Rat-tat-tat—
Clatter—!
With the transmission of an order from the Supreme Commander of the Eighth Legion of the Sacred Selene Empire—the Midnight Lord himself, Konrad Curze—the fierce close-quarters combat, fluid infiltration maneuvers, and multi-front demolitions throughout Commorragh abruptly slowed.
Swiftly, without hesitation or desire for prolonged engagement, the infiltration forces—composed of mixed elements from the Night Lords and the Thousand Sons—began an orderly withdrawal.
Realizing the retreat of these damned Mon-keigh invaders, the Kabals of Commorragh, who had suffered heavy losses in the textbook execution of surprise assaults, assassinations, and sabotage operations, erupted into a frenzy. Enraged, they charged forward.
It was humiliation.
They, who prided themselves as the rightful heirs of the great ancient Aeldari Empire, had been raided and desecrated by what they deemed lesser apes—humans. Worse still, the intruders not only stole, they plundered, burned, and slaughtered!
And as expected, in their mad pursuit, the Kabals' main forces ran headlong into a countercharge. The retreat had been a trap. The mixed units of the Night Lords and the Thousand Sons struck back hard.
Of course, the Archons had anticipated such a move. They had instructed their Sslyth mercenaries, Incubi, and Kabalite warriors to prepare for counter-counterattacks.
Unfortunately, as the saying goes—"I predicted your prediction." But prediction means nothing when your hardware can't keep up.
Their counter-counterattack collapsed instantly. The Kabalite warriors simply weren't capable of it.
Most of their forces had been hastily redirected from suppressing slave uprisings. They fought with outdated tactics—using strategies that might have worked against standard Space Marines or renegade warbands, but not against these enhanced "Honkai-canned" Astartes.
The Archons had repeated through the comms that these Mon-keigh were not like any they had fought before. Larger in scale, stronger individually, tougher in armor. But arrogance ran in Aeldari blood. Even in death, it would not fade.
Thus, with a mixture of pride and misplaced confidence, they met the Night Lords' Terminator companies and heavy fire support squads head-on.
They were annihilated.
The pursuing Kabalite formations were butchered—slaughtered to the last. Even their sleek raiders were blasted apart in the short, brutal ground engagements—dozens destroyed, hundreds damaged.
Those raiders, embodying the Dark Eldar creed of warfare—fast, agile, and lethal—were simply too fragile. Barely better than naked targets.
Above, in the void, their capital ships still traded broadsides with the invading fleets. But unable to descend into the labyrinthine hive-city below, they could only watch helplessly as the dark-armored figures withdrew at their leisure, not leaving behind a single fallen brother.
They longed to pursue—but Commorragh was chaos incarnate.
Riots and screams filled every corridor. Explosions, gunfire, and psychic howls echoed endlessly.
Every Kabal fought its own battle. Slave-hunting parties, orbital fleets, and even internal garrisons turned upon one another.
The entire city was madness—a boiling cauldron of war.
Even the lowborn Aeldari, the impoverished masses, seized their moment. Rising from the shadowed depths of the hive, they became thieves and brigands, looting the homes of their former masters.
Commorragh had become a true melting pot of madness.
As everyone knew, Commorragh was a city that could expand infinitely within the Webway—a superstructure built upon the bones and suffering of trillions of slaves.
And if there was one thing Commorragh never lacked—it was slaves.
Humans from the Imperium. Castrated Chaos cultists. Traitor Marines. T'au. Orks. Even xenos species long extinct in realspace—all could be found here.
A natural powder keg. And the Night Lords were masters at lighting the fuse.
Those who survived the torment of the Dark Eldar were not meek. Each one a monster in their own right—murderers, zealots, lunatics.
No guidance was needed. No speeches, no weapons distribution.
Kill the guards. Blow open the cages.
The rest would take care of itself.
Let them burn it down. Let them settle the debt in blood. Let them have their revenge.
"Damn it! That wretch Asdrubael Vect—he calls himself the Lord of the Dark City, the ruler of Commorragh—and when the moment comes, he disappears! What game is he playing? Trying to weaken his rivals in the chaos, is he?!"
The Archon of one of the major Kabals, watching his military forces being crushed bit by bit, lost all composure. In fury, he lashed his electro-whip, reducing a nearby flesh-puppet to ribbons of muscle and bone before unleashing a torrent of refined—but venomous—Aeldari curses.
"My lord, Asdrubael Vect is dead," replied his secretary, unaware that the Night Lords had discovered the decoy through soul-probing. "The informant we planted within the Kabal of the Black Heart confirms it. The Black Heart Palace was assaulted by the Mon-keigh Terminators. Many saw it themselves—Vect was torn apart by lightning claws in his hidden chamber. His head was taken."
"Hmph, our self-proclaimed 'Black Muse' playing his little tricks again... He's not the only one who can do that. Issue the order—cease all pursuit. Withdraw our forces. Let the others bleed."
...
"Oi, Jaghatai—you've been skulking around this cursed place longer than I have. What in the warp is a 'Black Muse'? And what's this trick of Vect's supposed to be?"
The sound of heavy boots crunched faintly through the rubble. From the corner of a shattered spire, shadows rippled. A hoarse, cold voice cut through the air like splintered ice.
"It's an Aeldari tradition. Those who perform great deeds or reach the pinnacle of their art are granted the title of 'Muse.' Vect... that old alien bastard has indeed perfected the art of evil."
Wolf howls and the cries of warhorses echoed beneath the thunder of orbital bombardments. The light of explosions illuminated two towering figures—Primarchs of the Emperor.
The Wolf King—[Leman Russ].
The War Hawk—[Jaghatai Khan].
"As for Vect's little trick—it's quite the show. He fakes his death to draw out hidden rivals, then stages a 'divine resurrection,' calling himself the 'Black Muse' to restore authority shaken by the Yvraine affair. And of course, he sends the exposed dissenters straight to the Haemonculi covens as raw materials."
Jaghatai tossed a wineskin of fermented mare's milk to Russ, gesturing for him to rein in his barely contained fury. His narrow, predatory eyes—cold and eagle-sharp—shifted toward the Kabal elites gathered miles away. The sight of their mindless flesh-puppets only deepened his disgust.
"So proud of their nobility... yet beneath the gilding, nothing but filth."
His hand rested lightly upon the hilt of his White Tiger Dao as he muttered.
"Pah..." Russ wiped the white froth of mare's milk from his beard, tossed the wineskin back, and grinned. "You want to strike first?"
Jaghatai only smiled faintly, offering no answer, then countered with a question: "Tell me, Russ—these Night Lords and Thousand Sons... do you see what I see?"
"Hmph. They're not the sons of that shut-in madman [Curze] or the arrogant fool [Magnus]."
"Oh?" Jaghatai raised an eyebrow. "Explain."
"The Night Lords—those bat-born bastards—never had this kind of unity. No wounded left behind, no fallen abandoned. I haven't seen a single Apothecary extract a gene-seed. As for the Thousand Sons... hard to tell, but my gut says they're not his."
Russ growled impatiently. "Enough talk, scholar. What are you planning, exactly?"
"Observation."
"Observation? And did you find what you were looking for?"
"I did." Jaghatai's sharp grin flashed. "Tell me, my brother—do you believe they serve Chaos?"
"..." Russ fell silent.
"I think I understand now... why Father made his choice."
Jaghatai raised a hand slightly, his expression distant. His eagle eyes focused somewhere far beyond—hundreds of miles away, toward the jagged silhouette of Commorragh's black spires, as if he were merely staring—or listening.
Above, looming in the shattered sky, floated a colossal warship—its hull forged entirely of adamantine, its bow tipped with a razor-edged ram. Its deep cobalt plating gleamed beneath streaks of gold and crimson sigils that marked its allegiance.
The ship stretched for hundreds of kilometers—far beyond any known Imperial vessel. One glance told all: its design was unmistakably human, forged in the grand, brutal style of the Imperium's shipwrights, bristling with countless weapons of annihilation.
"Is that a Gloriana-class?"
"Perhaps. Their Gloriana."
Before their eyes, one of Commorragh's greatest spires—the prison of the frozen Black Sun—began to crack.
Rumble—Rumble—RUMBLE—!
Like an orange-red blade of divine judgment, a colossal beam of light speared down from the heavens, cleaving straight through the foundation upon which the city had been built eons ago. The spire shattered, toppling in slow motion.
Countless Aeldari structures twisted and collapsed, while raider fleets traversing the labyrinthine skyways were hurled high into the air—hundreds, thousands of meters—before plummeting in fiery arcs.
The ground rippled like a living sea. Buildings swayed as the world itself convulsed. Jaghatai steadied himself, his eyes gleaming. "There."
...
The Black Sun known as Ilmaea had fallen.
Amid the ruins, the so-called Lord of the Dark City—Asdrubael Vect—clung to life thanks only to the preservation devices given to him by the Haemonculi masters. His legs trembled, his gaze hollow.
Everyone knew: Commorragh had no sun. Its light and energy came solely from the Black Sun.
That "Black Sun" had once been a dying star, torn from realspace by the ancient Aeldari Empire before its fall and suspended above the Webway's metallic spires to provide light and power.
And now... it was dead.
Terror gripped Vect's heart as he watched the city's light dim into a deep violet-red. The fall of the Black Sun had torn open the Webway veil, its psychic ripple nearly rivaling the signal that once reached Terra from Prospero.
Bzzzzzzz—
The boundary between realspace and the Warp was gone again. Yet, this time, no daemons poured forth.
Because Vect felt it—a gaze colder than death itself. A divine awareness that spanned galaxies. A god dissecting every fiber of his soul.
It was not She Who Thirsts. The Dark Prince of Pleasure had no such majesty, no such sovereign terror.
It was Finality—the newborn Chaos God who had vanquished Nurgle.
Vrrrm—
"Your Majesty, the sacrifice is ready."
A string of shriveled Haemonculi heads—threaded together by chains as thick as a thumb—was hurled at Vect's feet. The cold blue light of a disruption field reflected across Konrad Curze's emotionless face. The great scythe of the Divine Key crackled with electric fury.
"Mm."
And in that eternal instant before the dark claimed him, Vect heard it—a voice colder, prouder than his own, carried from beyond the tapestry of reality, from a dimension of painted madness.
Every cell in his body convulsed, splitting, dissolving, screaming at the level of his very genes. It was not fear. It was the absence of all emotion—the hollow chill of absolute despair.
"I... submit..."
Clang—!
His final expression froze in place. A breath later, his body fractured and collapsed—shattered like brittle glass. Flesh and bone burst apart into a fine crimson mist, soaking the ground and the pile of severed Haemonculi heads.
The ruins of the fallen Black Sun ran red with his blood.
For a heartbeat, silence.
Then came the wailing.
Dense black smoke—thick as dust, dark as rotted flesh—rolled across the sky. The city's souls screamed, its dead too numerous to count.
The cries of suffering reshaped Commorragh's skyline.
"You enjoyed the show, didn't you?"
Curze didn't turn. Staring upward at the swirling tides of Imaginary energy, his pale face half-lit by the violet storm, he tapped the side of his vambrace slowly, rhythmically.
"Curze... you seem to have improved more than I thought."
Clatter—
Jaghatai emerged from the crystalline ruins, taking a long breath. His eyes met those of his black-haired, pallid, yet eerily calm brother. "You're... performing a sacrifice?" he asked carefully.
By contrast, Russ was far less restrained. His spear—the Spear of Russ—gleamed with divine radiance as he snarled, baring his fangs. "Curze! Are you loyal or a traitor? Speak plainly! Where is Father?!"
Curze's cold eyes glinted faintly beneath his helm. "Loyal, traitor—what does it matter? I am offering sacrifice, yes. But tell me—have I not done it for you as well?"
Whssh—
The storm intensified. Above them, the great flagship unleashed a wave of psychic force that tore through the air.
Szzzz—!
And then, through the storm, a faint silhouette of gold descended—blinding, haloed in radiance.
With it came a fractured echo, a whisper of eternity itself:
"...As promised... I have come..."
The air froze. The galaxy held its breath.
—
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