Servius moved through the crumbling arteries of the Sink, his boots making no sound against rusted metal and loose debris. The darkness here wasn’t just from the failing lumen strips overhead—it was deeper, a choking absence of light, the kind that hid ghosts and worse. He had left a field of corpses behind him. Silent. Precise. No witnesses.

  But that didn’t mean no one would come looking.

  His ears twitched at a faint sound—distant footfalls. Not the heavy, deliberate steps of soldiers, but something softer, more uncertain. He exhaled slowly through his nose, keeping his pace steady, his body angled slightly to reduce his silhouette against the dim industrial glow of the ruined causeway.

  They were searching already.

  A flick of his tail, and he slipped into a lower walkway, pressing his body against a corroded support beam. From his new vantage, he saw them—a small search team. Five men, maybe six, clad in scavenged void-armor, rifles held tight against their shoulders. Not Legionnaires. Not real soldiers. Hired sweepers, sent to check the wreckage.

  One of them muttered something in low Gothic, voice tinged with unease.

  "You seeing this? No blood splatter. No burn marks. Just bodies. What kind of fight was this?"

  Another voice, gruffer, more seasoned.

  "Not a fight. A culling."

  Servius watched them move carefully through the lower paths, their weapons raised, their eyes darting into the dark corners of the ruins. They were alert but inexperienced. Not hunting him—yet. Just investigating.

  Still, the fact that they were here so soon meant the Hollowed Legion’s absence hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  He exhaled through his nose and moved before their search pattern could shift. Speed. Silence. Distance. His route took him away from the patrol, toward the ventilation shaft he had mapped earlier. A narrow, corroded tunnel, partially collapsed, its entry shrouded by a nest of rusted pipes and loose cabling.

  He slipped through without hesitation, feeling the press of cold metal against his coat as he maneuvered into the tight crawlspace. The air was different here—stagnant, tinged with the faint chemical tang of oxidizing steel and forgotten industry. Perfect cover.

  The tunnel sloped upward, leading into the maintenance ducts that wove through the station like veins. The safest path. The unseen path.

  His body moved with the ease of experience, claws gripping onto the slick metal as he ascended, not rushing, but not hesitating either. Below, the Sink stretched out like a corpse, its structures sagging with the weight of time, its forgotten inhabitants still huddled around dying fires.

  By the time he emerged near the upper docking bays, he was alone.

  The Praedyth was waiting.

  As he neared the docking bay, something caught his eye. A pair of dockworkers stood at the edge of the sector, speaking in hushed tones. One glanced in his direction—just a passing look, but something about it was off.

  Not curiosity.

  A confirmation.

  Servius kept walking, his pace unchanged, but the thought lingered.

  The docking bay itself was the same deteriorating mess it had always been—patchwork plating, flickering lumen strips, old ships in various states of decay. The kind of place where no one asked questions unless they were getting paid to.

  The Praedyth’s smooth, dark hull stood in sharp contrast to the wreckage surrounding it. Sleek. Unblemished. Untouched.

  Servius stepped onto the boarding ramp.

  A faint hum ran through the ship’s plating—a recognition, a greeting.

  The doors sealed behind him, the outside world cut away in an instant. The air inside was clean, crisp, void of the rot that clung to Driftmourne’s underbelly.

  He let out a slow breath, rolling his shoulders. The mission had been successful. He had left no loose ends. He had retrieved more than expected. And yet, he had more questions than answers.

  The case.

  His tail flicked once as he moved toward the secured storage platform, setting the reinforced container down with a dull metallic thud.

  "Praedyth," he murmured, rolling his shoulders, feeling the faint pull of bruised ribs from his fight with the Astartes. "Scan the case. Full spectrum analysis. Look for anything unusual—material composition, energy signatures, security measures."

  A brief pause. Then, the ship’s voice responded.

  “Analysis indicates user Servius has sustained substantial injuries”

  Servius sighed and looked to where he thought one of the ship’s sensors was. “Kindly just deal with this crate,” he said with a tone of slight annoyance.

  "Processing."

  Servius turned, unfastening his coat and setting his weapons back onto the armory rack. He checked his autopistol’s magazine, flicked the safety on, then slid it into its holster. His claws flexed slightly—a habit, a release of tension.

  Minutes passed. The ship remained silent, its internal systems humming softly around him. Then—

  A sharp flicker ran through the console, the display glitching for a half-second before stabilizing. Servius frowned, ears twitching at the faint pulse running beneath the ship’s hull.

  "Praedyth?"

  "Anomalous feedback detected. The case is emitting a passive disruption field."

  Servius’s tail flicked once. That was new.

  "Results inconclusive."

  Servius’s tail flicked once.

  "Elaborate."

  "The case is constructed from high-density composite alloys—non-standard fabrication. Internal scans are obstructed by layered interference. Possible countermeasures against remote intrusion."

  A safeguard.

  Whoever designed this case had expected someone to try scanning it.

  "Any heat signatures inside? Power sources?"

  A pause. Then—

  "Minimal heat variance. No active power signatures detected. The contents are inert."

  That was something.

  No explosives. No tracking beacons. Not a weapon in the traditional sense.

  But important enough to be shielded against remote intrusion.

  His claws tapped lightly against the metal surface, thinking.

  Would the Guild even know if he had peeked?

  House Ankaris had expected him to look inside the last crate, but they had no way of knowing whether he actually had. They had only been waiting for him to admit it.

  Would the Guild be the same?

  Would they care?

  Servius flexed his claws against the case’s smooth surface.

  One last tool to try.

  The data-slate from the unknown faction.

  If the Hollowed Legion had manipulated the trade, if they had falsified the information given to their “partners,” then there was a chance that whatever codes or encryption methods had been used on the data-slate might share similarities with the case’s lock.

  A calculated risk.

  His tail flicked once as he settled into the command chair, tapping into the ship’s decryption tools.

  "Praedyth," he muttered, his sharp green eyes locked onto the screen. "Let’s see if their mistake is my advantage."

  The echoes of war fade, but whispers remain.

  The Sink was silent. The dead were cooling. Servius had disappeared into the station’s shifting tides. But the consequences of his actions were already unraveling across Driftmourne.

  There were always eyes watching.

  And now, those eyes had turned toward him.

  The Hollowed Legion’s stronghold was buried deep within Driftmourne’s lower sectors, a place where even the station’s rulers dared not tread. The corridors were lined with salvaged plating from a hundred battlefields, patchwork relics of war, each section a trophy from some long-forgotten campaign.

  It was not a place of comfort. It was a place of function.

  And in the heart of it, standing before a towering war-table of flickering hololithic projections, was Valcair.

  The Leader of the Hollowed Legion.

  Once a Warsmith, marked by centuries of conflict, his gunmetal ceramite armor was a fortress unto itself—scarred, pitted, but never broken. His left pauldron still bore the faded remnants of a hazard stripe, an echo of his past allegiance to the IV Legion, though he no longer called them his brothers.

  His mechanical eye whirred softly as it adjusted focus, scanning the shifting battlefield data before him. His face—half-metal, half-ruin—remained impassive, but behind his augmetic optics, calculations were already running.

  Before him, a mortal officer stood at rigid attention.

  "The deal failed," the officer reported, voice crisp, professional. "Our operatives were eliminated."

  Valcair did not speak immediately. He let the words settle.

  Silence had power.

  His clawed gauntlet tapped once against the edge of the war-table, a slow, deliberate motion. Not impatience. Not anger. Just calculation.

  "Elaborate."

  The officer’s jaw tightened.

  "There was no sign of a struggle. No open battle. No collateral damage." He hesitated, then continued. "The site was… precise. Methodical."

  The display flickered to life.

  Vox-captures of the fallen.

  Still images, rendered in cold green holo-light, revealing exactly what had transpired at the meeting site.

  The Legionnaires lay where they had fallen, their weapons still clutched in their dead fingers.

  Single shot kills. Bladed strikes in vulnerable joints.

  No messy firefight, no bombardment, no panicked gunplay.

  A professional’s work.

  Valcair’s organic eye narrowed as he studied the details. The first shot had been from high ground. A clean vantage. The follow-up kills had been executed from multiple angles. Each one delivered without hesitation.

  Not an ambush. A culling.

  Valcair exhaled slowly, the faint rasp of his respirator the only sound in the chamber.

  "This was not a deal gone bad," he murmured. Not a betrayal. Not a rival warband seeking advantage.

  A pause.

  Then, with cold certainty—

  "This was an intervention."

  The officer shifted slightly but did not speak.

  Valcair studied the images a moment longer.

  Then he turned his attention to the Astartes corpse.

  One of his lieutenants, and one of his most experienced warriors. A soldier of the Long War, cut down like any lesser mortal.

  That was interesting.

  Valcair folded his arms across his broad chest, his mechanical fingers clicking softly against the armor of his vambrace.

  "Cause of death?"

  The officer didn’t hesitate.

  "Blade penetration through the neck joint," he said, pulling up an enhanced image of the wound. "Clean insertion. Minimal resistance." A pause. "The killer knew exactly where to strike."

  "Weapon?"

  The officer tilted his head slightly, consulting his internal logs.

  "Based on the wound diameter and cauterization pattern…" he hesitated.

  "…Power dagger."

  Now that was very interesting.

  Valcair let the silence stretch. A single person had done this.

  Not an Astartes kill team. Not another warband.

  One man.

  A highly skilled, highly efficient man.

  And that man had deliberately severed the Legion’s control over the meeting.

  The Hollowed Legion had enemies, of course. That was nothing new. The Imperium, Rival warbands, the differed factions of Varrn’s Shroud—all were adversaries in his war.

  But this didn’t appear to be any of those.

  This was something else.

  Valcair’s mechanical eye pulsed softly as it focused on the mortal officer once more.

  "Astartes?"

  "Unlikely," the officer replied. "No signs of bolter fire from the attacker. No transhuman wounds. The techniques suggest something else." A pause. "Something like a kill team operative. Or a xenos mercenary."

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  Now that was very, very interesting.

  A xenos.

  Driftmourne had many killers in its shadowed corridors. Mercenaries, bounty hunters, assassins-for-hire. But few had the precision and skill to take down an Astartes in a direct engagement.

  Few had the patience for this level of execution.

  Valcair exhaled through his respirator, considering.

  "An intervention."

  Yes. That was the correct assessment.

  And an intervention meant purpose.

  The Guild’s influence spread through Driftmourne like roots through a corpse, but even they rarely moved against the Hollowed Legion directly.

  So who had sanctioned this?

  Who had the confidence to challenge the Legion’s dealings?

  And, more importantly—who had the ability to pull it off?

  Valcair’s mind shifted through possibilities like a machine sifting through battlefield probabilities.

  Not the Guild directly. This wasn’t their style.

  Not House Ankaris. They lacked the subtlety.

  Not a rival warband. The kill pattern was too… professional.

  That left one possibility.

  An independent player.

  A rogue asset.

  A lone hunter.

  Interesting.

  Valcair’s fingers drummed once against the war-table, his mind shifting through probabilities.

  "Inform our operatives in the upper tiers," he murmured. "Pull our informants from the Guild’s periphery. If this was sanctioned, they’ll react."

  His mechanical eye flickered.

  "And send word to Narthis. If this hunter wants to move in the dark, then let’s see how well he fares when the shadows move first."

  The officer hesitated.

  "And if we find him?"

  Valcair tilted his head slightly, calculating.

  They could kill him, of course. That was the natural response. But…

  There was efficiency in using a weapon rather than breaking it.

  A tool like this? A man who could walk among the shadows and leave nothing but corpses behind?

  He could be a threat.

  Or he could be a resource.

  Valcair’s lips curled into a faint, humorless smirk.

  "Then we will learn if he was merely a nuisance," he murmured.

  His mechanical eye gleamed coldly in the dim light.

  "Or if he is worth dissecting."

  The chamber was quiet.

  Not the uneasy silence of doubt, nor the tense silence of unspoken conflict.

  This was the silence of consideration.

  A single figure sat at the long, metallic table, their deep crimson robes casting sharp contrasts against the dim light. Their presence was neither questioned nor acknowledged—a formality of the Guild.

  The Guildmaster’s voice, smooth and measured, broke the stillness.

  "He continues to prove… adaptable."

  The gathered envoys did not react immediately. A few exchanged brief glances, but none spoke out of turn.

  One of them, a woman with augmetic fingers, tapped a slender metallic digit against the table’s surface. "It was expected."

  Another, his features obscured by the haze of a low-burning lho-stick, gave a faint chuckle. "Perhaps. But he was marked before we knew his measure."

  A pause.

  Then, the Guildmaster’s fingers turned over a small, polished coin between them.

  Servius’s coin.

  The mark given to him when he had first arrived.

  "He has yet to disappoint."

  No further words were spoken.

  The evaluation was complete.

  For now, Servius was of interest.

  But whether he was an investment or a liability?

  That remained to be seen.

  The chamber was elegant, but restrained.

  House Ankaris did not flaunt its wealth the way lesser nobles did. Their power was not in ornate thrones or golden halls but in the weight of their name and the reach of their influence. The walls bore the insignia of their house—a twisting ouroboros of interwoven serpents—but beyond that, the room was a place of function.

  The men and women gathered around the polished voidstone table were not concerned with titles or etiquette.

  They were concerned with control.

  At the head of the table, Mistress Varena Ankaris sat in quiet contemplation. Her fingers, adorned with rings that bore the seals of contracts, debts, and favors owed, tapped against the tabletop in an absent rhythm. A habit of calculation, not impatience.

  Before her, a small data-slate flickered to life. The Guild’s recent assessments.

  And there—at the bottom of the compiled reports—one name.

  Servius.

  A wildcard.

  A silence settled over the gathering, thick with unspoken thoughts. It was Lord Hakar Ankaris, her cousin and one of the more ruthless voices within the family, who finally spoke first.

  "He is efficient. But unpredictable." His voice was smooth, practiced, as he leaned forward slightly. "Not yet an asset. Not yet a threat. A blade without a hand to wield it."

  Varena tilted her head slightly. "Then perhaps we should see whose hand reaches for it first."

  Another noble, Lady Oris Ankaris, scoffed lightly. "He was marked by the Guildmaster," she reminded them. "That alone is enough to draw attention. If we attempt to claim him too openly, we risk competing interests."

  Hakar exhaled through his nose. "We risk more if we allow others to claim him first."

  Silence. Consideration.

  It was Master Drenic Ankaris, an older, more reserved man who had spent decades ensuring the House’s stability, who spoke next.

  "We do not need to claim him," he said evenly. "We simply need to ensure that—when the moment comes—he is already standing where we want him to be."

  Varena smiled slightly at that.

  Yes. That was the way.

  House Ankaris did not recruit. They did not buy loyalty.

  They cultivated it.

  And if Servius was as resourceful as the Guild seemed to believe?

  Then he would soon find himself faced with opportunities he could not refuse.

  Varena tapped the edge of the data-slate, considering.

  "Send word to our handlers," she instructed. "Ensure that he is given tasks that align with our interests—but do not let him see the strings yet. He must believe he is making his own choices."

  She glanced at Hakar.

  "Make sure he is watched. Carefully. Should he become… problematic, I want contingencies in place."

  A faint murmur of agreement spread through the room.

  The discussion moved on to other matters—trade routes, political maneuvering, silent wars being fought with wealth and whispers.

  But in the back of Varena’s mind, the image of Servius’s name on that Guild report remained.

  He was useful. For now.

  And House Ankaris never wasted useful things.

  It was not a room made for human comfort—no lavish seating, no ornate fixtures, no wasted space. It was a shrine of circuitry and function, its walls lined with conduits pulsing with low-energy transfers, every surface gleaming with the cold efficiency of unfeeling metal.

  The Mechanists did not waste breath on unnecessary pleasantries.

  Twelve figures stood in a perfect half-circle, their faces obscured by the gleaming steel of their augmetics. Some still bore remnants of flesh—patches of pallid skin where their old selves had not yet been discarded. Others had transcended beyond such weakness, their forms reduced to the skeletal framework of machine and data, mind and purpose.

  At the center stood Arch-Technomancer Rhylis.

  His form was more machine than man—a tall, wiry construct of articulated plating, exposed synth-muscle, and neural spires that extended from the base of his skull. A single, unblinking red optic glowed from the center of his faceplate, scanning the gathered assembly with cold, mechanical precision.

  Before them, a flickering display hovered in the air—a projection of a single ship.

  Praedyth.

  A relic of unknown origin. Intact. Functioning. Undiscovered for far too long.

  Rhylis’s voice clicked and whirred as it emerged through his modulated vox-filter.

  "It is beyond standard Imperial design."

  The others did not immediately respond. Silence in their ranks was not hesitation—it was calculation. Processing. Analyzing. Running probability threads through their enhanced minds.

  One of them, Tech-Lector Voris, inclined his head slightly, a faint pulse of static escaping his augmetic throat.

  "Confirmed?"

  A low mechanical hum filled the chamber as a secondary data-stream flickered across the projection. Energy patterns, internal schematics—what little could be gleaned without direct access.

  "Confirmed."

  A murmur of processed binary swept through the assembly. Excitement. Curiosity. Hunger.

  Another voice, Magos Kira-Vox, her body suspended within a web of interlocking servo-arms, let out a low, metallic click of approval.

  "Unacceptable."

  The others turned toward her.

  "Clarify," Rhylis commanded.

  Kira-Vox’s optical lenses narrowed.

  "It remains an unknown. It remains outside our grasp. Knowledge unstudied is knowledge wasted. This… 'Praedyth'… must be understood. Reverse-engineered. Made to serve."

  A series of agreement-pulses flickered through the assembly.

  They did not covet wealth. They did not seek power.

  They sought knowledge.

  And this ship was a missing piece of something larger.

  A second projection flickered into view—a grainy capture of a lone figure moving through the depths of Driftmourne.

  The Mechanists did not know his name. They had no need for it.

  They only knew what he possessed.

  Rhylis turned his red optic toward the projection.

  "Then we require access."

  "The Guild has claimed him," Voris reminded them.

  Kira-Vox let out a mechanical chitter of amusement. "The Guild claims many things. This does not mean they will keep them."

  A flicker of encrypted data ran across the projection, a secondary thread of calculations running parallel to their discussion.

  "Our proxy within the Guild?"

  "Already in place," Voris confirmed. "They will ensure we are informed of his next move."

  Rhylis’s red optic glowed faintly.

  "Good." A pause. "When the time comes, he will have no choice but to seek us out."

  Silence.

  Then, a single statement.

  "Begin the preparations."

  A ripple of acknowledgment spread through the assembly as they turned back toward their workstations. Data-streams shifted. Calculations were altered. Plans were set into motion.

  They did not know what the Praedyth truly was.

  But they would.

  And when the time came?

  The ship would be theirs.

  The chamber was cold.

  Not from the temperature—Driftmourne’s infrastructure ensured that—but from the weight of the conversation being held. The walls were lined with holo-displays, each flickering with streams of shifting data, encrypted scripts scrolling too fast for an unaugmented mind to follow.

  A single figure sat at the head of the long, narrow table, draped in tactical void-leathers, their features half-hidden by the shadow of a raised hood. Their presence was absolute. Their voice, when it came, was measured. Devoid of doubt.

  "The Hollowed Legion played us."

  A second figure, seated further down the table, exhaled through a vocal modulator. The sound was processed, artificial. "Expected. They had no reason to be honest with us."

  The leader’s fingers tapped lightly against the table. "Irrelevant."

  The room’s holo-projectors flickered, shifting images with calculated precision. A grainy security still. A brief heat signature capture from one of the Sink’s decayed surveillance nodes. The last traces of a figure slipping into the dark.

  The unknown hunter.

  A flick of the leader’s wrist, and the images refined themselves.

  The silhouette sharpened.

  The vague distortions corrected.

  And then—a face.

  Feline features. Sharp green eyes. A coat worn for utility, not display. The stance of a predator.

  For the first time, his image had entered their archives.

  A third figure, their features hidden behind a steel-plated augmetic mask, tilted their head slightly. "He disrupted the exchange entirely."

  "He was meant to take the bait." The modulated voice rasped again.

  The leader did not move. "He did. Just not in the way we expected."

  Another flicker of the holo-displays. The recovered data from the trade. It was incomplete, fragmentary—but enough to confirm something.

  The Hollowed Legion had sold falsehoods.

  But in doing so, they had revealed a sliver of truth.

  The leader leaned back slightly, steepling their gloved hands.

  "The data was meant to lead us to him. Now, he has come to us instead."

  The augmetic-masked figure exhaled slowly. "Then we proceed?"

  The leader considered for a moment. Then, a single nod.

  "Yes. We let him believe he is ahead. We let him make his move." A pause. "And when the time is right… we ensure he never makes another."

  A faint hum from the holo-displays. The information was archived, categorized, red-marked for priority tracking.

  The leader let the silence stretch, watching the holo-display flicker with Servius’s image.

  "Make contact," they said at last.

  A slow exhale from the masked figure. "Directly?"

  "Not yet. Just enough to see if he bites."

  The order was understood. A rumor here. A misdirected job offer there. A whisper of something too valuable to ignore.

  And when Servius reached for it?

  They would be waiting.

  Servius sat in the quiet of his ship, the dim glow of the console reflecting off his sharp green eyes. The hum of the Praedyth’s processors was the only sound, a steady rhythm beneath the slow, pulsing decryptor.

  The stolen data-stream flickered before him, its layers of encryption unraveling thread by thread. Fragments of intercepted messages, old transmissions buried in shifting code, whispers of intent hidden behind firewalls meant to keep out lesser minds.

  Not him.

  Servius’s ears flicked slightly as the feeds stabilized. He wasn’t just looking at stolen intelligence anymore.

  He was looking at the movements of giants.

  The Hollowed Legion, their ambitions deeper than a single trade. They had not merely lost something in the Sink—they had been outmaneuvered. And now, their eyes would sweep the station, their blades searching for the unseen hand that had turned their deal into a graveyard.

  House Ankaris, watching from the shadows, their interest in him growing sharper. Not yet control. Not yet ownership. But he was on their board now, a piece they wanted to shape into something useful.

  And then… the whispers of those he did not yet know.

  The ones who had come seeking information, expecting an advantage, only to walk into a trap of their own making. They had been hunting something. Not the case. Not the Legion.

  Him.

  His tail flicked once, slow and deliberate.

  They wanted him removed.

  They had come for leverage. Knowledge of his weaknesses. But instead, he now held knowledge of them. Their structure. Their movements. Their failure.

  That made them vulnerable.

  Servius leaned back in his chair, exhaling through his nose. His claws drummed once against the console.

  The station was shifting. The balance of power had trembled—not yet broken, but strained.

  And none of them realized something.

  They weren’t the only ones playing.

  Servius had slipped into the cracks of Driftmourne’s great game, but he wasn’t content to be a mere piece.

  Not anymore.

  He would get answers.

  He would make his decision.

  Servius let out a slow breath, claws tapping against the console as the final decryption threads unraveled before him.

  "Time to push back."