The hemp rope bit in cruelly tight, dragging against Klein’s throat, clamping down on his arteries, forcing suffocation into his windpipe like viscous pitch.
Then that oxygen-starved sensation rose from his windpipe, climbing into his brain.
Brain cells wailed under the hypoxia, the searing agony driving them to secrete endorphins, injecting a hazy, cloying euphoria into Klein’s will.
That euphoria came like slick, coiling serpents, winding themselves around Klein’s cerebral nerves, trying to drag him down into that foggy sensation, to let the rope around his neck finish strangling him.
That euphoria seemed to possess a certain power, a will of its own, whispering in Klein’s ear that struggle would bring only pain, that calmly accepting death would let him savor the endorphin-borne bliss.
But Klein still struggled.
Compared to whatever pain the struggle might bring,
he feared far more the agony that awaited him upon returning to the Golden Throne.
Suffocation brings dizziness and vertigo, makes muscles convulse, strips away control of the body in moments.
Under normal circumstances, a human being hanging from a noose has no way to struggle effectively.
Yet perhaps the torment upon the Golden Throne had honed his will to the point where these sufferings of asphyxiation had been screened out by his consciousness, because Klein could still struggle lucidly.
His fingers seized the rope biting into his throat, trying to tear the cord apart, but this body was frail.
Klein could feel it failing under the lack of oxygen, could feel his organs aching dully, could feel the weakness deep in his muscles.
He pulled at the rope, but could muster very little strength.
Compared to the first body, the hunter whose flesh he had inhabited in the forest, this one was far inferior.
That forest hunter’s physique would have been enough to tear apart with bare hands this very kind of rope now coiled around Klein’s neck…
Klein reached out again, trying to undo the knot binding the rope.
But the knot held tight, like a clutch of vipers locked jaw-to-jaw.
Klein could only perceive it through touch.
There was simply no way to untie it.
The vertigo grew fiercer.
Klein’s head throbbed as if about to split, the blood in his cheeks seemed to burn violently, his eyes began bulging out of their sockets.
The entire room appeared to spin and warp.
The candle flame burning on the table beneath the window stretched impossibly long, burning, spiraling, transforming into a vortex of light.
Klein could almost feel the Golden Throne drawing his will back once more, hauling his escape-from-the-cage will back onto the Golden Throne.
The candle flame whirled into a vortex.
The Golden Throne called out from the Warp.
The veil of reality thinned.
Klein sensed the psychic power surging from the Warp.
He realized at once: this new body, like the previous one, possessed a certain psychic talent.
Of course, it was also possible that the previous body’s psychic talent had simply carried over into this one.
Klein clenched his jaw and spat out fragmented words.
The Warp’s psychic force let out a low keening.
The air around him turned abruptly cold.
The scent of ozone filled the room.
Reality’s veil was briefly gouged open, a rent through which psychic power poured into reality along Klein’s body.
The candle flame burst with a sharp crack.
A tongue of fire spun upward and shot toward the rope suspended above Klein’s head.
The rope burned through, and Klein slammed onto the floor with a thud.
The wine bottles scattered across the room’s floorboards shuddered from the impact.
A dizzy, spinning sensation still lingered in Klein’s mind,
but Klein nevertheless felt a surge of relief, because the Golden Throne’s call had grown blurred again.
That searing agony upon the Throne had faded into a distant background hum.
If Klein didn’t actively focus his attention, didn’t deliberately send his consciousness back toward the Golden Throne, the pain was now almost imperceptible.
As the suffocating pressure in his mind ebbed, his thoughts clarified, and the scattered memory fragments belonging to this body began to surface.
Klein saw that this body’s previous owner had once been a spirited, ambitious scholar.
He saw him standing at the lectern of a grammar school, working as a teacher.
He also saw him losing himself in gambling dens and clinging to the lure of alcohol…
Klein rubbed his temples, absorbing these fragmented memories.
Based on his experience, as time passed, he would gradually recall this body’s memories and acquire some of the skills its previous owner possessed…
The first thing he would learn was invariably the language.
“Boundless darkness…” Klein swore using a phrase from the scholar’s memory.
It seemed to be a curse originating from a barbarian tribe on this planet.
He pushed himself up from the floor and walked toward the wooden desk beneath the window.
The candle on the desk had already gone out; only a thin wash of dark crimson moonlight fell upon its surface.
Klein paused, momentarily stunned.
He raised his head and looked out.
Beyond the narrow window, across the vast night sky, hung no fewer than four moons.
The one that drew the eye most powerfully…
that moon was covered in crimson fissures, like an eye suspended in the heavens, shot through with veins of blood from wrath…
Gazing at that moon, the psychic power within Klein stirred faintly with agitation.
Klein drew a deep breath and let his gaze drop back to the desk.
“Forge-fire of Vulkan, light of Terra beyond the veil, lend this candle a single spark…”
Muttering under his breath, he brought his fingers close to the candle.
A tongue of flame leaped from his fingertip and lit the candle before him.
It was a simple exercise of psychic power, yet Klein furrowed his brow slightly.
It felt…
different from how it had in the Hive City.
Klein sensed that when he channeled psychic power, piercing the veil between reality and the Warp, it was far less smooth than it had been in the Hive City.
It seemed the veil at this planet’s location was much thicker than that of the planet the diviner had been on.
Illuminated by the candle’s flame, Klein pulled open the desk drawer and found what he was looking for.
It was a notebook with slightly dog-eared corners.
In Klein’s memory, this notebook was something the scholar had used daily to record trivial matters.
February 18th.
Played cards with Cicero.
Lost 54 denarii.
February 19th.
Cicero pressed me to play cards.
Lost 42 denarii.
February 20th.
Cicero called me to play cards again.
Lost 66 denarii.
No money.
Borrowed 66 denarii.
Aulus, oh, Aulus, you cannot go play cards anymore.
You have borrowed too much already.
February 21st.
Played cards with Cicero.
Lost 396 denarii.
Borrowed 396 denarii…
Klein froze for a moment.
Almost simultaneously, a golden flame suddenly flared across the pages.
The scholar’s name, “Aulus,” was devoured entirely by the fire.
Then, in the blink of an eye, the flame dispersed.
Every spot where Aulus had been written was replaced with Klein.
Klein’s gaze sharpened slightly.
Was this also some element of the Emperor’s great power?
He reached out and flipped through a few more pages of the notebook.
The more he browsed, the clearer the memories became.
This scholar’s life seemed to be integrating into Klein bit by bit.
The scholar’s proficiencies, grammar, education, literature, and historical knowledge, were gradually surfacing from within Klein’s mind.
He stopped flipping.
His eyes settled on a single word in the notebook.
That word was the name of this city.
It was also the name of this planet.
“Macragge,” Klein murmured the name softly.
Homeworld of one of the lost twenty Primarchs, the 13th Legion’s Primarch, the ambitious Roboute Guilliman.
The Ultramarines’ homeworld.
The capital of Ultramar.
The capital of Imperium Secundus…
But it was more than just that.
What drew Klein’s attention even more than the location was the time.
This journal contained absolutely no mention of the Imperium, the Emperor, the Primarchs, or the Astartes.
(Translated by yourtl.app)