Time stretches.

  Blood falls from Lias's back in individual droplets, each one suspended long enough for me to count the ripples they will make when they strike metal. The Skathrith's battle-hymn stretches into something almost melodic, notes extending beyond their natural duration, satisfaction given voice in frequencies that bypass ears and settle directly into bone.

  The world has not slowed, my perception has accelerated.

  Dust motes hang motionless in the sourceless light. The kneeling Xal'rith remain frozen in their death throes, blood-soaked statues collapsing to the ground. Raven Five stands arrested mid-reaction, faces caught in expressions of horror that have not yet fully formed.

  Only Binah moves.

  She walks at normal speed through the frozen tableau, each step precise, each movement connected to the next in sequences that bypass the mechanical limitations of joints and muscle. Her white hair drifts behind her as though underwater, the only acknowledgment that time flows differently where she exists.

  She will not look at me.

  Her face remains turned away, features hidden in angles that grant her privacy I cannot penetrate. The refusal is deliberate. Pointed. As though witnessing something she cannot reconcile with whatever passes for conscience in her inhuman heart.

  That refusal jerks me sideways.

  I had been moving toward Lias. Silver coating my arm, power thrumming beneath skin, the intention to... what? Strike again? Finish what Binah started? The purpose dissolves as I try to examine it, leaving only the shape of violence without the substance.

  The rage tastes metallic.

  Familiar in the way copper is familiar, the way drowning is familiar. But beneath it, something else writhes.

  This anger is not mine.

  The recognition comes sudden and cold. I have felt rage before. Have known the particular texture of my own fury, shaped by years of swallowed insults and denied grief. This is different. This carries undertones of appetite.

  I shove the emotion downward.

  Into the familiar darkness where unwanted things go to die.

  My Inner Hell groans.

  The structure I have constructed from necessity and desperation strains beneath the weight. Like overfilling a vessel never meant to hold this much. The walls bulge. The foundation cracks. Pressure builds in my skull.

  The Skathrith wails in protest.

  Its song shifts from satisfaction to something darker. Deep malice thrumming through frequencies that make my teeth ache. It does not want me to contain this. Does not want the rage compartmentalized, the hunger locked away. It wants me to feel. To act. To feed.

  I force the emotion deeper.

  For one breath, everything bleeds through at once.

  The rage. The hunger. The satisfaction of conquest. The horror at my own actions. Alien senses pressing against my skull like too many eyes trying to see through two sockets. I feel four arms where two should be. Mandibles where teeth hang. Compound vision fracturing light into geometric patterns. The phantom weight of bone blades hanging from hips that articulate in ways human anatomy cannot replicate.

  No.

  Two arms. Two eyes. Human teeth in a human mouth.

  I press the words like sealing wax over cracks. Force them into truth through repetition and will. The phantom sensations recede, reluctant, leaving only the echo of wrongness in their wake.

  From the corner of my eye, I see Binah trembling.

  She still will not look at me. But her shoulders shake with fine vibrations, her hands clasped before her in a posture that might be prayer or might be restraint. Whatever strains against my Inner Hell, she feels it too. Or feels something adjacent to it. Something connected in ways I do not understand and cannot ask about.

  Time snaps back.

  The transition is brutal. Sound returns too loud, too fast, the world lurching into motion with a violence that makes my stomach clench. I stagger, catch myself, adjust to the sudden return of linear experience.

  Lias covers his backside with his hands, voice breaking as words tumble out between gasping breaths.

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  "Do not eat me! Do not eat me!"

  The plea is genuine. He believes I will consume him. Believes the nickname that he gave me has become literal truth.

  I cannot honestly say he is wrong to be afraid.

  Edge's voice cuts through the clearing's horrified silence.

  "That's my line, you lucky bastard." A beat. Then, because he cannot help himself, because deflection through humor is the only defense he knows: "He is about to be eaten ass-first."

  No one laughs.

  The joke falls into the space between us and dies there, leaving only the awkward echo of inappropriate levity. Even Edge seems to recognize he has misjudged the moment, his smirk faltering as the weight of what surrounds us presses down.

  I can barely process what is happening.

  My Inner Hell groans again, pressure building against walls never designed to contain this much. The phantom sensations return.

  Four-armed coordination. No! I push them away with conscious effort, forcing my awareness back into the boundaries of human form.

  Two arms. Two eyes.

  I think the words like prayer. Press them into truth.

  Then something fails to reconcile.

  The iron ground outside the village where the Xal'rith fell is empty.

  Three hundred bodies should sprawl across metal surface, blood pooling, limbs tangled in the particular geometry of mass death. I watched them cut their own throats. Watched them fall in unison.

  Instead: gouged metal. Smeared darkness where bodies should rest. Emptiness where corpses should rot.

  No trails leading anywhere. No drag marks. No evidence of removal.

  Just absence.

  I understand without turning to look at Binah. Without asking questions I do not want answered. Without forcing confrontation with truths that would only confirm what I already know.

  I will not look at her.

  Will not ask.

  Will not know what I already understand.

  Lias trembles beneath the shadow I cast. Naked. Broken. The whip-cut seeping across his exposed back in a line so clean it might have been drawn with surgical precision. Muscle visible through parted skin, the architecture of the body laid bare by Binah's braided light.

  I did this.

  Not Binah. Not the Skathrith. Not the borrowed rage I claimed was not my own.

  I ordered the stripping. Watched the blow land. Felt satisfaction when he screamed. Let the cruelty unfold because some part of me, some hungry thing that may have always lived inside me or may have been planted there by the weapon bonded to my soul, wanted to see him broken.

  The tattered robe lies three paces away.

  Discarded by the Bound Blades who followed my command with the eagerness of those grateful to find themselves on the winning side. Torn fabric pooling on metal ground, gray material stained dark at the edges where it dragged through blood.

  I retrieve the robe.

  The fabric is heavy beneath my fingers, tightly woven. Cloth made for endurance rather than comfort, constructed to outlast bodies rather than honor them. I drape it across Lias’s shoulders, and the deep charcoal gray darkens almost immediately as blood begins to seep through.

  I watch the spread.

  The stain does not bloom at random.

  It finds the embroidery.

  Silver thread darkens first, blood tracing the concentric circles on his back, sinking into the stitched lines as if they were channels cut to receive it. The pattern draws the fluid inward, following the geometry of the inverted tower—each ring filling, then narrowing, descending toward the point at its center.

  Downward.

  Lias flinches at my touch but does not pull away. Cannot, perhaps. His body too broken, his spirit too reduced, his understanding of his place in this new hierarchy too complete to risk refusal.

  An apology forms.

  Dies before reaching my throat.

  What words exist for this? What language covers ordering a child stripped and beaten, then offering him the robe after? What mercy is this that follows cruelty, that tends wounds it created, that offers comfort to suffering it caused?

  "One must not play with their food."

  The words emerge before I can stop them. Light. Almost conversational. The kind of dark humor Edge deploys to deflect horror into something manageable.

  But Edge is not speaking.

  I am.

  And this is not humor. Not deflection. Not the protective armor of inappropriate levity worn to survive unbearable moments.

  This is what I have become speaking through what I was.

  Reactions ripple through the witnesses.

  Flint’s face hardens into something between disgust and understanding, the look of a man recognizing a threat he cannot challenge. Wren retreats another step, pressing harder against twisted metal, while Stagger’s eyes widen further than should be possible. Ash remains stone, but his stillness shifts, becoming the frozen immobility of prey hoping the predator’s gaze will pass.

  Among the Bound Blades, a flicker of nervous laughter escapes Torren and Vex before dying unanswered. Caine’s jaw tightens. Lark looks away. Shade’s tears continue to fall in silence, tracking down features too young for what they’ve witnessed.

  Lias does not react at all.

  Too broken to process. Too far beyond shock to register new horror. He kneels in his own blood, robe darkening across his shoulders, and stares at nothing with eyes that still flicker with dying blue light.

  I recognize the wrongness even as the words leave my mouth.

  Cannot take them back.

  I turn away, not fleeing exactly, but movement becomes necessary. Distance must exist between myself and what I have done, between the boy who entered this trial and the thing that stands in its aftermath. My legs carry me toward the village's edge with mechanical precision.

  Step. Step. Step.

  The witnesses part before me without being asked. They create a path through their frozen tableau, bodies shifting aside with the particular deference of those who recognize authority regardless of its source. No one speaks. No one moves to stop me.

  Their silence is acknowledgment.

  Acceptance.

  Submission.

  I walk like a ruler leaving a room that has always been his. Like someone whose actions require no explanation, whose decisions invite no challenge, whose power justifies whatever methods produced it.

  Behind me, I hear Lias's knees strike metal ground.

  The sharp crack of bone on iron cuts through the clearing's silence with unexpected clarity. A sound that should be lost in the ambient noise of aftermath but instead carries with perfect precision, demanding attention it has not requested.

  Then his voice.

  Raw from screaming. Broken from suffering. But absolutely clear, absolutely certain, stripped of everything except the truth he recognizes and cannot deny:

  "Primarch! I recognize you as Primarch!"

  The words land like an avalanche into still water.

  At my throat, the White-Gold torq begins to vibrate. Something is wrong.

  The vibration intensifies, spreads.

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