Chapter 314: Doubt? Enlightenment!
[Meditation Chamber]
The corpses stared at them in frozen horror, reeking of charred flesh.
They were pinned to the ground by countless long spikes, locked forever in a posture of wretched kneeling. Two long, straight black spears pierced their bodies, and from the wounds dripped only a faint, tar-like fluid.
Argel Tal subtly slowed his breathing, gently pulling Cyrene toward a clearer patch of floor. The woman turned her blind eyes toward him, puzzled by the gesture.
He cleared his throat.
"Father?"
He looked toward the figure slumped at the desk in the depths of the chamber. Flames and corpses surrounded him.
The Primarch sat with his back to them, bare-chested.
The searing irons had left dark scars across his skin; the golden inscriptions once carved upon Lorgar's back were now lost beneath bleeding wounds.
Something was terribly wrong here.
Argel Tal took Cyrene's hand and waited cautiously for the Primarch's reaction—
If Lorgar were to fly into a rage, Argel Tal would at least need to shield the woman from the worst of it. After all, it had been his decision to allow her this trespass.
To his surprise, Lorgar's voice, when it came, was unnervingly calm.
"If you've come to persuade me to rise again, you may leave now."
"Father, I've found a mortal survivor—one who witnessed the burning of the Perfect City from beginning to end. You may wish to meet her."
The hand writing upon the parchment stopped.
Lorgar straightened slightly, and a faint tone of irony colored his words.
"I was beginning to wonder why you had brought a mortal woman here, Argel Tal."
Lorgar sounded… wrong, yet still lucid enough to be understood.
Argel Tal drew a deep breath and pressed on.
"Father, the Word Bearers await your return to lead us. We have waited too long. The Ultramarines continue to call for our cooperation—we need your guidance."
He saw Lorgar's spine go rigid in an instant. The wounds tore open anew, fresh blood running down his back.
Then Lorgar spoke softly—so softly that the words felt like a blade sliding between ribs.
"Forgive me, my brave son. I cannot."
Argel Tal suddenly realized that they had come too late.
Something within their Primarch had already shattered, and now they stood only amid the shards.
Lorgar still held his quill loosely, though the white feather was drenched in blood.
"I called myself a preacher of truth, yet I spread false faith. I called myself a demigod, yet I trusted a traitor… I betrayed His trust. I was the only one among them who was right—and the only one who wounded Him."
His grip on the pen tightened, then loosened again.
"He acknowledged me. I should have rejoiced—God Himself lifting the veil to guide His lost shepherd. But I was so utterly wrong. I was raised by the damned, befriended liars and heretics. I betrayed Him."
Lorgar's shoulders sagged once more.
"Perhaps… I was never meant for this."
"My lord," Cyrene's trembling voice rang through the meditation chamber—clear and bright, like the first birdsong in a forest dawn.
"He allows us to live because He knows our faith can grow again—not wither."
Lorgar was silent for a long moment.
"He told you this? What did you see, then, lady—"
He paused.
"No, forgive my manners. What is your name, my lady?"
Argel Tal felt Cyrene's hand twitch nervously in his own. To speak with a Primarch required courage beyond measure.
"You may call me Cyrene, my lord. I was once a resident of the Perfect City. In the days when the blue giants descended, He showed me the path. I followed His guidance and bore witness to the city's destruction."
"Lady Cyrene,"
Lorgar said evenly, though his voice was ragged to the point of breaking,
"How will you prove that what you experienced was truly His will—and not a delusion born of grief? There are always mad voices in the wake of war."
"I have been bitten once by a hissing serpent; I will not trust so easily again."
The Primarch's words cut without mercy, pointing out the error of their intrusion.
Argel Tal felt heat rise to his face.
The rebuke was deserved. Yet from the first moment he had seen Cyrene, he had believed her—utterly.
No… that realization struck him cold. Erebus, the former First Chaplain, had once inspired that same kind of trust.
Slowly, Argel Tal understood that his impulse might have been a mistake.
Cyrene, too, seemed afraid. But even so, her voice did not waver as she spoke:
"My lord… if you doubt me, then I will tell you this: I witnessed things beyond anything I had seen in all the years of my life—things no mere mortal imagination could conjure, no image that any faith or scripture had ever described of the Emperor."
She swallowed hard, as though recalling the memory itself caused her pain.
"I saw…"
"I saw a darkness unlike any ever recorded in holy texts—something deeper than the deepest nightmare, a suffocating void. The darkness was like… like an ocean?"
"He appeared before me. Not the Emperor. No—not Him—but another being. He was… crying. Weeping in the dark. His tears were a luminous green."
Argel Tal felt his breath stop—and perhaps Lorgar's as well.
Nowhere in the reports from the Emperor or the Ultramarines had there been mention of Him in the seven-day burning of the Perfect City.
And in all the long history of the Imperium—there had been no record of such an entity.
Yet the punished Word Bearers had felt Him—truly and completely.
Perhaps they had been the first to know. Or perhaps others who had known were already dead.
The Word Bearers avoided speaking of that presence. To name Him was not pleasant.
A criminal seldom wishes to describe the face of his executioner.
So they turned their attention to the Emperor instead. Perhaps He was the Emperor's executioner… or perhaps something else entirely.
The Primarch, who had sat with his back to them all this time, turned at last.
In the blaze of the chamber's fires, the twin streaks of blood beneath Lorgar's eyes gleamed faintly, as though reflecting a golden light.
"You saw… the Silent One?"
The Primarch's voice faltered on the question.
"The Silent One?" Cyrene echoed in confusion.
"I thought… I thought He told me His name was the Lord of the Underworld."
The Lord of the Underworld?
The words sent ripples through both Word Bearers' hearts.
It was as if they had been cast back to that moonlit night—
—to that suffocating, helpless darkness where a sea of shadow had battered their souls, leaving them drifting, alone, in an endless black abyss.
Lorgar fixed his gaze upon Cyrene. Firelight flickered in his eyes.
"Do you know anything else about Him? What He truly is?"
Cyrene blinked in confusion, then slowly shook her head.
"I… I can't remember. I only recall that He spoke of sin—sin found within the truth itself. He may have said something more to me, but… I've forgotten."
The Primarch fell silent for a long moment before murmuring:
"He does not wish to be remembered."
Lorgar's weary eyes drifted to the two corpses nailed upon the ground.
"If this is Their will, then so be it."
Silence followed. The Primarch clearly had no desire to revisit that night of silence and madness.
Cyrene gathered her courage. She sensed that her words had earned her a fragile measure of trust.
"My lord," she said softly, "His true will is for you—and your Legion—to once again become heralds of faith. Culture and belief must be remade."
Lorgar lowered his eyes, releasing the bloodstained quill from his grasp.
"Is that what He wished you to tell me?"
The Primarch's question broke the silence like a blade.
<+>
If you want to see more chapter of this story and don't mind paying $5 each month to read the latest posted chapter, please go to my Patreon [1]
Latest Posted Chapter in Patreon: Chapter 351: The Onlooker Sees More Clearly Than the Player[2]
Link to the latest posted chapter: https://www.patreon.com/posts/145213204?collection=602520[3]
https://www.patreon.com/collection/602520?view=condensed[4]
[1] https://www.patreon.com/Thatsnakegirl
[2] https://www.patreon.com/posts/145213204?collection=602520
[3] https://www.patreon.com/posts/145213204?collection=602520
[4] https://www.patreon.com/collection/602520?view=condensed