The dimensional gate hissed in its final spasms of function. Arcane runes, once radiant, faded one by one as silence reclaimed the sanctum.
However, Luthar recognized that silence was deceitful.
He approached the stabilizer core slowly and with caution. His cracked auspex lens blinked in protest, its proximity alarm emitting a faint, insistent pulse.
Something had not disappeared.
And then he noticed it.
A small, twisted creature clung to the underside of the stabilizer pillar, half curled like a molten spider. Despite being only the size of a cat, it smelled bad. Its flesh gleamed like oil on water, and a crown of fractured eyes blinked open as it turned to face him.
A fragment. A spawnling. A testing fang.
Luthar did not pause. His left palm extended. A line of binary chant was whispered out, and a spear of plasma light emerged from the servo-mounted gauntlet on his forearm. The creature screamed—not in sound, but in thought—before disintegrating into ash.
His heart sank. Not even the daemon engines of the old wars could chill him like this. This was not an investigation.
He approached the console. The dimensional gate was beyond salvaging—corrupted and marked. Whatever intelligence stirred in the sea of madness beyond now knew this location existed.
He had to get rid of it.
Freya approached from the corner of his vision, watching silently as he pulled runed modules from the console. The sparks arced. Circuitry hissed.
"Are you going to fix it?" she asked.
"No," Luthar answered, his voice hoarse. "I am going to burn it."
Freya tilted her head. "You created this with reverence. You called it a miracle just a few minutes ago.
Luthar turned and locked eyes with her.
"Then let it die as one."
He crossed the room to a hidden cabinet and took out a long, black case trimmed in adamantine—his most valuable possession. He gripped it tightly as he looked at Liliruca.
"Follow. We leave right now."
They moved fast. The lab was already dimming, its once-bright wards flickering erratically.
Luthar paused at the outer door. He placed his palm on the control panel—cool metal humming with residual energy—and spoke three words in the Mechanicum's binaric language:
> "Secut ignis mundatur."
(Let it be purified with flame.)
A low chime responded. Emergency seals slammed closed. Coolant veins reversed. Energy cores increased dramatically. Blue, consecrated fire erupted through the walls, consuming heretical circuitry.
Luthar stepped into the corridor without looking back.
The lab, the gate, and the sin all became furnaces.
Not because he wished to forget.
But he remembered too vividly.
While the three of them made their way to the upper floors, a demon knelt before its master across reality, far from Orario, in a place where time boiled and truth was revealed.
It no longer had a stable form—memory was bound in warpflame, and logic was undone. Behind it was a crystal sphere with fragments of other worlds spinning within. A Lord of Change, seated on an obsidian feather throne, watched in contemplative silence.
"You failed," the Lord said, his voice sounding like a choir of birds and a blade drawn across stone.
The lighter shade bowed more deeply. "I agree, master. The child of iron shut the gate. He knew what he had created—until the end."
The Lord's galaxy eyes narrowed with thought.
"But he remembered... enough to cause fear. It is enough to destroy."
It extended its claw and traced light across the crystal sphere.
"A machine from the past... implanted in his future." "And now the seed is cracked." The spawnling whispered, "Should we pursue the others?"
The Lord gave a smile.
"No. Not just yet. Allow the mortals to panic. Allow the Blood-soaked Sons to guard their altar. We monitor. "We learn."
It leaned forward, its feathered wings extending into infinity.
"And when he builds again... we will sing."
As the whisper vanished into the Warp's roiling currents, far away—across void and veil—the material consequences of its intrusion smoldered beneath steel and stone.
Sanguinius' sons arrived in the depths of Forge Caldriax, where sacred fire had scoured forbidden truth, seeking answers rather than glory.
The flames had died beneath the earth, but the ash continued to whisper.
The air was still heavy with residual radiation and the oily odor of burnt ether. Astartes of the Blood Angels maintained a solemn vigil around the subterranean vault.
Brother-Captain Kaelen Dureus knelt beside the blackened entry seal, his gauntlet tracing the melted engravings.
"This was not an accident," he muttered into his helm's vox. "The ignition pattern is regulated. Ritualized."
Across from him, Varan Osceo, a space marine, examined the charred remains of a servo-skull, its cogitator core fused and its eyes melted into slag.
"There are signs that... Interference between warps. Intermittent. Targeted. Something attempted to interfere but was met with resistance."
Kaelen's gaze shifted to the scorched console embedded in the wall, its runes burned away.
"A mechanical-grade purge protocol. However, there is no evidence of internal presence—no footprints, no activity logs beyond the triggering code.
Varan gave a nod. "The switch. Whoever programmed it anticipated accidents. "Blow up everything."
Kaelen's demeanor darkened. "Who is in charge of this location?"
"Luthar Ferranus a Mechanicus priest," Varan confirmed.
A third voice joined the conversation.
Malchoir spoke grimly. "The enemy came after something buried. Something: They broke the barriers but could not accept anything."
He pointed to the still-warm corridor, where a faint shimmer of warp residue hung in the air.
"They were not attempting to steal. If the readings are correct, they were attempting to open a gate leading somewhere.
Kaelen creased his brow. "Then the purge stopped them."
Malchoir hesitated. "Or something else did... and the purge only sealed the aftermath." Silence fell. Only the distant hiss of cooling vents echoed beneath the forge moon. Kaelen turned his gaze upward, toward the void above.
"Lock this place down. No scribe, no adept, no priest enters—not without direct order from Baal. And tell the Magos I want answers."
Varan nodded.
Kaelen's grip tightened around the hilt of his relic blade.
Behind them, servitors sealed the vault. The incense smoke rising through fractured stone curled into silent symbols—unreadable, unresolved.
And far above, the warp pulsed.
Waiting.
instead of reading on chereads you can read this novel on a places where it's actually uploaded the only website it have been uploaded on Patreon,Scribble Hub, fanfiction.net,Wattpad
web novel, the last website should be Royal Road, which I really don't like, but at least they are not cheating me.