[And what truly made Sigismund the Emperor's Chosen was during the Siege of Terra.
During the Siege of Terra, Sigismund decided to slay the strongest of the enemy forces one by one.
And in the battle against Khârn, Sigismund would also become one of the Emperor's sharpest weapons.
Before the battle with Khârn, the Living Saint Keeler found Sigismund and told him.
Your brothers are those Chaos Astartes; they have turned into something else.
Their power comes from the gifts of the gods they worship; if you want to defeat them, open your heart and accept the Emperor's blessing.
But she was driven away by Dorn's forceful presence; in the end, Sigismund didn't understand what she meant.
Until he encountered his fellow chain-brother from the dueling pits, Khârn.]
"Look! Look! My brothers! Divinity cannot be hidden by lies after all!"
Lorgar's voice echoed in the viewing hall, not as a simple proclamation, but as a suppressed eruption of nearly trembling ecstasy after over a hundred years.
He stood up from his throne, spreading his arms as if to embrace the glimmer emanating from the mortal saint, Keeler, on the screen.
"He walks among men, and His will can create miracles! This woman, Keeler, she is the proof!"
"It is the irrefutable manifestation of Father's divine essence! I was once punished for this, my city turned to ash, only because I saw the truth that you are only now being forced to witness!"
His gaze swept across his brothers like a searchlight, finally landing on Dorn like a sharp sword, his eyes filled with reproach, pity, and a morbid sense of 'I told you so.'
"Rogal, my brother, you are still building ramparts with your cold stone and dull logic, yet you refuse to look up at the Sun that illuminates everything!"
"You cast out miracles and pushed your finest son into a bottomless abyss of powerlessness!"
"Open your eyes and look, Rogal! This is the truth of the Universe! A truth where a god exists and responds to prayers!"
"Truth?"
Dorn's voice was like the cracking of ice, every syllable cold and resolute.
He sat motionless, like the mountain itself, but his clenched fists betrayed the turmoil within.
"The truth I see is an unregulated Psyker using the illusions of the Warp to bewitch my Legion!"
"Using 'faith', that most ancient and vicious poison, to corrode the will of warriors!"
"Lorgar, have you forgotten? The cornerstone of the Imperial Truth was to completely liberate humanity from ideologies like yours that treat weakness and superstition as strength!"
"Superstition? Rogal, your ignorance is as unyielding as ever."
Magnus's sonorous and wise voice boomed, the red giant's single eye reflecting Keeler's figure, filled with complex insight.
"This is not superstition; this is an unguided, primal torrent of psychic energy!"
"It is the collective subconscious longing of trillions of humans in despair for Father's power, projected into reality! A living miracle shaped by belief!"
He suddenly turned toward the Golden Throne, his voice filled with suppressed pain and resentment:
"Father! You forbid us from systematically understanding and studying it, yet you allow it to erupt in its most dangerous and uncontrollable form as 'miracles'!"
"Instead of relying on such miracles that could be twisted by the whispers of the Warp at any moment, why not let us use knowledge to harness it?!"
"Why force us to grope in the dark, only to be left choosing between 'superstition' and 'ignorance'?!"
"Harness? You nearly harnessed all of Terra into a demon's mouth, sorcerer!"
Russ's roar followed immediately as he slammed a fist onto the armrest of his throne, producing a dull, heavy thud.
"That's the result of your nonsense! This stuff is Warp filth and should be purged! Not kept as a treasure in your ridiculous libraries!"
"That is the fear of the ignorant toward wisdom, you stupid wolf!" Magnus roared back.
"The Emperor's blessing?"
Angron's laughter, like a broken bellows, suddenly erupted, filled with extreme pain and mockery. He leaned forward from his throne, the Butcher's Nails churning madly in his skull, contorting his face.
"Ha! Another Master, another new chain! Dorn's champion fights with the chains of 'duty'."
"And my son fights with the chains of 'bloodlust'! Now, you want to give that poor wretch a flashier chain called 'faith'!"
His roar shook the air: "Slaves... are always slaves!"
"No matter who the Master is, whether the chains are gold or iron, it doesn't change your bound nature!"
"Lorgar, you cheer for finding a new Master, while I am sickened that you are all still searching for one!"
Perturabo looked at his rival, that forever orderly stone.
"This proves that no matter how solid a fortress is, if it's built on the sand of 'belief', it will fall with a single push."
"Dorn, it seems even your sharpest sword needs a bit of 'magic' to be wielded now."
"Your vaunted realism looks like a joke right now. What a... wonderful irony."
"Whether it's a blessing or a curse, it doesn't change one fact." Lion's voice was as cold as a Caliban winter.
He didn't even glance at his bickering brothers, his gaze fixed on the screen as if inspecting a weapon.
"Khârn has become a Beast that must be eliminated."
"And Sigismund, if he cannot complete this task, he is merely a useless tool. Discussing motives is the behavior of the weak."
"Tool? Beast? No, no, no... You are all wrong." Konrad Curze's hair-raising laughter came from the shadows as he glided out like a specter, a twisted smile on his pale face.
"This is our true face! One has embraced his inner fury, and the other is about to embrace his inner fanaticism!"
"They have simply... stopped pretending! Isn't this more honest than you hypocrites who use 'duty', 'Order', and 'honor' to sugarcoat everything?"
"Honest? Curze, what I see is not honesty, but endless pain."
The Master of the Fire Drakes, Vulkan, spoke in a deep and warm voice, yet it carried the tremor of an impending volcanic eruption.
His massive frame leaned forward slightly in compassion, his red eyes full of sorrow.
"Every one of Khârn's swings is an uncontrollable wail. Every one of Sigismund's parries is a desperate prayer for his own beliefs."
"They are not fighting; they are being torn apart by the storms within them! And yet here you are, coldly arguing about tools and pretense!"
"Vulkan is right."
Sanguinius's voice, like heavenly music, rang out softly, breaking the suffocating stillness.
His angelic face was filled with deep-seated worry, and his massive wings twitched unconsciously.
"What we see are two souls struggling on the edge of the abyss. One is consumed by a crimson tide of rage, while the other tries to grasp a sliver of golden light."
"But no matter what they grasp, they are no longer in control of themselves. This... is a wake-up call for all of us. How far are we from that abyss?"
[Sigismund was quite familiar with Khârn, but after years of not seeing him, Khârn had completely changed.]
[Because by this time, Khârn had been blessed by the Blood God and was halfway to becoming a daemon. Seeing Sigismund, he began to attack fiercely. After the first blow, Sigismund felt something was wrong—the strength was too great.]
[Khârn was also mocking Sigismund for still being bound by his duty.]
But although Sigismund was still fighting and saying that duty was far superior to empty satisfaction,
He simply could not defeat the current Khârn, despite having the technical advantage and being familiar with his opponent.
Even when Sigismund's sword cut through Khârn's armor and struck his body, the unnaturally bulging muscles allowed Khârn to ignore all attacks.]
Khârn forcibly withstood all attacks and took Sigismund down.
It was only then that Sigismund understood what Keeler had said: he had to be purer to win. Unfortunately, it was all too late.
When Dorn rescued Sigismund from Khârn's hands, Sigismund would be changed forever.]
The duel on the screen was incredibly brutal. Every one of Sigismund's exquisite parries and precise counterattacks was like crashing into an immovable wall of flesh.
Khârn had abandoned all technique; every swing of his battle-axe was an embodiment of pure strength and fury.
Sigismund's gaze was locked onto the screen, his knuckles cracking as he gripped the armrest of his throne.
That sense of powerlessness, the pain of watching a brother fall while being unable to do anything, crossed time and space to sear his soul once more.
"Why..." His voice was hoarse, as if squeezed from the depths of his throat.
"Khârn, we once shared the sand of the same dueling pits. Your rage should have been for breaking your chains, not for putting on another, bloodier pair of shackles!"
Khârn paused noticeably and said,
"Isn't it only natural? I cannot give up on my father, just as you will not give up on your duty."
"Duty... I always thought duty was our shared faith. We fight for the Emperor, for humanity."
"But you chose another path, the path of Chaos's hollow satisfaction."
Sigismund's voice was filled with deep disappointment and pain.
"You gave up honor, you gave up loyalty, you even gave up yourself."
"Then I can only say I'm sorry," Khârn said with regret.
Angron cheered as he watched Khârn on the screen. "Crush him! Crush that ridiculous discipline! Crush that hypocritical honor!"
"Show him! Where true power comes from! From pain! From rage! From everything that was stripped away from us!"
Dorn snapped his head around, his cold gaze staring directly at Angron: "You cheer for the fall of your scion?"
"Fall? No! This is liberation!"
Angron roared:
"My son has finally broken free of your ridiculous rules and embraced his true nature!"
"He is more free than any gold-clad slave in that palace of yours!"
"Even if it means raising a rebel sword against the Emperor?!"
Lion El'Jonson's low growl carried the lingering resonance of Caliban's thunderous wrath, the pupils behind his dark visor contracting into slits.
"Every drop of these traitors' blood defiles the glory of the Great Crusade."
"The First Legion should have emptied every magazine at Ullanor! Every potential corruption should have been strangled in its cradle!"
For the first time today, he felt that his discipline—harsh to the point of being inhuman—was still too lax.
"You have a good son, Angron."
Vulkan's voice was as hot as lava, carrying a hint of regret. His gaze moved past the screen to the brother tormented by the Butcher's Nails.
"To turn against his own brothers for your sake... In his own way, he has expressed a 'loyalty' you never received. Only, the price of this loyalty is his soul."
"Soul?" Angron sneered. "That kind of thing died the moment I put these nails in!"
"Now, my son is just like me, having learned how to fight without a soul!"
This conversation caused the atmosphere in the viewing hall to drop to freezing point.
The rifts between the Primarchs had never been so clearly or deeply displayed before everyone.
This was no longer a disagreement over strategy or ideology, but an irreconcilable opposition regarding the very nature of existence.