Inquisitor Kael Varro had always considered his instincts infallible.

They had guided him through the Ordos’ labyrinth of lies, through the endless war of interpretation that was the Inquisition itself. He was radical—proudly so, though he cloaked it in shadows. Knowledge was power, and power was the only truth that mattered in a galaxy rotting under the tread of gods and monsters.

Yet now, staring into the trembling flames of the ritual circle, Kael felt the ground of certainty crumble beneath him.

The circle was shattered. Sigils that should have bound the greater daemon of Slaanesh into stasis were torn, subtly altered—deliberate sabotage. The daemon had slipped the leash, fleeing into the city of Telvast with an ecstasy-laden shriek. Thousands were already lost, their minds hollowed into shells of wanton worship.

And the one responsible – the one who had cut the lines, whispered the wrong syllables – was his own acolyte.

Darnis Vale. 

Trusted, competent, loyal… or so Kael had believed.

The confrontation had been brief. Vale knelt, shackled by psychosteel, his face pale but defiant.

‘I did it for the Emperor,’ Vale confessed, lips trembling between fear and fervour. ‘To test the people of this world. To see if they could resist the temptations of the Prince. We must measure mankind’s strength, not coddle it.’

Kael had wanted to end him then, to reduce him to cinders with a single psychic lance. Betrayal deserved no less. But a colder truth stayed his hand: Vale knew the ritual better than any other. Vale knew the paths by which the daemon might be cornered, the weaknesses Kael had designed into the circle.

Kael’s heart thundered with disgust—at Vale, at himself. For hadn’t he trusted too easily? Hadn’t he always mocked the Puritans who chained themselves in suspicion, who saw heresy in every shadow? And yet the shadow was within me all along.

He closed his eyes and tasted ash. To save the world, he must wield the dagger of his betrayer.

Hunting the daemon was like chasing a storm of desire. Wherever it passed, mortals broke apart in orgiastic madness, limbs entwined in agony and bliss. The acolytes of Kael’s retinue struggled against the tide, gunning down civilians who had become vessels of the Warp.

Vale fought beside them, his chains removed but ever present in Kael’s mind. The man’s every word was barbed, every suggestion poisoned with zealotry. Yet he was effective, guiding them through shrines, catacombs, and market-squares defiled into arenas of slaughter.

‘Here,’ Vale would whisper. ‘The pattern bends. It feeds on singers, on those who give voice. We drive it to the old amphitheatre.’

And Kael, though every nerve screamed not to, listened.

The amphitheatre was a wound in the city, its stones echoing with centuries of voices. Now, it was a stage for damnation. The daemon stood tall, a form shifting between beauty and terror, flesh and blade, its laughter filling the night.

Kael raised his staff, psychic energy gathering like a storm. ‘By the seal of the Ordos, you are chained!’

The duel was brutal, a clash of will and Warp, a juxtaposition of light and dark seeking to absorb or shatter the other. The daemon’s temptations slithered into Kael’s mind, sparking ecstasy on his tongue whilst simultaneously sending painful spikes throughout his mind: 

You doubt, don’t you? You mistrust your own blood. You are already broken.

Kael could not decide what was worse, the gloating laughter of the ancient being or the horrifically revealed truth. The words punctured deep. Every thrust of his power was weighted by his uncertainty. He faltered—and the daemon struck.

Time slowed as Kael watched his inevitable demise come towards him with a sweet, sickly smile. Suddenly, reality tore back into existence. Vale jumped and intercepted, his body torn asunder by claws that glistened with pleasure and pain. Yet even as he screamed, Vale plunged the shard of Kael’s broken warding-circle into the daemon’s chest.

‘Now, Inquisitor! Bind it!’

Kael unleashed the last of his strength, his soul bleeding into the Warp as he sealed the circle anew. The daemon shrieked, folding inward, imprisoned once more.

But the price was ruin. Kael collapsed, blood pooling from wounds both fleshly and spiritual. Vale lay beside him, dying with a strange smile—martyr to his twisted cause.

The sky above was black. Kael could no longer feel his legs, nor the steady drum of his heart. He wondered, in those fading breaths, if any of this had mattered.

Had his life’s work shielded the Imperium—or only fed it deeper into madness? Was he a bulwark, or merely another inquisitor lost to hubris?

Then, a shadow loomed over him.

It was Jeren, the youngest of his retinue, a gutter-born recruit Kael had plucked from the hive.

Jeren held out crude crystals, glowing faintly with alien light. Soul-stones—xenos artefacts, forbidden.

‘Master… we can save you. I can save you.’ Jeren said, desperation cracking his voice.

Kael’s vision blurred, but his psychic senses reached instinctively for the stones. He felt the pull, the lure of survival. His essence, his soul, could be preserved. He would not vanish into the warp’s hunger.

But as his spirit slid toward the stone, he heard words—soft, almost gentle.

‘Forgive me, Inquisitor. This was always the plan.’

Jeren’s tone was calm now, reverent. ‘Inquisitor Kaedryn will have your soul. She’ll study it, learn from it. You were a great man… but greater in death than in life.’

Betrayal again. Always betrayal. His retinue was riddled with it, and he had never seen. His judgment had failed him consistently and mortally.

As the crystal sealed around his essence, Kael screamed—not aloud, for his throat was ash, but within the immaterial, where only the Warp could hear.

And then silence.

A soul caged.

An Inquisitor undone.

In the empty amphitheatre, the wind carried laughter that might have been the daemon’s… or the echo of the Inquisition itself, devouring its own.