40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 821, Section 18: Walking with Fire (The End)

The sound of the man in black armor falling was almost like thunder. The surroundings were as dark as a tomb, and naturally, the tomb was full of the dead—people hanging high, their eyes wide open in death.

They were all crew members of the Vengeful Spirits, who had boarded this massive warship with fervor and anticipation. Before that, they had undergone years of professional training and possessed all the necessary knowledge.

They simply didn't know what this job truly meant.

In fact, no one knew, not even the War Commander himself.

But he understands now.

He collapsed to the ground, forcefully and deeply inhaling the decaying air around him. His face looked swollen and haggard; the once valiant man seemed to have vanished, leaving nothing behind in this remaining shell. He crawled on the ground for a while, either in pain or for some other reason, before finally lying on his back, motionless.

There was no strength left to move, nothing more.

The knocking outside Wang Ting grew more and more intense. He tried to open the door, but his eyes were already drawn to the dead people hanging from the ceiling.

He knew them, every single one of them. He had spent almost as much time with them as he had with his own legion, some of the veterans having even watched the Sixteenth Legion grow from its very beginnings. These men were very old and could have retired to live out their days in peace, but they refused.

“We will serve you.” they said. “Until death do us part.”

We serve you. Even the dead say so. Until death do us part.

Horus stared at him.

Was he crying? Probably not, and even if he wanted to cry, he couldn't anymore.

His tears, blood, and everything that once belonged to humanity had been altered by the forces of chaos. This process had been underway ever since he reopened his eyes in the temple on Davin. These forces had silently seeped into his body and even his soul, changing him day by day, gnawing at him little by little, until his very essence was gone, leaving only an empty shell.

Therefore, the person who is now filled with regret, sorrow, and fear is merely a remnant of the past.

Horus saw him raise his hand again, and the original gates of the Wolf King's Court obediently appeared, and Eichmann rushed in, covered in wounds.

Horus the Younger was a man who cared a great deal about his image, especially when meeting the Primarch. If possible, he would even spend hours beforehand standing in front of a mirror examining his armor to see if there were any areas that needed polishing, and then he would take off his armor and slowly polish it himself, rather than entrusting this task to anyone else.

But now, he was covered in dirt and blood, and tears were already welling up in his eyes.

Eichmann rushed to his father, knelt down, and tremblingly helped up the dying, mangled body.

Yes, as another account states, Horus Lupecal died with only one person by his side.

When the Wolf God was alive, he commanded a huge following and was loved by almost everyone. Even Saint Gilles was unable to defeat him when he was clad in white armor.

But now, he only has Horus Eichmann by his side.

This is a kind of luck.

Horus didn't want to watch any longer. No, not Horus, that name didn't belong to him.

The entity in the warp raised its hands and saw the ground through the fading golden glow.

He felt a sensation that was hard to explain in detail, like hunger or thirst.

The thing whispered softly in his ear that it wanted a body, not necessarily a good one, but it had to be a child.

Why? Because children are innocent and pure, their souls have not changed. Children only need to learn how to grow up, while adults need to understand how to face death.

You cannot die, nor can you even know what it is, therefore you must be a child.

Children are the easiest to manipulate and deceive. They cannot realize the price hidden behind the extra voices in their ears and the power of a supernova explosion, just as they cannot understand the reasons behind the changes in the world, unless they grow older and lose their innocence.

But they will never grow up again.

"Children, they must be children," the thing said. "Otherwise you will die."

The moment these things, which could almost be called answers, surfaced in his mind, the entity punched its own chest, almost as an instinctive reaction.

The scene was truly laughable. But just a glimpse of that face, and the expression on it, transformed the laughability into something else entirely.
He began to take deep breaths, oblivious to the changing scenery around him and the blazing sun that had reappeared overhead.

His head was throbbing with pain, and he didn't want to care about anything. His mind was filled with disgust and hatred, so clear that it felt like blood was gushing from his mouth.

Then comes fear.

How could this happen? Why did this happen?

The image of Elias from Elodor flashed before his eyes; the boy's face was so thin it was almost inhuman. At an age when he should have been innocent and chubby-cheeked, he had become a living skeleton in a living hell.
Until one day, all the people he knew, liked, and loved died one by one.

His emotions surged within the warp, attracting entities. He had thought it was a miracle then, but now it seemed unlikely.

It was a ravenous monster searching for food.

He was filled with a joy that he himself was unaware of.

"Who are you?" Elias asked after becoming aware of his presence.

"I am Horus Lupecal."

"Who is that?"

"The Emperor's son," he proudly and happily introduced himself to the child. "The Son of the First."

"I do not understand."

“It doesn’t matter, Elias, all of this will be over,” the entity said.

He was right; everything ended soon after, including Elias's life, then the second, and the third.
He remembered their names and cherished them somewhere deep in his heart.

But now it all seems ridiculous—what he thought was a memorial was actually just another form of showing off his spoils, like a hunter who cleans up the head of a deer or bear he killed and hangs it in his home.

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but nothing came out, not even a sigh. Suddenly, he became mute.

He believed himself to be Horus Lupecal's soul separated from his body, possessing this power because he was the Emperor's son. Although he had only been adrift in the Warp for a short time, he had a vague understanding of what kind of being his father truly was.

Loka Aurelion's claim that he is a god is inaccurate, as gods cannot walk in the mortal realm.

In other words, he once thought he could save everything.

The world quietly came to an end with the changes; muddy roads and stone houses reappeared, only now they seemed tiny. In many other places, those that once belonged to this small village, the landscape was now broken, reflecting the outside world.

The scenery was truly insane, with lava flows stretching hundreds of meters, and dark patches of land rising into the sky due to abnormal gravity. The sky resembled the face of a dying man suffering from a terrible illness, covered with black mold and protruding blue veins—lightning.

And the hurricane put all of this together, like a child with great malice playing with building blocks in his hands, eager to make them work together to create something new.

Then the sky collapsed and the earth cracked.

Someone helped him up and then sighed.

“Nocturne Star’s recorded trials have never been as severe as this one. I think it’s because of you,” he said in a worried tone, then paused. “You’re going to die.”

He didn't need to remind them; the entity itself already knew about it.

Yes, he was going to die, not returning to the warp, but dying in the truest sense.

This inexplicably reminded him of some frivolous books Horus had read in the past, in which the mischievous ghosts described often didn't realize they were dead, but once they discovered it, they would immediately return to silence amidst screams.

Decline, withering, destruction. All is over.

Therefore, there is no need to say anything more now.

Stand up straight and suppress the pain.

With just this one movement, the sculpted face once again revealed an undeniable air of a ruler. He looked like a general who had regrouped and was not deterred by a temporary setback. Instead, he was full of fighting spirit and wanted to challenge the enemy who had defeated him.

“Tell me,” he said slowly. “Is there any way to stop this disaster?”

"Have."

“Then guide me—” The entity calmly and resolutely swung its right hand down, as if holding a sword. “—You have told me so much, it can’t be just to clear my doubts, you must have something to ask. But I don’t care about that, everyone in this world has needs of others, you just need to tell me what I have to give to reverse this disaster that I caused.”

Aren't you going to ask why?

The entity laughed: "I've heard enough truths today, so tell me already."

“Very well, but you alone are not enough,” Horus Lupecal, forged by Vulcan over millennia, replied calmly.

Then he turned around.

"Come with me."
-
Khalil did many things that others considered crazy, some of which he himself thought were a bit too much.

For example, in this matter now—at the very moment when this trial, which will later be regarded as the most severe, is gradually reaching its climax, he has actually decided to go deep underground.

He didn't do this because he was crazy, okay? There was a time when he was practically insane, and his behavior was completely out of control. But now it's different. He decided to do this while he was completely sober and in complete control of his body.

Interestingly, he had expected this to draw complaints, but the Imperial Guard Marshal and the Lord of Fire Dragons, who had escaped from beneath the dead volcano, had no such intentions whatsoever.

One of them simply nodded, while the other said, "I can't stop him."

“I’m not surprised,” Khalil said.

Then they parted ways, the two running towards the nearby fire lizard colony, while Kalil jumped down into a suddenly opened crevice, descending into that abyss-like world.

Before long, he gently landed in the deepest part of Nocturne Star, which was even deeper than the place where Vulcan had chosen as his forge, but it was not hot at all.

At first glance, all that could be seen were pitch-black rocks, but their texture was so smooth that they didn't resemble natural rocks at all.
Khalil stepped forward and placed his hand on it. A few seconds later, an indescribable grinding sound and breathing sounds came from inside the stone.

Then, they began to move.

Can you imagine? An entire mountain, and many mountains, just like that, began to move, or rather, crawl, wriggle, and then disperse.

Their size is so large that even if ordinary people could see them clearly, they still could not understand them, and their ancient life forms are even more of a mystery.

These are the original dragons and world serpents in the mythology of Nocturne.

The shaman, in a state of awe induced by the herbs, would sit by the fire and tell people their story—that they are the origin of the Nocturne Star, intertwined with each other, and then slumbering around her heart, their breath the pulse of the earth.

Many deep red eyes split open on the mountain peak, their pupils sharp as needles, all staring at him.

A moment later, one of the giant snakes finally moved.

It meandered in, and the sound it made as it moved even reminded Kalil of a volley of cannon fire.

Although sound cannot travel in a vacuum, almost every sailor on the gun deck was deaf, and they heard similar sounds almost every day.

This strange sound was incredibly dull, yet contained immense power.

The snake came before him and slowly lowered its head; one of its eyes was hundreds of meters high.

It scrutinized Kalil closely, but as if that wasn't enough, it moved even closer. At that moment, its pupils could even reflect Kalil's image directly, albeit in millions of fragmented pieces—the eye was like a single, faceted, deep red gem, exceptionally beautiful and mesmerizing.

“Yes.” Khalil nodded. “That’s exactly why I came.”

The snake became delighted, and its long, deep red tongue, as long as a river, slowly emerged from its mouth, carefully unfolding before him. A black and white stone appeared before Kalil. It wasn't large; compared to the size of its tongue, it was almost laughably small.

Khalil walked over, took it in both hands, and slowly picked it up.

The snake withdrew its tongue and swayed as it retreated back to its companions.

“Thank you,” Khalil said to them.

The snakes responded with their breathing, their eyes closed, and the mountains intertwined once more, the heat they had previously radiated beginning to return.

Soon, the intensity of the trial will gradually decrease, at least it will no longer be strong enough to destroy the world.

No one will know the reason behind it unless they happen to have read the only book that Maker Gowan never published in his lifetime.
He never named it, and the book was never bound; it remained just a manuscript, kept inside the courtroom.

In the opening of the book, Goun describes in detail an unexpected experience he had—he traveled with a fire lizard to the depths of Nocturne to visit Vulcan, only to find that the Lord of Fire Dragons was communicating with a creature as tall as a mountain.

That scene deeply shocked the scholar, and the Lord of Fire Dragons did not hide anything, telling him directly what this creature was.

But he ultimately underestimated a scholar’s ​​thirst for knowledge. Goen never left again for the rest of his life. He traveled to various parts of Nocturne, dissecting and learning the myths and legends he collected one by one, and even studying the ancient customs passed down by various tribes.

In the last year of his life, he asked to see Vulcan one last time, but after meeting him, he made a new request.
The Lord of Fire Dragons led him to the World Serpents, where Mek Gorn spent the entire day with them.

A week later, he passed away, leaving behind this book.

At the end, he wrote: "I do not expect people to understand these great creatures, but I think that apart from humans, there is no other creature in the world as kind as them."

"My research concludes here. My conclusion is that Nocturne is actually the home of the World Serpents, and humans are the later arrivals. Now, they have formed a healthy symbiotic relationship with us."

"As living beings, they need food, but not food in the traditional sense, but something like spirit or soul. The more noble it is, the more they like it. However, I don't think their feeding will destroy these souls; instead, it will only put them into a deep sleep."

"I have already said this in my study on the ancestral worship of Nocturne: a powerful enough shaman in the tribe can indeed awaken the best hunters and leaders at the burial site of their ancestors."

"As for the violent calamity during the trial, it is actually just a natural movement they make while they are asleep, like a person turning over in their sleep. However, Nocturne itself probably took advantage of this and turned it into some kind of test."

"They also told me that they had an agreement with humans that dates back many years, which I guess was shortly after humans left Terra. This means that they are likely the only race in the Old Night that has never betrayed us."

His research findings were affirmed by the seal bearers.

“Meek Gowne is right; there is indeed a pact between humanity and them,” he told Khalil before leaving Terra. “In fact, a part of Vulcan’s essence does not originate from the warp.”

"Which part?"

“The part about fire,” Macado said. “That’s all I know. For more details, you’ll probably have to go find him.”

Khalil ultimately didn't go to him; he felt that knowing these things was enough, and indeed he did.
He carried the stone to the salamander's encampment and found Vulcan. The Dragon Lord was busy in the workshop, trying to create a small, sturdy medical pod capable of nurturing fetuses. Kaliel's arrival interrupted him, and the stone made him sigh deeply.

Khalil walked to the side, looked at the embryo, and spoke softly.

"How about we add another badge, Vulcan?"

The Lord of Fire Dragons remained silent for a moment, then nodded.

"Okay." He said.

(End of this chapter)