The Black Crusade began on what Kevin had arbitrarily designated as day sixty-three of his imprisonment on the Golden Throne, though he had long since accepted that his calendar system was entirely fictional and served no purpose other than giving him something to focus on besides the endless parade of suffering that constituted his existence.
It started, as these things apparently always did, with a disturbance in the Warp.
Kevin felt it before anyone else in the Imperium could possibly have known it was happening—a vast ripple of malevolent intent that spread through the Immaterium like blood diffusing through water, a gathering of power and purpose that made the background noise of Chaos seem almost peaceful by comparison.
Something was coming.
Something big.
Something that made Kevin's already-constant state of psychic discomfort spike into something approaching genuine alarm, which was impressive given that he had spent the past two months in a state of pain that would have killed any normal human being approximately seventeen trillion times over.
The source of the disturbance was the Eye of Terror, that vast wound in reality where the Warp and realspace bled together in an eternal scream of impossibility, that place where the Traitor Legions had fled after the Horus Heresy and had spent ten thousand years nursing their grudges and planning their revenge.
And from that wound, pouring forth like pus from an infected injury that the galaxy really should have done something about millennia ago, came the forces of Chaos.
Ships.
So many ships.
Kevin could perceive them even across the vast distances involved, his psychic senses stretching through the Warp to observe the assembling armada—battleships and cruisers and strike vessels, hulks and space stations and things that defied easy classification, all of them corrupted by the touch of the Ruinous Powers, all of them crewed by beings who had turned their backs on humanity in favor of gods who promised power and delivered only damnation.
There were Chaos Space Marines aboard those vessels—the Traitor Legions in all their terrible glory, the sons of the Primarchs who had fallen to Chaos, the warriors who had once been humanity's greatest defenders and were now its most implacable enemies.
There were daemons, countless daemons, entities of pure Warp-stuff that strained against the barriers separating the Immaterium from realspace, eager to manifest in the material universe and spread their particular brands of corruption and destruction.
There were cultists, millions upon millions of them, the mortal worshippers of Chaos who had been gathered from a thousand worlds to serve as cannon fodder and sacrifices and whatever other purposes their dark masters required.
And at the head of this vast armada, radiating a presence that Kevin could feel even through the Astronomican's light, was a being of such concentrated malevolence that merely perceiving him caused Kevin's psychic senses to recoil in something approaching disgust.
A Chaos Lord.
Kevin couldn't quite determine which one—the Warp distorted such details, and his knowledge of specific Chaos champions was limited to what he remembered from his previous life's reading, which had focused more on the loyal factions than the traitors—but it didn't really matter which specific megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur was leading this particular invasion.
What mattered was that the Black Crusade was coming.
What mattered was that it was heading toward Terra.
What mattered was that Kevin was going to have to do something about it.
The Imperium's response to the emerging threat was, Kevin observed with the kind of resignation that had become his default emotional state, exactly as slow and bureaucratic as one might expect from an organization that had elevated inefficiency to an art form.
The first reports of the Chaos fleet's emergence took approximately six hours to reach the relevant authorities on Terra, filtered through layers of astropathic relay stations and administrative processing and the general communication lag that came from trying to coordinate a galaxy-spanning civilization without anything resembling instant messaging.
The initial assessment of the threat took another three hours, as the lords of the Imperium debated whether this was a genuine Black Crusade or merely a large-scale raid, as if the distinction mattered when either way a massive Chaos fleet was heading toward the heart of human civilization.
The mobilization orders took another twelve hours to draft, approve, counter-sign, file, lose, find again, re-approve, and finally transmit to the forces that would be responsible for defending against the invasion.
And the actual deployment of those forces would take weeks—possibly months—as ships were recalled from their current assignments, regiments were gathered from their garrison worlds, and the vast machinery of the Imperial military slowly, ponderously, began to move.
Kevin watched all of this with the helpless frustration of someone who could see exactly what needed to be done but couldn't do any of it himself.
Just go, he wanted to scream at the admirals and generals and lords who were debating response strategies. Stop talking and start moving. Every hour you spend in meetings is an hour the enemy spends getting closer. Every form you fill out is a form that isn't going to matter if Terra falls. JUST GO.
But of course, no one could hear him.
No one could ever hear him.
He was the God-Emperor of Mankind, worshipped by trillions, and he couldn't even send a memo.
The first real engagement came approximately two weeks after the initial emergence, when the lead elements of the Chaos fleet encountered a patrol squadron of Imperial Navy vessels that had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Kevin perceived the battle through his psychic senses, watching helplessly as the Imperial ships fought with desperate courage against an enemy that outnumbered them by a factor of approximately fifty to one.
The flagship was a cruiser called the Righteous Fury, commanded by a Captain named Helena Voss, who was thirty-seven years old and had served in the Imperial Navy for nineteen years and had a daughter on Terra whom she had not seen in six years and would never see again.
Kevin knew all of this.
He knew it with the same terrible intimacy that he knew the astropaths he had soul-bound, the same involuntary awareness that came from being psychically connected to everything in the galaxy whether he wanted to be or not.
He knew that Captain Voss was afraid.
He knew that she had already accepted that she was going to die.
He knew that she was fighting anyway, not because she thought she could win, but because fighting was what she had sworn to do, because her duty demanded that she stand between humanity and its enemies even when standing meant falling.
The Righteous Fury lasted approximately forty-seven minutes.
Kevin felt every one of those minutes.
He felt the ship's shields failing under the concentrated fire of a dozen Chaos cruisers.
He felt the hull breaches that exposed entire decks to the void, killing hundreds of crew members in instants of frozen agony.
He felt Captain Voss ordering ramming speed in a final act of defiance, driving her dying vessel into the heart of the Chaos formation and detonating her reactor in an explosion that took three enemy ships with her.
He felt her die.
And then he felt the next ship die, and the next, and the next, until the entire patrol squadron had been annihilated and the Chaos fleet continued on its inexorable march toward Terra.
I could have saved them, Kevin thought, the knowledge burning in his mind like acid. I have the power. I could have reached out and destroyed those Chaos ships with a thought. I could have protected those people. I could have—
But he couldn't have.
He knew he couldn't have.
Any use of his power beyond the essential functions would have strained the Golden Throne, would have risked the stability of the Astronomican, would have potentially doomed far more people than the few thousand who had died in that patrol squadron.
He had to let them die.
He had to let them all die, one by one, ship by ship, world by world, because saving any of them might mean dooming everyone.
This is fine, Kevin thought, and the thought was bitter and hollow and utterly without conviction. This is totally fine. I'm just going to sit here and watch people die for the rest of eternity because I can't help them without killing everyone else. This is a completely normal and acceptable situation that a normal person could definitely handle without going completely insane.
Kevin was beginning to suspect that he was not handling this as well as he might have hoped.
The Black Crusade continued to advance.
Worlds fell.
Kevin watched each one.
He watched the hive world of Kastoria Prime burn as Chaos forces descended upon its seventeen billion inhabitants, watched the PDF and the Arbites and the desperate civilian militias try to hold back an enemy that was beyond their capability to defeat, watched the orbital bombardment that came when the Imperium decided the world was lost and chose to deny it to the enemy through destruction rather than let it be corrupted.
He watched the forge world of Metallica IV fall to the Word Bearers, watched as the Tech-Priests fought with every weapon at their disposal against enemies who had once been their brothers in the worship of the Omnissiah, watched as the manufactorums that had produced weapons for the Imperium for seven thousand years were corrupted and turned to the production of daemon engines and chaos-tainted machinery.
He watched the shrine world of Saint Celestine's Rest—a world dedicated entirely to the worship of the God-Emperor, populated by billions of the most devout faithful in the Imperium—fall to a Slaaneshi warband that took particular pleasure in defiling everything the inhabitants held sacred.
He watched it all.
He felt it all.
He could do nothing about any of it.
And the Black Crusade continued to advance.
The Imperium's response was, Kevin had to admit, eventually impressive.
Once the bureaucratic machinery finally got moving, once the orders had been properly filed and approved and transmitted, the forces of the Imperium began to mobilize on a scale that was genuinely awe-inspiring even to Kevin, who had the original Emperor's memories of the Great Crusade and the massive armies that had conquered the galaxy in humanity's name.
Battle fleets converged from dozens of sectors, hundreds of capital ships and thousands of escorts gathering to form armadas that would have made any enemy pause.
Chapter Masters of the Adeptus Astartes pledged their forces to the defense of Terra, Space Marine strike cruisers joining the naval formations in numbers that hadn't been seen since the days of the Heresy.
The Astra Militarum mobilized regiment after regiment after regiment, billions of soldiers being transported from their home worlds to the threatened sectors, ready to fight and die in defense of humanity.
The Adeptus Mechanicus committed their Titan Legions, god-machines that strode across battlefields like incarnate destruction, each one capable of devastating entire armies.
The Adeptus Custodes themselves prepared to deploy, the Ten Thousand readying for war for the first time in decades, their golden armor gleaming with the promise of violence.
It was, objectively speaking, the largest Imperial military mobilization since the Horus Heresy itself.
It was also, Kevin realized with growing alarm, not going to be enough.
Because the Chaos fleet was larger than the initial reports had suggested.
Much larger.
And it was being reinforced by forces that were emerging from the Warp itself, daemon legions materializing alongside the Traitor Legions, the boundaries between reality and the Immaterium weakening as the fleet drew closer to its goal.
The Imperial forces would fight.
They would fight with courage and determination and the absolute conviction that they were defending everything that mattered.
And they would lose.
Unless something changed.
Unless someone did something.
Unless Kevin did something.
The battle for the Cadian Gate—or rather, what remained of the Cadian Gate after the previous Black Crusades had shattered Cadia itself—began on what Kevin had designated as day eighty-seven.
Kevin felt it begin.
He felt the first shots fired, the first ships destroyed, the first lives lost in what would become one of the largest naval engagements in Imperial history.
He felt the Space Marines boarding Chaos vessels in desperate close-quarters actions, fighting through corridors filled with daemons and corrupted Astartes, dying by the hundreds to take objectives that might slow the enemy advance by hours or minutes.
He felt the Imperial Guard regiments making their stands on whatever worlds and stations lay in the Crusade's path, fighting with lasguns and fixed bayonets against enemies that laughed at such weapons, dying by the millions to buy time that the Imperium desperately needed.
He felt it all.
And he felt the tide of battle turning against humanity.
The Chaos fleet was too strong.
The Chaos forces were too numerous.
The Chaos Lords were too skilled, their millennia of experience in the Eye of Terror having honed them into warriors that the Imperium's commanders could not match.
The Imperial line was bending.
Soon it would break.
And when it broke, there would be nothing between the forces of Chaos and Holy Terra itself.
Kevin had a decision to make.
The thing about the Golden Throne, Kevin had learned over the past three months, was that it wasn't actually designed to prevent him from using his powers.
It was designed to channel those powers.
It was designed to focus the vast psychic might of the Emperor of Mankind into specific tasks—maintaining the Astronomican, powering the wards that kept daemons from manifesting on Terra, keeping the Webway breach sealed against the endless tide of Chaos that lurked beyond.
These tasks consumed most of his power.
These tasks required most of his attention.
These tasks were the reason he couldn't just casually reach out and smite his enemies or communicate with his servants or do any of the things that the most powerful psyker in the galaxy should theoretically be able to do.
But "most" was not "all."
There was a margin.
A small margin, carefully husbanded by the original Emperor over the millennia, a reserve of power that could theoretically be used for other purposes if the need was great enough.
The original Emperor had used this margin sparingly, Kevin knew from the fragmented memories he had inherited.
He had used it to manifest the Legion of the Damned in humanity's darkest hours.
He had used it to appear as a vision to particularly important servants at crucial moments.
He had used it to work the occasional miracle that the Ecclesiarchy would later point to as proof of his divinity.
He had used it rarely, carefully, always aware that any expenditure from this reserve risked destabilizing the delicate balance that kept everything functioning.
But he had used it.
Which meant Kevin could use it too.
If he was willing to take the risk.
If he was willing to pay the cost.
If he was desperate enough.
Kevin looked at the battle unfolding before his psychic senses, watched the Imperial line crumbling, felt the millions of lives being snuffed out with each passing moment, and made his decision.
Screw it, he thought. I didn't ask to be here. I didn't ask to be responsible for all of this. But I am here, and I am responsible, and I am NOT going to sit on this stupid throne and watch humanity get annihilated because I was too afraid to do something.
Kevin reached for the margin.
Kevin reached for his power.
And Kevin, for the first time since his reincarnation, actually used it.
The effect was immediate.
The Golden Throne screamed.
Not metaphorically—actually, physically screamed, the ancient mechanisms protesting the additional load with sounds that had not been heard in millennia, sounds that sent the Tech-Priests monitoring the throne's systems into immediate panic, sounds that made the Custodes guarding the Sanctum Imperialis draw their weapons and look around for threats that they could not see.
The Astronomican flared.
Across the galaxy, Navigators cried out in shock as the guiding light that they had relied upon for ten thousand years suddenly blazed with ten times its normal intensity, searing their Warp-sight with brilliance that bordered on the unbearable, disrupting carefully plotted courses and sending ships careening through the Immaterium in ways that would take weeks to correct.
The wards around Terra strengthened.
The boundary between realspace and the Warp, always thin around Holy Terra due to the sheer psychic intensity of the Throne, suddenly solidified to a degree that made summoning daemons within the Sol System temporarily impossible, much to the consternation of several cults that had been planning to use the distraction of the Black Crusade to attempt their own summoning rituals.
And at the battle for the Cadian Gate, something happened that would be remembered in Imperial records for the next ten thousand years—assuming the Imperium survived that long to remember anything.
The God-Emperor intervened.
From Kevin's perspective, what he was doing was relatively simple.
He was reaching out with his psychic power—power that he had never actually learned to use properly, power that operated on instincts inherited from the original Emperor rather than any training or experience of his own—and he was pushing.
Pushing against the Chaos fleet.
Pushing against the daemons that were manifesting in the battle.
Pushing against the very fabric of the Warp itself, asserting the dominance of order over chaos, of humanity over the alien powers that sought to consume it.
It was not a subtle intervention.
Kevin didn't know how to be subtle with this kind of power.
He just pushed, as hard as he could, with all the frustration and anger and desperate determination that had been building up over three months of helpless imprisonment.
From the perspective of everyone at the battle, what happened was considerably more dramatic.
Admiral Helena Vrasquez of the battleship Imperator's Wrath had been fighting for eighteen hours straight when the miracle happened.
Her ship was heavily damaged, her crew was exhausted, her fleet was on the verge of collapse, and the Chaos forces showed no signs of slowing their relentless advance.
She had already composed her final report in her head, the words that would be transmitted to Terra before the end came, the message that would inform the High Lords that the Cadian Gate had fallen and that nothing stood between the Black Crusade and the Throneworld.
She had made her peace with death.
She was not at peace with failure, but she had accepted it as inevitable.
And then the sky caught fire.
That was the only way she could describe it later, when the scribes and remembrancers came to record her testimony for the historical archives—the sky caught fire.
Golden light erupted across the battlefield, not from any single source but from everywhere at once, a radiance that seemed to pour out of reality itself, that filled the void between ships with illumination that should not have been possible in the darkness of space.
The Chaos ships screamed.
Their daemonic engines, the corrupted machine spirits that powered their vessels, recoiled from the light as if it were a physical force, their systems failing and their crews falling into confusion as the power that sustained them suddenly withdrew.
The daemons that had been manifesting across the battlefield—the bloodletters and plaguebearers and horrors and daemonettes that had been tearing through Imperial crews with impunity—simply ceased to exist, their material forms dissolving as the golden light touched them, their essence being cast back into the Warp with such force that many of them would not be able to manifest again for centuries.
The Chaos Lords, those ancient and terrible champions who had led this crusade with such confidence, felt something that few of them had experienced in millennia—fear.
Because they recognized this light.
They had seen it before, ten thousand years ago, when they had faced the Emperor Himself on the walls of the Imperial Palace.
They had thought Him diminished.
They had thought Him contained.
They had thought Him safely imprisoned on His Golden Throne, too weak to interfere with their grand designs.
They had been wrong.
The God-Emperor of Mankind was not diminished.
The God-Emperor of Mankind was not contained.
The God-Emperor of Mankind was angry.
Kevin, back on the Golden Throne, was not so much angry as he was extremely uncomfortable and mildly panicked about what he was doing.
The power was flowing through him in ways that he didn't fully understand, guided by instincts that belonged to someone else, shaped by millennia of experience that he had inherited but never truly processed.
He could feel the effect he was having on the battle, could perceive the Chaos forces reeling from his intervention, could sense the hope blooming in the hearts of the Imperial defenders as they realized that their God had not abandoned them.
He could also feel the cost.
The Golden Throne was not designed for this.
The mechanisms that kept him alive were straining under the additional load, systems that had been carefully balanced over ten thousand years now thrown into chaos by his sudden decision to actually do something.
Pain spiked through him—new pain, different from the background agony that had become his constant companion, sharper and more immediate and carrying with it the distinct sensation that something important was breaking.
Okay, Kevin thought, trying to maintain focus even as alarms he couldn't hear began sounding throughout the Sanctum Imperialis. Okay, this might have been a mistake. This might have been a really big mistake. But I'm committed now, so I might as well see it through.
He pushed harder.
The Golden Throne screamed louder.
And at the Cadian Gate, the forces of Chaos began to route.
The aftermath of what would become known as the Miracle of the Gate was, from Kevin's perspective, a fascinating study in how the Imperium processed information that didn't fit its existing frameworks.
The battle had been won.
The Black Crusade had been broken.
The Chaos fleet had been routed, scattered, driven back toward the Eye of Terror with losses that would take centuries to recover from.
Millions of Imperial servants had survived who would otherwise have died.
Humanity had been saved.
And the credit, naturally, went entirely to the God-Emperor.
Kevin had no problem with this part—he had, in fact, actually done something for once, and it seemed reasonable that he should receive acknowledgment for that something.
What he had a problem with was how that acknowledgment was being expressed.
The first sign of trouble came approximately three days after the battle, when the Ecclesiarchy—that vast organization dedicated to the worship of the God-Emperor—began to process what had happened and formulate an official theological response.
Kevin, in his capacity as an omniscient-but-helpless being trapped on a psychic life support machine, got to watch the entire process unfold.
It started with the Synod of Cardinals, the highest theological authority in the Ecclesiarchy, convening an emergency session to discuss the miracle and its implications.
"The God-Emperor has acted directly in defense of His realm," declared Cardinal Hieronymus Vex, the senior member of the Synod and a man whose elaborate vestments probably cost more than the annual GDP of a small hive city. "This is confirmation of everything we have always taught. His divine power remains absolute. His protection remains eternal. His love for humanity remains infinite."
Okay, Kevin thought, that's not entirely wrong. I did do something, and it was in defense of humanity. I can accept this interpretation.
"This miracle must be commemorated appropriately," continued Cardinal Vex. "I propose the establishment of a new holy day—the Feast of Divine Intervention—to be observed annually on this date throughout the Imperium. All Imperial citizens will be required to spend the day in prayer and fasting, contemplating the glory of the God-Emperor and renewing their devotion to His service."
Wait, Kevin thought. A new holiday is... fine, I guess? But "required" prayer and fasting? That seems a bit much. People should be celebrating that they survived, not being forced to—
"Furthermore," Cardinal Vex said, "this miracle confirms the absolute truth of the Imperial Creed. Any who have questioned the God-Emperor's divinity must now acknowledge their error or face the consequences of their heresy. I propose that we use this opportunity to launch a new crusade against the non-believers within our own borders."
What? No! That's not—I didn't intervene so you could use it as an excuse to persecute people!
"And finally," Cardinal Vex concluded, "this miracle demonstrates the God-Emperor's approval of the Ecclesiarchy's methods. Our critics have long argued that our practices are too extreme, that our enforcement of doctrine is too harsh, that our treatment of suspected heretics is too severe. But the God-Emperor has clearly shown that He supports our efforts. If He disapproved of our methods, He would not have intervened to save an Imperium that we have helped to shape."
Kevin felt something that might have been despair settling into his consciousness.
They were taking his intervention—his desperate attempt to save lives—and using it to justify everything he hated about the Imperium.
The persecution.
The fanaticism.
The blind devotion that had replaced the rational Imperial Truth with a religion that the original Emperor had explicitly tried to prevent.
And there was nothing he could do about it.
He couldn't correct them.
He couldn't tell them that they had misunderstood.
He couldn't explain that he—Kevin, the guy from Ohio who had died choking on a Dorito—didn't actually want to be worshipped as a god and definitely didn't approve of murdering people in his name.
He could only watch as the Ecclesiarchy took his miracle and twisted it into something that served their own purposes.
The theological implications of the Miracle of the Gate continued to unfold over the following weeks, each development more frustrating than the last.
A new order of militant pilgrims was established, the Order of the Golden Light, dedicated to spreading word of the miracle to the far corners of the Imperium and "correcting" anyone who expressed doubt about its significance.
A new catechism was drafted, the Catechism of Divine Intervention, which declared that the God-Emperor actively monitored all human activity and would strike down the unworthy at a moment of His choosing, a theological position that Kevin found deeply concerning given that he definitely could not monitor all human activity and definitely did not intend to strike down anyone.
A new inquisitorial mandate was issued, declaring that any psyker who claimed to receive visions or messages from the Emperor that contradicted official Ecclesiarchy doctrine was to be immediately executed as a servant of Chaos, a policy that Kevin found particularly ironic given that he was literally the Emperor and literally couldn't send messages to anyone.
And through it all, the Ecclesiarchy continued to praise the God-Emperor's wisdom and mercy and love, completely missing the fact that the God-Emperor—or at least, the being currently occupying the God-Emperor's body—would have really preferred they stop killing people in his name.
Kevin began to compose a list of things he would say to the Ecclesiarchy if he could ever speak.
The list started with "Please stop worshipping me, I'm just a guy" and ended with approximately seventeen pages of increasingly profane expressions of frustration that would probably result in his immediate execution for heresy if any of the Cardinals ever heard them.
It was not a productive exercise, but it gave him something to focus on besides the endless suffering and the constant awareness of how badly everything was going.
The Chaos Gods noticed Kevin approximately two weeks after the Miracle of the Gate.
This was, Kevin had to admit, longer than he had expected.
He had assumed that his intervention in the battle, his direct use of the Emperor's power against the forces of Chaos, would have drawn the attention of the Ruinous Powers immediately.
He had prepared himself—as much as anyone could prepare themselves for the attention of entities that were older than human civilization and more powerful than anything else in existence—for some kind of retaliation, some terrible counterstroke that would punish him for his interference.
What he had not prepared himself for was laughter.
Kevin became aware of the attention gradually, a sensation of being watched that built over several days until it became impossible to ignore.
It was different from the background pressure of Chaos that he had felt since his awakening on the Golden Throne, different from the constant assault of daemons and corruption that he had grown almost accustomed to pushing back against.
This was focused.
This was personal.
This was four vast presences—each one almost too large for Kevin's mind to comprehend, each one radiating power that made his own abilities look like a candle compared to a sun—turning their attention directly to him and studying him with the kind of interest that made Kevin deeply, deeply uncomfortable.
And then Tzeentch spoke.
Not in words, exactly.
Not in any form of communication that Kevin could have described using human language.
But the meaning was clear, pressed directly into his consciousness by a being who had been manipulating reality since before humans had discovered fire.
Well, well, well. What do we have here?
Kevin felt a spike of terror that went beyond anything he had experienced since his reincarnation.
He had known, intellectually, that the Chaos Gods existed.
He had perceived them, distantly, as vast presences in the Warp.
But he had never felt their direct attention before, never experienced what it was like to have a god—an actual god, not the fake godhood that the Imperium attributed to him—looking directly at him and seeing him.
Don't be afraid, little mortal, Tzeentch continued, and Kevin could feel the entity's amusement radiating through the Warp like heat from a fire. We're not going to hurt you. Well, not right now, anyway. We're much too entertained.
Entertained? Kevin thought, unable to stop himself from responding even though he knew engaging with a Chaos God was probably the worst possible thing he could do.
Oh yes, came the reply, and now Kevin could feel the other three gods joining in, their attention adding to Tzeentch's in a way that made him feel like an insect under a magnifying glass. We've been watching you since you arrived. Such a fascinating development. Such an unexpected twist in the endless game.
Nurgle's presence washed over him next, a sensation of rot and decay that somehow also carried undertones of something almost like affection. Poor little thing. Trapped in that rotting corpse, suffering so beautifully. You should let go. Accept the embrace of decay. It's so much easier than fighting.
Kevin recoiled from the sensation, but he couldn't escape it.
He couldn't escape any of this.
He was stuck on the Golden Throne, unable to move, unable to run, unable to do anything except sit there while the Chaos Gods poked at him like children poking at a caged animal.
Khorne's attention came next, brutal and direct, a wave of rage that made Kevin's own frustrations feel like mild annoyance by comparison. WEAK. YOU ARE WEAK. THE CORPSE BEFORE YOU WAS A WORTHY FOE. YOU ARE NOTHING. BUT YOUR SUFFERING PLEASES ME, SO I WILL LET YOU LIVE. FOR NOW.
And then Slaanesh, whose attention felt like being caressed by razorblades wrapped in silk, whose presence carried promises of pleasure and pain so intertwined that they became indistinguishable. Such exquisite torment. Such delicious helplessness. You can feel everything and do nothing. You want so desperately to scream and cannot make a sound. It's beautiful. We should have thought of this ourselves.
Kevin tried to pull away from the contact, tried to close himself off from the Chaos Gods' attention, tried to retreat into the depths of his own consciousness where they couldn't reach him.
It didn't work.
They were everywhere.
They were in the Warp, and he was connected to the Warp, and there was no escaping beings who existed in the very dimension he was forced to perceive.
What... what do you want? Kevin finally managed to think, projecting the question outward even though he suspected he would regret asking it.
The laughter that came in response was worse than anything the Chaos Gods had done so far.
Four gods, four entities of unimaginable power and cosmic significance, laughing at him with the kind of genuine amusement that suggested they found his situation absolutely hilarious.
Want? Tzeentch responded, still radiating that terrible mirth. We don't want anything, little mortal. We're simply enjoying the show. The Anathema, the great enemy, the only being in the galaxy who could truly threaten us... replaced by a man who sells password resets.
Worked in IT support, Kevin automatically corrected. I didn't sell password resets, I just—wait, how do you know about that?
We know everything about you, Kevin Chen, Tzeentch replied. We know about your sad little life in your sad little world. We know about your Dorito. We know about your cat. We know about every argument you ever had on Reddit about which Primarch was superior. We found those particularly amusing, by the way. Your takes were terrible.
My takes were NOT terrible—
Kevin stopped himself, realizing that he was literally arguing with a Chaos God about his Reddit opinions.
This was not a productive use of his time.
This was, in fact, possibly the least productive use of his time that he could imagine.
There it is, Nurgle said, that awful paternal warmth suffusing his words. The denial. The refusal to accept reality. You still think you're going to find a way out of this. You still think there's hope. How adorable.
There's always hope, Kevin thought, though even he wasn't sure he believed it anymore.
Is there? Slaanesh asked. You're trapped in a corpse on a dying machine, watching an empire that worships you destroy itself in your name, unable to move or speak or change anything. Your predecessor spent ten thousand years in that chair and couldn't find a way out. What makes you think you'll do better?
Because I'm not him, Kevin replied. Because I know things he didn't know. Because I come from outside this universe and I have a perspective that—
That what? Khorne interrupted. THAT WILL SAVE YOU? YOUR PERSPECTIVE IS WORTHLESS. YOUR KNOWLEDGE IS MEANINGLESS. YOU ARE A MORTAL PLAYING AT GODHOOD AND YOU WILL FAIL JUST AS HE FAILED. THE ONLY QUESTION IS HOW AMUSING YOUR FAILURE WILL BE.
Kevin wanted to argue.
He wanted to insist that he was different, that he could find a way, that his unique situation gave him advantages that the original Emperor had never had.
But he couldn't think of what those advantages might be.
He was just a guy from Ohio.
He had worked in IT support.
His only real qualification for his current position was that he had died at exactly the wrong moment and woken up in exactly the wrong place.
We'll be watching, Kevin Chen, Tzeentch said, and Kevin could feel the Chaos Gods' attention beginning to withdraw, their vast presences pulling back from direct contact while still remaining aware of him in a way that he knew he would never be able to escape. We'll be watching everything you do. Every desperate attempt to change your situation. Every failed effort to communicate with your worshippers. Every moment of suffering and frustration and despair.
It's going to be wonderful, Slaanesh added.
It's going to be hilarious, Nurgle agreed.
IT'S GOING TO BE PATHETIC, Khorne concluded.
And then they were gone—or at least, as gone as beings who existed in the Warp could be from someone connected to the Warp—leaving Kevin alone with his thoughts and his suffering and the terrible knowledge that the gods of Chaos found his situation funny.
Kevin sat on the Golden Throne for a long time after the Chaos Gods withdrew, processing what had just happened.
He had been noticed.
He had been examined.
He had been judged.
And the verdict was: entertainment.
He wasn't a threat to the Chaos Gods.
He wasn't even a minor inconvenience.
He was a joke, a cosmic prank, a source of amusement for beings who had been seeking novelty for longer than human civilization had existed.
The Miracle of the Gate, his one attempt to actually do something, had apparently been so insignificant from the Chaos Gods' perspective that they hadn't even considered it worth punishing.
They had just laughed.
And that, somehow, was worse than anything else they could have done.
Kevin could have handled being hated.
He could have handled being feared.
He could have handled being seen as a threat that needed to be destroyed.
But being seen as a joke?
Being seen as nothing more than the cosmic equivalent of a funny video that the Chaos Gods could watch when they were bored?
That was... that was really hard to deal with.
I'm going to prove them wrong, Kevin thought, and he tried to put conviction behind the thought, tried to believe it with the kind of certainty that might actually make it true. I'm going to find a way. I'm going to change things. I'm going to—
Going to what? asked a small voice in the back of his mind. You can't move. You can't speak. You can't even scratch your nose. What exactly are you going to do?
Kevin didn't have an answer.
He didn't have any answers.
He just had questions, and suffering, and the endless weight of a responsibility he had never asked for and couldn't fulfill.
And somewhere in the Warp, the Chaos Gods continued to laugh.
The days continued to pass.
The Imperium continued to function—if "function" was the right word for an organization that seemed determined to make everything as difficult and painful as possible for everyone involved.
The Ecclesiarchy continued to use Kevin's miracle as justification for their worst excesses.
The Custodes continued to guard the Sanctum Imperialis without ever once considering that the Emperor might want something.
Guilliman continued to fight his impossible war, trying to hold together an empire that was determined to tear itself apart.
And Kevin continued to sit on the Golden Throne, watching it all, feeling it all, unable to change any of it.
This is my life now, he thought, and the thought carried a weight of resignation that would have been crushing if he hadn't already been crushed by everything else. This is my existence. Forever. Or at least until the Golden Throne finally breaks and everything dies.
I really should have chewed that Dorito more carefully.
It wasn't much of a final thought for the day.
But it was all he had.
End of Chapter Three
Next Chapter: Kevin discovers that someone is trying to repair the Golden Throne, watches helplessly as the Mechanicus manages to make everything worse while trying to help, and has an unexpected encounter with a certain Living Saint who can actually perceive that something is different about the Emperor—though what she concludes from this perception is not quite what Kevin might have hoped.