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Chapter I
The void was silent.
Not the silence of peace, nor the stillness of empty space, but the suffocating hush of something long forgotten. A region of nothingness, abandoned by time, where the shadows of the warp curled inward like dead things clinging to existence. For ten millennia, this fragment of the Immaterium had swallowed all who dared venture into it, a ghostly abyss with no return.
Then, against all reason, it split open.
Reality shuddered. A wound tore through the fabric of space, not with the violent, chaotic maelstrom of a typical warp breach, but something colder, cleaner. The warp recoiled, its currents scattering like vermin before fire. A crackling edge of frost formed along the edges of the rift, ice crystallizing in the vacuum of space where no such thing should exist. The stars flickered, their distant light momentarily dimmed as the abyssal rift exhaled.
A fleet emerged.
Not in the violent, agonized fashion of Imperial ships forced through the torment of the Empyrean, but with an eerie precision—an unnatural smoothness. Their hulls were obsidian, vast and ominous, as if carved from the void itself. Black monoliths of war, untouched by the corruption that gnawed at the Imperium's fleets. Each bore the markings of an age thought lost, a sigil erased from history: The Void Legion.
At their head, a dreadnought of unparalleled scale. A battle barge like none in the Imperium, its angular structure adorned with a single, unbroken eye, painted in stark white. It was a symbol of something impossible. Something that should not be.
It was the Abyssus Rex—the flagship of a Primarch long thought dead.
Within the darkened halls of the ship, the air was unnaturally still. No trace of incense, no lingering psionic hum, no static charge of warp-born influence. The ship's machine spirit was calm, untroubled by the tumult of the galaxy outside. Every cogitator screen glowed with the same message, running in endless repetition:
Reintegration Protocol Initiated. System Status: Nominal. Awaiting Primarch's Command.
Deep within the bridge, figures stood in silent vigil. They were warriors, clad in obsidian plate, their forms imposing even in stillness. Their armor bore no embellishments, no ostentatious symbols of honor, only the cold efficiency of war. Their helmets were smooth, featureless save for a single dark slit where eyes should be.
These were Astartes of the Second Legion—the lost sons of the Emperor.
And at their center, he stood.
Solas.
He had not aged. Not in the way his brothers had. His features were impossibly sharp, sculpted by something beyond mere genetics. His skin was pale—not the pallor of decay, but something utterly devoid of the warp's taint. His armor, like his sons', was midnight black, yet it shimmered with an unnatural absence of light, as if it rejected the universe's touch.
Solas exhaled. The sound was slight, but in the silent bridge, it was like a whisper against stone.
"Where are we?" His voice was smooth, but with an undertone of something unnatural, something that made even his own warriors stiffen.
A figure stepped forward—a mortal among demigods. His robes were a deep navy, embroidered with symbols of logic and precision. A sigil of the Mechanicum, though stripped of its usual devotion to the Omnissiah.
Magos-Executor Valen inclined his head. "We have returned, my lord," he said, his voice mechanized but reverent. "Segmentum Ultima. The Macragge System. Your orders?"
Solas said nothing at first. He stepped forward, the soft sound of his armored boots breaking the heavy quiet. His gaze moved to the central viewport, where the distant glow of Ultramar's core worlds pulsed against the void.
He could feel it.
The warp trembled. Not in fear, but in recognition. It recoiled from him, pulling back like a wounded beast. He had spent an eternity in its depths, in that abyss of silence, beyond the reach of time and gods. Now, the universe felt different. Wrong. The air itself was laced with corruption. The distant hum of the Astronomican, once a beacon, now flickered like a dying flame.
The Imperium was rotting.
His fingers curled into a slow fist.
"This galaxy has not changed," he murmured, more to himself than to his warriors. "It is still dying."
His second-in-command, Legion Master Dain, stepped forward, his voice steady. "Then it is as you foresaw, my lord. The Imperium did not endure."
Solas exhaled slowly. His thoughts were unreadable, locked behind those void-black eyes.
"No," he said at last. "It did not."
A moment of silence passed between them, heavy with meaning. The gathered warriors knew what this meant. Ten thousand years had passed since they were last in realspace. The Imperium they had been created to serve had long since fallen into stagnation and ruin. Their father, the Emperor, was nothing more than a rotting corpse on a throne of lies.
And yet, something else was here.
Something powerful.
A presence that flickered on the edge of his perception—not through the warp, for he could not touch it as his brothers did, but through something deeper. A resonance in the fabric of reality itself.
One of his own was here.
Solas turned his gaze toward the largest world in the system. Macragge.
"Guilliman," he said, tasting the name like a relic from a forgotten age.
His estranged brother lived. That alone was unexpected. But there was something else. A lingering stain. The taint of something beyond the material.
Solas' gaze darkened.
"What have you done, brother?" he murmured.
The battle over Macragge was a thing of fire and ruin.
The void above the Ultramar system was choked with wreckage, shattered hulls drifting lifelessly, the bodies of fallen Astartes and mortal crew frozen in the vacuum. The XIIth Black Crusade had come with fury, and the Ultramarines were bleeding.
The Black Legion's fleet, a vast congregation of corrupted battle-barges and daemon-infested cruisers, moved like a predator circling wounded prey. Great spires of obsidian warships pulsed with the malevolent glow of the warp, their void shields flickering with unnatural energy as tendrils of empyric lightning crackled across the battlefield. The Will of Abaddon, a monstrous ship twice the size of the largest Imperial battle-barge, loomed at the heart of the invasion force.
On the other side of the war, the Ultramarines fought and died.
Marneus Calgar stood on the bridge of the Fortress of Hera, his armored form rigid with focus. His gauntleted hands gripped the edge of the grand hololithic display, its surface flickering with real-time tactical data. His face, lined from centuries of war, was set in grim determination as he watched the Black Legion press forward, their darkened ships pouring hellfire into the remnants of the Ultramar fleet.
They were losing.
Even with the full might of Ultramar, even with every available ship from the Segmentum Tempestus converging on Macragge, the Black Legion was relentless. Every lost vessel on their side was another step toward the inevitable, another crack in the foundation of the Imperium.
And Guilliman… Guilliman still lay in stasis.
His gene-father, the Avenging Son, the only being who could turn the tide of this war, remained locked within his deathless sleep in the Temple of Hera. Cawl and his wretched experiments were close to awakening him, but time was running out. If the Fortress fell before Guilliman returned, Macragge would be lost.
A burst of vox-static interrupted his thoughts.
"My Lord!" A junior officer at the sensorium console turned sharply, his eyes wide with barely contained panic. "A new warp emergence! An entire fleet, bearing down on the battle from the galactic north! It's… it's enormous."
Calgar's heart hardened.
Another fleet? Now?
For a moment, a terrible certainty gripped him. He imagined a second traitor fleet emerging from the Immaterium, a fresh tide of iron and madness descending upon them like wolves scenting blood. If another Chaos warhost had arrived, then they were already dead.
"Confirm identification," Calgar ordered, keeping his voice steady.
The bridge crew worked frantically, cogitators spitting out streams of conflicting data as they struggled to classify the impossible.
"Ships are… Imperial-class," the officer said hesitantly, his voice filled with uncertainty. "But their signatures are… unregistered. No match in any archive."
Calgar frowned. "Impossible. Every warship of the Imperium is recorded in the Lex Ultima."
"There's more, my lord," the officer said, swallowing hard. "They bear a heraldry I— I don't recognize."
The hololithic display flickered, and an image was pulled from the void—the symbol marked on the largest of the newly arrived vessels.
At first, Calgar thought his mind was playing tricks on him. It was not the Eye of Horus, not the sigil of Chaos, nor the markings of any known Imperial faction.
It was a single, stark, white eye—featureless, watching.
A symbol that should not exist. A symbol that had been erased from history.
Calgar's breath caught in his throat.
"No…" he whispered.
"Lord Calgar?" One of his Honor Guard turned to him, confused.
"Impossible," Calgar said, louder this time. His armored fingers clenched into a fist. He forced himself to focus, to push aside the weight of disbelief. And yet… there was no denying it. The ships that had emerged from the warp bore the sigil of the Second Legion. A Legion that had been purged from memory. A Legion that should not exist. A Legion whose name was never spoken.
And yet here they were.
He turned to the sensorium officer. "Open a channel," he ordered, urgency in his tone now.
"My lord—" the officer hesitated, looking at the readings. "They are not responding."
Calgar stared at the holographic projection. The fleet was vast, larger than any Imperial force he had seen outside of the Indomitus Crusade. Black ships, moving with eerie precision, no warp turbulence, no psychic signatures, no chaotic interference.
A fleet of ghosts.
And then— they moved.
Like a tide of shadows, the Void Legion cut toward the battle. Their formation was perfect, maneuvering with machine-like coordination, unburdened by the warp's pull. Their speed was unnatural, their approach a calculated strike rather than a desperate warp emergence.
A new vox burst from the frontlines.
"Unidentified fleet has entered battle space! They are— Emperor's breath— they're opening fire on the Black Legion!"
Calgar stiffened.
He watched as the first barrage of fire erupted from the Void Legion's vessels. But there was no lance fire, no standard macro-battery fire, no explosive plasma torpedoes. Instead, their weapons shredded through the Black Legion's vessels like a scalpel through flesh.
There was no warp interference, no explosion of energy or empyric backwash. The ships simply ceased to function.
As if they had been cut away from reality itself.
Calgar turned toward his Honor Guard. "I want every record of this transmission preserved," he ordered. "Every detail logged. If this is real, then we are witnessing—"
He stopped.
Because suddenly, something else changed.
For the first time in the battle, the warp itself shuddered.
The maelstrom surrounding the Black Legion's fleet flickered, as if something unnatural had stepped into its domain. The empyric storms that had churned above Macragge began to recede, as if retreating from an unseen force.
The Black Legion's warships reeled, their formations breaking, their fleet suddenly disoriented. The battle over Macragge changed in an instant. Where once the Black Legion had pressed forward with unrelenting savagery, their warships now reeled, faltering beneath an onslaught they could not understand. The newly arrived fleet did not fight like Imperial ships, nor like the traitors who had ravaged the Imperium for ten millennia.
They moved without hesitation, without the telltale lag of mortal decision-making. There was no erratic maneuvering, no desperate shifts in formation—only cold, calculated movements, as if every step of the battle had already been decided.
And their weapons… their weapons were something else entirely.
Calgar stood frozen on the bridge of the Fortress of Hera, his gaze locked onto the hololithic display. The Void Legion's firepower was beyond anything the Imperium had seen before.
There were no warp-based munitions, no volatile plasma detonations, no psychic lances or empyric interference. Instead, their weapons disassembled.
A spread of obsidian-colored beams lanced across the battlefield. But instead of exploding or ripping through armor in conventional means, they silenced their targets.
The first wave struck the Harbinger of Despair, a massive Black Legion cruiser that had slaughtered thousands of Ultramarines in the early stages of the battle. The moment it was hit, the ship's warp-tainted armor corroded, blackened, and then simply ceased to exist. There was no explosion. No fire.
The ship went dark.
Cogitators aboard the Ultramarine vessels struggled to understand what they were seeing. It was as if the Black Legion ship had been erased—its power core inert, its daemonic essence obliterated. The Harbinger of Despair drifted, its once-living metal now lifeless, its daemons screaming into the void as their connection to the warp was severed.
The Void Legion's fleet did not stop.
More black ships cut into the heart of the Black Legion, each strike of their weapons unmaking their prey. The Maelstrom Reaver, a blasphemous war-barge that had led the first wave of the invasion, was next to fall. Its shields were torn away like paper, its hull disassembling piece by piece until nothing remained but a husk.
The Black Legion faltered.
For the first time since the battle began, they hesitated.
They were masters of war, veterans of ten thousand years of conflict, warlords of the damned who had butchered their way through Imperial space with abandon.
But this?
This was not war.
This was annihilation.
And it terrified them.
Abaddon's fleet, once the pinnacle of the Warmaster's might in this crusade, now began to retract, pulling back toward the outer edges of the system.
"The traitors are falling back," came the voice of Fleet Captain Voryn, his tone filled with disbelief.
Calgar's hands clenched into fists as he stared at the unfathomable scene unfolding before him. For hours, they had been dying, their forces overwhelmed by the might of the Black Legion's war machine. And now, in the span of mere minutes, the tide had turned. The void was now littered with the corpses of traitor vessels, while the remaining warships scrambled to escape. One by one, the Black Legion activated their warp drives, disappearing into the abyss from which they had come. Within moments, the sky above Macragge was clear.
They had won.
But not by their own hands.
Silence filled the bridge of the Fortress of Hera. The Ultramar fleet was stunned.
One moment, they had been at the edge of destruction.
The next, their enemies were fleeing into the warp like hunted beasts.
It was unnatural.
It was impossible.
Calgar exhaled, steadying himself. He turned toward the vox officer. "Open a channel to the unidentified fleet," he ordered.
A nod. A moment later, the bridge was filled with the static hum of the open transmission.
"This is Marneus Calgar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines," he said, his voice even but commanding. "To the fleet in orbit, identify yourselves. You have entered an Imperial warzone. Respond immediately."
Silence.
Only the faint crackle of vox distortion echoed back.
Calgar gestured for another attempt.
"I repeat—this is Marneus Calgar of the Ultramarines. Identify yourselves."
Still, no answer.
The bridge crew exchanged uneasy glances. Why weren't they responding?
Calgar studied the vast fleet now hanging in orbit over Macragge. They made no move toward aggression, no attempt to establish dominance.
And yet, they remained silent.
In the void above Macragge, the black fleet lingered.
Their largest vessel, the Abyssus Rex, loomed like an eclipse, its shadow stretching across the surface of the planet below. It was larger than any known Imperial battle-barge, its structure ancient yet pristine—unmarked by time or war.
And somewhere within its darkened corridors, a figure stood.
Solas watched from the observation deck, his eyes—those terrible, empty voids—fixed on the planet below.
Macragge.
The world of his brother.
His expression did not change. There was no relief, no anger, no triumph. Only stillness.
Behind him, Legion Master Dain approached.
"The Black Legion has retreated," Dain stated. His voice was emotionless, efficient. "The Ultramarines are attempting contact."
Solas did not turn. "I know."
Dain hesitated. "Shall I open a response channel?"
A long silence.
Then, finally, Solas spoke.
"No."
Dain did not question the decision. He had served his Primarch for centuries—longer than mortal reckoning could comprehend. Solas will was absolute.
"What are your orders?" Dain asked.
Solas exhaled slowly.
For ten thousand years, his Legion had slept in the void. They had watched. They had waited.
Now, the galaxy had forgotten them.
And yet, the Imperium was more broken than he had left it.
His father's great empire of order had become a rotting corpse, sustained only by superstition and ignorance.
The Imperium did not endure.
And Guilliman—his brother—had not yet awakened.
Solas turned from the viewport, his expression unreadable.
"Hold position," he said. "Observe. Do not engage."
Dain bowed his head. "As you command."
Solas stepped forward, deeper into the darkened corridors of his ship, his footfalls silent.
The bridge of the Fortress of Hera was silent, save for the soft hum of cogitators processing data that should not exist.
Marneus Calgar stood at the hololithic display, his battle-worn hands tightening against the edge of the console. His mind, honed by centuries of war, was struggling to reconcile what he was seeing. The ships in orbit—they should not be here. They could not exist.
The Second Legion.
He had read of them only in whispers. Only in redacted records.
Ten thousand years ago, during the Emperor's Great Crusade, there had been twenty Legions. Yet, only eighteen remained. The Second and Eleventh had been erased, not merely forgotten, but utterly removed from the Imperium's history. Their names never spoken, their deeds never recorded. Even among the Ultramarines, who inherited many of their lost brothers' recruits and assets, there had never been a single mention of who they truly were.
And yet…
Here they were.
Ships bearing their heraldry, descending into lower orbit over Macragge. Calgar's mind raced. If the Second Legion still lived, then why had they never returned? Were they loyal? Or were they something else entirely?
His thoughts snapped back to reality as a new alert flashed across the hololithic display. His breath caught. Hundreds of drop pods were launching from the void-black ships, streaking down toward the surface.
He turned sharply to the sensorium officer. "Tracking their descent path. Where are they landing?"
A brief pause as the officer's fingers worked across the console. Then, the answer:
"All across the battle line, my lord."
Calgar's heart pounded like a war drum.
The View from the Ground
The battlefield on Macragge was a broken hellscape of war.
The Black Legion and Ultramarines had been locked in brutal conflict for hours, both sides entrenched, neither willing to cede ground. Bodies of the fallen were scattered across the ruins, loyalist and traitor alike, their armor slick with gore.
Then—the sky burned.
Both sides saw the incoming drop pods, descending like a storm of falling meteors, trails of fire cutting across the smoke-choked sky.
For a single, fragile moment, both sides hesitated.
Each believed it to be their own reinforcements.
The Black Legion's Perspective
Lord Khalzar the Unbroken watched from the shattered remains of an Imperial fortification, his Terminator armor drenched in the blood of Ultramarines. He had been fighting at the forefront of the assault, slaughtering his way through the blue-clad loyalists, his power axe singing with dark energy.
Yet now, he had stopped.
His glowing, corrupted eyes were fixed on the hundreds of descending pods.
Reinforcements.
His lips curled into a feral grin.
"So the Warmaster has not forgotten us," he growled, his voice like grinding stone.
It made sense. The Imperium had fought bitterly, but they were crumbling. The Black Legion had been winning. The Warmaster's gaze had surely turned upon Macragge, and now, fresh warriors of the Long War had come to deliver the final blow.
"Prepare to receive our brothers!" Khalzar roared to his warriors. "Macragge is ours by sundown!"
A chorus of cheers and cruel laughter rippled through the ranks of the Black Legion. The tide was turning in their favor.
Or so they thought.
The Ultramarines Perspective
Sergeant Tiberius, a veteran of countless wars, was dug into the ruins of an old manufactorum. His squad had been holding this position for hours, their bolters nearly overheated from the constant slaughter of traitors pressing their way.
His brothers were bloodied, armor dented, ammo running low. But they still stood.
Then he saw the drop pods descending.
For a single heartbeat, hope swelled in his chest.
Reinforcements. Loyalist reinforcements.
The Imperium had answered their call for aid. Perhaps a fleet from Terra, perhaps reinforcements from another Chapter. It did not matter. The God-Emperor provided.
"The Imperium endures!" One of his squadmates, Brother Orlan, shouted.
Tiberius tightened his grip on his bolter, feeling the righteous fury of Guilliman's sons ignite anew.
They would hold.
Macragge would not fall.
Not today.
The first drop pods slammed into the battlefield.
The Black Legion surged forward to greet their supposed reinforcements.
The Ultramarines braced, believing salvation had come.
The hatches opened.
And both sides realized the terrible, crushing truth.
They did not know who had arrived.
The warriors who emerged were not Ultramarines.
But neither were they Black Legion.
They were something else.
Tall, armored figures stepped onto the battlefield, their forms encased in black ceramite. Their armor bore no Imperial Aquila, no sigil of Chaos, only the unbroken white eye of the void.
Their helmets were smooth, featureless save for a single darkened visor, their weapons unlike anything on the field.
They did not speak.
They did not hesitate.
And then—they opened fire.
Lord Khalzar saw the first volley. It was not bolter fire, nor plasma, nor any weapon of the Imperium.
The Black Legion warriors nearest the landing zones were cut down in an instant, their bodies not merely torn apart, but silenced. Their warp-tainted flesh blackened and withered, their very essence severed from the universe.
Khalzar felt it, deep in his marrow.
This was not the Emperor's power.
This was not the Warmaster's will.
This was something older. Something colder.
And for the first time in centuries, he felt fear.
The Ultramarines Perspective
Sergeant Tiberius saw the Black Legion fall, and at first, relief flooded him.
Then he looked closer.
The warriors who had descended from orbit did not cheer, did not call out in the name of the Emperor.
They did not signal their allegiance.
They simply moved forward, weapons raised, advancing like ghosts upon the battlefield.
Tiberius felt a cold chill seep into his bones.
Then the realization struck.
He had no idea who they were.
In the Skies Above
Marneus Calgar watched as his world was engulfed in the unknown.
The fleet above Macragge had already defied reason.
But now—now they had made planetfall. And not a single vox transmission had been sent.
No declaration.
No allegiance.
Just the cold, unstoppable march of an army that should not exist.
Calgar took a slow breath, his mind racing. He had fought countless wars. But this?
This was something beyond war.
His hands clenched into fists.
Whoever these warriors were—whatever their purpose—he would find out.
The deck beneath Marneus Calgar trembled as he strode toward the launch bay. His mind was a storm of questions, but no answers came. His armor, marked with scars of countless battles, felt heavier than usual.
He had seen the impossible today.
And it was still unfolding.
His pace quickened.
The cold, clinical efficiency of the Ultramarines' fleet was in stark contrast to the raw, unexplainable presence of the ships that now loomed over Macragge. They should not be here. Their heraldry should not exist, their tactics should not be possible, and their warriors—whoever they were—should not have descended in silence, not into a warzone, not without explanation.
But they had.
Hundreds of drop pods had landed, and now—whatever they were, whoever they were—they were marching across Macragge.
And they were killing the Black Legion.
The Black Legion—who had, just minutes ago, been poised to overrun the Ultramarines—were being slaughtered with precision that even the Adeptus Astartes could not match. Their warriors were being erased. Cut down in ways that Calgar still could not comprehend.
The Black Legion had thought them to be reinforcements from the Warmaster.
The Ultramarines had thought them to be reinforcements from the Imperium.
Now, both sides knew the truth.
They did not know who had arrived.
And that was the most terrifying thing of all.
Calgar's thoughts were sharp, his battle-honed mind working through every possible scenario as he stepped onto the open deck of the Stormbird waiting for him in the launch bay. His Honor Guard followed in silence, their armor pristine despite the grim circumstances.
He had fought xenos horrors, had stood against the traitor legions, had battled tyrants, warlords, and warpspawn alike.
But this?
This was beyond anything he had prepared for.
And now, there was only one course of action.
Protect his Primarch.
The heavy assault craft roared as it lifted from the launch bay, its thrusters burning white-hot as it cut through the upper atmosphere. The weight of gravity pulled against Calgar's armor, but he remained still, his massive form anchored against the inertia.
Outside the reinforced viewport, Macragge stretched beneath him, a war-torn battlefield of blood and steel. The Black Legion, once unstoppable, were now on the defensive—retreating, confused, unable to comprehend the force that had struck them.
But what unnerved Calgar the most was the way the newcomers advanced.
They did not move with the frenzied brutality of the Black Legion, nor with the proud defiance of the Imperium's warriors.
They moved like inevitability itself.
A silent march.
Perfect, unbroken formations.
No battle cries. No declarations of loyalty to the Emperor. No calls for vengeance against Chaos.
Just methodical annihilation.
As if the outcome had already been decided.
Who were they?
Calgar's gauntleted hands tightened into fists.
"Ten minutes to surface," came the voice of the pilot over the internal vox.
Calgar nodded, his expression unreadable beneath his helm.
He had one objective now—reach the Temple of Hera.
Guilliman's stasis chamber was there, deep within the Fortress of Hera. He was locked within an ancient sarcophagus of preservation, unmoving, untouched for centuries.
But the battle was getting closer to his position.
And Calgar would not allow his Lord to fall.
Not while he still drew breath.
The walls of the Temple of Hera trembled with the impact of artillery fire. The Black Legion had not given up.
Marneus Calgar stood at the base of the grand steps leading into the sanctum, his fists clenched as he surveyed the chaos unfolding around him. The air was thick with smoke, the acrid scent of promethium and charred ceramite clawing at the senses. The dying screams of battle-brothers and traitors alike echoed across the war-torn courtyard.
The enemy was closing in from all sides.
The Temple of Hera was the last bastion in this battle. The final stronghold of Guilliman's legacy, where the Avenging Son himself lay entombed in stasis. If the Black Legion took it—all was lost.
Calgar refused to allow that to happen.
A massive explosion erupted just beyond the outer barricades, sending a rain of molten rockcrete and shattered ceramite in all directions. More traitors were coming.
From the shattered ruins beyond the temple walls, wave after wave of Black Legionnaires emerged, their black and gold armor gleaming in the dim light of the fires surrounding them. They moved like a relentless tide, undeterred by the bodies of their fallen brothers littering the ground.
They howled their curses against the False Emperor, their bolters roaring in furious retaliation against the Ultramarines dug in around the temple's perimeter.
Calgar's vox crackled with urgent transmissions.
"The bastards won't stop, my lord! We've lost the eastern barricade!"
"Repositioning heavy bolters— Emperor's mercy, they just keep coming!"
"We're running low on ammunition— Brother Tarvios is down!"
Calgar turned his gaze toward the outer walls, where his brothers fought tooth and nail to repel the encroaching horde.
The Ultramarines were outnumbered.
But they would not break.
Not here. Not now.
"Form ranks! Hold your ground!" Calgar roared over the vox, his voice cutting through the chaos like a thunderclap.
His warriors answered without hesitation, moving like the flawless machine of war Guilliman had forged them into.
Bolters barked in disciplined volleys, their rounds slamming into the traitors storming up the steps. Explosive bolts tore into corrupted ceramite, sending shattered bodies tumbling back down the incline.
Calgar himself was a force of nature.
His Gauntlets of Ultramar crackled with raw energy as he met the enemy head-on, his blows pulverizing traitor Astartes in a single strike.
A Black Legionnaire in Terminator plate came at him with a lightning claw, his corrupted blade slashing toward Calgar's throat—only to be met with a bone-shattering counterpunch.
The traitor's helmet crumpled inward, his skull reduced to paste before he even hit the ground.
Another charged from the side, swinging a chainaxe in a savage arc—Calgar caught the weapon mid-swing, his armored fingers crushing the adamantium teeth before driving his other fist into the warrior's chest.
The traitor's ribcage collapsed like a brittle shell, his lifeless form flung aside.
More of them came.
And Calgar stood firm.
Behind him, the Temple's gates had been reinforced with makeshift barricades—fallen statues, shattered Rhino hulls, and wreckage from the battle itself.
Heavy bolters thundered, cutting down traitors in droves. Plasma cannons hissed as they unleashed searing bursts of energy, reducing entire squads to smoking ruins.
Yet, the Black Legion was relentless.
They climbed over the bodies of their own dead, pushing forward with hatred alone.
An Ultramarine fell to Calgar's right, his chest torn open by a bolt-round.
Another was ripped apart by a power sword, his dying scream lost in the cacophony of war.
Calgar felt the weight of every fallen brother, but he did not falter. His gauntlets dripped with the gore of traitors. His every step forward crushed another heretic beneath his boots.
From the smoke, a towering figure emerged.
Lord Vortagar, a warlord of the Black Legion, strode forward, his armor marked with the sigils of the Long War. His power mace crackled with empyric fire, his warped features twisted into a cruel grin.
Calgar turned to face him.
"I will break you, whelp of Guilliman!" Vortagar roared, raising his mace high.
Calgar met his charge head-on.
The two warriors clashed, power fields shrieking as the Gauntlets of Ultramar met the corrupted steel of the warlord's weapon.
Vortagar swung with monstrous strength, his blows fueled by the malevolent whispers of the Warp.
Calgar blocked, countered, and struck back, his fists hammering into the traitor's armor with enough force to crack ceramite.
They fought like titans, each blow enough to shatter lesser warriors.
And all around them, the battle raged on.
More Black Legionnaires poured forward, their numbers seemingly endless.
The Ultramarines were holding—but for how much longer?
Inside the temple, Cawl and his tech-priests worked feverishly.
They had no time left.
If Guilliman did not rise soon, the Temple of Hera would fall.
And with it, the future of the Imperium.
The battlefield had been a storm of violence, a cacophony of bolter fire, roaring chainswords, and the agonized screams of the dying. Then, suddenly, it stopped.
A stillness fell over the Temple of Hera.
Calgar felt it before he understood it.
It was not a lull in the battle. It was something else.
The Black Legion had ceased their attack.
Their warriors, who had moments ago been clawing, hacking, killing with furious devotion, now froze where they stood.
Some faltered mid-strike, lowering their weapons as if caught in some unseen force. Others staggered back, heads twisting toward the sky, confusion radiating from their battered forms.
Calgar's own warriors hesitated as well. The sudden retreat of the enemy made no sense.
Then he heard it.
A low, droning hum in the air, so deep it could barely be registered. Not mechanical, not psychic—something else. A presence.
The air itself felt thicker.
Heavy.
Then the Thunderhawk appeared.
Calgar turned his head toward the sound of approaching thrusters. Through the haze of war, a single black Thunderhawk descended, its armored hull devoid of markings, its design eerily perfect, as if it had never known the scars of war or the passage of time.
It glided into position just outside the temple, lowering itself with a grace that no Thunderhawk should have. Its descent was smooth, deliberate, unnatural—as if the weight of reality itself had bent to accommodate its presence.
The Black Legion broke completely.
Not just retreating—they were fleeing.
Hardened traitor Astartes, warriors who had stood uncowed against the horrors of the Warp, who had slaughtered their way across the Imperium for ten thousand years, were now running for their lives.
It was not out of strategy.
It was not a tactical withdrawal.
It was fear.
Sheer, undeniable terror.
Calgar had fought the Black Legion countless times. He had seen them fight to the last man, laughing even as their bodies were torn apart, knowing that death in service to Chaos was only the beginning.
But this?
They were abandoning their fallen, their weapons, their wounded. They were trying to escape, their movements desperate, animalistic—as if merely being here was now unbearable.
Calgar's blood ran cold.
What could make the Black Legion flee like this?
The Thunderhawk's boarding ramp began to lower.
A hiss of pressurized air filled the silence.
Calgar felt his breath hitch. The figure stepping onto the battlefield was a giant.
No.
More than a giant.
He was at least two heads taller than Guilliman, perhaps more. His form was impossibly broad, his armor a seamless abyss of midnight-black ceramite, smooth yet dense, giving off a presence that should not exist.
His footsteps made no sound.
No impact on the earth.
As if he was walking through the battlefield without being part of it.
His helm was featureless, void-like, save for a single pale marking—a white eye, stark and unbroken, watching the world without emotion.
His pauldrons were wider than any Astartes', his armored gauntlets resting at his sides. He carried no visible weapons. No sigil of loyalty. No hint of allegiance to the Emperor or the Warmaster.
And yet—his presence was absolute.
He moved without hesitation, without urgency, yet his every step brought him closer to the Temple of Hera.
Toward Calgar.
Toward Guilliman.
Calgar watched in stunned silence as the Black Legionaries closest to the giant simply… imploded.
Not disintegrated.
Not obliterated by weapons or warp fire.
They collapsed inward upon themselves, armor crumpling, flesh and bone compacting into nothingness, as if the very force that bound them together ceased to exist.
A warrior in corrupted Terminator plate raised his bolter in defiance—and was gone before he could pull the trigger.
A Black Legion sergeant tried to run, but the moment he crossed the threshold of fifty meters from the giant, his body folded into itself, vanishing into the cold air.
There was no light. No warp energy.
Just absence.
The war-cries of the Black Legion had turned to horrified shrieks, their retreat becoming a rout. Some dropped their weapons entirely, others fell to their knees, clawing at their helmets as if trying to escape from their own bodies.
And still, the giant walked forward.
Unshaken.
Unchallenged.
Unstoppable.
Calgar felt a weight settle over him, something he had not felt in centuries.
Not battle-weariness. Not doubt.
Something deeper.
Something primal.
And for the first time since the battle began, a thought—an impossible, irrational thought—crept into his mind.
This is not human.
This is not Astartes.
This is something else.
And it was walking straight toward him.
Calgar's mind screamed for action, for logic, for anything to explain what was happening. Yet all he could do was brace himself.
The giant kept walking.
His black armor bore no sigil, no heraldry save for the single white eye emblazoned across his chest. His movements were measured, effortless, inevitable—as if the chaos of battle, the screams of the dying, and the retreating Black Legion did not concern him.
Calgar's grip on the Gauntlets of Ultramar tightened.
His warriors, those who still held their nerve, had formed ranks around him, bolters trained on the towering figure as he continued his silent march toward the Temple of Hera.
"Hold the line," Calgar ordered, his voice steady, though his instincts screamed at him that whatever this was—this was unlike anything they had ever faced.
The Ultramarines had fought the horrors of the warp, had faced the Black Crusades, the Tyranid Hive Fleets, the Necron dynasties.
And yet this—this was different.
He was close now. Twenty meters. Fifteen. Ten.
Still, the giant did not raise a weapon.
Still, he did not speak.
Then—he stopped.
A silence descended over the battlefield, so deep it swallowed even the distant echoes of war.
And then, in one slow, deliberate motion, the giant reached up and removed his helmet.
The Ultramarines held their breath. Even the air itself seemed to pause. The helm came free with a smooth, effortless motion, revealing features that should not exist.
Blonde hair, cut short in a warrior's crop, golden like the sun.
A face that was chiseled in perfect symmetry, strong, ageless, untouched by mutation or the corruption of time.
And his eyes—
His eyes were blue.
Not the dull, dead blue of a corpse. Not the cold steel of an Astartes bred for war.
But deep and piercing, filled with something both ancient and absolute. A gaze that carried the weight of eternity.
Calgar staggered without meaning to. His mind rebelled against what he was seeing. Because it was impossible. There was only one other man in existence with such a face. Only one other man who had ever stood among the Imperium with such presence, such regality, such impossible, overwhelming power. And he was locked in stasis within the Temple of Hera.
No.
No, not just one.
There had been another.
And then, the giant spoke.
His voice was deep, impossibly deep, yet smooth, weighted with something far more profound than mere power.
It rumbled through the air, shaking not just the ground but something deeper—something within them.
It was the voice of a being who did not doubt, who did not question, who had long since ceased to fear.
The voice of inevitability.
And it carried with it a message that shattered all reason.
"I have come to see my little brother."
Calgar's heart stopped.
Calgar took a single step forward, his massive form dwarfed by the towering being before him. His gauntlets were clenched, his warriors standing behind him, weapons still trained on the figure who called himself Solas.
But his presence… his aura…
It was unlike anything Calgar had ever felt.
He had stood in the presence of Roboute Guilliman, had served beneath his banner, had fought and bled for the ideals of the Avenging Son. He had felt his Primarch's aura—that overwhelming, commanding presence that inspired absolute loyalty and unwavering purpose.
But this—this was something else.
This was heavier.
Colder.
It did not demand loyalty. It did not inspire.
It was a weight upon existence itself, something beyond the warmth of leadership, beyond the fire of righteous command.
This was inevitability incarnate.
Calgar did not let the dread creeping into his thoughts take hold.
He forced his voice to remain steady.
"Who are you?" he demanded. "I will hear the truth from your own lips. Are you loyal to the Emperor, or are you another traitor come to desecrate our Lord's resting place?"
Solas studied Calgar for a long moment.
Then, he smiled.
A slow, knowing smile—not one of arrogance, nor mockery, but of patience, as if he had already known Calgar would ask, as if he had already lived through this moment countless times before.
When he spoke, his voice rumbled like the shifting plates of a dying world.
"Ah, loyalty. It is always the first question asked… and the one that matters least."
Solas stepped forward, his every footfall silent, yet felt by all present.
The Ultramarines tensed, but none dared fire. None dared move.
"You believe yourselves to be guardians of the Imperium, steadfast in your duty. But tell me… What is the Imperium now? A crumbling empire of bureaucrats, false prophets, and blind faith. A great rotting beast, carried forward not by strength, but by inertia."
His piercing blue eyes locked onto Calgar.
"You demand to know if I am loyal to the Emperor? Tell me, Ultramarine—does He still rule? Or is His will nothing more than the whispers of dying men clinging to a dream that no longer exists?"
Calgar's teeth ground together beneath his helmet.
"I serve the Imperium. I serve the ideals of the Emperor, not the failings of men," he snapped.
Solas let out a low hum, as if pleased by the answer, yet unsurprised.
"Ah, yes. Ever the pragmatist, just like my little brother. And yet, here you stand, clutching at the last embers of a fire that burned out long ago."
Then, his expression darkened.
"You misunderstand the choice before you, Chapter Master."
The air itself felt heavier, as if Solas had pressed his will upon it, making it denser, colder, suffocating.
"I do not ask for permission. I do not seek your approval. I have come to do what must be done."
Solas spread his arms ever so slightly, and the ground beneath him cracked.
"Either you will let me pass… and we will resurrect my little brother together."
"Or you will try to stop me… and I will show you the wrath of a Primarch."
Some of the Ultramarines faltered, shifting uneasily in their stance.
Because they could feel it now.
His aura.
The unmistakable presence of a Primarch.
And not just any Primarch. This… this was something else entirely.
Those among them who had once stood in Guilliman's presence—those old enough to remember the days before the Horus Heresy—had felt the majestic command of their Lord firsthand.
But this presence dwarfed it.
Guilliman's aura had been like standing beneath the sun, warm and powerful, a beacon of unyielding order and leadership.
Solas was different.
Solas was gravity itself.
A force. A certainty.
He was not a beacon.
He was a black hole.
And the universe itself seemed to bend to accommodate his presence.
The Gauntlets of Ultramar crackled with raw power, but for the first time, Calgar was uncertain.
He had fought daemons, tyrants, warlords, and the forces of Chaos themselves.
But Solas was none of those things.
He was something that should not be.
Something that history itself had erased.
And yet, here he was.
Staring at him.
Waiting for an answer.
A tense, unbearable silence settled over the ruins of the battlefield. Marneus Calgar, Lord of Macragge, stood unmoving, staring into the piercing blue eyes of the being who had emerged from the void. His gauntlets hummed with barely contained power, every instinct in his body screaming that this was wrong, impossible, unnatural.
And yet—what choice did he have?
He had seen the fear in the Black Legion's eyes. The way the traitors had fled without question, without hesitation, as if they had glimpsed something beyond their understanding.
Even now, standing mere meters from this so-called lost Primarch, Calgar could feel it.
The weight of his presence. The pressure that threatened to collapse the space around him.
Solas did not gloat. He did not move to strike. He simply stood there, waiting for an answer.
Calgar exhaled slowly.
Then, in a measured motion, he lowered his weapons.
His warriors hesitated, glancing toward him in disbelief.
"Stand down," he commanded.
A moment passed.
Then another.
And finally—the Ultramarines obeyed.
Solas said nothing as he turned and began walking toward the Temple of Hera.
The massive, war-scarred doors of the sanctum loomed ahead, battered from battle but still standing. A dozen Ultramarines guarded them, their weapons trained on the approaching figure.
Calgar marched beside him, his mind racing.
This was madness.
This was insanity.
Yet, his heart pounded like a war drum in his chest, because—Emperor forgive him—part of him knew.
This man was not lying.
This was a Primarch.
But whether he was a savior or a storm waiting to break, that remained to be seen.
As they reached the threshold of the sanctum, Solas did not slow.
He did not acknowledge the dozens—hundreds—of bolters aimed at him.
Not a single Ultramarine dared speak, their hands white-knuckled on the triggers of their weapons, their breathing sharp and controlled.
Calgar had never seen his warriors like this.
They had faced daemons without flinching.
They had stood before traitor warlords and never hesitated.
But this?
They were in the presence of something beyond reason.
Solas walked through the doors of the Temple of Hera, his footfalls making no sound.
And for the first time in ten thousand years, the lost son of the Emperor stepped into the sacred halls of his brother's tomb.
Inside the Inner Temple
The air was thick with incense and the acrid scent of burning machinery. The grand chamber of resurrection was a ruin of flickering cogitators, damaged relics, and the wreckage of battle.
Wires and sacred cables ran across the floor, some sparking erratically, others pulsing with an eerie, half-life of energy.
And at the very center of it all—
Roboute Guilliman.
His massive, armored form lay motionless, his features still frozen in the timeless grip of stasis.
Above him, Belisarius Cawl worked tirelessly, his mechadendrites moving with inhuman precision as he adjusted the last components of the armor.
The Celestinian Living Saint stood nearby, her golden wings outstretched, her radiant form illuminating the chamber as she whispered holy invocations in a voice soft and steady.
Neither of them had noticed who had entered.
Not yet.
Cawl was too lost in his work, his attention consumed by the delicate, heretical operation of awakening a Primarch.
Celestine was too focused on the Emperor's light, her connection to the divine wrapping around Guilliman's broken form like a protective embrace.
Then—
They felt it.
A new presence.
A shadow that should not be.
A force that did not belong.
Cawl's mechadendrites twitched violently, his sensors flaring with unreadable signals. His mechanical eyes flickered, struggling to process the entity that had entered the chamber.
Celestine's wings shuddered, her divine glow flickering for just a moment, as if something had disturbed the very air around her.
Both turned.
Both looked toward the sanctum's entrance.
And there—standing beneath the great archway, his blue eyes watching without emotion—was Solas.
Neither Cawl nor Celestine knew who he was.
Neither had ever heard his name.
Yet in that moment, they understood something terrible.
This was not a mortal man.
This was not a Space Marine.
And this was not a servant of the Emperor.
This was something else.
Something older.
Something erased.
Celestine gripped her blade tightly, her divine senses burning with warning.
Cawl's logic engines screamed at him, his database offering no explanation for what his sensors were detecting.
But Solas did not look at them.
He did not speak.
He did not acknowledge the Saint, nor the Archmagos, nor the weapons still trained upon him.
He walked forward.
Slowly.
Without hesitation.
Without urgency.
And his eyes were fixed on one thing alone.
The motionless, deathless form of his little brother.
Roboute Guilliman.
The air in the Temple of Hera was suffocating.
Not with heat, nor the smoke of battle, nor even the weight of impending war—but with something deeper, something heavier.
A presence.
One that should not exist.
One that history itself had buried.
And yet, here it was.
Solas stood before Roboute Guilliman, his towering form casting a long, black shadow over the still, stasis-locked Primarch. His piercing blue eyes bore into the lifeless figure before him—not with sorrow, nor nostalgia, but with something colder.
With disappointment.
Calgar and the assembled Ultramarines stood frozen behind him, their weapons still clutched tightly in their gauntlets, but no one spoke.
Not a single warrior dared to interrupt.
Not even Celestine, who now watched this new arrival with uncertainty, her golden glow flickering ever so slightly.
Not even Cawl, whose mechanical tendrils twitched involuntarily, as if trying to process the impossibility of the being before him.
Solas did not look at them.
His eyes were only for his brother.
Then, in that deep, unshakable voice, he spoke.
"Oh… foolish little brother."
The sound carried through the chamber, reverberating through the vaulted halls, heavy enough to weigh upon the soul.
"I had warned you. I had warned you and our brothers, time and time again… but you did not want to listen."
The gathered Ultramarines stiffened.
Some looked to one another, their confusion growing. Was this truly how one brother spoke to another?
Solas stepped forward, closing the small but infinite gap between himself and the stasis pod, his black gauntlet hovering just inches from the surface of Guilliman's armor—but he did not touch him.
Instead, he exhaled. A slow, measured sigh.
"Look at you now… entombed in your own arrogance, drowning in the consequences you refused to see."
His voice was not cruel, not mocking, but it carried an undeniable weight of judgment—the words of one who had seen this fate long before it ever came to pass.
"You, the great architect of order. You, the champion of reason. You who once called yourself the heir to the Imperium."
"And yet, what has your brilliance wrought?"
Solas lifted his gaze, his blue eyes burning cold as he spoke, his tone never rising, but crushing all the same.
"I see your great empire, little brother. I see what you have built."
"It is broken."
"It is rotting."
"It is a corpse propped upon a golden throne, clinging to a dream that you were too blind to see was already dead."
Calgar bristled, his fingers curling into a tight fist.
He had endured every insult the Imperium had suffered at the hands of its enemies. He had fought against traitors, heretics, and xenos alike, all of them calling the Imperium a dying thing, a failure, a mockery of its former glory.
But never had he heard such words come from the lips of a Primarch.
The Ultramarines shifted uneasily, their fingers twitching on their bolters, their expressions torn between duty and the impossible reality unfolding before them.
Cawl, despite his mechanical detachment, could not contain the frantic computations running through his logic engines. Every recorded fragment of Imperial history, every lost text, every classified document—none contained the existence of this being.
Celestine's radiant glow dimmed slightly, her ethereal senses whispering to her—not of Chaos, not of the warp, but of something that should not be.
And yet… they could do nothing but watch.
Solas continued.
"Tell me, Guilliman… when I was cast into the void, when I was swallowed by the silence beyond the warp, did you ever stop to wonder? Did you ever stop to ask yourself if, perhaps, I had been right?"
"That the Imperium we built was not a paradise waiting to be realized, but a slow, creeping failure destined to collapse?"
Solas' jaw tightened, his patience worn thin by an argument that had already been fought long ago.
"And yet, even now, you are bound in silence. Still refusing to answer. Still refusing to see."
"I should not be surprised."
His gauntlet lowered, his fingers curling into a slow, deliberate fist.
"You were always the most stubborn of us."
Silence.
Long, suffocating silence.
The Ultramarines could not believe what they were hearing.
This giant, this impossible being, was not speaking of Guilliman as a warlord or an icon of the Imperium—but as a brother.
A true brother.
One older, colder, and utterly disappointed.
For the first time since his arrival, Solas turned away from the stasis pod, his gaze sweeping across the warriors surrounding him.
His eyes lingered on Calgar, as if seeing him for the first time.
"And you."
The Chapter Master met his gaze, unwilling to yield—even as the weight of that stare threatened to crush him where he stood.
"You who call yourselves his sons. Tell me, warriors of Ultramar… do you truly believe your father's dream lives on? Do you truly believe this Imperium is the future he fought for?"
"Or have you simply convinced yourselves that failure, repeated enough times, is still victory?"
Calgar's gauntlets trembled, his blood pounding in his veins.
He had never been at a loss for words before.
But how could he argue with something like this?
How could he argue with a Primarch?
More than that—how could he argue with a Primarch who had seen the decay of the Imperium before it ever happened?
He forced his voice steady.
"Guilliman is our Lord, Master and Father," he said firmly. "We fight for his legacy. We fight for the Imperium, because without it—humanity is lost."
Solas regarded him for a moment, his expression unreadable.
Then, slowly, he let out a low hum of contemplation.
"Perhaps."
Then, his attention returned to Guilliman.
"But first, let us see if he is still willing to fight for it."
Solas, the forgotten son of the Emperor, turned his gaze away from Guilliman's still form and settled his piercing, glacial blue eyes on Belisarius Cawl.
His presence alone seemed to unsettle the Archmagos in a way that no force of Chaos ever had.
The Master of Mars, the architect of Guilliman's rebirth, a being of cold, ruthless logic, who had toiled for ten thousand years for this moment—now stood before a being that history itself had erased.
A being who spoke not in hypotheticals or mysticism, but certainty.
A being who had come not to plead for Guilliman's survival—but to ensure it.
Solas' voice rumbled low, deep, and patient, yet carrying an undeniable authority.
"Finish your work, Mechanicum. Do what you were created for. Then speak, and I will undo what has been done."
Cawl hesitated.
Not out of defiance. He did not know how to respond.
The tech-priest's logic engines whirred and clicked, his vast intelligence trying to make sense of this figure, trying to categorize him, define him, place him somewhere within the bounds of history and the Imperium's understanding.
But he could not.
There was no record of Solas.
No precedence.
And that made him dangerous.
But the fate of Roboute Guilliman came first.
Cawl said nothing. He simply turned back to his work. His mechadendrites moved in precise, efficient motions, reattaching the final neural links between the armored exoskeleton and Guilliman's body.
His Primarch's body.
The process neared completion. The Celestinian Living Saint watched in silence, her golden glow flickering. She had never felt the Emperor's light react to anything the way it reacted to Solas.
As if it did not know whether to embrace him or reject him.
Minutes passed.
Then—
It was done.
Cawl's mechanical voice broke the silence.
"The process is complete."
Solas did not hesitate.
He stepped forward.
The Ultramarines gripped their weapons, their every instinct screaming to stop him, to question him, to challenge this being who spoke and walked as a Primarch yet was unknown to them.
But they did not.
They could not.
They simply watched.
Solas raised his gauntleted hand, placing it just above Guilliman's chest, his fingers hovering inches from the poisoned body of his dying brother.
Then—
He exhaled slowly.
And his Null Power surged.
The air itself shifted. Not violently, not explosively. But silently. As if something fundamental to reality had changed. The Warp-tainted poison that had coiled itself into Guilliman's veins, the hateful, lingering venom of Fulgrim, the unnatural sickness that had bound him to stasis for over a thousand years—simply ceased to be.
No ritual. No exorcism. No struggle.
Solas did not purge the poison with fire.
He did not burn it away with faith or psychic power.
He simply willed it out of existence.
A force antithetical to the Warp met something that had been born of it—and the Warp lost.
The poison vanished.
Guilliman's body lurched.
His breath returned.
His flesh healed.
His mind—still trapped in that timeless, endless nothingness—felt the chains binding him break.
And then, Solas stepped away.
He did not linger.
He did not revel in what he had done.
He simply watched.
As his little brother awoke.
The Rise of the Avenging Son
A deep, shuddering breath filled the chamber.
The stasis field flickered, then collapsed.
Roboute Guilliman's eyes snapped open.
The Ultramarines fell to their knees.
Every single one of them.
It was not an act of duty, nor of doctrine.
It was instinct.
Their Lord and Father had returned.
Calgar felt his own legs buckle, his gauntlets pressing into the stone floor as he bowed. His body did not wait for his mind to decide.
Guilliman—the Avenging Son, the Master of the Imperium, the Last Hope of Humanity—was awake.
The air inside the Temple of Hera was still heavy, thick with the weight of the moment.
A moment ten thousand years in the making.
Roboute Guilliman, the Avenging Son, the last loyal son of the Emperor to walk the stars, had risen. He took his first breath, his lungs filling with real air, untainted by the poison that had bound him in timeless agony.
His limbs, clad in the sacred armor that had been reforged around his flesh, twitched as sensation flooded back into his reborn body. His senses, dulled by over a millennium of silence, flared back to life with overwhelming clarity.
He could hear the distant echoes of war beyond the temple walls, the sound of battle still raging in the ruins of Macragge.
He could feel the weight of his armor, the power coursing through the mechanisms designed to sustain him.
He could smell the incense, the oil of Mechanicum machineries, the blood that had been spilled around him.
And before him, his sons knelt.
All of them.
Every Ultramarine within the chamber, warriors of the realm he had forged, the Chapter that had been his legacy—bowing before him, their heads lowered in reverence.
He blinked, confusion momentarily overriding his tactical mind.
Then, his voice—strong, clear, unbroken by time—spoke for the first time in over a thousand years.
"Rise, my sons."
The Ultramarines obeyed without hesitation.
The sound of ceramite shifting, of boots scraping against the temple floor, echoed through the chamber as they stood once more, their postures rigid with discipline, but their eyes filled with awe.
Guilliman turned his gaze to the nearest of them—Marneus Calgar, Chapter Master of the Ultramarines.
Calgar's massive, battle-scarred form stood firm, but there was something in his stance—something hesitant, something uncertain.
Guilliman narrowed his eyes.
He remembered this man, had studied his name, had understood his role in leading the Ultramarines through the long, dark centuries after the Heresy. He knew that Calgar was not a man given to doubt or fear.
And yet… something was wrong.
"Calgar," Guilliman said, his voice steady but questioning. "How am I alive?"
A hush fell over the Ultramarines, as if none dared speak.
Guilliman continued, his tactical mind already trying to piece together what had happened.
"The last thing I remember… was the wound."
His brow furrowed, memories flashing back in an instant.
He remembered the pain.
The searing agony of Fulgrim's cursed blade, its venom sinking deep into his veins, corrupting his very essence.
He remembered falling, his body betraying him as his brothers abandoned him to die.
He remembered darkness, stretching across the ages, an endless, dreamless void that should have been his tomb.
And yet—he was here.
"I died."
His words were not a question.
He knew it to be true.
"Fulgrim killed me. I felt the blade, I felt its poison… There was no return from that wound."
His piercing blue eyes locked onto Calgar, demanding an answer.
"How am I standing before you now?"
Calgar hesitated.
For the first time in centuries, the Chapter Master—the Lord of Macragge, the Regent of the Realm of Ultramar—did not know how to respond.
Because how did he explain it?
How did he tell his Primarch that the impossible had happened?
That his resurrection had come not through the will of the Emperor, nor through the work of the Mechanicum alone—
But through the hand of a brother Guilliman did not yet recognize.
A brother who had never been spoken of.
A brother who had been erased from history.
Calgar drew a slow breath, his gauntlets flexing at his sides.
"My Lord…" he began carefully.
But before he could speak, another voice answered first.
A voice deep, unshakable, absolute.
A voice that sent a ripple of unease through every Ultramarine in the chamber.
"Because I willed it so."
Guilliman's eyes snapped toward the voice.
And for the first time, he saw the towering figure standing in the shadows beyond his sons.
A man who should not exist.