Chapter Summaries

Isabella and the nobles revealed themselves as genestealer hybrids and attacked the banquet hall. Li Wei and Aurelia escaped the Crown of Atalos after discovering the uprising had seized the family guards, leaving House Atalos and the upper hive in chaos.

• Isabella transformed into a genestealer hybrid, and other nobles and officials revealed their alien forms and began slaughtering guests.
• Aurelia fought the hybrids while Li Wei drew Isabella close and used his pariah aura to disrupt her connection to the broodmind, allowing Aurelia to kill her.
• Li Wei and Aurelia discovered that the family guards had joined the uprising and saw Valerius struggle against controlling the Governor at the throne.
• Aurelia used a concussion grenade to escape with Li Wei through a window, and they fell toward the terrace garden as the Genestealer Uprising began.

Li Wei and Aurelia escaped the burning Crown of Atalos banquet hall by fleeing through the Sky Garden, where Li Wei discovered he could disrupt the hybrids’ coordination with his void field. After their shuttle was destroyed, they escaped down a waste-disposal pipeline into the corpsestarch factory, where Aurelia vowed to use her control of the sewers against the monsters.

• Li Wei and Aurelia landed in the Sky Garden and ran east as hybrid acolytes crawled down the Crown of Atalos’s outer wall after them.
• Li Wei used his void field to disrupt a leaping hybrid’s balance, causing it to crash into a statue, while Aurelia shot another pursuer.
• A rocket destroyed Aurelia’s private shuttle, leaving the pair trapped between the abyss and the encircling hybrids.
• Aurelia led Li Wei into a maintenance shed and opened a gravity pipeline; they jumped down it to escape the hybrids.
• Li Wei and Aurelia landed in a blood-filled reservoir at the corpsestarch factory, where Aurelia declared House Atalos finished and vowed to turn the city’s sewers against the monsters.

Li Wei used his Pariah aura to pacify the Rampant Servitors in Aurelia’s hidden armory, making himself their Shepherd. He and Aurelia led the silent army out of the sewers to attack the rebels and Genestealers in Atalos Hive City.

• Aurelia revealed her hidden chamber of Rampant Servitors and explained that her control device would only work for ten minutes.
• When an Ogryn Servitor broke free and charged, Li Wei removed his gas mask and used his Void Field to make it kneel.
• Li Wei’s presence silenced the other Servitors, and he told Aurelia they would stay calm as long as he led them.
• Li Wei equipped himself with a Chainsword and Hellgun, then set out with Aurelia to fight the enemy.
• Half an hour later, Li Wei led hundreds of Servitors from the drainage outlets into the noble district, where they tore apart rebel guards and hybrid xenos.

Li Wei and Aurelia escaped into the upper noble district and planned to seize the Hive City Broadcasting Center to expose Valorian’s conspiracy and the Genestealer infection list. As Rampant Servitors stormed the corridor, a Genestealer Cult Psyker Overseer emerged, and Li Wei charged it head-on.

• Aurelia had given Li Wei the Inquisition Data-slate, trusting his Pariah field to conceal it from detection.
• Li Wei and Aurelia decided to take the nearby Broadcasting Center and broadcast the Data-slate’s evidence across the Hive City.
• Li Wei unleashed the Rampant Servitors on the traitorous Guardsmen guarding the corridor, and the horde overwhelmed them.
• A Genestealer Cult Psyker Overseer appeared outside the Broadcasting Center and struck Aurelia and nearby Servitors with psychic power.
• Li Wei told Aurelia to cover her ears, drew his Chainsword, and charged the Psyker Overseer through its purple lightning.

Li Wei killed the Genestealer psyker, then broadcast recordings of the nobles’ mutations across Atalos Hive City and urged its people to rise up. As the city descended into chaos, he and Aurelia planned to steal the governor’s yacht and escape.

• Li Wei killed the Genestealer psyker and cleared the Hive City Broadcasting Center with Aurelia.
• Li Wei used a recording of the banquet massacre to expose the nobles as Genestealers and incite Atalos’s citizens to fight.
• Workers and gangs rose up, the Genestealer cult was exposed, and riots and fires spread through the hive city.
• Li Wei told Aurelia they would use the chaos to reach the starport and steal the governor’s private yacht.

A psychic broadcast drove Atalos Hive City into mass madness, while Li Wei remained unaffected because he was a Pariah. He and Aurelia reached the landing pad, where they discovered Valorian had stayed behind as a colossal entity appeared in the sky and trapped them inside its stomach.

• The psychic broadcast drove Aurelia and the Rampant Servitors into madness and suicide, but Li Wei resisted its effects as a Pariah.
• Li Wei slapped Aurelia back to clarity, and they crossed the corpse-filled corridors while the city’s inhabitants acted out horrifying hallucinations.
• At the blast door, Valerius told Aurelia that their father had left with the god, and Li Wei shot him dead.
• Li Wei and Aurelia found the landing pad empty of the governor’s Private Yacht, with Valorian standing at its edge.
• Valorian revealed that a colossal purple-eyed entity had appeared in the sky and declared that Atalos Hive City was already inside its stomach.

Li Wei and Aurelia escaped the collapsing landing pad by entering the corrupted Golden Eagle, where Governor Tiberius revealed the ship was taking them underground. As the ship plunged toward the hive city’s depths, Li Wei’s Inquisition Data-slate activated an Exterminatus countdown, revealing that it was an orbital strike beacon.

• Li Wei’s laser curved around Valorian, who dissolved into purple spores as reality began to warp around the landing pad.
• The Golden Eagle opened its hatch, and Li Wei and Aurelia were pulled aboard when the landing pad broke apart.
• Inside the ship, Li Wei and Aurelia encountered grotesque illusions and faceless crew members who announced that the destination was the digestion pool.
• Li Wei found Governor Tiberius fused into the cockpit and learned that the Golden Eagle was carrying them toward the geothermal depths of Atalos Hive City.
• Li Wei’s Inquisition Data-slate activated and displayed a fifteen-minute countdown to a Vortex Torpedo impact, revealing it was a targeting beacon for Exterminatus.

Li Wei and Aurelia escaped the living Golden Eagle and fought their way toward an updraft in the alien hatchery as the Inquisition's Vortex Torpedo closed in. They rode the vent upward just as the torpedo struck, leaving their fate uncertain.

• Li Wei and Aurelia discovered the Golden Eagle had descended into a vast flesh cavern filled with eggs and a pulsing biological spire.
• Li Wei drove the Exterminatus beacon into Governor Tiberius, provoking the living ship to convulse and eject them through its rear opening.
• Li Wei and Aurelia ran toward an updraft beneath the spire while the approaching Vortex Torpedo's countdown neared zero.
• Valorian manifested a giant psychic hand to block their escape, but Li Wei destroyed it with an explosive Hellgun blast empowered by his Void Field.
• Li Wei and Aurelia leaped into the biological vent and were carried upward as the Vortex Torpedo struck the cavern.

As Atalos Prime broke apart, Li Wei and Aurelia reached the Hive City’s summit and encountered Ultramarines sent to purge the survivors. Aurelia secured Li Wei a place aboard their Thunderhawk, but the Imperium took him prisoner as the gunship escaped the doomed planet.

• Li Wei and Aurelia landed atop Atalos Hive City as the planet’s core destruction caused the world to collapse beneath an Imperial Navy blockade.
• More than a dozen Ultramarines arrived in drop pods and killed the surviving Genestealers on the platform.
• The sergeant identified Aurelia as the planetary governor’s daughter and ordered her to board a Thunderhawk for questioning by the Inquisitor.
• Aurelia insisted that Li Wei be taken with her, and the sergeant agreed to let him board under restraint for assessment as a Pariah.
• The Ultramarines locked Li Wei in an isolation cage, and the Thunderhawk escaped into space as Atalos Prime broke apart.

Li Wei survived a Warp entity’s attack by using his Pariah nature to drive it away. An Alpha-level Psyker then contacted him, claiming someone had deliberately shut off the Gellar Field and inviting him to the lowest deck for a way to survive.

• Li Wei endured the Black Ship Angel of Death’s Warp jump while the imprisoned Psykers screamed around him.
• A Warp entity broke into the corridor and attacked the prisoner next door, then tried to force its way into Li Wei’s cell.
• Li Wei pressed his emptiness against the door and drove the entity away.
• An Alpha-level Psyker used a dead servitor’s intercom to tell Li Wei that someone had deliberately shut off the Gellar Field.
• The Psyker invited Li Wei to meet him in the containment block on the lowest deck, promising a way to survive.

As the Gellar Field faltered and Warp energy disrupted the ship’s security systems, Li Wei used his Void Field to open his cell. He armed himself with a Shock Baton and headed toward the lowest detention block to find the Alpha-level Psyker who had sabotaged the field.

• Li Wei used his Void Field to short-circuit the unstable electronic lock and escape his cell.
• He emerged into a corridor filled with blood, corpses, and wreckage.
• Li Wei picked up a guard’s Shock Baton and tested its electric charge.
• Following the servitor’s hint, Li Wei headed for the lowest detention block to find the Alpha-level Psyker.

Li Wei escaped a Warp Labyrinth aboard the Black Ship and fell into its Psyker Reactor Shaft, where the ship’s Machine Spirit revealed that someone had lured him there to use his emptiness as a key. The flesh web broke beneath him, sending him plunging toward the opened door and the Alpha-level monster below.

• Li Wei saw through the Warp Labyrinth’s false corridor and crawled through a ventilation shaft toward the D-5 Special Containment Level.
• He found five Sisters of Silence transformed into salt and surrounded by Hollow Clothes, then followed a mysterious voice’s warning to dive into a hazardous-waste chute.
• Li Wei landed on a web made of human bodies inside the Black Ship’s core Psyker Reactor Shaft.
• The ship’s Machine Spirit, speaking through a Teddy Bear held by a blind boy, revealed that the voice had tricked Li Wei into becoming a key to the door below.
• A black shockwave shook the shaft, the flesh web snapped, and Li Wei fell toward the opened door.

Li Wei destroyed the Alpha-level Psyker’s life-support throne, triggering a collapse that severed the Black Ship’s lower deck and threw him into the Warp. He emerged on a bleak world marked by a black sun and a towering obelisk, realizing it might be a Necron Tomb World.

• Li Wei confronted the Alpha-level Psyker, who tried to use Li Wei’s Pariah nature to stabilize the Warp rift and escape his prison.
• The Alpha-level Psyker bound Li Wei with ash and dragged him toward the throne, but Li Wei shorted out its life-support system and disrupted its suppression runes with his Shock Baton and Void Field.
• The old man disintegrated, and the unstable Warp rift collapsed into a miniature black hole that began consuming the lower deck.
• The Black Ship severed the collapsing deck, and the black hole’s repulsive force flung Li Wei into the Warp, where he drifted unharmed until a rift pulled him into realspace.
• Li Wei landed in a gray wasteland among rusted weapons, enormous skeletons, and faceless figures, then recognized a black sun carved on a stone tablet and suspected he was on a Necron Tomb World.

After waking in a gray wasteland, Li Wei scavenged water and supplies from a dead Imperial expedition and discovered that a Necron pulse had killed the camp and destroyed its weapons. With hundreds of scarabs pursuing him and another pulse due in five minutes, he ran toward the Black Monolith’s Silent Zone as his only chance to survive.

• Li Wei searched a ruined Imperial camp and found a canteen, purification tablets, and tasteless nutrient blocks among the mummified dead.
• He scavenged a thick cold-weather cloak and found that every weapon had overheated and self-destructed at once, suggesting a deadly pulse had struck the camp.
• A Canoptek Scarab disintegrated a corpse but failed to detect Li Wei, whose pariah nature made him register as background noise.
• Li Wei grabbed a still-active Imperial auspex, alerting the scarab and bringing hundreds more scarabs out of the ruins to chase him.
• The auspex revealed that the camp lay on a tomb world, the next Stasis Pulse would erupt in five minutes, and the Black Monolith’s Silent Zone offered the only shelter.
• Li Wei turned toward the Black Monolith and charged for the Silent Zone with the scarab swarm close behind.

Li Wei escaped the stasis pulse by reaching a Necron tomb, where he met Elena, a stranded Hospitaller who recoiled from his soulless nature but shared her food. Their fragile refuge ended when a Necron Lord awakened, and Li Wei stood between it and Elena.

• Li Wei outran the scarab swarm and reached the obelisk just as a stasis pulse swept across the badlands.
• Inside the tomb, Li Wei found Elena, a Hospitaller medical officer who had survived there for three days.
• Elena identified Li Wei as a Soulless but let him shelter near her camp and shared a cup of hot soup.
• A Necron Lord rose from a platform in the hall and declared that it would purge the intruders.
• Li Wei picked up his broken sword, stepped in front of Elena, and challenged the Necron Lord while unleashing his void field.

Li Wei and Elena hid from a Necron Lord inside a cramped stasis crypt, where Li Wei’s Void Field concealed them from its scan. After the Lord left, they emerged and prepared to enter the tomb’s core, with Elena’s feelings toward Li Wei growing more complicated.

• The Necron Lord attacked Li Wei and Elena, forcing Li Wei to carry her toward the stasis crypts.
• Li Wei shoved Elena into a half-open crypt and squeezed inside with her, closing the door as the Necron Lord searched nearby.
• The Lord’s scan detected no sign of life because Li Wei’s Void Field masked Elena, and it eventually left the hall.
• Li Wei teased Elena about her racing heartbeat, then let her out of the crypt and told her the Lord had opened the way to the core.
• Elena fixed her torn robe and followed Li Wei toward the tomb’s depths, no longer looking at him with pure disgust.

Li Wei and Sister Elena descended into the Tomb World to find its control room and stop the accelerating Stasis Pulse, where they discovered Archmagos Kilgrave had been turned into a living translator. The Tomb Technician seized Elena and forced Li Wei into a Soul Stripping Chamber, leaving his fate uncertain as green lightning struck him.

• Li Wei and Elena went underground, hoping to reach the control room and find Archmagos Kilgrave alive.
• Li Wei used his Void Field to disrupt the turning gears, helping himself and Elena cross the deadly mechanism-filled abyss.
• Li Wei and Elena found Kilgrave wired into a Necron console, and the Tomb Technician used his body to speak to them.
• The controlled Kilgrave grabbed Elena, and the Tomb Technician threatened to kill her unless Li Wei entered the Soul Stripping Chamber.
• Li Wei entered the chamber and challenged the Tomb Technician to use its full power; green lightning struck him as the cage closed.

Li Wei and Sister Elena escaped the tomb after Li Wei’s Void Field crashed the Tomb Technician, while Archmagos Kilgrave sacrificed himself to help them flee. They arrived in a desert beneath a Necron soul-severing field, where Elena began losing her sense of self but Li Wei felt strangely at home.

• Li Wei’s Void Field turned the Tomb Technician’s energy attack back on the control console, crashing the AI node and freeing him from the cage.
• Elena found Archmagos Kilgrave barely alive, and he revealed a Phase Transmitter and stayed behind to hold back the tomb’s security system.
• Li Wei took Elena and used a Phase Transfer Orb to escape as Kilgrave was overrun by Scarabs.
• Li Wei and Elena landed in a white desert beneath a Necron Dead Space of Exorcism node, and Li Wei realized the planet was designed to sever souls from the Warp.
• Elena began losing her faith and sense of identity within the field, while Li Wei felt unusually comfortable.

Li Wei and Elena entered a dead zone that stripped away emotions and souls, leaving Elena nearly catatonic and the town’s residents as mechanical shells. When the shells targeted Elena as a source of noise, Li Wei hid her soul’s presence by covering her with his blood, allowing them to escape notice.

• Li Wei found Elena incapacitated by the Dead Space of Exorcism and jolted her back to awareness by slapping her.
• Li Wei led Elena into an Imperial mining settlement, where they encountered residents mindlessly repeating their work.
• A broadcast signal caused the hollow residents to identify Elena as a noise source and converge on her.
• Li Wei smeared his blood over Elena, using his pariah trait to mask her soul from the residents.
• The residents lost track of Elena and returned to work, and Li Wei told her he would need to reapply the blood every two hours.

Li Wei and Elena boarded a Necron transport barge with thousands of hollowed-out people, hoping it would take them to the inverted pyramid and the core of the Dead Space of Exorcism. As the ship approached the pyramid, Li Wei began testing the energy barrier imprisoning him and spotted something organic writhing in a mist-filled crater beneath the structure.

• Li Wei and Elena joined the silent crowd being collected by the Necron transport barge, and Li Wei explained that they needed to reach the inverted pyramid to shut down the field.
• Li Wei and Elena passed the ship's soul scan and were forced into separate metal compartments among thousands of human captives.
• The barge flew toward the inverted pyramid while Li Wei quietly tested whether his sweat could damage the living-metal barrier.
• Li Wei saw black mist and a huge writhing shape in the crater beneath the pyramid and wondered what the Necrons were using the field for.