After Sharrowkyn's heavy footsteps, carrying the chill of the Nemesis Blade, faded away, Corax remained alone in the utterly dark Sanctum deep within the Shadow of the Emperor.
There was no light here, no sound, only eternal, stagnant darkness, much like his heart at that moment.
He slowly approached the mountain of spoils and began sorting through them.
These were relics plundered from the Intres Federation.
His movements were precise and slow, his pale fingers brushing over each object as though caressing the dust of history.
"The right to interpret... will always be mine." He murmured to himself, his voice echoing through the deathly silence with an unnerving calm.
He had already prepared his account for the Imperium.
A flawless, unassailable report was now traveling through encrypted channels toward Terra, toward his brother Lorgar.
In the report, he would play the victim: the Raven Guard's expeditionary Fleet had suffered an unprovoked, savage attack by the Intres Federation during a routine patrol.
For survival, for the Emperor's glory, he had been forced to strike back, crushing the enemy's plot at minimal cost.
What a reasonable script.
What a perfect inversion of right and wrong.
The truth? The truth had long since scattered into the void with the ashes of Intres.
His gaze swept over the spoils, until at last he spotted something.
Then his fingers touched something different.
It was neither metal nor a weapon, but an ancient volume wrapped in some kind of dark leather.
Multiple layers of powerful psychic seals guarded it tightly. The runes of those seals were ancient and unfamiliar, clearly not the work of humans.
Corax tried to sense it with his newly acquired power, but found only a chaotic fog.
*What was this Secret Manual for? What knowledge did it contain? Was it a curse,