The Terra Pilgrim was like a steel city adrift in the void, far larger than Wilson had ever imagined.
Corridors crisscrossed like veins, connecting habitation blocks, chapels, power compartments, ecological domes, warehouses, engine arrays... Countless chambers were stacked one atop another, stretching both upward and downward until they vanished from sight.
The air-circulation systems hummed without pause. Life-sustaining fluids and energy coursed through the pipes, while tens of thousands of people lived, prayed, worked, raised families, and perhaps even spent their entire lives within this sealed world of metal.
It truly was a miniature planet, an isolated island carrying faith and hope through the cold emptiness of space.
According to the information on his data-slate, more than fifty Imperial faith sects of various sizes and doctrines were active aboard the pilgrim ship. None were fully recognized by the official Ecclesiarchy.
They were grassroots religious groups, ranging from gatherings of only a few people to organizations occupying several entire compartments.
Their doctrines varied wildly. Some emphasized asceticism and repentance, others focused on astrology and omens. Some glorified the Emperor's warriors, while others praised the sacrifices of women... But all of them shared one unwavering core belief: fanatical devotion to the Master of Mankind, the Emperor.
Dressed in the black garb of an Inquisitor, Wilson strolled along one of the relatively broad main thoroughfares. The hem of his coat swayed gently with his measured steps, while the bolt pistol and power maul at his waist silently proclaimed both authority and danger.
Passing pilgrims, low-ranking crew members, and even junior priests from some of the smaller sects reacted with awe or fear when they saw his attire and the symbol of the Inquisition on his chest. They lowered their heads and moved aside long before he reached them. No one dared approach him, much less stand in his way.
Wilson found the invisible privileges and sense of control that came with his position extremely satisfying.
As he walked, he used the authority granted to him as an Inquisitorial acolyte to pull up surveillance summaries, personnel traffic data, and reports of abnormal energy consumption for the areas he passed through.
At the same time, he studied the subtle expressions, body language, and fragments of conversation of everyone who crossed his path.
His mind worked at high speed, trying to filter out the telltale anomalies of Chaos from a massive flood of seemingly ordinary information.
Yet he found his first "anomaly" far sooner than he had expected.
As he passed the entrance to a side chapel leading into the lower decks, a space normally used by small groups for private worship, an unusual commotion drifted through the narrow gap of a partially open alloy door, accompanied by a thick, nauseating stench of blood.
It wasn't the shouting of battle. Instead, it was a mixture of ecstatic chanting, the dull thuds of bodies hitting the floor, and the wet gurgle of splashing liquid.
Wilson frowned slightly and stopped.
He did not immediately rush inside. Instead, he cautiously peered through the gap in the door.
What he saw caught even him off guard with its sheer absurdity.
The chapel was dimly lit, illuminated only by a handful of flickering incense lamps. Around twenty or thirty people had gathered inside. They wore simple clothing, their faces twisted with religious fervor.
One after another, they were taking crude ritual knives and slitting their own throats without the slightest hesitation.
Blood burst from their necks like fountains, splattering across the cold floor and quickly pooling together. The fallen bodies were still twitching, yet their faces bore expressions of almost blissful relief and glory.
Presiding over the ritual was a gaunt old man wearing a crude imitation of Ecclesiarchy vestments and a crown of thorns. He raised a bloodstained staff high above his head and repeatedly shouted in a hoarse but powerful voice:
"Blood for the God-Emperor! Skulls for the Golden Throne!"
"Cast off this wretched flesh! Let your souls return to the Golden Realm!"
"Death is not the end! It is the beginning of your audience with the Emperor!"
The surrounding believers, whether they had already fallen or were still waiting in line to "offer themselves," trembled with excitement at every cry. Their eyes burned with a pure, spine-chilling fanaticism.
They did not believe they were going to their deaths.
To them, this was an incomparably sacred and glorious rite of ascension.
The blood flowing across the floor had not been allowed to spread at random. It had been deliberately channeled into an enormous, intricate, distorted ritual circle formed from skulls, thorns, and abstract flames.
The metallic reek of blood mingled with the scent of incense, creating a strangely sweet, suffocating atmosphere.
Wilson stared at the scene.
His initial shock was quickly replaced by the absurd feeling that someone was making a fool of him. He actually laughed in irritation and shook his head.
"Do I even need to investigate this?"
he muttered contemptuously.
"Self-mutilation, mass suicide, a ritual circle drawn in blood, fanatical slogans about blood sacrifices and skull offerings... If this isn't a Khorne cult, I'll eat this Inquisitor coat. Even some third-rate fringe sect that worships the Emperor couldn't possibly come up with a ritual this insane and outright hostile to human life. This has Chaos corruption written all over it!"
He felt as though the opening stage of this "game" was insulting his intelligence.
Heretical behavior this obvious still required an investigation?
This was practically a free point.
Without the slightest hesitation, he opened the operations interface on his data-slate and found the rapid-response option for confirmed heretical activity:
[Application for On-Site Arrest/Purification Authorization]
All he needed to do was mark the location and the primary participants, then call in the Inquisition's armed forces to suppress them.
He selected the priest shouting the slogans, marked the entire chapel, checked "Suspected Khorne Worship" under the "Nature of Heresy" category, then attached a brief description of the scene along with photographic evidence.
Confidently, he tapped [Submit Application].
The next second, the data-slate flashed red.
A glaring system notification appeared on the screen:
[Operation Failed. Application Automatically Rejected.]
[Reason for Rejection: Following comparison with the faith database and analysis of behavioral patterns, the target group has been identified as the "Emperor's Death Cult." Its central doctrine holds that "through voluntary sacrifice and death, the soul may be purified and its return to the Golden Throne accelerated, allowing it to dwell with the Emperor." It is one of several documented fringe extremist faiths within the religious framework of the Imperium of Man and has not been explicitly prohibited.]
[Although its ritual practices deviate from mainstream Ecclesiarchy doctrine, they have not yet crossed the established thresholds for heresy, including "worship of the powers of Chaos," "Warp summoning," or "corruption of other souls."Under Imperial law, such behavior does not presently satisfy the criteria for classification as a "Chaos cult." The Inquisition therefore lacks sufficient grounds to conduct arrests or purification on this basis.]
[Recommendation: Continue observation or locate more conclusive evidence of heresy.]
Wilson froze.
He stared at the cold text on his data-slate and read it several times.
The Emperor's... Death Cult?
Documented?
Not prohibited?
Religious tolerance laws?
Was this some kind of joke?!
A bunch of people were publicly slitting their own throats, spilling blood into a ritual circle, and screaming about blood sacrifices and skull offerings, and this shit counted as a "non-prohibited" "extremist faith"?!
An overwhelming sense of absurdity rose inside him, followed immediately by intense frustration and a faint but growing anger.
He felt like a student who had followed the textbook perfectly, confidently filled in the standard answer, and then had the teacher hand the paper back with, "This question goes beyond the syllabus. More than one answer is acceptable."
This wasn't the "high-difficulty intellectual game" he had expected.
It felt more like... a malicious distortion of common sense and logic.
He looked back into the chapel.
The priest had already completed another round of "sacrifices" and was now dipping his staff into the blood on the floor, using it to paint fresh symbols across the walls.
The line of believers waiting for their "ascension" remained quiet and fanatically devoted.
Wilson took a deep breath and forcibly suppressed his agitation.
He understood now.
The rules of this "game" were far stranger and more complicated than he had imagined, and they certainly did not operate according to common sense.
In the grim darkness of the 40K universe, under the twisted system of faith that governed the Imperium of Man, not every act that appeared insane, bloody, or irrational necessarily pointed to Chaos.
Some forms of madness were simply rooted in the warped cultural soil of this desperate empire.