54 "Reborn"

William straightened his collar. Blood beside his boots slowly seeped outward, and the messenger Psyker's corpse was gradually growing cold.

According to the head of the Ministry of the Interior, William absolutely should not have killed the Psyker who had come to deliver the message. He should have sat down and talked with him—to stall for as long as possible.

But why should William do that?

Next came the welcoming of the Psykers who had come to fight. The good news was that other forces would get involved as well: merchant fleets coming amid the chaos to destroy tax guarantee certificates, Astra Militarum troops stealing seals of authority, Assassinorum agents destroying evidence of guilt... As the Imperium's largest administrative body, the Ministry of the Interior contained more than enough valuable things.

William lifted his foot and walked through the corridor. Ground-level observation windows lined both sides, and he saw hundreds of millions of people buried in paperwork, laboring away like ants in a nest.

+This world is far madder than we imagined. We are nothing but insects gnawing at scraps atop the ashes.+

+Humanity as it exists now is already a corpse, discarded refuse left behind by evolution.+

Humanity as it was now could never attain true salvation.

No Iron Men, no AI, no genetically enhanced superhumans—the current Imperium could not even manage itself.

Yet the Iron Men were destined to rebel. That was why the man upon the Golden Throne had long refused to place his bet on them.

Even he, who had truly lived through that era, had been no more than a grain of sand amid the vast river of time.

+The Emperor was neither omniscient nor omnipotent, nor was he a benevolent savior of his kind. He watched humanity's towers collapse. He witnessed the end of