Within the tides of the Warp, it was not only Lorgar and Corax who were moving toward the Abyssal rift.
In another, even more desolate and shattered region of the Warp, Leman Russ, the Wolf King, was trekking alone.
His body, covered in old scars, remained towering, and the wild fire in his eyes still burned without end.
He could no longer remember how long he had fought in this land of Chaos. Time had lost all meaning here.
He only knew to wield his weapon, tear apart any daemon that dared approach, and follow the vague instinct within his heart.
Recently, he had keenly sensed something unusual.
The daemons had become... strange.
They no longer charged with the orderly fanaticism unique to Chaos. Instead, they had become more disorderly, more... insane. Some even displayed self-destructive urges or performed meaningless rituals.
At first, Russ had not paid it much mind. The Warp had always been bizarre and ever-changing.
Until he encountered and, with great difficulty, killed a Daemon Lord whose form was grotesquely twisted yet whose power was abnormally formidable.
At the instant he slew it, instead of the exhilaration of victory, countless mad, piercing, malicious whispers stabbed viciously into his mind like tangible needles!
It was not the corruption of Chaos, but a more primal, colder blasphemous voice that sought to completely dissolve all reason.
The Wolf King let out a pained roar. Relying on his unyielding will and Primarch nature, he barely avoided being drowned by that torrent of madness and managed to steady his nearly uncontrolled mind.
That experience put him on guard.
He began observing deliberately and discovered that the aberrant daemons seemed to share traces of a mutation leading back to a single source.
A hunter's instinct had been awakened. The Wolf King no longer