Upon the planet of Holy Terra, sacred homeworld of the Human race and beating, gold-encrusted heart of the Imperium of Man, in the dense hive-city surrounding the Imperial Palace, nestled within a monumental hab-block that towered several kilometers high, there was a small, dim, rather inconspicuous room. Within this room was a scribe of the Administratum, the byzantine organization responsible for the Imperium's near-infinite supply of bureaucracy. Amadeus Pynchon loved his work, regardless of how many of the Imperium's loyal citizens looked upon his profession with distaste or even horror. Right now, he was carefully transcribing a tax record of some far-off planet in the Segmentum Obscurus that had only recently been brought back under Imperial rule by Lord Commander Guilliman's Indomitus Crusade. Some even in the Administratum had begun to complain about the immense strain put upon them by Guilliman's sweeping reforms and ambitious reconquests, but Amadeus relished the challenge. Why, today, he had challenged himself to transcribe twice as many tax records as yesterday! Not that he would be rewarded by his superiors of anything of that nature, though he considered his work rewarding enough on its own.
As he finished a line of writing, his finger-quill implant ran out of ink, and he instinctively reached for his inkwell. He dabbed just the right amount of ink onto the tip of his pen implant and returned to the document. Then something happened. His finger shook, causing a minute error in his penmanship. He nearly had a heart attack. How could he be so careless? How could he ruin his perfect record like this? No, it couldn't have been him. He had been a scribe for nearly 40 years, and never in his entire career had his pen implant ever slipped. Then he felt the table beneath him shaking. A few of his meager possessions began to rattle in his cupboards, and he heard ominous creaking coming from the walls around him. His fear of what was happening was about equal to his elation that he had not, in fact, made an error on his own, but that an outside factor had interceded and affected his work. He would still have to completely start over on the page he was working on, but this worried him little compared to his pride in his workmanship. Once the subtle shaking seemed to have subsided, he crumpled the page and reached for a fresh one to begin his work anew. Then a sudden tremor, much stronger than before, rippled through the hab-block. Dust fell from the walls, and his paper and inkwell tumbled onto the floor. Amadeus panicked, unsure of what was happening. Holy Terra had never experienced natural earthquakes since the foundation of the Imperium, what was happening was truly unprecedented. The scribe scrambled to his feet and peered out his window, overlooking several layers of the hive-city below. Imperial citizens were scrambling all across the Eternal City, looking for shelters from pieces of loose debris dislodged from the shaking. Buildings which had only begun to be repaired following the chaos caused by the opening of the Great Rift started to buckle, and mass panic began to break out. Then Amadeus looked up. His eyes widened in terror and his skin turned pale-white like a ghost.
The space around Holy Terra had erupted in a maelstrom of devastating warp storms. Battlefleet Solar had been deployed immediately, with fears of another chaotic invasion of the Sol System such as the one Magnus the Red had recently attempted. Battleships and cruisers were scrambled across every kilometer of the system, yet no enemy ships could be found. The Astra Militarum, Inquisition, Sororitas, Imperial Fists, and even the Officio Assassinorum had been put on high alert, though no traces of demonic activity were recorded anywhere on Terra, only panicked and frightened civilians. Inside the Imperial Palace, it was a different story.
Deep within the walls of the Imperial Palace, past the heavily reinforced walls and structural defenses, under several kilometers of solid rock, the Sanctum Imperialis was shaking.
The custodes had been fully mobilized, scouring every inch of the Imperial Palace for any sign of… anything, really. In truth, the Custodes had absolutely no idea what was happening. That was extremely worrying to Trajann Valoris. Even more worrying was that the two companions which had been assigned to guard the Sanctum Imperialis were not responding. Without hesitation, Trajann rushed towards the location of the Golden Throne with a host of the most elite warriors of the Adeptus Custodes following close behind. After rushing through the mile-long hall which led to the inner chamber at blinding speed, Trajann himself pushed open the immense doors of the Eternity Gate with his bare hands. He was unprepared for what he saw inside.
The two companions, silent, motionless sentinels of the Emperor's throne, the most diligently trained guardians in the entire galaxy, were writhing upon the floor. Their helmets were removed, and they clutched their heads. Rivulets of blood were pouring out of their ears, eyes, noses, and mouths. But the two debilitated Custodes barely registered in Trajann's mind. His attention was solely drawn to one thing. He had seen the Emperor before. His lifeless corpse, wrapped in cybernetics to prolong his life, chained to the arcane mechanism of the Golden Throne which kept him alive through techno-sorcery, and wreathed in the dim glow of the Astronomican which represented what little of the Emperor's soul remained in his body. It was a solemn, gloomy sight, one which every Custodes burned into their heart. This was not what Trajann saw. If he were not a Custodes with genetically near-perfect eyesight and corneas designed to endure the light of an atomic explosion from close-range, he likely would have seen nothing but white light - or more likely his eyes would have evaporated in their sockets.
The Emperor's body was wreathed in an impossibly bright, golden-white flame, one which encompassed most of the stadium-sized chamber. He felt its intense heat searing his face, burning his skin at the same rate his supernaturally-fast healing rate could replace them. What Trajann saw within the flame did something which should have been, by all metrics, impossible.
It scared him.
The Emperor was screaming. His dead flesh was moving, his preserved skeletal structure twisting and contorting as if struggling to be released. His mouth was wide open, and though his vocal chords had long since rotted away, the psychic shockwave caused a single word to ring through Trajann's mind as clear as a day.
BETRAYAL