Anchor of Entropy

The fall did not end in shattered bones.

Li Wei felt himself drop into a pile of soft, dry, still-warm ash.

The ash had accumulated thickly, a full several meters deep, resembling a vast, grey ocean.

"Cough, cough, cough..." Li Wei struggled to crawl out of the ash pile, patting the dust from his body.

Yet when he saw clearly what these "ashes" were, his movements froze.

They were neither wood ash nor coal ash.

They were cremated bones. They were the remnants left behind by countless Psykers who had died, been drained dry, or been incinerated due to loss of control over the thousands of years this Black Ship had sailed.

They had been dumped here, filling this enormous abyss.

This was the garbage bin of the Black Ship, and also its graveyard.

Li Wei stepped upon these remnants of souls, producing a dull, rustling sound.

All around was pitch black, with only a faint blue light in the distance.

No guards, no fences.

Because the entities here required no guards by their very nature.

He gripped the single weapon in his hand—the shock baton—and walked toward that speck of blue light.

As he drew closer, he saw the light source clearly. That was an immense throne constructed from brass and black obsidian.

A person sat upon the throne.

Or rather, a human skin.

It was a withered old man, his skin hanging over his skeleton like dried tree bark.

His chest cavity was open, his ribs flared outward like an unlatched birdcage.

And within that hollow chest cavity, there were neither heart nor lungs.

There was a swirling nebula.

Blue and purple lights intertwined within that nebula, flashes of miniature lightning dancing across it from time to time.

This was that "Alpha-level Psyker."

The one who had claimed he could save him.

"You have come..." The sound did not issue from the old man's mouth (his mouth had already been sewn shut), but emanated directly from the vibration of the nebula within that chest cavity.

The voice echoed in Li Wei's mind, carrying an ear-splitting sense of overlap, as though a thousand people were speaking simultaneously.

Li Wei stopped ten meters away.

As a Pariah, he felt a visceral disgust.

The thing before him was a massive, leaking Warp rift.

This old man had died long ago. His flesh was merely a framework, a "doorframe" barely maintaining the rift so it would not expand.

"You are that 'door'?" Li Wei asked coldly. "The teddy bear doll said you wanted to use me."

"Use? Such a vulgar vocabulary." The nebula within the chest cavity accelerated its rotation. "This is... completion."

The old man's withered fingers twitched.

"You see, I am too 'full'."

"The energy of the Warp is endless; it expands within my body, tearing apart my flesh and burning away my soul. I am a balloon about to explode."

"And you... you are 'empty'."

"You are a gap in the universe, a funnel."

"As long as you are stuffed into my body..." The old man's body leaned forward, and the nebula emitted a greedy radiance.

"Your Void will neutralize my overload. We will achieve a perfect balance. The door will stabilize, and I will be able to walk out of this damned cage to become a true god."

Li Wei understood.

This was just like a pressure cooker about to blow, and this old monster wanted to find a pressure relief valve.

And Li Wei was that peerless, human-shaped pressure relief valve of which not a second could be found in the entire galaxy.

"What if I refuse?" Li Wei asked.

"Here, refusal has no meaning."

"The laws of physics are written by me."

The old man raised a single finger.

Boom!

The sea of bone ash beneath Li Wei's feet suddenly boiled.

The ashes of those dead people coalesced into several giant grey palms that clamped fiercely onto Li Wei's ankles.

This was no psychic illusion.

This was telekinesis.

It was pure physical force.

Even if Li Wei were immune to magical damage, he was not immune to having a hundred pounds of bone ash slammed into his face.

"Ugh!" Li Wei was dragged to the ground, sliding rapidly toward the throne.

"Damn it!" Li Wei swung the shock baton, shattering one grey hand, but more grey hands surged forward, binding him like a rice dumpling and hoisting him high into the air.

He was delivered right before the old man.

So close was the distance that he could even feel the terrifying heat radiated by the nebula within that chest cavity—the heat of radiation.

"Come in... Become a part of eternity..." The old man's ribs splayed open like tentacles, preparing to envelop Li Wei inside.

At this exact moment.

Li Wei did not struggle.

He stared at the swirling Warp nebula close at hand.

He suddenly smiled.

"Old thing, you got one thing wrong."

"What?"

"I am a Pariah." Li Wei gazed fixedly at the nebula. "My trait is not 'absorption', it is 'erasure'."

"I am no pressure relief valve."

"I am strong acid."

Li Wei abruptly let go of the shock baton in his hand.

Yet he did not let it drop to the ground.

With all his strength, he drove the baton—that sizzling, fully operational shock baton—deep into the brass throne beneath the old man!

There was a row of complex life-support conduits and psychic suppression runes there.

That was the physical apparatus keeping this "flesh doorframe" from collapsing.

"What are you doing?!" The old man emitted a terrified shriek.

"Since you are a door," Li Wei roared, grabbing that row of conduits shorted out by the baton with both hands and unleashing his Void Field at full power, "then this lord is going to dismantle the doorframe!"

Zzzt—Boom!!!

A triple strike erupted simultaneously:

Physical short circuit: The life-support system was compromised.

Psychic interference: The suppression runes failed under Li Wei's touch.

Void annihilation: The moment Li Wei's hand touched the edge of that nebula, Warp energy and anti-Warp matter underwent a violent annihilation reaction.

"No!! Pain!! Empty!!!"

The old man's screams tore the space apart.

His originally withered flesh began to disintegrate rapidly, melting like ice cream under the sunlight.

Losing the restraint of the "doorframe," the nebula within the chest cavity instantly lost control.

It was no longer a stable rotation.

It collapsed inward.

Hum— A black dot formed upon the old man's chest.

That was a miniature black hole formed after realspace was torn asunder.

"Run!" Li Wei was blown away by the shockwave of the explosion, slamming heavily into the pile of bone ash.

Yet he had no leisure to mind the pain.

That black dot was frantically devouring everything around it—the bone ash, the throne, even the light.

The Black Ship shuddered violently.

Alarms rang out loud and clear: "Warning! Lower deck structural collapse! Gellar Field failure imminent!"

"Initiating emergency jettison sequence! Initiating emergency jettison sequence!"

The machine spirit of this ship (that teddy bear doll) was executing its final self-preservation measure: severing the rotted lower decks, along with the collapsing Warp rift, away from the hull entirely!

Crack—Boom!

A deafening roar of snapping metal sounded overhead.

Li Wei saw the ceiling above split open into a massive fissure, revealing the colorful, madness-filled geometric patterns of the Warp outside.

The sector where he stood detached from the main body of the Black Ship.

Like a stone tossed into the ocean, it was cast away into the raging Warp.

"Finished." Li Wei clutched a fractured conduit, watching the disintegrating world around him.

Without the protection of the Black Ship, a mortal could not survive a single second in the Warp.

Yet at that moment, the collapsing black hole generated a tremendous suction force.

It did not suck Li Wei in.

Instead, because it repelled Li Wei's "Void" attribute, it produced an immense repulsive force.

Much like the repulsion of like poles on a magnet.

Bang!

Li Wei felt as though an invisible giant foot had kicked him fiercely.

His entire body turned into a shooting star, catapulted right off that disintegrating wreckage.

He pierced through that thin layer of realspace foam.

He plummeted into the Warp.

Logically speaking, he should have mutated instantly, gone mad, or been devoured piecemeal by demons.

However, within this ocean composed purely of psychic energy, Li Wei was a drop of oil.

He did not dissolve in water.

The demons saw him.

Those nameless entities cruising through the void, those whales with a thousand eyes, those storms composed of screams.

They all saw this tiny human.

Yet they all gave him a wide berth.

Because he smelled too foul.

Too revolting.

Just like someone in a swimming pool catching sight of a floating mass of toxic matter that continued to diffuse black ink.

Li Wei drifted in the bizarre void.

He had no need to breathe (the Warp required no breathing), nor did he freeze to death.

He merely felt an incomparable loneliness.

The entire world shone, while he alone was dark.

"Is this... the afterlife?" Li Wei watched the splendid spectacle before him that exceeded the limits of human understanding, his consciousness beginning to blur.

Just as he was about to lose consciousness, he saw a fissure appear ahead.

That was no Warp rift.

It was a crack in the real world—much like someone cutting a slit with a knife into the tattered fabric of the Warp, exposing the grey material universe beneath.

A massive gravitational pull emanated from the fissure.

Powerless to resist, Li Wei was sucked inside.

Thud!

Hard textures.

Biting winds.

And... the scent of dust.

Li Wei drew in a sharp breath and coughed violently.

Air. Real, freezing, earth-scented air.

He had survived. He had "leaked" out of the Warp.

Li Wei turned over with difficulty, looking up at the grey, overcast sky.

No stars, no sun.

Only heavy, eternal grey clouds.

He struggled to sit up and glanced all around.

This was a boundless wasteland.

Rusted swords jutted from the earth, piled high with colossal skeletal remains.

Weeping sounds drifted in the wind.

And at the edge of the horizon loomed a soaring black obelisk that pierced the clouds.

At the summit of the obelisk, green flames burned.

"Where is this?" Li Wei picked up a broken sword from the ground and propped his body up to stand.

In the distance, a few staggering figures walked out from the mist.

They wore tattered ancient armor and dragged rusted axes in their hands.

They had no faces.

Only a ball of burning plague-green fire.

Nurgle Walkers?

No, that wasn't right.

Li Wei narrowed his eyes.

Those things didn't carry that rot-laden stench on them.

Only a kind of... dead silence.

He lowered his gaze to look at the ground beneath his feet.

Half-buried in the soil was a shattered stone tablet, carved with a line of ancient script.

Li Wei couldn't read it.

But he recognized that symbol.

It was a black sun.

Li Wei's heart sank heavily.

He knew where this was.

This wasn't the Imperium.

It might not even be within the known maps of the galaxy.

This was a Dead World, or some forgotten alien ancient battlefield.

Or worse.

This was a Necrons Tomb World.