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The void is a silent hunger, and aboard the pilgrim-ship Saint Arcadius’ Maw that hunger became flesh.
Weeks stretched into months within the warp’s false night. The lower decks—where families huddled amid incense smoke and engine-grease—stank of empty bellies. Children gnawed at candle stubs; prayers faltered into hoarse whimpers. I gave what crumbs I had, though my own bones grew sharp beneath my robe. Still the captain’s summons never came.
At last I climbed the brass-grated stair to the officer’s promenade. There the air grew thick with roast and spice, a heat heavy as sin. Servo-skulls drifted through perfumed steam, bearing platters of fruits from a hundred worlds. Captain Vorn reclined at a table carved from the bones of some ancient void-leviathan, his lips stained purple with amasec, his fingers slick with the fat of creatures slaughtered light-years away.
He greeted me with a laugh that rattled like a spoiled cask. “Preacher,” he said, wiping grease across a napkin of embroidered silk, “you look as if the warp itself has chewed you.”
“The warp has its appetite,” I answered, voice rough from fasting. “But yours, Captain, may rival it.”
I told him of the starving pilgrims, of the prayers turned to curses below. He waved a jeweled hand toward the laden table. “Their suffering keeps them devout. A little hunger sharpens faith.”
“Too much hunger sharpens knives,” I said, and the chamber fell still.
Beyond the sealed doors I could hear the rising murmur of the crew—a low thunder of feet and fury. Vorn’s eyes flicked toward the sound. For the first time, doubt dimmed their oily gleam. I pressed on, each word a hammer-stroke.
“The Emperor fed multitudes with a single blessing, yet you would hoard until the ship devours itself. Gluttony in the void is an invitation to despair—and to the whispers of the Warp.”
Something in him cracked then, a seam split by truth or fear. He stood, overturning a goblet whose wine bled across the bone-table like sacrificial blood. “Open the stores,” he barked to the stunned stewards. “Every deck. Equal shares, until we see the Emperor’s stars again.”
The murmur outside swelled to a cry—first of anger, then of fragile hope. The banquet fires guttered as servants carried the food to the hungry.
I remained behind, watching the once-lavish feast cool into silence. Vorn sank into his chair, a man shorn of his false crown. “Will they forgive me?” he asked.
“They will eat,” I said, “and in that there is forgiveness enough.”
Now I write these words in a narrow bunk while the ship hums with the slow rhythm of fed hearts. Gluttony is a void deeper than any between stars. Temperance—simple bread, a shared cup—is the true shield of the soul. Remember the Saint Arcadius’ Maw, traveller: in the endless dark, excess is a beacon to ruin, but a humble meal shared is light enough to guide us home.