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The four of them walked deeper into the palace.
The floor was bone-chillingly cold. Even through their shoes, the chill seeped into the marrow. Guilliman, Horus, and Kullen each felt as though every step landed on the edge of a blade.
Kalen didn't feel any of that. He was busy silently grumbling about why the inner palace apparently still had the air conditioning running, or maybe it was the old man's psychic energy leaking out and tanking the ambient temperature.
Who could say.
The corridor held nothing but the sound of four sets of footsteps.
Heavy. Uneven. Oppressive.
The passage seed to have no end. Ti lost all aning here.
Then the darkness ahead was pierced by a layer of thick, viscous golden light.
A towering flight of steps appeared before them.
They looked up.
The Golden Throne.
This great construct, the crystallization of humanity's highest technology from the age of the Great Crusade, built to connect the webway and free mankind from its dependence on warp travel, now squatted at the top of those steps like a monstrous beast covered in tal tentacles.
It no longer shone. Its surface was crawling with dried, blackened bloodstains and scorch marks left by millennia of overloaded operation.
Then their gaze traveled past the edge of the Throne, and they saw the being seated upon it.
Guilliman's stride stopped dead.
His superhuman lungs felt as though an invisible hand had seized them in a death grip. He could not draw a single breath.
That was the Emperor of Mankind.
The father who had once led them to sweep across the galaxy, seemingly capable of anything.
The divine figure from the Imperial propaganda murals, halo above his head, worshipped day and night by trillions of subjects.
But look at Him now.
No gleaming golden power armor. No great flaming sword to point the way.
Only a withered, desiccated ruin of a corpse, skin and bone pressed tight against each other.
The torso and limbs were severely atrophied. The chest cavity had been hollowed out entirely. Dense clusters of thick tubing and life-sustaining tal had been driven brutally through that ruined body, pinning Him to the back of the chair like patches stitched into torn cloth.
Half His skull had been caved in by that earth-shattering clash between father and son all those years ago. The horrifying depression left by the blunt force was packed with neural cables. In the hollow eye sockets, a single remaining chanical red eye emitted a faint, dim glow.
He should have been dead.
From any biological standpoint, this corpse could not possibly retain any signs of life.
But the gears beneath the Throne were still spinning madly.
He was still breathing. Still burning His own soul to illuminate that rotted-through galaxy.
"Father..."
The sound that scraped out of Guilliman's throat was barely a breath.
The Lord of Ultramar — renowned for his rationality and restraint — felt his knees buckle. He collapsed straight down onto the steps.
From beside him ca the crisp ring of tal striking stone.
Horus knelt as well.
The Warmaster's head bowed so low it was nearly pressed into the floor. Those eyes — once filled with confidence, once commanding millions of warriors — held only suffocating despair and guilt.
It was him.
He was the one who had beaten his father into this wretched state with his own hands.
He was the one who had taken that grand blueprint, the one that could have led humanity to glory, and torn it into the blood-soaked grinding wheel it was now.
Kullen said nothing. This veteran Dark Angels warrior, who had survived countless bloody battles, silently dropped to one knee and pressed his right fist to his chest. Beneath his helt, the old knight's cheeks were already soaked through.
Only Kalen remained standing.
He tilted his head back and looked directly at the ruined corpse upon the Throne. No hesitation. No reverence.
This was sacrilege. An act of transgression.
Kalen didn't care.
He even found it absurd.
This was the all-calculating Lord of Mankind? This was the ultimate existence the Four Gods feared?
He had fought tooth and nail to conquer half a universe, and in the end wound up in a state worse than a vegetable, locked to this chair for ten thousand years as a human-shaped dry-cell battery.
Too ridiculous.
Kalen tugged at the corner of his mouth. He wanted to laugh. He wanted to mock this ending soaked in black humor, to mock this great soul that fate had utterly played for a fool.
But the laugh didn't co.
A heavy, bitter ache surged up through his chest and straight into his eyes. His vision blurred without him noticing.
Tears fell without warning.
Pure, unalloyed grief.
The old man hadn't needed to suffer like this.
He could have hidden in the shadows of history, watching human civilization rise and fall with cold, detached eyes. He had more than enough power to carve out a territory for himself in the warp, or take a seed-stock of humanity and flee to another star system entirely.
But He didn't.
He chose the hardest path. The most thankless road. He stepped forward and tried, through His own singular effort, to wrench the entire human race back from the jaws of Chaos.
In the face of betrayal. In the face of a situation where every piece on the board had been lost.
He still sat down in this execution chair, without a mont's hesitation, and let it grind His soul away piece by piece.
In this mont, Kalen looked at the broken corpse upon the Throne and saw the shadows of far too many people reflected there.
They were the idealists from his mories of his previous life. Those who, for the sake of so lofty goal, had pressed forward knowing full well it couldn't be done, and in the end burned themselves to ash.
They all shared a single na.
Pioneers.
The transmigrator lowered his head, crossed both arms over his chest, and paid his highest respects to the Lord of Mankind before him.
He spoke.
That power, sufficient to grind stars to dust, focused upon all four of them.
In words of light and fire, the Emperor spoke.
No sound. No opening of a mouth. Yet the words poured into the souls of all four, and they could hear.
First ca Guilliman and Horus.
[Two works. Not sons.]
8 words. They pierced straight through the deepest conviction in both Primarchs' hearts.
They had always considered themselves inheritors of the Emperor's will, sons bound to Him by blood. But the Emperor Himself reached out and, without rcy, punctured that lie.
Not sons. Only works.
Tools forged from His gene-code, purpose-built for the conquest of the galaxy. From the mont of their creation, they had only ever had one purpose, to be used without feeling, until they were completely spent.
Guilliman and Horus faced that violent, absolute primal truth. There was no warmth in it. Not a shred of pity. Only rationality distilled to its purest extre.
The Emperor's words burned them to the bone.
"Father... I..."
Horus, who had always regarded himself as the First-Returned Son, felt his defenses shatter completely.
Even witnessing the tragedy of Isstvan with his own eyes hadn't cut this deep. Even nearly killing the Emperor aboard the Vengeful Spirit hadn't left a wound like this.
The Warmaster's massive fra began to convulse. His confidence, his pride, the glory of his forr days, all of it stripped away without rcy. Tears hamred against the floor. A soundless, heart-shattering sobbing.
Guilliman pressed both hands hard against his own face, knuckles going white. He was using every last ounce of strength to hold his expression together, to keep himself from losing control on the spot.
Next ca the Fallen Angel, Kullen.
[Old Blade.]
That was the na the Emperor gave him.
The old knight didn't break down the way the two Primarchs had. He simply lowered his head a fraction further. He had long since accepted the truth that he was only a tool, a sharp weapon for cutting down enemies, nothing more.
Finally, that vast consciousness locked onto Kalen.
[Outsider!]
The soul-strike hit at a sharply elevated volu.
The violent psychic shockwave tore open a ring of energy discharge. This intensely targeted stream of information swept heavily across the souls of the other three as it passed.
BOOM!
Guilliman's eyes rolled back. His massive body tilted sideways and crashed to the floor.
Horus's convulsions stopped instantly. He toppled over and fell straight down.
Kullen didn't even manage a grunt before he was flat on the ground.
3 people. 2 gene-Primarchs and one battle-hardened veteran. Knocked unconscious, just like that.
The air went completely silent.
Kalen stood frozen in place, his mind full of nothing but confusion.
What is going on?
This is not how the script was supposed to go!
Old man, weren't you supposed to have a whole lot of profound things to say to these two sons of yours? Weren't you supposed to assign them their mission to save the galaxy? How did you go from playing it cool one second to knocking everyone out cold the next?
In the vast emptiness of the Throne Room, there was now only one very-much-alive mortal and one dried-out corpse staring each other down.
Before Kalen could even begin to work out the logic of what had just happened, the Emperor's next words ca through with urgent haste.
That towering, all-crushing authority from before had vanished entirely. What ca through instead carried a distinctly anxious edge.
[Speaker. Help .]
Kalen's eyelid twitched furiously.
So you knocked them all out on purpose, all so you could go behind these Primarchs' backs and secretly ask for a cheat-device?
➤ Next: Old Yellow's Sacred Profanity
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