Night hung low, and a bitter wind swept through the ruined wasteland. Blood stained the fallen brick and stone, and profane symbols had been marked into the ground. The city looked as though someone had plowed its surface with artillery fire. Most of its buildings had been destroyed, and the few that remained had been carved all over with the marks of Chaos.
The Astartes of the Raven Guard Chapter, clad in Walking Titans, patrolled the ruins warily back and forth. Not far from them, the Black Towers that had just been deployed were steadily and gradually driving out the influence of Chaos. The humming fields operated without cease. Perhaps in one year, perhaps in two, the corruption would be driven out sooner or later.
In the sky, a faintly visible Giant Shadow radiated a tremendous blue glow, reshaping the planet's polluted atmosphere. The Vengeance blocked the sunlight this star system should have received, but it also brought another kind of light.
Yet before Konrad Curze knelt a man who had lost his eyes, tongue, nose, and lips.
Do not misunderstand. This was not his "work."
The Lord of Night had indeed not yet abandoned the brutal interrogation methods he had mastered. Some things had to exist, and there was no need to grant so-called human rights to traitors.
The qualifications for being human had long since been cast aside by the traitors' own hands. If he could, Curze would have been very willing to apply, one by one, every method he had learned over his long life to them.
But he would never again lay such a cruel hand upon the innocent.
This man was the sector governor of the Pirstan system. Because he refused to surrender to the traitors and Chaos, the Chaos Traitors had subjected him to