Across the bleeding stars of the Eye of Terror, the warp twisted and churned with greater agitation than usual. The Chaos Gods—immense, ancient, and hateful—felt a ripple pass through the skeins of fate, a disturbance barely perceptible yet unmistakably alien. Something had changed in the material universe. A disturbance not born from their feuding schemes, nor from the raw agony of mortals, but from a new influence entirely.
The Black Legion was the first among Chaos Space Marines to notice. Warbands orbiting dying worlds intercepted fragmented transmissions — strange reports of Imperial regiments suddenly surviving slaughterhouse engagements with ease, soldiers outfitted with weapons and technology unknown even to the most ancient among them. The broadcasts carried no overt psychic resonance, no telltale warp signature. Yet the impact was clear: Imperial forces once easily crushed were holding their ground longer, fighting smarter, and in some cases, even outmaneuvering heretic Astartes forces.
In the war-torn wastes of the Cyclopean Subsector, a warband of the Word Bearers convened in their desecrated shrine. The Dark Apostle Threxias, robed in the skin of a thousand martyrs, addressed his warriors under the burning glow of a shattered aquila.
"These tools," he spat, the word like poison, "are an affront. Gifts not from the Dark Gods. Not from the ruinous powers. From something else."
His second-in-command, a hulking Helbrute still dripping the blood of a broken Imperial Knight, growled. "Then we shall take them."
Already, corrupted agents among the mortal ranks had secured a few samples—broken Pip-Boys torn from the corpses of fallen Guardsmen, a few battered energy rifles half-melted from battle. What the heretic-tech priests salvaged was unsettling. The weapons had no spirits to be appeased. No soul to corrupt. They simply worked. Machines without devotion. Engines without prayer.
Chaos Techmarines, bloated with the gifts of Nurgle or twisted by Tzeentch's favor, began experimenting immediately. They could not replicate the devices easily, but they could adapt them, forge bastardized versions reinforced with the madness of the warp. Lazer Rifles that hissed with daemonic whispers as they fired. Pip-Boys warped into living things, their screens pulsing like beating hearts.
The Legions watched with increasing unease.
In the Iron Warriors' bitter holds, the Warsmith Varaxes crushed one of the captured Pip-Boys beneath his gauntlet, snarling. "Tools of weakness," he muttered. "Tools of cowards who cannot bleed for victory."
But even he understood the tactical implications. Reinforcements across the Imperium were suddenly surviving odds that should have slaughtered them. Fortifications once overwhelmed now resisted the tide of Chaos assaults. Battles that should have turned into feasts for the Blood God stretched into grinding wars of attrition.
Not even the Death Guard, spread across pestilent warzones, were immune to the shift. Mortarion himself, from his plague-shrouded throne, ordered his sorcerers to scry these anomalies. What they found disturbed even them. Battles that once should have been decided in days now dragged for weeks, months, thanks to unnaturally resilient soldiers healed by the odd relics smuggled into Imperial forces.
On Cadia Secundus, Captain Ardent Vahl of the Emperor's Spears chapter noticed it firsthand. His Primaris forces had been deployed alongside several Guard regiments newly outfitted with these foreign tools. Vahl observed, silently impressed, as regular humans—normally fragile, breakable things—fought with a tenacity and coordination more akin to Astartes than mortal men.
He discussed it in private with his chaplain.
"Miraculous gear," Vahl murmured, polishing his blade after another grinding victory against the heretical forces of the Word Bearers. "Too clean. Too... precise."
The chaplain frowned. "Blessed by the Emperor, perhaps?"
"Or by something else," Vahl replied grimly.
The Imperium's upper echelons, busy with endless wars, chose not to question the source. The High Lords of Terra saw numbers improving. The Mechanicus demanded more samples. The Ecclesiarchy, sensing opportunity, began proclaiming the artifacts as evidence of the Emperor's continued favor.
But Chaos was not so blind.
The Sorcerer-Lords of the Thousand Sons, scrying deeper into the empyrean, glimpsed flashes of strange worlds beyond their knowledge. A city free of the warp's touch. Machines built with a logic that had nothing to do with chaos, nothing to do with faith.
The Chaos Gods themselves were stirring. Khorne roared for war, sensing his slaughter feasts diminished by stubborn survival. Nurgle shuddered in displeasure at wounds closing faster than disease could take hold. Tzeentch schemed deeper, probing the void for the architects of these changes. Slaanesh merely watched, amused and curious.
Among the mortal traitors, it sparked rage.
In the depths of the Eye, a conclave of Chaos Lords convened. The Iron Warriors, Black Legion, Word Bearers, and Red Corsairs sat across a cracked obsidian table. Tempers flared, blades were drawn, but ultimately, they agreed on one truth: something new had entered the great game, something beyond their understanding.
And it had to be destroyed, or worse, seized.
Meanwhile, far away, in a shadowed fortress on a dying world, a sorcerer whispered across the warp.
"Find them," he said to the shrieking daemons writhing at his feet. "Find the source of these tools. Find the city beyond the warp's grasp. And burn it to ashes."
The hunt had begun.
And the galaxy shivered at what would come.
End of Chapter Thirty-Six