WH 40k: Transcendence

Cassian scrolled through the data-slate, skimming past lists of sanctioned enforcements and recent crackdowns. The Adeptus Arbites archives were dense—hundreds of reports, rulings, and edicts filed away with ruthless precision. Most of it was routine: arrests, sentences, population control measures. But patterns stood out when you knew what to look for.

He flexed his fingers, trying to shake off the stiffness from hours of reading. The chamber was quiet, the dim lumen strips flickering slightly overhead. A servitor droned somewhere in the background, mindlessly sorting scrolls. The air smelled of old parchment and machine oil—familiar now.

He pulled up recent purge records from 745.M40—the current year. One caught his eye.

Incident Report: Hive Tersia, Lower Districts

"Arbitor Magistrate Helbrecht authorized the full liquidation of subversive elements. Compliance level: 100%."

Cassian frowned. No details. No names, no interrogations, no trials. Just a number: Four hundred executed. The official reason? Heresy.

That wasn't uncommon. The Imperium burned heretics by the millions. But the wording—full liquidation—that was different. He cross-referenced it with older reports.

Same phrasing. Different years. Different planets.

He tapped a command, pulling up archives from three centuries ago. A summary popped up:

487.M40 – Gelmiro Subsector Purification

"Following incidents of widespread rebellion, the Lord Marshal enacted total compliance protocols. Fourteen hive worlds underwent structural correction. Full liquidation orders were carried out. Compliance level: 100%."

Fourteen worlds. Purged. Barely a footnote in history.

Cassian sat back, drumming his fingers against the table. He wasn't stupid. When entire populations vanished from the records, it meant something had been erased—buried. And now, in the present, the same methods were being used again.

Something was repeating.

His gut told him this wasn't just standard Imperial brutality. This was containment.

A quiet voice cut through his thoughts.

"You read too carefully for a scribe."

Cassian didn't flinch. He turned his head slightly. Arbitor Dain. Tall, armored, sharp-eyed. The kind of man who had seen too much but spoke too little.

Cassian met his gaze, keeping his voice steady. "I like to be thorough."

Dain watched him for a moment, then exhaled. "Curiosity's dangerous. Don't let it kill you."

He walked off without another word.

Cassian sat there, fingers tightening around the data-slate. He glanced back at the reports, then at the exit.

Something was wrong in the Gelmiro Cluster.

And whatever it was, the Arbites weren't stopping it.

They were hiding it.

—-

Cassian had thought leaving his old life behind would make things simpler. No more endless hours in the Scriptorum, no more back-breaking labor just to afford extra rations. He had traded ink-stained fingers and exhaustion for something sharper, something that carried weight. Training. Combat drills. Patrol duty with the Adeptus Arbites.

It had been a natural transition. The Arbites had structure, resources, and most importantly, knowledge. He now had access to archives that few in the hive even knew existed. He had walked the cold corridors of Arbites precincts, sat through brutal exercises that left his muscles screaming, and even joined a real raid—a violent purge of a gang hideout deep in the mid-hive.

The food was plain but consistent, taken from the mess hall with the rest of the enforcers. His bunk was spartan, but it was his. He no longer worried about starving, about scraping together chits for a little more protein in his meals. He had purpose.

But even here, within the supposed order of the Imperium's enforcers, something felt wrong.

He saw it in the way the patrolmen whispered when they thought no one was listening. In the quiet glances exchanged over shared rations. In the reports that seemed to vanish from the records before anyone could act on them.

A sickness was spreading through the hive.

And no one wanted to name it.

---

The first time Cassian overheard the rumors, he was in the mess hall, picking at the same bland nutrient paste as everyone else. He wasn't part of the conversation, just another presence at the table, listening to the idle talk of enforcers between shifts. But some things stuck out.

"Another three workers went missing in Sector 12 last night."

"That's the third night in a row."

"No sign of a struggle?"

"None. They just vanished. No logs, no records, like they were never there to begin with."

Cassian glanced up. The speaker was an older patrolman, his face lined with the exhaustion that only came from years of seeing the worst parts of humanity. Across from him, a younger enforcer frowned, poking at his food.

"Maybe it's the underhivers. They've pulled people down before."

The old enforcer scoffed. "You think underhivers can erase names from work logs? Wipe out entire schedules?"

The younger man fell silent. The rest of the table shifted uncomfortably.

Cassian kept eating, but his mind raced.

Something bigger was happening.

And then, the real warning sign came.

"Have you heard about the sermons?"

---

Cassian wasn't stupid. He had read too much in the Arbites archives to ignore the pattern. He had seen records of past hive collapses, of doomed cities and planetary uprisings that had started with whispers just like these.

It was never just gangs. Never just corruption.

Not when priests got involved.

He started paying attention.

At first, it was just a name, muttered in hushed conversations between patrolmen. Father Veylan.

A minor preacher. One of the thousands of Imperium-sanctioned priests that tended to the spiritual needs of the workers in the lower levels. On paper, there was nothing unusual about him. No official complaints, no edicts against him from the Ecclesiarchy.

But the rumors didn't stop.

"They say his sermons aren't sanctioned anymore."

"I heard he doesn't even preach the Emperor's name."

"He speaks about 'the worthy being chosen'… but he never says for what."

Cassian didn't believe in coincidences. Not here.

Not in a hive that felt like it was holding its breath.

---

Then came the night he saw it for himself.

It was a routine patrol—curfew enforcement, nothing special. Cassian walked the dimly lit streets alongside two other Arbites, shock maul at his hip, the cold weight of a stubber against his side. The hive at this level was quiet, filled only with the lingering stink of sweat and industry.

Then they passed an alley.

Cassian's steps slowed. The other two enforcers walked ahead, unconcerned.

But he had seen it. Just for a moment.

A figure, kneeling before a crude, hastily painted symbol.

It was drawn in red.

And it dripped.

Cassian turned his head, forcing himself to keep walking, to act like he hadn't noticed. But his skin crawled.

It was the same mark he had seen in the archives. The same one that had appeared in hive cities that never stopped burning.

---

That night, he dreamt of whispers.

They slithered through his mind, curling around his thoughts like smoke. Not words. Not exactly. Just an overwhelming sense of something watching.

He woke suddenly, gripping the handle of his shock maul so tightly that his knuckles had gone white. His body was covered in cold sweat, and his heartbeat was erratic, like it had been racing even while he slept.

And outside, somewhere deep in the hive, he swore he heard chanting.

Not a cry for help.

Not the desperate pleas of the starving.

But something else.

Something that sounded a lot like worship.

---

The next day, Cassian went looking for more information.

He knew better than to ask outright. If this was what he thought it was—if the hive was truly starting to rot from the inside—then the wrong question could get him killed.

Instead, he listened. He watched.

And he saw the signs.

A veteran Arbites officer, his eyes sunken with lack of sleep, muttering a prayer before heading out on patrol—something none of them ever did.

A squad coming back from an investigation empty-handed, despite reports of disturbances in the underhive.

The way people stopped talking when certain names were mentioned.

Then, the final piece.

Cassian passed by a small shrine, one of the countless altars dedicated to the Emperor scattered throughout the hive. Normally, they were well-maintained, tended to by whatever local priest had been assigned to that sector. Candles burned. Incense was lit. Hymns were played on repeat.

This one was abandoned.

The candles had been snuffed out. The incense left to rot.

And someone had defaced the Aquila.

Not with crude vandalism. Not with gang signs.

But with that same symbol.

Drawn in red.

Dripping.

Cassian stared at it, his breath slow, controlled. He forced himself to look away.

He knew.

The hive was changing. The Warp was pressing closer.

And if the Arbites hadn't acted yet…

It meant they were either too scared to, or they were already too late.

—-

The precinct was dead silent. The kind of silence that only came before something bad.

Cassian sat at the long briefing table, his hands clasped in front of him. The dim lumen strips above cast harsh shadows across the room, turning the assembled officers into silhouettes against the cold metal walls. The air smelled of recaf, gun oil, and sweat.

Across from him, Vain Derrus stood, arms crossed, his expression unreadable. He was one of the few officers Cassian actually respected—practical, ruthless, and above all, not stupid. He didn't waste words or time.

And right now, he looked tense.

That alone was enough to put Cassian on edge.

"You're all here because I need enforcers I can trust." Derrus' voice was gravel, scraped raw from years of shouting over battlefield noise. "This isn't a standard operation. It's not some ganger cull or routine purge."

He let that sit for a moment. No one spoke.

Then he tapped the dataslate on the table, bringing up a grainy image on the holoprojector.

Cassian leaned forward slightly. The image was a corpse.

It had once been a man. Now, it was a ruin.

The body was slumped against a wall, its limbs twisted at unnatural angles. The armor of an Arbites officer was barely recognizable beneath the mess of deep, jagged wounds. The entire chest cavity had been carved open, ribcage cracked apart like someone had been digging for something.

Cassian felt his stomach tighten.

"This was Patrol Squad Theta-9," Derrus said. "Three men. They were sent to investigate a disturbance in the mid-hive yesterday." He swiped to the next image. More bodies. More Arbites. "This is what we found when they didn't report back."

Someone muttered a curse under their breath.

Cassian didn't. He just stared at the images. Examined them.

Because this wasn't just some ambush.

This was a message.

Derrus continued. "Witnesses—what few we could find—say they heard chanting before the attack. Said they saw figures in the dark, moving in ways that didn't seem…" He hesitated. "…right."

That got a reaction. A few of the older enforcers shifted uncomfortably. They knew.

Cassian knew too.

"Two weeks ago, we had a few disappearances. Then, priests started going missing. Now, we have full Arbites squads getting torn apart." Derrus' voice was steady, but there was an edge to it. "I don't care what you believe. I don't care what you think this is. What I do care about is putting these bastards down before this gets worse."

Cassian spoke for the first time.

"You think it's a cult."

Derrus met his gaze. "I know it's a cult."

No one argued. No one needed to.

They all knew what this meant.

This wasn't just an underground gang war. This wasn't a turf dispute or a rebellion.

This was something older. Something worse.

Cassian could feel it—pressing at the edges of his thoughts.

The hive was rotting.

And now, they had to cut the infection out.

Derrus straightened. "Mission is simple. We're hitting their hideout. No arrests. No mercy. We go in fast, we clear the area, we burn everything." His voice hardened. "Leave no one breathing."

Cassian exhaled slowly.

It was about to begin.

—-

Words: 2010

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