Early 36th Millennium, Reign of Blood
Holy Terra

More than a score of years before the battle between the Rus 105th Infantry and the Maxell PDF on an unnamed world in the Abalatian Reach…

The girl glanced back and forth, in both fear and awe, between the hallway in which she walked and those surrounding her.

The walls were ancient, having been constructed during the Imperium's formation, and were decorated with murals depicting the God Emperor's magnificence. The defeat of the Dragon. The Emperor leading his loyal sons, the Primarchs, into battle. Depictions of him leading battles in the Unification Wars of Holy Terra. Finding his sons scattered throughout the Milky Way.

Those surrounding her were dressed in long white robes. They were of very young age, early teens at the oldest, and of all different shapes and sizes. Some were tall and others were short. Some with dark skin hues and others with lighter ones. Every colour of hair and eye was present within the moving throng. Each so different from the others.

The girl herself was not so tall as most of those she walked with, and was a little plump. Her skin was ebon and she had a round face with dark eyes and a broad nose. Her smile was wide with full lips but she gave no smile on that day. She had a voluminous head of jet-black hair that consisted of tight curls that wound up and out from her scalp.

But the girl shared one thing in common with each of them, something she could feel in every one of them.

She could feel their presence in the Warp. I could just fade away among all these others, she decided while glancing around at those she walked among. As those words passed through her head, the hallway opened up and the throng entered into a great court, the Binding Assembly Hall. Her mind froze in awe but she kept walking forward, walking toward an enormous stepped subterranean pyramid that stretched kilometres on a side. A pyramid of gold.

The Golden Throne of the Master of Mankind.

As one, the girl and those around her looked up to the pyramid's summit, up to a great glowing nimbus kilometres above them. And she felt his Presence. It enveloped and smothered her senses, smothered her ability to sense the individual psychic signatures of those around her. It consumed her.

Then came the Pain.

Her body felt aflame. But it was not just her body, her soul was afire. She tried to scream, but was unable. The girl tried to concentrate on the nimbus above her, concentrate on what she knew to be the locus of the God Emperor's energy, but could not. Her knees buckled, but she remained standing. The girl tried to turn her face down, away from His Holy Light, but she could not. Visions flashed before her eyes in rapid succession, too fast for her to comprehend. She was barely able to piece together a single thought. He is trying to tell me something. The girl tried to understand what she saw but couldn't. She cried out, but no words left her mouth. Please help me understand! A voice whispered a single word into her ears.

Only the word was whispered into the girl's ears too quietly for her to hear.

The visions slowed and burned their way into her mind. Three men walked in the snow, wearing primitive coats made of furs and each had an unstrung bow over his shoulder. They were hunters and brothers. The three stopped in front of a range of apparently impassable mountains, but each simultaneously spied the one pass through. In unison, they whispered a single word as they stared at the pass.

Whispered too quietly for the girl to hear.

I do not understand, she cried.

Countless men fought each other, in countless variations of uniform, across a court. A mad despot watched on a throne above them, alternating between laughing and screaming. Their blood flowed, streaming together into a deluge while four gods she could not name or begin to comprehend gathered into an eight-pointed star and laughed while one of the four simultaneously waited without while still remaining within.

And again, she cried, I do not understand.

A figure with long white hair and lavender eyes filled her sight, then it was not the same as it was an instant before. Golden eyes shone where the lavender ones had been and the long white hair had become short and black. The figure transformed back and forth too fast for her to comprehend. Then it collapsed into nothingness and was reborn as a bird of fire, blazing gold and red. And she knew it was not the first time. And she knew that it would happen again.

And this time the girl merely cried, unable to put thoughts together in her mind as her visions continued.

A black hexagonal chamber with a black and white checked floor. In the middle, a hexagonal dais with a great twisted black spire extended into the abyss of the arched ceiling that towered over it.

The hexagonal chamber shifted to circular with countless open portals scattered around it and the floor became entirely black. The arched ceiling grew until it reached out of sight and the spire narrowed until it appeared little more than a needle of limitless length stretching up into the darkness and beyond.

Golden and red fire filled the girl's sight, a great red and gold bird of fire. And a single word echoed in her ears like thunder.

A word that shattered the girl's ear drums.

The girl's eyes watered and then her vision became blurry. The pain and heat became unbearable and her body went completely limp, not just her knees, but the girl still did not collapse. Visions continued to fly through her mind but she could not understand them. The skin of her face burned from the hot liquids that oozed from her eyes as they melted and poured out, leaving empty sockets behind. As the heat of His presence continued to consume the girl, her black skin paled and then turned white.

She collapsed to the ground and a single word was mumbled from her parched lips.

Scholomance