Eden's consciousness tore itself away from the cathedral square in an instant, plunging straight into the warp and sinking into the roaring, surging tides of faith.
This region was perfect for him to wield his authority, to forge a Legion of the Damned that belonged to him alone.
He drew a long, steady breath.
"From this moment on, maybe I've finally become a true 'Chaos God' of the warp. I can create my own 'daemons' and command an entire warp-host as a god."
The Chaos Gods—and any being that has stepped onto the ladder of apotheosis—could all create daemons of their own.
Those daemons could be deployed anywhere in the warp, or summoned into the galaxy. Even if they were slain, they would return again.
They were, in a sense, the perfect kind of warp-life: carrying their creator's power and concept, forming an army that was almost impossible to truly destroy.
A being as mighty as the Emperor also possessed his own "daemon" army—and it was unmistakably human in style.
That army was the Legion of the Damned.
The Legion of the Damned was a mysterious force, a Space Marine host that had appeared on countless battlefields only to vanish just as suddenly.
They wore black power armor wreathed in burning flame. No material attack could truly kill them—power swords and sorcery alike struggled to do meaningful damage.
They could also pour out ammunition far beyond what their weapons should physically carry.
More terrifying still, the Legion of the Damned always arrived at the most critical battlefield, and then slaughtered everything in their path.
"The Legion of the Damned are all elites. I don't even know if the Adeptus Custodes could beat them."
"If you compare attrition, the Custodes don't have enough bodies. They'd lose horribly. From that alone, the Legion of the Damned should be humanity's strongest elite force—bar none."
"In other words, isn't that just Ork 'I-reckon-it-works' psychic nonsense, wrapped in a Space Marine shell—warp-daemons in disguise?!"
Eden mocked it, but he was drooling with envy all the same.
Who wouldn't want that kind of authority, that kind of army—an armed force you could point anywhere and make it hit like a sledgehammer?
It was authority over souls themselves: the ability to reshape a believer's soul and return them to the material world.
And yet, creating that kind of warp-life was brutally difficult. Only a handful of existences could truly do it.
"Time's tight. I don't even know if I can pull it off this time…"
Eden let out a quiet sigh.
He had tried several times before. Every attempt had failed, and he had nearly caused those souls to lose themselves in the warp completely.
Over the last ten thousand years, the Imperium's strongest warriors—once they died—had, for the most part, returned to the Golden Throne, falling under the Emperor's grasp.
If the old man ever "went dark," he would naturally possess an endless supply of damned warriors.
Eden, on the other hand, had been collecting souls for less than fifty years. He couldn't afford to keep failing like the Emperor could. He didn't have an infinite pool of powerful souls to pick from, and he didn't have infinite attempts.
The cost of error wasn't the same.
Worse still, the Emperor couldn't really teach him this. Their authorities, their power structures, their internal "systems"—none of it matched.
"Good thing the Goddess of Life got hold of Alaitoc's Infinity Circuit and fragments of the Eldar god's avatar. Indirectly, that gave me a deeper understanding of souls."
Eden recalled the psychic structure he'd sensed when the Holy Sun mobilized the Legion of the Damned. Combining that with what he'd learned from the Eldar Infinity Circuit, he began his next attempt.
He thought to himself:
"Maybe it's a combined state—faith, soul-authority, and a psychic network fused into one. A Chaos God uses that whole framework to create and control daemons."
"But my authority is… messy. It's hard to unify everything into a single system…"
To build a system that truly belonged to him, Eden practically dragged every authority and scrap of insight he possessed into the attempt:
The Hope Sun's faith and life-authority, the Ork psychic network, the Tyranid gestalt network, and the Eldar Infinity Circuit.
It was an agonizing act of system-building. The entire authority-chain had to start running as a whole before it could stabilize.
The Chaos Gods—and the Emperor, those five great "gods"—could probably run their systems as effortlessly as breathing.
For Eden, it was like trying to assemble a machine out of stolen parts while it was already turned on.
If the five gods' systems were the warp's megabrands, then Eden was a shameless knockoff king.
He'd snatch a bit from here, a bit from there. Aside from the Hope Sun, everything else was basically a relabeled product. He'd copied just about every major species and faction across the warp and the galaxy.
Or, more accurately, the Hope Sun was the one doing the "labeling"—and that was exactly why the Chaos Gods saw him as a thorn in their side.
He didn't just steal their wool. He sold counterfeit faith, mixed it into their domains, and violently disrupted the galaxy's faith-market and the warp's belief economy.
Impossible to guard against.
The advantage was versatility—true all-round capability—and the ability to devour the "big brands'" market share.
The disadvantage was obvious: it was a mess.
He was the purest kind of brute-force engineer. A flying brick.
"Yeah… this should work. Add a bit of Ork network, blend in some Eldar circuitry, then route it through the Hope Sun's faith-path."
"I reckon this is flawless…"
Eden, controlling the Hope Sun, worked in frantic bursts—adding here, patching there, stirring the whole thing like a lunatic.
He forced his mismatched authorities into a new operating framework, kneaded it into shape, and then poured in the Hope Sun's faith-power.
He made it run.
"Perfect. No issues."
When he finished, Eden felt the bootleg "Savior authority system" cycling inside the Hope Sun.
It looked bizarre—wrong in a way that made your teeth itch—but it ran with shocking smoothness.
He was satisfied.
This system could function. It could be used.
He now possessed, at least in embryo, the outline of a "warp god."
He could manufacture a Legion of the Damned of his own.
At minimum, it would handle the current crisis and battlefield needs. He could refine and optimize it later.
"Come on. Let's see what my precious Legion of the Damned can do!"
Eden rubbed his hands together and threw in the loyal souls he had collected—reshaping their lives and bodies, turning them into warp-life.
But the next moment, he froze.
The warriors' souls he'd fed in… didn't respond at all.
He switched targets. He altered methods. He wrestled with it again and again—until at last, it worked.
He was practically vibrating with anticipation.
"It's perfect. Perfect damned warriors!"
Eden didn't even know what they would look like in the end. He was relying entirely on this newly forged framework and the Hope Sun's faith-power to shape them.
But no matter what, they would be a Legion of the Damned stamped with his personal style.
As the faith-energy surged, his nerves tightened.
The battlefield near the Third Diocese command flagship was about to collapse. The Flayed Ones and the Savior Genestealers' defensive line was breaking.
More importantly, every second he delayed meant more civilians on Fanes died under orbital bombardment.
The odds of the Kalozasa Dynasty turning traitor would rise with every heartbeat.
And if they betrayed him…
That was an outcome he could not accept.
"Enough. I'm sending my Legion of the Damned first—right now!"
The instant Eden sensed his Legion of the Damned fully form, he used a psychic coordinate to throw them across the void.
…
Third Diocese command flagship.
Cathedral square.
The Rift Lords Chapter and the Frateris Crusade unleashed a storm of fire so dense it became a wall of death—nothing should have been able to survive inside that kill-zone.
Those fanatical crusaders looked like they'd gone mad, charging the Savior Genestealers with frothing zeal, forcing them back step by step.
The Space Marines tightened the noose around the mutated Hive Tyrant Eden was controlling. Even bio-psychic power struggled to hold them off.
Their Chief Librarian was powerful—terrifyingly so.
"No wonder Freckbo can rule the Third Diocese and crush the other Ecclesiarchy sects."
"The chapter he controls—the Rift Lords—really is one of the stronger chapters in the Imperium."
Eden's consciousness returned to the mutated Hive Tyrant as he thought it through.
A Space Marine Chapter obeying the upper clergy of the Imperial Cult wasn't strange at all.
For a long stretch of history, the Ecclesiarchy might as well have been the Imperium itself—its authority towering, overwhelming.
After the Horus Heresy, however, the Space Marines had been stripped of many powers.
To put it bluntly, they'd become the Imperium's hired fists—its elite shock troops.
Especially the penitent chapters.
Wrapped in guilt, driven by remorse, they were easy prey for certain high-ranking priests, who used the Emperor's name to seize their leashes.
Those warriors were filled with uncertainty and helplessness. They believed they were born with original sin, and they fought for the Emperor by obeying orders—hoping to buy back their souls.
Eden had catalogued every Space Marine Chapter in the Imperium—over a thousand of them.
The Rift Lords before him were one of those marked for penance. Their gene-seed should have come from Guilliman.
If "Old G"—Roboute Guilliman—ever learned his gene-sons were being manipulated and treated like this, would he rage himself half to death?
Then again, this outcome was partly his own doing.
He'd dissolved the Legions with his own hands, split the Space Marines into chapters, and stripped them of power.
"Old G made his bed… and I'm catching stray shrapnel for it."
Eden stared at the approaching sons of a near-Primarch line and let out a deep sigh, a heavy worry settling in his chest.
It was a damned dilemma.
Not because the Rift Lords threatened his plan—his Legion of the Damned was already on the way.
But because he didn't want to hurt these penitent warriors.
They'd been misled and steered by the Ecclesiarchy. It felt like a waste to let them die here.
"Make a cairn of bone. Make a fire of souls!"
"Execute the xenos filth!"
The Rift Lords roared as they charged, trying to kill the mutated Hive Tyrant assaulting the cathedral.
The Genestealers surged to meet them—only to fall one after another into blood and gore.
Before the mutated Hive Tyrant, the Genestealers stacked their bodies into a living shield, blocking incoming rounds.
The corpse pile beneath its feet grew higher.
The warriors closed in tighter.
And Eden had fewer and fewer Genestealers left that he could still control.
Hiss—!
Perched atop a mountain of Genestealer corpses, the mutated Hive Tyrant threw back its head and screamed, erupting with brutal psychic force.
A powerful psychic dome stabbed through the overhead canopy and vanished into the void.
A psychic coordinate.
In the next heartbeat, a gentle golden radiance washed over the zone around the Hive Tyrant—like something immense and holy was about to arrive.
"Careful! The xenos are using a special psychic attack!"
"What is that?!"
The Space Marines stared at the golden curtain, stunned.
A Tyranid-born veil like this was unknown—nothing like it existed in the chapter's records.
What shocked them most was the sensation it gave off.
It felt familiar.
It felt… Imperial.
Faced with this unknown, the Rift Lords halted, instantly alert.
At the same time, the Hope Sun in the warp shook with a disturbance it had never known before.
???
The Emperor sensed that tremor.
While he remained locked in confrontation with the Chaos Gods in a higher plane, he still cast his gaze over this way.
And when he saw what the Savior had built…
His whole being jolted.
The Master of Mankind went momentarily incoherent—his foul mouth finally slipping out in full.
"This… this **is still the Legion of the Damned?! What the hell are you *** doing?!"
Eden, riding a high, stood with the Hope Sun's hands on its hips, shamelessly confident.
"Hey, hey, hey—don't blame me! Your people got held up. I didn't have a choice!"
"Just wait. My Legion of the Damned is about to land."
"F—ing Changer of Ways. I'm gonna *** you—!"
That line shut the Emperor up.
He left only a single sentence behind, then the higher plane erupted into even fiercer turbulence.
Somewhere in that violent tremor, faint screams could be heard.
"Tch. The Emperor's temper is really something…"
Eden sighed, but he was riding pure momentum now.
He'd climbed another rung.
He could summon "daemons."
Maybe he could even create a Savior "Greater Daemon"—not just a blessing, but something deeper: true creation.
He shifted his focus back to the cathedral square on the Third Diocese command flagship.
The holy-light curtain transformed again.
The sudden change drew countless eyes.
A cardinal in crimson robes appeared on the cathedral's high steps, flanked by towering warriors.
It was Archbishop Freckbo.
The moment he sensed that "xenos veil," he had come out with Chapter Master Ansemor to see it with his own eyes.
Freckbo's graying brows knotted as he asked in a low voice, "Do you know what that is? Will it threaten the cathedral?"
Ansemor's gaze held a sliver of awe. He shook his head.
"We have never seen an attack like this."
"But by the Librarians' reports, it hasn't shown aggression. It seems more like a high-tier… teleportation sorcery."
To the Imperium, that was deeply unsettling.
Freckbo's frown only deepened—confusion and suspicion twisting together inside him.
That veil the lowly xenos had created looked disturbingly similar to the descent of a Living Saint.
He had witnessed that miracle once.
"Could it be the God-Emperor's might descending?"
"But His might can't possibly descend on the xenos' side."
Even stranger, the veil carried a constant susurrus of warp-whispers.
Yet those whispers didn't feel wicked like the warp usually did.
They felt familiar—like loyal Imperial hymnals.
On the veil's surface, they saw psychic-formed cherubim and holy sisters—products of the Imperial Cult, unmistakably Imperial in style.
But those cherubim were wrong in a way that made the eyes ache.
Why were their foreheads… pointed?
Before anyone could process it, the veil erupted with even more thunderous music and the hissing roar of something humanoid.
Boom. Boom. Boom—
At the same moment, the cathedral square's metal decking shuddered, as if something massive was stomping across it.
"Loyalty!"
With that roar, towering warp-beings stepped out of the veil and onto the square.
Eden's Legion of the Damned had arrived.
Each damned warrior stood nearly four meters tall.
They burned with pale-gold flame, clad in ornate golden heavy armor, with mechanical wings of gold on their backs—loyalty made into color.
That armor was exquisite, blending human and Eldar artistry into a beauty that felt almost blasphemous.
"Genestealers?!"
"Emperor…"
The Archbishop and the Chapter Master finally lost their composure, their faces twisting in shock.
The part that made it impossible to keep a straight face was the warriors' heads: swollen crests, four arms, savage claws, and an aura of sheer menace.
Across the cathedral zone, crusaders and Space Marines alike stood frozen, staring at those glittering, towering xenos Genestealers—
Imperial Aquilas embedded in their chests,
bolters and chainblades slung in their hands,
bathed in blazing gold.
Such a grotesque mash-up of alien and heresy left everyone blank, their minds stalling out.
Even the Flayed Ones stopped licking blood, their movements stiffening as their worldview took a direct hit.
They all shared one thought:
This damned universe had officially gone completely off the rails.
And before anyone could react—
Eden's damned Genestealers, under his command, let out a full-throated "WAAAGH!" and launched a loyal charge.
(End of Chapter)
[Get +30 Extra Chapters On — P@tr3on "Zaelum"]
[Every 300 Power Stones = 1 Bonus Chapter Drop]
[Thanks for Reading!]