Chapter 75: The Cadian Apocalypse - Part Three

I do not own the Warhammer 40000 universe nor any of its characters. They belong to
Games Workshop.

Inspired by the Dornian Heresy, by Aurelius Rex.

I am Ciaphas Cain.

Hero of the Imperium. Liberator of Perlia. Savior of more worlds than I care to
remember. Agent of the Inquisition. Operative of the Alpha Legion. Commissar-
Castellan of Cadia.

My name and face are plastered on recruitment posters all across the Segmentum and
beyond. I have fought Tyranid Hive-Tyrants, executed self-proclaimed Warmasters of
Chaos, killed Traitor Marines, witnessed the banishment of Daemon Princes and the
destruction of worlds. I have walked on Holy Terra and survived the intrigues of
the High Lords.

I am a liar. A fraud. A coward. And I am so, so very afraid.

The Times of Ending are here, and I am afraid.

I should be used to fear. After a century of this life, You would think so,
wouldn't You ? And yet, here I am, kneeling in this small chapel within the command
bunker of Kasr Tyrok, trying to stop myself from going mad with terror. Everyone
else has cleared it without me needing to even ask, as they do every time I come
down here. They all think I'm praying to You for clarity, for strength, for the
safety of the souls of all those who have already been killed.

They are wrong. I am here because I am going to break under the pressure, because I
need to let the mask down and stop pretending to be something I am not for a
moment.

Still, prayer certainly can't hurt at this point. The other side certainly aren't
shy about calling on their own gods to help them win their battles. And they have
the gall to call us weak …

God-Emperor, I know I haven't been the most devout of Your subjects. I haven't
spent as much time in Your churches as I probably could have, and definitely more
in bars and gambling dens than I should have. In my defense, it has been around
seventy years since I last set foot in a bordello for reasons not related to my
duty.

All of my life, I believed that You had more important things to care about than I.
But now, here I stand, on the threshold of Hell, faced with the hordes that took
Your sacrifice, and so much more, to push back the last time they threatened
Humanity.

So many have died already. So many more still will, no matter what I do.

Please, grant me Your guidance in this hour. Not for me, but for all those
beautiful fools who believe in the lie of Cain the Hero.

I am not that man. I never was. He never existed. All I am is Ciaphas Cain, and it
isn't enough.

So please. I beg of You, my Emperor. If You feel any gratitude for what I have done
in Your name, however reluctantly it was done, then please …
Help me save them.

Times of Ending : The Cadian Apocalypse

Part Three : Death of Heroes

With the descent of the New Marines, the battle of Cadia has entered a new phase.
Cut off from the rest of the Imperium by the Warp Storms raised by the Dark Angels,
the defenders of the Cadian Gate must now make their stand against the fruit of
thousands of years of the Clonelord's vile genetic experiments, while sinister
plots unfold across the system that could forever change the course of the Long
War. A darkness not seen since days long lost to myth has come to the galaxy, but
these brave heroes are unaware that it is but the prelude of what is to come – for,
far from the Cadian Gate, three Primarchs still have yet to reach their father's
Throneroom …

The fall of Kasr Partox had dealt a terrible blow to the defenders of the Cadian
Gate. Though the forces of the Archenemy had initially found some success in their
attack, it had been believed by the common troopers that the fortress-worlds would
be able to hold against the Black Crusade for months, or even years. Instead, Kasr
Partox had fallen in barely a month, and while Imperial high command stamped hard
on any rumor, there were still stories circulating of the bloody daemons that had
been involved, including the infamous Destroyer and his infernal progenitor, the
accursed Rogal Dorn.

Of course, Imperial high command knew the full extent of what had happened on Kasr
Partox, as the defenders of the sister-world to Cadia had made sure to inform their
peers of the peril they faced, despite knowing that there could be no
reinforcements sent. The last Castellums still standing on Kasr Partox were,
according to the last communications which had made it through the increasing Warp
turbulences, preparing to meet their end nobly against the Khornate hordes. The
only bright spot, such as it was, was that the destruction of the Eternal Crusader
had left behind considerable orbital debris, even taking into account the bigger
pieces which had fallen onto the planet. As a result, the evacuation and
redeployment of the Chaos armies responsible would be significantly delayed after
the last Imperial defenders had been defeated – no one truly believed they could
prevail.

Battle continued across the rest of the system. On Solar Mariatus, the forces of
the Dark Mechanicum had pushed into the underground forges of the frozen world,
leading to brutal tunnel warfare being waged between the tech-priests of Mars and
those of Chaos. After the third incident of a long-range vox-receiver killing its
operators after being infected by scrap-code, the order was given to stop listening
to transmissions from Solar Mariatus, at least until the strategic situation had
evolved.

The fortress-worlds of Kasr Holn and Kasr Sonned were besieged by the Black
Legion's hordes of mutants and heretics, but the Word Bearers of the Illuminating
Dawn Chapter deployed between the two planets alongside their garrisons of Astra
Militarum troops and Fourth Legion overseers were holding for now. It appeared
that, for now, the Black Crusade's commanders simply wanted to keep those forces
contained while their plans for Cadia itself progressed. The Navy complex of
Vigilatum had yet to come under attack by the Chaos fleet, and while the hive-world
of Macharia was suffering a veritable plague of cult uprisings, it too had been
spared from direct assault by the invaders. It was speculated by Imperial high
command that the Black Crusade desired to seize the food production facilities of
Macharia for itself, as investigations in the Eye of Terror (performed at great
cost) had made it clear that such facilities were rare in the extreme within the
spatial anomaly, and uncontaminated food and water worth as much if not more than
ammunition for the Traitors' guns.

This still left the Cadian defenders to deal with the Black Legion's latest
horrifying surprise : the three Redoubts which had landed on the planet and
disgorged the Astartes contained within. To the Black Legion, these creations of
Fabius Bile were called New Marines, but the Imperials soon came up with different
appellations : the Defiler Marines, the Abominations, the Bile-born, and a hundred
others.

Within days of the Redoubts' landing, the situation across Cadia had altered
dramatically. The estimates of Imperial logisticians concerning the number of New
Marines each Redoubt carried turned out to have been overly optimistic : in total,
around thirty thousand of the Clonelord's transhuman children had been brought to
Cadia. It was a strength worthy of a Legion in the days of the Great Crusade, when
the Space Marines had gathered in the tens of thousands and brought the galaxy to
heel in the Emperor's name, before the Roboutian Heresy had forever changed the
fabric of the Imperium and forced Humanity on the defensive, scattering the
Astartes into smaller forces save for exceptional circumstances.

It was fortunate for the Cadian defenders that the New Marines lacked the
organization and discipline of a true Legion. If they had been trained to fight as
soldiers rather than warriors, and assuming performance equal to that of a loyalist
Space Marine and that the commanders were willing to accept any sacrifice, the
tactical simulations of the Iron Warriors showed that the planet would have fallen
within the week, though doing so would have cost all but a tenth of their number –
the Iron Warriors and Cadians hadn't spent ten thousand years turning the planet
into a death trap for nothing.

The lack of equipment of the New Marines also played a considerable part. The Bile-
born were each wearing standard suits of power armor, mass-produced within the
Hell-Forges of the Eye of Terror that had aligned themselves with the Black Legion.
Not only were these suits, on average, of inferior quality to the wargear of the
loyalist Space Marines, they also failed to take into account the unique
physiologies of individual New Marines. The rest of their equipment was also
unimpressive, though still of a class far above what common Chaos cultists could
scavenge. They had emerged from their stasis coffins with bolters and chainswords,
but no transports, tanks, bikes, or other specialist weaponry. Some claimed
transports from the other Black Legion forces already deployed, or captured it from
Imperial forces caught in the open, but it was obvious that they had been deployed
primarily as infantry, without the kind of infrastructure a true Legion would have
taken for granted.

"The subject's body was recovered in the trenches around Kasr Tyrok, prior to the
withdrawal of all Imperial elements within the Castellum's walls. He was killed in
action by the battle-brothers of the Alpha Legion alongside elements of the
Valhallan 597th and Commissar-Castellan Cain himself, during the extraction of the
Ordinatus Manifest Fury [for more details on the engagement, see after-action
report IXYAB-45, classification beta-emerald]. The dissection was performed by me,
with support from Magos Biologis Demetrius Vex and his servitors.

Genetic analysis of this particular specimen has returned interesting results. The
mixing of different gene-seeds is a known heresy of the Clonelord, but this subject
appears to have been created using a combination of Eighteenth Legion (explaining
the tint of his eyes), Fifteenth Legion (likely related to the psychic abilities he
was recorded as using on the field), and Sixteenth Legion's genetic material. I
believe the latter element was used as a stabilizing base of some sorts, a canvas
on which the rest of the abominable work was performed.

Like the other specimens, this one wore standardized power armor showing a marked
lack of adaptation to his unique deformities. In this case, the bones of the left
shoulder showed signs of gigantism extending to the rest of the arm, which must
have caused considerable pain and stiffness in the limb, severely impacting the
subject's efficiency on the battlefield. I have discussed the matter with a
Techmarine of the Fourth Legion, and he has confirmed my suspicions that such an
adaptation would have been the matter of few hours of work for a skilled artisan at
most.

The subject showed little traces of physical mutations beyond the previously
mentioned abnormal growth of his left arm. His brain had been damaged by the method
of his death, but examination of the remains of his brain matter have revealed
abnormalities, the impact of which on cognition and emotional stability I can only
guess about without more intact specimens, or even alive ones – something I am well
aware is unlikely in the extreme to happen anytime soon.

If I were to speculate, however, I would say that these abnormalities might be the
reason for the 'Bile-born's' observed fanatical dedication to their creator. Mere
hypno-conditioning and more conventional indoctrination could of course explain
much of that behavior, but I suspect the Clonelord went further in order to ensure
the loyalty of his creations.

I must stress that this is purely theoretical, and of little practical use besides.
Fabius Bile has had thousands of years to perfect his control on his creations. It
is supremely unlikely that the 'Roboute scenario' some of my peers have imagined
will ever come to pass, unless something drastic happens within the hierarchy of
the Black Legion."

Excerpt from the (abridged) report of Caractacus Mott, Inquisitorial Savant, on the
Heretic Astartes sub-category commonly known as 'Bile-born'

Given the size of the Redoubts and the immense amount of resources that must have
gone into their construction and the creation of the Bile-born, it seemed
impossible that this was by mistake. The presence of observation servitors
alongside the New Marines reinforced the belief of the Imperial commanders that the
entire battle zone was being treated as a giant experiment by the mad Arch-Renegade
of the Emperor's Children : a way to test his creations in real battle conditions
and see which ones performed best. Alpha Legionnaires present at high command
meetings confirmed that this was likely the case, based on the information they had
on the Black Crusade in general and Fabius Bile in particular. Of course, this
information was kept from the troops, who certainly didn't need to know the enemy
commander was using them to test the skills of his latest demented creations.

But while the New Marines lacked some of the strengths of their predecessors, they
had their own unholy gifts to compensate, bestowed upon them not by the Ruinous
Powers but by the forbidden alchemy of the Primogenitor. The Imperial forces that
had been operating outside the Castellums, harassing the Black Legion hordes and
cutting their supply lines, were now faced with overwhelming transhuman numbers.
Even the old, Heresy-era tactics developed to deal with the Traitor Legions were
useless, for they hadn't accounted for seemingly random abilities the New Marines
displayed. In some cases, the warbands of roaming Bile-born were slaughtered by the
more experienced and disciplined Imperials, while in others the servants of the
Emperor were killed to the last, with many more engagements falling somewhere in
between.

The New Marines had been deployed without a clear order of battle, and seemed to
have their own objective : to prove their worth to the Clonelord, whom they
regarded as a mix between a father figure and creator god. In a manner reminiscent
of the way Orks behaved, they sought the greatest challenges, and while this drew
most of them to the Castellums, those loyalist forces still operating outside the
fortresses soon became hunted by thousand-strong wandering bands of New Marines,
along with whatever Black Legion troops they could bully into supporting them. Only
forces that could move fast enough to avoid being caught, or who had enough
transhuman power of their own to overcome the New Marines in small groups, could
hope to survive in those conditions.

Individual Companies of Space Marines were thus able to continue operations across
Cadia, as did motorized Regiments with enough firepower. With the vox-network
heavily damaged by Warp interference and the ongoing destruction of orbital relays,
these units were forced to operate entirely on their own, doing their best to
inflict as much damage upon the enemy as they could.

Even Knights and Titans were not completely safe from the New Marines, as was
proven when a battle-group of the Legio Kulisaetai was swarmed by other two
thousand Bile-born and around fifty Black Legion tanks. The Astartes rushed the
Titans and climbed them despite the casualties they took in their charge, before
hacking their way inside and slaughtering the crew of the thirteen God-Machines.
Within the week, half of them walked again, their machine-spirits forced into
submission by elements of the Dark Mechanicum.

Other battles went better for the Imperium. The World Eaters of the 59th Assault
Company struck at the Black Legion forces advancing onto Kasr Tyrok for days, until
the New Marines among its ranks lost patience and pursued the sons of Angron all
the way to the Caducades Sea. Clad in void-proof power armor, the World Eaters
walked down into the depths, and such was the fury of the Bile-born that all of
them with functioning helmets pursued them. On the ocean floor, the 59th Assault
Company turned back to fight its pursuers, supported by eleven Regiments of the
Knossosian Harpooners. The resulting battle would last for weeks, as the two forces
fought an invisible war in the darkness beneath the waves, keeping hundreds of New
Marines from reinforcing the siege of the Castellum.

The Knossosian Harpooners

Originating from the Ocean World of Knossos, the Harpooners are extremely
specialized among the untold millions of Regiments of the Astra Militarum. Knossos
is a world entirely covered in water, and Humanity's presence is concentrated
within a few cities on artificial islands which double as landing platforms for the
heavy cargo haulers which send the planet's tithe of processed fish and alga to
feed other worlds. This would qualify Knossos as an agri-world, if not for the
presence of the Charbydae Megalodons, immense shark-like creatures which reign at
the top of Knossos' food chain, despite Man's best efforts to exterminate them.

Such is the strength and resilience of the Charbydae Megalodons that wiping the
species out completely would require the use of chemical weapons which would
cripple the planet's biosphere and render it useless to the Imperium. Therefore,
the harvest-arks of the Knossosian people are defended from the Megalodons and
other predators by human soldiers, with the best of the survivors being inducted
into the ranks of the Harpooners. On occasion, the world has also provided recruits
for the Twelfth Legion, including the second-in-command of the 59th Assault
Company, Lieutenant Manawa Veltram, who would end up assuming overall command of
the underwater conflict after the death of his Captain.

All Harpooners are equipped with amphibious wargear and trained to fight in
underwater environments. On the overwhelming majority of the galaxy's battlefield,
such specialization is useless, but due to the sheer size of the Imperium there are
always wars where the Harpooners are useful. The planet's ties to the World Eaters
guarantees that the lives of their Regiments are well-spent, though the hostile
environments in which they are deployed often mean that they must win entire wars
against breeds of aquatic xenos or other sea-dwelling human cultures with only
minimal support.

The eleven Regiments of the Caducades Sea were all survivors of a conflict against
a tendril of Hive-Fleet Leviathan which had taken root on another Ocean World after
being called there by a grotesquely mutated Genestealer Cult. The war there had
lasted for over a decade, ending only with the arrival of the 59th Assault Company
of the World Eaters. No sooner had the Tyranids been defeated that the call for
muster at Cadia had come, and the sons of Angron had ensured the Harpooners
accompany them.

The trenches that stretched outside of the Castellums' walls were abandoned when it
became obvious that the New Marines could simply swarm them with sheer weight of
transhuman numbers, making contesting them with Guardsmen impossible. The Imperial
forces withdrew to within the relative safety of the walls, but many warmachines
and soldiers were left behind, surrounded by the New Marines and the hordes of
mutants and cultists who had landed in the previous waves of the Black Legion's
attack. A few sorties were launched to recover critical assets, such as the
stranded Ordinatus of the Adeptus Mechanicus, but by and large, those unfortunate
were left to their fates and told to sell their lives dearly. Most did, though a
few instead broke their oaths and joined the invaders, damning their immortal souls
in order to survive as traitors for a few more days.

The polar fortress of Kasr Torr fell within three days of the New Marines' arrival,
after one of the New Marines opened some manner of shadow-based Warp portal
directly past the walls, cutting right through the wards of the Castellum. This was
done using some sort of trans-dimensional ability that was later believed to be the
result of a unique mutation of Nineteenth Legion's gene-seed. In a handful of
minutes, the New Marines had slaughtered the crew of several gun batteries and
opened a path for the hundreds of others waiting outside, leading to the total
collapse of the Imperial lines too fast for any reinforcement to arrive in time.

Those who knew anything about the Raven Guard shuddered when they heard the news,
and gave thanks to the Emperor that this was the extent of this creature's powers –
and more importantly, than it was dead. Despite its limitations, it might very well
have turned the tide of the war on its own had it not been slain by the defenders
of Kasr Torr in a last-ditch suicidal charge. Upon receiving the news, Commissar-
Castellan Cain ordered that a vigil be held for the heroes of the 498th Cadian
Shock Troopers who had perished in slaying the New Marine, and posthumously awarded
each of the soldiers with the Cadian Cross, the highest honor it was in his
authority to grant.

Every other Castellum was besieged. With their encircling positions solidified by
the reinforcements of the New Marines, the Black Legion began to land more valuable
troops and heavy artillery from orbit into secure areas. The Cadians had long
prepared for that kind of warfare, but the addition of the New Marines' unholy
powers into the mix made the war far more complicated.

Among the troops deployed in the second stage of the Black Crusade were thousands
of Bile's infamous New Men, whose existence was obscene in a different way than
that of the Bile-born Astartes already defiling Cadia with their presence. Where
the Bile-born were twisted images of Space Marines, the New Men were corrupted
versions of baseline Mankind, altered by the Clonelord in order to one day replace
the entire species as the rulers of the galaxy. They were cruel, sociopathic, prone
to ritualized cannibalism and utterly devoted to their Primogenitor.

They were also viciously cunning and able fighters, who had sharpened their skills
fighting each other for their maker's attention, as well as all the monsters of the
Eye of Terror, up to and including Chaos Marines and Neverborn. They were more used
to ambushes and raids than sieges and formal battles, but they were quick to adapt,
and helped the New Marines organize the hordes of Chaos chaff that had been poured
onto Cadia more efficiently.

His name is Markus.

He is the Benefactor's son. He loves the Benefactor, and he hates him too. Loves
him for the strength that was given, hates him for the pain and horror that came
with the gift.

Markus remembers little of his life before Cadia. He remembers needles and knives,
bright lights and emotionless voices droning on. He remembers knowledge pouring
into his skull, and his body being cut apart while he felt every incision with
excruciating sensibility.

He remembers the voice of the Benefactor telling him his name, just before the dark
and the cold which only ended here, on Cadia.

The Benefactor is watching. He must prove himself, must earn his respect. He must
show that he isn't a mistake, isn't a waste of the Benefactor's time. He remembers
the smile on the Benefactor's face just before he went into the not-sleep of
stasis, and he wants that again, more than anything else.

He runs up the slope, screaming. There are men in front of him, wearing uniforms he
recognizes from hypno-teaching. Astra Militarum. Cadia Kasrkin. They were caught in
the Rezla Mountains during the withdrawal, some part of him monitoring the tactical
disposition of troops on this front notes. Judging by the amount of snow-covered
bodies his boots have crushed on the way here, they have shown great
resourcefulness to have survived this long.

It won't save them from Markus. He leaps above their firing line and lands directly
among them. His chainsword swings and takes off a head and half a torso in a single
swipe. His free hand clings around a skull and squeeze -

Something tears in his arm. Markus doesn't know what it is – he lacks the knowledge
to understand that his hypercharged muscles have given out under the combined
strain of intense physical exertion and the punishingly cold temperature of the
peaks. His limb falls to his side, unresponsive, nothing but a flare of agony that
makes his stumble.

The other Kasrkin don't hesitate to take advantage of his distraction, training and
experience overcoming the shock of the attack and the death of their comrades. They
turn, they aim -

They shoot, and Markus dies. His last thought before a las-bolt pierces through his
eye-lense and boils his brain is that he has failed the Benefactor.

Skalagrim Phar sighed and cut off the feed. Another failure, another New Marine who
hadn't made the cut. It was a cruel test, even a wasteful one, for so many of the
New Marines could have accomplished so much more if they had been prepared. But
Bile was right, in this as in so many other things. The galaxy was cruel, and the
warriors who would conquer it couldn't expect to always be at their best. If they
couldn't survive Cadia with the gifts they had been given – and those were
plentiful – then they weren't what the Consortium, what Humanity, needed for its
new generation of transhuman protectors.

Around the Traitor Apothecary of the Sons of Horus, the observation chamber of the
Pulchritudinous was a hive of activity. Almost every apprentice of the Clonelord
had answered the summons of their old master : nearly two hundred Apothecaries,
with representatives from every Legion – yes, even the Fifteenth. Poor Penthu had
joined the Consortium after his mind had broken under the strain of watching so
many Aspirants turned to dust by Ahriman's Rubric, but his goal of saving his
Legion had been forgotten after thousands of years of experiments and cullings.

Like him, every Apothecary was monitoring a series of screen showing what the
observation servitors down on the surface of Cadia were recording and transmitting.
Even with a dozen screens per Apothecary, there weren't nearly enough of them to
follow every New Marine on Cadia : instead, the members of the Consortium were to
use their own judgment to decide which of the tens of thousands of Bile's creations
they were going to follow.

The other screens of Skalagrim's monitoring station still showed several other New
Marines, but none of them were engaged at the moment. He took a deep breath, and
looked around, searching for – there.

"You," he barked, summoning a pale and thinly thing clad in black rags and wearing
a respirator mask closer. "Is he still at it ?"

He didn't need to precise who he was talking about. Not when talking to one of
these mutants, and probably not even if he had been talking to another Astartes.
The shadow of their common master loomed large over them all, even after days of
absence.

"The master hasn't left the room, great one," hissed the wretched creature. "Nor
has he sent any word."

"I see," he sighed.

"The master is not to be disturbed -"

"I know, I know." He waved its words aside dismissively, suppressing a flash of
irritation before it pushed him to break its neck to silence it. The creatures were
plentiful, breeding like vermin in the dark corners of the ship, but you never knew
if this was one of Bile's favourites, and training replacements up to his exacting
standards was always a pain. "Go away now."

It scurried back in the shadows, leaving Skalagrim alone with his thoughts.

According to his armor's internal chronometer (which admittedly wasn't worth much
after so long in the Eye of Terror), it had been thirteen days since the incident
in Bile's personal observation chamber. Thirteen days since all but one of Fabius'
clones in the Black Crusade had been killed by an unknown assassin; thirteen days
since that one remaining head of the Clonelord had locked himself up in one of his
personal laboratories with the broken body of Melusine.

The Black Crusade was continuing in his absence, but things were becoming … tense.
Skalagrim didn't know if what had happened on Kasr Partox had been part of the
plan, but somehow he doubted it. Fabius' association with the Blood Angels had
ended a long time ago, but he didn't think Rogal Dorn had forgotten it, or how it
had led to the War of Woe between the Seventh and Ninth Legions.

After millennia in the Consortium, there were few things left that scared
Skalagrim, but a Daemon Primarch of Khorne was certainly one of those. And then
there were the Dark Angels. Their plot with the Archduke had failed, which was good
where the Black Legion was concerned since it meant the New Marines would get a
proper testing, and bad because there was no telling how the hypocrites of the
First Legion would react to being humiliated like this.

They needed Bile's leadership, now more than ever, to ensure that the Black Crusade
didn't crumble, that they didn't lose their momentum. But the Clonelord was too
busy trying to save the life of his firstborn daughter, and they didn't have any
others left. All the clones that had been in gestation had been killed, and it
didn't look like the work of the assassin who'd wounded Melusine.

Bile's primary enforcer was on the case, but until then, it fell to the Consortium
to pick up the slack and ensure their master's vision for the Black Crusade was
followed. He hoped they'd be up to the task.

"Another failure, Skalagrim ?" called out one of the other Chaos Marines in the
room.

Like many of the Consortium, his armor bore no signs of his former allegiance, its
colors having been supplanted by the black and gold of the Black Legion, with its
emblem – the eightfold star of Chaos surrounding a silver skull – having replaced
any previous insignia. Skalagrim had his suspicions as to the other Apothecary's
origins, but it was of little import in any case.

"Yes, Gorel. Yours ? You had found a promising candidate last time we talked."

"Still alive, as a matter of fact," replied Gorel with a tight smile. "He just
wiped out an entire squad of Iron Warriors and a company of their Guardsmen pets by
himself, so I called him back to the Redoubt for now. I think I may have identified
another army-killer, if he survives long enough to make it back."

Skalagrim grunted. That was far from certain : many New Marines succumbed to the
strain of their abilities once they unleashed them on the battlefield. Testing
these new gifts was the whole point of the exercise, after all, so as to identify
the most promising ones and correct the design flaws in the next generation. It
still boggled his mind to consider the amount of effort Bile had put into this
project – blood of the Gods, the Primogenitor had more or less created a whole
Legion of whole cloth, and he was using it as a testing bed !

He wasn't sure whether that was madness or genius. In the end, he supposed that
would depend on whether it worked or not. Hopefully he would still be alive to see
History's judgment with his own eyes.

"What kind of ability does that one have ?"

"I am not sure," admitted Gorel with a shrug. "It looks like some sort of
instantaneous, controlled flesh-shaping : arms turning into bladed whips that can
cut through ceramite and then back into arms again, that sort of thing. Building an
armor appropriate for him will be a nightmare, that's for sure."

"That will be the Mechanicum's problem, not ours." He glanced at his screens again.
"What's more pressing to me is what we'll do if they decide they don't like
following our orders."

"They are all loyal, you know that," said Gorel incredulously. "I don't think they
can be anything else."

"They are loyal to him, Gorel, and him alone. But that's not really what worries
me. Realistically speaking, it is impossible for the indoctrination processes to
have gone perfectly on all of them, especially with the amount of variation between
them. Let's say one percent of them all are gifted with tactical-scale abilities;
that they are, as you, 'army-killers'. We have deployed over thirty thousand New
Marines on Cadia; that means three hundred army-killers. What are the odds that at
least one of them will have a faulty conditioning, or even just refuse to accept
orders not directly from the Chief Apothecary ? We don't know, because we have no
data on this."

Gorel shrugged again. "If it happens, then we'll send the Eldest to deal with them.
No matter how strong Bile made them, the New Marines cannot deal with that."

"… Maybe. No, you're right. But what if the Eldest is unavailable ? Mark my words,
we are walking a thin line there. For all of our sakes, I hope Bile hurries up and
finishes what he's doing."

Days turned to weeks, and the war ground on, with millions more dying on either
side. Kasr Derth fell, as did Kasr Gehr and Kasr Luten, and a dozen more lesser
strongholds. Each time, only a fraction of the Imperial troops managed to punch
through the Black Legion's encirclement and escape the subsequent pursuit to keep
fighting. Entire Regiments with distinguished battle honors and histories
stretching thousands of years were wiped out to the last man, or fused with the
survivors of other decimated units before being sent back to the front. Medicae
facilities filled up with wounded that were at the mercy of ruthlessly efficient
triage, while factories manned by stern-faced Cadians and sterner overseers
continued to churn out ammunition and replacement parts for the Imperial
warmachine.

Yet despite the grimness of the situation, not all hope was lost, as the propaganda
broadcasts of the Commissariat made sure everyone knew. The Black Legion was paying
a heavy price for each Castellum it took, both in New Marines and conventional
forces. According to the verdict of the Fourth Legion's cold-blooded analytic
models, if the Imperials could keep up or increase the rate of attrition, there
would be a point when the heretics could no longer sustain the war effort. Cadia
would be left in ruins, but the Black Crusade would be stopped dead. The Imperium
would be able to rebuild. The Cadian Gate would hold.

So the broadcasts repeated every day, often in the strong and confident voice of
Commissar-Castellan Cain himself, although as atmospheric conditions continued to
degrade due to the amount of dust and ash being kicked up and vox-transmissions
became more and more unreliable, his own communiques were eventually limited to
Kasr Tyrok and a handful of the closest Castellums.

Of course, the Bile-born had shown that they could make a mockery of the sons of
Perturabo's predictions, and they weren't the only ones the loyalists had to worry
about. As Fabius Bile himself stopped making personal appearances in the Black
Crusade's leadership, Grand Master Nephalor of the Dark Angels began to make moves
of his own. The discovery of the Archduke of Cysgorog Korahael had thrown a wrench
into his plans to bring down the entire defense of Cadia from within, and the
humiliation dealt to his Legion had to be repaid.

The Lord of Stars contacted his Sorcerers, who had made planetfall on Cadia itself
days ago. The Dark Angels' presence on Cadia was on another continent than the one
where the command center of Ciaphas Cain, the individual responsible for Korahael's
defeat, was located, but such distances meant little to the dread magisters of the
First Legion. At the command of Nephalor, the nine Chaos Sorcerers who had
descended upon Cadia Secundus paused their works near the Pylon Fields and prepared
a summoning ritual, drawing upon the energies of the eldritch shroud that
surrounded the system, preventing ships and astropathic communications from passing
through.

This was not an action Nephalor had cleared with the other lords of the Black
Crusade, and had they known what the consequences would be they would never have
allowed it. For the arcane calculations of the Dark Angels had been precise, and
the shroud did not have much in the way of safety margins. But the Lord of Stars,
worried that the Commissar-Castellan might continue on his way and foil the greater
plans of the First Legion for Cadia, decided that weakening the shroud was an
acceptable risk in order to remove this perceived threat to the commands he had
received from his Daemon Primarch.

The Sorcerers called upon the power of Tzeentch, offering the blood of enslaved
wyrds and the souls of cultists as sacrifices to power their spell, and opened a
tear in reality half-way across Cadia, right in the middle of Kasr Tyrok. Of
course, Nephalor didn't expect common daemons of the Changing God to succeed where
an Archduke of Cysgorog had failed, and so had personally intervened, calling in an
arcane debt owed to him by a Lord of Change for services rendered in ages past.

In return for being freed of that obligation, the Greater Daemon ensured that one
of the Tzeentchian daemons that manifested within Kasr Tyrok was a creature born of
the fears of a hundred paranoid tyrants, wielding all the powers of invisibility
and disguise that had plagued these genocidal madmen before their fall. There was
no possible way the Commissar-Castellan would be able to survive, but just to be
safe, Nephalor made it clear the daemonic assassin wasn't to get anywhere near its
target, but to find a way to eliminate Cain from afar.

Unfortunately for the Dark Angels, but fortunately for the Imperium, Ciaphas Cain
never got within five kilometers of the daemonic incursion, having departed the
command center to deal with another, much more urgent threat. Instead, the assassin
would end up unceremoniously crushed when the Grey Knights of the Seventh
Brotherhood collapsed an entire building on top of the manifested daemons, before
going through the rubble with blessed flamers to purge the last traces of infernal
taint.

Weirdly, the only think I could think of when the wall exploded next to me was
'typical'. It certainly was : sometimes I feel like my entire career can be summed
up by me trying to avoid an obvious danger and ending up cunningly charging into
something far worse.

I had come to the walls to avoid having to deal with the daemonic incursion inside
Kasr Tyrok itself that our spooks had sensed was coming. The way I had sold it to
the others was that we had the Grey Knights to deal with that, while I could do
more good being seen on the frontlines. Furthermore, Jurgen's unique gift affected
the Grey Knights just like they did every other psyker, although they were tough
enough not to pass out in his presence. Deploying them against the same enemy
effectively weakened us.

It had the benefit of being true as well, but of course, my real reason had been
that I didn't want to get anywhere near the infernal abominations that had ended up
manifesting in a disaffected assembly line. Anything that could pierce through the
wards around the city was not something I wanted to deal with if I could help it.
Warp take it, I was a Commissar, even if a fancy title had been slapped behind the
rank. It was my job to deal with scared troopers, not hunt daemons.

I should have known better.

I had been out of the Chimera and among the men at the base of the walls, speaking
with squad leaders before visiting the field hospitals, when the Bile-born fell
from the skies with the crackling of lightning and the screams and las-fire of a
few dozen Guardsmen (who mercifully stopped firing as it landed, or else they would
have killed us all in seconds).

It didn't have a helmet, and the reason why was obvious : its eyes were two pits of
Warp energy that lashed out around him. I watched in horror as a couple of Cadians
were caught by one of the arcs and instantly turned to ash, without even having the
time to scream. Alpharius rushed it, power sword held up, only to be send flying
with a glance. He was still alive – his armor, I would later learn, contained
special anti-psychic wards precisely for that kind of scenario – but he was out of
the fight.

I was drawn out of my fear-induced paralysis by a familiar earthly smell, and took
courage in the knowledge that Jurgen was at my side.

I couldn't exactly turn around and run. For one thing, there were thousands of
witnesses; for another, one of the more dubious aspects of my job is that my
uniform, hat and scarlet sash stand out even among a motley collection of
Regimental uniforms as was present that day. Unless it was completely blind or
terminally stupid (neither of which was entirely out of the question, admittedly),
the Chaos Marine would pick me out and charge me, and I believed my chances of
survival were slightly higher if I confronted it head-on rather than showing it my
back.

Well, if I was going to act like an idiot, I might as well play up the part for the
audience.

"Abomination !" I roared, brandishing my chainsword in its direction and looking

every bit the brave Hero of the Imperium I was supposed to be. "Come and face your
doom !"

That got its attention. It turned to face me, eyes flaring with eldritch power that
burned tracks in the ferrocrete pavement like a hot knife through butter.

It gestured in my direction, and a bolt of lightning jumped toward me. I

instinctively braced, ready for the brief flash of pain that would precede
annihilation -

- but the thunderbolt fizzled out and died before it could reach me, leaving
nothing but the stench of ozone behind, overpowering even my aide's pungent
bouquet. Once again, Jurgen's gifts had saved my miserable hide.

The creature froze in shock at the sight. It might have blinked, but that was
impossible to tell, what with the unholy lightning that kept pouring from its eye
sockets.

There were three ways it could have reacted. The first was to ignore me and keep
doing damage to our defenses. If it had done that, it might have been able to open
a hole in the walls through which its brethren outside would have entered, dooming
us all. It could also have fled, faced with something it didn't understand and
clearly hadn't been designed to deal with.

Of course, it took the third option : it charged me, screaming like a damned soul,
convinced that I was the reason why its powers hadn't worked on me, thus making the
same mistake as more heretics, xenos and traitors than I care to count.
Unfortunately, its chainsword could still kill me despite its mistake.

Since arriving to Cadia, I had taken up my old training with Alpharius again, and
those sessions saved my life now as they had decades before. I couldn't match the
Bile-born's speed or strength – trying to block its strikes would end up with my
weapon being ripped out of my hands, along with my arms if I wasn't lucky. But I
had the advantage of experience, and the creature fought more like a juvie who has
just been given their first toy sword than a transhuman warrior. It knew some
forms, but its lack of experience was obvious. Then again, with its eyes shooting
lightning, it probably didn't need to be good with a blade most of the time.

I moved around its strikes, parrying and trying to get an angle where Jurgen would
be able to shoot it with his melta-gun without vaporizing me as well. It was a
manoeuvre we had performed more times than I was happy with, and I was confident
that a weapon that had killed a Daemon Prince would be enough to deal with that new
kind of horror the Clonelord had unleashed upon the galaxy.

Except, as I barely dodged another blow, I caught sight of my aide in the corner of
my eye and my heart froze in horror, though my battle-reflexes were too deeply
ingrained for that to affect my own motion. Jurgen was fussing at his weapon with
the closest thing to a panicked expression I had ever seen on his grim-covered
face. A piece of half-melted rock had hit the melta, and judging by the sparks its
machine-spirit was furious at the assault. If he tried to pull the trigger in this
state, it was carrots to credits that it would blow up and kill us all.

I was going to tell him to try anyway – a likely chance of death was still better
than a certain one, and every second I spent in melee with the Bile-born and didn't
get skewered was minor miracle – when the air suddenly crackled with energy that
had nothing to do with the creature's unnatural powers.

I jumped back, recognizing the signs, and dragged Jurgen out of the way while the
Bile-born was still trying to figure it out. We were just clear of the blast zone
when the teleportation activated and a considerable volume of air was suddenly
displaced, throwing me and my aide to the ground.

I rolled with the blast and forced myself to my feet, despite the pounding headache
and pains all over my ageing body. I was just in time to see the Bile-born be
decapitated by the crackling sword of a giant in golden armor wearing a purple
cape. More giants bearing the same colors were materializing all around him, some
of them clad in something that reminded me of the Terminators I had seen long ago
aboard the Spawn of Damnation, though these ones looked more like something that
had walked down from a cathedral's frescoes.

"Commissar Cain," the golden giant said as he turned toward me, and for a moment I
thought it was the Emperor speaking – that He had finally had enough and had come
in person to set me to rights. "I am glad to see you are still alive. I am Shield-
Captain Nathadian Raskus of the Aquilan Shield, and by my oath, no harm shall come
to you whilst I still live."

Through the use of Godstrike-pattern teleportariums capable of bypassing the

Castellum's void-shields, the forces of Shield-Captain Nathadian Raskus (the first
two of the veteran's many, many names) managed to reach the battlefield just in
time to rescue Commissar-Castellan Cain and prevent another breach of Kasr Tyrok's
walls by the Black Legion.

Once the situation had stabilized, the leaders of the defenders gathered again. The
Shield-Captain had brought with him one hundred and seven of his brothers, a force
more than capable of breaking the back of whole Chaos armies. Their number slightly
surpassed those of the eighty-three Grey Knights of the Seventh Brotherhood, led by
Grand Master Covan Leorac. More Custodes had been dispatched from Holy Terra, but
those were the only ones to have managed to reach Cadia for now.

In addition, most of the Custodes sent to bolster the defenses of the Iron Cages
had been sent to Olympia instead, for the diviners of the Tower of Hegemon had
learned that Roboute Guilliman, Arch-Traitor and Dark Master of Chaos, had awakened
from his ten thousand years of stasis-slumber, and once more threatened the galaxy.
That unpleasant revelation alone caused considerable distress to the gathered
commanders, until Commissar-Castellan Cain, in his own inimitable manner, pointed
out that since the Iron Warriors' homeworld would face the Ultramarines' own
thrice-accursed sire, they had no excuse to fail here, not when all that stood
against them were the vat-spawn of Fabius Bile and one of the Arch-Traitor's lesser
brothers.

The presence of so many of the Imperium's greatest warriors was a sign of the
importance of the battle being waged across the Cadian Gate, especially now that
Rogal Dorn had manifested on Kasr Partox. Centuries ago, the Grey Knights had
defeated the Daemon Primarch of the Imperial Fists on Armageddon, and according to
Covan, the Chapter's Prognosticars had foreseen the possibility of his return at
Cadia and dispatched him and his Brotherhood to remove this grave threat to the
Imperium.

Covan did not tell the other Imperial commanders that a handful of his
Brotherhood's warriors had remained on Titan to assist in Supreme Grand Master
Geronitan's planned divination ritual. The secret of the Grey Knights' very
existence had already been revealed to far too many people for the Grand Master's
liking; there was no need in his mind to further complicate matters by revealing
information that wasn't relevant to their situation.

The temper of Rogal Dorn, which had been legendary even before he had abandoned all
traces of his humanity and embraced Khorne, was well known to the Inquisition. None
doubted that as soon as he was done with Kasr Partox, the traitor son of the
Emperor would come to Cadia in order to avenge his past defeat.

According to Nathadian, there were Imperial reinforcements massed at the nearby

systems of Belis Corona and Agripinaa. The Iron Cage warhosts meant to serve as the
hammer to Cadia's anvil had been bolstered by forces from all over the Segmentum,
but were kept from joining the fray by the Warp shroud that surrounded the Cadian
Gate. The Custodes' own ship, the Crown of Starlight, had only managed to reach
Cadia now thanks to the skills of its Navigators and a sudden and brief thinning in
the sorcerous shroud.

Though the opening had been brief, that it had formed at all indicated that the
Dark Angels' heretic rituals weren't permanent. Sooner or later, the shroud would
dissipate, and the Black Crusade would be crushed between the walls of Cadia and
the spear of their reinforcements. Of course, the Traitors surely knew this as
well, which meant they either believed they could win the war before then or had
something else planned to keep the reinforcements from arriving.

According to Shield-Captain Nathadian, the Aquilan Shield had been sent

specifically to keep Cain alive, for it had been foreseen that his survival would
be instrumental to the defense of Cadia and the survival of the Imperium.

Despite the grandeur of such an announcement, and how little faith the famously
modest Cain had in it, those around him took it as face value : not only were the
Custodians know to perform such protection duties on occasion, and had been proven
right in every case despite the sometimes obscure and lowly origins of their
charges, but Cain had already saved the entire system by exposing Creed's
corruption, to say nothing of his ongoing leadership amidst the crisis.

Surrounded by demigods apparently dedicated to ensuring his continued survival,

mystical knights, the Emperor's own bodyguards and some of the best officers the
Astra Militarum had ever possessed, Ciaphas Cain allowed himself a moment of hope
that he might make it through this after all.

Which was when, on Holy Terra, Lorgar Aurelian struck down the Emperor with the
Sword That Was Promised, and Light's End swept across the galaxy.

The Emperor is dead.

The thought burned into my brain, and I knew it to be true.

The Custodes were on their knees, as were the Grey Knights. In the opposite corner
of the room, Rakel – Amberley's pet psyker, to whom the years hadn't been anywhere
near as kind as they had been to either of us – was quietly weeping. Whatever they
were experiencing must be much worse than what we mere mortals were going through,
but that's not to say it was easy for us either.

The Emperor is dead.

Amberley was shaking on her seats, eyes wild and unfocused. Kasteen was completely
immobile, but I could see her nails biting into the skin of her palm with enough
strength to draw blood. I could hear the sound of wailing and screaming, and it
took me a moment to make sure I wasn't its source, but that it was instead coming
from outside the room – from the entire Castellum, no, from the entire planet.

Through the window, I could see the Eye of Terror. It was pulsating with energy,
and I could swear it had grown larger than it had been one minute ago.

The Emperor is dead.

It felt like I was falling, despite the solid ground under my feet, falling into a
bottomless abyss inhabited by all the worst monsters of my nightmares. I felt a
cold sense of dread creep in on my soul, and knew that if I gave into the fear I
would go mad, or worse. I had never bought into the notion that the God-Emperor
watched over all of His subjects : there were far too many of us, and He was
already busy keeping the entire galaxy from slipping into damnation and ruin.

But I had believed in Him. I had believed that He watched over Humanity, even if
the particulars of my individual survival were very much up to me alone, and
whatever fools I could persuade to stand between me and the enemy. That He loved
us, despite all of our many, many flaws, and that He wanted us to survive and be
great, no matter how often and gravely we disappointed Him.

The Emperor is dead.

This is it, I thought to myself then. This is the end of the galaxy. The Imperium
is doomed. Humanity is lost. We are all going to burn.

And with that certainty came a certain liberation. As I had found out many times
during my career, the absolute certainty of your death does wonders to focus the
mind. Your existence is reduced to surviving the next few seconds, and the next
ones after that.

My thoughts shifted. My instincts took over, while my conscious mind withdrew

before it could break under the horror of my situation. I stood up, and walked
straight to the Custodes officer. He had removed his helmet at the beginning of the
meeting, revealing features that, while more handsome than those of most Space
Marines I had met, could never truly pass for human.

Even on his knees, his bulk was such that my eyes were roughly at the level of his.
He didn't look up as I approached, staring down at the floor and seeing nothing, in
shock for, I suspected, the very first time in his entire existence.

I slapped him, hard, with the hand that had augmetic fingers. It was like punching
a rock, but it got his attention, and that of everyone else in the room.

"Shield-Captain Nathadian," I heard myself say. "You said earlier that the Emperor
sent you here."
He blinked, and the look of utter incomprehension on his face was almost comical. I
pressed on, not giving him time to answer.

"Do you really believe that the Master of Mankind didn't foresee His own demise ?"
I asked rhetorically. "That, in ten thousand years of enduring the burden of
guiding our species on the thin road to survival, He didn't plan for this
eventuality ?"

And as the words left my mouth, I suddenly found myself believing them, like a
drowning man clinging to a piece of wood in the midst of a storm.

"Is your faith in Him so weak ?" I hammered the point home, then I draw my las-
pistol and aimed it straight between his eyes. I had no idea if it could harm him,
even at this range and without his helmet – his armor could have additional
protections I wasn't aware of. But it got the point across.

"Well ?!" I barked. "Are you going to be the first Custodes ever to be executed for
cowardice ?! Custodes or not, you are still a soldier of the Imperium, and I am
still a Commissar. If you don't get your head back into the fight so help me I will
shoot you where you stand ! Is that understood ?!"

Slowly, he stood back up, and it slowly dawned on me again just how big he was. For
a moment, I wondered if he was going to crush me where I stood for daring to speak
to him like this – then, he nodded.

"Yes, Commissar-Castellan. It is understood."

"Good." I went back to my chair and sat down, to hide the fact that I was about to
collapse of mixed terror and relief, and swept my gaze over everyone else. "Now,
the rest of you. Yes, the Emperor is … is dead." The words were like ashes in my
mouth, but I forced myself to press on : "But our duty remains the same. Shield-
Captain Nathadian told us that, before his ship made the jump to join us, they had
received astropathic messages telling of the return of the Primarchs Magnus and
Lorgar, both of whom in the Sol system. We must trust that they can handle whatever
is going on there right now, while we take care of matters here."

I took a deep breath.

"None of us have ever considered the matter of succession when it comes to the
Golden Throne. We never had reason to, and the mere idea was poison for the soul
until now. Fortunately, that is something the High Lords will have to decide with
the Crimson King and the Aurelian. Our own task remains the same; in truth, it has
become more important than ever before. The Cadian Gate must be held, and it shall
be held. We all swore oaths to the Emperor, and though He may no longer watch over
us from Holy Terra, we shall not dishonor Him by failing now !"

There was a slow rumble of approval, which grew and grew and grew until the room
erupted in approving, wrathful cheers. Even Amberley was looking impressed.

"That was a good speech, sir," came a familiar voice at my elbow.

"Thank you, Jurgen … wait." I paused, doing a double-take at what my aide was
carrying. "Is that a vox-caster ?"

"It is," he confirmed phlegmatically as he switched it off. "Thought the rest of

the troops could do with a little bit of morale-boosting too."

I listened, and found that while the sound of wailing hadn't entirely stopped, it
had diminished greatly. In its place, I could hear the familiar noises of defiance
– oaths shouted through fear-tight throats, sergeants and officers putting their
troops back in order.

"Jurgen," I asked weakly, "how far did you broadcast that ?"

"Not sure, sire," he shrugged. "I am no tech-priest. I just pushed the dial all the
way up."

I looked at the controls, and dredged the lessons that had been drilled into my
skull at the Schola from the depths of my memory. This was connected to the vox-net
of the command center, which had some of the most powerful machines available. So …

Oh.

Everyone had just heard me speak, hadn't they ? Everyone on the whole bloody
planet.

Typical.

Although the complete collapse of morale and leadership had been narrowly adverted
by Commissar-Castellan Cain's heroic speech, the situation was still dire. The Grey
Knights and Custodes were reeling from the psychic shock of Light's End, and the
influence of the Dark Gods had surged all across the system. More and more men gave
in to despair and horror, their minds – which had been raised since infancy to keep
faith in the God-Emperor – unable to endure in a galaxy devoid of His presence.
Cain's initial speech to the war council, and the ones he made after that, helped
in preventing the worst, but not even the Commissar-Castellan could completely
soften the blow of Light's End.

The Sisters of Battle deployed across Cadia fared worst of all Imperial forces.
Through the power of their faith, they had always held themselves as linked to Him
on Earth, His strength flowing through their mortal bodies so that they might do
His will. That connection was sundered now, and to add to the trauma, those with
the greater link to the Master of Mankind now claimed that, in His final moments,
the God-Emperor had somehow chosen to perish. Some clung to the words of Cain, who
claimed that He had made the ultimate sacrifice as part of some divine plan it
wasn't for them to understand, but no few gave in to despair, believing that He had
abandoned them all, having judged them unworthy. Several Castellums fell to riots
of newly converted Chaos cultists, or penitent hordes driven mad by shock and grief
seeking only to join their Emperor in death.

Ironically, the psychic pressure that had slain so many Imperial psykers in Cadia
meant that only those possessed of the strongest wills were left when Light's End
struck and their soul-bond to the Emperor was severed. It was also fortunate that
the effects of soul-binding didn't disappear with the death of the Master of
Mankind : the ritual of soul-binding infused every psyker with the tiniest shard of
the God-Emperor's own radiance, suffusing the Astronomican. Each soul-bound psyker
held within them an echo of His light, which gave them some protection against the
predations of the Neverborn – though, as had been proven uncountable times through
Imperial history, that protection was far from perfect.

Of course, the forces of the Black Crusade had been caught unaware by the Emperor's
demise as well. On Kasr Partox, the coming of Light's End struck just as the
Khornate armies were assaulting the final Castellum on the fortress-world. As the
valiant defenders reeled from the psychic backlash of the Emperor's death, Rogal
Dorn and Sigismund broke through their lines, and within moments the slaughter was
over. Only when the last skull had been claimed did the Daemon Primarch and his son
pause to consider what had just happened, and realized that the Long War and Great
Game of Chaos had just changed forever.
All across the Black Legion forces, wyrds and witches sensed the echo of Light's
End. Scores succumbed to the Dark Gods' roar of victory and surge of power,
becoming gateways through which thousands of daemons manifested all over Cadia.
Amidst the mayhem, only a handful of Sorcerers were observant enough to notice that
the daemons of Slaanesh were present in far lesser numbers than the rest of their
infernal kin; and of those, fewer still realized the reason why was that the hosts
of the Silver Palace were being unleashed upon Sol itself with the opening of the
Tear of Nightmares and the beginning of the Angel War.

The mix of violent celebrations, spontaneous daemonic summoning and sense of

disbelief (among the Black Legion were veterans of the Long War, who had once
fought alongside the Emperor during the Great Crusade) did much to slow the
offensive of the forces of Chaos. This gave the Imperial commanders precious time
to restore order among their own forces.

There was another aspect to Light's End : for years now, its coming had completely
blocked the foresight of all oracles, with the blindness growing worse and worse
the closer that fateful moment neared. The Black Legion didn't employ many
prophets, Fabius Bile being notoriously untrusting of them, but as the favorite
servants of Tzeentch, the Architect of Fate, the Dark Angels were badly affected.
Aboard the Invincible Reason, the seer-choirs and daemon-oracles were crippled,
with the survivors babbling incoherently as their minds tried to make sense of the
great alterations that had been wrought upon the tapestry of Fate. All but the most
immediate of prediction was impossible, for too many things had been changed by the
Emperor's willing sacrifice and rejection of godhood.

Deprived of the guidance of his god and unable to make contact with his Primarch
(who, unbeknownst to him, had fled to Cysgorog to recover from his confrontation
with Cypher and Lorgar), Grand Master Nephalor was forced to improvise. He decided
to stick to the orders that he had received prior to leaving Cysgorog. Though the
galactic situation had dramatically changed, the tactical realities of the Traitor
Legions stuck in the Eye of Terror remained the same, and this course of action was
the one that would grant them the most opportunities to do Tzeentch's will in the
future.

Back in Kasr Tyrok, the Imperial defenders had little time to recover from the
calamity that had befallen the Imperium. Hordes of daemons, cultists and New
Marines hurled themselves at the walls. The defiance of Ciaphas Cain had been
noticed by the Black Legion, and the Bile-born seeking to prove themselves to the
Primogenitor converged on the Castellum, certain that a worthy battle awaited them
there. Other Black Legion commanders had identified the Castellum as the center of
Cadian resistance, and directed armored columns and Chaos Titans toward the
stronghold.

Yet those were the least of the threats the loyalists faced. Amidst the ashes and
bones of Kasr Partox, Rogal Dorn looked up toward Cadia. There, amidst the tides of
despair and bloodshed, the Daemon Primarch of Dorn could sense a familiar fire.
Centuries ago, that fire had burned him, cast him back into the Immaterium. He had
sworn revenge then, and now the Blood God had presented him with the chance to
claim it.

With a roar that made the pyramids of skulls the lesser daemons of Khorne were
building among the ruins collapse, Dorn tore a ragged hole into reality with his
monstrous claws. Through will alone, the Daemon Primarch opened a Warp portal
between Kasr Partox and Cadia, departing the desolation the Khornate forces had
made of the fortress-world without a single glance backward. Immediately, the Black
Templars and their thralls rushed to follow, with Sigismund being the first into
the portal after Dorn himself. The portal closed long before more than a fraction
of the Blood God's forces on the planet could pass through, but the departure of
Dorn and Sigismund served as a global signal to withdraw from Kasr Partox and
return to orbit, where many transports and ships of the Black Templars' armada
still awaited, though the orbital debris of the Eternal Crusader would greatly slow
extraction.

Driven by the desire to fight at the side of their two lords, the hordes stranded
on Kasr Partox attempted to open their own Warp portals. The Hierophants of Skulls
performed great rituals in order to replicate what the Daemon Primarch had achieved
through the simple use of his own divine power, sacrificing thousands of their own
people in order to fuel their works. Many of them succeeded, but not all portals
thus opened brought them to Cadia : instead, entire armies of cultists, mutants and
Kriegsmen found themselves scattered all around the galaxy, brought to worlds
suffering under Warp Storms unleashed by Light's End. Scores of worlds already
afflicted by unprecedented calamities thus found themselves invaded by heretics
that quite literally manifested out of thin air, and a hundred wars began in the
name of Khorne – a suitable offering to Khorne for the rest to be allowed to reach
their intended destination.

On Cadia, the Grey Knights sensed the coming of their ancient foe even through the
shock of Light's End, and wasted no time in warning their allies of his coming. It
didn't take long for the Imperial commanders to come to the conclusion that they
couldn't hope to hold the walls against a Daemon Primarch. The Inquisitorial
representative among them had access to highly classified reports from the
fortress-world of Hydra Cordatus and the doom that had befallen it, and while Dorn
was an entirely different kind of horror than the dreaded Ravenlord, there was
little doubt that the Daemon Primarch of Khorne would be able to breach through the
walls as soon as he reached them.

Using unaugmented soldiers to fight a Daemon Primarch would be a colossal mistake :

their mere proximity was known to drive people insane, like the usual soul-rending
effect of most Neverborn but amplified by the scope of their power. Combined with
the effects of Light's End, only the Grey Knights and Custodes had a chance to be
able to withstand Dorn's corrupting aura – once, it would have been a certainty,
but the Emperor's death had changed everything.

Shield-Captain Nathadian and Grand Master Leorac were ready to stand against the
Daemon Primarch once he arrived, each vowing that they would do their utmost to
hurl him back into the Realms of Chaos, even should it cost them their lives. But
that left the problem of the tens of millions of Guardsmen and other mortal troops
in the Castellum, all of whom were in danger of being turned against their
transhuman allies.

Inquisitor Amberley Vail was the first to suggest an evacuation of the city. The
human armies of the Castellum would punch through the heretics' lines and make for
Kasr Vasan, on the coast of the Caducades Sea. The other Castellum still stood, in
part because Kasr Tyrok had drawn the bulk of the Black Legion's assault due to the
presence of Imperial high command within its walls, and also because its back was
to the ocean, which the heretics were ill-equipped to cross (not that the Cadians
had left that side of their city-fortress undefended).

From there, the Inquisitor continued, they could cross the Caducades Sea and
reinforce the Castellums of Cadia Secundus. She was especially concerned about Kasr
Kraf, which stood on the edge of the great Elyseon Fields, full of the famous
Cadian Pylons. According to the fragmentary reports that had made it through the
vox-disruption, the Fields were under sustained attack by elements of the Dark
Angels, who ignored the Castellum and had focused their efforts on claiming control
of the Pylons.
The famous Cadian Pylons were, if not of Necron construction, then based upon
similar technological principles. It had long been theorized that they had
something to do with the local tranquillity of the Warp compared to the insanity
raging within the Eye of Terror, and to be the reason why the Cadian Gate existed
in the first place. There was no question that letting the First Legion have
control of thousands of them was dangerous – for, according to information
Inquisitor Vail refused to refuse the source of, the Pylons could, in theory, be
used to amplify that which they had previously held back.

The thought of the Warp being amplified around Cadia instead of repelled was a
chilling one, even for those already facing the crumbling of all they had ever
believed in. Commissar-Castellan Cain agreed that something must be done, and that
it was unlikely Kasr Kraf had the strength to mount a counter-attack to retake the
Elyseon Fields : holding the walls against the Black Legion was all its defenders
could do.

In addition, retaking the Elyseon Fields might give the Imperials a chance should
Rogal Dorn triumph over the chosen scions of the Emperor and come for those who had
escaped him. It was a slim chance, but proximity to the Pylons might weaken the
fallen son of the Master of Mankind enough that he could be defeated by mere
mortals, especially after the Grey Knights and Custodes had weakened him.

While the continental masses of Cadia were largely under the control of the Black
Legion outside of the Castellums, such was not the case of its waters, thanks again
to the lack of support infrastructure the Clonelord had provided to his Bile-born.
The massive shipping fleet of Cadia had more or less escaped the hostilities
unscathed thus far, though even they had faced madness, treachery, and the
occasional assault by mutated horrors that had slumbered in the darkest depths for
untold aeons, slowly altered by the influence of the Eye of Terror until they were
awakened by the psychic calls of the Dark Angels.

If these sea-ships could be contacted and gathered at the docks of Kasr Vasan, then
the data-smiths of the Mechanicus estimated that a full evacuation of both
Castellums was theoretically possible. When the option of leaving the civilians
behind was mentioned, Cain crushed it immediately, claiming that leaving ritual
fodder for the heretics was such a monumental blunder it wasn't even worth
considering. And when Inquisitor Vail followed by saying that there were options
available to ensure the Black Legion and its allies couldn't use the civilians,
Cain replied that, with the Emperor dead, the fate of their souls was in their own
hands, and he would not damn his own by ordering the wholesale slaughter of
millions of Cadians – nor would he let the Inquisitor do it in his place.

Even for the disciplined Cadians, the evacuation of millions of soldiers and
civilians was a daunting task at the best of time, let alone while under siege,
with the Eye of Terror blazing and the mental scars of the Emperor's death still
raw and bleeding. But the people of Kasr Tyrok rose to the challenge, perhaps
relieved to have something to distract them from thinking about their situation too
much. There had been plans drafted for such an evacuation by the Fourth Legion, and
drills were as natural to the Cadian lifestyle as breathing. Within a few hours –
eight to be precise – the time had come.

The Warp portals opened in the trenches around Kasr Tyrok, where so many had
already perished. The Daemon Primarch and his followers emerged covered in gore,
having fought their way through the Realm of Khorne in order to get here, and were
accompanied by new infernal reinforcements : several legions of Bloodletters, and
no less than eight Bloodthirsters of Khorne, who stalked around Dorn like a
nightmarish escort.

The wards of Kasr Tyrok groaned under the strain as they kept the baleful aura of
these daemonic monstrosities from overwhelming the walls, but they held for now.
Within, the first motions of the evacuation began, with tens of thousands of
transports and other heavy vehicles marshalling in the section of the Castellum
directly opposed to the Daemon Primarch's position. It was reasonably assumed by
high command that Dorn would go straight for the walls, targeting the gate closest
to his location. To make sure of this, the Grey Knights stood on the battlements,
ensuring that their presence there was noticed by the enemy.

The New Marines and Black Legion elements laying siege to Kasr Tyrok clearly hadn't
expected the arrival of the Khornate forces. Unfortunately, the mutual destruction
the Imperials had dared hope for failed to materialize, bar a few skirmishes that
only left a few thousand dead. The Daemon Prince identified by the Grey Knights as
the ascended Sigismund managed to keep some semblance of peace between the two
heretic factions, and it was agreed that the Seventh Legion would breach the walls,
then the Black Legion would follow – and that the Grey Knights within belonged to
Dorn alone.

Not all Imperial forces were part of the evacuation. One Regiment in ten, chosen at
random to prevent any machination of the Dark Powers, remained behind. Despite the
risks of psychic corruption, the sheer size of the Castellum meant that the Grey
Knights and Custodes could fight Dorn in a city-sized area while the mortals fought
their own bloody war out of sight. Their purpose was to keep the Black Legion
occupied within Kasr Tyrok for as long as possible, before finally detonating the
reactors which fed the great void-shields and deny its resources to the enemy. The
self-destruct wouldn't wipe out the Castellum entirely – the Iron Warriors weren't
fools, and had been perfectly aware of the danger such an option would have
presented when the Enemy had the means of turning even the most resilient of souls
eventually – but it would at least give the last defenders a clean death.

Commissar-Castellan Cain made sure to meet with some of these martyred Regiments in
person before departing to join the evacuation column, climbing aboard the
Ordinatus Manifest Fury, which he had helped rescue from the front himself weeks
earlier. Then, just as Dorn attacked from the west, the rest of the Imperial
forces, which were informally called 'Cain's Column' struck out eastwards, punching
through the weakened lines of the Black Legion at full speed and making straight
for the ocean.

The gate had crumbled to pieces before his might. The horde of Astartes-things and
mortal thralls had followed in his wake, keeping a respectful distance from him and
his Legion of Blood.

The alliance with the Black Legion was … unexpected. His last contact with Fabius
Bile had been when he had ripped the Chief Apothecary to pieces during the War of
Woe, not that he had expected it to last even then. The Clonelord couldn't hide his
true nature from him, not after he had broken free of the restraints the False
Emperor had placed upon His creations after He had realized their true potential
and the danger they posed to His plans.

For now, they would remain allies. It was the will of Khorne that the Cadian Gate
be brought down, and Dorn couldn't deny that Bile's machinations had done much to
make it possible. But once that was done, some things would need to be …
reconsidered. The scale of the carnage wreaked by the Apothecary's was impressive,
but the motives behind it were lacking. These 'New Marines' were more interested in
impressing their creator than paying rightful homage to the Blood God, though
perhaps that was simply due to their youth. They would learn in time, or they would
be crushed, like all who opposed him. There was more important prey to hunt.

Now at last, he had cornered the knights whose blades had bit into his flesh and
shamefully brought him low centuries ago. At last, vengeance was within his grasp.
He remembered Ullanor – or, as the Imperium called it now, Armageddon. He had gone
there, heeding the call of Morkai's victor … but why ? Sigismund had never set foot
on that world. None of his sons had, for Dorn hadn't been called to help in the
Ullanor Crusade, nor had he participated in the Triumph that had followed, when the
weakling Horus had been made Warmaster. So why had he gone there ? He couldn't
remember …

Ah. Of course.

Looking back in light of Sigismund's revelations, now it made sense. This was what
Sigismund had been talking about, wasn't it ? The hidden leash around his soul
Guilliman had woven into his Legion's pact with Khorne. For some unknown reason,
some secretive scheme, his brother had sent him to Armageddon, stoking the fires of
his rage until he hadn't been able to think and had seized the first opportunity to
vent his fury upon the Imperium.

Perhaps the goal had been to weaken him, to ensure he was defeated and banished for
centuries. Perhaps it had been to learn more about the Imperium's counter-measures
for the rebel Primarchs. Perhaps it had been to plant the seeds of blood on
Armageddon. Dorn didn't know, and he cared little.

What mattered was that his brother would pay for that transgression in time, just
like the silver knights of his father would pay for theirs now.

His father was dead, but though Dorn was furious that kill had been denied to him,
wiping out all traces of His legacy was still a worthy endeavour.

They struck at him from afar with their little tanks and petty spells, but he
chased them down. Oh, he wasn't stupid : he knew they were drawing him into a
ground they had prepared, thinking it would give them the advantage over him. He
was content to let them have that morsel of hope, before he crushed it down and
slaughtered them all. It would make his revenge for his past defeat all the
sweeter.

"ENOUGH RUNNING !" He roared, causing several of the buildings around him to
collapse. "COME, LITTLE KNIGHTS. COME AND FIGHT !"

"Very well," replied a deep, calm and collected voice. "Let us finish this,
traitor."

Even with the advantage of prepared terrain, the Grey Knights and Custodes faced
overwhelming odds as they sprung their trap on Dorn's warband. The Black Templars
alone outnumbered them, and while either Imperial faction were better fighters than
Sigismund's elite warriors one-on-one, the Khornates were capable of working
together as well as accompanied by daemons of the Blood God and other elements of
the armies with which they had laid waste to Kasr Partox. Each of the eight
Bloodthirsters following Dorn would have required the intervention of the Grey
Knights on their own, or Inquisitorial leadership combined with overwhelming
artillery fire.

The champions of Sol knew that this wasn't a fight they could win by wiping out the
opposition, which given the Dark God they worshipped would be the only way to
defeat them. In response, they had adapted their objectives. They didn't seek to
kill every Khornate in the Castellum (though they were certainly going to do their
best in that regard) : instead, they would focus on sending the leaders of the
daemonic incursion back into the Warp. If Dorn and Sigismund were removed from the
equation, it was possible – not likely, given the unusual amount of cooperation
exhibited so far, but possible – that the Black Crusade would tear itself apart.
The plan was simple. They had drawn Dorn deep within the Castellum, away from the
Black Legion elements that had followed him, leaving those to the Imperial forces
which had remained behind. They had moved as fast as possible, forcing Dorn to
pursue them while the slower members of his entourage struggled to keep up,
stretching them out and isolating Dorn further.

Now they struck with all their remaining strength. Squads opened fire with blessed
lascannons and portable missile launchers, striking at the Bloodthirsters and
distracting them until Dreadnoughts and Terminators could engage the Greater
Daemons in melee, fighting defensively in order to last as long as possible.
Tactical squads fired at the Black Templars from the defensive positions that were
a part of all Cadian architecture. A trio of Land Raiders in gold and silver
unleashed their arsenal upon the being identified by the Grey Knights as the Daemon
Prince Sigismund, drawing his gaze long enough for another squad to collapse a
watchtower atop him.

The lives of two scores champions of the Imperium had already been spent, but at
last Dorn stood alone. The commanders of the Imperial transhumans met the Daemon
Primarch with a charge of their own, accompanied by two full squads of their
respective elite. A volley of bolter fire flew overhead as they charged, every shot
hitting its mark, but not a single one doing so much as inconvenience Dorn.

With a roar between rage and savage joy, the fallen son of the Emperor plunged
forward, his bulk blocking out what little sun pierced through the clouds of ash
and smoke that filled Cadia's atmosphere while the psychic pressure of his aura
slammed down on his foes. Even the bravest of mortal men would have been given
pause by the dark majesty of the Daemon Primarch, but not a single Grey Knight or
Custodes flinched, and the melee began.

With every moment, veterans of centuries of war perished, their priceless armor
rent asunder by the ever-bloody talons of Dorn. Every iota of skill, every gift of
the Emperor was strained to its utmost limit simply for them to survive from
heartbeat to heartbeat. Dorn was death incarnate, the distillation of war in its
most unrestrained aspect given form and unleashed upon a tormented galaxy.

And yet, this was nothing Nathadian and Covan hadn't expected, and in the tenth
second of the engagement, as the blood of yet another Custodes spilled onto Cadian
soil, they struck. Moving as one thanks to more than a thousand years of combined
experience, they caught the Daemon Primarch in a pincer. The attempt should have
been ludicrous, for Dorn dwarfed even these transhuman heroes, towering above them
in his incarnated form. But not only were these some of the finest warriors the
Imperium had ever produced, they wielded some of the most powerful weapons of their
orders, artefacts so sacred and powerful they had been locked away in vaults for
the better part of ten thousand years – longer in the case of the Shield-Captain's
own armament.

The sword in Grand Master Leorac's hands was not the same weapon with which he had
fought so far in the Black Crusade. He had sheathed his Nemesis blade, and
extracted the relic blade of Taremar Aurellian, who had fought Dorn on the plains
of Armageddon centuries prior and dealt the final blow that had hurled the Daemon
Primarch back into the Warp. The sword had been kept in a box covered in seals made
from the remnants of dead Blanks, hidden from the sight of the Ruinous Powers until
this moment. Dorn recognized the weapon at once, and immediately focused all of his
attention on the Grand Master, knowing that by the laws of symbolism which governed
the Warp and all its denizens he was uniquely vulnerable to a weapon that had
already defeated him.

It was a mistake, for at his back was Shield-Captain Nathadian Raskus, and in his
hands was something whose very existence the Custodes had gone to great lengths to
wipe out from history, decades before Guilliman had broken his oaths. Its true name
had been forgotten even by the Ten Thousands, who simply called it the Cerulean
Lantern. It was a small device, of construction so strange that it was impossible
to tell whether it was xenotech or human archeotech. It had been recovered during a
particularly violent Compliance of the Space Wolves, in the years before the weight
of their duties had stolen away their savage joy and begun to twist their souls to
madness.

Nathadian activated the Lantern, and the wings of Rogal Dorn burned under its
light, which ate through his daemonic flesh like Tyranid acid through exposed
flesh. In the blink of an eye nothing remained of the great bat-like wings but
broken and charred bones. The eldritch light reached the Warp-forged armor, and it
too began to dissolve, unable to withstand the Lantern's terrible radiance. All the
time, Nathadian could feel his own soul wither away, his Emperor-forged flesh dying
at being so close to the activated Lantern. The agony was unspeakable, but he held
on, determined to do his duty unto death and beyond, as he had vowed and been
shamefully reminded of by a mere mortal – though one marked by the Master of
Mankind.

Dorn's roar of pain and fury shook the Warp, and was heard all across the system,
though the very Empyric shroud the Dark Angels had raised to isolate Cadia
mercifully kept it from spreading further. For all this pain, however, the Daemon
Primarch wasn't undone, his hold onto corporeality still strong. He would endure,
but his attackers would not. The violence was followed nearly matched what Dorn had
wrought upon the Destroyer's mortal body, and it was only when Sigismund finally
dug his way out of the tower the Imperials had dropped on him that the Daemon
Primarch's rage simmered down. By then, all that remained of the Shield-Captain and
Grand Master were scraps of broken ceramite and auramite and pools of cooling gore.

The fall of Kasr Tyrok was arguably a pyrrhic victory for both sides. The Imperials
successfully evacuated the bulk of their forces, breaking through the Black
Legion's encirclement while the Chaos armies were occupied, but it cost them the
irreplaceable lives of two hundred Custodes and Grey Knights. Meanwhile, the
Khornates and Black Legion had finally broken into the city, but the resistance of
the Guardsmen left behind was fierce, and the Castellum was designed for a smaller
army knowing the terrain to bleed the foe for every step they took. Furthermore,
the wounds Dorn had sustained in the confrontation would take time and copious
amounts of bloodshed to heal.

Enraged that some of the Cadian defenders had fled rather than face him like true
soldiers, the Daemon Primarch ordered Sigismund to give chase and slaughter them to
the last. By that point, however, Cain's Column had gained a considerable lead, and
was in sight of Kasr Vasan, where the Commissar-Castellan's messages had been heard
and obeyed. The evacuation of the Castellum's population onto the ships had already
begun.

Within a few hours, the last of the ships was departing Kasr Vasan. An entire ore
hauler had been hastily reconverted to carry the Manifest Fury, the tech-priests
tearing open a hole into its side so that the Ordinatus engine could enter before
soldering metal plates back on. It was a slapdash job that no true disciple of the
Machine-God would ever have been satisfied with, but time was running out and
abandoning the Manifest Fury would have been a far greater transgression, not to
mention a waste of a very useful asset in the war.

The journey across the Caducades Sea was far from tranquil. The Dark Angels had
learned of the Column's destination, and they acted to stop the Imperials from
interfering with their nefarious designs. All manners of horrors rose from the
deeps to harass the fleet, as did flying daemons and Chaos aircraft, who were met
in the tumultuous skies by the Aeronautica Imperialis wings based on the naval
carriers of the Column. Many aces were crowned among the pilots of the 4589th,
203rd, 962nd and 3244th Imperial Navy Fighter Wings, and many gave their lives to
defend their comrades and the civilians aboard the fleet.

By luck or the Emperor's posthumous guidance, Cain's Column crossed paths with the
59th Assault Company of the Twelfth Legion and the Knossosian Harpooners, with whom
they had been fighting an underwater war since the arrival of the Redoubts. Light's
End had struck them badly, but the leader of the sons of Angron, Lieutenant Manawa
Veltram, had managed to hold them together in the darkness until they had picked up
the vox-traffic of the Column and emerged to join it.

Their experience in that kind of environment was particularly useful, and Colonel
Eusebios, the most senior of the Knossosian officers, was swiftly added to the
Commissar-Castellan's mobile command center. The higher number of Apothecaries the
World Eaters fielded compared to other Legions proved to be an additional boon, as
they were of great assistance to help with the wounded and prevent sickness from
taking root among Cain's Column. And of course, the presence of the World Eaters
helped with morale, for the warriors of the Twelfth had endured the news of the
Emperor's passing with stoicism, managing to deal with the grief and shock by
relying on their brotherhood and the duty they had to protect the humans alongside
whom they had fought in the last weeks.

"I have to be strong for them, Commissar. To know that our grandsire is … dead, it
is difficult to be sure. But at the same time, if what you said is true, then
Lorgar has returned and Magnus has awakened. If two of the lost Primarchs can
return, then who is to say that our own won't do the same ? And if that is so, then
I refuse to have the Lord of the Red Sands be disappointed in the behavior of his
sons. I will grieve for Him, as will we all, but I won't let His death be our
undoing or that of His Imperium.

… and I won't let it be what kills His people either."

Lieutenant Manawa Veltram, of the World Eaters 59th Assault Company, during a
private meeting with Commissar-Castellan Ciaphas Cain

Twenty-one days after their departure, Cain's Column reached the shores of Cadia
Secundus and disembarked. Scouting parties of Sentinels were sent ahead of the
Column, and they began to trek toward the Elyseon Fields. The plan was to defeat
the Dark Angels forces there and stop whatever foulness they were preparing, before
moving to Kasr Kraf. The number of civilians in the Column worried Cain, but those
were Cadians, and they bore the danger this would place them in without complaint.

But the Dark Angels were not about to let the Imperials disrupt their plans. They
could have called upon their allies for aid : indeed, the Black Legion had millions
of troops besieging Kasr Kraf, and a chance to face the forces of the Commissar-
Castellan would have drawn many New Marines. However, the paranoia of the First
Legion worked against them here, though not without reason.

Nephalor hadn't informed his peers among the Black Crusade's leadership of his
interest in the Pylons. Before leaving Cysgorog, the Lord of Stars had been ordered
to use the sorcerous lore of the First Legion in order to destroy the Cadian Gate
once and for all. As Inquisitor Vail feared, his plan was to invert the Warp-
suppressing effects of the Pylons, allowing the Eye of Terror to expand, swallowing
the Cadian system and the entire Iron Cage around it. The ships of the Black
Crusade, used to surviving in the Eye of Terror, would be able to withstand the
expansion with few casualties, though the Dark Gods would inevitable claim their
tithe of souls, but the Imperials would be utterly annihilated. The Iron Cage would
not just be forced open, it would be shattered forevermore, and not all the bastard
sons of Perturabo would be able to rebuild it, especially not now, with the False
Emperor dead.

Nephalor didn't think Sigismund or Dorn would oppose such a course of action,
though they may claim to disdain the complex sorcery involved. It was Bile whose
reaction worried the Grand Master of the Dark Angels. The Clonelord had made no
secret of his intent to use Cadia as a testing ground for his creations, and
doubtlessly already had his own plans for the other worlds of the Iron Cage.
Furthermore, Bile had refused time and again to truly give himself over to the
service of the Dark Gods, despite the ever-greater rewards they had promised him in
return for his full allegiance.

It was therefore doubtful that the Primogenitor would approve of Nephalor's plans,
which was why the Grand Master had done everything in his considerable power to
keep them secret. Which meant that, when Cain Column's marched on the Elyseon
Fields, it found himself faced only with those forces the Dark Angels had landed on
Cadia – but those were already plenty dangerous enough. At the command of their
Grand Master, who needed to stay on the Invincible Reason lest the other commanders
suspect something was amiss, a vast warband of the First Legion moved from the
Elyseon Fields to attack Cain's Column.

In hindsight, leaving the Ordinatus may have been a mistake.

It had made perfect sense at the time, of course. The Manifest Fury was a big,
obvious target for the enemy, and what had happened at the Tyrok Fields had proven
even these great engines weren't proof against Chaos cultists, let alone their
Astartes masters. I had thought making my position less immediately obvious would
be good, and besides, I'd found myself growing restless, despite the additional
safety of many tons of metal around me. Now more than ever, I needed to do
something proactive to keep terror at how frakked we all were from overcoming me.

So I had left the Manifest Fury's confines and joined the 597th, bringing with me
my entourage of a recovered Alpharius, a trio of Custodes and my malodorous aide.
That it was the latter I trusted the most to keep my hide in one piece said
something about me, but I wasn't sure what.

We were three kloms from the edge of the Elyseon Fields when the charge of the Dark
Angels hit us. The traitors moved fast, with that speed that seems impossible for
soldiers who have never seen transhuman might in action, swallowing the distance.
But by then, every surviving Guardsman on Cadia was perfectly aware of what the
Astartes' physiology was capable of.

We welcomed them with a withering hail of weaponfire, pouring everything we had

into their charge. At this range and against targets like these, my trusty
laspistol was all but useless, but I still joined in, more for morale purposes than
out of the hope of doing any real damage. At best, I might chip the paint from
their ceramite.

So of course my first shot ended up going straight through the eye of a Dark Angel
who had decided going into battle without a helmet was the best way to honor his
demented god, boiling his brain and dropping him to the ground instantly. A raucous
cheer came from the soldiers around me, and I heard Alpharius chuckle, though the
Custodes remained silent, their weapons aimed at the enemy along with all of their
focus.

"Nice shot, sir," Jurgen praised me, aiming his own weapon carefully and taking
down one of the mutants who had somehow managed to keep pace with the Chaos
Marines.
"Thank you, Jurgen," I answered, and then they were on us.

Fighting with even only three Custodes at my side was a very different experience
from the fighting I had grudgingly become used to. I had expected them to fight
like Space Marines, only faster and stronger, but I had been wrong. The Space
Marines fought like soldiers, while the Custodes fought like warriors, each one
immersed in his own personal front with the enemy, even when they came to one
another's aid. What few managed to pass through this moving curtain of death I
dispatched with Jurgen's aid relatively easily.

The Emperor's guardians, however, were not infallible. The Imperium would be a very
different place if they were. And there were only three of them, in the end. One of
them died, an opening formed. It happened so fast I barely noticed it until it was
almost too late.

A shadow fell upon us. I looked up, and saw a winged monstrosity with the head of a
lion and scorpion's tail plunging down on us, a Dark Angel riding on its back. One
of the remaining Custodes leapt, stabbing his spear deep into the creature's skull,
but its rider jumped off his dead mount, landing straight in front of me. In his
hands, he held a sword that glowed with malevolent light, and I froze in place as I
sensed the thing within reach out to grasp my soul.

As the Dark Angel drew closer, I still couldn't move. It wasn't panic, for I had
been able to fight through worse situations than this one. It was sorcery,
incredibly potent one to boot. The Dark Angel lifted the weapon -

"Look out, sir !"

Jurgen collided with me just as the blow fell. I heard an unearthly scream of mixed
anger and disgust, and a grunt of stoically endured pain.

I blinked. I was on the ground, Jurgen on top of me, and I could smell blood – so
much blood. I gently pushed him aside, and gasped as I saw that the Dark Angel's
blade had gutted him from throat to groin, cutting through his carapace armor like
paper.

I held him in my arms, too shocked to do anything else even as the battle continued
to rage around us.

"Are you okay, sir ?" he asked me, and his voice was far, far too weak.

"Yes. Yes, I'm fine, Jurgen."

"Ah." He smiled, even as his blood poured out from the wound. "That's … good …"

He blinked a few times, then closed his eyes and exhaled. Somehow, his final breath
didn't seem so foul.

He was still smiling as he died. I cradled his body in my arms, unable to

comprehend what had happened, my mind refusing to accept the evidence of my senses.

It seemed to last an eternity, but it cannot have taken more than a few heartbeats.
A harsh bark of laughter pierced through my shock and returned my attention to my
surroundings.

Slowly, I looked up, and saw the Dark Angel who had killed Jurgen towering above
me. His helm was lacking its lower half, revealing his mouth.

He, too, was smiling. He was saying something, some taunt no doubt, but I didn't
hear it. All I saw was that smile.

The motherless bastard had murdered my best friend, and he was smiling.

I am not unfamiliar with anger. This might surprise you, if you know me. But it is
the truth.

I have seen the corpses of children thrown into sacrificial pits by Chaos cults. I
have seen xenos abominations rip apart good men and women to feast on their
entrails. I have seen the inside of an Eldar raider ship, and climbed over the
corpses of their discarded playthings.

I was afraid each time, of course. Terrified more often than not, in fact. But I
was still angry.

Yet that anger was nothing compared to what I felt now.

For one moment of searing, blood-soaked clarity, I understood the kind of anger
that can drives someone into the arms of the Blood God willingly, into desiring
nothing more than to kill and kill and kill, until the entire galaxy is dead …

… because only then, do you feel that your pain will stop.

I truly believe I could have fallen then. Many Imperial Guardsmen had succumbed to
madness on Cadia since the Black Crusade had begun – I had executed several myself.
And with Jurgen dead, I was no more protected from the influence of the Warp than
any other soul trapped on that benighted rock. Even the Emperor was dead, removing
whatever faint protection He had been able to spread out across all of His people,
even the scoundrels like myself.

The foul energies of Chaos were waxing stronger on Cadia with every hour, and I am
proud enough to think that the Ruinous Powers would have received my soul with
quite the welcome package, after all that I had done to inconvenience them over the
years. I could hear them whisper in my ears, though whether this was a real psychic
effect or just a delusion brought on by grief and fury I will never know.

They promised me that, if I embraced them, if I turned my back on the Emperor – on

a dead Emperor, and I knew it to be true, no matter how impossible and heretical
the thought may be – then they would gift me with the power to avenge my friend.
The power to escape the fall of Cadia. The power to save those men and women behind
me, who trusted me so much.

And oh, but I was tempted. For the first time ever, I was actually tempted. Is that
not hilarious ? I, Ciaphas Cain, who had seen so many horrors, who had won so many
glorious victories in the God-Emperor's name, whose name and deeds echoed across
the Segmentum and beyond, was about to be undone by the death of a First-Class
Gunner with hygienic issues.

But I didn't. Not because I was innately better than the other poor bastards around
me, but because it would have been an insult to Jurgen's life and memory if I had.
He had believed in the legend of Cain the Hero, and I would not let that legend die
before I did.

I embraced the pain, rather than try to drown it with blood. I did not let the
wrath consume me. I held it tight, so tight it seemed that it might burn me alive,
until it had grown cold as the ice of Valhalla.

And then, as tears still blurred my vision, I picked up Jurgen's melta and shot the
Dark Angel in the face.
He never saw the shot that blasted his heretic head off coming, which I suppose
says something about the First Legion's supposed wisdom.

With his chainsword in one hand and a melta-gun in the other, Ciaphas Cain led his
forces from the front, wielding the two-handed range weapon as a lesser man might a
shotgun. Soon, the attack of the Dark Angels was repelled, but as he looked upon
the bodies of his slain comrades, the Commissar-Castellan burned with righteous
fury. Furthermore, the sanctioned psyker of Inquisitor Vail informed them that the
foul rites of the First Legion were approaching their climax, threatening to sunder
reality and doom them all to a fate infinitely worse than death. There was no time
left to waste, and so Cain ordered his forces to march on, leaving only a handful
behind to guard the civilians.

Watching the Imperial advance, Nephalor grew restless as he realized that the
Commissar-Castellan was going to reach the Sorcerers before their great work was
complete. The thought of the punishment that awaited him should he fail in his
purpose drove him to recklessness, and he gave the order for his forces planetside
to unleash one of the Dark Angels' secret weapons : the Lord of Wraiths.

Not long after the landing of the Redoubts, a sealed cage of adamantium, seals made
of the corpse-wax of Imperial preachers and psykers, and wood from a dead world had
been brought down to Cadia. This prison had been taken from the holds of the
Invincible Reason, and before that from the Halls of Penitence on Cysgorog, where
its prisoner had been brought after being recovered from the clutches of an
Imperial Fist warlord even as his flagship was burning around him due to the
sabotage of the Twentieth Legion. It had been deposed in one of the captured
Mechanicus research outposts on the edge of the Pylon fields, and constantly
attended to since by nine times nine devotees of Tzeentch, their endless rites
sustaining its integrity.

Now, at the command of the Lord of Stars, the purpose of those rites was changed.
One by one, the seals were broken, the locks opened, and the wood burned to ash by
warp-fire. One by one, the nine magisters leading the rites were consumed from
within by the Warp, turned into infernal mouthpieces through which the Grand Master
imposed his will upon the being imprisoned within the cage, until the last of their
strength was spent and they collapsed into ash, their task complete. A chorus of
terrified and agonized screams soon rose as the weapon of the First Legion
immediately turned against the closest living beings it could vent its endless fury
upon.

Over two hundred years before, the Chaos Lord known only as the Hierarch of Blood,
of the Seventh Legion, had broken off from the Chaos forces faced by the Sabbat
Crusade, and laid waste to the Imperial world of Tanith, razing it completely after
slaughtering its defenders. The Hierarch hadn't been aware that his actions had
been manipulated by the Dark Angels, who had moved so subtly even their eternal
rivals, the Alpha Legion, had missed their involvement in the tragic affair. It was
the Dark Angels who had led the Hierarch of Blood to Tanith, just as its very first
Astra Militarum Regiments were mustering to join the countless billions of
Guardsmen fighting for the Imperium across the galaxy. It was the Dark Angels'
agents who whispered into his ear that taking the officer who had led the last
stand of these Regiments alive rather than claiming his skull for Khorne would be a
good idea.

And it was the Dark Angels who, in the Halls of Penitence, had remade that officer
into the Lord of Wraiths. Through their machinations, a great destiny had been
twisted and bent, reforged into a weapon to serve the purposes of the Architect of
Fate. None of them recognized the hypocrisy in such actions, none of them
recognized the evidence of the lies that had enslaved them as they did Tzeentch's
will. The hold of their Dark God, and their own desire to avoid facing the truth of
their sins, prevented them from doing so.

The Lord of Wraiths was a skeletal figure clad in the tattered but still
identifiable remnants of his uniform. From his back hung a mantle woven from
thousands of silver shards, each harvested from the combat knives given to the
soldiers of Tanith in celebration of their joining the Guard. Upon his brow sat a
crown of the same, whose ragged edges bit deep into his skull. Around him howled a
ghastly chorus of thousands of tormented souls, torn from the Warp and shackled to
the Materium by the First Legion's Sorcerers.

He had another name once, but now he was the Lord of Wraiths. Compelled by the
sorcery of the First Legion, he went west, to meet Cain's Column, and Death
followed with him. The endless agony of the trapped souls of Tanith drew a host of
daemons to his side, though they were kept from devouring the spirits and limited
to leeching off their pain, further intensifying their torment.

The Commissar-Castellan and his forces had weathered the Dark Angels' assault, but
the Lord of Wraiths' host of Neverborn and undead was something else entirely. Las-
guns were utterly useless against the spectres that heralded his approach, and they
sank ethereal claws into the hearts of men and women, drinking their lives to gain
the briefest of reprieves from their pain. Faith and psychic power were more
effective, but both were in short supply, and the depredations of the dead were
nothing compared to the cruelties of the daemons. The advance of Cain's Column
wavered, stopped, then began to threaten to turn into a rout or a slaughter.

Only Cain himself seemed completely immune to the wraiths' powers, the ghostly
apparitions recoiling from his presence with unholy screeches. Even the daemons
appeared reticent to face him, showing what the men and women of the Astra
Militarum thought they recognized as fear at his presence. Capitalizing on this
effect, he moved up and down the lines, holding up his forces where they were about
to break, encouraging them to push forward. Cain was hoping that, if they could
push through to the Pylon fields, the ancient constructs would prevent these Warp-
born horrors from following them.

It was a desperate gambit, for the effects of the Pylons were poorly understood,
even after ten thousand years of study. Certainly the cults that plagued Cadia and
the daemons they occasionally unleashed the world had always avoided that region.
It might have worked, but no one would ever know. For as Cain encouraged the
command company of the 597th back into position by charging the daemons and shaming
them into following him, the Lord of Wraiths himself appeared.

I had never seen Ciaphas furious before. Worried, yes, angry even (once when he had
thought me wounded, which I had thought was very sweet), but not furious. As an
Inquisitor who had served for over a century, I was well-versed in reading people,
and though Ciaphas was always a challenge in that regard I had a lot of experience
with him in particular. When I had found him standing over Jurgen's corpse and in
front of the Dark Angel's headless body, there had been a fire in his eyes, in his
face, in the entire way he stood ...

As I said, I had never seen him like that, and it scared me just as much as it
broke my heart.

After recovering Jurgen's dog tags, Ciaphas had incinerated the body with the
melta, refusing to leave anything for the carrion or the enemy to desecrate. In
death, Jurgen had looked more at peace than ever, and far less repugnant that his
Blank status had made him appear, even to us who knew him well.

It was strange. A Custodes had fallen as well, a scion of the now-lost Emperor, a
figure of myth and legend, of the kind not even Inquisitors ever expect to meet
unless their duties take them to Holy Terra, and even then only rarely. And yet, I
mourned Jurgen's death far more than I did that of Kelerasios Bherynet.

But there was no time to mourn for long. We were at war, and Ciaphas immediately
pushed us further east, to the Elyseon Fields. If the enemy was willing to go this
far to stop us, he reasoned in a voice devoid of his usual humor, then we must be
on the right track. We all agreed with him, so we pressed on.

Now we were under attack again, by ghosts and daemons, and Ciaphas didn't even seem
to notice. With fire and blade he struck the enemy down, looking every bit the hero
everyone but him knew him to be. The two surviving Custodes stood ever at his side,
and it was only thanks to their presence that he survived. Even then, how he
managed to fight with his chainsword in one hand and Jurgen's melta in the other I
had no idea. The latter was supposed to be a two-handed weapon, and Ciaphas wasn't
even trained in using it beyond having watched Jurgen employ it to save all of our
lives on more occasions than I cared to count.

The Lord of Wraiths met us on what had once been a flower field, where medicinal
plants were cultivated in another example of the Fourth Legion's habit of combining
beauty and practicality. The earth had been torn open by tanks, artillery and the
passage of daemons and their pawns, but that wasn't enough to stop Caractacus from
identifying the flora.

When he saw the Lord of Wraiths and stopped talking, I realized that we were in
serious danger.

At last, we saw why the dead had been afraid of Ciaphas, when the daemons had
recoiled from the Custodes' presence, which even now echoed with the Emperor's
power. It was his uniform which frightened them. It reminded them of their master,
because he wore the same, albeit tattered and worn. Even the emblem of the aquila
was still visible, left intact as a deliberate insult by those who had created this
abomination.

The Custodes died first, overwhelmed by a maelstrom of spirits driven by the Lord
of Wraiths' direct command, which superseded whatever fear of Ciaphas' uniform they
might hold. They were torn to shreds by a thousand spectral hands, and Rakel
strained herself to her limits protecting us from them, erecting a small sphere of
protection around the few members of my retinue I had left.

I saw the Lord of Wraiths go for Ciaphas, raising an old chainsword in his hands.
The Legionary Ciaphas refused to call anything but Alpharius moved to intervene,
his armor glowing where the wards carved in its surface were overloaded by the
power of the Warp. Ciaphas shouted something at him, and after a fraction of a
second, the Space Marine nodded and turned back, arriving just in time to stop a
creature with too many mouths from burning Colonel Kasteen alive.

I saw the Commissar-Castellan of Cadia duel the Lord of Wraiths, and I heard the
laughter of Dark Gods booming overhead as they fought. Ciaphas had thrown the melta
aside immediately, needing both hands to match his opponent's supernatural
strength. He was taller than the Lord of Wraiths, but that advantage of reach was
negated by the unholy boons the creature had received. The clash didn't continue
for long, for even a battle between the most skilled of warriors will only last
until one of them makes a mistake.

I saw Ciaphas' strike be blocked when a half-solid spectre hurled itself at his
chainsword. I saw the Lord of Wraiths' weapon plunge into his chest and burst out
of his back in a torrent of blood.
I saw Ciaphas slowly fall backward, onto a bed of blood-splattered flowers. I
caught a glimpse of his face, and though his gaze didn't meet mine like it would
have in some contrived third-rate mummer's play, I did recognize the expression on
his face.

It wasn't pain, or even shock or fear or grief. It was relief.

I am Inquisitor Amberley Vail of the Ordo Xenos. I saw all of this, and I saw what
came next.

Ciaphas Cain fell, dead before he hit the ground. Close by, Inquisitor Amberley
Vail screamed, and the Lord of Wraiths laughed mirthlessly with a thousand spectral
voices. On the Invincible Reason, watching the battle unfold through a pool of
liquid so toxic even he couldn't stand in its presence for more than a few moments
at a time, Nephalor breathed a sigh of relief. In the Immaterium, the daemons that
had been banished by Cain during his long and illustrious career licked their teeth
and prepared to enact their vengeance upon the Hero of the Imperium's soul.

And then …

"Cain !"

The Whiteshield's name was Theiros Delial. He had been born on Cadia thirteen years
ago, and this was the first time he had seen a daemon. Despite all his training, he
was terrified, and his hands trembled as he fired his lasgun, wildly missing the
target. Tears of terror and shame ran on his face – but he stood his ground. The
Commissar-Castellan was dead, and it seemed that with him all hope was lost – but
he stood his ground, and shouted with all his strength, desperate to hold on :

"Cain !"

The veteran's name was Maxim Jasn. His parents had been soldiers in the Regiment
back when Cain had been its sole Commissar, and he had grown up with tales of
Cain's heroic actions a constant in his life. When he had heard that the Commissar
had been brought out of retirement to lead them once more, he had been ecstatic.
Now the Commissar was dead, and Maxim was as horrified as he was sad, but he stood
his ground, calling out the name of their martyred hero.

"Cain !"

The cook's name was Jonathan Lex. He had joined the Imperial Guard to escape the
fathers and brothers of the three girls he had seduced back home on Valhalla. At
some point in the battle, he had lost his left hand – he didn't remember how or to
what, he had just looked down and seen it gone, and staunched the flow of blood
with a scrap he had torn from his apron. But still he stood his ground, mad with
terror but finding in himself reserves of courage he had never known were there,
and he screamed the name of the fallen hero to keep himself from falling apart.

"Cain !"

The General's name was Regina Kasteen. Ciaphas had been her friend, the one who had
taken two groups of bitter soldiers and forged them into the 597th, seeing
something in them where so many others in his place would have instilled discipline
through decimation. She had fought on his side in scores of warzones, and seen the
care he held for the troopers under him, how they mattered far more to him than all
the accolades heaped upon him. Her left arm was broken, her life having only been
saved by Alpharius' intervention moments ago. But still she fought, firing her bolt
pistol into the horde of horrors while shouting his name in between orders for her
Regiment to hold their ground, to honor the memory of the man who had made them
what they were, until the end.

"Cain ! CAIN ! CAIN !"

What had begun as a single cry was picked up, more and more soldiers shouting the
name of their fallen leader at the top of their lungs, opening fire on the daemonic
horde charging them, not one of them taking a step back. They were scared, far from
their homes, in a world where everything they believed in seemed to have been lost
… but they stood their ground.

And their defiance blazed in the Warp like a beacon, forcing the Dark Gods that
lurked there to turn their gaze away for the briefest of moments. But the beacon
also drew to it another entity, one that had once been part of a greater whole. Now
it was but a fragment, its identity quickly dissolving in the soul-burning tides of
the Empyrean – but it still had power.

Amidst the darkness, there is Light.

It chases the shadows that come for me with hungering maws. It protects and
comforts me.

It gives me a choice … You give me a choice. Now ? Now, of all times ?

Even in death, Your sense of humor hasn't improved, I see.

Have I not done enough ? Have I not fought well in Your name ? How much longer must
I continue to fight ? I am tired. So tired of being afraid. So tired of all the
death, all the devastation …

I have buried so many friends, so many soldiers who deserved to live more than I.

It would be so easy. Just … stop. The Light does not judge me. Here, at the end, I
finally understand that You never did.

You understood. You … understood.

If I choose to end, the Light will protect me from all the daemons I have angered
over the years. It will safeguard my soul, and grant me peace.

No more fear, at last. No more pain. No more grief.

I am not the hero they all think me to be. I never was. I am a liar and a fraud,
nothing more. You know this, surely You do.

It would be so easy …

But …

They are calling my name.

They are dying, and they are calling my name.

And …

I …

I will not abandon them.

Ah …
I do not do this for You, You understand.

I do this for them.

But then, that's the point, isn't it ?

Onward into the breach, one more time, then.

Light descended upon Cadia, and Ciaphas Cain rose anew, blazing with the fire of
the Emperor. Reforged by a fragment of the power that had been unleashed at Light's
End, the newly ascended Living Saint looked upon the Lord of Wraiths, and an awed
silence descended upon the battlefield.

Then the silence was broken, as the sorcerous bonds of the Lord of Wraiths
reasserted themselves, and the creature of the First Legion charged the Living
Saint. Once again, the two former Commissars duelled. With every blow, the screams
of the wraiths became less angry, less agonized, and more mournful. Great arcs of
energy erupted whenever the two chainswords clashed, incinerating scores of daemons
but leaving the Imperials fighting them untouched.

It was a battle of legend, a confrontation between two opposing Powers, and the
sight of it would remain in the memory of all who witnessed it until their dying
day. And in the end, Cain's swordmanship and newfound power proved greater, and the
Lord of Wraiths was cast down, his weapon torn from his grasp.

Sainthood was not what I had expected.

Not that I had ever thought I would receive it, you understand. I knew Saints were
real : I had access to enough confidential records to have a vague idea of the
truth behind the Ecclesiarchy's propaganda. At the time, reading the accounts of
the Twentieth Legion, I remember feeling sorry for the poor bastards. None of them
had had happy lives before the Emperor had shoved a bit of His soul into them and
turned them into His avatars in the galaxy.

At least I wasn't overcome with the desire to smite heretics and start preaching
about the glory of the Golden Throne. I think I might have had to kill myself if
that had been the case.

Still, I understood things now that I hadn't even considered before. It was, I
knew, only a fragment of a fragment of the understanding the Emperor had held
before His death, and for that I was grateful, for even that little was almost too
much to bear. I could see how precarious Humanity's situation was, how the
Emperor's last plan had essentially been to kick the regicide board away and shank
the other player before they could react. He had given us every advantage He could,
but in the end, He had still been relying on us, His subjects and His sons, to find
a path to victory.

And He had chosen me to help with that. This confirmed what I had long believed :
His sense of humor left a lot to be desired.

There were other benefits. I had just fought the hardest duel of my life, yet I
stood tall, barely breathing hard despite the effort. The Lord of Wraiths – and I
knew that to be the name the Dark Angels had given him, just like I knew his real
one, without being able to explain how in a manner that wouldn't make me sound like
Rakel off her medication – was down on the ground, looking up at me.

Here, at the end, he was just a man, broken and weeping for all those he hadn't
been able to save.
"… It is not fair," he whispered in a voice that was so frail compared to the storm
of howling ghosts that now watched us in silence. "It is not fair ! Why YOU ?! We
fought ! We fought and we bled and we screamed and we died and we didn't break, and
it wasn't enough ! Not enough to save us, not enough to save the world ! So why ?
Why ?!"

"Where was our Saint then ?!" he wept bitterly. "Where was the Emperor's Grace ?!
It is not fair. It is not fair !"

"You are right," I answered. "It isn't fair."

His face twisted in incomprehension. Softly, I brought my deactivated chainsword

down, onto the collar of that awful cloak wrapped around his body.

I wouldn't kill him. Because he was right. This wasn't fair.

The universe wasn't fair.

But it should be. And we would make it so.

I deny you. In the Emperor's name, and in Jurgen's, I deny you.

"DO YOU HEAR ME ?!" I roared to the skies, where something sitting on a throne of
skulls roared back. "I DENY YOU !"

I triggered my chainsword, and adamantium teeth bit deep into the chains that held
the mantle of silver shards to his shoulders.

"You are not deserving of my Wrath, and we have all Sacrificed too much already," I
said, speaking loudly enough to be heard over the screeching of my weapon's teeth
at work. "This is the hour for Salvation."

At last, the chain gave way, and the cloak fell. The shards of silver turned to
powder, breaking the sorcery that held the dead soldiers of Tanith in bondage to
the Dark Angels. They flew in the breeze, and became sparks that burned within the
eyes of the ghosts and turned the daemons to ash.

The Lord of Wraiths breathed a sigh of relief, and his own flesh, preserved for
centuries by the dark sorcery of the Dark Angels, fell apart into dust, leaving
behind a new specter, looking far more stable and sane than the emaciated figure of
moments ago.

It was my first miracle, and a gesture of defiance to the Dark Gods above. I would
not give them the satisfaction of killing one they had enslaved, one who had never
had a choice in his damnation, who had struggled against his chains ever since his
capture.

"On your feet, Commissar Gaunt," I told him. "Your duty is not yet done."

Slowly, he stood up, and we locked gazes for a moment. Then he threw his head
back :

"MEN OF TANITH !" bellowed the specter of Ibram Gaunt. "DO YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER
?"

It was clearly an old war-cry, something which made sense only to those who had
fought and died together on that doomed world. Despite the bitter irony of the
words, the ghosts raised their ethereal voices in reply, a choir of wrathful
defiance that promised death to those who had enslaved them for so long.

As one, the hundreds of specters turned and flew toward the Elyseon Fields in the
distance. If they hadn't been soulless heretics bent on drowning the galaxy in
madness and death, I might have felt sorry for the Dark Angels. As it was, all I
felt was cold satisfaction.

"Come on !" I shouted, turning back to look at the army at my back and gesturing in
the direction of the departing spectral horde with my revving chainsword. "Are you
going to let the dead show you up like this, soldiers of the Imperium ?"

The roar I received in answer must surely have been heard all the way to orbit. I
turned my back on them and swirled my chainsword in a suitably dramatic gesture.

"For Jurgen," I whispered under my breath, and started running. "For the Emperor."

You kill us for sport.

We are nothing to you. Playthings. Tools. Food. You feast on our pain, you
cultivate our torment, and then you kill us.

Worse : you make us kill each other for your amusement.

Not this time.

I told you Diomedes wouldn't be the last.

Neither will this one.

The ghosts of Tanith swarmed the Elyseon Fields, the Warp-repellent effects of the
Pylons not appearing to affect them, whether due to the damage already inflicted by
the Dark Angels or because their nature was now antithetical to the kind of
Immaterial energy the Pylons were designed to hold back. Behind them came the
Guardsmen and Space Marines, with Cain leading once more from the front.

The vengeful dead fell upon their enslavers with a terrible fury, choking them with
centuries of their own accumulated pain at their hands. Having expended the bulk of
their armed forces in the first failed attempt to stop the Column, the Sorcerers
and their acolytes were overwhelmed and put down, choosing to fight to the last
rather than flee and incur the wrath of their Chaos Lord and Dark God. They fought
with desperation, while the Sorcerers accelerated their rites, willing to burn
their own souls to see their unholy work completed. Yet even these desperate
measures were not enough, for where Ciaphas Cain walked the radiance of the Emperor
shone and unmade the spells of the Dark Angels, banishing the power they had
accumulated in preparation for the subversion of the Pylons back to the Immaterium
and leaving them empty-handed, with only the laughter of their daemonic patron
echoing in their damned souls before they were cut down.

Once the last of the Chaos Marines had fallen, the ghosts of Tanith faded from
sight, and the silver dust of their broken blades flowed around Ibram Gaunt's own
ghost, leaving him half-corporeal. Through Cain's intervention, the Lord of Wraiths
had been remade into an anchor for the power of Vindicta, that entity born of the
wrath of Magnus the Red and the dying prayers of billions of souls for justice and
succour. As a Living Saint, Cain carried within him a shard of the God-Emperor's
power alloyed to his own soul, but this power was aligned with that of Vindicta, in
a way the rival Dark Gods could never be, by their very nature. Together, they had
accomplished a miracle neither would've been capable of alone.

Had Gaunt not stood at the side of a Living Saint, who had just transfigured him in
full view of hundreds of Guardsmen, no doubt he would have been attacked on sight
by the Imperials. Instead his presence was cautiously accepted as the Column
departed the Elyseon Fields in triumph. At the recommendation of Inquisitor Vail,
he did his best to remain out of sight and out of mind until the memory of the
ravages he had inflicted while enslaved faded, remaining aboard the Manifest Fury
under the watch of the Inquisitor's retinue while she herself attempted to deal
with the fact that a celebrated Hero of the Imperium and secret agent of the
Inquisition and the Hydra had become a Living Saint.

With the Dark Angels broken, Cain took his army to the relative safety of Kasr
Kraf. With the help of the ghosts of Tanith, breaking through the Black Legion
siege lines was almost easy, and the defenders opened the gates to let Cain's
Column inside under ragged applause and cheers. Even from afar, they had witnessed
the descent of the Emperor's power that had transfigured Ciaphas Cain, and for the
first time since Light's End, hope was kindled within their hearts alongside the
bitter fire of defiance that had kept them going so far.

Inside the Castellum, the Living Saint was met by Imperial Guard high officers,
Astartes Captains, priests of the Ministorum, Canonesses of the Adepta Sororitas
and Archmagi of the Mechanicus. All of them knelt before him, honoring the one who
brought them salvation in their darkest hour. The Commissar-Castellan of Cadia
looked upon them with an impassive expression, and none but him know what he
thought at the sight.

"We are battered and bleeding. The Imperium itself is wounded nigh unto death, in a
worst situation than it has been in ten thousand years.

The unthinkable has happened. The Emperor is dead. We may never know the details of
what transpired on Terra, though I hold onto the faith that the Throneworld still
endures. And so long as it does, so must we.

Our foes rejoice in this bitter twist of fate, and celebrate their victory as if it
were inevitable. Yet we have already shown them that though the Master of Mankind
is no more, His light still shines to burn away the darkness. So long as I live, I
intend to keep that light burning. But I cannot do it alone.

So on your feet, all of you. The time for kneeling is past.

Though all the horrors of the Eye stand against us, though we are alone against the
tides of Chaos and the machinations of the Dark Gods, I declare this, now and
forever :

Cadia stands !"

Ciaphas Cain, during the first meeting of Imperial high command at Kasr Kraf
following the Battle of Elyseon Fields (later to be added to The Book of Cain,
Second Volume, Chapter II, Verses XI-XVII by the scribes of the Tallarn 340th,
whose General was present at the gathering)

AN : There are scenes in the Times of Ending that I have had in mind since I
finished writing the Index Astartes and first considered actually writing the Times
of Ending for the Roboutian Heresy. Cain's ascension was one of them, with the core
of the scene immediately prior to his transfiguration (the soldiers of the Imperium
calling out his name in defiance) having already been written for years by now. The
idea of Cain becoming a Living Saint first came to me while reading the TV Tropes
pages for the Ciaphas Cain series, specifically the WMG section, and seeing
speculation as to how Cain could return to the setting after his official death. I
doubt it will ever happen, unfortunately : the tone of the Cain novels doesn't
exactly fits the 42nd Millennium. Then again, the Squats - sorry, the Kin of the
Leagues of Votann - came back, so clearly everything is possible.

(And yes, I do have a plan for the Leagues. I have always had a plan for them, and
the latest lore reveals haven't changed anything about it, just given me more to
work with. You may now begin to shudder in dread.)

Pretty much all of you saw Cain's rise to Sainthood coming, which I believe means
that my foreshadowing worked as intended. Some of you even foresaw that it would
require Jurgen's death, if for no other reason that the shard of the Emperor would
find it difficult to fuse with Cain otherwise. Congratulations to you all, but none
of you, however, saw the fate of Ibram Gaunt and the Tanith Regiments coming, and I
had it planned for just as long. It's nice to see I can still surprise you.

If this Cain is a bit different than the one in the novels, that's because he is,
bluntly put, old. He has seen a lot of things, few of them nice. Experience has
taken the cowardly, self-centered dissembler he was at the start of his career and
turned him into exactly the Hero of the Imperium everyone else sees him as, with
only himself remaining blind to the transformation.

And yes, once again the Dark Angels get stomped on. That is what happens when you
swear yourself to a god relying on prophecies and temporal manipulations and an
event like Light's End blocks all foresight. Now that we have passed that juncture,
however, you can expect the servants of Tzeentch to become more dangerous as the
Architect of Fate 'recompiles' a new Web of the Future, so to speak.

Quick note : despite my research showing that, in canon, the cities of Cadia are
all called Kasr, I kept using Castellum for continuity's sake. Let's say that is
because of the Fourth Legion's influence in this timeline and quickly move on.

Thanks to Jaenera Targaryen for beta-reading this. I expect the next chapter will
take more time, if only because I'm still not sure whether or not it will be the
final one for the Cadian Apocalypse (barring an epilogue I'm pretty sure is going
to be necessary) or if I'll need to split up the events of this arc into two more
chapters. At least I have a name for it (though that too is subject to change).

Zahariel out.

To be continued in
The Cadian Apocalypse
Part Four : To Forge Salvation