Angar settled onto his knees, the blighted land eerily silent under the bruised sky.

  His Resilience ebbed far too low, and he needed to pray and meditate, but impatience won out. He had waited long enough.

  He took out Fella’s letter, sniffed it once, then stowed it away.

  Now, among the ruins of this fallen world, he would assail the veil once more.

  Breath deepening, drawing in the tainted energy and thin, bitter air of this despoiled world, he plunged inward, past the clamor of mortal concerns that clotted thoughts.

  Emotions he did not purge, but harnessed instead, forging them into a battering ram of will as his molten core ignited in fury.

  His form grew and grew, becoming its true self, as he visualized the hub-plane, that forsaken sanctum of portals, not as a distant echo but as a bastion to be stormed. Sweat beaded upon his brow, his jaw clenched until fresh blood trickled from split lips.

  Pain lanced through him, a sacrament to his unyielding resolve. He battered the veil, raging against its adamant membrane, his mental presence swelling like a titan in the throes of ascension.

  It took a great while, and great effort, but reality eventually bent to his will. The barrier groaned and sundered with a ragged slurp, hurling his essence through the breach into oblivion's maw.

  Clarity snapped back, vast and oppressive.

  Angar manifested as a flickering wisp of will adrift in the hub-plane's colossal desolation.

  This time, he didn't materialize amid the central arches of bone and rust, but in a peripheral alcove, where the star-flecked marble floor sloped into abyssal cracks, and portals yawned like the jaws of ancient horrors.

  The air, if such it could be called, hummed with primordial menace, the spectral cobwebs above speaking of long-decayed eras.

  He sensed the Mindscape portal, a distant throb like a heartbeat, somewhere beyond the labyrinth of thresholds.

  There was no time for hesitation. He surged forward, the ethereal essence of his form streaking through the dusty expanse, past gateways of ivory and flame that beckoned to the unknown and the forbidden.

  But dissolution ate away at him, his essence fraying like limestone in acid.

  Long before getting close to the Mindscape’s portal, he dissipated, unraveling into nothingness, yanked back to the temporal realm with savage force.

  He jolted awake, his body convulsing upon the ground, his muscles scourged by invisible torment.

  Garioch glanced over, concern etched on his features, but Angar ignored the look entirely, his thoughts turning back toward the veil.

  He would not yield.

  Settling once more, he delved inward with renewed ferocity, channeling the frustration into his assault. The veil parted quicker this time, a testament to his growing mastery.

  He emerged in yet another quadrant of the hub, surrounded by towering pillars of weathered obsidian, where runes pulsed with malevolent light and distant creaks echoed like the groans of damned souls.

  The Mindscape's portal seemed nearer from this spot, but his essence was diminished, like a sputtering flame now.

  He pressed on quickly, weaving through rifts oozing ethereal mist. But the dissolution struck swifter, merciless, unraveling him far short of the portal's grasp.

  Reality reclaimed him in a haze of pain, his vision spinning as he gasped for breath, his cybernetic eyes glitching with static.

  Undaunted, he gathered his tattered resolve for a third assault. Breath steadied, cores aligning in volatile harmony, he hammered at the veil anew, only for a firm hand to clamp upon his shoulder, shaking him from the precipice.

  The trance shattered, the hub's barrier fading like a receding nightmare, as Salvador's armored form stood above, his azure visor reflecting Angar's glare. “We need to move. The cleansing crew’s here. Your face is covered in blood, by the way.”

  Sure enough, above the steam rising from the sprawl of Hellspawn carcasses, a strange vessel hung suspended in the tainted air, its thrumming grav-engines stirring eddies of dust and ichor across the blighted plain.

  It was a hulking brute of a craft, broad and squat like the flattened carapace of some Hell-born horror, its flanks yawning open in segmented bays that exposed the grim machinery within.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Riveted plates of hardened alloy, scarred by ceaseless labors, formed its hull, painted in a drab utilitarian gray that seemed to absorb the feeble light of the bruised sky.

  Blue strobes pulsed rhythmically along its edges, casting eerie sapphire glimmers over the charnel field below. On the vessel's underbelly and emblazoned across select panels on its sides gleamed the caduceus, twin serpents coiling sinuously around a winged rod, the ancient emblem of mercy and neutrality etched in a white block.

  This indicated it was no warship, housing non-combatants, bound by the iron edicts of the Ilarix Accords, forged in blood-soaked councils millennia ago, decreeing such vessels inviolate, their symbols a ward against the predations of all but the most feral foes.

  Factions great and small, imperial and Heretical, honored this symbol, but certain spawn of Hell and other mindless cretins, such as uncontrolled Warforms, knew no restraint, and were exempt from the rules of civilized warfare.

  Workers clung to the open bays like grim warriors, their forms encased in bulky, reinforced hazard suits, faces obscured behind plastic shields and rebreather masks.

  Strapped to their backs were bulky flamer units, tanks sloshing with volatile fury, nozzles trained downward like the maws of chained beasts.

  For now, they held fast, unmoving as the craft's own armaments, clusters of underslung incinerators, belched gouts of purifying flame across the corpse-strewn ground.

  The air filled with the roar of ignition, the sizzle of corrupted flesh yielding to cleansing fire, and the terrible reek of charred filth that clung heavily in the thin air.

  Angar rose to his feet, taking out a cloth and wiping the blood from his face before seizing his maul in one fist and his helm with the other.

  He retreated to a broad clearing amid the ruins, a large stretch of blighted earth mercifully free of the Hellspawn's foul remains and foliage, where Simo and Garioch already sat in repose.

  Salvador followed suit, guiding his battlecycle into the space with a low growl of its engine, the machine's battered frame kicking up plumes of ash as it settled.

  There were many reasons to consign infernal detritus to the flames, such as plagues that could fester in the rotting viscera, or serve as raw material for greater entities to use, as had just happened.

  The cleansing crews knew this truth well, their labors a grim necessity, freeing warriors from the task.

  Simo's helm sat beside him, his face drawn and filled with exhaustion, etched with the weariness of one who had fought the darkness for decades, and whose duty had almost finally, blessedly come to its bitter end. Almost.

  Reflecting on his own frayed incursions into the hub-plane, how his ethereal form had manifested with such diminished vigor on the second attempt, Angar resolved to bide his time, allowing his Resilience to knit itself anew.

  He would treat this as a trial, something to approach as a methodic test.

  Prayer and meditation called to him still, but first, he turned inward to the cold glow of his System interface, scrutinizing the messages as he scrolled through them.

  He’d gained 51 Points in total, with 43 for the felled Osenas, the Wraith Prince, whose essence had screamed into oblivion under his own hands, so he expected more, and 8 for the hordes of bloodwraiths and pyromancers that had fallen before it.

  But as he delved into the experience tallies, a cold rage ignited in his chest, coiling like a serpent around his heart.

  Not a single level gained. He lingered at 94% toward 68.

  He had reaped thousands of the infernal horde, slain a named horror of the Underworld. Leveling in the third Tier was considered a Sisyphean grind, he knew, but this?

  He expanded the logs, and there it was, a 99% XP penalty imposed by Theosis, a censure etched in black and white. If he were awarded his full due, he’d be level 99 now.

  Such a thing was unprecedented, unheard of, a gauntlet flung in injustice that shattered his composure.

  Blasphemous thoughts filled his mind, but he drew a deep, steadying breath, then another, and another, until the rage subsided.

  He laid his hammer aside with deliberate care, sealed his helm over his sweat-slicked brow, and knelt upon the ashen ground, tracing the sign of the trey across his armored chest.

  With a neural flick, he muted his comms, ensuring his words remained a private communion. "Divine Theosis," he intoned calmly, "why this penalty upon my experience? What offense have I committed?"

  No response materialized in his vision.

  Angar grappled with the silence, searching for a reason for this.

  He was unburdened by any sin save one, the covetous ache for a wedded woman, a grave transgression for certain. With Stek assuming the chaplain's mantle aboard their vessel, Angar had avoided confessing this sin to a crewman, opting instead for self-imposed penance.

  But compared to the Heretics Theosis still protected and empowered, those foul apostates who wallowed in depravity, Angar’s sin was a trifling shadow, relatively nothing.

  He had dismissed Hidetada's claims of Theosis’ Divine missives as a lie, for the System didn't operate in such a way, and bend to such whims. It never bucked the Parousia Protocols. Never.

  Or perhaps the Neural Nexus was the culprit, and the reason for the XP penalty.

  Worry now gnawed at him for Spirit. He might have unwittingly thrust her into peril's grasp. He prayed for her return, if only to confirm her safety.

  But a deeper conviction stirred, as this fit a pattern of being targeted.

  Chances were, this was the unfiltered ire of Theosis itself, a personal disfavor that burned like promethium in his veins.

  He excised the rising bile, casting it aside like tainted offal. Such bitterness was the province of lesser men, those who bent under the hammer rather than becoming it.

  His mind turned to his gloried ancestor, Cardo, and how he'd view this slight.

  "I forgive you, Theosis," he prayed, "for meting out harsher judgment upon me than the vile Heretics you shelter and empower. Persist in your injustice. Heap your worst upon me. I welcome it all, and thank you for this crucible, this chance to further prove my superiority. I shall ignite the Glorious Path ablaze with righteousness, marching forth in the Lord’s true light."

  The hour Angar achieved level 99, whether tomorrow or on his last day here, mattered nothing.

  Four months of Holy slaughter remained on this world, and Sainthood demanded many requisites, including shadowing an inquisitor and then a governor of an A-class city for months, making haste irrelevant.

  He’d still ascend swifter than any precedent. If he survived.

  As Theosis offered no retort, Angar rose, pivoting to face his companions.