Warhammer: God of Order. Misericordia.

The weight of a heavy blanket pressed me into the lavender-scented bed. The faint creak of floorboards — which should have been replaced with linoleum long ago — and the distant chime of familiar voices. Everything should have been just as always: I’d toss off the covers, creak across the floor, and, still half-asleep and worn out from last night’s shift, go out to greet my girls… and my hopeless son.

Yes. That’s how it all should have gone.

But when I opened my eyes — there was no home. No family. Only erratic flashes of light flickering here and there, my sole companions as I plunged downward — hurtling straight into an endless abyss. A wind that had no place in the vacuum of space seized my limbs, wrenching them upward with impossible force.

My mind was blank — I couldn’t grasp a single echo of the thoughts that, mere moments ago, had seemed so vital. Now they were dust. I shivered — a tremor so fine, it felt like my muscles were peeling from my bones. Instinctively, not even fully understanding what I was doing, I tried to scratch at the crawling itch, lowering my right hand — but one careless twitch, one slight shift to the left, and the precarious balance of this place was broken.

There was a moment — just one — to realize the mistake, before I was spinning, whirling like a child’s top, and my body began to hum a dirge of stretching pain from heel to temple. From the void emerged something formless, boundless — an unspeakable mass that began to take shape despite my ever-accelerating descent.

I wanted — desperately — to believe it was a dream. That in just a second it would stop, and I’d be back to grumbling about how my wife’s perfume burned my nose, or how Alyosha’s clay masterpiece still hadn’t been scrubbed off the wallpaper...

But reality was deaf to my pleas.

The neurons meant to deliver this simple, horrifying truth hadn’t even fired — yet my lips parted, and a scream burst from my lungs. The sound rippled into the dark like black silk, sinking into the void and becoming the beginning... of unmaking.

The corners of my mouth began to split, tearing jaggedly as they revealed layers of fat, muscle, and blood vessels — bursting one by one, peeling back to expose my teeth and the hollow of my mouth. The line reached my cheekbones. My jaw cracked — an unbearable crunch, a guttural tearing of sinew — and dropped downward, slamming against my throat.

Primal terror pierced me. My consciousness thrashed inside my skull, howling its pleas for salvation — and yet, even as I screamed, I couldn’t stop noticing how I was slowly ceasing to exist: my joints bent backward, skin rupturing into grotesque hematomas, fingers drifting away into the void, skin stretching thin until veins rose like beads of stagnant blood.

The fall was slowing. My eyes, adjusting through the torment, began to catch glimpses of monstrous, cyclopean vortices of color — spinning in and out of nothingness — but I couldn’t focus. The agony of unraveling drowned everything, until at last even the nerves themselves were gone.

There was nothing in my mind — only the fading images of what I assumed was once my reality. They offered a hollow comfort, one that dried out my eyes and made capillaries burst into burning halos. They’re there, I told myself. They exist. And I... — My lungs, jolted by some unseen force, slammed into the ribs and tore. The sacs burst like overripe fruit, spilling air into the Abyss that devoured them.

Soon, I would no longer be.

My eyes burst — and yet I did not fall into darkness. On the contrary, the world ignited with color once more. A sea — no, an ocean — where sky and water had fused into one; where up and down had lost all meaning; where the material no longer existed as substance, but as paradox: everything and nothing, all at once.

But when this phantasmagoric truth unveiled itself before me — I felt nothing.

Only emptiness.

A desperate serenity had wrapped itself around my very soul.

I don’t know how much time passed — an hour, or a fleeting minute — before my mind began to thin. Serenity gave way to despair, and despair itself began to crumble into ashes, along with what was left of my consciousness. For man was not meant to face such void — he always longs to be something.

Cycling through endless fragments of thought, I clung to them like to tiny islands of identity, anything that could remind me that I existed. Here, in this place where everything had come undone, life felt like nothing more than a fleeting dream — a momentary glimpse by some great Leviathan that both was and was not, suspended between extremes of being.

Emotions flickered and flared into firestorms, warping everything they touched every second. I wanted to scream, a high and desperate note — but there was no mouth. Nothing. Yet suddenly — lips parted.

And only after a beat — I realized I was screaming: loudly, clearly, truly. The vortices around me trembled — space itself burned and flowed, and what once seemed incomprehensibly massive contracted like rubber, letting out a dry, ripping snap.

Then — flash.

The bulb above me flared to life. Familiar corners of the ceiling drowned in shadow. A single ray of sunlight spilled through a gap in the blue curtains. My lungs were burning. My skin itched beneath a sweat-soaked T-shirt.

Wait... I can feel that.

I’m alive?

Throwing off the blanket with a sharp kick, I could barely control the flailing of my hands over my body. My eyes, wide and frantic, darted around the apartment: there was Aly’s clay bear on the wallpaper, a long-empty bottle of whiskey staring at me from the top of the wardrobe, and — yes — a bald patch of wall near the radiator where I’d never gotten around to fixing the peeling wallpaper, even though it’d been three years...

God...

Tears burst from my eyes. My trembling hands fell limp. I covered my face with a palm and caught the scent of burnt cigarettes. I didn’t want the kids to see their father crying.

God, it was just a dream. Just a dream.

My teeth dug into my lip. Blood bloomed in my mouth with that familiar metallic sting. I wanted to scream — but I couldn’t. I just... couldn’t.

God, just a nightmare. A simple nightmare.

“Nightmare,” I finally whispered aloud — the word cracking through the stillness like thunder.

Everything went silent.

Suddenly, I felt a touch on my shoulder.

I flinched — nearly knocking the hand away — and froze, too afraid to breathe.

“Alex, stop tossing and turning. If something’s wrong — just say it instead of sulking, for God’s sake. You’re being impossible,” came a voice from my left — stern, a little annoyed, yet filled with that quiet, unmistakable tenderness only she could muster.

Swallowing hard, I cautiously pulled my hand away from my face. My heart pounded — ready to burst from the tide of emotion swelling inside me.

Right now — right now — I would see her again. And I’d finally shove this damned nightmare away. I’d throw it out the window like that whiskey bottle I chugged after the fight with my wife. Then I’d fix the wallpaper, frame Aly’s clay bear so I could embarrass him with it in front of his girlfriend ten years from now, and I’d apologize to Kate for that idiot I threw out of the house, and then...

And then everything froze.

Because I had frozen — staring into the wide emerald eyes of Lena. Her warm, familiar face — filled with memories and comfort — was distorted, twisted, like a warped reflection in a broken mirror. And yet... her eyes remained unchanged. Pure. Sparkling with mischief. And touched by that quiet sorrow only years can bring.

Pain — sharp and accusing — seared through my chest.

Choking down a sob, I forced my hand to rise. In a ragged motion, I touched her cheek — and there it was: the warmth. That unmistakable, long-lost warmth…

But there were no tears. Because my eyes, the sweat, the warmth — it was all a cruel illusion.

“A-a-a-a-a-a!!!”

I howled on a single, ragged note — desperate to spill out all the pain this vision had carved into me. The world around me quivered. The image blurred and, in a flash like shattering glass, cracked and began to fall apart — piece by glittering piece.

Reality trembled with my scream — even as the illusionary throat vanished, even as my body turned to transparent ice, nothing more than a flattened reflection. I broke through the wall of the apartment — flung forward by a gust from one of the ever-churning vortices.

The apartment dissolved — more violently than ever — warped beyond recognition. Everything crumbled into a funhouse of memory and reflection, until at last, it shattered completely. With a brutal jolt, I was falling again.

Down. Always down.

I don’t know how many more illusions I was forced to endure. The very concept of time lashed out — and the part of my mind responsible for understanding it cracked under the weight of paradox. At that moment, I realized something terrifying:

That Lena… hadn’t been the first.

I screamed — tearing bloody lines across my lips. I clawed at my throat, trying to force air into my lungs. I begged God for forgiveness — grinding my knees against jagged stones in prayer...

But I had no lips. No throat. No knees.

Only a mind — desperate to cling to the flickering images of memory, thought, and fantasy. To be. Or at least to feel, through pain.

Weaving my own suffering into an endless thread, I saw — again and again — the truth behind all things. No matter how much I yearned to return home, I was sinking deeper into this phantasmagoria, slowly losing what remained of my sanity. And just when it seemed like I’d vanish entirely—

The landscape changed.

Bright — yet strangely uniform — the scenery began to dull. The color palette dimmed. These changes held me so tightly in awe, I didn’t immediately notice the nauseatingly sweet stench of rot.

Out of nowhere — like a chunk of rainbow cake torn from nothingness — a continent emerged. Spiraling and folding in on itself like torn fabric, it revealed scenes more grotesque than my mind could accept: gigantic, multi-eyed toads… branch-like trees with bone-limbs and fleshy yellow lips, singing hymns so beautiful they made the skin crawl. From their sticky crowns fell blobs of something vile — instantly devoured by dancing humans in a mad ring of ecstasy, spreading their inspiring insanity in dozens of concentric circles around the tree.

Thousands of eyes, fogged by cataracts, stared at me as I fell — drifting along rivers of green, decomposed flesh.

Could my mind really have created this?

The ground below — as illusory as everything else — tore apart, and a wave of painful euphoria surged through me. The earth embraced me with thousands of maggots, joyfully bouncing across my skin.

For only a few seconds, my consciousness writhed in disgust — before I realized:

God... I feel good.

Could this be Heaven? Had I somehow reached Paradise?

But then — I was cast aside like a filthy insect. The very land recoiled. And I was once again flung into the swirling chaos, seized by the sleeve of another vortex.

Hurt. Again.

Another vision of home ripped from me — denied.

Even this foul, strangely blissful place had judged me unworthy.

Even through the fading euphoria, I wanted to end it. To stop.

To land somewhere — anywhere.

Even if it meant sinking into rotting flesh.

But the shining, multicolored vortex hurled me further — into new lands, where red winds howled, and mountains of skulls formed thrones. Endless slaughter raged before their gates — all against all.

Bodies turned to bone and blood, flowing in endless streams into boiling rivers — from which rose new warriors. Each screamed themselves hoarse and charged back into the carnage — to die, or to ascend.

Through the crimson haze — they saw me.

But this time, they saw something in me — far too early.

And so — they turned away. Hissing. Writhing in pain.

The blood-soaked ground would not touch me.

The scarlet wind, filled with raw hatred and disgust, blasted me aside — into the core of another vortex, where invisible bonds seized my illusory limbs.

Nothing surprised me anymore. I couldn’t call it a dream — not truly. But to accept this as reality would mean surrendering the last fragment of sanity.

The heart of the vortex consumed me — and then, like a rag doll turned inside out, spat me back into the void. I was falling again. Fast. Spinning.

But this time, I wasn’t alone.

All around me, countless dim shadows flitted through the chaos. Some ran madly along the swirling arms of the vortices — their minds cracking with every step. Others marched slowly — some alone, others in endless columns — following sunbeams that seemed to form solid paths beneath their feet, conjured from nothing. A third group suffered a different fate entirely — devoured by monstrous shadows, manifestations of vice and sin. Demons.

It was all so strange. So horrifying. So impossible to comprehend.

I hoped — pleaded — that the fall would finally end. That I would reach bottom.

But no sooner had that hope sparked than the colors around me shifted again — red into violet — and out of the shadows emerged another land.

Not a continent this time. An archipelago.

Islands, bound together by massive chains.

And on those chains — twitching in pain and ecstasy — hung thousands of people, gazing at one another with hunger, desperate to satisfy their every base urge.

Those who managed to stand on the earth — a translucent, pulsing thing, as if drained of substance — danced a grotesque waltz. They flayed their own skin with whips, rolled across fields of razor-sharp needles, and in waves of uncontrollable lust — destroyed one another in orgiastic frenzies. All around them spread a sugary fog — heavy with moans and screams.

Then — eyes again.

But these were different.

Fogged by lust.

Not hate. Not rage. Just… disgust.

A single moment passed — and the violet wind grabbed me, carrying with it a crawling itch and a spark of yearning — which dissolved instantly, like sugar in boiling water, as a sharp, punishing blow hurled me away once more.

I wasn’t even allowed to feel.

Why?

Why do all these strange, impossible beings hate me so much? What have I done?

I wanted — longed — to find myself at Heaven’s Gate.

But there were no gates. Only these damned lands, rising one after the other — and each rejecting me.

Why am I unworthy to dance in the kingdom of rot and joy?

Why does the endless slaughter cast me aside in contempt?

Why does the sweetness of lust look upon me with lazy revulsion?

What have I done to deserve this suffering?

What sin did I commit against the Creator to be cast straight into HELL?! Why—

“Do not scream, spawn of Khaine and Isha!”

The voice struck my mind like iron through glass — filled with power and rage. The sound rang through the hollows of my nonexistent skull, erupting into a sickening, all-consuming chime. Thousands of eyes, shifting every second, locked onto me. Hands — not hands — elongated fingers with lips on their tips — snapped around me. The mouths spoke in a thousand tongues.

Then — silence.

The ringing faded.

And I looked upon It.

A towering humanoid form, its body covered in hundreds of symbols — shifting constantly like a living tapestry. Tens of thousands of chains dangled from its horns, each etched with runes, each connected to a massive spinning spindle. The spindle ground and snapped, weaving those chains into a chaotic, incomprehensible pattern.

The creature sneered — irritated — but never stopped weaving. Its second set of arms kept the rhythm.

“Finally shut up, freak,” it said — calm, and utterly filled with disgust.

The words sank into me like ice. My thoughts froze, encased in amber.

“Hah... how amusing. Your thoughts and memories — all laid bare like an open book. Well then, Alexander...”

“Do you wish to ask something?”

The churning stopped.

Eyes stilled.

The mouths fell silent.

And the creature let out a booming, mocking laugh.