"So, this was your mission."
The Horus-aligned interrogation specialist of the Raven Guard Legion slowly relaxed his iron-clamp fingers.
Before him, a headless Mortals corpse slumped limply to the floor. Everything above its neck was gone.
Without expression, he licked the warm liquid lingering at the corner of his mouth, its rusty, bloody sweetness still on his tongue.
His brain was being battered by a vast, chaotic torrent of information.
These were the memories stored in the brain he had just devoured—the memories of a Colchis spy who had infiltrated the Shadow of the Emperor.
Images, sounds, smells, and emotions spun through his consciousness like shards of a broken mirror, fitting together and reassembling.
He saw dim corridors, recognition signals, and faces hidden in the shadows.
He saw Cargo Section Seven, the fifth seat on the left in the third row of Chapel No. 12, and the information exchange points concealed beneath seemingly ordinary cargo crates.
He saw the entire network.
But most of the information was already useless.
The interrogation specialist knew perfectly well that once a network's central figure was discovered and eliminated, the other infiltrators would immediately follow their contingency plans and sever all contact. They would assume everyone in that network had been exposed or killed, then go deeper undercover or activate another, entirely independent communications network.
This was standard procedure for professional spies. He did not expect to uncover the whole web with a single raid.
But it was enough.
The information he had obtained was enough to confirm one thing—a group of people who neither believed in nor were loyal to the great Corax had wormed their way aboard the Shadow of the Emperor.
They came from Colchis and served another master. In the very heart of the Raven Guard, they silently gathered intelligence