Entry VI - The Silent Return

 

Entry V – The Silent Return

They returned without signal or herald.

The Striking Scorpions emerged from the shadowed approaches to the landing zone as they had departed it — unseen, intact, and unpursued. No alarm had been raised among the Orks. No pursuit followed. The warband of Kraznakh One-Eye remained ignorant that the ground it claimed in triumph had been walked again, and that what it sought to deny had already been taken from beneath its feet.

At their head walked Karandor Asurdor, Shadow-Exarch of the Striking Scorpions of Elune.

He bore no marks of haste, no signs of exertion. His armour was darkened by ash and soil, its edges scarred where blades had met resistance in silence. Those who watched him approach felt unease they could not name — not fear, but the awareness that something lethal had passed nearby without ever announcing itself. His warriors moved as an extension of his will, spacing perfect, discipline absolute. No words were exchanged among them.

The Spirit Stones were carried with reverence.

Recovered from the field of first blood, each soulstone was accounted for, lifted from where fallen Aspects had made their stand. The Scorpions had waited until the Orks’ attention drifted elsewhere, until violence dulled vigilance. Then they had moved — not to kill, but to reclaim. To deny the warp its due.

Safar Timura met them at the edge of the warded perimeter. The Farseer felt the presence of the stones before he saw them — familiar echoes, muted but intact, threads returned from the brink of unraveling. The skein tightened, steadied. Futures that had trembled now held.

Karandor inclined his head once.

“The dead are not lost,” he said.

No more followed. None was needed.

At Timura’s gesture, the Warlocks took the Spirit Stones, bearing them away so that, in time, they might be returned to Elune and set within the Infinity Circuit. Their voices would not fade into the predation of She Who Thirsts. They would endure — as memory, as warning, as guidance.

It was then that Karandor produced a final item, wrapped in a shard of dark cloth that swallowed light. He placed it upon the stone between them. The air around it felt wrong — heavy, resistant to thought.

“A fragment,” he said. “Found where the ground remembers.”

Timura did not need to reach for the ore to recognise it. Blackstone. Not whole, not shaped, but unmistakable — a splinter torn from something older and more deliberate than Ork interference or chance concealment. Its presence dulled the warp’s whisper even as it provoked unease.

Karandor did not elaborate.

“The shadows linger there,” he added after a pause. “Longer than they should.”

Timura studied the Exarch carefully then. Karandor did not name omens or prophecies. He did not speak of fate. Yet his understanding ran parallel to the seers’, expressed in instinct rather than vision.

“The planet waits,” Timura said.

Karandor’s helm tilted slightly.

“Yes.”

That was all.

With their duty complete, the Striking Scorpions faded once more into prepared positions, resuming their silent watch upon the shifting field. The fallen had been reclaimed. Knowledge had been gained. And something else — something heavy and patient — had been taken from the planet’s grasp.

The world did not protest.

That, more than anything, troubled the seer of Elune.