"Ugh..."
Chelast's consciousness drifted through endless darkness, like a drowning man sinking into the deepest abyss.
An invisible, viscous force wrapped around his body from every direction, crushing his chest and tormenting him with the pain of suffocation.
He could neither move nor cry out. All he could do was drift silently through this absolute void, feeling the cold as his life ebbed away, thread by thread.
The thought of giving up began to linger at the edges of his exhausted soul, like a seductive whisper.
Was this how it ended?
Dying in battle to purge xenos for the Emperor and free their souls... perhaps that wasn't such a bad ending.
Just as the darkness was about to swallow his will completely, as he prepared to surrender to that eternal silence, an inexplicable pull made him muster his last scrap of strength and "look" down.
That single glance sent a violent tremor through his soul, which had been on the verge of falling silent!
Below him lay not an endless Void, but a boundless "ocean" of countless translucent human figures, each radiating a gentle glow!
He recognized them. They were the replicas he had slain with his own hands aboard the space station, the desiccated corpses piled into mountains, the imprisoned brains hanging from the "trees"!
They were the hundred thousand members of Dawn space station!
But now their faces held no pain, no numbness, no distortion born of desecration. There was only gratitude, utterly pure and peaceful.
They floated silently, countless arms formed of light reaching upward together!
And at the center of what they held aloft was Chelast's consciousness, slowly growing cold!
He was not falling. Those hundred thousand liberated souls were using the last strength of their existence to lift him steadily, resolutely upward!
Toward the faint