Thanks to You, You and the Demons Behind You Can Behold the Golden Throne

Father's Eye hung high in the sky.

This satellite was called Formakas, one of Macragge's four moons. Lava periodically burst through its surface, creating the spectacle known as Father's Eye. The people of Macragge believed that the Father of the divine realm was gazing down upon the land, and that on this day, Macragge's Veil was at its thinnest.

Yet Zhou Yun could not quite understand why the divination had instructed him to enter his new body at one in the morning, when Father's Eye reached its highest point. Was there some Numerological significance to it?

As he pondered, Zhou Yun calmed himself. He took several deep breaths and slowly began returning his will to the Golden Throne...

"Begin."

The blind witch spoke in a hoarse, hollow voice. Aphrodisiac mist, like white snakes, coiled around her and wound itself around the necks of the sixty-six believers.

Sakofi Paulus's heart pounded fiercely. The arousing smoke opened every pore on her body. Her expression was dazed, her mouth hanging open as she breathed like a beast.

She was nervous, yet also somewhat expectant of what would happen next. She would receive true joy and be welcomed into the courtyard of the God of First Cry... That was what her father and sisters had told her. Her second sister had entered the God of First Cry's banquet before her.

But she also knew what she was about to undergo. She would shed her mortal flesh and ascend in spirit to the courtyard—or rather... die.

Whenever she thought of that, Sakofi felt ashamed. She was still afraid, still frightened, still worried. It was proof that her faith was not devout enough.

Or perhaps she was still reluctant to let go of worldly pleasures.

She liked the way her father used to tell her stories beside the warm stove, even though he had not done so in a long time. These days, he preferred inflicting pain and receiving it.

Her eldest and second sisters seemed to have forgotten those days as well. Compared to stories, they now preferred the sounds of pained moans, whether from their own mouths or someone else's.

She also somewhat missed her classmate Tita. She was a very interesting person, always suddenly doing something neurotic that startled people, only to leave them pleasantly surprised.

And Tita's uncle... Recently, that grammar professor seemed to have become more and more charming. Sakofi was not very resistant to mature men like him.

Sakofi did not actually like pain very much either. She did not understand why her sisters could enjoy it. She could not... She only gritted her teeth and endured because she did not want to disappoint her father.

She realized she did not like those extreme thrills or those exaggerated indulgences either. She seemed to prefer a quiet romance with a mature, steady man on a warm afternoon. She simply lacked the courage to tell her father that.

She still remembered how her mother had looked before she died. Highly concentrated drugs had taken her life, and those vacant eyes, nearly bulging from their sockets, had stared right at Sakofi... Sakofi was afraid. She realized that she truly still feared death, feared all of this. She could no longer deceive herself.

But she had no more chances.

Pale mist tightened around her neck. A fierce, terrifying suffocating sensation washed over her. Her eyes widened. She was flying, she was rising, she was...

Sakofi let out a pained wail. She saw that the other sixty-five people had also been strangled by the smoke and suspended in midair, like that broken wooden puppet her father had carved himself.

The blind witch spread her arms on the stage. A sticky, nauseating shrieking song, as though she were vomiting out her soul, poured from her throat. Wild tones and violent rhythms crashed directly into Kofina's body.

Her body twisted in grotesque poses. Her bones snapped, her blood vessels burst from her body, and the notes drove her senses to unbearable sensitivity.

Every single one of the devotees writhed to the music, dancing a fervent aerial ballet. The sounds of their breaking bones merged into the melody, becoming the instruments that played this composition.

Sakofi saw it—the courtyard, the sixfold courtyards surrounding the bedchamber of the God of First Cry. Eternal, cruel revelries were being held within them, and Sakofi's soul was ascending into one of them.

She saw a pitiful woman suffering cruel punishment, every nerve pulled from her body and made into violin strings.

That woman looked exactly like the statue in Semuneta Temple. She gazed at Sakofi with sorrow, pain, and pity in her eyes...

A bull-headed monster seized Sakofi's soul. Mocking laughter flooded her ears as the creature ridiculed Sakofi's foolishness. Pain beyond the limits of sensation began pouring into her body.

The blind witch released a shrill cry. The dazzling storm raised by the sacrifice of sixty-six souls lifted her own soul into the heavens.

This sacrifice would allow her gifts to grow, letting her advance to a higher level and receive more blessings from the God of First Cry.

The shape of her soul began to change. In the Warp, she became a shrieking witch, six serpents of pure gold burning at her side. Carrying boundless pain, she lunged toward her target. She was going to kill the pitiful wizard called Zhou Yun. Following the scent through the Warp, she sought Zhou Yun's direction...

Then she saw it.

She saw Zhou Yun rising as well. His will hung in the Sea of Souls, staring at the blind witch with eyes burning with psychic fire. Astonishingly, that psychic energy was gold.

Zhou Yun looked at the blind witch. He noticed the boundless pain coiling around her and the extreme emotions rising from the sacrifice of the sixty-six offerings. He saw the scene of the ritual.

The blind witch felt Zhou Yun's emotions. They were... disgust and contempt...

Contempt directed at the blind witch... disgust directed at the sacrifice...

Sixty-six people sacrificed, sixty-six streams of agony.

And all this was just to pull your soul out of your own body and throw it at me like a brick?

Did you ever think this was dangerous? What if your soul couldn't beat me? Or what if some Warp turbulence scattered your soul?

Did you consider outsourcing it to a Warp entity? Fuck, you've believed in Slaanesh for this long and you don't even know any daemons? Do you seriously have no connections at all?

Then, if nothing else, you could have just projected pure psychic energy!

Why did you throw out your own soul too? Why?

Fuck, how is this any different from ripping out your own heart in a fistfight and throwing it at someone?

Zhou Yun's voice rang beside the blind witch's ear.

There was no mockery in that voice, only pure incomprehension.

But the blind witch snapped. She had endured boundless pain and accepted countless tortures. Under the blessings of the God of First Cry, she had lost an unknown amount of life force and could only sustain herself by draining the lives of young girls.

Yet the gifts she had gained through such sacrifice, even bolstered by sixty-six offerings, were no different from a clown in Zhou Yun's eyes.

Screaming, she lunged at Zhou Yun—but before she could touch him, she saw it.

She saw what stood behind Zhou Yun.

The Golden Throne towering into the clouds, and the mummified Emperor seated upon it.

Ordinarily, neither you nor the demons behind you have the right to behold the Golden Throne at your level.

But today, thanks to you, you and the demons behind you can behold the Golden Throne.

Zhou Yun's voice descended from the Golden Throne and entered the blind witch's ears.

Then she began to burn.