavering crimson.
"Charge the First:
Unauthorised activation of the Cognis-Braid, the merging of machine-spirits.
I enacted the sequence—but you gave the command.
Responsibility is yours."
A pause.
"Charge the Second:
Improper and unsanctioned use of Gellar Harmonizers in battlefield application.
I calibrated the lattice. But you ordered its erection."
The servo-skull clicked once, sealing the line with red ink.
"These are the only charges at present," Thale concluded.
Then—
all his optics shifted, flaring with cold analytical light as they locked onto the fused Knight behind Obol.
The servo-skull froze mid-script.
Thale's tone did not change, but something harder lay beneath it.
"Unless, High-Scion…"
A beat.
The whir of his optics tightening.
"…you intend anything other than the complete purgation of that Anathēma-Ferro."
—
"Anathēma-Ferro?" Obol repeated, a faint edge behind the calm.
—
"Yes."
Thale's mechadendrite lifted, a curt gesture of dismissal.
The servo-skull dipped its cranial unit once, tore the page it was writing from its parchment reel with a snap of brittle vellum, and drifted backward into silence.
"I conducted a full analysis while drafting your censure."
Thale stepped forward, optics narrowing into slits of cold white.
"The Knight's noospheric aura is… void.
No residual machine-cant, no communion-echo, no Throne imprint."
A second mechadendrite clicked outward, projecting a hollow glyph-stream between them. While the quill-skull worked its inkling.
"I attempted an MIU handshake."
A brief pulse of red static flickered through the glyphs.
"Denied. Absent. As if the circuit itself had never learned the concept of reply."
Another pause—long enough to feel heavy.
"There is no trace of Thanatos' spirit-song."
"No trace of Cinerion's blade-logic."
"No ghost-echo. No oath-resonance. No binharic memory-stream."
Thale moved forward.
"The Knight is a body without a soul, High-Scion."
His gaze rose to the warped titan towering behind Obol.
"A carcass of iron.
A frame bereft of the Omnissiah's breath."
A soft crackle rolled through his vox.
"In Mechanicus classification: Anathēma-Ferro."
He let the word hang, heavy as a verdict.
"A metal abomination."
—
"You say it is a carcass, a soulless body," Obol said.
—
Thale inclined his head once—sharp, mechanical.
"Correct. A Corpus-sine-Anima."
—
Obol turned slightly, gaze lifting toward the warped titan's silent helm.
"Then treat it as such," he said, voice low but iron-steady.
"A body without a soul belongs not to purge-fires, but to remembrance."
Thale's optics narrowed—a flicker of recalculation.
Obol continued before he could reply.
"It will be entombed in the Hall of the Fallen.
As sacrificial honor
to Thanatos.
To Cinerion.
And Maeric of Maeryss."
The words struck like a tolling bell.
A rite.
A verdict.
A shield against scrutiny.
—
Thale processed this for three long, clicking heartbeats before one of his mechadendrites lifted up and dismissed the Quill-Skull, it quickly tore off the next page and hovered again.
"I have to report this anomaly to Mars,
but if you choose to destroy it by purgation, you could avoid another charge."
—
Obol raised his hand, dismissed the tech-priest from talking further.
Thale nodded once, although his optics betrayed his compliance.
"By your command as High-Scion," he said at last.
"the Corpus-sine-Anima will be interred among House Kharon's honored dead."
His optics dimmed in something like ritual acceptance.
"The rites of entombment will begin once the hull is stabilized."
—
Obol exhaled— the grim steadiness of a man who had secured one necessary lie.
He stepped closer to the fused Knight—its warped chestplate still reflecting the hangar's harsh white lights, its silhouette motionless, silent, watching.
His fist tapped the plating once.
His thoughts pressed forward like a whisper through the permanent bond.
"I name you… Anathor."
A pause.
His mind steadied.
"Anathor the Soulless."
—
The Knight did not move.
But inside Obol's mind—
a faint ripple, neither machine nor spirit, answered.
"We accept the name."
The tone was soft.
Obedient yet utterly alien.
Obol closed his eyes for a heartbeat, steadying his breath, then he stepped back from the towering silhouette.
The Knight did not move, did not twitch, did not reveal the mind sleeping within its marrow.
Its optics were dark, its hull inert—nothing more than a corpse to the onlookers.
Exactly as it needed to be.
Obol composed himself—straightened his back, wiped the blood from his brow, and set his expression to iron.
When he finally walked away from Anathor, his strides were slow and deliberate, every step echoing against the hangar deck.
—
Ahead,
the Scions of Kharon waited—
battered, exhausted, some still half in their flight harnesses.
Isera stood first, gauntlet removed, posture rigid.
Caldrin hovered behind her, trying—and failing—to hide the worry in his eyes.
Vaerin and Vaeleen stood shoulder to shoulder, murmuring quietly.
Thrykos leaned heavily on a railing, helm beneath one arm, sweat streaking the ash on his brow.
Morphael's red carapace loomed like a shadow behind them all.
They had seen the fused Knight lowered into the hangar.
They had seen Obol's silhouette standing before it alone.
They had questions and they had fears.
And their High-Scion was walking toward them—
alone, heavy with the weight of one brother lost and another lying dead in the hull of a machine that pretended to be silent.
Obol breathed once, deeply.
Everyone straightened the moment Obol reached them—
backlines stiffening, boots locking together, helms turning in unison.
Even exhausted, even shaking, they were Knights of Kharon.
—
But it was Vaeleen who broke the silence first, her voice thin with fear she was trying—and failing—to conceal.
"High-Scion… why is that thing here?"
Her gaze flicked toward the fused silhouette in the far cradle.
"Shouldn't we destroy it?"
Her words trembled at the edges, more frightened than insolent.
—
"Vaeleen—" Isera snapped, stepping in, hand half-raised as if to cuff her helm for speaking out of turn.
—
Obol lifted his hand.
A simple motion.
Enough to halt Isera instantly.
"It's all right," he said quietly.
His voice carried the kind of tired calm that made even the most hardened warriors bow their heads. He did not look at them—his gaze fell to the deck plates beneath his boots.
"We are all mourning," Obol continued.
"We lost three today."
Thanatos. Cinerion. Maeric.
The names landed like stones dropped into a silent lake.
No one moved.
Even Vaeleen's breath hitched—guilt softening her expression as the truth settled in.
—
"So… what now, my lord?"
Thrykos asked, voice rough, the words scraping from a throat still raw from reactor strain.
—
"We go to Mars," Obol answered.
"I must answer to the Red Conclave for everything that transpired today."
A ripple of unease flickered through the group.
Even the machine-spirits humming behind their helms seemed to whisper caution.
—
Caldrin stepped forward, head tilting slightly.
"And what of Cinerion and Thanatos' spirits?"
His voice carried the weight of a man hoping against hope.
"Can we recover them?"
—
Obol shook his head.
"No."
His tone was not harsh—just final.
"Magos Dominus confirmed it.
There are no traces of either machine-spirit.
Neither survived."
He let the truth settle, let it carve its shape into the silence, before delivering the final blow.
"Our House stands…"
a breath—ragged, restrained—
"…two Knights fewer."
The words echoed through the hangar like the aftershock of a funeral bell, rolling off steel walls, through cables and scaffolds, settling heavy in the hearts of every Scion present.
Obol turned slowly, meeting each gaze in turn—
Vaerin's tightened jaw,
Isera's trembling restraint,
Caldrin's hollowed fury,
Vaeleen's guilty fear,
Thrykos's grim acceptance.
Then he said,
"The body will be entombed in the Ancestors' Hall."
voice low but unbreakable.
"In memory of those for whom the Toll came."
And in that moment, every Scion bowed their head in mourning.
—
The next day dawned cold and colorless.
Even within the metal bones of the Psicopompos, the air felt thin—like a ship holding its breath.
Obol sat alone in his quarters, wiping the soot from the edge of his sword.
The steel caught the lumen-light in a muted line, then slid quietly back into its scabbard.
His hand lingered on the hilt—not in ceremony, not in grief, but in a simple need for grounding.
Then—
THUD. THUD. THUD.
A hard, urgent knock at the door.
—
Obol turned, brow tightening.
He opened it.
A young officer stood there—barely more than a boy, still pale from yesterday's horrors, but spine straight as a pike.
He saluted sharply.
"My lord—" His voice cracked, then steadied with effort.
"The Choir… they request your immediate attention."
—
Obol's jaw clenched.
"The astropaths?"
—
The officer nodded once, fear flickering behind his eyes.
"Yes, High-Scion. They say the veil is… wrong."
—
Obol exhaled slowly.
"Lead me."
The officer stepped back, bowing once.
Obol followed, his footsteps echoing down the silent corridor—each step bringing him closer to the Choir Sanctum.
—
The doors to the Choir-chamber groaned open as Obol stepped inside, boots echoing through the sanctum of gilded pipes and suspended copper coils.
Thale, Thrykos, and Isera were already present—faces grim, silhouettes framed by the green glow of psychic wards.
The attendants and Choir-servitors froze when they saw him.
Obol's voice cut through the tense silence.
"What is happening?"
—
No one answered at first.
Then a young Choir-attendant—barely old enough to shave—hurried toward him, clutching a data-slate with trembling hands.
"My lord… the astropathic messages are not going through."
—
Obol frowned.
"Not going through? They were merely distorted during deployment."
—
Thale turned, his optics flickering with warning runes.
"That distortion has escalated, High-Scion.
We have attempted transmission twenty-one times since yesterday."
He gestured to the central choir dais, where the astropaths sat slumped in their thrones, blood trickling from the corners of their eyes.
"Our messages are unmade the moment they touch the warp."
—
Obol's brow tightened.
"A warp storm?"
—
Thale's optics dimmed, then brightened—an imitation of a sigh.
"No, High-Scion. The disturbance predated our descent."
He fully turned toward Obol, servo-joints whispering.
"The Immaterium is degrading. Not a storm—a systemic instability."
—
Obol's expression sharpened.
"Systemic instability…" he echoed, voice dropping low.
His eyes narrowed.
"You mean this is by design—someone did this?"
—
Thale did not answer immediately. The soft thrum of the Choir's containment field filled the silence. Finally, with a slow mechanical turn of the head, he spoke:
"Possibility: non-zero."
A dangerous phrase from a Magos.
—
Obol exhaled hard.
"We are only days from Segmentum Command," he muttered, half to himself.
His gaze shifted toward the dim corridor leading to the bridge.
"We make a stop before Mars."
—
"High-Scion… if I may?"
Isera stepped forward, helm tucked beneath her arm, her expression taut.
—
Obol turned slightly.
"Yes, Lady Isera."
—
She hesitated—only long enough to steady her voice.
"All these occurrences…" she said quietly,
"…the astropathic distortion, the gate, the beasts that came through it… the Warp itself turning unstable."
Her eyes shifted toward the distant vault where the fused Knight rested.
"What if they are all connected?"
The hangar fell silent.
Isera's voice softened.
"What if what happened on that world… was not meant to end there?"
—
"Your concern is sound—and heard," Obol answered softly.
He drew in a slow breath, shoulders stiff with exhaustion, then straightened.
His arms folded behind his back in a posture that was half discipline, half the weariness of a man forced to lead through uncertainty.
"All the more reason to get moving."
His voice hardened—not unkind, but final.
"For now—Astropaths, stand down and recover your strength."
A pause.
His gaze shifted toward the distant vault where Anathor rested in silence.
"And let it be known: no personnel are to approach the Corpus-sine-Anima.
None. On my authority."
The order settled over the chamber like a tolling bell.
—
Obol was the first to turn away.
He moved with measured steps—boots ringing softly on ceramite decking—as he made for the inner corridors of the Psicopompos.
The weight of command and loss wrapped around his shoulders like a burial shroud.
His thoughts churned in tight, circling knots.
He barely registered the officers standing guard outside the vault approaches.
Each saluted sharply, bowed, or stepped aside as he passed—but their faces blurred, reduced to pale shapes in the periphery of his grief.
The vault doors loomed ahead—towering adamantine slabs engraved with the sigils of House Kharon's honored dead.
The officers stationed there gave him a stiff nod and keyed the runes of passage.
"High-Scion," one murmured.
The bulkhead began to part with a grinding sigh of ancient gears.
—
Just before the doors sealed behind him, another figure stepped through.
Metal soles clicked in quiet, precise rhythm.
Thale.
The Magos Dominus passed beneath the threshold with the ease of someone whose presence was expected, pistons adjusting to match Obol's pace.
Servo-lenses irised shut and open again as he regarded the corridor ahead.
"High-Scion," Thale began, his vox-filter giving the syllables a soft metallic rasp.
"You walk burdened with unresolved variables.
And I follow because these variables intersect with the sanctity of the Mechanicum's domain."
The corridor stretched before them—long, cold, flanked by alcoves where Knight-sarcophagi rested like iron reliquaries. Their shadows flickered under dim lumen-strips, like silent witnesses embedded in the walls.
Thale's optics clicked once—tightening focus.
"Scion Isera of Isyrr is correct," he continued, tone even, modulated, his mechadendrites coiling loosely behind him like patient serpents.
"I request—strongly—that you reconsider your intended course before this… anomaly becomes a matter escalated to Mars."
He simply stated a truth that even the vault's cold air could not ignore.
—
Obol did not slow.
But he glanced sideways—just once.
"I expected you would," he murmured.
They walked deeper into the quiet of the vaults, where the air itself felt older, where history slept in metal tombs—and where Obol meant to hide the greatest secret he had ever carried.
They arrived,
and stood before Anathor.
The fused Knight loomed in the center of the vault chamber, framed by the dim amber glow of lumen-candles set in ancient steel sconces.
Its warped plates threw broken reflections across the flagstones—shapes like shattered halos, wreathed in dust.
Even dead, it commanded the room.
—
Obol stepped forward first.
His glove brushed the cold stone of the inscription plate—freshly etched, still sharp.
He read the words aloud, each syllable a weight:
"Here lies the remains of Thanatos,
Cinerion,
and Scion Maeric Maeryss.
Their Toll called…
and answered."
The echo faded into the vaulted chamber, swallowed by the silence of dead giants.
—
Thale stood behind him, motionless—only the faint twitch of a servo-motor betraying that he processed every detail before them.
The Magos's optics swept Anathor's warped silhouette, lingering on every impossible weld, every fused seam, every place where the laws of sacred metallurgy had been rewritten by the warp itself.
At last, he spoke—softly, but with the finality of a verdict.
"Even inert," he murmured, "it exerts presence. A morphology that should not exist."
A single mechadendrite traced the air before its helm, not daring to touch.
"The vault senses it," he added.
"The machine-spirits interred here grow… restless."
Obol said nothing.
His eyes remained fixed on Anathor—the tomb that was not a tomb, the corpse that breathed without breath.
"Why would you risk your House for this?"
Thale's question cut through the vault like a scalpel—precise, bloodless, unavoidable.
His optics did not blink as he spoke.
They simply narrowed, adjusting focus on the fused helm as if trying to decode a forbidden equation.
—
"Because, Magos."
Obol's reply came soft—he did not look at Thale at first.
He looked at Anathor—the warped Knight, the grave of three souls.
Then he exhaled, long and unsteady.
"I… cannot let go."
He finally turned, meeting the cold glow of Thale's lenses.
"This is what remains of them.
Tainted or not—warp-scarred, wrong, impossible—it is what is left."
His hand brushed the great stone plaque at the Knight's feet, as if steadying himself.
"If we destroy it," Obol continued, voice tightening,
"then they fade.
Not as Knights.
Not as ancestors.
Not as spirits—but as memory."
He swallowed once.
"I know it is illogical."
A beat.
His gaze lifted to Anathor again.
"But it is final, Magos."
The word finale hung between them like a tolling bell.
—
Thale's vents expelled a harsh burst of steam—the tech-priest's equivalent of a weary sigh.
"Then I cannot protect you from Mars' wrath."
There was no anger in the words.
Only inevitability—cold as a logic-engine's verdict.
He stepped back from the fused Knight, servo-limbs folding neatly to his sides.
His head inclined—not in reverence,
but in formal acknowledgment of Obol's choice.
"Very well, High-Scion. I shall begin the rites of interment and prepare the vault-seals."
A final pause.
His optics dimmed once—the Mechanicum's version of closing weary eyes.
"Before we make for Segmentum Command,
the Corpus-sine-Anima will rest among your honored dead."
With that,
Thale bowed deeply, turned, and the hiss of his pistons echoed down the corridor like a fading benediction.
The vault was silent again—silent as tombs, silent as memory.
Then,
inside Obol's skull,
a voice brushed against his consciousness like a hesitant hand.
"Why, Obol Kharon?" Asked a newborn mind trying to understand its own shape.
"Do we deserve to exist?"
The words trembled—not with fear,
but with the uncertainty of something that had never been alive wondering whether it had the right to be.
—
"I don't know," Obol murmured, voice low, stripped of all pretense.
His gaze lifted—meeting the fused helm, meeting the single amber lens that watched him with impossible stillness.
"Do you… want to live?"
—
Anathor's optic flickered once in response.
Something like a breath moved through the vault—though no lungs existed to take it.
—
Obol exhaled, shoulders loosening by a fraction.
A faint, tired grin pushed through the exhaustion and grief.
"Well then," he said softly, almost fondly,
"you have your freedom. In life or in death."
The smile died.
His eyes hardened—not in anger, but in the fierce, unyielding resolve of a Kharonian oath.
"But promise me…"
He stepped closer, close enough that the candles behind him cast twin shadows—man and machine—across the vault floor.
"…you will pay the cost of that freedom with a just cause."
Not vengeance nor survival alone.
A purpose worthy of the dead whose pieces lived inside him.
The helm did not move.
But the presence in Obol's mind bowed—a quiet, newly forged vow.
"We promise."
—
Obol remained there for a long while—
long after the echoes of his vow faded into the vault's cold stone.
He sat with his back against Anathor's greave, coat scraping lightly against scorched ceramite.
Thoughts passed between them—quiet, wandering, searching.
A conversation that was half grief, half remembrance, and something that felt almost like closure.
For the first time since the Gate, the weight on Obol's chest eased.
—
Then,
footsteps broke the stillness and Obol lifted his head.
Thale Serekin had returned—surrounded by robed tech-acolytes and servo-cherubs carrying censers, seals, and binding glyphs for the entombment rite.
For a moment, the two men—flesh and forge—simply looked at one another.
Then, with the faintest inclination of his head, Thale acknowledged him.
Obol returned the nod.
He pushed himself back to his feet, dust and ash falling from his shoulders, and stepped away from Anathor—making room for the rites to begin.
Behind him,
the vaulted chamber filled with the soft, rising binharic cant of the Mechanicum.
Servo-cherubs drifted through the incense haze, and the bitter-sweet scent of sanctified oils bled into the ancient air.
More figures filed in—officers, attendants, oathbound retainers—drawn not by command,
but by duty and mourning—by the need to witness the rite that had yet to begin.
—
The Covenant of Ending stood in the first row, rigid and proud.
Obol took his place among them.
His hand found Caldrin's shoulder—firm, reassuring—and gave it a small, grounding squeeze.
To his right stood Thrykos, the eldest Scion of the House.
A veteran carved from hardship and bone-dust, who had seen too many claimed by the Toll.
His jaw was clenched tight, eyes fixed forward, refusing to blink.
To Obol's left stood Isera—his aide, calm even in grief.
She offered him a small, soft smile.
He returned it with a nod, the gesture carrying gratitude more than words could.
Behind him stood the twins of Dolmarch—Vaeleen and Vaerin.
Young, inexperienced.
Their first true loss carved into their posture and their silence.
They held each other's hands without shame or ceremony—a simple, fragile brace against the weight of death.
The vault hummed with sorrow and steel.
And the Rite of Entombment—for a Knight that was not truly dead—was about to begin.
Incense drifted through the vaulted chamber, thick and sweet with the scent of sacramental oils.
Lumen-candles guttered in recessed sconces, their amber light turning the steel ribs of the vault into the arches of an ancient cathedral.
Before them all stood Anathor.
The fused Knight did not move.
It was just a silhouette carved from war and death, now a monument to those who had paid the Toll.
The chamber quieted further as Thale stepped forward.
His robes rustled like ancient parchment, servo-joints murmuring in quiet benediction.
Seven tech-acolytes followed in ritual formation, bearing censers, engraving tools, sanctified mechadendrites, and data-slates etched with ancient script.
—
Thale lifted a vox-amplifier, his voice modulated into a solemn, ceremonial register.
"Let the Rite begin."
Binharic chant bloomed from the acolytes behind him—static hymns woven with the soft hum of harmonizers.
Servitors lowered sanctified chains to lock Anathor into its burial frame.
Ritual oils dripped along the fused greaves, hissing as they touched damaged plating.
Thale stepped before the Knight's shadow.
"By the authority vested in me," he intoned,
"as Magos Dominus of the Psicopompos and sworn servant of Mars—
—I sanctify this Corpus-sine-Anima.
Body without soul.
Frame without spirit.
Remnant of duty fulfilled."
He turned then, facing Obol.
His optics glowed brighter.
"High-Scion Obol Kharon V," he said,
"Lord of the Toll…
Master of Kharon."
The title echoed through the vault like a drawn blade.
Behind Obol, the Scions straightened instinctively.
Thale extended the inscribing stylus—an ancient tool of gold-filigreed adamantium, reserved only for rites of finality.
"You will inscribe the designation," Thale said.
"It is your right.
And your burden."
He stepped aside.
—
Obol inhaled—slow, steady, heavy.
He stepped forward.
The stylus was cold in his hand.
He approached the great stone tablet set at the foot of the burial dais.
Generations of etched names glimmered faintly—Kharons long dead, Knights long fallen, echoes of an unbroken lineage.
He knelt.
The chamber held its breath.
One stroke at a time, he carved the words:
ANATHOR — THE SOULLESS
—CORPUS-SINE-ANIMA—
Date of Entombment: 003.7.M31
The sound of stone and adamantium meeting rang through the vault like a muted tolling bell.
When he finished, he placed the stylus down with reverent precision and rose to his full height.
Obol set his hand against the carved name, bowed his head once, then spoke:
"The Toll answered."
His voice echoed off the vaulted steel.
And then—
"THE TOLL ANSWERED,"
the Covenant repeated as one, their voices merging in a single resonant chord that filled the entire vault.
One by one, every Scion, acolyte, and adepts of the Mechanicum sank to one knee.
Heads bowed. Helms pressed to the floor. Hands crossed over hearts and oath-plates.
A single moment of absolute unity—grief, honor, remembrance.
A final farewell to
Thanatos, to Cinerion, to Maeric Maeryss…
…and to the Knight that should not exist.
—
A silence followed the last chant—deep, absolute, sacred.
Then—
TOLL
A single note rolled through the Psicopompos.
A low, resonant bell-tone that vibrated through steel, bone, and memory alike.
The sound that House Kharon reserved only for those whose names had entered the vaults.
A final call for the dead.
Every Scion rose from their kneel.
Every attendant straightened their robes.
Even the vault-lights seemed to steady themselves.
The Rite was complete.
One by one, they began to file out, heads bowed, footsteps soft out of respect for those whose Toll had been answered.
Obol remained the last.
He turned, ready to follow the others—
When a whisper brushed the inside of his mind.
"What is the noise?"
—
Obol paused.
His gaze slid back toward the towering silhouette of Anathor—shrouded, sealed, and utterly still beneath the crypt-light.
He exhaled.
"A final call for the dead," he said quietly, almost an afterthought.
Then, a faint smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"But you—?"
He shook his head with a whisper of grim amusement.
"A beginning."
He left the vault in silence.
Behind him, Anathor's optics dimmed once in answer—a newborn soul acknowledging its first truth.
The bulkhead shut with a final, thunderous seal.
Obol didn't look back.
His stride through the corridor was steady, proud—not the tread of a man without doubt, but of one who had accepted the weight upon his shoulders.
—
When he entered the command bridge, every officer straightened.
The vaulted canopy of hololithic displays cast shifting gold light across his form as he ascended the dais. He lowered himself into the command throne—its frame humming as it recognized his biometrics—and rested one hand upon its arm like a king claiming judgment.
He nodded once toward the Helm-Master.
"Set course for Segmentum Command."
—
"Aye, High-Scion."
Runes flared across the bridge.
The Psicopompos rumbled as its massive engines reoriented, Gellar pylons brightening along its spine.
Moments later—
FWOOOOOM
The Conductor of Souls tore a wound into unreality and slipped through.
Blue fire crawled along its hull as the stars folded inward, and the ancient warship vanished into the Immaterium—bearing House Kharon toward a future none of them yet understood.
—
Then, upon arrival—
the sight of the orbital station made Obol's jaw clench hard enough to ache.
From dread.
Even through the Psicopompos' reinforced canopy, the station looked wrong.
Segmentum Command's high-anchor station—Aegis-Array Nine—should have blazed with constant traffic, courier-ships darting in tight formations, defense monitors sweeping their patrol arcs, vox-beacons announcing docking lanes in steady rhythm.
Instead—
It drifted.
Silent.
Dark.
Half its lumen-spires flickered like dying candles.
The defense turrets sat motionless, their barrels pointed nowhere.
Docking clamps hung open, loose, like slack jaws frozen in shock.
Obol leaned forward in the throne, one hand gripping the arm so tightly the metal groaned.
"Emperor…" he breathed.
This was no simple xenos predation.
This place reeked of warp-bleed—so thick, so raw, that even non-psyker could feel it prickling along the skin.
Something had touch Aegis—Array Nine.
Something that should never touch the Solward routes.
—
Behind him, the bridge crew whispered uneasily.
"My lord—no traffic signals."
"Vox-response null."
"Station shields minimal—reactor cycling at… standby only?"
—
Thale's voice came next, clipped and analytical—but even he could not mask the undertone of alarm.
"High-Scion… this ruin emits the same warp-signature as the entities we faced planetside."
His optics narrowed, runes flickering across their surface.
"This is no coincidence."
A beat.
"Something is targeting the Imperium."
—
Obol swallowed hard.
The Warp had followed them. Or worse—
something had already come through before they ever arrived.
Even the thought made his jaw tighten.
"Prepare for dock approach," he ordered.
But the iron was gone from his voice.
No one questioned it.
Every soul aboard the Psicopompos felt the same quiet dread—
Whatever was happening in the galaxy…
…had already begun to CORRUPT the Imperium's walls.