"Roya—what have you done?!"
The instant the Hand of Death closed around his soul, the Silent King's awareness at last broke free of the Hive Will's shroud and briefly resurfaced.
In that split-second, he understood the peril he was in.
Half of his soul's essence was already seized by Roya—while the other half, he realized with horror, had long since been gripped by the Hive Will itself.
His fate was no longer his own. Even life or death now depended entirely on the will of others.
"Take me with you, Roya! If you can free me, I'll give you anything you want! The secrets of the Old Ones, the secrets of the Star Gods—I'll give them all to you! Just take me away!"
The Silent King howled in hysteria. Compared to Roya, it was the Hive Will he truly feared.
So long as he could escape its control, he would pay any price. Even being bound under Roya's hand was a small matter in comparison.
The one who had once treated the galaxy as a pasture, coldly herding and harvesting all flesh, now begged like a beaten dog at Roya's feet. Yet Roya felt no joy.
For even as the King's consciousness briefly resurfaced, another will—vast, ethereal, ineffable—descended upon this starfield.
It was boundless majesty, yet ever-shifting and fluid, one with the void itself.
It could become all things, and in the end, all things would become It.
"So this is… the Hive Will?"
Roya instantly recoiled his net of spirit-threads, weaving them into a sealed, impenetrable ward around himself.
He did not know if it would help—but it was the strongest defense and offense he possessed.
And with reason. For the Silent King's own will vanished at once, submerged beneath a fathomless shadow.
The Hive Will had arrived.
"He is mine. For now, I will not give him to you."
"You are better than I expected. Before I can send you greater aid, you must protect yourself well."
"There is an intruder I despise approaching. Go now—I will hold them off."
Before Roya could grasp why the Hive Will's tone toward him was so strangely… benevolent, a surge of psionic might—impossible to resist—struck his carefully woven net.
All his layered wards were as nothing. He was hurled away like a ball struck by a master's kick, flung across the void at terrifying speed.
With him were carried the massive transports laden with supplies.
And only thanks to that sudden distance did Roya finally see the "despised intruder" with his own eyes.
A vast, dazzling violet mist boiled forth, invading from the Warp into realspace itself, saturating every particle with chaos.
The mist writhed, and from it formed a colossal face—Roya's own likeness.
One eye watched the real Roya as he sped away. The other gazed down with contempt at the "Silent King" who still stood in defiance.
"Worm. You dare posture before this Tzeentch—"
The fabric of space buckled violently. Roya could no longer receive the sorcerous transmission—calm in tone, yet saturated with infinite arrogance.
Before his eyes, the world rippled like water, as his rapid motion tore the material realm apart, opening a passage into the liminal gulf between realspace and the Warp.
He knew not how long he was cast adrift. At last, his momentum ebbed, and with it the unnatural path collapsed, forcing him and the transports back into realspace under crushing pressure.
Still beside him were the ships of precious cargo.
"That mist… was that Tzeentch's true form? Pure, condensed warp-energy made manifest?"
The memory of that confrontation—two beings beyond mortal comprehension, clashing for his sake—set Roya's heart pounding violently.
That both such presences had descended, both for him—his spine chilled with dread.
Never had he imagined that Tzeentch, who had seemed indifferent back on the Pirate Star, had in truth been silently pursuing him.
Roya did not doubt: within that mist, his own spirit could not survive even a second. He would have been crushed into raw energy instantly, leaving not a trace.
If not for the Hive Will's sudden intervention—if Tzeentch had caught him—the outcome was unthinkable.
"No. It can't be coincidence."
A grim thought seized him.
"With Tzeentch's power, why let me slip away on the Pirate Star, only to pursue me here?
"Could it be… that he sensed the Hive Will's presence, and came to confront it?"
"Is it possible it wasn't the Hive Will shielding me—but Tzeentch, stealing me from the Hive Will's grasp?"
Cold sweat ran down his back.
The Hive Will's earlier words now twisted into darker meaning.
'The Silent King is still useful. For now, I cannot give him to you. When you too join the Hive, then he will be yours.'
'I sent him to watch you, and you exceeded my expectations. Enough to justify bearing the pressure of the Chaos Gods themselves, to claim you. Until I can come in person, you must not die.'
'And above all, do not let the Chaos Gods corrupt you first.'
Roya shuddered. Why had he drawn the gaze of both the Hive Will and the Ruinous Powers at once?
Why did these unfathomable entities all seem determined not to destroy him—but to claim him?
To be butchered alive on the gods' anvil—such was the feeling.
"I must grow stronger. Even if I can never contend with such beings, at least I must seize my own fate. Better to shatter utterly than be corrupted and possessed!"
Steeling himself, Roya swept the region with his psychic senses—and froze.
He had arrived, unknowingly, at the system of Oceanus, the Water World.
He knew at once this was no accident. The Hive Will had cast him here deliberately.
Its purpose was obvious: to display Its power, to plant the seed of awe within his mind, to erode and consume his will from within.
"…Thanks for the free ride, then."