"No!!!" Calgar's roar echoed through the temple.
Not just him, but all the Ultramarines present let out a painful cry of rage.
The same emotion, similar anger, a linked bloodline, even stirring a ripple in the Warp.
But a mere roar could not stop the Black Sword that descended simultaneously from the Empyrean and reality.
Death arrived from the void; a tall, blue, round figure and Alexander from the real universe simultaneously plunged their sword into Roboute Guilliman's chest.
Scorching blood flowed from the Emperor's son's chest, turning into steam and vanishing on the burning Black Sword of death.
Roboute Guilliman let out a low groan of pain.
"No! What have you done!"
Calgar's voice was almost hoarse. He charged forward again, desperately.
However, the teardrop-shaped spear silently swept through, shattering the power armor on Calgar's leg before he could react.
The spearplay astonished Calgar, even in his rage.
He fell heavily on the steps before the throne, staring in disbelief at the figure in the flaxen robe.
The figure wielded the teardrop spear, reaping the lives of the Black Legion like an old farmer harvesting wheat on Macragge.
Each time the spear tip flashed, a Black Legion head flew into the sky.
His spear tip skillfully and precisely struck the neck of every Black Legionnaire.
Such divine skill...
Calgar felt dizzy, vaguely thinking that the teardrop-shaped spear looked familiar.
Perhaps he had seen it in some mural, some legend, some historical account.
Calgar watched as the figure in the flaxen robe slowly turned its head, looking at his dying gene-father.
The Black Sword was slowly pulled from Roboute Guilliman's chest, drawing out blood and the Primarch's life.
The corner of the flaxen robe's mouth seemed to curl into a smile.
"King of the Late, now it's your turn to die."
"Father!" Calgar only managed to let out a painful wail.
Death.
Roboute Guilliman looked at the scene before him in a daze.
Fulgrim's blade had cut his neck?
No, perhaps that was long past, something from many years ago.
This time, what took his life was a pitch-black blade.
The sword seemed to constantly hunt his very death, stabbing out from beneath the veil of reality, piercing into his chest, taking his life.
It hurt, intense pain assailed Roboute Guilliman's chest, blood flowed uncontrollably.
The sword cut through his ribs, pierced his heart and many vital organs, leaving a kind of burning yet cold fire of death in his chest.
Guilliman wanted to raise his hand to cover his chest, but he couldn't.
His once powerful arm wouldn't lift, the vitality in his flesh seemed to have been drained, and hot machinery wrapped around his body like tentacles.
Death.
"Father!"
Roboute Guilliman seemed to hear a wail.
An Ultramarine in blue armor knelt on the steps before him, perhaps one of his gene-sons.
Roboute Guilliman wanted to speak, he tried to lift his head.
And a figure in a flaxen robe standing before him seemed to notice his effort, slowly turning its head to look at him.
A clear and familiar laugh echoed, making Roboute Guilliman feel a sense of familiarity.
"King of the Late, now it's your turn to die."
The words carried a hint of playfulness, a touch of resentment, and a perfectly pitched mockery.
Who are you?
Roboute Guilliman wanted to ask the question.
But he was weighed down by heavy death, slowly sinking into a deeper place.
No.
Roboute Guilliman's soul cried out in agony.
No.
Who will protect them now?
Who will help them now?
Who will save our cause now?
No.
But death was merciless. Guilliman clearly felt his organs weakening little by little, his heart abruptly stopping its beat, the electrical signals in his brain no longer flowing.
He stood on the cliff at the boundary between reality and the Warp, hearing the gods' insane laughter.
Cold, sticky scales wrapped around his body, and a mocking moan echoed from the void.
"Finally."
"The most arrogant one."
"The most boring one."
A rustling of velvet brushed past Roboute Guilliman's ears, like a snake slithering over it.
Poisonous fangs emerged from tightly pressed lips, and intense joy, pleasure, and exhilaration turned into venom, dripping onto the wound on his neck.
The snake would emerge from here, from here tear apart Roboute Guilliman's glory, and plunge him into eternal depravity and mockery.
It was a scaled creature, a mix of an eel, sea snake, slug, and ouroboros, emerging from the wound on Roboute Guilliman's neck.
But just then, the snake noticed a fresh wound on Roboute Guilliman's chest, entwined with a power completely different from its own.
That was... that was... that was death.
The snake suddenly realized something and tried to retract its body.
However, the wound on Roboute Guilliman's chest suddenly widened, and a blue arm with a white, round hand emerged from it, tightly gripping a pitch-black blade, its body entwined with thick death.
The snake let out a terrified wail, but the Black Sword held by the round hand killed Roboute Guilliman without hesitation, and also killed the one parasitic on Roboute Guilliman.
The Black Sword, entwined with death, directly pierced the snake's body, and an intense pain swept through the snake's entire being.
It was pain without pleasure or stimulation, cold, dry, hollow pain, unable to bring the slightest mental stimulation, only intense self-destructive desire.
The snake parasitic on Roboute Guilliman let out a wail and dissipated into death.
"Ah!!!!"
In Slaanesh's palace, Fulgrim let out a sharp, painful howl.
His body slid from the velvet throne, and the scorching, constantly trembling fifth old crone sword slipped from his cloaca.
A pain hotter and colder than the Aeldari death god's power on the old crone sword swept through Fulgrim's entire body.
What Fulgrim found most unbearable was that the pain, that death, was purer and colder than the Aeldari death god's.
It was untainted by hatred or any other emotion, only hollow destructive desire and pure death.
Fulgrim, in a daze, seemed to see the destroyer of worlds.
Undoubtedly, this was the corruption he had left on Roboute Guilliman taking effect.
But something was wrong.
This cold death and destruction certainly did not come from the Aeldari death god.
Fulgrim eagerly cast his gaze over.
He saw it.
Guilliman's soul hovered on the cliff at the boundary of reality and the Warp, then the cliff collapsed, and Roboute Guilliman's soul roared uncontrollably.
His blood and flesh, spirit and essence, were returned to their most primordial state in the Warp's death storm.
It was a furious storm of blue and gold, operating with a unique and strange order, mirroring the operation of Ultramar's five hundred world star clusters.
Then, Fulgrim saw it.
The blue, round figure rose from the ripples of the Warp, its head enormous, like a raccoon dog, with a pocket full of dead silence hanging from its belly, as if the other end of the pocket was the end of the entire galaxy.
The figure stretched out two round hands and suddenly grabbed the storm that Roboute Guilliman had become.
In an instant, the storm began to regain its soul, form, body, and matter, gradually reforming into Roboute Guilliman himself.
But at the same time, the power of that blue, round figure was also constantly seeping into Roboute Guilliman's body.
He was corrupting Roboute Guilliman!!
Fulgrim let out a sharp, low growl.
Who exactly is this? What kind of being was born from where? To dare to get ahead of him.
Suddenly, the blue figure seemed to instinctively sense Fulgrim's gaze and slowly turned its head.
Fulgrim's distorted, depraved, and deformed figure was reflected in its round eyes.
"You're peeking, aren't you?"
In the material universe, Alexander seemed to sense something and silently turned his head.
But he found that his gaze did not fall on the real universe, but directly pierced through the entire Warp, falling on a... .
A creature coiled beneath a velvet throne, a mix of snake, eel, slug, and white fat maggot, its upper body still vaguely showing human traces, but with a pair of hideous, thin fleshy wings, and beneath the wings were four slender, needle-like arms.
Its face still showed some traces of its former beauty, but the marks of debauchery, drugs, and depravity were even more obvious, stretching his face to an unreasonable degree, filled with unhealthy pallor and emaciation, a veritable pale snake demon.
And beside this fallen behemoth lay a blade forged from pale finger bones, glowing with a ghostly blue heat, vibrating with a hum on the velvet carpet, covered in unknown slime.
Alexander looked at the pale blade, clearly the fifth old crone sword, and then at the daemon Primarch, clearly Fulgrim.
Fulgrim was also looking at Alexander in a daze.
The fifth old crone sword was hot on the ground, humming lowly.
Alexander guessed that this might be the old crone sword's own ability, to burn Slaanesh daemons and actively attack beings blessed by Slaanesh.
But... but it seemed Fulgrim had developed some different uses.
For a moment, the atmosphere in the air was a bit awkward.
Finally, Fulgrim let out a sharp and terrified scream, retracted his gaze, and twisted his snake-like body, disappearing into the Warp, vanishing without a trace.