Ash and pulverized stone coated Kaelen’s lips. He spat, the grit mingling with the metallic tang of his own blood. Around him, the Sunder-Gap District groaned. Walls of ancient plasteel, scarred by warp-fire, listed precariously. A perpetual twilight clung to the ruins, filtered through the poisoned air of the Shroud-Touched Realm.
“Jory! Keep your head down, you idiot, or a Void-spike will carve it off!” Kaelen barked, voice raw. His rebreather unit hissed, straining against the particulate-laden atmosphere. Scavenged chitin armor, fused with arcane wards, felt like a second skin. Dirt-smudged hands, calloused from countless skirmishes, gripped a relic-rifle.
Jory, his lean frame silhouetted against a crumbling archway, ignored him. He peered over the barricade of debris, a salvaged chrono-lens held aloft. Its flickering display captured the distant, almost ceremonial, exchange of arcane fire. “Chill, Kaelen. No Enforcer will waste a genuine warp-flare over two Arcane Hierarchs bickering about… what was it this time? Domain proximity?”
Jory lowered the lens, shaking his head. “And the skirmish will end soon. Hierarch Varkos can’t keep defying the Conclave, even if he is an ancient relic.”
Exact truth in Jory’s words. Another senseless bloodletting, born from the petty squabbles of the ‘Enlightened’ Arcane Orders. Yesterday, Hierarch Varkos had reportedly scoffed at Hierarch Lysandra’s recent ‘Domain reclamation’ as merely “rearranging abyssal dust.” Lysandra, never one for subtlety, had promptly revoked the ceasefire.
“Argh… those Hierarchs of ours even disregarded the Superior Conclave’s decree,” Kaelen grunted. He slammed a fist against the jagged concrete. “It means nothing, they said. *Nothing*.”
“Don’t you know?” Jory shrugged, adjusting a loose strap on his pack. “Power makes old men mad. Varkos is pushing three centuries this cycle.”
That was the crux of it. Ancient beings, their minds warped by forgotten lore and ceaseless power struggles. They believed themselves beyond consequence, beyond mortality. Yet, Void-Hunters like Kaelen and Jory paid the price. Youth squandered in endless, pointless conflicts while reality itself unraveled. And the Hierarchs themselves? Safe within their sanctums, miles from the decay.
“Man, what’s eating you?” Jory asked, a faint smile playing on his lips. “I should be the one stressed. My wife is due with our second child next season. A girl, we hope.”
A warm light entered Jory’s eyes. “Just thinking about them… brightens the gloom.”
Kaelen felt a prickle of dread. This was the one. The classic, fatalistic pronouncement. He started sweating, a cold clamminess beneath his armor.
Jory continued, oblivious. “You know, my wife even said—”
Kaelen seized Jory by the shoulders, shaking him violently. “You family man, you walking red flag! I’m single, Kaelen! And still a freaking virgin! What did you say about your wife? Stop giving me omens, you idiot!”
His words choked off. Eyes widened, tracking something above. A shimmer of sickly purple light, growing rapidly, tearing through the decaying heavens. An Eldritch projectile. No, a focused warp-flare, charged with the malevolent intent of a Hierarch. It wasn't targeting a district, but *them*. Specifically, behind Jory, where a fragile support beam offered meager cover.
Reflexes honed by years of grim survival screamed. Kaelen shoved Jory with all his strength, flinging him toward the relative safety of a deeper trench. A searing heat bloomed behind him. He spun, throwing himself between Jory and the impending blast. The warp-flare detonated. Reality shrieked.
A thousand needles of pure void-energy pierced Kaelen. His chitin armor buckled, then shattered. Flesh burned, tore, then froze as forbidden energies coursed through him. A sickening lurch in his gut, a wrenching sensation as his very essence was exposed to the Void. The world dissolved into a cacophony of pain and screams. Then, silence.
Jory cradled him, face a mask of horror. Tears streamed down his soot-stained cheeks, streaking rivulets through the grime. Kaelen heard nothing, felt only a dull, spreading ache. A warmth seeped from his chest, staining Jory’s scavenged tunic. He raised a hand, slick with blood, and pressed it against his sternum. A gaping wound, pulsing with malevolent energy, leaked a viscous, black ichor.
Jory’s lips moved, frantic words unformed. Kaelen tried to speak, but no sound escaped. Only a gurgle, a desperate gasp. His thoughts, however, were grimly clear.
Hah! Serves you right, Kaelen. Foolish heroics. At least Jory gets to meet his second child.
Child… what a fragile, precious word in this dying realm. Then, a strange wetness on his own cheeks. Tears. Damn it… never even truly lived. Never tasted the warmth of another, never known peace beyond the brief lulls between Void incursions. If he ever got another chance, his top priority: find someone. Someone real, outside the endless decay. Second priority: power. True power. Enough to tear down Hierarchs, to make them taste the dust.
Vision blurred. Jory’s face, contorted in anguish, swirled like a painting dissolving in acid. “You bastard,” Kaelen thought, a faint, bitter humor stirring within the pain. “You really were the last one, huh? Looks like you won the ‘Survival’s Price’ bet.”
Painfully, he reached into a pocket, his fingers fumbling. Pulled free a blood-soaked scrap of synth-paper. Extended it, a final gesture.
Darkness consumed him. The Void reached out, not to destroy, but to embrace.
---
Jory watched the last flicker of life leave Kaelen’s eyes. His throat tore, a primal scream ripped from his lungs. “NOOO! Kaelen! Why?! Was it because of my wife, you fool?! I only brought it up to lighten the mood!”
Jory knew. Kaelen, the cynical survivor, the pragmatic Void-Hunter, harbored a grim, hidden loyalty. He’d impersonated Jory, taken double duty on the outer perimeter, so Jory could spend an extra cycle with his pregnant wife. Now, he’d given his life. Jory wiped futilely at the tears, but new ones sprang forth, endless. How could he carry this? A debt of life, a burden of survival. He didn’t even know Kaelen’s family, if he had any left.
His gaze fell on the bloodied note. Jory snatched it, fingers trembling. Reading the crude script, a fresh wave of agony washed over him. His cries intensified, rattling the crumbling district. Other Void-Hunters, their faces hardened by too many losses, arrived. They didn’t speak, didn’t try to console. They simply closed his mouth gently, letting him sob as they moved Kaelen’s body to a temporary resting place. Another gone. Another echo in the Void.
---
Kaelen remembered the crushing void, the cold embrace of oblivion. But now…
He stood. In an alleyway. A derelict alleyway, not of pulverized concrete, but rough-hewn stone bricks. He blinked, tasting dust, not ash. “What the Void-Heart?”
Straightening, he assessed his form. Simple, coarseweave trousers and a tunic, roughly tailored, but clean. No chitin armor, no rebreather. A dull ache throbbed in his muscles, but nothing like the mortal wounds. This was… bearable. The kind of weariness a long patrol left.
Surroundings were bizarre. Buildings of carved rock and ancient timber rose, unlike any sector of the Shroud-Touched Realm he knew. Even the ground felt wrong – uneven cobblestones, not the scarred plasteel or cracked asphalt. He tried to reconcile this with the last thing he knew, the searing pain, the dark embrace.
A sudden, blinding headache seized him. Not mundane pain, but a surge of foreign sensation. Images, not his own, flickered through his mind. Whispers, ancient and forbidden, clawed at the edges of his consciousness. A child's fear, a scholar's obsession, a Void-Touched beast's hunger. All fragmented, all alien, yet… familiar. Like shadows cast by a distant sun.
“Aghhh… something knocking from inside my skull.” He pressed both hands against his temples, trying to steady the deluge.
What… what was this? This couldn’t be the Shroud-Touched Realm. Too… solid. Too ancient, yet too pristine in its decay. And these memories, these fractured visions… were they a side-effect of the Void-Heart? His ability to consume aberrations, to assimilate their forbidden knowledge, was it manifesting in a new, terrifying way?
Kaelen muttered, staring at nothing. “Is this… what they call transmigration? I died once… no, twice if I count that last body. This body feels… raw. Like an unrefined vessel.”
He looked again at the coarseweave clothing, at his own hands – younger, unscarred. The fragments in his mind coalesced. Not just his own past, but *another’s*. A host. A new vessel. And within it, the echo of *his* Abyssal Heart, still beating, still craving.
He adjusted the rough tunic. “To be honest, if those sudden… recollections… are true, this doesn’t seem so bad. A fresh start. And a new source of power.” A grim smile touched his lips. The Void hadn’t consumed him. It had… repurposed him. And in doing so, offered a path to master it. Perhaps even master himself.