Lorgar gazed at the pale, twisted face of Curze before him. That ghastly grin—more of a sneer—sent a cold chill down his spine.
"So it was you behind all of this," he murmured, realization dawning fast.
It all made sense now.
Curze had first exploited his deep-rooted fear of the Raven Lord to drive him off course. Then, he fanned the flames of his hatred for Guilliman, unbalancing his thoughts, slowly unraveling his mind. Finally, Curze had taken on Horus' visage to feign salvation—seizing Lorgar's momentary shock to worm his way in.
Psychological warfare—Curze's artform, honed to a dreadful edge.
Lorgar had been outmaneuvered, his mind ensnared by the intricate, layered trap. Curze had pried the purpose of their mission from his lips without lifting a blade.
And yet, even knowing how Curze's insight into the human psyche had been key, Lorgar couldn't shake the sense that something else was at play—some power the Night Haunter had never revealed in his lifetime.
He had a guess as to what it was.
But one thing still gnawed at him.
Why didn't Curze strike when he had the chance? It was the perfect opportunity. A single attack could have left Lorgar crippled—or worse.
Instead, Curze had chosen to reveal himself.
Arrogance? Or just the Night Haunter's twisted sense of theater?
Lorgar didn't dismiss the latter. Curze reveled in suffering. Watching his prey squirm in terror was half the joy for him.
Even Lorgar had to admit—when Horus' form twisted into Curze's, it had shaken him to his core.
But now…
"When did you learn such a trick, brother?" Lorgar asked coldly, locking eyes with the apparition.
"We've all changed, haven't we?" Curze responded, smiling thinly.
Lorgar's expression remained impassive—but something shifted behind his eyes. Then, he laughed. A sharp, cutting laugh. His tension bled away.
"You're not Curze," he said flatly. "You almost had me. But you talk too much. Curze never did."
He turned his back and walked away, as if the terror of Nostramo had been reduced to nothing more than air.
"Have you gone mad, brother?" Curze chuckled, stalking him like a shadow, laughter echoing behind.
But suddenly, Lorgar whirled and struck with the ornate scepter in his hand.
Curze dodged easily—too easily—his movements light as mist.
But that was all Lorgar needed to confirm his suspicion.
"See? You're not him," he said. "You're no illusion either. A daemon construct, maybe—a puppet of the warp, shaped by Curze's will."
He stepped closer, voice laced with contempt. "You're not capable of harming a Primarch. You know it. That's why you didn't attack. You adopted Curze's form to stall me—to keep me here long enough for the real Curze to arrive. Or worse—Dukel."
He smirked, confidence returning to his stride.
"I see through you now. Your tricks no longer work on me. Leave—or I'll scatter your essence across the Empyrean."
Without waiting for a response, Lorgar pushed past the false Curze, the fear gone from his heart.
The warp-phantom said nothing as it watched the Word Bearer leave, its eyes empty and cold.
The light around Lorgar faded. Though he was a Daemon Primarch, even he struggled to pierce the void with his senses. The darkness was total—a suffocating, sentient shroud.
But Lorgar felt no fear.
He was a being of perfect memory, a walking scripture. The path ahead had already been etched into his mind. Even blind, he would not stray.
A crow's cry shattered the stillness. A shrill, mocking kraaak!
Lorgar's teeth clenched. He despised that sound. Crows—messengers of the Raven Lord. Their presence was an omen.
Curze hadn't given up.
More taunts. More games.
He lifted his gaze.
Ahead, the gloom cracked open like shattering glass. Dead trees emerged, twisted and skeletal. On their branches sat a host of crows, their feathers as black as the void, their cold, lifeless eyes staring down without emotion.
Lorgar's steps faltered for the briefest second.
Then he growled, voice low and wrathful. "You won't scare me off again."
"You're still running, little preacher." A voice sneered from the darkness.
From the shadows stepped a giant in cobalt-blue armor, his sword wreathed in golden flame.
"Sometimes I wonder," Guilliman said with scorn, "if Father created you simply so the Imperium would have a jester. Every court needs one, after all."
Lorgar clenched his jaw and forced himself to walk past the illusion. He said nothing.
It isn't real. None of this is real.
His mind repeated the truth like a litany, crushing the fury that burned within him.
Light returned slowly as he walked. The oppressive black began to lift.
The Great Speaker exhaled quietly, thinking perhaps he had escaped the Night Haunter's grip at last.
Then he saw it.
The source of the returning light was not salvation.
It was fire.
Blinding, all-consuming fire stretched before him—an inferno devouring the void, setting the warp itself alight.
"You have no escape!"
Through the roaring inferno, a towering figure emerged, taller than any Astartes, his blade gleaming with unrelenting purpose.
The sea of flames seemed to part, forming a burning corridor that heralded his advance. The warrior—majestic, indomitable—charged forward like an unstoppable war chariot, forged in divine wrath.
Illuminated by the hellish light, Lorgar Aurelian, the Great Speaker, felt a nameless dread rising within him. Fear and despair clutched at his hearts.
The valor of the Second—Lion El'Jonson—was beyond question, even among the Emperor's sons. Yet time had only sharpened his power into something more elusive... more terrifying.
When the Lion's chariot of fire rolled through reality, there was no defense, no resistance—only retreat or ruin.
But Lorgar had no path left to flee.
And so, he did the unthinkable. Before all the gathered specters of gods and men, the Great Speaker charged straight into the oncoming flames, toward the Primarch who had already judged him.
The distance vanished.
And with the collision, the fire disappeared entirely—snuffed out as though it had never been.
Lorgar stood alone, breath ragged.
"Son of God…"
A voice rasped from below. A blackened, half-charred corpse dragged itself to his feet, eyes hollow, voice hoarse.
Lorgar's eyes widened.
Even in that ruined husk, he recognized the soul that remained—Old John, one of his earliest disciples, one of the few who had once truly shared in his dream of a radiant future. A friend.
Lorgar had given him belief, painted visions of utopia—and Old John had believed. But he had perished long ago, swallowed by the cleansing fire that razed the Perfect City.
"Tell me, my lord," the corpse asked, "was it all… worth it?"
Lorgar opened his mouth, but no words came. His guilt clung like ash. Even if this was a daemon's illusion—he could not bring himself to face that question, not from him.
He stepped around the corpse.
"There will be meaning," the Great Speaker whispered without turning. Whether the words were meant for the dead man or himself, none could say.
And he walked on—his stride resolute, his purpose burning brighter than the fire behind him.
Then, the voice called out again.
From the shadows, Horus emerged.
Disheveled, wounded—still bearing the bleeding gash in his side—he looked both real and unreal, as if memory and present had merged.
"Your illusions won't work on me," Lorgar growled, sneering, raising his weapon.
But before he could strike—
The storm swallowed them.
A vortex of Warp energy surged, and in an instant, both Horus and Lorgar vanished.
Moments later, Dukel descended in a pillar of golden light, illuminating the battlefield that had fallen into the grip of artificial night.
He surveyed the surroundings with a furrowed brow. The absence of light did not hinder him. If anything, it drew the predators to him.
In the gloom, countless Warp entities came for him—moth-like in their madness, seeking to smother the flame.
Dukel ignored them. Phantoms held no sway here.
Though the sudden appearance of Konrad Curze on Belial IV had been wholly unexpected, Dukel understood these daemons were not hostile. They were the Night Haunter's pets, loyal and whispering things only their master heard.
"Dukel."
The darkness unfurled like a velvet curtain, revealing Curze, shadow-cloaked and gaunt-eyed.
"I know what they're planning—Horus and Lorgar both."
Curze did not hold back. He spilled the secrets he had gleaned—without reservation, without artifice.
Dukel listened.
At first, his expression was unreadable. But as Curze spoke, a flicker of alarm crossed the golden warrior's face.
Elsewhere, deep within the temple-city's core, Horus and Lorgar reached the terminus of their pilgrimage.
The shadow cast by the arachnid-like structure spread wide. At its center stood a square framed by eight towering altars, layered with incense ashes and the dust of old Chaos.
Every detail had been arranged by the Great Speaker long before.
Despite the humming of industrial machines and arcane biotech constructs, the aesthetic here was... ancient. Unearthly.
Too familiar, Horus thought.
Steel, sinew, and circuitry combined into alien cranes and writhing archways. The air pulsed with a rhythm not of this world.
Lorgar had carved this altar into the heart of the city—hidden so deeply not even Imperial reconnaissance had detected it.
Twenty-two towering pillars wreathed in flame ringed the site. Had they not been buried beneath tons of reinforced stone, their spires might have pierced the clouds.
The entire complex groaned under the weight of ritual.
And from high above, a strange sigil looked down upon all—an emblem Horus had never seen before. Above it, a massive brazier blazed with flame that seemed more metaphor than fuel.
Coolant flowed from over a dozen auxiliary altars, and within the maze of stairs and causeways, robed Word Bearers and Warlocks moved in ritual precision.
Hovering above them, chained daemons shrieked and wailed, tormented by prayer and pain alike.
The Word Bearers chanted with a fever that bordered on madness—each syllable a blasphemy offered to something ancient and patient.
A force far above the Materium gathered here. On the high dais, the High Priest raised his hands.
The final rite was nearing its end.
"Why here?" Horus asked, unable to suppress his unease. "Why conduct the ritual in such a vulnerable place?"
"Because," Lorgar said, pulling black ashes from his robes, "this is the thinnest point between the Immaterium and the Materium."
He let the ashes fall.
"The portal is strong enough to go unnoticed—and that's exactly the point. But the ritual alone isn't enough. The war across the Belial Subsector is part of it. All the suffering and rage feed the rift, weaken the veil. What we're doing here is simply the final push to tear it open."
Lorgar's gaze was alight with holy fury. No logic remained—only belief.
Horus inhaled deeply. He had never taken Lorgar's plan seriously. It had reeked of desperation.
But the power Dukel now wielded… the resilience of the Imperial forces… they had left him no other option.
Then the chanting surged.
The altar erupted.
Flames—primordial and unreal—engulfed everything: the priests, the towers, the symbols, the machines.
But the fire did not burn. It did not consume.
Horus and Lorgar were caught in it, yet felt no pain. Startled, they glanced at one another—then watched.
The fire whispered.
And into their minds poured something greater: arcane calculus, cosmic experience, forgotten languages and endless knowledge—each fragment laced with madness and revelation.
They had opened the door.
Now something was reaching back.
There was something eerily familiar in the voices—tones half-remembered, as if once spoken in a dream or carved into ancient memory.
The whispers grew louder.
Soon, it was no longer a whisper at all but a cacophony—an overwhelming chorus of thousands shouting in unison, chanting truths in a language no mortal mind could truly comprehend.
Lorgar and Horus gritted their teeth, agony flaring behind their eyes. It was as if the entire knowledge of the universe had been poured into their skulls, flooding their thoughts with unbearable weight. Equations, axioms, histories, divine revelations—too vast to understand, too alien to accept.
The sound reached a crescendo.
Then—
Time itself halted.
Reality fractured before them as an immense portal, vast beyond measure, tore open. A threshold to the unknown yawned wide, beckoning.
Without resistance, the consciousness of the two Primarchs was pulled into the void.
They emerged into a place unmoored from sanity—a dimension where dark stars hung in a black sky, each one casting thousands of blade-like beams of light. No sun warmed this place, only the chill of unknowable truths.
"What is this…?" Horus muttered, bewildered.
"The True God!" Lorgar had already collapsed to his knees, his voice trembling with ecstasy. He prostrated himself like the most fanatical zealot. "Accept our meager devotion! Grant us mercy infinite and divine!"
The Black Star gave no answer. Yet, they felt it.
A will—immeasurable, cold, all-encompassing—examined them.
Time passed, or didn't. It was impossible to know.
Then it spoke, not with voice, but with an echo that resounded through the core of their being.
"You—"
The word stalled mid-thought. The will seemed to pause, like a data-stream encountering a paradox.
Neither Horus nor Lorgar noticed the stutter.
"Your day has not yet come," the voice continued after a long pause, almost contemplatively. "Perhaps… it remains undecided."
It was less a message and more a divine verdict. A whisper borne from the lips of an eternal.
Horus opened his mouth to speak—he wanted to ask something, anything.
But before the thought could form, another message was etched into their minds like fire:
"Five years."
A number. A warning. A deadline.
Then the world spun.
When they opened their eyes, they were back on the soil of Belia IV.
The altar was cold, its flame extinguished. The warp-saturated atmosphere had stilled.
But no one doubted the truth.
It had not been a dream. It had not been an illusion.
It had been real.
Horus stared at his hands, as though expecting them to be transformed. "What did we receive?" he asked, uncertain.
"Everything!" Lorgar cried, jubilant. "We have been blessed beyond comprehension, brother! Limitless knowledge! Infinite revelations! Power unmeasured! This is the True God's grace—so unlike the petty lies of the Chaos pantheon!"
Lorgar's eyes blazed with fervor, the madness of a man who had finally glimpsed the answer behind the veil. The purpose he had chased for millennia had taken shape.
But Horus remained grounded, his voice a whisper. "Five years…"
He clenched a gauntleted fist. "Is it a deadline?"
Lorgar only shook his head. "What matters is we succeeded. That is undeniable."
"…Yes," Horus said after a long pause. The lines on his brow eased. "Yes. You're right."
This outcome was beyond his wildest hopes. It meant he would not need to storm the Gate of Moloch, nor bargain with the Chaos Gods for gifts forged in deceit.
Because now, they had found something greater.
…
TN:
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