Incident at Facility IX

Prologue

Imperial World: Abora – Segmentum Pacificus – 400 years after the Hegemon

The darkness hummed with the constant murmur of ancient machines, echoing solemnly from the depths, like the chanting of an old religion.

The stagnant air was lit dimly by tiny, blinking lights on dust-filmed control panels, and by the sickly green glow emanating from static screens. The artefact that was confined in this hollow abyss was as monstrously tall as the chasm was deep. Dark and monolithic, the intricate, sculpted form of the artefact plunged down into pitch black depths. The circular walls around the artefact were lined with metallic walkways with thin railings. The basic, plain, practical architecture of the dizzying shaft was in direct contrast to the ancient, florid and grotesque detail of the artefact, which stood in the artificial night like a subterranean basilica or a colossal sarcophagi.

Around it, the darkness was alive. Alive with an invisible force, something like electricity or a silently howling wind, but comparable to neither. Alive with misunderstood, fleeting thoughts, whispers, promises, words that never existed. Alive with a feeling of absolute solitude, of dangling in a void, but with an awareness that spans impossible distances, with the shudder and the needling sensation that something is watching with invisible eyes and an unknowable intellect.

To linger in this abyssal shaft was to invite madness. For nearly four-hundred years it had been securely and jealously sealed, warded, and barred, only the most trusted allowed within for short periods at a time.

Now, someone was coming. Someone who had seen horrors from across the galaxy.

Someone who held the key.

The darkness stirred. The darkness expected. Invisible energies grew. Silent winds howled in the void.