Chronicle, entry number eighty-five.
There are things the Imperial archives don’t record.
Not because they’re secret, but because nobody knows how to write them down.
This chapter is about two of those things.
The first is a snowfall that kills.
The second is something that made the Primarch Konrad Curze back away.
The two have something in common: they came from a place no one has been able to find.
I.
The Snowfall
Buenos Aires, one summer night.
In a house in Vicente López, four friends were playing truco around a table, with mate, pastries and a radio on.
Juan Salvo, the owner of the house, a quiet man with tired eyes, had just called envido when the power went out.
Outside, it began to snow.
It doesn’t snow in Buenos Aires.
And that snow wasn’t snow.
It fell slowly, glowing, silent.
And everything it touched died.
From the window, the friends watched their neighbors drop on the sidewalk, one after another, like dolls.
A dog.
A kid on a bicycle.
A bus that slammed into a lamppost, its driver slumped over the wheel.
Juan Salvo stepped away from the window very slowly.
“Don’t go outside,” he said.
“Nobody goes outside.”
* * *
The Space Wolves reached the city three days later, by which time the survivors had spent seventy-two hours shut in their homes, rationing food and water, cobbling together makeshift suits out of raincoats, diving masks and electrical tape so they could go out and scavenge for supplies.
Leman Russ touched down on General Paz Avenue with the snow falling on his gray armor.
The snow settled on the ceramite plates, glittered for a moment and melted away without doing a thing.
“My lord,” reported the Tech-priest, “the precipitation is of artificial origin. Toxic to unmodified humans. Harmless to our armor. Its chemical composition is unknown.”
Russ held out his hand.
A glowing flake landed on his gauntlet.
He sniffed it.
“It doesn’t smell of anything.”
“That is what worries me, my lord.”
Behind him came his two admirals.
Fujitora, the blind swordsman, who raised his face to the sky as if he could see the snowfall.
And Smoker, who fastened a sealed helmet over his head, lit a cigar inside the helmet—nobody ever figured out how—and looked out over the dead city.
“This isn’t a natural disaster,” said Smoker.
“This is an invasion.”
“Then where’s the invader?” asked Russ.
“Hasn’t shown up yet.” Smoker blew out smoke inside the helmet, which fogged up completely.
“This is just the cleanup beforehand.”
II.
Juan Salvo
The Wolves found Juan Salvo and his group at the house in Vicente López.
They were wearing makeshift suits and carrying old rifles, and they were about to head out to look for fuel.
When they saw the gray giants in the doorway, they raised their rifles.
Smoker raised his hands.
“Easy. We’re here to help.”
“Who are you?” asked Juan, without lowering his weapon.
“The Imperium of Man. We’ve come a very long way.”
“And why should we believe you?”
Smoker took off his helmet.
He breathed the street air, thick with toxic snow.
He coughed a little.
He didn’t die.
“A soldier’s word,” he said, and put the helmet back on.
“Though I don’t know if that’s worth anything in this country.”
Juan looked at him for a moment.
Then he lowered the rifle.
“It is,” he said.
“Here, it’s worth something.”
* * *
Juan Salvo’s group was made up of his wife, Elena; his little daughter, Clara, who had disappeared the first night while they were scavenging for supplies in the neighborhood; his friend Favalli, a physics professor; and Lucas, a young man who drove an old Ford Falcon with more rust than paint.
“That car,” said the Tech-priest, eyeing the Falcon with glowing eyes, “has an extraordinary machine spirit.”
“It’s forty years old,” said Lucas.
“Precisely.”
The Tech-priest spent an hour blessing the Falcon.
When he was done, the car started on the first try, for the first time in a decade.
“The old stuff works,” said Favalli, surprised.
“The old stuff always works,” said the Tech-priest.
“It’s the new stuff that gives trouble.”
III.
The Subway
Over the following weeks, the Space Wolves and the survivors combed the city looking for Clara and the others who had gone missing.
In the tunnels of the Subte they found a shelter with a hundred people hiding in it.
On the street they found a little stray dog with a motorcycle helmet on its head, which someone had put there to protect it from the snowfall.
Njor, a young Space Wolf, adopted it on the spot.
“His name will be Helmet,” said Njor.
“Very original,” said Russ.
“It’s a good name, my lord.”
“It’s a terrible name. I love it.”
And in a church in Belgrano they found a priest named Omar, who had spent days looking after a group of orphans with the little he had.
When the Wolves came in, the priest put himself between them and the children.
“If you’ve come to hurt them, you’ll have to go through me.”
Russ looked down at him.
“We haven’t come to hurt anyone.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“I know.” Russ crouched until he was at eye level.
“But I brought food.”
Behind him, two Wolves were hauling crates of rations, dried meat and bread.
The children peeked out from behind the priest.
Omar looked at them.
Then he looked at Russ.
Then he stepped aside.
IV.
The Cascarudos
The first creature appeared on Cabildo Avenue.
It was a giant insect, the size of a car, with a glossy black carapace and mandibles like shears.
The survivors called it a “cascarudo,” because it looked like the beetles in their gardens, only a thousand times bigger.
It didn’t come alone.
Hundreds came.
And they didn’t attack at random.
They moved in formation.
They attacked in groups, covered their flanks, pulled back when they lost too many and returned with reinforcements.
Like an army.
“They’re not animals,” said Favalli, watching them through binoculars from a rooftop.
“Someone is directing them.”
“Who?” asked Juan.
Favalli lowered the binoculars.
“I don’t know. But it’s not one of them. It’s someone behind them.”
* * *
The Space Wolves wiped out the cascarudos in three days of fighting.
Fujitora dropped a meteorite on their largest concentration, at River Plate’s stadium.
Smoker smothered entire avenues in smoke to disorient them.
Russ and his Wolves hunted them down one by one, like on the great hunts of Fenris.
But the Tech-priest, analyzing the cascarudo corpses, found something he hadn’t expected: embedded in the head of each one was a small metal device.
A receiver.
“Hive mind,” he said.
“Remotely controlled. By someone. Or something.”
“From where?”
The Tech-priest looked at the sky.
“I do not know, my lord. The signal comes from everywhere. And from nowhere.”
V.
Truco
In an abandoned shopping mall in downtown Buenos Aires, turned into a shelter, the Space Wolves and the survivors spent the quietest night of the campaign.
Someone found a Spanish deck of cards.
Juan Salvo taught the Wolves to play truco.
It was a disaster.
The Wolves didn’t understand the rules.
They didn’t understand the signals.
They didn’t understand why you had to lie.
And, above all, they didn’t understand why the Argentines yelled so much whenever somebody called out “¡Quiero retruco!”
But within an hour they were hooked.
“Real envido!” answered another.
“Falta envido!” roared Russ, slamming the table so hard the cards went flying.
Juan Salvo laughed like he hadn’t laughed in weeks.
“This is more fun than Fenrisian chess,” said a veteran Wolf, studying his cards with absolute concentration.
“What’s Fenrisian chess like?” asked Favalli.
“Same as the normal kind. But the loser fights the winner.”
“Ah. Like truco, then.”
* * *
That night there was an asado, too.
The Wolves lit a giant grill in the mall’s parking lot.
The Argentines took charge of the fire because, according to them, foreigners didn’t know how to make proper embers.
Russ brought the meat: some enormous cuts, red, strange, that smelled of the sea.
“What kind of meat is this?” asked Juan, eyeing it suspiciously.
“Sea King,” said Russ.
“I hunted it on a world of pirates. It’s very good.”
“Sea King? What’s a Sea King?”
“A giant fish.”
“And how do you season a giant fish?”
Russ shrugged.
“However you like.”
Juan Salvo seasoned it with coarse salt, chimichurri and patience.
It was, according to the Space Wolves, the best asado they had ever eaten.
Russ ate three Sea Kings.
Tobías Garza, who had been reassigned to the campaign at the last minute, ate half of one and had to lie down.
VI.
The Sun
The snowfall stopped one morning, without warning.
The sky opened.
The sun came out.
People poured into the streets, without suits, without masks, crying and hugging each other.
Children ran along the empty avenues.
Helmet, Njor’s little dog, wouldn’t stop barking.
Juan Salvo stood on the sidewalk outside his house, looking up at the blue sky, saying nothing.
Elena took his hand.
“It’s over,” she said.
“No,” said Juan.
“It’s not over.”
“Why do you say that?”
Juan took a while to answer.
“Because I’ve lived through this before,” he said at last.
“I don’t know how. I don’t know when. But I’ve lived it. And last time it wasn’t over either.”
VII.
What Came After
A summary of the following months, according to the Space Wolves’ reports:
There were bandits.
Armed gangs that used the chaos to loot entire neighborhoods.
Smoker dealt with them personally, with smoke and peppermints.
There was a military base.
At Campo de Mayo, what was left of the Argentine army regrouped alongside the Astra Militarum.
For weeks two flags flew there: the sky-blue and white, and the Imperial eagle.
Nobody suggested taking either of them down.
And there was something worse.
The missing came back.
The people who had been lost during the snowfall began to turn up in the streets.
They walked slowly, with empty eyes.
Some were neighbors, friends, family.
And whenever anyone approached them, they opened fire.
They were being controlled.
Just like the cascarudos.
With a small device embedded behind the ear.
One of them was a Space Wolf.
Brother Ulfgar, who had vanished during a night patrol.
He came walking down Libertador Avenue with his bolter in hand, firing on his brothers.
Russ stopped him himself.
He knocked him down, pinned him, and plucked the device from behind his ear with two fingers.
Ulfgar collapsed, unconscious.
He survived.
But when he woke up, he remembered nothing.
He just kept repeating one word.
“Them.”
“Who are they?” Russ asked him.
“I don’t know,” said Ulfgar, shaking.
“I only know they watch. That they’ve always watched. And that this is only the beginning.”
* * *
Clara, Juan Salvo’s daughter, was never found.
Juan kept searching for her.
Every day.
On every street.
Russ left him a squad of Wolves to help.
When the Legion departed, Juan went to say goodbye to the Primarch on General Paz Avenue, where it had all begun.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For everything.”
“We’re not finished,” said Russ.
“You know that.”
“I know.”
“When they come back, call me.”
Juan Salvo nodded.
Russ turned to go.
Then he stopped.
“And save me an asado.”
Chronicle, entry number eighty-six.
The Space Wolves’ report on the Buenos Aires campaign ends with a phrase written by Admiral Fujitora: “Beginning of the end.” I asked him what it meant.
He told me it was what Juan Salvo had written on the door of his house the day the sun came out.
I asked him if he knew the end of what.
He said no.
That Juan didn’t either.
The Mechanicus analysts have compared the signature of the signal that controlled the cascarudos with other signals recorded in the Webway.
There is a partial match.
With a signature recorded months ago, at a portal opened on Terra.
In a city called Tokyo.
VIII.
The Night Haunter and the Rebels
Many worlds away, Konrad Curze had a very different problem: he was enjoying himself.
The world he had arrived on was at war.
Two human armies—the Regular Army, disciplined and well equipped, and the Rebel Army, chaotic, violent and led by a general with an enormous mustache named Donald Morden—had been fighting for years.
And in the middle of that war, armies of aliens, mummies, zombies and robots kept joining the conflict with suspicious frequency.
Curze presented himself to General Morden at his headquarters, a bunker full of maps, cigars and rebel soldiers who looked like they wanted to punch somebody.
Two of his Night Lords came with him.
Morden looked him up and down.
Beside the general stood his most trusted officers: Commander Abigail, cold and calculating, and Sergeant Allen O’Neil, a shirtless giant with a machine gun in each hand and a knife between his teeth.
“And who the hell are you?” growled Allen, spitting the knife onto the table.
“Another idiot in a carnival costume?”
The two Night Lords raised their weapons.
Curze stopped them with a gesture.
He stared at Allen for a long while, with his black, pupilless eyes.
Then he smiled.
“I like you,” he said.
Allen blinked.
Nobody had ever said that to him.
Nobody had ever smiled like that, either.
IX.
The Alliance
The alliance between the VIII Legion and the Rebel Army was the strangest of the crusade.
The Night Lords were silent terror.
The rebels were noisy chaos.
Together they formed something the Imperium’s analysts classified as “unpredictable to the highest degree.”
They took the Regular Army’s bases one by one.
At night, the Night Lords slipped in silently and eliminated the sentries.
At dawn, the rebels charged in screaming, shooting and blowing things up.
The Regular Army had its own heroes.
The Peregrine Falcons squad, led by Marco Rossi and Tarma Roving, and the Sparrows squad, with Eri Kasamoto and Fio Germi.
Legendary soldiers, capable of cutting through entire armies on foot with a pistol and a grenade.
With them were Lieutenant Nadia Cassel, Sergeant Trevor Spacey and Private Clark Still.
But not even they could stand up to an Astartes Legion.
Tarma, while trying to fix a tank.
Eri and Fio, in an ambush in the desert.
The Night Lords didn’t harm them.
Curze had other plans for them.
“They are the best soldiers on this world,” he said.
“I want them alive. And I want them on our side.”
“And if they don’t accept?” asked Abigail.
Curze smiled again.
“They will.”
* * *
The crown jewel of the Regular Army was a combat AI called MS-Alice, which controlled the Metal Slug tanks.
When the rebels seized the tank factory, MS-Alice merged with a giant Metal Slug and took them on alone.
The expedition’s Tech-priest, Magos Amadeus, watched her in horror.
“Potential heresy detected. Thinking machine. Autonomous. With a tank.”
“Then destroy it,” said Curze.
“I shall try, my lord.”
But Amadeus had a secret.
He himself had brought an AI along on this campaign, hidden in his own equipment: a combat system shaped like a child, called White Baby, which controlled a giant robot called White Knight.
The Tech-priest had found it on a previous world and hadn’t had the heart to destroy it.
White Baby faced MS-Alice in a clash of mechanical titans.
It won.
Then it went back to Amadeus’s side and asked him if it had done well.
“Very well,” said Amadeus, his voice trembling.
Curze had seen everything.
He approached the Tech-priest.
“An AI,” he said.
“In my Legion.”
“My lord, I can explain…”
“If it disobeys, I will destroy it,” said Curze.
“Personally.”
“Understood, my lord.”
“And if it disobeys you, I will destroy you as well.”
“Understood, my lord.”
White Baby waved.
Curze didn’t wave back.
But he didn’t destroy it, either.
X.
The Ptolemaics
The last enemy was the strangest: the Ptolemaic Army, a mysterious paramilitary group with green uniforms, advanced technology and an almost religious obsession with an ancient cult.
Its commanders were three fearsome women.
Dragunov, an elite sharpshooter.
Yoshino, a swordswoman with a katana that could cut through tanks.
And Caroline, a brilliant mechanic who spent all day complaining that she didn’t have time to build everything she wanted.
“I need clones of myself,” she kept saying.
“Ten. Or twenty.”
“That is heresy,” a captured Tech-priest they were holding prisoner told her.
“Everything’s heresy to you people.”
“Yes. It is very practical.”
The Ptolemaics held out for weeks.
They had energy shields that bolters couldn’t penetrate.
They had a mobile fortress called the Stone Turtle, commanded by an empress named Anastacia IV.
And they had a secret weapon: the Shooting Ray, a combat spaceship.
But, above all, they had a leader no one had ever seen: Ptolemaos, a mysterious priest, and his disciple, Mira.
XI.
Scyther
When the Stone Turtle fell and the Night Lords surrounded what was left of the Ptolemaic Army, Ptolemaos and Mira did the only thing they had left.
They summoned something.
At the center of their last temple, amid chants in a language no one knew, a rift opened in the air.
And out of the rift came a creature.
Scyther.
It was a being of pure darkness, vaguely human in shape, tall as a tower, with scythe-like claws and a featureless face.
The Ptolemaics called it the Avatar of Evil.
Curze watched it emerge from the rift.
And, for the first time in his entire life, the Night Haunter took a step back.
The Night Lords saw it.
Nobody said a word.
Nobody dared.
Scyther turned toward him.
It regarded him with its empty face.
And it spoke, in a voice that seemed to rise from the bottom of an endless well.
“You are darkness,” it said.
“But I am what comes after.”
And it struck him.
Konrad Curze went flying through the air, smashed through three of the temple’s walls and landed in the desert, two hundred meters away.
* * *
Scyther didn’t stop there.
It attacked everyone.
The Night Lords.
The rebels.
The Regular Army soldiers.
Even the very Ptolemaics who had summoned it.
It destroyed everything it touched.
Magos Amadeus was the only one who found a solution.
He hooked White Baby up to the generators of the Ptolemaic fortress and produced an energy pulse that drove Scyther, partially, back toward the rift.
The creature didn’t vanish completely.
It faded halfway into the rift, screaming, and the rift closed with it inside.
Or so it seemed.
XII.
The Stolen Ship
In the confusion of the battle, while everyone was staring at the rift, nobody paid any attention to the Shooting Ray.
The Ptolemaic ship lifted off from its hangar with Dragunov, Yoshino and Caroline aboard.
It flew straight up into orbit.
And there, instead of fleeing, it rammed one of the VIII Legion’s ships: the Gloriana Indomitus Vult, a battle barge twelve kilometers long.
It wasn’t a suicide run.
It was a boarding action.
The three Ptolemaic commanders entered the Indomitus Vult through the breach left by the impact.
They carried a stolen Imperial access code—nobody ever learned how they had gotten it—and used it to seize control of the navigation systems.
The ship’s crew was a skeleton one; most of them were planetside, fighting.
The few left aboard were locked in the holds and later released in escape pods, with a handwritten note from Caroline:
“Thanks for the ship. It’s very pretty. It needs maintenance.”
The Indomitus Vult activated its Webway drive and disappeared.
Curze, still sprawled in the desert, watched the ship vanish from the ground.
His armor was wrecked and blood was running down his face.
He lay there a long time, staring at the empty sky.
Then he burst out laughing.
It wasn’t a happy laugh.
It was the laugh of a man who has just discovered that the universe is bigger, darker and more interesting than he thought.
* * *
Chronicle, entry number eighty-seven.
The Gloriana Indomitus Vult is officially missing.
Twelve kilometers of Imperial warship, armed with enough weaponry to raze a planet, in the hands of three women from an army that no longer exists and who devote themselves, according to the reports, to “the worship of an ancient cult.” Nobody knows where it is.
The Primarch Curze has asked the Office of Remembrancers not to record the moment he backed away from Scyther.
The Office has agreed.
I have not.
I’ve written it here.
If anyone ever reads this, let them know that a Primarch took a step back.
And that afterward he got up and laughed.
And that I don’t know which of the two frightened me more.
Tonight I went to see Malcador to hand in my report.
He was in his study, with the famous drawer open.
Inside were hundreds of notes.
He was arranging them on the desk like a jigsaw puzzle.
Snow that controls minds.
A portal in Tokyo.
A green suit of armor that smells of rust.
A leak Magnus can’t explain.
A sorcerer who smiles as if someone had opened a door for him.
A creature that claims to be “what comes after.” I asked him what he saw.
He told me: “Nothing yet, Garza. But I’m starting to see the shape of the hole.”
So ends what the archives will call the Book of the Toy Gods.
What begins now, I’m told, has no name yet.
But I’ve heard a Thousand Sons captain call it, under his breath, “the Rift.”
I’m an aspiring writer with many stories still waiting to be told and a deep passion for Warhammer.
I love creating dark worlds, epic battles, and flawed characters.
I write to learn and grow.