7.156.920.M41
The void-ship Mercy of Dawn groaned like an old cathedral in winter as the warp swallowed her whole. There is no sunrise in the Immaterium, only the slow churn of unreality—a horizon of nightmares glimpsed through the Geller field’s dim halo. Days and nights bled together until even the chronometers wept confusion.
I was returning from a pilgrimage when the storm rose. One moment the Navigator chanted his careful course; the next the warp heaved like a wounded beast, casting us adrift in a sea of screaming light. The vessel shuddered, void-shields wailing their dirge. The crew looked to their officers for deliverance and found only the pale mask of fear.
For three cycles we drifted without direction. Rations grew thin, tempers thinner. I heard prayers half-spoken and curses fully uttered. Men dreamt of their own deaths and woke to find those deaths still waiting. The bridge smelled of ozone and desperation.
Captain Hale summoned me on the fourth cycle. “Friar,” he said, voice ragged, “the Navigator pleads for a surge-burn to break through. The storm worsens. I must act.”
“To strike blindly in the warp,” I answered, “is to hurl ourselves into the jaws of daemons. The Emperor’s hand is steady even when ours tremble. Trust Him.”
His jaw tightened. “And if He delays?”
“Then we endure.”
I gathered the crew in the great chapel, a place already half-forgotten beneath layers of dust and neglect. There we lit candles—one for each soul aboard—and sang the Canticle of the Endless Watch. The hymn wove through the cold decks like a patient tide. I spoke not of victory, only of waiting, of breath following breath until the Emperor willed otherwise.
The storm raged for what felt like a lifetime. Hull plates thrummed with the laughter of unseen things. Dreams grew heavy with shadow. Yet the crew returned to the chapel again and again, their voices steadier each time. The Navigator kept his third eye shuttered, listening to the measured rhythm of prayer as if it were a guiding star.
And then, without warning, the Immaterium quieted. The screeching colors bled into black, and realspace unfolded like dawn breaking after a thousand-year night. Our battered ship slid back into the calm between suns. No surge-burn, no desperate gamble—only the Emperor’s timing.
Captain Hale found me at the viewing port, where the first true starlight kissed the hull. “You were right,” he said simply.
“I was only still,” I replied. “The Emperor was right.”
Now I write by the glow of that gentle starlight, the ship humming its soft mortal music. Patience is not mere waiting; it is faith made flesh, the discipline to trust when every instinct screams for haste. In the endless silence of the stars, the Emperor’s hand moved unseen, and we were saved—not by struggle, but by steadfast quiet.