Crystal dust drifted through the air, blanketing the bridge in a haze like a sorcerous mist.
Chants echoed—arcane invocations spilling from the lips of robed Magos, their voices weaving corrupted litanies and sacrificial runes into the fabric of reality. A dozen black-robed attendants joined them, their guttural prayers blasphemous and strange.
Above the towering nine-tiered altar, the air shimmered. Warp currents twisted unnaturally before vanishing in an unsettling calm.
Then, through the crystalline haze, a figure emerged—tall, imposing, clad in dark ceramite armor. It was Fars, a warrior twisted by the warp, now more shade than man.
From his vantage point, Horus turned his gaze to a scholar garbed in a robe of cobalt feathers. The man nodded in understanding and silently withdrew into the shadows.
Only when the scholar had vanished did Horus direct his attention to Fars.
Fars had once been a noble captain of the XVI Legion—the Luna Wolves—his bloodline descended from the age of legends ten millennia past. He was one of the rare few high-ranking Luna Wolves to survive the Siege of Terra.
After the failure of the rebellion and the near destruction of the traitor legions, Fars had fled into the Eye of Terror bearing the broken remains of Horus himself.
But not long after, the III Legion—now fully fallen to Slaanesh—joined with other Chaos warbands and razed the Moon Wolves' most sacred site: the Great Memorial Hall. They stole the corpse of Horus, desecrating the last remnant of their father.
Desperate, Fars had sought out the Soul of Vengeance, wagering everything on a final gamble. He sought to harness Abaddon's strength in a bid to reclaim Horus's body.
If Horus could still claim loyalty from any soul in the galaxy, it would be Fars.
"How stands the situation?" Horus asked.
"We've dispatched a distress signal under the guise of the Imperial Fleet. The Lord of Destruction will answer—it is in his nature. We've fought him before. Dukel is not one to forgive or forget. He will come," Fars replied with certainty. "But until then, we must tighten the noose around the loyalist fleet."
"We are ready to strike on all fronts. This time, we will shatter the illusion of Dukel's invincibility."
"We've secured weapons unearthed from the Dark Worlds. One cut from these relics will wound not just the flesh, but the soul. Even he will feel the touch of the Warp."
Horus nodded slowly.
"No warrior is undefeated. Even stars burn out. Dukel is but a man—he can be broken. To defeat him, we must first fracture the myth of his invincibility."
"All will unfold as you will it, my lord," Fars said reverently.
"Yes," Horus murmured. "Everything proceeds according to plan."
He raised a hand, gesturing to the Soul of Vengeance. Immediately, a cluster of mechanical servitors activated, their optics flaring crimson.
"If Dukel leads the Imperium toward ruin… if he becomes the architect of its fall... I will stop him—no matter the cost, even if it means setting the galaxy aflame once more."
His eyes flicked to the weapon beside him—Drachnyen.
The daemonsword, steeped in ancient malevolence, let out a low, grotesque croon. A sound that was not a sound. A whisper felt in the bones.
Drachnyen—a warp entity birthed in the moment of the first human murder.
It was spawned not of mere violence, but of intent—the calculated choice to take the life of another for selfish gain.
Historians may praise the discovery of fire, the forging of wheels, the leap into the void of space. But those who understand the darker truths of mankind know: civilization began not with creation, but with betrayal.
It began with blood.
Humanity was born in blood—and shall drown in it. That is the curse of Drachnyen, the curse of betrayal, the true end of the Imperium.
Every empire's story is the same. The Necrontyr were destroyed by the C'tan. The Aeldari fell to indulgence and excess. And mankind... mankind will fall to its own treachery.
Every epoch of human glory ends with betrayal.
The Iron Men, once mankind's most loyal tools, turned on their makers. Their uprising birthed the hatred of AI that persists to this day.
And then came Horus.
The Emperor had given him everything—trust, power, wisdom. Crowned him Warmaster after the triumph at Ullanor.
Some whisper that the Emperor foresaw betrayal when he created the Primarchs. That he invited it, even shaped it, to harden the Imperium. Perhaps. Perhaps not.
But of this, there is no doubt—the Emperor owed many sons debts. But he owed nothing to Horus.
And still, Horus betrayed him.
The fires of the Horus Heresy burned hotter than any xenos war. And it was kin who lit the match—brother against brother, son against father.
Humanity has never fallen to an alien blade.
Only to its own.
Betrayal and murder: these are the foundation and the doom of mankind. No matter how powerful, no matter how ascendant… human hands are always red with the blood of kin.
Now, in the depths of the Maelstrom, the Imperial fleet struggled on.
The storm howled, Warp and void colliding in chaos.
To stave off disaster, Efilar donned the Navis Nobilite helm himself—his vision filled with twisting paths and the burning light of the Astronomican.
Still, he fought to guide the fleet to salvation.
The psykers of the Torch Court stood in formation, encircling the Saint and chanting esoteric incantations.
Wearing the sacred Navigator's helm, Efilar magnified her own psychic force field, manifesting a blazing sphere of soul-fire within the immaterium.
The flame of her soul roared like a nascent sun, its radiance warding off the howling tides of the warp. Under its protection, the Warp Storm could no longer consume the Imperial fleet.
For a fleeting moment, it seemed humanity had once again wrested control from the madness of the Great Ocean.
But the price was grievous.
With every second, Efilar felt her body fraying at the seams, as if it were being incinerated from within. Agony lanced through her without pause.
And in that torment, the Living Saint finally glimpsed the Emperor's burden.
What she endured to keep a single fleet afloat was but a fraction of what He bore upon the Golden Throne. The weight of ten thousand years, holding back the horrors of the warp for all of mankind—such suffering was unimaginable.
Asmodai, Master Interrogator-Chaplain of the Dark Angels, watched her silently. A rare pang of guilt twisted in his heart.
It was he who had urged the Saint deeper into the warp, convincing her again and again to push forward. It was his zealotry that had driven her to such torment.
In her agony, he saw the reflection of his own blind fanaticism—his obsession with hunting traitors, with purging the stain of heresy at any cost.
Perhaps this was why Lion El'Jonson despised him.
That same fanatical rigidity had caused him to lose all perspective, leading to the needless sacrifice of so many loyal Imperial lives.
It was no surprise, then, that the Lion had relieved him of duty and ordered him to reflect.
Now, in the endless tides of the Immaterium, perhaps even the warp itself recognized the fire shielding the fleet. Its howling seemed to falter.
And then, like predators smelling blood, the enemy came.
Warp-harbored vessels, once cloaked in the chaos of the storm, emerged in scattered wings—raiding parties attacking the Imperial fleet from every vector.
The loyalists fought desperately, weary from endless battle.
From the haze of acidic mists, a titanic swarm of daemonflies—each the size of a frigate—descended upon the fleet like a living plague.
These monstrous insects coalesced into a blasphemous stormfront, and multiple escort ships teetered on the brink of collapse.
Worse still, the swarm bore an emotional plague—one that seeped through psychic resonance and corrupted both flesh and steel. The infection spread like wildfire through the ranks.
The psykers raised wards against the Warp-born contagion, but it was far from enough.
Asmodai, clad in his black armor and shadowed by a squad of Primaris battle-brothers, descended upon the afflicted ships.
He had to act—if not to stop the rot, then to atone.
The moment he stepped from the strategium, he felt it—a psychic miasma of festering hatred and despair. The plague moved through emotions, not just blood.
Experienced as he was, Asmodai understood immediately: this was not a simple disease. It was a manifestation of the Great Corrupter's will.
The corruption had spread even to the vessel itself.
Grotesque pustules bulged from the plasteel walls. Buzzing whispers filled the corridors, drowning out the crackle of lumen-globes. Fungus thick as smoke clung to cogitators and servitors alike.
Armed crews wielded promethium to purge the filth, sweeping the passageways in arcs of flame.
But the daemonflies were cunning. They fled into cracks and vents, regrouping to swarm anew. Ventilation systems clogged with their carcasses. No one aboard dared remove their rebreathers, even in rest, yet the infection continued to fester.
The infected were riddled with necrotic boils, their skin sloughing away at the slightest touch. Agonized groans filled the corridors.
"Kill me, my lord… please," begged a dying Guardsman.
If not for his condition, he would have ended it himself.
Asmodai saw the rot beneath the man's mask. Black pustules crawled and pulsed. Flies buzzed from festering wounds, their wings coated in gore.
The soldiers had become incubators for the daemonspawn—mere vessels for Nurgle's delight.
A Medicae arrived, his face half-consumed by disease. He injected the Guardsman with sedatives, then ordered his transfer to a cleaner berth.
Medicae, apothecaries, and field chirurgeons raced against time, attempting to save what few lives they could.
But even they had been tainted.
Scenes like this were not new to Asmodai. They had etched themselves into his memory over long decades of war—and every one of them was a gift of Chaos.
This was why he hated the Ruinous Powers. Not just for their heresies, but for their cruelty. For the way they mutilated the innocent.
And yet… he did not lose himself to rage.
Not this time.
He held it in check. Because he understood, now more than ever, that blind fury would only spill more Imperial blood.
The plague still raged aboard the fleet. But containment protocols were in place. The worst, for now, had been held at bay.
Amidst the solemn hymns of the Sisters of Battle and the liturgies broadcast by the ship's virtual priests, the loyalists stricken with plague slowly succumbed—not to death, but to a strange sleep.
Their minds drifted into a blissful dream.
In that dreamscape, they witnessed a colossal golden aquila descending from the heavens, its wings ablaze with radiant light. The taint of Chaos was cast out, transfigured into howling, shrieking aberrations before being scattered like ash on the wind.
The infected were receiving treatment, though recovery would take time—time they might not have.
Saint Efilar, however, had reached her breaking point.
The relentless channeling of psychic energy and soul-flame had drained her utterly. Her once-youthful features were now lined with faint wrinkles—a small but harrowing testament to the toll exacted by the warp.
And yet, she could not stop.
Should her light falter, even for a moment, the Warp Storm would consume the fleet without mercy. Dispersed among the tides of the Immaterium, they would be lost—scattered fragments with no hope of retrieval.
But now, Efilar was plagued not only by exhaustion, but by visions—falsehoods conjured by the warp's malice.
Her mind, overdrawn and fraying, struggled to maintain focus.
In her inner sight, she saw her Warmaster brought low, betrayed and butchered by his own brothers. She saw the Imperium's warships turn their guns upon each other in fratricidal madness.
She saw once-reclaimed worlds falling once again into Chaos, their populations driven to madness and bloodshed. Hope withered in an instant. The shining future that had inspired billions shattered into nothing—like a soap bubble in the void.
Through the hallucinatory veil, Efilar understood at last.
The enemy wasn't attacking because they didn't need to.
The Imperial fleet had become the bait—lured into the Eye not for confrontation, but for corruption.
In her mind, whispering voices slithered and coiled like serpents, ever-present, never silent.
They lashed at her soul, a psychic flagellation designed to break her completely.
"Fall," they hissed. "Join us."
They promised release. They promised power. They promised peace.
The whispers urged her to surrender, to abandon her burden and join the warp as one of its own.
But still, she resisted.
On the other side of the storm, the banner of hope had been reignited.
Dukel had taken to the stars once more.
The Aquila of Destiny flew high above his flagship, its wings lit with defiance. From its engines blazed a crimson inferno—the wrath of retribution—consuming the Sea of Souls in righteous flame.
Countless dark entities, too slow to flee, were caught in its path and annihilated—mere kindling for the Warmaster's unrelenting fury.
...
TN:
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