For Freedom!

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Accompanied by the dull thuds of heavy lead shoes—worn by prisoners to restrict their movement and prevent escape—striking the ground, a man who looked to be around thirty, his head and face covered in burn and scald scars, was the first to slowly step down from the orbital train specially used to transport supplies to the Spaceport under escort from fleet soldiers.

Behind him came thousands upon thousands of men and women in prison uniforms, their faces filled with confusion and fear. More than a third bore signs of beatings, Torment, and abuse.

The oldest among them were white-haired and skeletal, as though they might die at any moment. The youngest were perhaps not even ten years old. Dragging their lead shoes was an exhausting struggle for them, and the shaved heads of these children bore prominent brands in human script marking them as heretics.

There was no need to ask. These pitiful wretches sent here as "Soul Currency" were prisoners transported from planetary prisons throughout the vast territory of the Imperium of Man. They were also the most direct manifestation of the tyranny inflicted by the Imperium's ruling class during the ten thousand years since the Emperor had taken his seat upon the Golden Throne and all the Primarchs had vanished.

This was especially true of those arrested by the various agencies under the Inquisition and labeled heretics. Many of them had merely been deceived by cults, or forced to join because their own lives and the lives of their families had been threatened.

Yet after those cults were destroyed, these victims not only received no compensation or resettlement, but were instead regarded as a part that naturally had to be completely eradicated.

In the eyes of the Ecclesiarchy, only this could ensure that the