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The deepest reaches of the Eye of Terror.
The Vengeful Spirit, that steel leviathan dormant for ten thousand years, hung dead and silent at the very heart of the Warp's turbulence.
Its colossal hull was crawling with blasphemous runes. The engines belched distorted spectra, warping the surrounding void into contortions by sheer force of presence.
Sixteen decks down lay the forbidden zone — a place even Black Legion veterans would rather attempt a boarding action than approach.
The four walls of the core chamber were stitched together from hundreds of freshly flayed human skins. Crude, blood-crusted sutures pierced through the dermal layers, and nerves not yet fully dead still twitched and curled within the walls, beyond any control.
That cloying, acrid reek of iron hung in the air. The circulation system ran at full overload and still could not purge it.
Ezekyle Abaddon stood shirtless at the center of the chamber.
He had, for once, shed the iconic Terminator armor.
That body, stripped of its ceramite, bore a silhouette of near gene-sire magnificence. His chest and arms were covered in hideous scars accumulated over ten thousand years of war.
Every single one ca from a bloodbath fierce enough to destroy an entire Chapter.
Beyond that, his flesh was flawless. No Chaos mutations. No extra limbs. No weeping pustules. No flickering alien compound eyes.
Only when he raised a hand to pass it over the blood pool before him did the power of the Four Gods flash through his eyes: Khorne's crimson, Tzeentch's bright blue, Nurgle's rotting green, Slaanesh's lurid purple. Four powers flowing smoothly within him, like four rivers converging into an abyss, never interfering with one another, all ultimately bowing to his will.
He alone mastered Chaos. Not the other way around.
Drach'nyen, the daemon-sword that sealed within it the concept of humanity's first murder, stood upright at the bottom of the blood pool.
Abaddon had refused any guards or sorcerers as witnesses.
This was the psychic divination belonging solely to the Warmaster of Chaos, perford before the great host set forth.
He closed his eyes. No superfluous movents. Psychic power flowed down along the sword's grip and connected directly to the deepest channel of the abyss.
Thick, viscous bubbles churned violently across the surface of the blood pool.
Nurgle's murmurs coiled around his ears, promising that if he toppled Cadia, the entire galaxy would be sown with a carnival of plagues. Tzeentch's visions exploded before his eyes — among countless tangled tilines, only one path led to the Throne on Terra.
Khorne's roar shook his very soul, the Blood God having prepared endless skulls and a throne in his na. Slaanesh's wanton tones entwined around his body, promising that after the Corpse-Emperor's fall, an ecstasy to resound across the galaxy would be his.
Monts later, Abaddon opened his eyes.
Drach'nyen let out a long, keening shriek from within the blood pool.
At that mont, Chief Sorcerer Zaraphiston materialized without a sound. The old thing could hardly be called a living creature anymore. His spine was bent backward into a grotesque fold, and thick tentacles had completely replaced his lower limbs.
Zaraphiston's ruined body shuddered violently. His voice ca as if scraped from the foulest wind at the bottom of the abyss, and he delivered the final prophecy to the Warmaster:
"On the Thirteenth Crusade, your war-boots shall trample the Corpse-Emperor's bastions into dust. Cadia's spires are the final links of the shackles. When they crumble, the Eye of Terror shall swallow the galaxy whole!"
"Your Blackstone Fortress shall beco the great axe that cleaves reality apart. When it smashes into Cadia's earth, the Warp-flood shall drown all things. The Great Rift is about to open. Your long crusade shall finally et its grand-slam finale."
The outco was already decided.
Cadia was fated to shatter. That dam of the Imperium that had blocked him for ten thousand years was about to be smashed apart.
A Great Rift spanning the galaxy would tear humanity's domain in two, like a single slash across a septic wound.
He, Ezekyle Abaddon, would personally complete the supre, unfinished work of his gene-sire.
But imdiately after, the sorcerer added one more line.
"On the ga board... a strange piece has landed."
The noise squeezed from the old sorcerer's throat sounded like two sheets of rusted iron scraping desperately against each other.
Abaddon did not even glance at him. His entire mind was still replaying the trajectory of the Great Rift he had just foreseen.
The mouth on the old sorcerer's belly opened and closed grotesquely, and it added:
"An outlander has descended upon this world, one whom even the gods cannot see through. It brings a new variable. The Corpse-Emperor's most loyal warrior has been summoned by it. The pale wolf shall manifest at the full moon, and the Lion's son shall accompany him."
The chamber fell deathly silent. Only the faint twitching of nerves within the skin walls broke it.
Abaddon tilted his head slightly.
The pale wolf? Probably so wild dog from the Space Wolves that had run out to bark.
The Lion's son? Dark Angels. If this were the Legion era ten thousand years ago, perhaps that would an sothing. But now, how large a wave could they possibly stir?
As for the outlander, that was an even bigger joke.
Most likely so ancient xenos freshly crawled out of a catacomb, or a crude smokescreen conjured by those pointy-eared Eldar in the Webway.
Only that one line gave him pause. "The Corpse-Emperor's most loyal warrior."
A scoff rolled from Abaddon's throat.
Too dull.
For ten thousand years, the fools shouting "For the Emperor" as they rushed to throw their lives away had been too nurous to roster. What did 3 or 4 more such clowns count for? Could they overturn the board?
The Warmaster's mind flipped through hundreds of potential threats like the pages of a book.
Inquisitors. Chapter Masters. Living Saints.
But he missed the single most impossible correct answer.
Within the baseline of his cognition, he had not reserved even half an inch of space for the na "Horus." That na, together with the disgrace of that failed rebellion, should long ago have been tossed into the garbage heap of the Warp.
Wiped out by the Corpse-Emperor's own hands. His soul burned away until nothing remained.
A weak, worthless wretch who had led his own Legion astray, dead beyond dead. Even speaking the na aloud would dirty the lips of the Chaos Warmaster.
And even if soone truly ca and told him that Horus had not only survived but crawled back,
Abaddon would not blink. He would charge forward, snap that brittle spine underfoot, and kill him all over again.
"Is this outlander variable enough to break Cadia's final defensive line?" Abaddon asked.
Zaraphiston's twisted neck swayed from side to side.
"The settled outco is hard to alter. Those three are, at best, spectators at a grand funeral. The water's surface will ripple. They cannot stop what is coming."
"Then that is sufficient." Abaddon had no more words to waste.
He extended a broad palm and seized Drach'nyen's hilt in a death grip.
Veins bulged across the back of his hand like gnarled tree roots. His wrist exerted force.
The sword ca free of the pool.
The thick, congealed blood clinging to the crossguard could not withstand the blade's extre heat. It vaporized instantly into a choking crimson mist that dispersed into the chamber air.
The Warmaster held the daemon-sword reversed in his grip and strode for the door.
The chamber door, assembled from layer upon layer of white bone, slid open to both sides with utmost tact.
The arming servitors waiting outside imdiately moved to et him, numbly bearing the heavy black-gold components.
The Terminator armor's attachnt procedures activated in sequence. Servo-motors let out piercing roars. Layer after layer of heavy ceramite plating locked back down over his muscles. The massive pauldrons slamd together with a sound like a death knell.
He beca, once again, the embodint of dread that made the entire galaxy tremble.
Abaddon strode up to the bridge command platform and looked down from on high.
"Open the full-spectrum broadcast."
The static crackle of the opening channel drowned out the roar of the lower-deck engines.
"Pass the word."
The sound waves rode the fleet array and smashed indiscriminately into every Black Legion vessel moored nearby, and into the representatives of every Chaos warband waiting beyond.
"All forces, rally. The Thirteenth Black Crusade — begins now."
➤ Next: The Potential Traitors of Cadia
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