Chapter 16
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The warp.
It was not a place one could walk, nor a realm one could sail — it was the raw ocean of thought and emotion, the dreams and nightmares of all living things made fleshless yet suffocating. Colors that did not belong in the mortal spectrum bled and swirled in infinite tides, shapes that were never meant to be born slithered just at the edge of perception, and the very fabric of reality hummed with an alien hunger.
And in this endless sea of madness, something stirred.
The god seed.
It was young by the standards of the warp — so very young — but its form was a nightmare of contradictions. Flesh without bone, bone without flesh, sinew and eyes and mouths forming and unforming in an eternal cycle, each iteration more twisted than the last, as if it could not decide what it wanted to be. Each heartbeat — if such a thing could be measured here — sent ripples through its amorphous body, carrying with it the scent of malice, the taste of hunger, the promise of chaos.
The warp cradled it, fed it, nurtured it. It did not grow like a mortal child, slow and hesitant — no, the god seed swelled with power at a rate that mocked nature itself. Faster than when the first great predators of Vulkan's ancient warp were birthed. Faster than the primal whispers of the old chaos lords who once stalked the molten plains of his home reality.
Its gaze — if one could call the shifting, pupil-less orbs that briefly formed upon its flesh a gaze — was fixed upon the material world.
And there, trembling amidst the collapsing street, was the boy. Kevin.
So small. So fragile. So… *perfect.*
Greed boiled in the god seed's shifting mass. This child was no mere mortal — the warp itself wreathed him like a crown, spilling from his form in wild, uncontrolled storms. The boy's fear was a melody; his confusion, a feast. Every death, every scream, every wail of agony caused by his unstable presence only served to make the god seed feel more complete, as though it had been missing pieces it didn't know it lacked until now.
The amalgamation of flesh shivered in delight as it whispered into Kevin's ear. Words that were not words. Promises that were not promises. The kind that slipped past reason and carved directly into the soul.
> "You are mine… and through you… they all will be…"
The streets below were a chorus to its dark lullaby. Civilians who had touched Kevin's wild warp field lay as dust on the cracked asphalt, their last moments echoing in the god seed's mind. Others — the *lucky* ones — convulsed and screamed, their bones snapping and reforming as the corruption reshaped them into things with too many limbs, too many jaws.
And the god seed feasted.
Warp tendrils invisible to the human eye snaked from it, dragging those screaming souls into its form. Each one was swallowed whole, absorbed into the ever-changing meat of its body, their essence fueling its rapid maturation.
Yet even as it drank deep, something tugged at its awareness.
In the background of its feeding, three threads of resistance burned like coals in the mist. A man of iron, his armor dented and burned, moving with sharp precision despite the weight of guilt pressing at his mind. Another, the archer, loosing arrow after arrow, his smirk defiant even in the face of monsters that shrugged off mortal wounds. And the woman — the spider — weaving through the chaos with fluid, lethal grace, her batons crackling as she cut through corrupted flesh before it could reach the terrified survivors.
The god seed found their defiance… amusing.
But Kevin was the prize. The others were merely noise.
It coiled around the boy's mind, speaking again, louder now, drawing on his fear like an addict inhaling smoke. It could feel him bending, his panic opening doors that should never be opened.
And then —
The warp shuddered.
It was not the mild ripple of mortal psychic interference, nor the trembling caused by Kevin's unstable power. This was a *command,* a presence so vast it bent the tides around it. The god seed's gaze — if such a thing could be — tore from the boy and looked deeper into the roiling chaos of the immaterium.
There, through layers of impossible distance, it saw him.
The figure stood solid where nothing solid could exist. His form was a mountain of metal and fire, a presence so utterly *real* it felt like a wound in the warp itself. The black-and-bronze armor was ancient, scarred by wars the god seed could not comprehend. And though this being stood in the material world, his eyes met the god seed's directly, with the kind of certainty that only comes from knowing one's own strength beyond question.
Vulkan.
For the first time in its short, unnatural life, the god seed felt something sour creep into its core. A deep-seated anger — yes — but also something it did not like to name.
Fear.
The boy could wait. This… was a predator.
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