The air in the Throne Room congealed into liquid mercury, so heavy it could not be breathed.
"Since Father refuses to be a god, there must be other gods in the Universe!"
The words rang out like a slap, striking Lorgar Aurelian's face and every Primarch present.
Silence.
Even the normally boisterous Space Wolves were throttled into stillness.
"Hah…"
A dry, almost hysterical laugh cracked the hush.
It was Perturabo.
The Iron Warriors' lord did not look at Lorgar; he stared at his oil-stained hands, voice gravelly, as if chewing grit:
"This is… logic? This is the logic of the most spiritual among us?"
He jerked his head up, eyes blazing with absurdity, and jabbed at the screen:
"Because Father slapped him and said 'There are no gods,' his conclusion is 'I'll find some bastard who calls himself god and call him Dad'?!"
"What is this—an adolescent snorting drugs to spite his parents?!"
"Much as I hate to agree, Perturabo—"
Dorn's face was granite. "—you're right. This isn't folly; it's weakness. Utter weakness."
Dorn turned; his stern eyes stabbed the crumpled Lorgar like awls.
"Lorgar—look at me!"
Dorn's voice was thunder:
"Is this your faith? So cheap? So… fickle?"
"Anything on an altar, anything that accepts your kneeling—no matter who or what—gets your knees without a twinge?"
"Are your knees made of cartilage?!"
The real Lorgar Aurelian trembled.
He wanted to retort.
To cry, "No! I seek truth!"—"I seek a spiritual home for mankind!"
But the screen showed him, swayed by Erebus and Kor Phaeron, leaping into Chaos—making every excuse ash.
That eager wagging, like a lapdog finding a new Master, turned his stomach.
"That… was despair."
Guilliman spoke, exhausted, as if decades had suddenly bent his spine.
He looked at the screen, at Lorgar, then at his own hands—still "ash-covered" for razing the Perfect City.
"We drove him to it."
Guilliman murmured, self-reproach thick:
"We destroyed everything at Monarchia."
"We left his life in ruins and gave him no new pillar. When a soul is rubble, even a daemon's claw looks like rescue."
"Spare us your pity, Roboute!"
Ferrus Manus barked, metal hand slamming the rail with a screech:
"Only the weak turn traitor from a beating! We bled; we despaired—did we kneel to daemons? No!"
Ferrus' eyes blazed. "Excuses. A filthy cloak for the craven itch to bow to power."
While the Primarchs argued, the screen moved on.
No more debate—only action.
The footage turned bloody and raw.
Word Bearers, once chanting the Emperor's name for mankind's liberation, now aimed Bolters and Chainswords at unarmed civilians.
Not for war—for sacrifice.
Blood pooled, coursing along ancient runic grooves.
Screams rose and fell, yet Lorgar stood amid the gore, expectant, sickly beatific.
"A necessary sacrifice."
The screen-Lorgar whispered.
"For truth."
Vulkan's eyes pulsed crimson, wrath incarnate.
"He killed them…"
Vulkan's voice shook.
"He slaughtered those who trusted him—not for rebellion, but as chips to amuse monsters?"
Vulkan wheeled on Lorgar, no longer a brother but an unforgivable alien.
"How dare you, Lorgar! How dare you make human lives your offering?!"
"This is 'truth'?"
Sanguinius' perfect face iced over, wings half-spread for strike:
"If truth must be inked in innocents' blood, then truth itself is the greatest lie."
Yet deepest dread came from the thing that stepped through the Warp-rip.
A twisted, blasphemous daemon prince of meat and Chaos flame.
It stretched a hand to Lorgar, promising "the truth of the Universe."
And Lorgar—Primarch, one of the Emperor of Mankind's perfect creations—lowered his head like a humble pupil and clasped that pus-and-fire talon.
Thus they entered the Eye of Terror.
The visions turned lurid, madness mortal minds can't bear.
Reality buckled, time shattered.
Lorgar walked on, past The Flayer's temples, Slaanesh's pleasure halls, Nurgle's gardens, Khorne's skull-throne.
He did not gag or draw blade.
He… recorded.
He… praised.
Like a pilgrim returned home, he drank deep the rot-and-madness air.
Forty years.
Seconds passed in the materium; within the Warp Lorgar spent forty years on pilgrimage.
In those decades he sold his soul and—save a handful purged as loyalists—turned the entire Word Bearers Legion to Chaos.
When he stepped from the Eye again, he had changed.
The screen froze on the "new" Lorgar's face.
Still golden armor, still sacred runes.
But the eyes had altered.
No more doubt, no hunger for a father's love.
In their place: cold, calculating cruelty born of seeing all darkness.
No longer the weeping saint.
He was the Dark Apostle of Primordial Truth.
"Look at him."
Magnus spoke, cyclopean eye glinting with scholar's dread and sorrow. "His psyker-soul… soured."
"Once it blazed like gold—fanatic yet pure. Now—"
Magnus pointed:
"He's a black hole, drinking light."
"He's ceased being material; he's fused with them—daemons."
"More than that."
Khan narrowed eyes, catching the crux: "His expression. He no longer sees us as brothers."
"He looks at us like swine for slaughter, fools needing 'enlightenment.'"
"That arrogance… more nauseating than his former weakness."
The scene rolled on.
Lorgar returned to the Imperium. No open revolt.
He learned disguise.
He prosecuted the Great Crusade more "piously" than ever, reconquering Worlds at stunning speed.
The Emperor thought him reformed.
Guilliman thought he'd finally learned to be a warrior.
Yet on every conquered Planet Lorgar etched hidden Chaos runes.
He was poisoning the Milky Way Galaxy.
Patiently he waited for the pivotal piece—Horus.
"Father would become god; we must stop him. Only Chaos is humanity's destiny."
On the screen, Lorgar whispered to Horus, sounding for all the World like a prophet who had to bear humiliation for humanity's future.
"Bullshit!"
Russ hurled his goblet to the floor in fury. "That bastard! He eats shit himself and still tries to trick us into eating it too—and preaches like he's some saint!"
"The deadliest lies are always laced with truth."
Alpharius murmured from the shadows, voice laced with sarcasm only he grasped.
"Lorgar has found his role. No longer the useless architect, he has become...a carrier of plague."
"And he's succeeding."
Horus Lupercal stared at the screen, watching his future self step deeper into the web Lorgar wove.
"He used my trust. He used my ambition. And he used...my fear of our father."
Horus turned to the Lorgar still kneeling on the floor, fury blazing in his eyes.
"You...treacherous viper."
"I called you brother, the littlest one who most needed protection."
"And what were you thinking? How to drag me into that cesspool with you?!"
Horus strode toward Lorgar, his power claw humming.
"Don't kill him, Horus."
Guilliman suddenly stepped between them, face equally grim.
"That was the future him. The one here...hasn't done it yet."
"Haven't done it?"
Angron let out a savage laugh, pointing at the Word Bearers behind Lorgar.
"Look at them! Look at those Astartes! What's carved on their armor? Not Imperial script—it's Colchisian hexes!"
"They betrayed us long ago. From the start these fanatics have been digging holes inside our own camp!"
Angron's words sent a chill through everyone.
Dorn instantly turned to the Word Bearers, gaze as sharp as a blade.
Sure enough, beneath the seemingly sacred scripture lay disturbing, twisted sigils.
Before, they'd thought it decoration; now it was clear—marks of obeisance to dark gods.
"Disarm them."
Constantin Valdor, Captain-General of the Custodians, gave the cold order.
Golden Custodians surrounded the Word Bearers delegation in an instant.
"No! We are loyal!"
A Word Bearers captain tried to protest, but when he saw his future self on the screen driving a dagger into an Ultramarine, his voice died.
At that moment the silent Emperor stirred again.
He still did not look at Lorgar.
His gaze locked on the old man trying to shrink into the shadows—Kor Phaeron.
The accomplice of Erebus, Lorgar's adoptive father, First Captain of the Word Bearers.
[Erebus is the spark. You are the instigator.]
The Emperor's voice echoed through the hall, devoid of feeling.
[You abused him, controlled him, fed him that twisted creed since childhood. You forged this weak soul.]
[If Lorgar is the dagger thrust at the Imperium, then you are the one who honed its edge.]
Kor Phaeron froze, feeling the psychic pressure that could crush stars fix upon him.
"N-no, my lord...I did it for his sake...for—"
The old man's excuse rang hollow.
[You need not speak. Your soul reeks of rot. I can smell that you long ago swore yourself to the one called Tzeentch.]
The Emperor raised a single finger.
[Since you so love to toy with faith and souls...]
[...join your accomplice.]
Boom!
Golden psychic flame erupted around Kor Phaeron.
But this fire differed from the one that had taken Erebus.
Erebus screamed; Kor Phaeron made no sound.
The flames sealed his senses.
Everyone watched as Kor Phaeron's mouth gaped wide, trying to scream, to wail, yet uttering nothing.
His body melted like wax, but the Emperor locked his consciousness inside, forcing him to feel every nerve burn.
It was silent, eternal torment.
With a gesture the Emperor set this burning "torch of silence" opposite Erebus.
On one pillar: Erebus, screaming for Eternity.
On the other: Kor Phaeron, eternally mute, howling only within his soul.
Motion and stillness, noise and silence—the Throne Room's most terrifying, cautionary tableau.
Only then did the Emperor lower his gaze to Lorgar, kneeling and half-dead with fear.
Seeing the two who had shaped him most turned into living torches shattered Lorgar's mind.
"Father..." he sobbed like an abandoned child, "don't kill me...I didn't want to betray...save me..."
The Emperor looked down, golden eyes flickering with something far too complex.
Was it disappointment, pity, or the coldness of one who had foreseen all?
[Lorgar.]
The Emperor's voice echoed in his mind, no longer thunder, but a calm that chilled.
[You wanted gods.]
[You wanted faith. You wanted a higher being to kneel to, to depend upon.]
[It is a flaw in your genes—a mistake in my design.]
Those words stunned Lorgar and every Primarch present.
Their father...admitting a flaw?
[But I will not let that flaw become poison that dooms humanity.]
[You seek truth? You wish to see the Warp?]
Slowly the Emperor extended his hand; a sphere of pure golden psy-energy condensed above his palm.
[Then look your fill.]
He thrust the sphere into Lorgar's brow.
"Aaaaahhh!!!"
Lorgar shrieked.
It was not pain of flesh.
In his sight the World changed.
The Emperor had forced open his psychic eye—utterly, without filter.
He saw the Warp.
Not the "divine realm" Erebus promised, not the "truth" he had imagined.
He saw the maggot-swarm that was Nurgle, wrought of filth and pus; Slaanesh, devouring sensation; Khorne, mindless roaring hate.
The Emperor stripped Chaos of its "divinity," showing Lorgar their basest, foulest, most chaotic essence.
[These are the gods you craved.]
The Emperor's voice was cold commentary.
[Parasites that feed on emotion. Dimensional refuse—and you would kneel to this trash?]
Lorgar clutched his head, writhing on the floor.
"No! It's hideous! It's obscene! Take it away! Father, take it away!"
For Lorgar, who yearned for beauty and sanctity, this forced "truth" was worse than death.
The collapse of his idols left him vomiting bile.
[Even should you close your eyes, you will keep watching.]
The Emperor pronounced, merciless.
[Until you learn to despise them with reason, not worship them with knees.]
At last Lorgar sank into unconsciousness.
Two Custodians stepped forward and carried him back to his seat.
Silence reclaimed the hall.
Only the crackle of the two burning torches remained.
The Primarchs looked at one another.
For the first time they understood: this "viewing" was no mere tale.
It was a trial.
A trial of their very souls.
Lorgar was only the first.
Who would be next?