Brother Thaddeus had served the chapter faithfully for two centuries. His mind was a fortress, his will unbreakable, his devotion absolute. That's what made it so difficult to watch his decline.
It started with minor things - a slight tremor in his hands during blood rituals, a moment's hesitation before meditation. The war beasts noticed first, as they always do. Fenrir, who had guarded our rituals for decades, began growling softly whenever Thaddeus entered the chapel.
I watched him for three weeks. Each day, the signs became clearer. His dreams leaked into the warp, causing disturbances in the ship's Gellar Field. During blood bonds, his battle-brothers reported a metallic taste, something our rituals had never produced before.
When I finally confronted him, he knew. Emperor's mercy, he knew. "I can feel it," he said, "like iron bands around my thoughts, tightening each day." He didn't resist when I drew my blade. His last words were a prayer of gratitude - thankful that we had caught it in time, before corruption could take root.
I keep his progenoid glands in my personal reliquary. Still pure, thanks to our vigilance. Sometimes, duty is measured not in enemies slain, but in brothers saved from a darker fate.
They ask me why we watch so closely, why every blood ritual requires a Chaplain's presence. Let me tell you of Brother Severus and the Harvest Moon Incident.
The ritual seemed perfect - all prayers correctly intoned, all precautions taken. But I noticed his secondary heart beat three times in the space it should have beat twice. Most would have missed it. Most would have continued the ritual.
I stopped it immediately. Within hours, Brother Severus was in isolation, his blood being scoured by our Chaplains. They found it then - microscopic warp-tainted organisms, dormant until activated by the ritual's psychic resonance.
We traced it back to a xenos blade that had wounded him three campaigns ago. The corruption had waited patiently, hidden so deep even our war beasts hadn't detected it. Only that slightly accelerated heartbeat gave it away.
Brother Severus lived, purged of the taint before it could manifest. One second of attention, one tiny detail - that's all that stands between purity and damnation.
Watch carefully, initiates. See that empty seat in our ritual chamber? It once belonged to Captain Vladimar of the Fourth Company. His fall teaches us why even the highest must be watched.
It began after the Crucible Campaign. The Captain's tactical brilliance had won us many victories, but something about those battles changed him. He became obsessed with efficiency, with reducing casualties through perfect prediction.
His psychic powers grew stronger, but so did his isolation. He stopped participating in blood rituals, claiming he had transcended their necessity. The war beasts would pace anxiously outside his quarters, but he refused to acknowledge their warnings.
I watched him decline over six months, cataloging every sign. His battle-brothers reported his blood running cold during combat. His strategic predictions became too perfect, knowing things no amount of tactical genius could explain.
When we finally moved to confront him, we found his quarters covered in calculations - mathematical formulas that hurt the eyes to read. He had turned to forbidden knowledge, convinced it was the only way to protect his men.
The execution was quick, but the lesson remains. That empty throne reminds us that rank does not protect against corruption. The higher one rises, the more vigilant the watch must be.
Most see our war beasts as mere weapons or hunting hounds. They don't understand that these creatures are our first line of vigilance. Let me tell you why we trust their instincts above even our most sophisticated scanning devices.
During the Purging of Hive Mortalis, our beasts detected something wrong with an entire squad of battle-brothers returning from a deep-strike mission. All testing showed them pure, all rituals were completed successfully. But the beasts would not let them board our strike cruiser.
For three days, we kept them in quarantine, running every test we knew. Nothing showed up. But on the fourth day, during the sleep cycle, we discovered the truth. Micro-parasites had infected their cerebral cortexes, dormant until their hosts could infiltrate our ship.
The war beasts had smelled it - not the parasites themselves, but the microscopic changes in their hosts' blood chemistry. Thirty brothers had to be put down, but the chapter was saved. The beasts mourned with us, but they never wavered in their vigil.
They ask me how we do it - how we watch our brothers so closely while maintaining the emotional distance to execute them when necessary. The truth is, we don't maintain distance. We love them as brothers should. That's what makes us effective.
You must care deeply about someone to notice the subtle changes that herald corruption. You must love them to watch them so carefully that you catch the first tremor of doubt, the first whisper of taint. And you must love them enough to grant them a clean death before they become something they would hate.
I remember every name, every face. Brother Marcus, who taught me to read the Emperor's Tarot. Brother Callus, who helped me master my first blood ritual. Brother Theon, whose jokes lightened even our darkest vigils. I executed each of them, and I grieved for each of them.
That's the true burden of a Chaplain's vigil - not the watching, but the caring. We are not cold executioners but loving brothers who bear the terrible responsibility of keeping our family pure.
Let this stand as instruction for future Arc Chaplains. Our burden is unique - we must watch even our own for signs of corruption. The hardest vigil is the one we keep over ourselves.
I speak of Arc Chaplain Mordecai, my predecessor. For thirty years, he maintained the purity of our rituals, executed the corrupted, trained countless initiates. His fall began with dreams - visions he claimed were prophetic warnings about future threats to the chapter.
The visions proved accurate, time and again. He saved hundreds of lives acting on their intelligence. We almost missed the subtle changes - how the visions came more frequently, how they required more and more of his strength to interpret.
In the end, it was Mordecai himself who revealed the truth. He came to me one night, his war beast Thanatos at his side. "The dreams," he said, "they're not visions anymore. They're demands." He had recognized the corruption in himself and chosen to act before it could spread.
I executed him with his own Crozius Arcanum. His final act was to write an amendment to our vigil protocols - no one, not even an Arc Chaplain, is above suspicion. The price of purity is eternal vigilance, even against ourselves.
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