Warhammer: Empire Reboot

The islanders had no idea what was happening outside.

All they knew was that a purple crack had appeared in the sky, that something with too many eyes would occasionally emerge from the sea at night, and that the fish pulled up by the fishing nets could sometimes talk.

Modkai lives on a remote island at the northernmost tip of the archipelago.

The island has only a lighthouse, a rocky beach, and a shack made of driftwood.

He built the lighthouse himself, using parts from abandoned fishing boats and rocks.

The light at the top wasn't a standard Imperial signal light, but rather a constant light source drawn from the reactor of his power armor.

It has been lit for eight hundred years.

Mordecai is an Astartes of the First Legion.

When Caliban was shattered, he was an ordinary tactical soldier, not even one of the first in his company's number.

A subspace storm threw him onto the surface of the Tarsus Sea more than three thousand years ago.

The fishermen on the island found him.

They didn't know who he was.

All that is known is that a giant wearing an iron shell crawled out of the sea. He was injured, didn't speak, but didn't hurt anyone either.

Modkai settled down on the island.

For the first few decades, he was still waiting.

Waiting for the Empire's ships to arrive, waiting for the Legion's signal, waiting for anyone who could tell him what had happened.

He repaired the lighthouse and kept it lit forever, hoping to leave a faint mark in the starry sky.

No one came.

He started doing other things.

Repair fishing boats and reinforce seawalls.

Teach the islanders how to use simple weapons to fight off the mutated creatures that crawl up from the deep sea.

Every few years, those creatures with too many eyes would swarm onto the rocky beach, and Mordecai would stand alone on the shoreline, hacking them down one by one with a power sword that had been repaired countless times.

The islanders call him the Old Guardian.

Eight hundred years have passed.

The island's inhabitants have changed dozens of times. The descendants of the fishermen who first rescued him have come to regard him as a legend, an iron giant living in the lighthouse on the North Island, forever young, forever silent, forever waiting for something on the coastline.

Mordekay's power armor was only functional in the torso section.

The helmet was shattered, leaving only the neck armor; the eagle emblem on the chest had long been corroded by sea salt and was no longer visible.

The energy field of the power sword was completely extinguished three hundred years ago; now it is just a very heavy iron rod.

Modkai didn't care.

He does the same thing every day.

Patrol the coastline, inspect the lighthouse, repair fishing boats, sit on the rocks and watch the sea, and occasionally kill a few monsters from the deep sea.

He no longer remembered what he was waiting for.

That evening, Modkai was mending a torn fishing net on the rocky beach.

The sea breeze blows from the west, carrying the scent of salt and seaweed.

The lighthouse's beam rotated steadily behind us.

Modkai tied the last knot and looked up.

The shadow at the base of the lighthouse cracked.

Two people came out from inside.

The first one was a younger Astartes, only younger than Modkai.

When the second person came out, Modkai dropped the fishing net in his hand.

White hair, ancient armor, and a giant sword.

Even after three thousand years, even if that face was much older than he remembered, he still recognized it.

Modkai's knee slammed into the rocks.

He knelt there, his lips moving several times.

The Lion King walked up to him.

He looked down at the old soldier kneeling on the reef, with a lighthouse that had been lit for eight hundred years behind him.

The Lion King gazed at the lighthouse for a long time.

Mordecai lowered his head, not daring to look at the Lion King's face.

“Father, I don’t know what happened back then. Lord Luther gave the order, and we carried it out. By the time I realized something was wrong, Caliban was already shattered, and the storm threw me here…”

Eight hundred years of silence were too heavy; he didn't know how to put those things into words.

The Lion King placed one hand on Mordekaiser's shoulder armor.

"stand up."

Modkai raised his head.

The Lion King looked at him and said, "You've stayed here for eight hundred years. Now, rejoin the pack!"

Modkae's eyes reddened; Astartes' tear glands, weakened during genetic modification, were functioning for the first time in three thousand years.

A drop of liquid slid down from the corner of his left eye and landed on the reef.

Zabril stood behind, turning his face away.

He understands that feeling.

When Modkai stood up, the lighthouse light was still spinning behind him.

He glanced at the lighthouse.

The Lion King said, "Keep it, let it continue to shine."

Mordekai followed the Lion King and Zabril toward the shadows at the base of the lighthouse.

Before the three figures were swallowed by the shadows, several fishermen who came out to haul in their nets at dusk on the island saw this scene from afar.

They saw the iron giant, who had guarded the lighthouse for eight hundred years, follow two unfamiliar figures into the darkness of the lighthouse and disappear.

…………

Heros-IV is the remains of a hive world.

After the Great Rift, the planet experienced three invasions by different forces: first the orcs, then the Chaos Cult uprising, and finally a small expeditionary force of the Death Guard that dropped plague bombs.

After the three disasters combined, less than 200 million of Heros-IV's 30 billion population remained.

Survivors huddle together in the middle layer of the hive ruins, surviving by filtering sewage and scavenging old warehouses.

Seven people who shouldn't exist live in the underground pipe system of the seventh district of the Nest City.

They call themselves the Grey Bones Company.

Seven Astartes, wearing power armor with all their insignia painted off.

The color on the armor was ground to a uniform gray, and the legion markings on the shoulder armor, breastplate, and leg armor were all scraped off, welded flat, or covered with metal plates.

They leave no trace that can be tracked.

Company Commander Kyle was the oldest among them.

He was a sergeant when Caliban shattered, and was thrown to the past six thousand years by a warp storm.

Over six thousand years, he has traveled to eleven planets, escaped the pursuit of the Dark Angel Inquisitor Priests nine times, and lost four companions.

The seven survivors were fallen angels he had gathered at different times and places.

Some he found in the ruins of the battlefield, some he encountered in the dark corners of the empire's lower class, and some he survived by covering for each other while being chased by the Dark Angels.

Seven people, the entire Grey Bone Company.

Kyle established strict rules for survival.

It does not use any Imperial communication frequencies and does not make contact with Imperial military forces.

He doesn't stay on the same planet for more than ten years and doesn't trust anyone wearing dark green power armor.

Especially the last one.

The Dark Angels' Inquisitor Priest is the most persistent hunter in the galaxy.

They would disguise themselves as merchants, mercenaries, refugees, or even warriors from other warbands to approach their targets.

Their interrogation techniques would put even the most ruthless Chaos Torture Masters to shame.

None of the fallen angels they captured walked out of the interrogation room alive.

Therefore, Kyle doesn't trust anyone.

Heros-IV is the twelfth hideout planet of the Greybones Company.

They chose this place because it was terrible enough—plague, ruins, two hundred million starving people. The Empire wouldn't care about a place like this, and the Dark Angels were unlikely to come all the way to a junk planet just to find them.

They hibernate deep within the pipes during the day and emerge at night to hunt down mutants and cult remnants in the hive, collecting ammunition, food, and medical supplies. Some are used by themselves, while others are anonymously left near civilian settlements.

Kyle does not allow anyone to have direct contact with civilians.

"We do not exist."

He said the same thing to every new brother who joined: “We are demons. Help people and then leave. Don’t let them remember your face.”

That night, Kyle set up an ambush in a dead-end alley in the Seventh District of Hive City.

He received intelligence that a squad of Chaos Cult members was infiltrating the fourth residential level through the underground sewers, targeting a still-operating water recycling station.

If the water purification station is destroyed, the 60,000 civilians on the fourth residential level will die of thirst within two weeks.

The entire Grey Bone Company was mobilized, with the seven members scattered in the pipes, ventilation shafts, and abandoned elevator shafts on both sides of the dead-end alley.

A cult squad has emerged.