The ash-grey wasteland stretched into the horizon — not a line, but a dissolution, as if the very idea of distance had been worn away. The air was thin, crackling faintly with static and the scent of ozone, dust, and long-forgotten death. Across the desolate expanse, like the scattered bones of forgotten titans, lay the ruins of once-mighty voidships — shattered hulls, skeletal girders clawing at a sky of perpetual twilight, their grandeur twisted into grotesque tombstones. This was the Graveyard of Stars.
Among the wreckage moved two figures. One was robed in earth-toned cloth, a staff carved from pale, polished wood in his hand, seeming fragile against the brutal majesty of the scene. His young face held quiet determination, even as ash clung to his skin and the void whispered madness around him. This was Aang.
Beside him strode a being no less mythic — though of a far different tenor. He moved like a vision from legend: vast, regal, and impossibly graceful. His golden armor drank in the dying light, and his wings, folded behind him like the remnants of divinity, stirred slightly in the wind. Time and sorrow had carved deep lines into his noble face, but his eyes still burned with purpose.
This was Sanguinius.
They had found it partially buried in a ravine of rust and time — a downed Imperial vessel, its hull sheared open by ancient impact or warp breach. A long-range survey ship, perhaps, or a minor pilgrim carrier. Now its back was broken, its structure spilling out in molten ribs and collapsed decks.
They entered through the jagged wound where the Gellar Field generators had once thrummed with psychic protection. Now, only silence lived here.
Inside, the void was thick. The whisper of wind through ruined corridors echoed like voices through a broken cathedral. Their footsteps crunched on powdered bones and fragmented ceramite. Tangled cables, like the tendrils of a dead god, hung from ruptured ceilings. Ancient banners still clung to the walls — faded litanies of the Imperium, devotional iconography caked in dust and dark stains. Time had not claimed the dead gently: calcified skeletons slumped over shattered consoles, tangled in cables, or lay sprawled like offerings to a god that had never listened.
Aang paused beside a half-collapsed console, brushing dust and corrosion from the controls with careful fingers. Though its screen was shattered, some of the surrounding instrumentation remained intact — buttons dulled by time, vox ports rusted but recognisable.
"There's... a lot here," he said, his voice a quiet tremor in the silence. He looked to Sanguinius, blue eyes hopeful. "Maybe we could reach someone. This looks like a vox-transmitter. Maybe something bigger — an astropathic matrix?"
Sanguinius knelt beside the device. His armor groaned softly, gold dulled with ash and history. He touched the machine like one might touch a corpse — with reverence, but no delusions of revival.
His voice, when it came, was low and final. "We have bones," he said, "but no blood. The plasma cores are cold. Power conduits ruptured. Relay nodes burned out. The machine-spirit was severed, likely during breach or warp failure." His fingers drifted over blackened circuitry. "This vessel is not just broken. It is dead."
Aang's shoulders fell slightly, but the spark in his eyes didn't go out. He understood what Sanguinius meant — understood that they could not bring this leviathan back to life. Yet he didn't step away.
"There might still be... echoes," he said, quietly. "Residual energy, maybe? A whisper in the system?"
Sanguinius's expression softened, though grief lingered in his voice. "The Imperium is vast. Signals are fleeting. Even if a spark remained, it would fade into the void before anyone heard it." His wings shifted slightly. "Hope, in this galaxy, is answered most often with silence. Or worse."
Aang didn't flinch from the truth. He simply nodded. "Maybe," he said. "But if even one signal reaches someone... it could change everything."
He stepped to a smaller panel adjacent to the main console — less scorched, perhaps used for local command or distress transmissions. "What if we tried to send something small?" he asked. "A burst. A message."
Sanguinius studied him for a long moment. This boy — this child from a different world — still believed. Not with naïve ignorance, but with fierce conviction. It wasn't the kind of hope that ignored darkness. It was the kind that challenged it.
Finally, the Primarch turned toward the lesser unit and placed a hand over it. He focused — not just his will, but something deeper. His presence, his psychic aura, pressed into the dormant panel like a spark into dry wood.
Somewhere deep in the ship's ruined veins, something flickered.
Aang felt it too — the faintest hum, the brush of energy against his skin like the whisper of a forgotten prayer. "Did you feel that?"
Sanguinius nodded. "Barely. But it may be enough for one final breath."
Together, they worked. Not to repair — that was impossible — but to salvage. To siphon what remained into a crude, single-use burst. A cry into the void.
Hours passed. Aang carved guiding glyphs along the casing, symbols of balance and breath. Sanguinius rerouted ruined wiring, rechanneled psychic circuits with instincts born of science and art. And finally — they sent the signal.
A simple code. A frequency known across the Imperium. An emergency cry laced with identity unknown, threat unknown, origin untraceable — but carrying just enough force to be noticed.
They stepped back.
The panel sparked once, then went still.
"Now what?" Aang asked.
"Now," said Sanguinius, "we wait."
And far above, unseen by either of them, a flicker of light danced across the void — reaching sensors on the edge of legality and empire. The Aurora's Folly stirred from drift, and aboard it, a Rogue Trader raised her eyebrows at the ghost of a message from the graveyard of stars.
Scene Switch
Aboard the Rogue Trader Vessel: The Emperor's Folly
The bridge of The Emperor's Folly was a glorious, chaotic mess. Gilded aquilas glinted from every bulkhead, cheap poly-plas paneling strained to mimic fine wood, and jury-rigged cogitators whirred and clicked amidst clouds of scented lamp oil and the less charming aroma of stale amasec. Servitors skittered across the deck plates, carrying messages or scrubbing grime, while crewmen bickered over data-slates or hunched over hissing plasma relays. The air thrummed with the barely contained energy of a vessel built for profit, no matter how illicit.
Perched upon a throne cobbled from salvaged industrial machinery and painted gold, Rogue Trader Captain Vanya Volkov surveyed her domain. She wore her ambition like a second skin — opulent silks, gaudy jewelry, and a perpetually amused, slightly glazed look that suggested she may have started drinking before dawn. She swirled a glass of amber liquid, watching the organized pandemonium with practiced detachment.
From a bank of humming machinery emerged a stooped figure wrapped in layered, patchwork robes, its face veiled behind a thick, dark visor. It was Ashira, the ship's Navigator, her presence a constant, unnerving reminder of the nightmares lurking just beyond the Gellar Field.
"Captain," Ashira rasped, her voice like sandpaper across stone. "A peculiar vox-echo. Faint. Short duration."
Vanya raised an eyebrow, sipping slowly. "Another automated salvage beacon? Or some lament from a wretch the cyclonic torpedoes missed?"
"Neither," intoned a second voice, filtered and layered with the static of holy machine-speech. Magos Prime Xi-9 shuffled out from a bank of chattering cogitators, a living tangle of crimson robes and sparking augmetics. He held up a data-slate flickering with runes and waveforms.
"Unstructured. Crude. A gross inefficiency. Yet the modulation... the syntax beneath the entropy... it is identifiably Imperial. Ancient structure, non-standard cadence. Desperation registered."
Vanya leaned forward, the amusement slipping from her features, replaced by something far keener. "Imperial? Out here? A trap, Magos? Perhaps a Black Ship, baiting stray sheep?"
"No psychic taint," Ashira replied. Her visor remained fixed on nothing visible. "No Immaterium echo. Origin: realspace. Signal: recent."
The background hum of the bridge seemed to dampen. Heads turned, subtly, toward their captain.
Vanya paused, swirling her drink. Coordinates glimmered on a screen beside her throne — close. Very close. A distressed Imperial vessel implied salvage. Tech. Personnel. Cargo. Possibly even a rare story worth selling. A trap implied danger. But the Navigator confirmed its authenticity. A mystery, though? That implied potential. And Volkov, like all Rogue Traders, had never been one to let a good mystery go unprobed.
She glanced again into the black, empty void outside the viewport.
The signal was real.
The silence stretched. Her crew waited.
Volkov grinned slowly, wolfish and dangerous.
"Bring us about. Prepare a recovery team."
Curiosity had won.