Chapter Summaries

Li Wei and Elena were sent down a Necron assembly line that fed human souls to a captive C'tan Shard, but they escaped into a waste chute by making themselves appear lifeless. The C'tan recognized Li Wei as a key, and Li Wei planned to reach the machinery powering its prison.

• Li Wei and Elena were carried with thousands of Hollow Shells toward an abyss where a Necron device drained their souls and turned their bodies to ash.
• Li Wei used his Soulless Vision to identify a chained C'tan Shard in the abyss, which the Necrons were exploiting as a source of power.
• Li Wei suppressed Elena's vital signs with his Void Field so the sorting machinery would classify them as corpses and throw them into a waste chute.
• As they were tossed aside, the C'tan Shard addressed Li Wei with the concept of entropy and called him the key it had awaited.
• Li Wei and Elena emerged in a garbage dump, where Li Wei spotted a damaged maintenance door and decided to pull the C'tan's power plug.

Li Wei and Elena crossed the Necron pyramid’s maintenance shaft and reached a control room containing a captive C’tan fragment. Li Wei freed it to clear a path toward the core, and he and Elena followed as Necron defenses began to awaken.

• Li Wei guided Elena through a corpse dump and a Blackstone conduit, suppressing the psychic whispers that began to torment her.
• They found a shaft filled with cages holding frozen moments and phenomena, then crossed its energy pipes while evading Crypt Wraiths.
• Li Wei and Elena entered a control room where a C’tan thought-tentacle was imprisoned as the power source for a Tesseract Labyrinth.
• Li Wei realized the fragment would head toward its main body and destroy obstacles along the way, then burned out the force-field generator to free it.
• The C’tan Tentacle smashed through the control room wall toward the core, and Li Wei told Elena to follow it as their vanguard.

Li Wei overloaded the Necron system with the data it forced into his mind, escaped the collapsing tomb with Elena, and watched an Inquisition warship drive off the C'tan before targeting the survivors. As a Vortex Torpedo struck, a strange portal seized Li Wei and Elena and pulled them to an unknown destination.

• Li Wei charged into the time loop, endured the Necron Technician's forced data transfer, and caused its system to crash.
• Li Wei gained knowledge of the Necrons and the C'tan as the Nightbringer derivative shattered the Hypercube and the tomb began to collapse.
• Li Wei dragged Elena out of the ruins while the powerless Necron Warriors fell apart around them.
• An Inquisition warship bombarded the C'tan, which escaped, then launched a Vortex Torpedo to purge the Tomb World.
• A dark green portal opened and a mechanical claw dragged Li Wei and Elena away just before the torpedo struck.

Li Wei survived the destruction of the planet but was captured by Archmagos Axis aboard the Forge of Vashtorr, where the Dark Mechanicum sought to exploit his Pariah nature and Necron knowledge. Imprisoned with the captured Iron Hands Sergeant Atticus while Elena remained in Axis’s custody, Li Wei began planning to sabotage the ship.

• Li Wei sealed the overwhelming Necron data inside his mind and awoke in Axis’s corrupted factory, where Axis identified him as a Pariah and questioned him about the Necron tomb.
• Li Wei pretended to know nothing, then claimed his presence had disrupted the tomb; Axis stopped the planned dissection and ordered him taken to Sector D-9 while keeping Elena for experiments.
• As Li Wei was dragged away, he found knowledge of a Necron countermeasure called Waste Code and resolved to wait for a chance to use it against the ship.
• Li Wei was thrown into a prison pen, where he met Atticus, a captured former Sergeant of the Iron Hands, and told him that he made soul-bearing people uncomfortable.
• Unable to sleep, Li Wei struggled to control the Necron knowledge flooding his mind and decided he had to stay alive, free Elena, and destroy Axis’s ship.

Li Wei used his Necron knowledge and Atticus’s strength to sabotage a crane and rescue Elena from Tech-Priest Dominus Axis. The three escaped into the ship’s sewers, where Li Wei discovered a C'tan Shard or something similar powered the Chaos warship.

• Li Wei told Atticus he could exploit the cell door’s faulty wiring, and Atticus revealed that Li Wei’s presence silenced the ship’s Warp influence.
• Skitarii forced Li Wei, Atticus, and other prisoners to work in a furnace hall, where Li Wei secretly gathered scrap parts while Atticus shielded him.
• Tech-Priest Dominus Axis lowered Elena toward a furnace to use her pain as fuel, so Li Wei planned to sabotage the crane with Atticus.
• Atticus smashed an exhaust pipe with an armor plate, and Li Wei ignited the escaping gas, causing an explosion that dropped Elena’s cage onto a cooling platform.
• Li Wei rescued Elena, and Atticus carried them through Skitarii fire into a sewer as Axis pursued them.
• Li Wei’s Necron database detected a C'tan Shard or something similar in the ship’s core, revealing its power source.

Li Wei, Atticus, and the unconscious Elena crossed the corrupted lower decks of the Pain, fighting their way toward Axis’s laboratory. They reached the central waste-disposal platform and its main power conduit, leaving them poised to climb toward the laboratory.

• Li Wei and Atticus assessed their injuries in the ship’s lower sector, then followed the energy flow deeper while Li Wei carried the unconscious Elena.
• Atticus silently killed a mutated servitor with Li Wei’s broken sword after Li Wei identified its weakness.
• Li Wei and Atticus used a suspended tank wreck to cross the acid pool, where Li Wei’s Void Deterrence frightened off the tentacled creature attacking them.
• The three landed on the central island beside the energy conduit that led up toward Axis’s laboratory.

Li Wei, Atticus, and Elena reached the core laboratory and discovered the Dark Mechanicum was torturing a C’tan Shard to power its Demon Engine. Li Wei joined forces with the shard to stop the machine, and his Void Collapse swallowed the core chamber.

• Li Wei, Atticus, and Elena climbed the conduit into the core laboratory, where they found a C’tan Shard chained inside the Demon Engine Core.
• The C’tan Shard asked Li Wei to help it turn the warship into its body, while Archmagos Axis fed captured Psykers into the machine to contaminate it with Warp energy.
• Li Wei identified the suppression field generator as the machine’s weakness and planned to reach it with his broken Living Metal sword.
• Atticus charged the Skitarii to clear a path for Li Wei, but Axis struck him down and wounded Elena with a Melta Ray.
• Li Wei threw the broken sword to the C’tan Shard, which used its control over gravity to crush Axis and clear the way to the pedestal.
• Li Wei activated Void Collapse at the pedestal, and black lightning swallowed the core chamber as the Demon Engine exploded.

Li Wei, Elena, and Atticus escaped the warship Pain as the awakened Shard of the Void Dragon transformed and destroyed it. They headed for Medusa, where the Iron Hands planned to take Li Wei for questioning, while the Necron database remained active in his mind.

• The Shard of the Void Dragon awakened, dismantled Archmagos Axis, and began rewriting Pain into a Necron tomb ship.
• Li Wei and Elena rescued the injured Atticus and reached an escape shuttle, but Pain’s daemon-infested Machine Spirit tried to drag them into its jaws.
• Li Wei injected Necron anti-Warp data into Pain’s nerves, freeing the group and allowing them to launch the shuttle.
• The Shard compressed Pain into a sphere and destroyed it with a gravitational eruption as the shuttle escaped.
• Atticus decided to take Li Wei to the Iron Hands’ Chapter Monastery, and Elena chose to stay with them after Li Wei saved her.
• Li Wei set the shuttle’s course for Medusa and fell asleep while the Necron database continued searching the system.

Li Wei and his companions reached Medusa and were taken to the Iron Hands fortress, where Karrg threatened to dissect Li Wei for the Necron data in his brain. Li Wei discovered a logic-virus infecting Karrg’s machinery and offered to remove it, leaving his survival dependent on proving he could.

• Li Wei explained to Elena why Medusa was their safest destination and brought the shuttle into the Iron Hands’ exclusion zone.
• Atticus identified himself to Medusa’s defenses and secured landing clearance for the shuttle at the mobile fortress Iron Fist.
• Karrg detected Necron residue in Li Wei and ordered him taken to the laboratory, while Atticus was sent for surgery.
• Karrg threatened to experiment on Li Wei, who claimed he could decode the Necron data and improve Iron Hands technology.
• Li Wei’s Necron database revealed scrapcode contamination in Karrg’s logic engine, and Li Wei persuaded Karrg to let him prove he could purge it.

Li Wei purified the Iron Fist’s corrupted console with his pariah power, convincing Archmagos Karrg to keep him as a specialist. Elena left with the Adepta Sororitas, while Li Wei accepted a data implant and began his new role with Clan Raukaan.

• Li Wei used his pariah power to purge the chaos waste code from the console, and Karrg declared him a valuable logic purifier.
• Karrg arranged for Elena to be transferred to the Adepta Sororitas, and Elena chose to return to her sisters rather than remain with Li Wei.
• Elena boarded the Sororitas transport after bowing toward the shadow where Li Wei stood.
• Li Wei watched Elena’s ship depart, then accepted Karrg’s offer to work for Clan Raukaan in exchange for help suppressing the Necron database’s effects.
• Li Wei implanted the data interface and followed Karrg into the factory to begin his new work.