When the Imperium landed upon Incheo, they found the people under the tyranny of a Witch. It was not the iron-fisted rule of a despot who enforced order through vast armies and brutal law upon the most minute details. This Witch kept the world in a state of barbarity: all attempts at civilization were sundered by beasts, their minds wreathed in occultism like the mists upon the land. The suppression of humanity’s potential, the subdueing of its birthright to galactic domination, was exactly why the Emperor had sent forth his legions to free and unite the lost worlds of Man. By the wrathful trinity of bolter, flamer, and melta, the Sacred Rose fought for the salvation of this world’s people from the witch’s clutch and drove her off the continent and across the sea to an isle in the southeast. If not for the cataclysm, the Witch, and all her malign influence, would have been burnt at the stake.

  But the cataclysm did happen. The besetting of dark gods upon this world allowed her to consolidate her power in the isle to make it a palace of natural defences and monstrous defenders: mist so thick one can hardly see their own hand, jagged stone so sharp it can slice through ceramite, prowling beasts under the thrall of mountain lords all make the isle virtually unassailable. With the war against Sinui taking up so much effort, no sufficient force could be mustered to finish her.

  From her isle, she casts her hexes upon the lands of the faithful. No where is her curse more felt than the Namche province. Since the province has the isle a stone’s throw off its shore, it is wreathed in mist just as it was in the antebellum epoch and further chained down by the occultism meant to appease the Witch, passed down generations through traditions from pagan ancestors. Try as the missionaries and dialogus might, so long as the Witch had her clutches on the land, the disparate village of Incheon pagans would not turn to the Ecclesiarchy’s enlightenment.

  Still, faithful or yet-to-be enlightened, all humanity, or at least these lands, were under the Emperor’s protection, and He tolerated no infringement without retaliation. When witchbeasts stalked the thickets and threatened populations, the forces of the Imperium would be dispatched. The Defense Force and the Adepta Sororitas trained their cadets and novitiates through the hunts of monsters and that would usually be enough. Should the beast be too much for the initiates, the Namche preceptory would assemble wingless battle sisters, clad in ceramite and armed with wrathful trinity, to smite the foe deserving of His wrath.

  It was a rare occasion that both of these should fail. Sometimes the Witch cast all her malevolence through a hex like the Long Winter. Some beasts were too mighty, or underestimated in cleverness, and earned infamy after gorging on the blood of hapless hunters. Some witchlings slipped through even the most vigilant grasp and followed The Witch’s siren call to become mountain lords. It was then that the Convents of Gyeo or Ulsa would send their winged elite: flamewings of seraphim, ophanim, and, if need be, zephyrim. It was in the slaying of such beasts, or the weathering of such hexes, that the terribleness of the war against the Witch was remembered.

  The Thunderhawk’s landing echoed throughout the village. The landing pad had its dust brushed off by the exhale of the aircraft’s thrusters. The reverberations became ripples across the paddy fields of the hillside. When the ramp opened to release the seraphim, they were greeted by a figure from the mist that stepped up to the pad.

  “Obey His words, for He will lead you to progress,” said the Sister Dialogus. She had eyes like glittering emeralds and a rosary over her clasped hands that reminded Yoon Si-nae of Hae Nyeo’s chaplet. Seraphim Superior Whang Youn Dai removed her helmet to reveal her augmented eyes.

  “Heed His wisdom, for He will protect you from damnation,” said Whang Youn Dai. Her focus darted to a seemingly random height in the mist; in actuality, her augmetics lenses clicked to scan past the mist to the mountain monastery they came here for. “Do we truly have no information on the target?”

  “No, my superior, the dokkaebi—”

  “The what?”

  “My apologies, the witchbeasts in this area are mere Chams, thieving goblins. They have never had an aptitude for battle and were a nuisance at their worst.”

  “So, witchbeasts roamed free here even before now? Common enough for you to use their names outside of academic text and indulge the local tongue. This laxity is what allows witchspawn to fester and now it bears fruit,” said Whang Youn Dai. She saw how the Dialogus had shrunk under her sternness and sighed. “But the lack of forces to patrol this land is not your fault. I am angered by the lives lost, that is all. Back to the matter at hand, how is it that three groups have met their end without us knowing what we face?”

  “I was in town. When I attempted to contact the monastery, I was met with silence that persisted up to my last attempt a moment ago before your arrival. The soldiers and your sisters said they would maintain communications, but they neither answered nor returned.”

  “Yes, we lost contact with them as well,” she donned her helm oncemore, “we face more than a mere beast out there. Alert the pilot if we do not return by nightfall. Seraphim! With me.”

  The Superior and her squad barely made it off the landing pad before they were surrounded by more figures of all sizes. Their thin frames were covered by baggy, dirty, patchwork rags and shaded by sedge hats. Their breaths were hoarse and laden with coughs. Though the mist blocked most sunlight and provided moisture, the toll of hard labor in the fields aged even the children beyond their years. The crowd was silent, too slackjawed to form words.

  “Is there a reason they impede us?” The Superior spoke past the townsfolk to the Dialogus.

  “They are merely in awe at the form of His servants. The monks and I tell them of the Emperor’s design, yes, but seeing it in person, your arms and armor, when they have previously only known Him by the landing pad and trinkets, I tell you, I see the change in their hearts more in the past week than I have in the past year.”

  “Tell them to step aside if they want to see His work be done.”

  The Dialogus made a brief bow to the Superior and spoke the local tongue to the crowd. They shuffled out of the way just enough that their breath still brushed ceramite as the sisters passed. A boy tugged on the cloth that hung from the hip of the rearmost sister. Her red lenses met his wide eyes and she watched his lips move in unfamiliar syllables. His ecclesiasticus necklace hung low from his neck on a body too small for it. The Superior barked for her through the vox; from the boy’s perspective, she turned away from him in silence and disappeared into the mist just as ethereally as she arrived.

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  The Sisters trekked up the eerily quiet forest to reach their destination, following alongside the river that fed the village’s rice paddies. The monastery was a cobblestone structure built into the mountainside so neatly it would be camouflage even without the mist. The outlying buildings were wooden huts that stored grain and accommodated visitors.

  They had followed the tracks left by previous groups but footprints on the monastery ground became erratic then stopped. There were craters and skid marks in the dirt, as if something was pulled out or dragged across it, but nothing reached the buildings—or came out from them, for that matter. Signs of struggle, but not of battle.

  The Superior pushed open the monastery doors gun barrel first. The church was still and cold as a corpse. Down the nave, the wax candles had melted into puddles that dripped off the candelabras. The book was open on the pulpit, ripped pages strewn to the tiles like disembowled entrails. They left the church to explore deeper into the rest of the monastery. The dormitory beds were neatly folded and the library shelves were similarly untouched. The refectory had cold soup, some in bowls and pots, some spilled across the table and floor.

  The infirmarium was the worst mess: intravenous fluids mixed with blood, defecation, and other effluvia. Whoever was confined to this bed was ripped from it without delicacy. However, only the initial action left evidence, as they found no droplet trails beyond that room to follow where the patient was taken.

  The squad exited the monastery and were about to survey the outlying buildings when the Superior commanded them to a halt. Something caught on her auspex and she sent the outline to the rest of her flamewing. A quadruped, larger than the shed it skulked by. The scan failed to make out exact details, just something huge and methodical.

  Two orbs of baleful citrine pierced through the mist and their red lenses to peer into each of their souls. A low growl ambled across the grass to rattle their armor and bones.

  As reviled as the native tongue is to any self-respecting imperial, it was used to distinguish the psyker monstrosities from the natural animals that they stole the form of. A tiger was a noble and wise companion of humanity. The mimicry that was before them now was a mockery of those traits: a Horangi, emissaries of the Sansin, who themselves were Mountain Lords that served The Witch. Whether the squad lived or died would depend on the color of its fur.

  The flamewing unfurled. Most of the squad fanned out to check the surroundings and structures. Yoon Si-nae alone advanced upon the witchbeast with a chainsword in one hand, and a bolt pistol in the other. She would occupy it while the other completed the encirclement. Whang Youn-Dai stood back to keep overwatch and conduct the flamewing as needed.

  The ephemeral growls continued to rustle grass and ceramite. The chainsword revs barked back as an answer. The mist obfuscated their bodies, but yellow eyes and red lenses met each other. Roars sent shockwaves that crashed against wooden walls and knighted ladies. The chainsword revs barked in defiance of each roar as she waded forth. Done posturing, the Horangi went back to its growls while the chainsword purred and rumbled in Yoon’s hand.

  Shrouded in mist though it was, Yoon was close enough to make out its form. Orange with stripes of black like embers amongst charred twigs. An overgrowth of teeth betrayed its origin as a malevolent creation: rows of fangs littered across gums forced its mouth into a constant drool. Sharp claws scissored the ground wherever its swollen paws landed.

  The Horangi crept back far enough that again only his citrine eyes came through. It lowered his head between his forelegs and reared back on his hindlegs. Yoon crouched into a start and primed her jumppack which let out a low hum in anticipation.

  At once, with roars animal and mechanical, both pounced. The loaded spring muscles of his hindlegs cratered the dirt he had leapt off of. Yoon’s jumppack sent her soaring with a single explosive beat. His claws were raised and his orchestra of teeth were bared. She aimed and fired her bolt pistol to strike behind his left foreleg. The boltshell detonated within his matted fur to create an opening. She twisted to avoid his claw swipe and slashed her chainsword across the opening; still, she chewed mostly singed, tangled fur.

  They landed and before she could fully turn he was already pouncing again. She beat her one wing on her jump pack to dodge, but his follow up chased her down. When he raised to slash again, she beat to dash under him, chew off more of his fur with her chainsword, and blow open a wider opening with her pistol. It was a small bald patch, but it was a start.

  He seemed to leap at her with all his force, but she remained calm. He had actually hopped a short distance and clearly had planned to swallow her up if she had dodged forward. His feint was rebuked with a bolt to the snoot, meant to insult and enrage rather than damage.

  He shrugged off the detonation, snarled, and poised to pounce again. He leapt forward again, and Yoon’s jumppack beat again to carry her under him for another strafe to further pry at the chink in his armor. But this time, shrouded in the mist behind her, was a shack that the ophanim was in. His weight alone crumpled the wood upon landing then completely caved it when he lept off it, bringing down a shower of splinters on the ophanim. Yoon had barely turned to the side when he was upon her again. She tried to beat her jump pack but his claw clipped off a wing and sent her spiraling out to crash into an empty shed.

  She was entangled amongst split timber beams and snapped wooden planks. The crash dazed her during a duel that allowed not a flicker of distraction. She could push off what pressed her down but she needed something to steady her mind before he was upon her again.

  “Through the lightning and the tempest, our Emperor delivers us,”

  She kicked off a beam and rolled out the way of the spiked club called a paw he swung at her. It wasn’t much but she couldn’t think of any other song and a girl drowning in rapid rivers would cling to any fallen branch.

  “across the dark, beneath the tide, our Emperor delivers us,”

  The beat of one wing made her more predictable. His paw caught her hand, swatted away pistol, battered bone, and rent ceramite up the vambrace.

  “Lantern in hand, on beaten paths, our Emperor delivers us.”

  Her bloody arm felt cold and numb, dribbling blood as it was exposed to the elements. The broken bones were going to hurt later. Revving the chainsword reminded her other arm it was still alive.

  He pounced again. Numb side forward, she beat her wing to launch into his lower jaw. His weight brought them down, but his misshappen teeth bit down on his own tongue. Now he was the one with a moment of distraction, his desperate swipe was deftly evaded, and the chainsword was jabbed into the opening in his fur that she had steadily carved to finally bite into flesh. The chainsword sprayed blood out its carapace as its gore soaked teeth spun along the belt. She beat her wing to drive further mauling up to its glenohumeral joint. His roaring cries and squelching flesh were made all the sweeter by the repetition of splintering bone.

  The chainsword burst out of his shoulder and tore his foreleg off. He whimpered on his remaining legs as blood squirted and flowed and vomited out of his gaping wound. When the chainsword was shoved into his eye and revved its teeth, he howled and spasmed. He flailed his head and body whole, but its bite and her grip held tight as it ate its way into his skull. She beat her wing to push him onto his side and the sword into his brain. The spinning teeth chewed and swallowed and spat out the brain matter and skull fragments even as he only had futile twitches left. His death was marked by his still corpse and the mist shriveling away as it dispersed, yet, for all to see more clearly now, she only dug the teeth in deeper. It was a glorious sight of faithful Imperial civilization dominating pagan native savagery.

  When his head was sufficiently mulched, she tore the sword out through his eyes. His periocular was now a gnash wound that was just as slacked and abominable as its bloody mouth. Both orifices drooled thick, chunky red.

  “In fogged mire, from ashen plains, Our Emperor delivers us."

  Yoon maglocked her chainsword onto the remains of her jumppack. She retrieved her pistol—damaged but not irreparable—to return it to its place at the side of her hip.