He followed the steps to the Eternity Gate. After Trajann Valoris, the Captain-General of the Custodian Guard, verified Zeke’s identity, he allowed him to enter.
The Emperor was still sitting quietly upon the Golden Throne.
Zeke kept it brief, telling the Emperor his idea of resurrecting Ferrus and Horus.
The Emperor didn’t show much emotion. He simply nodded, just as usual, and then waved His hand. Carried by psychic energy, a body part appeared before Zeke.
Zeke struggled to lift Ferrus’s remains with both hands. He looked at it, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out which part of the body this was.
After Ferrus was decapitated by Fulgrim, his remains were divided up among the traitors. Who knew what thods the Emperor had used to acquire this small piece.
Setting up a pillar, Zeke placed the remains on top of it, then brought out the fully ford Reaper’s Scythe. The Reaper’s Scythe sliced open a rift in ti. Through the rift, Zeke was able to glimpse the very mont of Ferrus’s death.
Fulgrim wielded an abominable blade of bizarre shape, attacking his once deeply loved brother, Ferrus.
Ferrus, on the other hand, relied on his bizarre, tal-encased hands to fight his brother. His hands could crush ceramite armor as easily as lting ice; even the flesh and bone of a superhuman Primarch could barely withstand their assault.
The duel between these two brothers was bitter and bloody.
One was graceful and as fast as lightning, attacking the other with the murderous speed and precision of a bird of prey. The other possessed mountain-shattering strength and an overwhelming aura, boasting superhuman defense and unbelievable might—unyielding, relentless, and feeling no pain.
In the brief gaps between their clashes, both Primarchs sustained injuries that would have killed the most elite Astartes warriors dozens of tis over.
In the end, Fulgrim swung the fatal blow at Ferrus, severing his own brother’s head.
Well, well, if it isn’t our headless friend, Ferrus?
"Stop." At that exact mont, Zeke made his move. Wielding the Reaper’s Scythe, he snatched Ferrus’s soul away, then imdiately returned along the rift.
Snatching souls had beco easier. Zeke rembered that when he resurrected Malcador, it had required quite a bit of effort. But now, the fully leveled Reaper’s Scythe could snatch souls entirely at will.
"Easy peasy. Now, only the hardest one is left: Horus," Zeke muttered.
Zeke used the Reaper’s Scythe to reforge a body for Ferrus, then placed the soul inside it.
The Primarch of the Iron Hands opened his eyes in bewildernt. The first thing he noticed was that his arms, originally covered in living tal, had reverted back to flesh and blood.
In his youth, Ferrus had engaged in a one-on-one duel with a silver wyrm nad Asirnoth. During the battle, he drowned his opponent in magma. The creature’s tallic outer shell lted and bonded with his arms. Thus, Ferrus gained a pair of iron hands...
Well, they were actually neither iron nor just hands. Strictly speaking, Ferrus had gained a pair of arms made of an unknown tal.
"It seems the Reaper’s Scythe’s resurrection brought back your original flesh-and-blood body," Zeke scratched his head, feeling a bit embarrassed. Ferrus’s iron hands were incredibly formidable, capable of even smashing through tank armor.
Ferrus didn’t pay much attention to Zeke’s words. After exchanging a glance with his father, the Emperor, he understood everything and silently stood off to the side.
Excellent. Next up is Horus. Zeke continued to use the Reaper’s Scythe, slicing open a temporal rift.
Because he lacked any of Horus’s body parts, Zeke had to manually target the location. This resulted in the scene appearing within the rift not being the optimal point for resurrection.
The rift displayed the scene of the duel between father and son. The Emperor and Horus were currently clashing a re thirty ters away from the rift Zeke had carved open.
Bulkheads as sturdy as adamantium groaned and buckled. Stone decorations exploded into dust, the deck bent, and ceramite wall tiles all shattered simultaneously as if struck by point-blank fire.
It was such overwhelmingly powerful force. For the first ti, Zeke saw the Emperor fighting at His absolute maximum.
He was entirely bathed in golden light, seamlessly switching between wielding His claw and His sword, or combining the two into one, displaying unbelievable close-quarters combat skills.
Horus had been pumped full of Chaos energy to his absolute limit. The four chaos gods manipulated him like a marionette. That body continuously expanded and twisted, eventually bloating to more than twice the size of the Emperor’s fra.
The two cleaved with blades and swung their mauls, attacking each other relentlessly. Every single one of their collisions shattered what was already utterly broken around them even further.
Zeke was naturally familiar with such a classic scene, but this was not the point in ti he was looking for.
Zeke wanted to return to a ti before Horus had been corrupted by Chaos—roughly before Horus visited the Warp Gate on Molech—and directly haul a loyal Horus back.
With that thought in mind, Zeke directly controlled the Reaper’s Scythe, wanting to push the tiline further back.
But Zeke failed.
The flow of ti felt as if it had been clamped shut. The world plunged into an eerie stillness. Imdiately after, a gaze fell upon Zeke.
Who is it? Zeke’s first reaction was to look at the father and son in the center of the battlefield.
Horus’s blood-red eyes stared at the Emperor, carrying the resentnt of an abandoned child, mixed with a maddening joy.
The Emperor’s blazing gaze held no pain, anger, or sorrow; He simply looked at Horus calmly.
It was clearly neither of these two. Zeke carefully felt the gaze and finally discovered where it ca from.
"Four" entities. The ancient "Four." They hid within Horus’s shell. Their bones trembled from bursting, blistered from violence, and were lashed by brutality. Yet, they still leaned forward, craning their necks to look at Zeke, their eyes filled with wild glee.
"Everything is proceeding exactly as planned."
"You ca again, just as expected."
"Did you think manipulating ti was a parlor trick exclusive to a re mortal like you? How endearingly naive."
"Those who toy with ti shall eventually be toyed with by ti."
These words sparked so mories in Zeke, and he suddenly ca to a stark realization.
During the Siege of Terra, the four chaos gods had once summoned 6,000 Vengeful Spirits from both the past and the future to surround Terra, thereby preventing Guilliman from reinforcing it. This ant the four gods could also manipulate ti.
Why didn’t they stop from resurrecting Malcador or Ferrus the previous tis?
Perhaps they didn’t have ti. But the far greater possibility is that they were waiting all along. Waiting for a more opportune mont. Waiting for the prey to walk deep enough. Waiting for the jaws of the trap to open wide enough.
Retreat! Zeke instantly felt an unprecedented sense of crisis in his heart.
Reviews
All reviews (0)