Space Marine in Star Wars (Warhammer X Star Wars) Chapter 75 75: 74. Saved From the Deep

=== Nira ===

Nira's eyes fluttered open.

Pain echoed in her skull like the aftershock of an explosion, and her vision swam with blurred shapes and shadows. The air reeked of ozone and burnt stone, thick with the scent of Warp-taint. Her body ached all over, her limbs trembling as she slowly pushed herself up on her elbows, dust and ash falling from her robes.

She blinked hard, trying to focus.

Just beyond the crumbled remnants of the Chaos Sorcerer's dark sanctum, she caught sight of a tall figure striding away—Sebastian, black-clad and broad-shouldered, disappearing into the corridor, his Crusader's tabard billowing around him like a ruined banner. His armor was broken and shattered, half of it missing altogether while the other half still bore the gri of battle.

She turned her head to the right, her senses returning in shards.

Anakin.

He lay still, sprawled on the ground. His breathing was shallow. His robes were scorched, his torso bruised and bloodied—but it was his arm that made her blood run cold. The limb was missing, and bleeding fiercely. Padmé was crouched over him, pale and panicked, her hands stained crimson as she pressed a piece of cloth against the wound. Qui-Gon knelt beside them, face grim, using the Force to try to slow the bleeding, but even his strength seed to be waning after his battle.

"It won't stop," Padmé whispered, her voice cracking. "He's—he's slipping away!"

Nira tried to stand but collapsed to her knees, her head spinning.

Then—the whispers.

At first, they were faint. Like wind slipping through the cracks in stone, curling tendrils of sound tickling at the edge of her mind.

"You need not lose him..."

"Reach out..."

"Power lies within. You need only listen."

She gasped, clutching her head. "What… what is this?"

The voices were ancient and otherworldly, a chorus of countless tongues speaking in unity, as if ti and space bled together in their echoes. They sounded like promises whispered in candlelight. Like riddles wrapped in silk. And they called to sothing inside her, sothing… unfamiliar.

"He is destined for greatness. You cannot let him die. You, child of the Force and the Immaterium—you can change the outco."

Her vision dimd again. The world seed to narrow to the flickering light above Anakin's body, to the gory ruin of his arm. She could feel the Force around her, turbulent and twisted. But there was sothing else—sothing colder, more chaotic, ancient and unknowable.

She stretched out her hand toward Anakin, trembling.

"Please…" she whispered, not sure if she was speaking to the Force or back to the whispers.

Suddenly, energy surged through her.

It wasn't like the warmth of the Force. It was chaos incarnate—vivid colors erupting behind her eyes, a cyclone of visions and equations, spiraling galaxies and the shrieks of stars being born and torn apart. Her mouth opened in a silent scream as her body arched unnaturally, lifted a few inches off the ground. Sparks of psychic energy danced around her hands like violet fire.

Everyone in the room turned.

Qui-Gon reached for her, but was stopped by a wave of pressure that pushed him and Padmé back. An invisible cyclone of Warp-born power burst forth from Nira, and her eyes glowed bright gold—no longer her own.

The whispers crescendoed.

"Yes… Let it flow. Let the threads of fate be rewritten by your hand..."

Her hand hovered above Anakin's ruined arm. With a strangled cry, she unleashed the energy.

Malevolent light engulfed the wound. It burned unnaturally, warping the air around it. The torn flesh knit together in reverse, shattered bones fusing with cracks like molten tal. Muscle and skin reford as if sculpted by invisible hands. Anakin's back arched as life returned to him—his eyes flying open with a scream that echoed with both pain and wonder.

Then—silence.

Nira collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, smoke rising from her fingertips. Her body hit the ground with a dull thud, unconscious once more. Her breathing was shallow, but steady.

Anakin blinked, stunned. He looked at his newly healed arm in disbelief—flexing his fingers, watching the golden veins of energy briefly flash beneath his skin before fading.

Dooku stared at Nira, then at the air where the power had manifested. "That… was not the Force."

Padmé's eyes were wide with awe and fear. "What was it?"

Anakin didn't answer.

But far, far away, in the screaming void of the Warp, Tzeentch smiled.

Nira's body then began to convulse violently.

At first, it was a twitch—barely noticeable. But then her limbs jerked with a savage, unnatural rhythm, her fingers clawing at the stone beneath her, her back arching off the broken floor. Her mouth opened in a soundless cry, her eyes rolling back until only the whites were visible. The very ground beneath her seed to recoil, cracks spreading out like spiderwebs beneath her trembling form.

The whispers returned.

They poured into the room like a flood of poisoned honey.

"The threads unwind..." "She is ours..." "The pact is sealed in thought, not word..." "Co, child of power, step into the truth..."

The Jedi stepped back. Yoda's face was grave, but even he did not dare touch her. Padmé covered her mouth in horror, while Anakin—newly healed, confused and shaken—stared in silence, the light from Nira's skin casting flickering shadows on the walls.

Suddenly, everything stopped.

Nira's body went limp. The room grew impossibly still, as though reality itself held its breath.

=== Nira - The Immaterium ===

Nira opened her eyes—and scread.

She was adrift in a void of colorless madness, a place where ti twisted and space laughed. The sky—if it could be called that—was alive, boiling with faces that lted into eyes, then mouths, then galaxies of teeth. Tendrils of reality slithered through the air like serpents made of language and shadow, speaking riddles in voices that clawed at her sanity.

A distant choir of children scread lullabies backward. Towers of bone and brass floated upside down in rivers of ink. Planets wept blood as they were devoured by maws that birthed them in the sa breath.

She floated through it all—her mind fraying at the edges.

And then she saw it.

A creature so unknowable, her mind literally broke.

He did not walk—he did not move. He simply was, unfolding and folding into himself endlessly. His form was mutable, shifting: an avian serpent with too many eyes and mouths, each head speaking in tongues, one singing prophecies, another devouring them. Scrolls of fire wrapped around his limbs. Wings of paradox unfolded behind him, casting shadows that spoke.

"You answered, child of fate," he whispered, his voice as infinite as the Warp.

"You opened your mind, and now I open the door. The gift you accepted cannot be returned."

Nira tried to scream, but her voice was swallowed by the unreality around her.

The being drifted closer, his talons made of glowing equations. One reached toward her chest, its fingers curling.

"Co. Let us craft your soul into sothing beautiful."

And just as his claw was about to close around her heart—

Light.

Not the light of the Warp. Not the crackling fires of Chaos.

This was sothing pure. Towering. Golden.

The Immaterium recoiled like a wounded beast. The being shrieked, in rage and in disbelief, as a blinding wave of gold fire tore through the void, incinerating the unreal landscape in its path. The boiling sky shattered. The serpent-faces scread and dissolved. The structures of madness fell into themselves and vanished.

Tzeentch stumbled backward, his many heads howling.

"No!" he hissed. "She is MINE—"

The golden fla struck him—and in a flash of impossible brilliance, he was gone.

Nira floated in silence, trembling. Her mind was a storm of questions. The silence that followed was not empty—it was whole.

And then, he appeared.

A man walked from the golden fla, each step forging reality beneath his feet. He wore a simple white toga, revealing much of his chest and shoulders. Atop his head he wore a simple golden wreath, his long brown hair flowing behind him.

His face was handso, though she had seen it once before. His presence cald the Warp around her—like a song forgotten by the galaxy but rembered in the soul.

She tried to speak, but her voice failed her. Her body, her soul, everything trembled in awe and fear.

He stopped before her, towering.

Then, in a voice that was firm, kind, and impossibly ancient, he said:

"We et once more, child."

His hand extended—not to seize, but to offer.

"There is much we must speak of."

Nira reached for him, heart pounding.

=== Kharath ===

The skies of Mortis churned with unnatural hues—golden mists clashing against streaks of violet and shadow creating storm clouds, the air thick with ancient power. Kharath's ship pierced the atmosphere like a blade through silk, its hull crackling with the residue of the Warp. It landed without ceremony upon a ridge overlooking the palace grounds, its engines hissing as they cooled, like a predator exhaling before a kill.

From the ship's ramp erged Kharath, clad in his baroque erald armor laced with gold and obsidian, each step of his boots cracking the stone beneath him. His helt glead under the alien light of Mortis, the air around him warping ever so slightly. Alone, he marched forward—undaunted and deliberate.

As he approached the temple, the doors opened on their own. Inside, flanked by the crystalline trees and eternal twilight of Mortis, stood the Father, robed in pale blue, a being of serenity and imnse power. His eyes, ancient and knowing, watched the Chaos Sorcerer with stern anger.

"I sensed you would co," the Father said, his voice echoing with tiless resonance. "As did the Balance."

Kharath stopped several paces before him. "And yet you did nothing to stop . Do you co to plea, old man?"

The Father narrowed his eyes. "You tread on sacred ground, bringer of madness. This place is not for your kind."

"You know nothing of my kind," Kharath replied, his voice like gravel soaked in venom. "I seek the thing you protect, the Force Nexus. You can either step aside, or die."

Lightning flashed in the sky above, though no storm brewed. The Son stirred from his perch in the distance, and the Daughter turned her gaze toward the gathering tempest. They felt it too—the unraveling thread of fate tightening around their throats.

"You seek to bring chaos to the Galaxy," the Father said, anger beginning to crack through his calm. "You would burn the last bastions of order for your own ambition."

"Of course I do. It is what my God demands of " Kharath hissed. "And you three stand in the way."

The Father raised his hand, energy crackling around his fingers. "Return to whatever dark realm you have co from," he thundered. "This world will not suffer your blight."

But Kharath only laughed—deep and low—as he unsheathed his sword, a terrible weapon forged in the heart of the Eye. The runes upon its length flared with Warp-light, and the air scread around its blade.

"You know as well as I do." Kharath said, stepping forward. "There is no returning. There is only conquest."

Without another word, Kharath thrust his hand forward, and from his palm erupted a torrent of Warpfla—green and violet fire, unnaturally cold and impossibly hot. The ground hissed as the stone cracked and blackened under the surge of corrupted energy.

The Father raised his hand calmly, a blue shield of force shimring into existence. The Warpfla splashed harmlessly against it, scattering like water on steel. The mont the fire died away, the Father surged forward with divine speed.

Kharath barely brought his blade up in ti to parry the first blow—an open-pald strike that sent shockwaves rippling across the courtyard. He skidded backward, boots grinding against stone, his armor groaning under the pressure.

"You are powerful," the Father said, already stepping into another attack, "but twisted."

"I am transcendent," Kharath spat back.

He swung his sword, a two-handed arc powered by both brute strength and the Warp. The Father caught the blade mid-swing with his bare hand. The blade humd with rage, hungry for blood, but the Father pushed it away and struck Kharath in the chest with a blast of golden energy.

Kharath flew backward, smashing through one of the stone walls surrounding the courtyard.

Growling, the Chaos Sorcerer rose from the debris, green light bleeding from cracks along his arms. "You should have killed when you had the chance."

The Warp surged.

Dark lightning arced from his fingertips, crackling across the space like writhing serpents. The Father raised a hand, but the bolts struck faster than before—forks of power slamming into his chest and shoulder, flinging him back. He hit the ground with a grunt, smoke curling from his robes.

Kharath didn't pause. He teleported, vanishing in a flash of black light before reappeared behind the Father. His blade ca down in a deadly cleave aid at the deity's spine.

But the Father spun, catching the blade again—this ti between his forearm and bicep—then unleashed a wave of kinetic force that shattered the ground for ters. Kharath was sent flying, landing hard and rolling, his armor sparking and fractured at the joints.

The Father rose, his expression darkening. "Enough."

With a flick of his wrist, jagged pillars of stone erupted from the ground, slamming into Kharath like battering rams. Each hit was surgical, trying to pierce vital organs, crush limbs and splintering ceramite. Kharath roared, his voice warping with a daemonic echo, and released a pulse of Warp energy that flattened the courtyard in a storm of dark wind.

Panting, bleeding internally, Kharath rose on one knee.

The Father descended like a bolt of judgnt, hands wreathed in celestial fla. Kharath raised a barrier of black tal conjured from the Warp, but the divine flas lted through it in seconds. The Father grabbed him by the chestplate, and looked down at him.

"You are a mistake," he said, his voice resonating like a temple bell. "And I will correct it."

Golden energy coursed through Kharath's body, cracking his armor open, burning into his flesh. He scread—more in rage than pain—and with one last surge of effort, drove his blade into the Father's side.

It landed true, forceful enough to stagger the god.

The Father hurled Kharath from him like a discarded weapon. The impact created a crater beneath him, sending fractures snaking through the courtyard floor.

The Father brought a hand to his side, and it ca away bloody.

He looked at it in disbelief. "Impossible."

Kharath coughed blood, struggling to stand as his vision blurred.

"I make the Impossible, possible!" he croaked.

The Father appeared before him, his expression a mix of sorrow and authority. "You abomination!"

He raised his hand once more, divine energy gathering in a radiant sphere above his palm.

But as the final blow prepared to fall, the Son appeared, his presence like a shadow across the stars as he flew in. At the last mont, he grabbed Kharath from underneath the Fathers wrath, and disappeared into the night.

===

If you enjoyed this chapter, maybe consider leaving with a couple of your power stones? I promise I'll take good care of them:)