++ INQUISITORIAL DOSSIER — Segmentum Tempestus Archives ++
Date: 1XX.007.M41
Clearance Level: Veritas Ultima
Subject: Recovered Carcharodon Astra
Compiled by: Inquisitor Heinrix Van Calox
It began with a whisper—an errant signal caught by the augur arrays as we passed through the outer reach of a debris-choked stellar graveyard. Nothing should have survived there. Not after what the Mechanicus records described: a warp surge, multiple gravitic implosions, and enough radiation to wither a Krieg-born Ogryn. And yet, the machine-spirit of the auspex insisted. A signal. Organic. Coded. Ancient.
Lord-Captain Javius von Valancius, ever the opportunist in embroidered finery, ordered a salvage operation. I advised caution. He smiled—his usual reaction when I remind him the warp does not trade in favors without a price. He dispatched a recovery team. What they brought back still chills me.
A stasis pod. Standard Astartes design, but heavily customized. Markings eroded. Hull pitted and warped by centuries adrift. Inside… him.
The pod opened under quarantine protocols. What emerged was no mere Angel of Death. He was colossal. Easily a head taller than any Adeptus Astartes I have seen—his pale flesh taut over coiled muscle, scarred like some myth-wrought beast. His body was marked not by ceremonial honor, but raw survival. The kind of wounds you only walk away from if you're too stubborn to die.
Nude, of course. The stasis field preserves flesh, not modesty.
His armor lay folded near the pod in ruins—fractured ceramite and torn adamantium. What remained bore faded iconography: the maws. The Carcharodons. That alone was cause for prayer. Sharks of the void. Nomads. Executioners without borders. The kind of Astartes who drift in from the cold, kill everything, then vanish.
I examined the remains more closely. Pre-Heresy pattern greaves. An older Mk. V fusion in the breastplate—patched with what I swear was plating from a Traitor's helm. But what froze my blood was the campaign markings. Badab. He was there. One of the ghosts from that blood-soaked chapter of Astartes history. Meaning, he might be centuries-old.
We don’t know his name. No heraldry. No identifiers save for ritual scar patterns—old Carcharodon code, partially readable. They spoke only of silence, death, and oceanic hunger.
Sister Argenta was present during the examination. She had the misfortune (or privilege?) of catching a glimpse of our slumbering relic in all his Emperor-given proportions. The poor girl turned redder than a Calixian beetroot and excused herself with a stammer. I may have teased her for the rest of the day, noting that not all relics of the Long War are entirely ceremonial.
The Rogue Trader has decided we will awaken him.
I objected, of course. Violently. Not out of fear—though I confess I feel it—but out of logic. We do not wake ancient killing machines without preparing for the consequences. This one is a relic from a time of betrayal and bloodletting. He belongs to the deep—best left there.
But Javius insists. He claims the Emperor brought this “gift” to us for a purpose. He smiles too much lately. The kind of smile you wear when you’ve rolled the dice and you think you’ve won before they’ve landed.
The medicae have begun stabilizing his pod for revival.
I have seen many things. Daemons. Heretics. Xenos. But I do not know if we are saving this creature from the void… …or unleashing something it was meant to hold.
—Inquisitor Heinrix Van Calox
++ PERSONAL LOG - Idira Tlass ++
Encryption Level: None — like I care
Timestamp: Nightcycle 487.3.
Location: Medicae Vault, Deck 17, Guardian on the Brink
Couldn’t sleep. Not with him here.
You ever felt something shift when a new soul enters the ship? Like when the Gellar fields stutter just a beat too long, and the warp presses in like a lover with teeth? That’s what it felt like when they dragged that shark-man outta his coffin.
Everyone whisperin’. Paladin boy all stiff 'round the neck, Sister Argenta prayin’ more than usual (and jumpier than a ratling at a feast), and Heinrix? Oh, he tryna play cool, but even that crusty Inquisitor been keeping his rosette closer than usual. Me? I needed to know.
So I went to see him.
I wait 'til ship quiet—when the deck plates hum like breathin’, and the servitors got that sleepy look in their dead eyes. Found him where they stashed him: cold slab, medicae vault, two servo-skulls and a pict-recorder offline ‘for calibration’. Hah.
Even in sleep, he massive. Pale like void-ice, all scars and muscle like coiled cabling. Armor’s junk, scattered and melted like he’d been kissed by a melta and smiled back. But that body? Emperor’s mercy. Ain’t seen an Astartes like him, and I seen a few. He ain’t built like the others—he built like wrath.
I touch his arm. Just a finger, right? Tiny spark in the warp. Echoes. Screams. Steel on bone. All blurred. Only one thing clear—death. Nothin’ but death behind his eyes.
Wasn’t enough.
So I did somethin’ dumb.
Dropped my robes. Yeah, I ain’t shy—never been. Skin on skin might open a clearer path, I thought. Maybe more of me pressed against more of him might show me more of who he is. And yeah, maybe I liked the idea a little more than I should’ve. But that’s my business.
Laid right on top of him. My skin on his. Heatless, but electric. Like pressin’ into a storm.
His scars are beautiful, in that brutal, savage kind of way. Ritual, almost. I know tribes who write prayers in blood just the same. Something about it… it stirred me. The contrast of my dark against his dead-white skin? Striking. I ran my fingers along the line of his jaw. Like carvin’ your name in marble.
I… got excited. You can judge if you want. Call it madness. Call it disrespect. But I felt somethin’ primal. The warp stirs through sensation—through truth. And I ain’t the kind to flinch from either. So yes—I took pleasure in it. Rubbed myself on him. Moaned and climaxed. And I ain’t sorry.
But more important?
I saw.
A storm. Planets burnin’. Void warfare, savage, up close, personal—him, like a monster outta myth, rippin’ through traitors and loyalists alike. Badab. I saw the Badab War. The color schemes, the sigils, the betrayal. He lived it. Fought in it. Maybe ended it for some poor bastards. And a name echoed in the warp like thunder: Kraal.
I wrapped myself back up after. Still buzzin’. Still feelin’ like I’d kissed a sun. It was like a river between mg legs.
Reported what I saw to the Rogue Trader, who said the shark-man should awake soon from his slumber. Vitals look good, he said.
Things are about to get interesting.
++ PRIVATE DEVOTIONAL LOG — Sister Argenta of the Adepta Sororitas ++
Timestamp: 488.1 — Shipboard Nightcycle
Chapel Sanctum, Deck 12 — Guardian on the Brink
I return from the medicae vaults with heart alight and limbs trembling—not from fear, nor illness, but something holier. Something fuller.
I stood beside the stasis-sarcophagus, as I have for the past three nights, praying with all the fire and discipline I possess. I offered litanies, blessings, psalms of the Cleansing Flame and the Triumph of Saint Arabella. My words echoed in the cold chamber like incense over a reliquary.
They told me his name now. Jurax Kraal. A Carcharodon. A relic from the Badab War, drifted across the stars like a fragment of vengeance itself. He lies there like a myth, wrapped in old wounds and silence.
But today… today, he stirred.
His hand clenched. Muscles along his jaw flexed and quivered. His head turned ever so slightly. His breathing, which had been shallow and faint, quickened to something more… present.
I felt it, deep in my marrow—the Emperor was listening. My voice, my faith, my soul—all heard. All answered.
I wept.
It was as if a holy fire ignited in me, sudden and consuming. I know the feeling well. That trembling ecstasy when devotion becomes more than discipline—when it becomes rapture. Few speak of it outside the most private of confessionals, but it exists. When one offers themselves fully, body and soul, to the Emperor’s will, sometimes He touches back.
Even now, hours later, I can feel it. My fingers tremble as I write.
Afterward, I returned to my cell in silence, still cloaked in the ghost of that fire. I performed my cleansing rites in the shower, letting the water run over the body the Emperor gave me—a body trained for war, hardened by penance and duty, yet not devoid of grace. The robes of the Sisterhood hide much, by design. But beneath them is a vessel—strong, scarred, and undeniably woman.
I did not expect the memory of him—Kraal—to surface there. Of the stilled strength in his limbs, the pale webwork of old scars across his chest, the terrible beauty of his form. I remembered my first accidental glimpse of his body and how the heat had risen in my cheeks like flame. Shame, I thought then. But now? I wonder.
Is it shame… or is it awe?
They are not so different, those feelings. Zeal and yearning. In both, the heart burns.
I say this not in confession, but in clarity: I am still the Emperor’s. Fully, fiercely. I know what I felt in the medicae vault was real. His awakening is a sign. He was sent to us. A blade reforged. A judgement given flesh. And I… I will not question the form in which the Emperor chooses to reveal His gifts.
I end this entry kneeling before my shrine, breath steadying, pulse still high. My fingers stray across the aquila pendant at my neck, then lower. Not in sin, but in understanding.
Because sometimes… worship is not soft or still.
Sometimes it is fire, tearing through the soul.
And I am not afraid to burn.