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At the sa mont Horus cut down Daemon Prince Urkanthos, Celestine and Kullen were far from idle, carving through the Khornate daemons, Chaos Astartes, and cultists pressing up the line.
At Kasr Kraf, the Emperor seed to have extended His hand over the Imperial defenders. The machine spirits of the Chaos armored units turned their guns on their own traitors without warning. Both sides froze in disbelief. The Necrons lurking in the shadows found the sight entirely satisfying.
With the Chaos ground forces' champion beheaded, the void war shifted as well. Against all expectation, the Imperial Fists' flagship Phalanx punched through the Warp storms and arrived at Cadia, driving straight for the Blackstone Fortress.
The Chaos fleet scrambled to intercept. It made no difference. Before that colossal hull, every attack dissolved into nothing, and the fleet trying to stop it was hamred into disarray.
Space Wolves Wolf Lord Sven Bloodhowl led the joint boarding party that had already secured a foothold inside the Blackstone Fortress. Working in concert with the Phalanx from within, they destroyed the Blackstone Fortress Eternal Will.
In Cadia's orbit, a full third of the Chaos fleet failed to escape the Warp rift that tore open around the dying fortress. The violet light swallowed them whole. When it faded, only scattered wreckage remained of the Eternal Will, drifting through the dark.
The Despoiler's assault had failed.
Vengeful Spirit, bridge.
Abaddon descended the tal steps and reviewed the compiled battle reports.
The Blackstone Fortress gone. He felt nothing. A third of the fleet. Irrelevant.
The Eye of Terror had fanatics to spare. Troops and materiel could be replenished without limit.
What he cared about now was the engagent data coming back from every surface defense line.
An attendant knelt before him on both knees, data-slate held out in both hands, trembling so badly the slate shook.
"What is Urkanthos's status?" Abaddon looked down at him.
The attendant swallowed against a dry throat. "Reporting to the Warmaster... Lord Urkanthos... has fallen."
Abaddon turned.
A Daemon Prince dying on a mortal defense line was beyond any reasonable explanation. Even with a Living Saint involved, there was no world in which Urkanthos died without making a sound.
"Was it Celestine who struck?"
The attendant's forehead went flat against the cold tal deck.
"It was not the Living Saint. The last images from the front's surviving augur arrays showed it was the exceptionally large Ogryn on the western front. Lord Urkanthos... had his head punched clean off. One blow."
One blow punched off his head.
The words slamd into Abaddon's neural core.
The mory seal he had kept shut for ten thousand years cracked open with a roar. Images of the Siege of Terra blazed across his mind: Khârn, once Khorne's foremost champion, had carved through defense line after defense line — then ran headlong into Imperial Fists Primarch Rogal Dorn. Dorn swatted him aside with a single casual strike. Like killing a fly. Khârn went into the wall and stayed there, dead or alive unknown.
That sense-defying demigod might had been the shadow Abaddon could never shake. Ten thousand years, and it had never left him.
And now, in the mud of Cadia, a mutant Ogryn had punched a Daemon Prince's head off?
CRACK.
The sharp shriek of snapping tal.
Abaddon's right hand, the Talon of Horus, closed around the bridge's thick alloy railing and folded it into twisted scrap.
A mutant could not do this. Absolutely could not.
"Withdraw."
He ground the word out through clenched teeth.
The attendant on the floor raised his head, certain he'd misheard. The Despoiler, master of the entire Eye of Terror, ordering a retreat while the battle's outco was still open?
"Do you not understand Gothic?!" Abaddon's boot caught the attendant and sent him sprawling. The roar that followed shook the bridge from end to end. "All ships disengage from the battle net! Now!"
He turned and fixed his gaze on Cadia through the command viewport. Savage killing intent churned in the depths of his eyes, and beneath it, buried very deep: dread.
"Get the Planet Killer moving! Bring the last Blackstone Fortress here as well!"
"I will pound this planet into dust. And him — crush him completely!"
---
Cadia, surface.
On the broken walls of Kasr Kraf, the torn battle standard of the Cadian Shock Troops climbed back into the blood-scented wind.
With the orbital blockade broken, Imperial reinforcents fought their way down through the Warp turbulence from every direction. Fresh troops, ammunition, heavy vehicles — they poured into the dying fortress world like blood back into a drained body. The gray death faded from the eyes of the Astra Militarum. The crisp sounds of bolts being racked surged back into a tide of iron.
Deep in the fortress, a sealed tactical chamber.
The heavy adamantium door locked shut. Living Saint Celestine raised one slender hand, and pure golden psychic radiance flooded the walls like a tide, severing this narrow room from the physical universe entirely.
She turned, dismissed all her fervent followers, and stood alone before the three who had distinguished themselves most in this campaign.
Her gaze passed over the mortal Kellen. Celestine's eyes locked onto the "Ogryn" draped in an oversized, tattered canvas cloak, whose fra exceeded any reasonable proportion by a considerable margin.
"I have raised a psychic shield. No one can hear us."
Hidden in the shadow of his hood, Horus studied this rumored mouthpiece of the Emperor of Mankind and gave nothing away.
The forr commander of the Great Crusade noticed an ill-tid comparison forming in his mind. He thought of Sanguinius of the Ninth Legion. Wings on the back. Holy light wreathing the fra. For what it was worth, he privately judged his brother, the Angel of Baal, considerably superior to the woman before him in both the fullness of those wings and the dignity of his bearing.
"How should I address you?" Celestine's faint voice rang through the sealed chamber, taut with barely concealed tension. "As the Wolf of Luna? Or Lord Lupercal?"
Kellen gestured to the side.
Without a word, Kullen reached up and tore off his helt, revealing the cold, hard face of a Caliban veteran, lined with old scars.
Then Horus raised both hands and pushed the canvas hood, crusted with rotten flesh and dried blood, back behind his head.
A broad forehead. Deep-set eyes. A jaw cut from stone.
That face had been cast into plaza statues across countless star systems during the Great Crusade. After the Great Heresy, it had been nailed to the deepest, darkest pillar of sha in all of human history.
Now it stood under cold light with nothing to hide it.
"Address as Lupercal."
Horus said.
Celestine stopped breathing.
Several seconds of absolute silence. Then she let out one long, impossibly complicated exhale. Shock. Hatred. Grief. Sudden clarity. Ten thousand years of accumulated weight collapsed all at once.
The sacred golden flas withdrew into her body.
The Living Saint stepped forward and drove her knee hard into the steel deck. She bowed her head.
"I have co at the decree of the Emperor of Mankind to find you."
"The Emperor has revealed many things to , Lord Primarch. Among them, that your soul is pure and unblemished."
"Lady Celestine."
Horus finally spoke.
He stepped forward. His broad hands steadied her forearms and brought her to her feet.
"I am a man who belongs on history's guillotine. No one should kneel to ."
Celestine held his gaze. Her eyes, lit with shifting golden light, did not flinch.
"My lord, the brand of traitor was never yours to bear.
The Warmaster who unleashed the Great Heresy died long ago at the hands of the Master of Mankind. He was a puppet of the Ruinous Powers, an empty vessel that wore your na and nothing more. He was never the Emperor's child. But you, standing here before , are the Wolf of Luna whose soul never bent, the Warmaster the Emperor Himself anointed.
For ten thousand years, the Emperor has not rested within the sacred flas of the Golden Throne. He has fought the darkness without ceasing. Long ago, He revealed His will to : a shepherd burdened with the heaviest infamy would return, his soul as pure and whole as the day it was ford. He would stand as the bulwark against the tide of Chaos.
I did not kneel to the rebel written in the history books. I knelt to the Emperor's true son, to one of the guardians who will hold the last gate for humanity. This is the mission He placed within my hands. It is the reverence I owe, as His servant."
➤ Next: The Old Man in Gold's Little Clever Sche
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