40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 27 27. The Long Night (End)

fire.

raging fire.

Coming from the other side of the curtain, carrying boundless fury. It illuminates the darkness, but brings deeper terror.

Khalil fell to his knees, clutching his own throat and trying not to breathe. The increasingly strong smell of blood was frantically challenging his sanity. Veins popped out on his neck, and boundless resentment began to roll in his heart.

No, that's not my anger. he thinks.

I can still persist, I must persist.

He thought so, and the voice continued.

Wearing a blade and armor, tear into pieces the ugly faces of these self-righteous people.

Hang them, chop off their heads, turn their pathetic flesh, clad in soft gauze, into dry bones.

Make them pay.

You want that, don't you? You want the world to burn, you want everything to be consumed by fire. I can hear your thoughts, come out, stop hiding

I will give you everything.

And I want nothing.

Khalil shuddered and closed his eyes.

He didn't know who or what the voice was. But he didn't care either - the voice lingered in the darkness, trying to get him to 'come out'.

In these three words, enough information was revealed.

The situation is the same as before.

As long as he kept silent, they couldn't see him. In those floating years, this was how he peeked at the shadow behind the curtain.

Now, he just needs a little time.

Yes, a little time

He always had time for himself when alone.

Khalil closed his eyes and let his thoughts sink into the gloomy rainy night.

——

Gloomy rainy night, empty ruins.

There was silence all around, and countless shadows stood silently in the darkness, densely packed and terrifying.

"Avenge us?" A child who had lost his skin asked standing on the edge of the ruins.

"I will." The ghost pursed his lips and replied.

"Avenge us." A shaky worker who was crushed under the rubble said, coughing blood.

"I will." The ghost knelt down and nodded with him, then straightened up and walked over.

"You don't have to do this."

Said a woman in shabby clothes who was hanging on a telephone pole by the roadside and drifting in the wind. "You do not belong to Nostramo."

"But I saw everything."

The ghost stopped and told her. "I can't stand it."

"You don't belong here."

The woman repeated, her pale face was covered in bruises, her eyeballs were swollen, and her appearance was horrifying. She was hanged because she resisted a robbery by a gang member.

"You are a ghost, there is no need for you to suffer for someone you don't know."

"Maybe." The ghost nodded and continued to move forward.

"You don't have to do this." The woman's voice sounded from behind the ghost, and she repeated again.

In the rainy night, there were countless dead people like her staring at this scene, without exception.

"No, there is," the ghost said firmly.

"But what about the child?" the woman asked. "What is he going to do?"

".He will find his own way."

"You gave him the light."

A man's head whispered in the middle of the ruined road. "And now you have to take away this light with your own hands. Even if you light a fire, can this fire really cleanse the darkness of Nostramo?"

"I gave him a false light" the ghost responded in the same low voice. "That's not noble."

He looked at the head, whose eye sockets were empty.

The head belonged to a leader of a failed workers' uprising and was subsequently executed by the nobles.

"False light?" the skull asked.

"Yes."

said the ghost. "If he was of no help to my plans, I would not have brought him back from the mines. If he had no power, I would not have taught him how to kill, how to look at evil fairly. I was simply using him. ”

"Lie. When he was in the mine, he was just a beast that was frightened by the light source. How could he help your plan?"

The head retorted coldly, the empty eye sockets filled with darkness. "Furthermore, even if what you say is true, in a world like Nostramo where there is no light at all, is false light worse than real light?"

The ghost didn't answer anymore, he just remained silent. After a moment, he said, "I'm not here to argue with you."

"I know that you have always been very purposeful. You will not do unnecessary things - you want to ignite yourself, don't you?" the head asked calmly.

"Yes."

"Then you will die."

"Yes."

"We are just memories, ghosts. We have no name, no past, no life, we have nothing but pain, we are nothingness."

The head stared at him and said softly: "But you are different. You still have hope. You have been given an opportunity, and you should make good use of it."

"No more." The ghost shook his head. "I made a mistake and my caution deserted me. That allowed one of them to find me."

"."

The head fell silent, then sighed.

"You are such a stupid person, ghost. I don't understand why you want to step into this cruel world yourself. You have been wandering for a long time. You have seen the horror of human beings. Why do you insist on changing everything with your own hands?"

"They are not human," the ghost replied. "Is this reason enough?"

"not enough."

"How can I convince you?"

"You can't convince me," said the head. "You don't need to convince me. You don't need our permission to use power."

"I'm dead long ago, I'm just a painful memory. I can talk to you because of your arrival. If you leave, we all stop thinking. You are talking to an echo, ghost. You can't convince a dead person people."

"But I need your help," the ghost whispered. "I need...a flint and steel."

"You don't need to," the head said calmly. "The dead can't help you. See the truth, ghost."

".What truth?"

"The truth of your power," the skull said.

"We never gave you any power. It belongs to you. It is not the so-called 'souls of the victims' as you imagined, or the crystallization of our pain. No, it is not. It is something else."

A cold blue light slowly lit up in the empty eye sockets of the head. The rain was still falling, and millions of blue lights also lit up in the surrounding gloomy ruins.

The ghost lowered his head.

"That's it." After a long time, he said. "So that's it."

——

Khalil opened his eyes.

The smell of blood is still strong, escaping in the hall. The Baroness's body was already cold, and her body was now in a mess, so terrifying that it was almost impossible to look directly at it. There is still a cold blue light in the dark eyes.

The sound continued.

Khalil could vaguely see its shape, which was huge and filled with deep anger. There is no doubt that this is not something that should happen in a normal world.

In silence, Khalil slowly raised his right hand.

——Countdown.

For no apparent reason, he recalled this description he had personally spoken to the ghost.

He once said that he is a time bomb with an invisible countdown. Now it seems that this statement is half correct and half wrong. The countdown was actually always visible, and the detonation button was even in his own hand.

How ridiculous. Khalil thought. Because of your stupidity, an innocent child will bear your mistakes in his short life, and may even bear some unnecessary guilt.

And, how will he live after this? Will he be aware of the problem with his body?

And what will happen to Nostramo in the future?

Can the sun come out from behind the clouds? Will the contamination be removed? Will the wild beasts outside the city be driven away? Corruption, gangs, will life be better for workers?

He has no answer. His thoughts were now terribly complicated. A term that had not been mentioned for a long time emerged from his heart at this moment.

Two words, two syllables, blue. It's not perfect, but it's much better than Nostramo.

A thousand times better.

Khalil closed his eyes, then opened them again.

In the next moment, a cold light suddenly lit up in his eyes. They had never been so intense, shining like blue suns across the room.

Terrible pain followed, and Khalil could feel that the organs in his body were shattering - that kind of power reluctantly crushed everything in this body under the will of the owner.

The liver, lungs, and heart then go all the way up, and the blue radiance washes through the body like a flame, destroying everything and burning everything. Eventually, they reach the brain within a thousandth of a second.

"Goodbye," Khalil said into the darkness.

At this moment, he felt no pain, just worry.

No!

The voice in the darkness let out a furious cry, and scarlet flames suddenly erupted at this moment, trying to wrap him up directly, but were restricted by the curtain and could not make any progress.

It could only watch helplessly as the sacrifice it chose became a corpse without any life left.

No! No! No!

Anger washed over the room, and a terrible howling sound came from beyond the curtain. A huge weight that had nothing to do with the real world suddenly fell, causing the solid room to shake. However, it dissipated in the next moment without any warning.

The darkness receded with it.

The candlelight flickered, and the room was peaceful.

There were footsteps outside the door. A shadow stumbled in, rushing towards the body the first moment it saw it.

He carefully lifted the body up, blinking rapidly, and the ends of his fingers were trembling. After a while, the ghost opened his mouth and let out a small, inaudible whimper from the depths of his throat.

"."

He wanted to speak, but he couldn't.

The body trembled, the teeth trembled, the muscles spasmed - and then, an emotion that almost completely destroyed the sanity surged in, breaking this uninformed heart.

"Ah, ah" he shouted softly, hugging the body and shaking his head

His face was expressionless, but his movements were so gentle. On the dirty face, rainwater fell downwards.

There is no rain in Nostramo tonight.

After a while, the ghost let go of the body. He put him on the ground and turned around, his shoulders and neck shaking. He didn't speak, but kept making a strange and broken tone.

Calm down, Ghost—that's what he said.

Ghost said to himself, imitating Khalil's voice.

However, this doesn't work. There is great sadness rolling in.

He stood in ragged clothes in the splendid room, looking broken and lonely - and at the next moment, a voice came from the other side of the curtain. Through the ghost's sad emotions, it touched his heart.

+Hold his hand. +

said the voice.

What? who?

+ You'll soon know who I am, but, for now, Conrad Coates holds his hand. +

Who are you? Who is Conrad Coates?

+Do you want to save him? +

The voice did not answer directly, but instead mentioned another matter. He called the ghost by an unfamiliar name, but for some reason, his toneless voice felt familiar to the ghost.

An eerie familiarity.

I think.

+Then hold his hand. +

After a moment of silence, Ghost clenched his teeth and did as he was told. He stepped forward tremblingly and took the corpse's right hand.

+Very good, don't move now. +

The voice rushed from the other side of the curtain with a pity that was almost like a sigh. In a daze, the ghost seemed to see a golden light.

In the next moment, he leaned back as if struck by lightning, and a dazzling light lit up in his dark eyes.