The sea clawed endlessly at the jagged rocks of the Ravaged Coast, its waters thick with oil and ash. Once, these shores had gleamed with the divine light of Azyr’s chosen, when the Stormhosts of Sigmar purged the heretic and the daemon alike. Now, only the warped echoes of that glory remained.
Former Lord-Veritant Arkan Voltrix rested his staff on the rockyoutcrop on which he stood, it’s blue-skull cystal pulsing with unnatural energy. Voltrix’s armour shimmered not with the pure lightning of Sigmar but with hues that shifted like an oil slick — violet one moment, turquoise the next. His eyes, once bright as stormlight, now burned with the kaleidoscopic fire of Tzeentch, the Architect of Fate.
Behind him marched the Changecast — once proud warriors of the Celestial Vindicators, now bearing twisted mutations and armour etched with symbols that writhed and rearranged themselves when unobserved. Their warhammers replaced with the spoils of battles past reflecting their new, more brutal nature. Their armour warped and alive with sorcerous energy. Each bore a fragment of the same curse — a shard of awareness that flickered between mortal faith and daemonic servitude.
Their mission was singular: to reclaim emberstone, the living ore that pulsed with Azyr’s lightning and Aqshy’s flame, scattered across the wrecked coastline. To the unknowing, it was merely a potent fuel for reforging or spellcraft. To Voltrix, it was the final ingredient in a ritual of resurrection.
For deep beneath the coastal ruins, in a vault sealed by fate and fire, slept the Lord of the Thousand Sons — a being both dead and yet to be, whose first whisper had twisted Voltrix’s soul. It had been in battle against the Arcanite Cults that the voice had reached him, promising a truth beyond the tyranny of Sigmar’s reforging. “You are more than his hammer,” it had said, “you are his undoing.” That had been when he found the first artefact, the staff that linked him and his sorcerous master with a bond stronger than those forged by Sigmar and one that was impossible to resist. “Gather my artefacts, the parts of my soul, and I shall live again through you.”
Now, centuries later — or perhaps only days, for time fractured around them — Voltrix led the Changecast to awaken their forgotten master.
As the warband descended into a chasm glowing with emberstone veins, a storm brewed overhead. But this was no heavenly tempest — it was a storm of lies and memories, of futures collapsing into themselves. The air shimmered with visions: Voltrix saw himself as he had been, kneeling before Sigmaron’s gates, his soul reforged for the first time. Then again, as he now was — the same pose, but before a vast crystal eye wreathed in azure flame.
He could no longer tell which was real.
“Gather it all,” Voltrix commanded, his voice layered with echoing tones, as if others spoke through him. “The Lord’s cocoon awaits. The emberstone must burn bright enough to blind even Sigmar’s gaze.”
One of his warriors, his helm marked with the symbols of chaos and change, hesitated. “And if he awakens wrong, my lord? If the Lord of the Thousand Sons consumes us as kindling?”
Voltrix smiled. His teeth gleamed like shards of starlight refracted through madness. “Then we will become his flame. What greater fate for those reborn in the image of change?”
The ground trembled. Emberstone cracked and bled molten light. From below the earth, a voice began to laugh — soft at first, then rolling like distant thunder.
It was neither man nor god.
It was the Lord of the Thousand Sons, stirring in the dark.
And above, lightning struck — not gold, but blue, violet, and pink — as the Ravaged Coast began to shift, rewriting its own history around the corrupted Stormcast who had damned it forever.