The Citadel of Contagion, the living fortress that had been the heart of a system-wide plague, was coming apart at the seams. Great, fleshy chunks of the ceiling fell, crashing to the ground with wet, sickening thuds. The pillars of bone groaned and splintered under the strain, and the very floor beneath them began to dissolve into a gray, featureless slurry.
"Move!" Captain Arken's voice boomed, his training taking over. "Back the way we came! For the Emperor, move!"
The Deathwatch marines, models of discipline even in the face of total collapse, turned to begin a desperate fighting retreat from the heart of the dying fortress.
"That will be unnecessary, Captain," Rimuru said, his voice a calm island in the roaring chaos. He raised a hand. "Please, everyone, stand still for just a moment. It will be much faster this way."
The Astartes hesitated, their instincts screaming at them to run, but the absolute confidence in Rimuru's voice held them in place. The world around them was ending, the very architecture of hell collapsing, yet the small, silver-haired being at their center was perfectly serene.
Rimuru activated his skill, Spatial Domination.
There was no lurch, no flash of light, no violent tear in reality. For the seven warriors, the universe simply... changed. One instant, they were standing in the heart of the collapsing throne room, the roar of its destruction deafening. The next, they were standing on the cold, solid metal of the Carrion Triumph's assault ramp, the fresh (by Helios Prime's standards) air of the open plains on their faces. Behind them lay the quiet, dark interior of their captured ship-fortress.
They stood in stunned silence for a moment, processing the instantaneous and effortless escape. A journey that would have been a life-or-death struggle against the clock had been rendered a triviality.
"By the Throne," one of the marines whispered, the words a prayer.
From their new vantage point, they watched the final death of the Citadel of Contagion. It did not explode. It imploded. Like a colossal, diseased body succumbing to its own rot, it sagged, groaned, and collapsed in on itself, sinking into the blighted ground until nothing remained but a vast, swirling pool of grey sludge that was quickly swallowed by the earth.
And then, a new miracle began.
The death of the Daemon Prince had been a decapitation. His very existence was the anchor that chained this world to the Garden of Nurgle. With that anchor severed, reality, grim and unforgiving as it was, began to reassert its dominion.
A wind, the first real wind they had felt on this world, began to blow across the plains. It was a clean, scouring wind that tore at the sickly green clouds above, revealing patches of a dark, unfamiliar sky. The incessant, maddening buzzing of the corpse-flies faded, replaced by the howl of the rising gale.
Across the landscape, the fleshy, pulsating moss withered, turning black and flaking away to reveal the cracked, barren soil beneath. The weeping fungal forests collapsed into piles of desiccated dust. The rivers of filth and pus ceased their sluggish flow, their foul liquid evaporating into a harmless, noxious steam, leaving behind dry, cracked beds of mud.
The psychic pressure that had suffocated their souls was gone, leaving a profound and startling emptiness. The world was not healed. It was dead. But it was a clean, honest death, no longer a part of the unholy, unending cycle of the plague god. Helios Prime was no longer a Daemon World. It was just a planet once more.
Aboard the Obelisk, the bridge crew worked in a state of stunned, reverent silence.
"Lord Inquisitor," a Tech-Priest reported from his sensorium throne, his synthesized voice trembling with awe. "The planetary-scale warp contamination… it's gone. The empyrean resonance has dropped to baseline. The world… it is mundane."
Varrus stared at the main viewscreen, which now showed the once-foul planet as a simple, barren sphere of rock. He had seen worlds lost to Chaos. He had ordered the exterminatus of worlds to prevent them from becoming what Helios Prime had been. He had never, in three millennia of service, seen one brought back.
He looked at Kael, whose face was pale, his composure utterly shattered. "We thought we were testing a sword," Varrus murmured, his voice heavy with the weight of revelation. "We have, in fact, unleashed a new star in a sky that has only known darkness."
A shuttle, its Imperial Aquila sigil gleaming, descended from the Obelisk, landing gracefully beside the rusted, monstrous hulk of the Carrion Triumph. The ramp lowered, and Varrus himself stood there, his usual retinue absent. It was a sign of the most profound respect.
He met Rimuru and the Deathwatch on the ashen plains. He looked not at the Astartes, but directly at Rimuru, and for the first time, the ancient Lord Inquisitor gave a slight, formal bow.
"King Rimuru," he said, his voice devoid of any artifice or manipulation. "You have honored your side of the covenant. A feat deemed impossible by the combined might of the Imperium has been accomplished. The Helios Sector is cleansed. The Imperium is in your debt."
"I am glad we could come to an arrangement that was beneficial for all of us," Rimuru replied with a simple, honest smile.
"I will uphold my end of the bargain," Varrus stated, his gaze unwavering. "The Black Ship Silent Vigil and its cargo will be placed at your disposal. I will personally open a channel to the Eldar of Ulthwé—they will listen to a request from me, however grudgingly. The path to your home will be opened, as I promised."
He paused, his expression turning grim once more. "However. A new complication has arisen. An event of this magnitude… a 'miracle'... cannot be contained. The whispers of your deeds on Ryza were already spreading. The cleansing of an entire star system… this news is now an astropathic firestorm."
He produced a data-slate, its screen glowing with fragmented, desperate, and joyful messages intercepted from across the Segmentum. They spoke of a golden-eyed angel, of a new saint who had purged the unclean with a wave of his hand, of a divine intervention that had answered the prayers of the faithful.
"The Ecclesiarchy, the state church of the Imperium, has heard these whispers," Varrus said, his voice low. "The Adepta Sororitas, their militant arm whom you might know as the Sisters of Battle, are already mobilizing fleets to 'investigate' the source of this divine occurrence."
He looked at Rimuru, his ancient eyes filled with a new, weary apprehension.
"You have faced the soulless machine, the ravenous beast, and the ultimate corruption of the daemon. You have defeated them all." Varrus offered a grim, final warning. "But you are about to face a far more complicated, and perhaps far more dangerous, foe, King Rimuru: the fanatical, unshakeable adoration of Mankind."