Warhammer 40k - Mark Of The Xenos.pdf -

“Tell me again why we are defiling this grave, Roth,” grumbled Watch-Captain Thorne of the Deathwatch. His black-armored form was a statue of disgust, the silver Inquisitorial I on his pauldron reflecting the sickly green sky.

Roth smiled a thin, terrible smile. “The Mark of the Xenos describes the old predators. These are the new ones. Stealth strains. Infiltrators. They carry no pheromone signature. The Deathwatch’s auspexes won’t see them until it’s too late.”

The first xenos dissolved into a cloud of acidic mist. The second melted into the mud. The third… was already behind them. Warhammer 40K - Mark Of The Xenos.pdf

The war never ended. But the book grew heavier.

Below the text, he pressed his bleeding palm to the vellum. The mark glowed once, then faded. “Tell me again why we are defiling this

The world screamed.

Thorne’s power fist crackled. “Impossible. The Hive Fleet was broken here.” “The Mark of the Xenos describes the old predators

“Because the Mark of the Xenos is not just a book, Thorne,” Roth said, not looking up. He ran a gloved hand over a vein of pulsating, iridescent flesh that should have been fossilized. “It is a warning. Every scar the Imperium carves upon an alien breed changes the breed.”

Veridian Secundus, Eastern Fringe

Thorne fired.

Inquisitor Kaelen Roth of the Ordo Xenos knelt in the mud of a dead world. Before him, spread across the cratered plain like a silver slick, lay the remains of a Tyranid bio-ship. It had been dead for sixty years—a relic of Hive Fleet Kraken—but its spines still towered like cathedral spires, and its chitin still wept a thin, acidic dew.