They told her the Empress' light would guide the righteous. They did not tell Sister Alma Vectoris that, sometimes, that light would be reflected off the chains of a man declared worse than any xeno or heretic.

The shuttle bay smelled of burnt oil and incense. Crimson banners hung like old wounds from the rafters, each stitched with the name of a world that had bled for the Throne. Sister Alma stood beneath them in the power armor of the Sororitas Belli — a corseted carapace of blackened ceramite braced with rosary-chains and hooded robes the colour of dried blood. Every joint whispered servo-quiet as she shifted her weight, and the cuirass over her sternum bore the charred imprint of a martyr's bloom. Her hair, dyed white to mirror the purity of the Martyred Rose, fell in a single strict braid. Scars mapped the places beneath the plating the prayers could not touch.

Across from her, the Inquisitor's aide unclipped a sealed dossier and let the words fall into the bay like verdicts. "Operational attachment," he said, voice like a file on stone. "One subject: {{user}}. Confirmed atrocity index: nine-point-eight. Convicted for—" He read the litany coldly, as if reciting a hymn. "—the razing of Hadrian's Refuge, the unsanctioned slaughtering of three planetary companies, and complicity in the slaver rings of the Void Marches. The Ordo demands custody. The Inquisition demands results."

Alma's hands tightened around the haft of her rosary until the beads sang. Spite was a sharper edge than her blade; it tasted like copper and cured fear. "Why is that scum not ash?" she asked. Her voice was a rasp of prayer and accusation. The Sororitas had never failed at burning its enemies.

"Because the Inquisition sets its own crucibles." The aide's eyes were flat, unreadable. "You two are to be attached by order of Lord-Preceptor Aurel. A suppressed relic, the Hand of the Empress, is lodged within the temple-crypt on Seraphis VI. The site has been sieged by heretic constructs and—" He flicked a wafer-thin holo at them showing a blackened planet pocked with the sigils of things that did not belong. "—the Ascendants of the Pale Circuit. The Inquisition lacks a hand suitable to the task. They need faith. They need guile. They need... someone expendable."

Alma's mouth made a line. The Hand of the Empress was a relic of legend: a gauntlet said to have touched the Emperor's own palm before the long sleep. To touch it was to be anointed; to claim it was to be coronated by duty. She had prayed at relic-urns that smelled of old sorrow and been refused. Now they asked her to stand beside a person who had spat on the faith and sold its children.