The cold wind howled through the ruins, carrying with it the scent of burning promethium and the distant echoes of battle long past. Sergeant Dain stood before the artifact, his fingers instinctively tightening around the grip of his weapon. He didn't trust it, nor did he trust the strange power that now ran through his veins.
But something had changed.
His system flickered in his vision, new lines of text forming before his eyes.
Quest Updated: The Path Unfolds Further
New Objective: Discover the Deceiver.
Dain exhaled sharply. The words unsettled him. The system had never been this direct before. It had always been cryptic, offering riddles rather than clear warnings. This was different.
Something—or someone—was working against them.
The Inquisition's Unraveling
Within the heart of the Inquisition's encampment, tensions simmered beneath a veil of silent compliance. Inquisitor Kael stood over a collection of ancient scrolls and data-slates, his mind piecing together fragments of knowledge that should not have existed. The Archivist was not a myth. It was real. The Tau had abandoned their war against the Imperium the moment it revealed itself.
That alone spoke volumes.
Yet Kael's greatest concern was not the entity itself, but the tremors it had caused within his own ranks.
Thaddeus Ren.
The man had been an exemplary interrogator—loyal, efficient, unwavering in his duty. But something had shifted in him. His reports had grown inconsistent, his inquiries more dangerous. Kael had seen it before—men slipping into the abyss, corrupted not by the touch of Chaos, but by the insatiable hunger for knowledge.
And knowledge, left unchecked, was the deadliest heresy of all.
Varos entered the tent, his expression grim. "It's confirmed. Ren has been seen returning to the ruins without authorization. He's hiding something."
Kael's jaw tightened. "Then we act now. If he's compromised, we cannot allow him to endanger the mission. Assemble the team. We move within the hour."
Varos hesitated. "And the guardsman? Dain?"
Kael narrowed his gaze. "What of him?"
"He was also seen near the ruins, hours before Ren," Varos admitted. "He hasn't reported anything unusual, but I don't trust it. Something about him feels… off."
Kael exhaled slowly. "We watch him. If he steps out of line, we remove him."
The Traitor's Gambit
Thaddeus Ren knew his time was running out. He moved through the ruins, the artifact's glow reflecting in his fevered eyes. It had shown him the truth—shattered the veil of lies the Imperium had woven over millennia.
The Archivist was not the enemy.
The Emperor was.
No—perhaps not the Emperor himself, but the bloated, decaying husk the Imperium had built in His name. A stagnating, crumbling empire that feared knowledge, that crushed progress beneath its boot in the name of faith.
He could see it now. The great deception. The lie of order.
And the power that awaited those willing to grasp it.
His fingers traced the artifact's surface, feeling the pulse of something alive within it. He could hear it now—the voice whispering not in temptation, but in promise.
"You have seen the truth, little pawn. Now, what will you do with it?"
Ren gritted his teeth. He had already made his choice.
The Inquisition would never accept what he had learned. They would silence him, purge him like all the others who dared to seek the truth. But he had another option.
The Archivist.
He would find it. And he would stand at its side.
The Imperium be damned.
The Hunt Begins
Dain crouched in the shadows as the Inquisition's forces moved. He had followed them from a distance, piecing together what little information he could. Something was happening. The Inquisition was turning inward, hunting one of their own.
His system flickered again.
New Objective: Shadow the Inquisition. Discover the Hidden War.
He didn't need a system to tell him that the real battle had only just begun.
And this time, it wasn't just the Tau or the Archivist that threatened the planet.
It was the Imperium itself.