Among the dark stars, young Sanguinius stood within the dome of the command deck, gazing through the reinforced adamantium-glass. Starlight shimmered faintly against his angelic features, casting a soft radiance over his flawless face.
Though he had witnessed such celestial vistas countless times, the sight of worlds endlessly orbiting their stars—like tireless cogs in the galaxy's vast machine—never failed to stir something deep within him. A silent awe, renewed each time.
Imperial scholars—Magos of the highest cognitive orders—had long postulated the universe's age through observations of cosmic decay, placing it in the tens of billions of years. But such estimates were flawed. The truth was likely far older. Even the Imperium, whose domain spanned the breadth of the Milky Way, could not yet gaze past its veil into the stars beyond.
In this immense and eternal void, all sentient life—be it Human, Eldar, or even the ancient Necrontyr—were but brief sparks along the river of time.
And I, called a demigod, am perhaps no more than a fleeting reflection on the waters of that ancient current.
As he stood, lost in reverie, Sanguinius' mind wandered to thoughts of cosmic insignificance and divine burden. A philosopher's melancholy drifted through him like a solar breeze.
Beside him stood Mephiston, Chief Librarian of the Blood Angels. Though his psychic senses were honed and ever alert, for a moment, even he was caught in the quiet contemplation radiating from his Primarch. The silence of the stars, the weight of history—they were infectious.
Such thoughts… unbecoming, perhaps even heretical, Mephiston mused silently. He pressed his lips together, his face composed.
They simply stared, side by side, into the star-wreathed silence.
And what, one might ask, were the Primarch of the IX Legion and his Chief Librarian doing drifting idly among the stars, when the galaxy was ever aflame?
The Blood Angels had originally set out with the fleet of the First Legion, the Dark Angels. But then, without warning or signal, the Lion had vanished.
Lion El'Jonson—Lord of the First and son of the Emperor—had discovered something in a hidden star system. Without ceremony, he had activated a warp jump. In minutes, his entire fleet broke from the formation and vanished from the auspex arrays of the IX Legion.
The Blood Angels were left alone, drifting through the void—directionless.
Sanguinius clenched his teeth. "Mephiston," he said, voice low. "The channel ahead—he passed through there. Use the temporal augurs. Trace the trail. He must have found something. Maybe..."
He trailed off. Whatever conclusion he was about to voice, he kept it locked behind pale lips.
Mephiston noticed, but did not act on the order immediately. His brow furrowed as he turned to face his Primarch.
"Holy Father," Mephiston began cautiously, "I believe Lord El'Jonson acted with rational intent. I will, of course, carry out your will—but for the sake of your safety, allow me this boldness: What is our true mission?"
His tone was firm, bordering on insubordinate—but Mephiston no longer cared for protocol when it came to the Archangel's safety. The Chief Librarian's duty was absolute.
The disappearance of the Lion was abnormal. It reeked of peril. If a Primarch acted in such secrecy, it could only mean the danger was extraordinary—beyond even the expectations of transhuman warriors.
And yet, neither Sanguinius nor El'Jonson had disclosed the mission's true objective to the Blood Angels.
Sanguinius' golden eyes flickered. "It is a direct task from Lord Commander Dukel."
He offered no more.
"The nature of the task, Father," Mephiston pressed, voice sharp now.
A silence settled between them. Such forwardness would have meant death or censure from any other Primarch—but not from Sanguinius.
The Blood Angels knew no fear—not of pain, nor death, nor the warp. But Mephiston would see the Imperium burn before letting harm come to his gene-sire again.
Sanguinius studied his Chief Librarian. There was no anger—only quiet acknowledgment.
He knew the look in Mephiston's eyes: grim resolve. Without transparency, the efficiency of his Legion would degrade. But disclosure could invite other consequences—darker ones.
"You're troubled," Mephiston said quietly, lowering his tone. "Is my question an offense, Father?"
The Archangel remained silent for a time.
"No," Sanguinius said at last. "Perhaps… now is the time for honesty."
He turned to the Blood Angels assembled around them—Holy Blood Guard, Librarians, veteran sergeants.
"Dukel received intelligence… that the Arch-Traitor, Horus, may have returned. This mission, undertaken with Lion El'Jonson, was meant to verify the truth."
The words fell like thunder.
"lion departed so abruptly because he may have uncovered the critical clue. We concealed this knowledge at first—so as not to incite blind fury from the Blood Angels, rage that would cloud your judgment."
He paused. His voice faltered as he felt it—the sudden change in the air.
Around him, the warriors' eyes gleamed red. Mephiston's irises darkened with blood. The chamber pulsed with rage barely held in check.
Even now, even after millennia, the name Horus awakened deep, inherited fury in the sons of Baal. Rage that had never fully healed. Rage that would never forgive.
"Mephiston," Sanguinius asked, voice steady despite the change in the air. "You will remain rational… yes?"
"Please rest assured, Holy Father. We are very rational now," Mephiston replied, his bloodshot eyes gleaming. As he spoke, his lips parted slightly, revealing elongated fangs.
Young Sanguinius remained silent.
Soon after, the engines of the Blood Angels' fleet ignited with thunderous force, the roars of the awakened machine spirits echoing across the decks. Every ship in the flotilla pushed into overdrive, machinery screaming in communion, as the fleet surged forward through the void with unprecedented urgency.
They quickly locked onto a residual psychic signal—left behind by the Lion himself—and followed it through the stars.
Across the galactic dark, on the far edge of the void, the Dark Angels' battle-barge tore through the illusion of Caliban's forests, phasing into realspace.
Unlike the blood-fired wrath of the Blood Angels, the atmosphere aboard the First Legion's fleet was silent, oppressive, almost reverent. Even the engines seemed to hum more quietly, as if mourning what lay ahead.
Lion El'Jonson stood at the heart of the command deck, eyes fixed on the warriors before him—his sons, all veterans of the Great Crusade, relics of a time ten millennia past.
"This mission will bring us no remembrance, no glory," the Lion said quietly, his voice devoid of ceremony. "Our loyalty is its own reward."
He gave them a moment—if any wished to turn back, he would ask no questions.
Secrets within secrets. That is the nature of the First Legion. Angels who walk alone in the dark, forsaking light and triumph alike.
"We fear no sacrifice, my lord. Sacrifice is our calling," intoned the Angels of Absolution, kneeling with solemn conviction.
None withdrew.
"I won't ask again," the Lion said, nodding. His voice was like a sword being drawn—final, resolute.
They knew the stakes. This was no ordinary foe they approached, but Horus—the first son, the traitor Warmaster, long thought dead. And yet, perhaps not.
The Lion gazed downward toward the bridge crew. The murmur of servitors, the clipped orders of naval officers, the hum of cogitators—it was all so familiar.
And yet... alien.
Ten thousand years had passed. He had awoken into a world both unchanged and unrecognizable. The names of his brothers echoed in reverence and in infamy. The Imperium endured, but it was twisted, its soul hollowed.
He stood now beside the descendants of his sons, against the shade of his once-beloved brother.
Perhaps I have grown old, the Lion thought grimly. He cast aside the doubt, focusing his mind.
"Enemy fleet incoming," a vox-officer reported. "They're encircling us."
Small Chaos raiders broke formation, lunging ahead of their armada, hungry for glory—or madness.
Macrocannons and lance batteries blazed toward the Dark Angels' flagship, but they were repelled with ease. The First Legion's vessels—ancient, sanctified, and heavily modified under the guidance of Fabricator-General Dukel—shrugged off the enemy barrage like an old knight ignoring a drunkard's slap.
The deck crews worked with practiced discipline. Mortal serfs scurried in their assigned roles under the ever-watchful gaze of the Angels of Absolution, who enforced loyalty with silent authority.
"My lord, the light spear arrays are charged," a herald intoned, bowing.
"Fire," the Lion said, his voice calm as steel.
Red beams lanced out from the flanks of the fleet, carving lines across the void. Chaos vessels screamed silently as they were torn apart—some vanishing into ruptures of flame and implosion, others blasted into drifting wreckage.
One massive Chaos cruiser's reactor detonated. In a brief, blinding flash, it became a flower of light in the silence of space.
With the Lion's superior command and the unmatched craftsmanship of the fleet, the Chaos vessels were annihilated.
Next came the orbital defenses—gun platforms and automated bastions that ringed the system. One by one, they were eliminated with precision strikes.
Then came the descent.
The landing craft deployed, its engines burning toward the desecrated surface below. The Primarch and his most loyal knights prepared to enter the eye of the storm.
They had done this before.
They descended into a city not built, but grown—a biomechanical blight, the work of the Arch-Heretek, Fabius Bile. Massive, living organ-structures writhed across the landscape, pulsing like the insides of some diseased god.
Fabius was a genius. But he had become a thrall to his own brilliance—a mind severed from faith, creating abominations without restraint or remorse.
The city held no vegetation, only rows of organ-vats filled with churning, half-formed tissue.
It was not a place of life, but of mockery.
Lion moved forward with grim determination. He knew—Fabius was here.
They were met first by twisted horrors—emaciated slaves and bio-fused monsters, each a testimony to Fabius's grotesque obsession with life's perversion.
And still, the Lion pressed forward.
Fabius Bile had created these abominations and left them to rot.
Under the twisted reverence of these creatures, a projection of Fabius himself emerged in the dark recesses of the Imperium's supreme hells.
But these monstrous creations were no match for the might of the Primarch and his Dark Angels.
Each time the warriors of the First Legion moved through the corridors of this profane city, the stench of decay and blood would follow in their wake. Limbs were torn asunder with brutal efficiency, and not an ounce of mercy was spared.
A Lion does not feel sympathy for the weak.
The Dark Angels fought with their unyielding, ruthless style, slaughtering the mutated horrors that crossed their path and shattering the defenses laid by Fabius with brutal precision.
Under Lion's leadership, the warriors of the Dark Angels were an unstoppable force—wisdom and strength beyond imagination guided them as they pressed forward.
The mutants fell before them—fangs were snapped, horns shattered, and grotesque pus oozed from broken bodies. The air was filled with the sounds of tortured shrieks as broken flesh littered the floor.
Nothing could halt their advance.
Soon, they arrived at the heart of the nightmare: Fabius's laboratory.
It was a macabre masterpiece, a place where biology and machinery had been fused into an abominable horror. Flesh and blood were suspended in grotesque arrangements on the walls, with bright red blood staining the cold metal floor.
But the sight barely stirred the Dark Angels. They had seen far worse in their long lives. Such things were no longer a source of shock or revulsion for them.
With methodical precision, they cleared every obstacle in their path.
Finally, the last pockets of resistance emerged in Fabius's infernal laboratory.
This nightmarish domain, a twisted amalgamation of flesh, blood, and metal, reverberated with the sound of battle. The Lion led his sons forward, and an explosion ripped through the lab, obliterating anything in its path.
Glass shattered. Flesh exploded. Metal warped under the strain. The deformed organisms Fabius had created howled in agony as they were torn apart by the relentless firepower of the Dark Angels.
A violent explosion shook the very foundation of the laboratory, sending flames surging across the room. The inferno consumed the mutants in a searing blaze, reducing them to blackened husks.
And then, after pushing through the carnage, they found it—Fabius's final hiding place.
But as Lion's towering form entered the chamber, his unshakable composure faltered.
Here, in this final corner of darkness, he saw the face of one of the most notorious traitors of the Imperium, and for the first time, his heart—a heart hardened by ten millennia of war—felt something unrecognizable.
There, standing beside Fabius Bile, was a towering figure: a giant clad in ancient, battle-worn armor, his black cloak billowing behind him like a shroud.
Lion's voice was heavy with emotion he couldn't quite place.
"You are here indeed," he murmured, his tone carrying a weight that neither time nor war could erase. Even he couldn't quite identify what surged within him as he spoke that name.
"Horus."
And there, in the shadows of that forsaken laboratory, stood the last face he ever wanted to see again.
...
TN:
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