Chapter 22: Should I Die… - Part 4: Alone… (Aurora's Perspective)
The doors open.
The light bursts forth, a searing, radiant force that explodes outward with the weight of souls. It slams into Valeria and Faust like the hammer of a vengeful god.
Faust is torn from his feet instantly, flung back like a broken doll, his coat snapping like a funerary banner as he vanishes into the dark.
Valeria withstands it.
She staggers forward, her armor glowing white-hot, runic engravings igniting across the plating, searing lines of scripture flashing with every inch she forces herself through the gale. The light howls, a flood of spiritual pressure, not heat, not force, but the weight of the unnumbered dead, all pressing down at once.
She keeps walking.
Her teeth are bared in a snarl, boots grinding against the stone, one slow step after another, forcing herself through the divine storm. Her gauntleted hands claw forward, fingers curling against the air itself.
The doors slam shut the moment she crosses the threshold.
Everything goes silent.
No more screaming. No battle. No weight. No pressure.
Just stillness.
I exhale.
Valeria stands before me—small.
I blink. She's nine years old.
She looks down at herself, startled. Her power armor is gone. Her weapons, her scars, her gauntlets—everything. She is just a child, the girl I first met, the girl who sat beside me in the darkened dormitories of the Progenium, whispering secrets, clutching my hand under the blankets when neither of us could sleep.
Her fingers twitch at her sides. Her breathing is too fast.
She doesn't understand.
Neither does she see that I am the same.
I lift my hands, flex my fingers, whole, human—two flesh-and-blood hands.
I am small again, six years old, my white-blonde hair curling in childlike waves, my eyes the color of sky instead of fire.
The way I was when she first met me. The way I was before all of this.
I know this isn't real.
She looks past me.
Her breath hitches.
She sees the chapel. She sees her own real body standing behind her, still braced against the flood of power, still trapped in the moment before stepping forward. She sees me, my real body, seated on the altar, blindfolded, arms resting in my lap, one gold, one black, the rings hovering over them like twin suns.
She sees the dead.
The mothers. The daughters. The babes in swaddled cloth, lying in perfect peace.
Her heart is breaking. I see it. I feel it.
I swallow down the sorrow. It doesn't matter anymore.
She turns back to me.
Her lips part, trembling.
"Aurora?"
I force a smile that feels like a knife in my throat.
"Hello, Valeria."
I call her friend.
I exhale slowly.
Neither of us moves.
The silence in the chapel is absolute. Not the silence of peace, not the silence of a sanctuary, but a silence so thick it feels like a hand around the throat of reality. Even the air seems held in suspension, waiting.
Valeria's gaze flicks across the chapel, her small, nine-year-old fingers curling unconsciously at her sides. She's sharp, perceptive—I see it in the furrow of her brow, the tension in her shoulders. She notices everything.
The bodies.
The stillness.
The eerie, frozen tableau of Magos Harspes, his mechadendrites locked mid-motion, as if time itself has ceased to touch him.
I watch her breathing accelerate, the understanding creeping in, brick by agonizing brick.
This is not a vision.
This is not a dream.
This is real.
But I do not want to start here.
Not yet.
Not with this.
Not with what I've done.
I take a slow step forward, bare feet brushing against the cold stone. My hands—whole, soft, human—are clasped in front of me like a child being polite. I am small, a girl again, the way I used to be. The way I was when Valeria first met me.
I force a smile, even though it hurts, even though it feels like a wound pulling open inside my chest.
"Do you remember," I say, voice quiet in the waiting hush, "the first day we met?"
Valeria doesn't answer at first. She just stares at me.
I can see the gears turning, her mind wrestling with too much, all at once. I know what she's seeing—the contradiction, the impossibility of it all. Her hands tremble slightly as she glances down at herself, at her own small, nine-year-old form, at the bare feet that should be encased in armored boots, at the smooth skin where there should be scars.
I step closer, cautious, as if she might bolt.
"I remember it," I continue. "I remember being cold. I remember bleeding."
Valeria's gaze snaps up.
I nod slowly.
"The boys took my robe," I say softly. "Lucious and the others. They stole it and ran. They laughed and threw rocks at me while I tried to hide in the shrubbery." I let the words settle between us, let the memory unfold in the dim glow of the chapel. "I was too embarrassed to come out. I didn't want the instructors to see me… like that."
Valeria's expression shifts. I see the flicker of remembrance, the hesitant recollection of a moment that belonged to another life.
The first day we met.
The first time she found me, huddled behind a hedge, shivering in my underclothes, trying to bite back tears.
The first time I looked up and saw her.
Not an instructor.
Not another child there to laugh.
Just a girl, a little older than me, with kind eyes.
I let my breath go, softly. "And then you found me."
Valeria doesn't move. Her small fingers flex at her sides, her lips pressing into a tight line.
"I remember," I murmur, taking another step. "I remember how you didn't ask me why I was there. You didn't ask me what happened, or try to scold me, or tell me I should be stronger, that I should fight back. You just sat with me."
Valeria's jaw tightens.
"You didn't leave. You sat with me in the dark, in the dirt, and you stayed." I try to smile again, but it feels brittle, fragile. Like something that could shatter if she touched it. "It was the first time I had a friend."
Valeria breathes in sharply.
For a moment—a fleeting, fragile moment—I see her waver. The cold set of her shoulders falters, her stance shifts, like she's on the verge of stepping toward me, of reaching out, of believing.
But then she speaks.
And her voice is like a blade sliding between my ribs.
"Is that what I'm here for now?" Her eyes meet mine, wide and unreadable. "To sit with you? In this darkness?" She gestures vaguely around us, at the horrible, silent dead. At the golden-eyed faithful who lie cold and still, their expressions serene, their souls stripped away. She swallows, and when she speaks again, her voice is tight, shaking. "In this false light you've clothed yourself in… friend?"
The word hurts.
More than the rocks Lucious threw at me. More than the beatings at the hands of Helena. More than the agony of the golden threads burrowing into my flesh.
Friend.
The weight of it crashes down, drowning me.
I almost falter.
Almost break.
The pain is a living thing, curling sharp and raw in my throat, clawing its way into my chest, wrapping tight around my ribs.
But I don't let it show.
I can't.
I force it down. Swallow it. Bury it.
I lock it away with everything else I have lost.
Because I knew.
I knew this was coming.
I knew this moment would come, that she would look at me like this.
Like she doesn't recognize me anymore.
Like she's already started to hate me.
I can't breathe.
But I smile anyway.
Because this moment is precious.
And it's the last good one I'll ever have with her.
I exhale.
The silence between us is suffocating.
Valeria's eyes are still locked on me, wide and dark and brimming with something unspoken—something hurt and angry and afraid. But I can also see it—the battle inside her. The war between her heart and her faith. The war that I am losing.
I knew this was coming. I knew it from the moment I saw her storm into the Council Chamber, from the second I heard the way she spoke my name. Aurora. The way she demanded that they believe in me, that they listen, that they see me for what I was. I knew it from the moment she swore herself as my herald, her voice trembling with devotion.
But she didn't know then.
Didn't see.
Not like she does now.
Now, she has seen too much. The golden-eyed faithful, stripped of themselves. The children who fought without fear, who bled in the dirt with blank, unseeing stares. Riley, weeping, broken, bleeding from the empty sockets where her eyes once were.
Valeria has always been the light in my life. But now, as she stands before me, she looks at me like I am the darkness.
She says nothing.
I swallow against the ache in my throat.
"Would you?"
Valeria flinches. A barely perceptible movement, but I see it. Her hands curl into fists at her sides, her jaw clenched so tight I think she might crack her teeth.
I step forward, slow and deliberate, careful as if she might run.
"Would you sit with me?" I ask again, softer this time. My voice sounds small. Fragile, like something that could shatter if she looked at it too hard. I let my hands fall to my sides, let the weight of the question press between us.
I am not asking for forgiveness.
I am not asking for faith.
I am asking for a moment.
Just one.
Just for now.
I let out a slow breath, my chest tight, heavy. "I know this isn't real. I know it's false. The light, the silence, this place—" I gesture vaguely at the chapel, at the waiting dead who lie around us. "It's a lie."
Valeria's lips part, like she's about to say something—something sharp, something cutting, something that will break me further.
But I don't let her. I can't bear to. I beg.
"Just for a moment," I plead. "Just so we can pretend, like we used to."
Her eyes flicker.
"We used to pretend, remember?" My voice quivers. I don't want it to. I hate how much I still care, how much this still hurts. "Back then, when we were children. We used to pretend that things would be okay. That the boys wouldn't keep throwing rocks. That Lucious wouldn't keep hurting me. That we wouldn't—"
I break off. Swallow hard. Shake my head.
"That none of this would happen. That we would be sisters together, side by side, till the Emperor took us home. That I wouldn't lose my arm," I whisper. "That I wouldn't lose my faith. That I wouldn't lose my home." I look at her, my vision blurring. "That I wouldn't lose you."
A muscle in Valeria's jaw twitches.
I take another step forward. "Just one moment, Valeria. Just one." My voice trembles. "I promise—I swear—I won't try to convince you of anything. I won't tell you that I'm right. I won't lie and say I'm not a monster." I inhale sharply. "I just—"
I squeeze my eyes shut. My throat burns.
"I just don't want to be alone. Not yet."
The words hang between us, suspended, waiting.
Valeria's expression doesn't change. Not at first. Her lips are pressed into a hard, thin line, her shoulders locked tight with anger, with grief.
But I see it.
The way her fingers twitch.
The way her breath stutters, just a little.
The way her anger is shielding something deeper.
I step closer, so close now I can see the way her knuckles are white with tension.
I force myself to say it. The words that she never said. The words that she thought she kept hidden. The words that I always knew.
"If you love me," I whisper.
Valeria's breath catches.
"If you love me," I repeat, watching her shatter right in front of me. "Please. Just for a moment. Let's talk. About anything." My voice is shaking now, desperate and so, so tired.
"Just not this."
I gesture around us, at the dead, at the horror, at everything I have done.
Valeria stares at me.
The storm in her eyes rages, flickering between love and hatred, between anger and grief.
I hold my breath.
I wait.
Valeria laughs.
A strange, broken thing—half a sob, half a hiccup, like she can't quite decide whether to cry or scream. The sound punches through the stillness, shattering the fragile, frozen moment between us.
Tears slip down her cheeks in uneven trails, gleaming in the soft glow of the false light around us. Her body trembles with the force of emotions she's spent too long trying to bury, trying to crush beneath the weight of her anger, her faith, her duty.
"What's the point?" she chokes out, voice raw and jagged. "What's the point of any of this? Of love? Of this moment? What the frak would we even talk about?"
Her hands shake. Her breath quakes.
I step forward.
She doesn't move away.
I reach out—slow, deliberate—and pull her into my arms.
She doesn't resist. Doesn't stiffen, doesn't recoil, doesn't shove me away. She just breaks.
And before I can think, before I can stop myself, before I can remind myself that this is not for me, that this moment belongs to her, I tilt my head forward and press a kiss to her lips.
Soft.
Barely there.
A whisper, a breath, a fragile thing.
She sniffles and shudders—then collapses.
The sob wracks her whole frame, a deep, keening sound that rips through her like a bolt of pain made flesh. I sink with her, lowering us both to the floor, holding her as she breaks apart in my arms.
She cries. Openly, messily, unashamedly. And I let her.
She deserves this.
I've had time to prepare for this moment. I've had time to process what I've done, to accept the weight of my sins, to steel myself for what comes next. But she—
She only just found out.
I cradle her, fingers stroking through her hair, down the sharp curve of her shoulder blades, a rhythm as old as our friendship. The weight of her in my arms is real, so painfully real, a stark contrast to the dead stillness of everything else. The chapel, the waiting bodies, the eternal hush of frozen time—only she is real.
Only she matters.
I take a slow breath, steadying my voice. "Do you remember," I murmur, "the first day we met?" I repeat like a mother soothing a babe.
Valeria sniffles, a weak, hiccupping sound, but she doesn't lift her head from my shoulder.
I press on.
"You found me behind the shrubs, hiding in my underwear, bleeding. You were nine. I was six. The boys had taken my robe and thrown rocks at me until I couldn't move anymore."
I pause.
She does remember. I can feel it in the way her body tenses, the way her hands fist in the fabric of my tunic.
"You could have walked away," I whisper. "You could have left me there. You didn't."
A small, broken breath from her.
I press my cheek against her hair, closing my eyes. "You sat with me."
She doesn't respond.
"You didn't tell me to get up. You didn't tell me to stop crying. You just sat with me. And for a little while, we pretended it would be okay."
A ragged inhale.
"We pretended that Lucious wouldn't keep coming after me. That the others wouldn't keep throwing stones. That the priests would step in. That justice existed." I swallow. "That I wouldn't lose my arm. That I wouldn't lose my faith. That I wouldn't lose you."
Valeria shudders.
I tighten my hold.
"Would you sit with me now?" I ask again, even more softly. "One last time?"
Her breath catches.
"I'm not here to make you believe in me," I say. "I'm not here to tell you I'm not a monster. I won't give you pretty words, or excuses, or lies." I squeeze my eyes shut. "I just want to sit with you. Just for a moment."
She doesn't answer.
I feel the tension in her, the fight, the struggle between wanting to hate me and aching to believe me.
I let the silence stretch.
Then—finally—she nods.
Just once. Small. Barely there.
But it is enough.
I exhale shakily, pressing my forehead against hers, breathing in the scent of her hair—sweat and blood and the lingering, sharp tang of promethium.
And I begin.
"There were two girls," I say.
Valeria stills.
"They grew up in the Schola. They were orphans. Like all the others. Like everyone else in that Emperor-damned place." I smile faintly. "One was small and fast and clever, the other a little stronger, a little older, a little wiser."
Valeria sniffs but says nothing.
"They overcame adversity together. They trained, they fought, they struggled through the worst of it—side by side."
I pause, my fingers tightening against the fabric of her tunic.
"They graduated together. One to the Hospitallers, one to the Order of the Battle, both to the Sanctified Shield."
Valeria shifts slightly, but she doesn't interrupt.
"They were given a rare thing," I continue, voice soft. "Permission. To be bound. Not just as Sisters, not just as comrades—but in soul. In spirit. A fleshbond. A life entwined forever, in faith, in love, in devotion."
A breath.
"They stood together that day, on the day of the youngest one's ascension to full Sister of Battle, and they swore their lives to each other before the Emperor."
Valeria's hands tremble against me.
"They fought together. Bled together. Laughed and sat together in the quiet spaces between battles." I close my eyes. "Theyloved."
A ragged sound escapes Valeria's lips.
"They fought as their home burned. As the stars fell. As the Emperor's light dimmed beneath the tide of the Warp. They held the line together, as Sisters. As one."
I let out a shuddering breath.
"And when the end came—when there was nothing left but each other—they died together." My voice is barely above a whisper. "And their souls went as one, hand in hand, to the Emperor's side."
Silence.
Thick. Heavy. Crushing.
Tears drip from my chin onto her shoulder.
Valeria pulls back.
Her eyes are red. Her lips tremble.
She swallows.
Then, voice hoarse, barely more than a breath—
"What happened to them?"
I take a slow breath.
The kind of breath you take when standing at the edge of something vast and terrible, staring down into the abyss, knowing there is no way back.
Time is still frozen.
Valeria is still looking at me.
I can feel the question she asked hanging between us like a blade suspended by a fraying thread.
I don't want to answer it.
But I will.
Because this is the moment.
Because this is the truth.
Because there is no other path left to walk.
I swallow, steady my voice, and begin.
"There were two girls," I say, my words soft, deliberate. "One of them had faith. Pure and certain, like a beacon in the dark."
Valeria stiffens, eyes flickering. She knows where this is going.
"The older one was wiser. Braver. Made to ascend, to fly on wings of devotion, to never know the pain of doubt, the weight of guilt. To be free."
I exhale, gaze dropping to the floor.
"She would be unstoppable. The hope of all who gazed upon her, a golden vessel fashioned in faith, made to carry the light."
Valeria is breathing faster now.
I press on.
"The younger one had faith too," I murmur. "But it was smaller. Insignificant. A stubborn, unkillable roach of a faith."
My voice tightens.
"She prayed, every night, that the Emperor would watch over her. That He would spare her the pain, the beatings, the humiliation. That He would protect her."
I close my eyes.
"And every night, He answered those prayers."
Silence.
I can feel Valeria staring at me now, the tension in her body coiling tighter, tighter.
I force my voice to stay steady.
"He sent the bullies," I whisper. "He empowered her persecutors. He took her faith and beat it with a hammer of iron, over and over, until there was no uncertainty, no doubt left in His mind."
A breath.
"That her faith could endure the worst fate."
The silence is thick now. Suffocating.
I open my eyes and meet hers.
"And so," I say, voice barely more than a breath, "the younger killed the older."
Valeria flinches. As if I struck her.
"She killed herself," I continue, relentless. "She took their futures, their love, their hope together, and she tore it apart."
My chest aches.
I press my palm against it, as if I could stop the breaking inside me.
"She tore their friendship. She tore their lives. She tore the decades of love and purity they would share in one another's arms. All of it."
I swallow against the lump in my throat.
"She ate it up. Sacrificed it. Placed it on the altar of obedience. Of faith."
Valeria makes a small, wounded sound.
I ignore it. I have to keep going.
"She had to have faith," I whisper. "Faith to do the unspeakable. The unforgivable. Because it was the only way. Just as He did for His Imperium."
I can see her hands clenched into fists now. White-knuckled. Trembling.
I take another breath.
"The older one—she was meant to be free. To be unshackled. To become the Saint."
My throat tightens.
"But the younger—she was prepared for something else."
The silence feels endless.
"She was made to endure," I say. "To bear the weight of sainthood without the glory. Without the adoration. Without the light."
I clench my hands in my lap.
"She was given just enough of life to steel herself against its absence."
I blink back tears. They burn.
"And so," I murmur, "she took it all."
I lift my gaze to meet hers.
"The love. The faith. The future."
A breath.
"And she burned it."
Valeria is shaking.
I swallow the pain in my throat.
"What happened to those two girls?" I repeat, voice a ghost of itself.
The truth is a knife against my ribs.
"I killed them, Valeria."
Her breath catches.
"They died to save trillions."
My voice is numb now.
"One will no doubt die for her sins," I continue, "and if not, she will live out the rest of her days wishing for death."
Valeria's tears fall freely now.
I keep going. I have to.
"The other will become more than she ever hoped to be."
I force myself to smile.
"And in becoming, she will find the same loneliness that the first bore from the beginning."
Silence.
Valeria doesn't move.
Doesn't speak.
Just stares.
Frozen.
And for the first time since this moment began—since this lie of a moment, this stolen sliver of peace in the ruins of everything I have done—
I wish I had never opened my mouth.
I exhale slowly, the weight of my own words hanging in the space between us like the final, inevitable toll of a funeral bell.
Valeria's breath hitches.
Her lips part, but no words come at first, just a tremor, a visible fracture in the fury she's been gripping onto like a lifeline.
Then— "What have you done?"
Her voice is tight, small, but it rings out like a gunshot in the frozen silence.
I close my eyes. I was waiting for that.
A bitter, breathless laugh slips past my lips, dry as ash, devoid of warmth.
"Only what I was born to do." My voice is quiet, but steady. Too steady. "Only what I was prepared for. Only what was set before me."
Valeria shakes her head, as if trying to physically shake my words out of existence. Denial. Hope. Desperation.
I turn from her, the finality of it settling like a stone in my chest.
"No one will see it that way from this day forward."
Then I raise my voice, casting my words into the stillness like a commandment.
"Jessamine. It's time."
The silence around us shifts, curdles. Something moves.
Darkness bleeds into the edges of my vision, pulling itself up from the void, peeling away from the fabric of this place as if she has always been there, just beneath the surface.
A shape unfolds in the frozen air.
Twisted. Hulking. Hollow-eyed and grinning.
Valeria inhales sharply as Dark Jessamine manifests, stepping into our quiet, stolen moment like an executioner into a cell.
I don't need to turn to know what Valeria is seeing.
She is tall, impossibly so, draped in a robe that is more tattered shadows than cloth, her limbs long and jagged, her presence curling at the edges of reality like a slow, insidious rot. Her mouth stretches into something that might be called a smile— but there is nothing kind in it.
I can feel Valeria's reaction before she even speaks.
Her breath, shallow. Fear, biting at the edges of her righteous fury.
Then—
"This," she hisses, "this is the demon you've consorted with."
The words hit like a thrown gauntlet.
My step hesitates.
Just for a fraction of a second.
I don't turn to face her. I can't.
She's desperate to believe it. I can hear it in her voice.
Desperate for an explanation, any explanation, that makes this something she can understand. Something she can fight. Something she can kill.
She wants to believe that I have been deceived.
That I have been misled.
That I am a victim, not a monster.
And that—
That hurts worse than anything else.
Dark Jessamine laughs.
A low, velvety sound, rich with mockery, curling like smoke from a pyre.
"Daemon?"she repeats, tilting her head, considering."No, child."
Her voice is ancient, rasping like the whisper of a dying prayer.
"I am no daemon. I am merely what was cast away. The bones and rot and unspoken truths left to fester in the dark."
I hear Valeria's breath catch.
Dark Jessamine spreads her arms wide, her shadowed form stretching unnaturally across the frozen chapel, her jagged grin never fading.
"I had no hand in this,"she purrs, and I hate how much truth there is in her voice.
I turn, finally, meeting Valeria's gaze.
Dark Jessamine inclines her head in mocking acknowledgment.
"Everything you see,"she adds smoothly,"all of it—her idea. Her vision."
Valeria's fingers tighten at her sides, her knuckles white.
I can hear her breath coming faster, see the betrayal crushing her.
Dark Jessamine's grin stretches wider.
"I am merely participating,"she continues, voice dripping with amusement,"because the thirst to crush the head of Nullmaw, a daemon manifest of my own sins, is a temptation worthanyprice."
Silence.
Valeria looks at me, eyes wide. Searching.
I hold her gaze.
No defense. No plea.
Just truth.
She follows as I step forward, towards the altar. Towards the end of all things.
Her voice is tight. Raw. Desperate.
"Aurora—"
"Stop."
She does.
Not because she wants to.
Because time resumes.
And everything slams back into motion.
The stillness shatters.
Valeria gasps, staggering back as reality roars back into being, her armor slamming down onto her body like a sudden, suffocating weight.
The golden storm that was frozen in time outside the chapel resumes, a crackling pressure in the air though it no longer assaults her. The walls vibrate with the force of it.
The sound of battle is a dull roar from beyond the great bronze doors once again.
She blinks, her power-armored form settling around her like a ceramite cage.
She is standing at the chapel entrance.
Not in the frozen moment. Not in the quiet.
Back here.
Back in the underhive ruins of this world where its future will be decided.
Aurora—me—I am sitting on the altar.
Just as I was before.
As if I had never moved. I never did.
Harspes stands behind me, mechanical appendages twitching, instruments whirring in eerie silence as he takes his readings, utterly unaffected by the sudden, cataclysmic shift in time.
He does not look up.
As if what is happening is inevitable.
As if he has seen this moment before.
Valeria shakes, reality slamming into her too fast, too violently.
And then—
Scarmaker roars to life in her hands.
The teeth of the chainsword rev against the air, furious, hungry, as if feeding off the betrayal seething inside her.
She strides forward.
Her eyes burning.
Her fury rising.
And I—
I do not move.
Because this, too, was always meant to happen.
Because this, too, is part of the price.
I inhale sharply, the breath rushing into my lungs like I've been drowning for hours and only now break the surface.
My eyes flutter open.
The golden light dims, siphoned back into the ring spinning above my augmetic palm, its radiance curling in on itself like the last breath of a dying sun. It pulls at me—the weight of it, the lives within it, pressing into my bones, sinking into my marrow, wrapping around the very essence of my soul.
Then—
A sound like the end of the world.
A terrible, rending crash, as if the Basilica itself is cracking open, as if the very foundations of faith and stone and war are splitting under the strain of something immense and hungry.
Screams.
Not human.
Not sane.
The roar of something that should not exist.
Nullmaw.
I flinch, but I don't turn toward the doors.
I already know what is coming.
Instead, I watch her.
Valeria.
She seethes, shoulders rigid, the slow, measured pace of her steps carrying rage in every movement.
Scarmaker snarls in her grip, its teeth revving, answering the betrayal that burns in her eyes like a wound that will never close.
But I do not move.
I do not speak.
Dark Jessamine moves first.
Like a shadow peeling itself free, she coalesces at my side, jagged and wrong, a dark and knowing grin splitting her lined face.
She lifts one long, blackened hand—
And within it, something small appears.
A woman.
No taller than a child, made entirely of golden radiance, pulsing with warmth, with something too sacred, too pure for this place.
Jessamine.
The true Jessamine.
Light incarnate.
The moment she manifests, she does not hesitate.
She turns, steps forward, reaches into the hand that holds her.
Her fingers brush the golden ring.
A blinding pulse—
She grows.
Light pours from her, stretching, expanding, until she descends from the dark palm that bore her into the air.
When she lands, she is whole.
She is terrible in her beauty.
She is Saint Jessamine, in all her splendor.
The same face Valeria has seen a thousand times in paintings, in statues, in glass and gold.
The same face she has prayed to in cold cathedral halls.
The same face that has watched over her since childhood, since she was old enough to kneel before the altar and whisper the litanies of faith.
Now, the Saint stands before her in the flesh.
And Valeria stops.
Scarmaker's teeth still snarl in her hands, but she does not raise it.
She does not step forward.
She does not look at me.
Jessamine smiles at her.
A smile that is pure warmth, pure light, pure presence.
Valeria's breath stutters in her throat.
The Saint lifts the ring and extends it toward her.
"It is time."
Valeria steps back.
Her voice is wary, sharp, demanding. "Who are you?"
She wants to believe.
I see it in her stance, in the tightness of her fingers around the hilt of her weapon, in the battle between hope and terror that rages behind her eyes.
But she is still afraid.
Still clutching the last remnants of certainty, of what she thought was real.
Jessamine's radiance does not falter.
She does not shrink.
She glows.
And she speaks.
"I do not approve of your existence, little self."
Valeria flinches.
The words strike like the weight of an executioner's axe.
Jessamine does not soften.
"You are bone of my bone, flesh of my flesh," she continues, her voice a steady, radiant force. "A true clone. Grown, not born. A product of the abominable machinations of Magos Harspes. Subject J-13. The fool's thirteenth attempt to meddle with divinity, to measure faith in numbers and formulae."
Harspes says nothing.
But his silence is louder than any confirmation.
Valeria shakes her head once, but she knows.
She knows.
I see it in the way her fingers tighten around Scarmaker, in the way her breath comes in shallow, ragged gulps, in the way her soul fractures right in front of me.
It is one thing to doubt.
It is another to have the truth laid bare.
Jessamine watches her with understanding.
Not pity.
Not judgment.
Just understanding.
"There is an emptiness in you, is there not?" she says softly. "A hollow place you have never understood, never named. A hunger for something you could not grasp."
Valeria does not answer.
She does not need to.
Jessamine nods, as if she had spoken.
"It is true. And yet—"
Her smile returns.
Softer.
Smaller.
Warmer.
"Your rise to sainthood, our merging as one, has nothing to do with his plans."
She gestures toward Harspes without turning.
"The Emperor has granted me grace I do not deserve. Or perhaps… penance. One last chance to live. In you. Through you."
A flicker of something sorrowful passes over her features.
She breathes.
"An echo. A memory. A connection to the Golden Throne that no Tech-Priest, no Magos, no man of science could ever forge."
She lifts the ring once more.
"You are the saint, Jessamine Valeria."
Valeria's breath hitches.
Jessamine steps forward.
"You are me."
Another crash outside.
A terrible scream.
The dying wail of thousands as something vast and unspeakable breaks through the Basilica's last defenses.
The gates are falling.
The foundations tremble.
I clench my jaw.
Time is running out.
Jessamine does not turn.
She does not react.
Her eyes are only on Valeria.
"There will be time to learn all things. To understand all things."
Another roar shakes the chapel, the sound of adamantine gates buckling.
"But only if you act."
She lifts the ring, palm up.
A simple gesture.
An offering.
A choice.
The glow of it flares, casting Valeria's armored form in pure gold, her power armor reflecting its radiance.
"This is your one chance," Jessamine whispers, "to take the power that only you can truly wield. To take the faith that only you can truly bear."
She does not command.
She does not force.
She simply waits.
Another tremor.
A final, deafening impact.
The Basilica shakes.
The battle outside howls in agony.
Then—
Boom.
The adamantine gates fall.
I don't see it.
I don't need to.
The sound alone is a physical thing, a seismic judgment that hammers through the walls, through the stone, through flesh and marrow and soul.
The shockwave follows, a tidal wave of air displaced by the collapse, rolling through the Basilica like the death rattle of something vast and dying.
I close my eyes.
I don't need to see.
I already know. I've seen it before.
Outside, the defenders stand on the final line—knuckles white around weapons, faith tightening in their throats like the last prayer of the condemned.
Some scream.
Some weep.
Most stand in stunned silence, staring into the abyss of Nullmaw's vast, incomprehensible form as it flows through the ruin of the Basilica's broken gates.
The daemon's arrival is not a charge.
It no longer needs form, or axe, or horns, or muscle, or legs, or body. It needs only the truth of what it always was.
It crawls.
It seeps.
It pours through the gates like black water spilling from a shattered dam, its vast, gelatinous flesh shifting, squirming, breathing.
Eyes open across its surface—some human, some not, all rolling sightlessly, drinking in the carnage.
Maws part—jagged, serrated, wrong.
Not mouths made for eating.
Mouths made for consumption.
For erasure.
The defenders open fire.
Lasrifles flare.
Bolters thunder.
Flamers wash the dark tide in righteous fire.
It does nothing.
Nullmaw does not slow.
The horde is devoured whole in its passing.
It crashes against the steps of the chapel like a tidal wave, washing over the embattled third barricade entirely—swallowed screaming, lost forever in the writhing, crushing mass of churning blackened flesh.
The Basilica—the last holy ground of Saint Jessamine, the site of forty-thousand desperate last stands—
Is falling.
It pauses.
Not to regroup. Not because it must.
But to relish the fear of the final few defenders.
And inside the chapel, Jessamine does not move.
She does not flinch.
She does not force the issue.
She simply waits.
The ring still in her palm, glowing with a light that should not be able to exist in a galaxy so devoid of warmth.
Valeria stares at it.
Her lips part.
No sound comes out.
A war is raging in her eyes.
Jessamine watches her without judgment.
"I accept it," the Light Woman says, her voice calm, unshaken, as if we are discussing the weather.
"I accept that if you choose not to do this, my sins—"
Her gaze flickers, something distant and old shifting in its depths.
"All the dead babes."
The words are a whisper.
"All the sacrificed lives."
Her hands tremble—not with fear.
With the weight of the truth.
"The failings of a saint who was never worthy."
Her voice grows stronger, steadying, reforging itself into something unbreakable.
"They are mine to bear. Along with the trillions of the Emperor's faithful that will die in the days to come if Nullmaw is not stopped."
I see Valeria tense at the words.
She does not move.
Jessamine steps forward, close enough that Valeria can feel the warmth of her presence through the power armor, through the ceramite and the reinforced plating.
She tilts her head, sad, almost fond.
"I choose to accept the consequences of that."
Her voice is a confession, an executioner placing the axe in the condemned's hands.
"On my soul, for all eternity."
I watch Valeria breathe too fast.
She isn't looking at Jessamine anymore.
She's looking past her.
At me.
At the girl she loved.
At the girl who has done something beyond forgiveness.
Jessamine does not look back.
Her eyes stay on Valeria.
"I will not lie," she murmurs.
A boom from outside—closer.
The chapel doors shudder on their hinges.
"Sainthood is as Aurora made it out to be."
Her expression is unreadable.
"Pain. Loss. Loneliness."
She exhales softly.
"The cold embrace of a distant and often absent father."
The words feel final.
Not a plea.
Not a demand.
A simple truth.
But—
Her fingers shift around the ring.
"It is also a purpose."
Another impact.
The chapel doors bulge inward.
Jessamine does not turn.
"It is a surety."
A creaking sound—
The metal warping.
Jessamine's voice remains steady.
"It is a light in the darkness."
The doors crack—
Valeria flinches.
Jessamine does not.
Her fingers close halfway around the ring.
Her golden eyes burn with a radiance too vast to comprehend.
"For those who can bear to carry it."
She lifts the ring one final time.
One final offer.
"Will you carry it?"
The chapel shakes.
The air pulls tight.
The doors scream—
Jessamine does not move.
Her gaze is steady.
Gentle.
Certain.
She whispers.
"Will you carry me?"
The ring glows brighter.
The final breath before eternity.
"For the Emperor?"