Gaia left the antibiotic injector on the ground and walked away from the man who had fallen into madness, dragging along a deeply pained Solomon.
What was it that had driven him to dance away his own life?
The heretical cult that had poisoned him?
The illusory lost paradise?
Or Hecius itself?
She felt a little lost.
"You seem pretty shaken by that man's rambling."
Solomon's slightly teasing voice sounded by her ear.
Gaia did not turn to look at his face. She could already guess it would be wearing that same irritatingly smug expression, so she only nodded silently.
She had always known that places like the underhive were an unavoidable reality. After all, the Byzantine bureaucracy of the Imperium of Man was tightly fused to the arteries of its existence.
But now, while feeling anger toward that reality, she also felt something else rising inside her.
Fear.
Could she really change any of this?
Once, filled with passion, she had boarded Solomon's ship from the orbit above Klaurund and thrown herself into the void, crossing the stars in an attempt to change the disasters of the Age of Apostasy with her own two hands.
But now, as she continued to encounter the many great powers of the Imperium and witness world after world, she had begun to feel a deep and gnawing powerlessness.
A rot that could not be stopped had spread through the Imperium like cancer, metastasizing endlessly and resisting all hope of removal.
Even if she succeeded in toppling the madman Vandire, how much would that truly change in a human empire that had already become this?
At that thought, fear began to flood her heart.
She feared that all her effort would end in nothing, that no matter what she did, the Imperium would still continue sliding deeper into decline along its fixed course.
And she feared something else too.
She feared why she was thinking this way at all.
Why was her conviction wavering?
But the more she thought, the more confused she became.
That middle-aged man's self-destruction had acted like a lever, prying open the deepest part of her heart, the place she had always deliberately tried to bury.
A flood of negative emotion surged into her mind, so intense that even her psychic power began trembling dangerously.
Just as she was sinking deeper into helplessness, Solomon smacked her hard on the back.
"What exactly are you getting lost in?"
"The one who came up with that plan that's basically the same thing as marching off to die was you."
"This doesn't look like the Gaia I know. The one who wanted to change the lower decks."
His voice gradually turned serious.
"Maybe you've finally realized just how deep-rooted the obstacles in front of your plan really are. Maybe you've realized how hard it is to change a world that's already set in stone."
"But since you've already made your decision, then don't be afraid of the result."
"Like we voidsmen always say, the moment you decide to sail, you've already accepted the possibility of crashing into pieces. Though, honestly, that's a lesson I've been learning especially well lately while flying the Spear of Destiny."
By the end, Solomon's tone had returned to its usual joking cadence.
After hearing him out, Gaia turned and looked at him deeply.
Solomon answered her gaze with a faint smile and even lifted his captain's hat in a mock gesture.
Looking at him standing there so theatrically, Gaia's lips slowly curved upward.
This greedy man always became astonishingly clear-headed at the critical moments that had nothing to do with money. And although his words had a certain slippery sophistry to them, they had undeniably encouraged her.
She took a deep breath, and the tide of emotion inside her gradually receded, returning once more to the stillness of a quiet pool.
Gaia understood that maybe she could not bring immediate change.
But she would use every ounce of her strength to carve this outhouse of a world into something at least a little more worthy of being called human.
Even so, a thread of doubt arose in her mind.
She had begun to notice that lately her emotions were changing much more violently than they should.
That was clearly not normal.
And this kind of abnormal influence reminded her of one other place that also affected the mind in similar ways.
The Warp.
At the same moment, Dushi, who had not spoken for quite a while, suddenly sent a slightly urgent voice directly into Gaia's head.
"Something's wrong. This whole area is saturated with some kind of sub-frequency signal wave."
"The signal is too strange. I can't pin down its exact source."
"It's as if it's appearing out of nowhere..."
Dushi's words seemed to confirm Gaia's suspicions.
So without even thinking about the fact that Solomon was still beside her, she immediately asked aloud,
"Can you detect where the signal is strongest?"
"Huh?"
Solomon was clearly stunned by her seemingly random question.
But Gaia had no time to explain. She only waited anxiously for Dushi's answer.
"Tch, don't rush me. I was getting to it."
Then, with his usual irritating flair for dramatic pauses, Dushi gave the rough direction of the strongest signal.
And when Gaia got that answer, she was not surprised at all.
Because it was exactly the place where, in her own vision, the violet light blazed brightest.
...
Darkness.
Endless darkness.
Darkness so suffocating it felt impossible to breathe.
That was the only thing Mitchell could feel.
Where the hell even was this place?
I want to see.
Let me see.
As long as I can see that damned path, then all of this will make sense.
And just as his consciousness drifted deeper into confused echoes, the scene before him began to change.
The darkness gradually receded, and in its place emerged nauseating twisted vortices, within which countless grinning human faces seemed to interweave.
This was an aftershock from the highest heaven.
A fragment of the Sea of Souls.
He had seen it many times before, yet every single time he saw it, he still wanted to curse.
Ugly as hell.
But now that he could see again, he turned his attention to the path ahead.
A weak light appeared.
In the void not far away, a radiant tower burned with a brilliance fierce enough to scorch the soul, shining in his vision like a beacon in the storm.
That was the most important point of reference for any Navigator.
The Astronomican from Holy Terra.
Now, under the illumination of that vast psychic beam fueled by a thousand burning souls, the waves of the immaterial began to recede, and the signs hidden behind them came into view.
And when Mitchell's third eye looked past the tides of the Sea of Souls and glimpsed the future flickering beyond, he saw something that filled him with horror.
A nameless, indescribable shadow that was twisting and shifting in impossible ways.
With a stabbing pain in his soul, his consciousness felt as though it had been struck by a colossal hammer.
The sensation of floating above the invisible sea vanished, and he plunged back into his body.
"By Asuryan's balls!"
He let out a shrill yelp, snapped his eyes open, and locked stares with Priestess Lena, who was currently holding a scalpel and measuring up his stomach.
(End of Chapter)
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