Terra, M41.999, on the eve of the Age of Unrelenting
Terra calendar M41.999, on the eve of the Age of Indomitable.
The inhabitants of the Hive Seven, "Eternal Perseverance," had never seen such a dawn.
The sky was no longer its usual rusty dark red, but had turned into a nauseating purplish-black, as if the universe had been ripped open with a festering wound.
The air was thick with the smell of rust and rotting flowers, and every breath burned my lungs.
In the lower levels of the Hive City, miner Hassan pushed open the broken door of his shack and looked up at the unusual sky.
He had been working in the deepest mine of the Hive Seven for forty-two years, working eighteen hours a day, breathing air filled with heavy metal dust, and his lungs had long since become fibrotic.
But the air today is different—it's heavy and viscous, like liquid fear.
"Daddy..." His eight-year-old daughter tugged at his overalls, pointed to the sky, and said, "The stars are bleeding."
Hassan squinted his blurry eyes.
Indeed, the starlight that pierced through the polluted clouds left a blood-red trail.
The distant wail of the city's Hive City could be heard, but the sound was distorted and deformed, sometimes sharp like a banshee's wail, sometimes deep like a giant beast's panting.
"Go back inside and lock the door."
Hassan's voice was hoarse as he pushed his daughter into the house, but he stood still.
He saw something in the sky breaking through the clouds.
As a resident of Holy Terra, even if he was at the very bottom of the hierarchy, his knowledge far surpassed that of many Planetary Governor regions.
He recognized that it was not the familiar outline of the Imperium warships; those creations should be sacred creatures with eagle wing insignia and sharp, angular features.
The one above their heads was clearly not that; rather, it was some kind of twisted, ominous presence.
Its metal hull is covered with spikes and barbs, and the bow is carved with a huge skull statue with a gaping jaw and an inextinguishable flame burning in its eye sockets.
"The Emperor..."
Hassan drew the Aquila on his chest.
The warship did not follow any landing trajectory.
Like a falling star, or a ferocious beast pouncing on its prey, it crashed straight into the boundary between the upper-class aristocratic district and the middle-class industrial district of the Hive City.
The shock wave arrives before the sound.
Hassan felt the ground beneath his feet undulate like ocean waves, and the surrounding shacks were being overturned like pieces of paper.
Then came the sound, a deafening roar that seemed to tear at the soul, as if the whole world was screaming.
A dust cloud rose up, forming a mushroom cloud that reached straight into the sky.
But beyond this physical destruction, Hassan saw something even more terrifying:
An unnatural red light flickered within the dust, the air began to distort, and reality itself seemed to be being torn apart by some indescribable force.
He should have run away.
Everyone struggling to survive at the bottom of the Hive City instinctively knows: what happens above has nothing to do with you; when disaster strikes, hide deep inside and wait for it all to end.
But something caught his attention—perhaps curiosity, or perhaps a long-suppressed desire to change the status quo.
Hassan began running towards the point of impact.
The impact crater is over one kilometer in diameter, and the metal and rock at its edges have melted into a boiling lava lake.
But what is truly horrifying is that in the middle of that lake, the wreckage of a warship stands, like a newly born evil temple.
On its outer shell, blasphemous runes were writhing and rearranging themselves, emitting a dark red glow.
Hassan hid behind a half-collapsed ventilation tower and witnessed the arrival of hell.
First, there was the sound—heavy, rhythmic, like the footsteps of a giant's heartbeat.
A figure emerged from the warship's split belly.
He was taller than anyone Hassan had ever seen, even taller than the Adeptus Astartes who occasionally visited Hive City.
Three meters? Four meters?
The armor was a dark red, the color of dried blood, with the shoulder armor sculpted into a shape of protruding spikes, and the breastplate etched with a blasphemous emblem composed of a skull and Eight-Pointed Star.
He wasn't wearing a helmet, but his exposed face was more terrifying than any helmet could conceal.
It was an inhuman face, with skin like charred leather, eyes burning with pure rage, and curved goat horns growing from its forehead.
The red-armored giant held a massive axe with serrated blades, and at the end of the handle was a fresh, still-dripping human head.
"Blood for the Blood God!" The giant's roar shook the air. "Skulls for the Skull Throne!"
He moved.
It was faster than Hassan could comprehend; one moment it was in the center of the impact crater a hundred meters away, and the next it was in front of the nearest group of Hive City guards.
These guards, dressed in rudimentary armor and carrying Lasgun, are the security forces of the Hive Seven City. Their primary tasks are suppressing worker riots and eliminating mutants.
They had never encountered such an existence before.
A flash of axe light.
When the first head flew off, blood spurted from its neck three meters high.
The second, the third... The giant's movements were precise and efficient, without a single wasted moment.
He wasn't simply killing; he was... collecting.
After each kill, he would use his left hand to precisely catch the flying head and then pile them up at his feet.
Behind that giant were many other red giants.
Hassan knew they were some kind of Superman warriors, transplanted with the blood of the Holy Primarch, granting them superhuman powers.
And these things in front of us are clearly the legendary rebel warriors.
Ten thousand years later, the Primarch is as ethereal to mortals as Prometheus in mythology.
The guard's laser beam struck the red-armored figure, leaving only faint scorch marks.
He easily deflected the Plasma Gun's shot with the axe blade.
The barrage of heavy logging gun fire caused him to pause for a moment; Mars sparked against his armor, leaving shallow dents, and then the giant laughed.
That was genuine, joyful laughter.
The giant charged toward the lumberjack position, his axe flashing, slicing him and his weapon in two.
He began indiscriminate killing: fleeing civilians, guards who tried to resist, hiding workers, and even wounded people crawling out of the rubble.
No one could escape him; he was too fast, his senses too sharp, as if he could smell fear itself.
Hassan witnessed a mother holding her baby trying to climb into a drainpipe.
The giant was thirty meters away, with his back to her.
But just as she was about to succeed, the giant, without turning his head, threw his giant axe backhand.
The axe spun across half the square, precisely cleaving the mother's back, the blade stopping just a finger's width in front of the baby.
Then the giant yanked the chain connecting the axe handle, and the weapon flew back into his hand. The baby's cries were particularly piercing in the deathly silence.
"Not enough!"
The giant roared.
By this time, a small mountain had been piled up at his feet, containing at least a thousand heads, men, women, and children, their expressions frozen in final terror.
He began to carefully arrange the heads.
It is not a random stacking, but according to a kind of blasphemous geometry: the outermost layer is adult males, the innermost layer is women, the core is children, and at the very top is the head of a Hive City judge.
Hassan recognized the fat face; just three days earlier, this judge had sentenced twelve workers to death for stealing food.
The Skull Throne is beginning to take shape.