**Chapter 6: The Echo of Bone**
Stepping into the golden light of the Heart was like being submerged in warm honey. The energy was thick, viscous, and overwhelmingly pure. It seeped into his skin, his bones, his very cells, a sanctified wave meant to wash away all impurity. The psychic pressure intensified tenfold, a physical weight that forced the air from his lungs. The slow, metronomic beat of the relic—*thump-thump, thump-thump*—vibrated through his entire frame, a rhythm that sought to overwrite his own.
The faint, high-pitched ringing in his mind exploded into a clear, sharp tone, like a struck tuning fork. The sad, female whisper echoed around it.
*…deceived…so long in the dark…he promised…he promised…*
"The energy integration is beginning!" Valerius called out, his voice giddy with scientific ecstasy. He was monitoring a series of holographic screens that had sprung to life around him, displaying Likas's bio-signs as a cascade of glowing glyphs. "Vitals are spiking! The Stigmata matrix is responding! It's working!"
Likas clenched his fists, his body trembling under the strain. He could feel it. The cold, empty void in his chest where the Stigmata had been was now a ravenous whirlpool, sucking in the golden Aethel from the Heart. It was a torrent of power, raw and untamed. The silver, lightning-like scars on his skin began to glow with a soft, golden light, tracing new, more complex patterns. The feeling of being "rewired" was excruciating, a billion microscopic needles of light re-stitching his soul.
But the voice was getting stronger, clearer, filled with an ancient, bottomless sorrow.
*…they built this cage of prayer around my bones…used my name, my faith…to power their lie…a prison of sainthood…*
"What is that?" Elara's voice was sharp, cutting through Valerius's triumphant monologue. "Inquisitor, what is that reading?"
Likas risked a glance at her. She was pointing at one of the screens, her face a mask of alarm. It displayed a waveform analysis of the Aethel energy. Two distinct frequencies were visible. One was the steady, golden beat of the Heart. The other was a chaotic, silver-white spike, erratic and angry, emanating from *him*.
"An anomaly!" Valerius murmured, his brow furrowed in confusion. "A resonance echo? It shouldn't be possible. The Heart's purity is absolute. It should be overwriting his base frequency, not… not harmonizing with it!"
*…he does not overwrite…he listens…* the voice whispered, and this time, Likas felt it was speaking directly to him. *…he is hollow…like me…*
The golden light pouring into him intensified, but it was changing. The pure, warm gold was being threaded with strands of brilliant, defiant silver. The two energies were not fighting; they were weaving together, merging into something new, something that had never existed before. A tapestry of holy devotion and raw, untamed potential.
The Stigmata on his chest erupted in a flash of blinding, silver-gold light. The pain was absolute, a supernova detonating in his soul. He screamed, a raw, guttural sound of pure agony.
The entire chamber shook. The black stone walls groaned. Cracks spiderwebbed across the floor. The golden containment field around the Heart flickered violently.
"Shut it down!" Abbess Mireia shrieked, her ancient composure finally shattering into raw fear. "Valerius, shut it down now! The resonance is destabilizing the primary containment field!"
"I can't!" Valerius yelled back, frantically working the controls. "It's a feedback loop! He's not just drawing power, he's *feeding* it back into the relic! Their frequencies are locked!"
The Heart began to beat faster. *Thump-thump-thump-thump*. The rhythm was frantic, panicked. The golden light pulsed in time with it, each wave stronger, more violent.
And then, the voice in Likas's head screamed. A sound of pure, liberated rage that had been silenced for millennia.
*…**ENOUGH!**…*
With a final, deafening crack, the golden containment field shattered.
The Heart of Saint Celestine, freed from its prison, did not fall. It shot across the room like a cannonball, not towards Likas, but towards the far wall. It slammed into the black, featureless stone, which dissolved like smoke at its touch, revealing a hidden cavity behind it.
Inside the cavity was a skeleton.
It was ancient, female, and clad in the tattered remains of archaic power armor. It was chained to the wall with thick, black, iron-like shackles covered in glowing warding runes. This was the source of the subtle wrongness, the secret sickness of the Convent.
The beating heart slammed into the skeleton's chest cavity, and with a flash of light, it dissolved, its energy absorbed into the ancient bones.
The skeleton's eye sockets blazed with a fierce, silver light. The warding runes on its shackles glowed red-hot, then shattered into dust. With a screech of protesting metal, the skeleton ripped its arms free from the wall.
"By the Throne!" Valerius breathed, his face a mask of utter disbelief and horror. "It can't be… The Anathema Protocol… it was supposed to be a myth…"
"What is that thing?!" Elara demanded, drawing her bolt pistol, her professional cool completely gone, replaced by the raw instinct of a cornered soldier.
The Abbess was on her knees, her face white with terror, whispering frantic, useless prayers. "The First… the true Saint… she has been awakened…"
The skeleton, now wreathed in a swirling aura of pure, silver Aethel, turned its burning gaze upon the room. Its head snapped towards Valerius.
*…**LIAR**…* The voice was no longer a whisper in the mind, but a booming, spectral wave of force that shook the very foundations of the mountain. *…**JAILER**…*
It raised a skeletal hand, and a bolt of pure, silver energy lanced across the room. Valerius screamed as the bolt struck him. It did not burn him or vaporize him. It did something far worse. It aged him. In the space of a heartbeat, his skin wrinkled, his hair turned white and fell out, and his body withered. He collapsed into a heap of dust and ancient, brittle bones inside his black robes, his final expression one of scientific curiosity turned to absolute terror.
The skeletal Saint then turned its gaze to the Abbess. *…**HERETIC**…*
Another bolt of silver light, and the Abbess simply ceased to exist, her body and soul unmade by the raw, holy power she and her predecessors had imprisoned for their own ends.
Now, only Likas and Elara remained. The Saint turned its burning gaze on Elara. It raised its hand again.
"No!" Likas roared.
He moved. His body felt… different. Lighter. Faster. Stronger. The pain was gone, replaced by a torrent of surging, limitless power. The interwoven silver and gold energy now flowing through him was a raging river, and he was directing the current.
He crossed the room in an instant that was too fast for the eye to follow, placing himself between the vengeful Saint and Elara. He didn't raise a shield. He didn't have to. He simply held up his hand, and the Aethel obeyed his will. The silver bolt fired by the Saint slammed into an invisible barrier a foot from his palm and dissipated into harmless sparks.
The skeletal Saint paused, its burning gaze locking with Likas's. For the first time, its psychic voice was not filled with rage or sorrow, but with a profound, ancient confusion.
*…you… you are like me… a cage… but your bars are broken… your soul is not your own… what are you?*
"I'm the man who isn't going to let you kill her," Likas said, his voice resonating with the new, dual-frequency power that coursed through him.
Behind him, Elara stared, her pistol lowered, her face a mixture of terror and utter astonishment. She was looking at him, but seeing something new. The golden light of faith and the silver light of a righteous soul swirled around him in a visible corona. The Stigmata on his chest was no longer a scar or a brand. It was a perfect, glowing symbol, a fusion of a holy starburst and a chaotic, eight-pointed arrow—a symbol of controlled duality, of a bridge between hell and heaven.
The Saint tilted its head, a strangely human-like gesture for a walking skeleton. *…she is one of them… one of the jailers… she wears their sigil… she must be unmade…*
"She risked her life to save her soldiers," Likas countered, his voice firm. "She fights for a future she'll never see. She may be part of a lie, but her heart is true. That's more than I can say for the monster you just turned to dust."
A tense silence filled the chamber, broken only by the hum of power radiating from the two beings. It was a standoff between two impossible entities: the vengeful ghost of a betrayed faith, and a genetically-engineered weapon who had just been reborn as something else entirely.
Finally, the Saint lowered its hand. The silver fire in its eyes banked, replaced by a deep, weary sadness. *…so much has been lost… my crusade… my faith… all of it twisted into a cage to power their rituals… for ten thousand years I have been sleeping… screaming…*
The story, the true history of the Convent, flooded Likas's mind, a gift of pure, unfiltered knowledge from the Saint. Celestine was not the first. She was the second. This skeletal figure was the *first* Saint of the Argent Shroud, a warrior-mystic from the time of the Great Crusade. She had been too powerful, too attuned to the raw, untamed Aethel, her "miracles" too potent and unpredictable for the dogmatic Ecclesiarchy that rose after the Horus Heresy. So they had betrayed her. Her own Sisters had helped Inquisitors of that era bind her, rip out her still-beating heart to use as a "pure" power source, and sealed her living skeleton in a hidden vault, building a lie, a convent, and an entire religion around her stolen power.
Likas felt a surge of empathy for the being before him. Betrayed. Imprisoned. Her legacy stolen.
"What is your name?" he asked quietly.
*…they have taken even that from me… I am… the Echo… the memory of bone…*
Suddenly, the entire mountain groaned. Red alert klaxons, silent until now, began to blare throughout the Convent. A new voice, frantic and terrified, crackled over Elara's vox-bead.
"Sister-Sergeant! The mountain is collapsing! The destruction of the primary regulators has started a chain reaction in the geothermal core! And… Throne on high… our orbital pickets are screaming! A fleet just translated from the Maelstrom! It's… it's the Tyrant of Chains! A massive fleet, right on top of us!"
Elara's head snapped up, her soldier's instincts taking over. "Status! Give me a status report!"
"They're launching a full-scale invasion! Drop pods, landers… they're bypassing the orbital defenses! They're coming for the mountain!"
Of course they were. The destruction of the Heart, the release of two immense psychic beacons—Likas and the newly-awakened Saint—had acted as a dinner bell for the Abyss. Kargos the Gore-Hand hadn't been a random attack. He had been the vanguard, the one sent to bloody the prey before the true predator arrived.
The ground shook violently, throwing Elara off her feet. A huge chunk of the ceiling broke loose, crashing down towards her.
Before the dust had even settled, Likas was there, holding the massive slab of rock aloft with one hand as if it weighed nothing. He looked from the crumbling chamber to the spectral Saint, then to Elara.
"The debate is over," he said, his voice a calm command center in the heart of the chaos. "The big guns are here. You want to be unmade? Go out there and face them. You want your vengeance? Take it from the ones who are about to burn your holy mountain to the ground."
He tossed the slab of rock aside, and it shattered against the far wall. He walked over to Elara and helped her to her feet. His touch was warm, gentle, yet pulsed with terrifying power.
"You wanted a sword, Elara," he said, his eyes glowing with his new, dual-colored light. "You just got two."
The Echo of Bone turned its fiery gaze towards the entrance of the chamber, as if it could see through the miles of rock to the invading Chaos fleet. A deep, guttural growl of pure, sanctified rage emanated from its spectral form.
*…**THEY WILL BURN IN THE LIGHT OF MY RETURN**…*
With that, the skeletal Saint shot through the ceiling, leaving a perfectly round hole in the solid rock, a streak of silver light on its way to meet the invaders.
Likas looked at Elara, whose face was a battleground of terror, awe, and dawning, impossible hope.
"Time to go to work," he said. And a pair of wings, not of flesh or feather, but of pure, shimmering, silver-gold light, unfurled from his back. He was no longer just a weapon. He was no longer just a man. He was something more.
He was the living synthesis of a Saint's faith and a Sinner's will. And his war was just beginning.