After handling those chores, Soshyan, who had not slept for several days, returned to his private room.
Rozim received the most serious punishment. Because he secretly used the group's supplies, left his post without permission, and illegally sheltered aliens, he was revoked from his position as the restaurant owner and became the acting restaurant owner, and confiscated it at the same time.
All the illegal gains (only a small part is left) will be used for the construction of the chapter, while the green skin will wait to be disposed of when it returns to Nessin IV.
As an "accessory", Loken's punishment was second only to Rozim's. Not only was the system authority reduced from 12 to 9, but all supplies of the workshop were halved within ten years, and the deducted part was invested in other Mechanicum workshops, such as Falla.
there.
The punishments received by the new recruits were relatively light, but from this day until they returned to Naisen IV, they had to undergo punitive training-that is, the amount of all training subjects was doubled, and they only had three hours of rest every day.
, and need to be responsible for all cleaning work in the monks’ living area on the upper deck.
When they return to their home planet, a whole month of confinement awaits them!
But to say how angry Soshyan was, it wasn't really that big of a deal, because he had known about Rozim's little tricks for a long time and just turned a blind eye.
But this time he not only brought new recruits with him, but also hooked up with the greenskins, and he couldn't bear it anymore.
The main purpose this time is to warn him and make him restrain himself.
Soshyan, who had taken off his armor, sat on a chair wearing a loose robe, and then opened a drawer under the table.
Inside, an ancient scroll was lying quietly.
He has never had the chance to open the twentieth volume of Sanguinius' Secret Records given to him by Dante, and today he plans to see what is in it.
When you pick up the scroll, it feels slightly rough, a bit like ancient papyrus.
There was a small metal buckle on the secret book. Soshyan gently took it off, and then slowly unfolded it on the table with both hands.
"This is--"
To his surprise, there was no text on the secret record, and there was just a pure black card lying quietly inside.
Soshyan picked up the card and looked at it carefully, but couldn't see anything strange about it, except for its strangely pure black color.
He had never seen such pure black.
It was so dark that it seemed to drag his soul into it.
Staring at this weird black card, Soshyan couldn't help but blink his eyes. He suddenly felt that his vision was a little blurry, and the surrounding lights seemed to be gradually dimming.
The next moment, darkness swallowed him.
Surprised, he looked left and right, but couldn't see anything. There was a smell of dust and time in the space.
He exhaled, and the candle in the room suddenly lit up again, the flame chasing the faded and browned marble surface and the shadows on the picture.
But Soshyan found that his body was suddenly out of control, and he became a stranger in a strange body.
The body stood still for a moment, and Soshyan felt the weight of time and meaning surrounding and oppressing him. Through a pair of eyes, he saw a luxurious palace that was completely different from his own house. Every item in this palace seemed to be different.
They are beautiful works of art: a crystal cup with a bull carved on the side; a sword with folds of steel, its edge still sharp; an obsidian disk polished to look like a mirror; a spear handle with painted
Make it still look black with blood stains.
Images, objects, memories…
"I must know."
Suddenly, "he" spoke to the silence.
"I have to make sure..."
"He" walked forward, raised his hands covered with golden armor, and took off the large shawls on his cloak shoulders, revealing his smooth blond hair.
Through the mirror opposite, Soshyan saw an ethereal and handsome face that was almost divine, and the folded wings behind his shoulders.
There is no doubt that this is the genetic father of the Blood Angels, Sanguinius.
With a soft groan, the candle floated from the tray, spinning in the air, forming a circle around Sanguinius as he approached the wooden table.
Then, a box rose from the table, and Sanguinius mentally turned the mechanism, causing the locks on its edges to rotate as well.
The box opened, and a small velvet-wrapped package fell into Sanguinius' hands.
Around him, candles were in place, and the flames gradually grew stronger, making the rest of the room appear dim as the firelight gathered.
His hand held the small bag for a long time without making any movement.
About five minutes later, Sanguinius peeled back the soft fabric, and there lay a pile of pure black cards. Each rectangular crystal piece could capture light and spread the image into his eyes.
, he distributed them on the wooden table, and then patterns appeared on the cards: hammer and sword, poisonous snakes, lost figures wrapped in rose thorns, dark oceans, and beasts and terrifying things that were bright and dark.
Some people would call it Tarot cards. The arrangement and combination of destiny and connotation are broken into pieces and thrown to mortals for interpretation.
There are many decks like this in the mortal world - slender cards, metal and bones painted with patterns, telling the inner truth of the universe.
But cards like Sanguinius are completely different.
He looked down at the cards, and Soshyan looked at them too. They were black and did not reflect light, as if each one was now a hole cutting into the lightless void among the stars.
In his mind, Soshyan heard the fear rising among billions of beings on Terra as the ships filled the night sky.
Horus has arrived, and fate has sent him back to the place of his birth, and in the hives and crowded metropolises, humans are waiting to witness who will be their master when the future comes.
“What does the future hold?”
Sanguinius whispered:
"Where will we go from here?"
Then, slowly and hesitantly, as if something were grasping his hand - Sanguinius reached for the first card.
But at the last moment, his fingers curled up.
Whispers resounded in his mind, and Soshyan heard them clearly: shouts, screams, hisses that he recognized but could not recall.
Then, with determination, the Archangel touched the first card and turned it over.
Then Soshyan saw it.
Black trees stretched into the swirling snowstorm in the sky, and the moon floated in the torn clouds.
Soshyan could feel it, the biting chill, the branches creaking in the roar of the wind.
In other people's thoughts, he knows that it is not real, has no reality, is just an idea or a dream.
But Sanguinius's senses were different from Soshyan's, and the archangel had been on the spiritual path long enough to know that reality was a matter of which lie he chose to believe.
The archangel staggered towards a tree trunk and knelt down halfway. The snow around his legs was thick, and ice condensed on his hair and armor.
"Midnight forest..."
He gasped, those words making his mouth foggy.
"The winter of the soul, the fears and predators that come from the darkness... I know all this, I understand all this, but why do I see it all again?"
He closed his eyes, but when he opened them again, the forest was there.
"This is not the past, is it? This is the darkness we are trying to escape from, the source of all our fears."