The sky is wrong.

  I can’t stop staring at it, no matter how much I tell myself to look away. It’s not like the sky is particularly helpful in navigating this gods-forsaken place, but somehow, I keep hoping it’ll give me answers. Maybe a sign. Something. Instead, it just sits there, mocking me with its impossibility.

  I don’t even know if I should call it a sky. It stretches endlessly above me, but it’s not blue. It’s not black. It’s… everything. Shimmering hues fold into each other like oil on water, shifting and rippling in ways that make no sense. The longer I watch it, the more it feels like it’s watching me back.

  It changes, sometimes slowly, sometimes violently. At first, I thought it was just another trick of the Warp, random nonsense meant to distract me. But no. The patterns shift in ways that are too deliberate, too intentional. Like it’s reacting to something.

  To me.

  I stop walking, my boots crunching softly against a ground that feels like glass but doesn’t reflect a thing. The sky is rippling again, the colors bleeding into each other with a kind of rhythm. Almost like… breathing.

  My breathing.

  I take a step back, my heart pounding harder than I’d like to admit. The sky pulses. The colors darken and deepen, swirling into a mass of red and black, a sickening vortex that churns like blood swirling in water. It feels… familiar.

  The shadows of the battlefield on Chimir Prime flash through my mind. Bloodletters screaming, their blades dripping with gore. Anubis standing tall, laughing in his arrogance. The screams of my soldiers as they fell.

  “No.” My voice cuts through the silence like a blade. The vortex shudders and flickers, the red dissolving into golden light.

  Golden. Like the Emperor’s light. Like the lies I used to tell myself to keep going. Like the faith I tried to cling to when everything else fell apart.

  “Stop it.” My voice is quieter this time, but the words carry weight. The sky trembles, the golden light fraying at the edges, revealing a dull, sickly green beneath it.

  I hate this.

  The colors shift again, faster now, like they’re panicking. The green deepens, thickening into rot and filth, and suddenly I smell it—the sickly-sweet stench of decay. It floods my senses, and I take another step back, choking on the memory of the swamp that tried to drag me down.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn’t help. The smell is still there, and the colors aren’t just in the sky anymore—they’re behind my eyelids, burning into my mind. The green rots away into purple, and the whispers start.

  No words. Just sounds. The kind that crawl under your skin and fester.

  “Enough!”

  I open my eyes, and the sky freezes. The colors stop shifting, holding their positions like an artist caught in the act of ruining their own painting. It’s a mess—a swirling, jagged chaos of red, gold, green, purple, and blue. Every corner of the sky tells a different story, and none of them make sense.

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  I hate that I can’t look away.

  “What do you want?” I ask, though I don’t expect an answer. The Warp isn’t some daemon I can kill or a foe I can outthink. It’s everything. It’s nothing. It’s the godsdamned game that never ends, and I’m the piece that shouldn’t be here.

  But the sky doesn’t answer. It just… watches. And shifts. And waits.

  I force myself to keep walking, even though every instinct screams at me to stop. I don’t even know where I’m going—there’s no horizon here, no landmarks, no destination. Just the endless stretch of the impossible, and me, wandering through it.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been walking when the sky changes again. This time, it’s not colors or whispers. It’s shapes. Faces.

  I stop in my tracks, my breath catching in my throat.

  The first face is Novak’s. His sharp features softened by that cocky grin he always wore when he was trying to lighten the mood. The face blurs and twists, and suddenly it’s Abbey, her tired eyes and resigned expression etched into the stars.

  Then Cole.

  Then someone I don’t even recognize, but I know they’re familiar.

  My claws twitch—not from anger, but from instinct. They all look at me, their eyes hollow but filled with accusation. It’s not fair. They’re not fair. I did everything I could for them. I fought for them. I bled for them. I didn’t—

  The faces vanish, and the sky is empty again.

  I exhale slowly, my grip tightening on the strap of my rifle. “Nice try,” I mutter. My voice echoes faintly in the nothingness, a hollow sound that disappears almost as quickly as it came.

  The air feels heavier now. The weight of the Warp pressing down on me, suffocating, as if daring me to break. But I keep walking.

  Because that’s all I can do.

  I’m not even sure if this is real. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe the Warp doesn’t have to do anything to me because I’m already doing it to myself.

  Maybe that’s the point.

  The thought makes my stomach turn, but I push it down, burying it beneath layers of grit and spite.

  The sky shifts one more time before it leaves me alone. This time, it’s just a reflection—my reflection. A towering silhouette of me stretched across the heavens, my features exaggerated, distorted. The eyes burn brighter than anything else, and they’re staring straight at me.

  It doesn’t speak. It doesn’t have to.

  I meet its gaze, my own eyes narrowing. “I’m still here,” I say, the words clipped and firm. “You haven’t beaten me yet.”

  The reflection lingers for a moment, then shatters into a thousand pieces. The fragments fall, fading before they can hit the ground.

  The sky is empty now. Just gray, endless and dull.

  I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and keep moving. My legs are heavy, my boots dragging slightly against the strange, smooth ground. But I don’t stop. Not yet.

  I can still feel it watching me. The sky, the Warp, the whatever-it-is. It doesn’t care about me. Not really. But it knows I’m here, and that’s enough to keep it entertained.

  Well, good for it.

  I’m still here, too.

  For now.