The Raven Guard Legion's flagship.
The Shadow of the Emperor.
Deep within the immense ship, in a forbidden zone deliberately skirted by every cogitator array, power conduit, and passageway, there stood a room belonging solely to its master, a room of absolute darkness.
There were no lights.
No viewports.
No faint glow from instrument panels.
There was only a stagnant, oppressive darkness that seemed almost solid. It devoured sound, warped perception, and made even time turn viscous.
Corax.
At that moment, he had all but merged with the darkness. In his hand, he held the ancient-looking sword he had retrieved from deep within the ruins of Intres: the Nemesis Blade.
The blade was dull and lightless, but as his pale fingers, with their unusually elongated joints, slowly brushed over the cold metal, dark tides seemed to surge silently within it.
It was a terrifying mass of psychic energy, vast enough to inspire dread, permanently imprisoned through a blasphemous craft and hammered into the blade.
That psychic energy brimmed with pure hostility and the desire to destroy everything.
Corax could feel it tremble faintly in resonance with his Chaos power, like a sleeping viper sensing the presence of prey.
He stood motionless for a long time, as though communing with the whispers within the sword, or weighing every detail of this instrument of destruction.
At last, he slowly turned. With a lightness utterly at odds with his immense frame, he approached a twisted metal table in one corner of the room, likewise shrouded in shadow.
Apart from a few scattered data slates etched with eerie symbols, the table held only a solitary wineglass.
It contained a dark red liquid. In the absolute darkness, its red was so deep it verged on black, like a still pool of blood that had yet