Leslie Cole knelt in front of her makeshift shrine and prayed reverently. He was a star whisperer, a devout member of the state religion, who trusted and worshipped the majesty and supreme power of the god emperor.

This devotion had not brought him any perceptible help in his previous work, and he did not consider himself fundamentally different from other astral whisperers. Even though he had risen to the rank of Principal Singer of the Star Whisper during his 100-year career with the Talon of Destruction, he was adamant.

Faith can strengthen his will in the turbulence of the Most High Heaven, protect his mind, and prevent him from falling by uncleanness or being corrupted by the forces of chaos. Leslie's faith was not born out of this, but he was already satisfied with it and did not expect more.

But today he began to wonder if his piety had really made the Emperor hear his prayers, and he was thrilled and joyed by the imagination, and he became even more religious.

In fact, when the accident first happened, the entire upper echelons of the ship, the departments unrelated to the operation, did not know exactly what was happening on the ship, and Leslie was no different. Everyone in the Starling Spire heard the warning sound from inside the ship, confirming that their area was sealed tighter, as they did every time a ship was jumped.

It's not uncommon to be jumped in subspace, and although Leslie has heard of this tactic, it is the first time in a century that he has actually experienced it. He had a little drumming in his heart, but as the lead singer of the choir, he buried his uneasiness as much as he could, and with a strong attitude he united the younger, inexperienced, and therefore obviously masterless members of his command.

Assuming that Geller's position had expired (which it was), he told everyone to sit quietly in their seats and meditate against the encroachment of the subspace, and to be ready at all times—half of them could relax a little, and the other half had to keep an eye on the bridge, ready to use their abilities as commanded by their command: whether it was the job of sending the Star Language, or using their powerful psionic powers connected to the Emperor to fight in times of crisis.

Leslie didn't want the latter to happen: if it did get to that point, he didn't know if he could do what he was supposed to do. He was always nervous, and when he was younger, he would panic at the slightest incident, but now that he is better, at least he knows how to pretend to be calm, but it is limited in nature.

His strength really calmed the mood of the choir, and everyone waited quietly in the minaret. Only he knew that it was a very painful time for Leslie. He had to clench the pendant of the necklace with the emblem of the state religion hidden under his robes, and recite the state religion prayer incessantly to control his mind from sliding into the more terrible abyss.

Unfortunately, although he barely controlled his thoughts, he could not prevent the situation itself from sliding into an even more terrible abyss. The first problem that arises is that the communication is cut off, and at this time they can still convince themselves that it is normal that the enemy always attacks the communication system inside the ship first to hinder the support dispatch; Then there was a terrible shudder on the ship, and it was difficult to tell from the minaret at the edge of the ship whether the impact was coming from the inside or from the outside, but in any case, it was clearly not a good sign; After that, almost all the members of the choir were keenly aware that something evil had befallen the ship.

The feeling was vague and rather unreliable, but every hunch of the psyker was almost meaningful. Leslie didn't know what had infiltrated the ship by what means, and he couldn't tell what the problem was, but he clearly sensed a threat of imminent death.

He still forced himself to be calm, and even calmed the worried young psykers so that their emotions would not fluctuate too much, and something worse would have been brought in - but in fact, if he had been given a pen and a piece of paper at that time, he would have immediately fallen on the ground in tears and began to write a suicide note.

This lasted for an unknown amount of time, but the mentally ill-witted began to attract unclean things under the impetus of excessive nervousness, and were soon automatically terminated by the agency corresponding to their seat at Leslie's orders. The outermost spire of the ship should have been incapable of detecting anything after communication had been cut off, but Leslie was always suspicious that an unknown enemy had approached the Adamantite Gate and Killing Corridor that isolated them. Every tremor of the floor and walls made him scream, and he tried to persuade himself to stop these speculations, but after a while, he realized that something like this was happening.

Everyone heard the explosion of gunfire getting closer and closer, and felt the vibrations stronger and stronger, until the signs were clear enough that they could no longer deceive themselves. In desperation, Leslie organizes the rest of the choir, and no matter what fate awaits them—whether they are brutally killed or tortured after being captured, they have to do something.

The last barrier crumbled with a tooth-aching scrape and explosion, and the heat was enough to melt the gold, burning everyone's cheeks to the point of pain. After a few seconds, all the light, smoke, and water vapor dissipated, and Leslie found that there was only one person standing in the gap in the broken door:

Debit Zem Voyd, a few months ago, after the Claw of Destruction was on a mission to rid the Genestealer Sect on a planet in the Kalysis sector, he was inexplicably an astrogeologist on board the ship, the kind of researcher who focuses on astronomical phenomena and star map changes in the physical world. Leslie himself was unfamiliar with the division, but he could sometimes see the young man talking to the navigators.

He didn't understand why this young man was here, why the other party was able to break through the defenses under the star-speaking spire alone, and he didn't understand what he was doing this—and the young man with the scarce purple pupils didn't give him time to understand, but single-handedly sent a message of imperative to everyone present:

"The upper floor is no longer safe, if you want to survive, come with me to the middle floor."

The young man didn't explain, just threw down the sentence and then turned around and left the way he came. The whole thing was so sudden that Leslie couldn't think because of it—but maybe he was forcing others to not think and have to do what he commanded? Leslie doesn't know, but if that's the case, then Debit succeeded.

"Keep up with him." He turned back to the remaining choirists.

As it turned out, it was the right decision: the defenses on the Starlingling Spire, which had been completely destroyed once, did not provide any sense of protection, and following Debit all the way down managed to keep most of the remaining Startalkers alive and secure. But if you look at it from the process...... All Leslie can say was the most horrific experience of his life.

The Navigator's tower has fallen, and some evil idea from a subspace entity hovers over the ship, ready to pick up all the souls it can touch. The slightest contact with the psyker's mind would have been wiped out, but Debbit had interfered with the communication between the two in a way that was difficult for psionics to understand.

That's all Leslie remembers. More things seemed to be shrouded in fog, and his instinctive desire to survive warned him not to go too far, he just remembered that it was not a very comfortable journey. The men he brought out of the minaret had only lost two of them along the way, but one more had been found completely insane when he reached the safety of the ship's middle level. The mad psykers are already dangerous, and the current ship is drifting in subspace, and it has been directly ordered to be executed by the temporary commander of the Iron Hand.

No one objected to this, only Debit himself showed an expression that was close to "pity" for a moment as if he were delusional. Leslie stumbled upon a glimpse of this, but he wasn't sure if it was a delusion.

Immediately afterward, the Psykers (the only two Navigators Leslie noticed here) were placed en masse in a temporarily vacant hangar, guarded by a handful of warband recruits. The servants built them with a little basic equipment to sit and lie down, and they managed to collect some fabric themselves to withstand the cold caused by the lack of heating.

After settling down a little, they gathered together and whispered to each other in the fog that was permeated by the cold. Everyone could sense that there was something obscure and vast in this space, but no one could tell what it was. Navigators who were more sensitive to the waves of subspace said that this being obscured some of the malice of the Supreme Heaven, and Leslie himself did not feel any definite hostility.

But that's not quite right. They were debating in apprehension whether they should use this to disturb the temporary commander in battle, and the two surviving navigators suddenly cried out like crazy:

"Light ...... It's light! They danced and pointed in a direction in the void, so excited that they could barely utter a complete sentence. The noise made by the two men even startled the warband monks stationed next to them, but Leslie didn't feel any signs of uncontrolled depravity from them.

Just as he was wondering, a wide-area star language pierced into the minds of all the members of the choir present like a sharp cone: it was very close, the content was simple, and it was asking about the current state of the warband.

This was obviously something more important, and Leslie immediately informed the commander of the news, and sent a reply in Star Weave at the request of the other party - while using psionic energy to cast the content of the communication, he realized that he was facing the direction the navigator was pointing.

Then he saw it too: the majesty of the God Emperor was quietly suspended in the subspace.