"Guilliman!"
On Sicarus, beneath a sky boiling with fire and blood, a hysterical roar erupted from the 'Temple of Truth'—the sanctum of the Dark Council of the traitorous XVII Legion, the Word Bearers.
That voice was so thunderous it seemed as though the entire colossal cathedral dedicated to Chaos would shatter under its wrath.
At the highest spire of the temple—Inficio Sanctuary, the private quarters of the Daemon Primarch Lorgar—the flickering flames cast jagged, dancing shadows upon walls inscribed with intricate runes of prayer and devotion.
Every Word Bearer present—blessed officers, Dark Apostles, honored Primarch's Death Vanguard veterans—felt it. That overwhelming fury burning from their gene-father, Lorgar Aurelian of Colchis.
Yet what puzzled them all was that this wrath wasn't directed at the so-called Sacred Selene Empire's invading forces on Sicarus—but at someone far away, across nearly one hundred thousand light-years—the Lord of Ultramar's Five Hundred Worlds, his brother, the Thirteenth Primarch, Guilliman.
What was going on? Wasn't Guilliman still in the Ultramar Sector? Did their gene-father's hatred still run so deep? The Battle of Calth had long since avenged the "Perfect City" incident. So why…
The enemy was at their gates, yet the Primarch still obsessed over Guilliman across the galaxy?
Ignoring the murmured doubts of his subordinates, within the grand cathedral, the Daemon Primarch Lorgar was busy with his own grim affairs.
He stood, wrath blazing in his chest, before five towering, grotesquely proportioned statues—
Brass and skulls: the Blood God.
Beaks and feathers: the Changer of Ways.
Rot and decay: the Lord of Plagues.
Flesh and excess: the Prince of Pleasure.
And finally—a figure still incomplete, carved from a crystallized white dwarf core, adorned with radiant metals and kaleidoscopic hues—The Goddess of Honkai.
The first four were clearly finished; only the last remained under sculpting—a recent addition to the "truths" enshrined within the Temple of the Word.
"Liar! Deceiver! The greatest hypocrite and usurper in the galaxy! Guilliman, you shameless wretch! My damnable brother—you are the most insidious, deceitful, despicable little man I have ever known!"
Swinging a vicious spiked maul, the Daemon Primarch roared as he tore apart a thick, yellowed tome before him. Having ascended, his horned visage, covered in dark-golden rune-like scars, twisted in fury.
"The Lectitio Divinitatus was my creation! It should be I who received the blessings of the gods! The faithful one preaching the divine word—it was me! Me!"
"That accursed impostor, that shameless pretender, used the very Lectitio Divinitatus I once gifted him to spread his ideals to the pitiful masses—claiming only his faith was true and all else false!"
"How dare he."
Grinding his teeth, Lorgar swung his engraved maul, covered in countless symbols and marks.
"He of all people has no right! He burned the Perfect City, denied all faith and religion—and now, with feigned innocence, he preaches belief and devotion using my own doctrines! Doctrines he spat upon and scorned!"
"He once destroyed my glory—and now he seeks to take what little of it remains!"
After the betrayal at Calth and the Shadow Crusade against Ultramar's Five Hundred Worlds, Lorgar had believed himself beyond mortal anger—that nothing could shake his composure.
But when Lorgar sensed through the Sea of Souls that his brother Guilliman had revived, awakening his own nature as a being of the Warp—and worse, that he had been recognized, even favored, by the gods themselves, entrusted with a divine mission to spread their faith—
He broke.
The unique "spark" that bound the Primarchs, and the massive sacrificial rituals held by Guilliman's sons on Macragge, along with the unrestrained proclamations of the Warp's ruinous powers—all of it made Lorgar one of the few beings in this sector capable of perceiving and understanding such chaos within the Sea of Souls.
Not that Lorgar felt particularly lucky for it.
He would rather have been spared such fortune.
Truly, seeing Guilliman blessed by both the Emperor and the Chaos God Finality hurt more than any punishment or beating ever could.
How are you qualified to be a preacher, Guilliman?!
The worst part of it all—Lorgar had personally gifted the original version of the Lectitio Divinitatus to Guilliman!
Guilliman, why didn't you burn it?! Just as you burned my Perfect City!
Even the great Primarchs were not free from human emotions—joy, anger, sorrow, and pride. In fact, theirs burned fiercer, more absolute.
Lorgar's mind played memories like a flickering slide projector. One moment he was standing dazed within Inficio Sanctuary; the next, he was once more on Colchis, standing on the crimson carpet welcoming the Emperor's descent.
One second he was butchering Guilliman and his perfect sons at Calth; the next, he was passionately delivering his speech at the months-long festival on Colchis celebrating the Emperor's arrival...
Scene after scene of memory assaulted Lorgar's mind until all of them suddenly dissolved—leaving him kneeling among the ashes of the Perfect City, punished and humiliated.
I was not wrong!
His daemon-red eyes flared wide as he roared hysterically within his mind. His expression was feral, like a beast cornered with no way out.
He refused to admit it—but jealousy burned within him for Guilliman.
"Shameful father. Despicable Emperor. A false Imperial Truth spewed from your mouth—only to now join hands with the Chaos Gods..."
Waves of power surged from his body—tangible tides of black energy that rippled through the air like a vast, fathomless ocean. The Word Bearers around him bowed their heads under the crushing weight of their Primarch's rage.
For the few ancient veterans who had followed their gene-father since before the Perfect City's burning, such a display was unprecedented. Not even during his psychic punishment kneeling in the ashes had Lorgar been this furious.
As the blessed figures near the daemon-world home of the Word Bearers exchanged uneasy glances, a heavy thudding sound echoed—thud, thud!
Rushing footsteps approached. The Daemon Primarch's first captain, the architect of betrayal himself—Erebus—burst into the sanctuary, panic written across his face.
It was as if his arrival had triggered a signal; more high-ranking Word Bearer officers, Dark Archpriests, and even Chaos Lords of renegade warbands who had sworn allegiance to the Word Bearers came hurrying toward Inficio Sanctuary.
Above the temple, hundreds of spiked towers—each over five kilometers high—pierced the heavens. Each was covered with serrated Chaos eight-pointed stars, impaling countless living sacrifices. Normally, the screams of these loyalist victims would be the sweetest of symphonies.
But now, every twisted face carried only grim tension. Their hurried steps lacked the calm poise once typical of the Dark Apostles.
Because—rumble, rumble, rumble!—
The sky of this Chaos world of cathedrals, temples, and monuments had become a sea of fire.
Having returned from the Webway, the fleet of the Sacred Selene Empire's Night Lords once again roared with thunderous bombardment. Orbital strikes poured down like flaming rain, while the immense void-shield arrays built by the Dark Mechanicum flared under the assault, shimmering with endless ripples like a lotus pond battered by storm.
Molten debris and half-melted metal rained from the sky, pelting the continent below with a deafening crash, crackle!.
What should we do?
The ever-shifting battlefield filled them all with unease. Every gaze turned to that towering, maddened figure, their only hope.
"First Apostle," someone called.
A Chaos Lord stepped forward, his armor shattered and scarred, half his face melted by the screaming heat of a proton weapon. The blackened, warped skull beneath pulsed with visible brain matter.
"You?!" Erebus hesitated, his inhumanly cunning face momentarily frozen. "Lord Isaacdis?"
He recognized the man—commander of a mid-sized Chaos warband who had joined him during Abaddon's Thirteenth Black Crusade. But hadn't they been left behind as sacrificial pawns to delay the enemy?
How the hell did he get here first?!
Damn it!
So they ran without resistance, didn't they? No wonder the enemy fleet was pursuing so closely.
So that's it—you cowards ran first! Damn it all! You're immovable as mountains when allies are in peril, greedy as fire when plundering spoils, yet faster than the wind when retreating!
He had no awareness that he himself was no better than the rest—but that hardly mattered now. Far more pressing matters loomed ahead.
"Apostle, the situation across the Sicarus system looks grim. Several daemon worlds have been razed to the ground. Many are out of contact. Holding our ground is pointless—the Corpse-Emperor's sorcery is proving troublesome. Under these circumstances... the Primarch remains in seclusion. Should we retreat or fight?"
"Don't panic."
Though Erebus was inwardly burning with anxiety, desperate to flee from Sicarus—this giant target drawing all enemy fire—and escape a hundred thousand light-years away from the 'locust' fleet that had burned its way from Cadia, he still wore the composed mask of the "Hand of Fate."
"What about Kor Phaeron?"
"Chief Faith Advisor Kor Phaeron is dead—on Macragge."
"Oh, Kor Phaeron is dead? How... how truly tragic. The loss of a dear comrade, my closest confidant. Our poor lord has lost one of his strongest arms."
Erebus's brows furrowed as his slitted eyes narrowed. With feigned solemnity, he clasped his hands together, preparing to deliver a spirited, exaggerated prayer of mourning but—bang!
The Daemon Primarch Lorgar had already stepped out of the sanctuary.
"My lord. It seems you have overcome your grief."
Like the most sycophantic of courtiers, Erebus pressed his thin lips into a serious expression, facing his enraged Primarch. "The Legion now requires your direct guidance."
"...Retreating, is it? Sounds as though, while I prayed, the Legion's condition has grown dire."
Panting, his bestial, bloodshot eyes glaring, Lorgar spoke through gritted teeth.
He adjusted the angle of the skylight above and looked beyond—to the burning cathedrals outside, where the land itself writhed as if alive.
Those Night Lords were not as he remembered them. Their advance toward the Temple of Truth was unstoppable.
Everywhere his gaze fell, the ground was shattered and molten, like a vast smelting pool. Solid shells, lasers, and plasma batteries rained down in dense bombardments upon every Word Bearer fortress.
Screams and blood filled his senses—the battlefield a maelstrom of tens of thousands of Astartes locked in carnage.
Still the Night Lords. Yet their assault was unlike before—massive, relentless, unfamiliar. The phantoms of midnight did not strike from the shadows this time. They launched a full-scale frontal attack from every direction.
No focused spearhead—just total, crushing advance.
That was not the Night Lords' style.
It was more like the Iron Warriors—or the Space Wolves.
"My lord, given the situation," Erebus quickly interjected before another outburst could erupt, "my suggestion is to avoid their edge. The storm of the Warp shows no allegiance—we've already lost crucial allies. To fight head-on would be the worst strategy."
Seeing Lorgar's hysteria about to flare again, Erebus added hastily, "Evacuate all sacrificial stockpiles within Sicarus and the surrounding systems. Through a grand sacrificial ritual, we'll shift Sicarus itself—hide it within the Warp. Let the Corpse-Emperor's hounds and those heretic fleets chase ghosts."
"Is that so?"
Lorgar seemed unconcerned about the dire state of his Legion's new homeworld. He rested his clawed hands on his knees, a deranged smile twisting his monstrous face.
"Tell me, this is not an Imperial world. Why would they not use Exterminatus? Why the foolishness of a ground invasion? And, Erebus—Abaddon failed. Tell me, my dear adjutant, how did you escape from them alive?"
"This..."
Erebus's pallid eyes widened, pupils shrinking. Bloodshot veins crawled across the whites—he realized the disaster about to unfold.
"Because they wanted to take me alive."
Lorgar spoke softly:
"Or perhaps—to take my head, to ensure I am truly dead. You are a wedge, Erebus—a locator. A marker for my position. Isn't that right, Russ, my brother? Even from here, I can smell that foul wolf-stench of yours."
The Wolf King—Russ?!
At that name, Erebus instinctively tried to move away from his Primarch. This place had become too dangerous.
But as he shifted, his vision spun violently. His eardrums burst. Pain tore through his broken back. His head turned toward the direction where his eight-pointed Chaos staff had fallen.
One of his hands still gripped the staff's handle—but the weapon itself lay hundreds of meters away, buried deep into the temple floor. Blood from his severed wrist painted the ground crimson.
The clash of metal filled the air as explosive force shook the grand hall—leaving a crater several meters deep.
It was an axe. A thrown axe.
The Primarch's honor guard fell like wheat before the scythe, blood and viscera flowing in crimson rivers.
A towering, wild figure clad in gray armor appeared at the edge of vision.
"Hmph! That tone—you really are Lorgar, aren't you?"
"No doubt, Russ—he's Lorgar. I'd recognize him even if he were reduced to ash."
A vast, shadowed form loomed behind the Wolf King.
"Then, as promised—justice is delivered. The traitor shall be punished by the victims of his betrayal. But leave him alive. The Emperor requires the Essence Spark within him."
A flicker of ghostly blue light gleamed coldly.
—
—
40 Advanced Chapters Available on Patreon:
Patreon.com/DaoOfHeaven