The city stood still for the first time in hours. Smoke curled lazily from ruined craters where once there were streets. Broken armor, shattered glass, and scorched plating lay in piles beside still-smoking husks of corrupted metal. The scent of ozone and blood hung in the air, clashing with the strangely untouched scent of flowers blooming from every unblackened patch of grass. The Death Guard had been repelled, but their filth lingered.
Now came the cleaning.
Citizens, still armored and armed, stepped from shelters and clean-up zones like disciplined units of a living organism. Machines unfolded from the sides of buildings and pavement, extending arms tipped with multi-tools and plasma-burners. Drones hovered silently overhead, scanning for biohazardous material or warp-spore remnants, marking them in glowing amber glyphs only the locals seemed able to read. It was not chaos. It was procedure.
A low rumble echoed across the horizon. Not from enemy forces—but from the clouds. Thick, grey, heavy with something more than rain. It started as a drizzle, then thickened to a steady downpour. But the people didn't run. They stood tall, eyes closed, mouths open, arms outstretched.
The Imperials—Sisters of Battle, Black Dragons, and Mechanicus tech-priests—watched with a quiet wariness.
Sister Clarent narrowed her eyes. "This… isn't water."
Brother Garran knelt, scooping a handful of the strange rainfall into a canister. It shimmered slightly with a faint iridescent hue. No stinging sensation. No corrosive reaction. Nearby citizens rubbed it into their skin, splashed it over wounds, and even let it wash into their eyes. Children laughed as they danced in it, smearing it through their hair and over their faces.
"They're treating it like a blessing," Garran said, rising slowly.
"Or a bath," muttered Clarent.
Inside the safety of a small café on the city's surface, nestled near a transit hub, sat Zeus—the God Android tasked with command and control, modeled after an ancient deity but fused with advanced weather manipulation systems. He sipped a steaming drink, relaxed, unmoved by the concern of outsiders. Outside the glass walls, a large dispersal cannon—shaped like a mounted railgun but repurposed—fired glowing pellets into the sky every sixty seconds. Each capsule burst in the upper atmosphere, releasing finely tuned chemical blends.
Cleaning agents. Nano-digestive spores. Anti-corruption mist.
Zeus didn't even look up from his terminal. He tapped lazily across a hard-light interface hovering above his table. One finger swipe redirected jet streams. Another adjusted pH levels of the storm. With each minute, the chemical rain neutralized more of the lingering corruption left by the Death Guard. And like everything else in Pangea—it was planned. Calculated. Automatic.
The Imperials, meanwhile, continued watching. None dared step directly into the rain, though one Mechanicus adept sent a servo-skull to collect samples. Its lenses steamed as it hovered back, soaked and dripping, but the sample remained stable.
"This is... effective," the adept noted. "Far more efficient than Mechanicus quarantine protocols. I detect no lingering warp decay."
Later that day, as evening began to fall, the cleanup was nearly complete. Damaged panels had been sealed. Streets swept. Dead husks of Chaos infantry reduced to ash and vacuum-sealed for analysis. The city's rhythm resumed—not perfectly, but efficiently.
Then came the departure.
At the main hangar, the great pilgrim ship once thought doomed to rust and decay now stood tall again. Gleaming armor plates repaired, engines humming with unfamiliar smoothness. Whatever had been broken was no longer. It didn't look like a new vessel—but like a forgotten relic restored with impossible skill. The Magos responsible for the ship gave a hesitant nod as he scanned the systems. Whoever had repaired this craft knew not just its design—but knew how to improve it.
"Main capacitors running above projected thresholds," he murmured. "Fusion coils stabilized… no warp interference detected."
The Sisterhood and the Black Dragons gathered with the last of the pilgrims at the gravity bridge, preparing to board. The citizens of Pangea stood silently nearby, watching. They made no spectacle of the farewell. No performance. Just quiet presence. Some nodded. A few waved.
No speeches.
Just silence—and strength.
Within the crowd, the Imperials couldn't help but feel something unsettling: gratitude. Not from themselves, but from the people here. No fear. No resentment. Just a mutual, quiet acknowledgment of survival. The shared understanding that something greater had passed through them all.
Before departure, members of the Mechanicus, the Sisters, and a handful of civilian adepts recorded and compiled every log they could: images, sensor data, notes, environmental recordings. Holophotos captured the children playing in the streets. The museum's Earth hologram. The murals along the city walls. The strange yet gentle rainfall. Food stalls. Shops. Defensive towers. The unseen drones. And always, the calm, measured behavior of Pangea's people.
No one ordered them to document. They just knew they had to. Because if they returned without proof, no one in the Imperium would believe it.
And even with the proof, they might still be silenced for suggesting anything but decay beyond the Emperor's light.
Once the last supply crate was loaded—filled with fresh rations, purified water, and medical packs of suspiciously high quality—the ship powered up. Not a single word of thanks had been exchanged aloud, but it hung in the air like incense.
Seraphina gave a nod to her Astartes counterpart.
"Ready?" she asked.
Garran paused, eyes scanning the horizon one last time. Then he nodded. "We're not leaving this behind. Not forever."
The magnetic clamps disengaged. Engines roared.
The ship lifted from the hangar floor, ascending through the shielded ceiling toward the atmosphere above. No escort followed. No warning fire tracked it. It rose alone, into a sky still heavy with the last of the cleansing storm.
From orbit, the planet below was quiet. Untouched. Untraceable. The protective field that surrounded Pangea shimmered faintly before vanishing from all sensors. To the Imperium, it would soon vanish from sight as well. The pilgrims had seen a miracle—and had no guarantee they would ever find it again.
---
Some days later, deep within the confines of their restored vessel, the senior members of the expedition gathered in a sealed briefing room. The holoprojector displayed everything they had gathered: topographical maps, scans of the weather systems, photos of the museum, the citizens, the city.
"It doesn't fit," Garran said. "It doesn't align with anything we know. Not a colony. Not a forge world. Nothing sanctioned."
Clarent spoke next. "Then it may have been something older. Pre-Imperial. One of the lost colonies from the Great Crusade, separated by warp storms."
"A culture that developed outside of our reach," mused the Astropath. "But untainted. Efficient. And most likely... prepared for everything and anything that may come there way."
They all looked at each other.
Prepared.
Not just to defend—but to thrive under any circumstances.
They made a unanimous decision: the data would be preserved. Shown to the right people. Quietly. Carefully. No public declarations. No reports to open inquisitorial channels. But someone in the high echelons of the Imperium would see this. Someone who might understand.
Whether that would help or damn the people of Pangea was another matter.
But as their ship continued its slow journey toward Holy Terra, there was one certainty among the crew: they had seen something real. Something terrifying in its beauty. Something that would never leave them.
And if they were lucky—just maybe—they would have a chance to return to this strange but exciting world.
---
End of Chapter Forty-Four
Extra: Sorry everyone I've been busy with work, every one is expected to come back to the office I work at and unfortunately puts more work on my, and my fellow coworkers shoulders. Also my supervisor been out for a month, meaning me and the other have been stuck taking care of his work. But he should be back by next week. Hopefully I can get more time to work on righting this story.