It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.
Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. It is also the story of another, where truth runs through taloned hands and fleshcrafted demigods war for the fate of the human soul. The new age which will be born lies undefined in the hearts of the people who shape it, but when the suns set on the ancient world, and the fires burn out, there will still be one more story left to tell. One last tale to make the blood run cold, one last lie to destroy the hopes of mankind forever...
AN: Greetings all. This is a mirror of a fic by the same name, by me, on AO3. This story will be updated to reach the current state of the fic, through it may fall behind by a chapter on occasion.
Earlier chapters are, as noted by me on AO3, lower quality. They will be updated before the concluding arc is published.