The Smallest Primarch

by Twisted_Whisper

Summary:

Guilliman expected to be awoken by saints or scholars.
He got a shark-toothed menace.

Gawr Gura, the long-lost Primarch of the Carcharodons, his sister, broke into his stasis vault, poked his face, and called him “Bobby G.”

She says the Imperium’s a mess.
She says it’s his problem now.

She’s not wrong.
She’s just… very annoying about it.

Guilliman is trying to rebuild the galaxy.
Gura is trying to find a good sandwich.

Chapter 1: Prologue: The Alarm Clock

He could think, but not move.

Ten thousand years, or a moment—time had lost meaning long ago. Conscious thought came in fragmented pulses, like distant thunder in the fog of stillness.

He remembered fire.
Pain.
His father’s voice.

And then: nothing.

Now, he dreamed.
He dreamed of duty, of failure, of a galaxy decaying into madness.
Of the Empire he built, and the faith cult it had become.
Of his brothers , dead or worse.
Of himself , a relic encased in machinery and regret.

And always, the silence.

He had grown used to it.

Until—

tap tap tap tap tap

A sound.

No— a vibration.

tap tap tap tap tap

A rhythm. Annoyingly fast. Repetitive.

His mind sharpened. Awareness bloomed.

Was it— footsteps?

The vault was sealed. Only the Lord Commander and the Mechanicus had clearance. And even they were careful. Reverent.

But this…

“Yooo, this thing still working?”

The voice was young. Female.
Not reverent. Not careful.

“Open sesa– wait, do I push this? Ooh, it’s glowy.”

He tried to move. The stasis fields held him firm.

He tried to see. His vision was clouded by layers of hololithic frost and psychic film.

“Hey, Bobby G~ Brother? You awake?”

Did she just call him “Bobby G?”?

Something clicked. Metal hissed. Steam vented.
The field destabilized.

A bright light. The world lurched.

Guilliman’s mind screamed into full consciousness as gravity, pain, and sensation all returned in one overwhelming wave.
He slowly opened his eyes, coughing, blinking. Alive.

And standing in front of him was—

A tiny shark-girl.
His sister.
Staring down at him with a grin of far too many sharp teeth.

“Wake up! Oi! Oi! Wake up!”

She slapped his face lightly, alternating cheeks, eyes sparkling with mischief.

He blinked.
Once.
Twice.

Was this a warp hallucination? A daemon’s mockery? Had the stasis chamber failed and thrown him into some disjointed dream?

“Yeah, you, I’m talkin’ to you! That’s right!”

Her voice pierced through the fog in his skull like a lascutter.
It was not how a daughter of the Emperor should speak.
It was how a child might greet a sleeping dog.
A sleeping primarch, in his case, but she didn’t seem to care.

She grabbed his hand—warm, real, strong—and hauled him upright with a strength that didn’t match her diminutive size.

“Up and at ’em! Come on! Feet on the floor, chop chop!”

Guilliman stumbled forward, muscles groaning, lungs heaving in air thick with ozone and oil. His armor hissed and shifted as power returned to its systems.

His mind was still catching up.

This is not a vision. Not a dream. This is real.
And that— thing with the shark teeth—
That is my sister.

Gawr Gura.
The lost Primarch.
The Abyssal Blade.
The Myth.

He stared at her as she continued tugging his gauntlet like an impatient child trying to drag her older brother to the candy stall.

This cannot be happening.

Where are the honor guards? The rites? The Mechanicus?

Who let her into my stasis chamber?!

Why does she smell like promethium and bubblegum?!

She looked up at him, beaming.

“Hey, Robu. You good? No brain leaks? You were in there, like—forever. Thought you might’ve fossilized or something.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came. His throat burned.

She slapped a ration bar into his hand.

“Here. I know you’re grumpy when you’re hungry.”

He looked down at the bar. Then at her. Then at the still-hissing stasis sarcophagus, its security seals clearly bypassed .

Then back at her.

I was awoken… not by the High Lords… nor by the Adeptus Custodes… nor by any act of holy ritual…

But by the most chaotic, irreverent, shark-themed disaster in the galaxy.

This… this is worse than the Heresy.

She leaned closer and whispered conspiratorially, “Also, you might want to put on pants. The vault's, like, half open. The others are staring .”
Guilliman finally had time to look at his surroundings. Guilliman finally had time to look at his surroundings.

Of course there were people. There should have been people—dignitaries, Custodes, senior Tech-Priests—he expected a solemn ceremony. Incense. Vox-hymns. The litany of activation , chanted with due reverence. A world on bated breath for the return of their primarch.

Instead—

A handful of confused Skitarii stood at the far end of the chamber, their optics whirring erratically as if unsure whether to raise their weapons or pray.

An acolyte was hiding behind a servo-console, peeking out with a dataslate held like a shield.

A Tech-Priest Dominus stood in the middle of the chaos, visibly twitching. Not out of fear, but out of rage—the kind that only came from centuries of sacred security protocols being shredded by a 4'6" gremlin with a trident and no regard for firewalls.

And behind them all, a Custodes, hand on his Guardian Spear, unmoving but visibly… lost.

None of them spoke.

They were all staring at him.

No.

Not him.

Her.

Gura waved at them cheerfully, holding Guilliman’s arm aloft like a championship belt.

“Look who I found! He’s awake! Mostly! Might be a little crispy in the brainpan, but we’ll work on that.”

The Ultramarine Primarch tried, desperately, to process.

His thoughts, usually ordered and sharp, crashed into each other like failing cogitators.

This is a breach of protocol.
This is a desecration of sacred rites.
This is… mortifying.

He was half-naked. Covered in stasis gel. Barely coherent. And being paraded like a prize catch by a rogue Primarch who spoke like a tavern-brawler and acted like an Ork who’d discovered caffeine.

He locked eyes with the Custodes, silently pleading for some sort of explanation.

The Custodes looked at him.

Then slowly, awkwardly, gave the Imperial Aquila.

Guilliman wished the stasis field had finished killing him.

Chapter 2: Chapter 1: Bubblegum and Bureaucracy

Mcragge, 996.M41

Guilliman moved through the corridors with slow, deliberate steps. The remains of his shattered armor—relics of a time long past—had been peeled away in silence. Left behind like shed skin in a medical bay built for monsters. In its place: a simple, dark-grey tunic, high-collared and austere. Standard fleet issue. It hung loose on his frame, though nothing could quite obscure the imposing presence of a Primarch returned.

He hadn’t looked in a mirror.

Didn’t want to.

He remembered the last time he had. Before the blade. Before the dark. Before the long, dreaming void.

That man had believed he could save an empire.

He stepped through the bulkhead doors into the command room.

It was massive—built for spectacle, for war councils and fleet coordination. Strategium hololiths flickered to life at his presence. A slowly rotating map of the Segmentum Solar hung in the air like a bleeding wound. Everything felt different from the old days—sleeker in some ways, cruder in others. Like a facsimile of Imperial design filtered through madness and compromise.

And seated casually on the command throne— his throne—was her.

Guilliman had faced daemons, xenos, brothers turned traitor, and the crushing weight of a dying empire. But none of it prepared him for the sight before him now. 

Gura was sitting sideways in the massive command throne, legs swinging lazily over the armrest like a child on a park bench. The seat, designed for a Primarch’s armored bulk, made her look like someone’s wayward pet curled up where it didn’t belong. Her cloak was draped messily behind her, one boot on the console, the other dangling free. A battered trident leaned beside her, humming faintly with warp-kissed energy.

“Oh hey, you’re still awake,” she chirped, chomping on something unidentifiable from a ration bar wrapper. “That’s good.”

Guilliman, still seated across from her in a smaller—yet still imposing—throne, folded his gauntleted hands and stared.

Gura beamed. “Sooooo. Want the monthly recap?”

He didn’t respond. She took that as a ‘yes.’

“Okay! So. Popped outta the Eye right near where Cadia used to be—y’know, before it pulled a magic trick and became rubble. Sad. Confusing. I mostly wanted food.”

A pause. She gestured vaguely with the ration bar. “Tried to dock with a Black Templar patrol. Accidentally called their Marshal a cosplay Inquisitor. That got loud.”

She giggled at the memory. Guilliman’s expression remained stone.

“Anyway! Learned the galaxy’s on fire again. Didn’t like that. Heard whispers you were technically still alive. Liked that. So I poked around, maybe sliced a few Mechanicus comms, mayyyybe pretended to be ‘Inspecta G. Ura’ on a sacred Omnissian junk barge…”

Guilliman sighed. Loudly. “Emperor preserve me…”

“I know, right?” she said brightly, completely missing the point. “But hey, found the vault. Thought you could use a wake-up call. And voila!”

She raised both arms like a magician finishing a trick.

“...You bypassed a thousand levels of clearance.”

“Yup.”

“Violated twelve sacred machine protocols.”

“Mhm.”

“You broke into my stasis chamber and woke me up with your singing.”

“To be fair,” she said, pointing her ration bar at him, “it worked.”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You went into the Eye. With your entire legion.”

The air shifted.

Her grin faltered for the briefest moment. “Not all of them.”

—————————————————————————————————

Cadia, 121.M31

The void beyond the Eye of Terror was not quiet.

It seethed.

Warp storms thrashed like wounded beasts. Stars blinked out, devoured by the tendrils of unreality. Astropathic screams filled the silence between ships. Yet the Carcharodons did not falter.

Their fleet, void-black and shark-toothed, drifted just outside the threshold of the Immaterium’s gaping maw. Gura stood fully armored at the observation deck of the flagship Abyssus Mortalis , trident in hand. Behind her, a formation of her Chapter Masters waited—uneasy, but silent.

“I’m going in,” she said simply.

One of them stepped forward. Captain Kael, his armor scarred from a thousand compliance wars. “My Primarch… we await orders.”

She turned, eyes shining with a light not of this galaxy. “You have them. Hold the line. Protect what’s left. Someone has to make it home.”

The marines did not question her. Not out loud. But tension rippled through them like static. Gura had always been… unconventional. But this?

“You know what’s in there,” Kael said.

She grinned. “Yes. And I’m gonna bite it in the ass.”

Another murmur rippled. “We should go with you.”

“No.” Her voice cut clean. “Most of us won’t come back. I need some of you to. You’ll return to Terra. Make them remember the Carcharodons are still loyal. Still watching.”

Then, quieter, almost too soft for their transhuman ears: “And if I don’t make it back… someone has to lie to the historians.”

A low chuckle swept the bridge.

She left behind three thousand of her most disciplined and tactically adept—those less warped by the silent slaughter they’d waged across the fringes of the Imperium. The rest, nearly 150,000 strong, followed her into the screaming dark.

The rift opened like a wound. And they vanished.

—————————————————————————————————

Mcragge, 996.M41

A quiet passed through the room.

“I left a few thousand to hold things down. Told ’em I’d be back.” She leaned back, suddenly distant. “We chased the traitors. Real deep. Got real weird. But thats a story for another time. Came back with thirty-nine thousand. From one-fifty.”

Guilliman said nothing. He didn’t have to. The numbers said enough.

“They’re orbiting now. Mostly intact. Mostly sane. Put the ones with the least brain-rot in charge.” Her voice dipped into a seriousness that almost didn’t sound like her. “They stuck with me through everything. I owe ’em that.”

He studied her again. She was gone for ten millennia. And came back... like that.

Not just alive. Functional. Laughing.

It was absurd. It was impossible. It was… awe-inspiring.

‘She should not exist. And yet she does.’

“You could have contacted the High Lords.”

“I did.” Her nose wrinkled. “It sucked. All meetings and incense and guys with sticks yelling about relics. I left after a week. Might’ve faked my own assassination to escape. No regrets.”

Guilliman stared.

Gura shrugged. “I’m more of a ‘stab the demon, eat the rations, sleep in a crate’ kinda Primarch.”

He gave her a long, unreadable look. “You do realize what you’ve done.”

“Yup!” she grinned, hopping off the throne. “I made you responsible again. You’re welcome.”

“You forced me back into power.”

She tilted her head. “Yeah, but like… gently.”

Before he could argue, the vox-unit on the wall crackled.

“Lord Roboute Guilliman,” came the voice, formal and tight with tension. “Your reactivation has been confirmed. Praise be. I request immediate audience.”

Guilliman didn’t respond. He was still staring at the seat Gura had vacated.

“I’ll leave you to it,” Gura said, already halfway to the door. “Got some old friends to meet down on my homeworld. Heard some weird stories about ‘em. They’re the silent type apparently. Either way, it’ll be good to be home for a minute. Haven’t been able to go back yet.”

She paused, glancing back. “Oh, and I’m sending someone to help you. Calliope. She’s got files, sass, and an actual attention span.”

He turned. “Wait—”

“Later, Bobby G~” she sang, vanishing through the automatic doors.

Silence.

The doors hissed shut behind her.

Guilliman didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t even blink.

His eyes remained fixed on the now-empty throne across from him—far too large for her, and somehow still shaped by her presence.

The silence stretched.

No rites. No parades. No choir of servo-chants. No dignitaries or torchbearers or liturgies of reawakening.

Just a hoodie-wearing gremlin with bubblegum breath and a trident.

That’s how the Avenging Son returned to the realm of the living.

Not by ritual.

Not by need.

But by her.

The absurdity of it struck him like a blade hidden in laughter. The galaxy he remembered—its reverence, its order—was gone. In its place: improvisation, madness, and the occasional weaponized song lyric.

His thoughts drifted—to ceremony, to the weight of legacy, to the way his name had once been spoken like prayer. Now it had been scrawled in marker on a ration bar.

‘What does the Imperium see when they look at me now?
Do I lead a dream… or a corpse?’

He felt the burden settle on his shoulders again—familiar, but heavier somehow. Like it had grown in the centuries he'd been away. Maybe it had. Or maybe he had simply changed.

‘And what if she’s right? What if laughter is the only sane response left?’

The vox crackled again.

Static. Then the voice, clipped and precise—someone important enough to speak, but still uncertain.

“Lord Roboute Guilliman. Your reactivation has been confirmed. Praise be. I request immediate audience.”

His gaze didn’t leave the throne.

Then, slowly, he spoke—his tone measured, even.

“I am operational. I require a brief window before formal contact. You will have your audience shortly.”

A pause. The voice came back, tinged with reverence and unease.

“Your… resurrection was not sanctioned, and reports state that she was involved.”

Another moment of silence.

“You must understand the implications of this act, Lord Guilliman. The Ecclesiarchy is already in an uproar. There are questions about authority. About protocol. About—”

His voice sharpened. Not loud. Just colder.

“I will issue a full report. In person. When I choose.”

Another silence.

“...Understood. I will notify the High Lords. A secure meeting will be prepared.”

“I expect to address them within the next twenty-four hours.”

The line went dead.

The chamber felt emptier now.

He rose, movements slow—each step deliberate, as if the air itself had grown thick. Heavy. Like armor.

He moved toward the viewport. Stars lay scattered before him, distant and strange. Familiar constellations, twisted by the churn of centuries and war.

In the far distance, a cluster of ships—angular, predatory. His sister’s fleet.

Thirty-nine thousand Astartes, hardened and half-mad, still flying her banner. Still listening to her.

She lived. She returned. And then she left the reins on my lap like they were something she'd outgrown.

Was that wisdom… or cowardice?

He stared longer, searching for an answer. None came.

But then he smiled. Just faintly.

No. That was trust.

Shoulders straightened. The burden was still there—looming, immense—but now, at least, it had shape .

And then—

 “Ah. So. You’re awake.”

A floating skull drifted lazily from the shadows.

Baroque in design. Filigree crusted every edge. Pink rune-etchings pulsed along its housing like a heartbeat. A jazz rhythm—smooth, faint, and inexplicably catchy—played from somewhere inside its casing.

It wore a long, synthetic pink wig.

Of course it did.

 “Yo. Name’s Calliope Mori. You can call me Calli. I’m your liaison, technically.”

Guilliman blinked.

Of course the floating skull was talking. Of course it had a name. Of course it was apparently sentient. Of course it sounded like a lounge singer who’d just rolled out of bed and was halfway through a cocktail.

 “I’m with her , obviously. Someone’s gotta keep the Abyssal Gremlin from setting the Golden Throne on fire with a lascutter. Again.”

It drifted closer, spinning in place once like it was twirling on an invisible dance floor.

“Also, I’m the one who goes to the meetings she doesn’t want to attend. I listen, I take notes, and I have exactly zero respect for the Adeptus Bureaucraticus.”

 The servo-skull hovered closer, pink wig bobbing with each motion. She extended the dataslate with a dainty mechanical limb, like she was presenting a cocktail menu at the end of the world.

 “Special delivery, my liege. Straight from the abyssal archivist herself.”

Guilliman took the slate slowly, his fingers brushing cold metal. Calli didn’t move.

 “She said you’d be cranky and confused, so she made this to help. Tactics, logistics, weird warp crap she pretends not to understand but totally does.”

A beat. Then, drier:

“Also a playlist.”

Guilliman’s brow furrowed. Of course it did.

The Primarch turned the slate over in his hands, his expression unreadable. Calli floated a little higher, faux-whispering now:

 “It’s got fleet movements, legion sitreps, anomaly trajectories… real grown-up stuff. Honestly? If she weren’t so allergic to thrones, she could’ve run half the Segmentum.”

Her tone shifted slightly—just a shade warmer.

“But she didn’t want to be the one holding the galaxy together. She wanted you .”

Another pause.

 “Lucky you, huh?”

She winked. Or at least, her single glowing eye dimmed in a manner that strongly suggested a wink.

 “Anyway. Try not to drop it. It’s encrypted in High Gothic, Old Gothic, and one line of shark emoji.”

He tapped at its surface—and his sister’s voice came through, bright and irreverent, as if she were still in the room.

“Hey, Robu. You looked sad, so I left you a playlist. It’s mostly loud things. Very motivating.”

He scrolled past the music, sung by her no doubt,—old Terra titles like Kiss from a Rose by Seal and Hey Brother by Avicii flickered by—until he reached a tactical file.

His expression changed.

Detailed logistics. Precise fleet movements. Warp anomaly predictions. Sightings of Traitor warbands down to regiment strength and predictive vectors.

It was… thorough. Clear.

Professional.

He reached the end.

“Told you I’m not stupid. I’m just allergic to thrones.”

He shut the slate. Eyes heavier. Sharper.

“Time to be the responsible one again,” he muttered. “Lucky me.”

Calli drifted sideways like a leaf on static.

 “Oh. Also. High Lords want a word. You said twenty-four hours, and apparently they know how to count.”

 “They’re very upset that you got activated without a blessing, a council vote, or seventeen Liturgies of Verification.”

 “Expect yelling. And a parade. And maybe a firing squad. Depends who shows up with the right paperwork first.”

Guilliman turned his head slowly, eyes on the chamber doors.

Calli hovered closer, her voice softening—just slightly.

 “Don’t worry, Big G. I’ll be there. Someone’s gotta translate bureaucratic High Gothic into something that won’t make you punch a wall.”

A beat passed.

 “...Also, she left you a snack.”

From a hidden compartment, the skull produced another ration bar. Half-unwrapped. A scribble across the foil in childish scrawl:

For Bobby G <3 – No Brain Leaks Pls

He stared at it.

And for a moment, the weight didn’t feel quite so impossible.

 

Notes:

So a nice and speedy 1st chapter. How unlike me! This is absolutely so much fun to write.
Here's the main issue. My knowledge of complete Warhammer lore is spotty at best. If you spot something super egregious, PLEASE leave a comment so I can fix it. Some of them are purposeful, for example, I know technically that servo skulls can't be sentient, but I'm passing this off as Calli being influenced by not only 10k years in the Eye, but also being subjected to Gura's pysker abilities. I plan on explaining those in detail eventually, but I can't give everything away immediately, now can I?

Oh and if anyone has any ideas of what to do about Ina, PLEASE speak up. I have no idea what to have her be. I have plans for the rest of holomyth and a few for council, but nothing for her yet. :(
(Please don't say ork. I know the Wah would be funny, but I can't stomach the thought of ork Ina.)
Next chapter will be the reunion between Gura and the Carcharodons that she left behind. (The canon ones. Yes, that means Tyberos).
Hope y'all enjoyed!

Chapter 3: Chapter 2: Grins and Grumbles

The cavernous halls of Gura’s flagship echoed only with the muted footfalls of Tyberos and his two veteran Carcharodons. Hydraulic servos hummed faintly beneath the heavy plating and machinery—a sterile symphony beneath their measured steps. The ambient light was cold, sterile, but it did little to thaw the chill in Tyberos’s chest.

She’s here, Tyberos thought, eyes narrowing. The lost Primarch—if she truly is. The future of the chapter rests on this moment. Words won’t sway the truth; only action. He was a man of duty, of resolve, not politics or riddles. And yet, the uncertainty gnawed at him. The message that had summoned them—coordinates to a world erased from Imperial archives—was a beacon of hope, or perhaps a trap.

The heavy doors ahead groaned, grinding open with ancient reluctance. Tyberos entered, flanked by his veterans, every sense alert.

There she was.

Gura lounged atop the command throne, feet bare against the cold steel, casually chewing on what looked like dried kelp—an odd, almost mocking display of calm in the face of legend. Her trident leaned beside her like a fisherman’s rod, deceptively casual. She wore the shark hoodie, faded and familiar, an ironic signature on this warlord of myth.

Two honor guards stood on opposite sides of the room—armored like the Carcharodons, but in a deep ocean blue that seemed to drink in the light. Their helmets were stylized shark heads, silent sentinels in the cold light.

To her right stood the giant—Bloop. Towering at over ten feet, clad in battered Terminator armor with the unmistakable robotic shark helmet, its top painted a blood-red crown. His presence was an oppressive weight—silent, controlled, a predator coiled and ready, yet saying nothing.

Gura’s eyes lifted lazily as Tyberos approached, chin resting on a fist. Calm, but far from passive.

“So you’re Tyberos. The Red Wake. I expected someone... taller.”

The faintest rustle from her side betrayed Bloop’s amusement, though he remained statuesque.

Tyberos halted a few paces away, his gaze sharpening as it swept over her: the bare feet, the shark hoodie, the casual posture, the formidable guards. The irony in her words was not lost on him.

“Taller,” he mused. A woman who plays the part of a predator, yet dares to jest.

Finally, his voice came—flat, measured, careful.

“You’re different than the stories.”

Gura leaned forward, tail wagging like a curious beast, a toothy grin spreading as her elbows settled on her knees.

“Aren’t we all?”

Gura pushed herself up from the throne with lazy grace, her bare feet padding softly against the deck plates. She drifted over to the towering figure beside her and gave a casual pat on the armored arm.

“This is Bloop. My second. Say hi, Bloop.”

Bloop didn’t move a muscle, didn’t utter a sound. His presence was a silent wall of intimidation.

Gura smirked, leaning in just enough to mock-whisper, “He’s shy.”

One of Tyberos’s veterans shifted uneasily, the silence stretching heavier between them.

“As you know, I am Gawr Gura. Primarch of the Carcharodons. Daughter of the Emperor, yada yada. Titles aren’t all that important.”

After the curt introductions, Gura began to circle the command chamber with slow, deliberate steps. Tyberos and his men stayed rooted, watching.

Her eyes flicked between the shark-like markings etched into his armor and the man beneath it. Despite her playful energy, her movements carried the precision and intent of a predator.

She glanced at his pauldron with a teasing lilt.

“You kept the motif. A little more jagged now, but still… sharky.”

Tyberos replied flatly, voice steady.

“It was never just a motif.”

Gura turned, hands clasped behind her back like a mischievous schoolchild.

“And what do you think I am, then? The lost fishy come swimming home?”

Tyberos met her gaze without hesitation.

“You are the Primarch. That is all that matters.”

Her smile didn’t falter, but her eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

Tilting her head in mock innocence, she pressed on.

“You always this charming, or is that just for me?”

Another veteran shifted uncomfortably. Tyberos remained impassive.

“I speak when I must,” he said plainly.

Closing the distance between them, Gura stopped just a few feet away, looking up at the towering Astartes.

“Not a talker. Not a smiler. What do you do for fun, Tyberos?”

A long pause followed, the silence deepening—then a cold, honest answer.

“We hunt.”

Gura chuckled softly, almost laughing under her breath as she nodded thoughtfully.

“Mm. A loyal shark with a bite. I can work with that. But there is more to life than just hunting.”

Bloop shifted slightly at her side, his silent, looming presence a steady counterpoint to her lively probing.

Then, with a deliberate turn, Gura faced away from Tyberos for a moment—a calculated gesture of fragile trust.

“You don’t know me, Tyberos. And I don’t know you. But I know the look in your eyes.”

She spun back, softer now.

“You’re not sure I’m real. That I’m still the one who I was in your stories.”

Tyberos’s gaze didn’t waver immediately. Then, measured.

“I’ve seen many things in the void. Lies take many forms.”

Gura nodded, accepting the truth.

“Good. Then keep watching. We’ll see what truth looks like. Together.”

The chamber fell still, heavy with unsaid questions and careful assessments. Gura returned to her seat, a more serious edge now to her expression.

“Alright, spill it. What exactly happened to those three thousand troublemakers I left behind?”

Tyberos’s eyes hardened. He said nothing at first, but the silence promised weighty answers.

Tyberos’s heavy boots echoed softly as he stepped forward, voice slow and deliberate, the weight of history settling with each word.

“Within days of your disappearance, Chaos forces launched a swift, brutal assault.”

His gaze remained steady, but his jaw tightened. His fingers twitched briefly at his side before clenching into a fist.

“The strike was precise, calculated to cripple the legion.”

He paused, voice dropping lower, almost a growl.

“Veterans, seasoned commanders... decimated to the last man.”

A flicker of pain crossed Gura’s face—an involuntary tightening of her eyes, a flick of her bare toes curling against the cold deck.

Tyberos’s stance stiffened as he pressed on, eyes locked forward with grim resolve.

“The rookies were left untested, raw, and vulnerable.”

He glanced briefly at the veterans standing with him—silent, hardened. His voice remained measured.

“No orders. No chain of command. Just chaos.”

Gura interrupted, leaning forward, elbows resting on her knees, eyes bright with challenge.

“But they didn’t fold like cheap cards, right?”

Tyberos nodded slowly, shoulders relaxing just a fraction.

“No. They fought desperately, carving out their own command structure.”

His gaze flicked back to Gura, steady and unwavering.

“They learned to fight as sharks, not soldiers.”

Gura’s lips curved into a soft, satisfied smile. She leaned back, folding her arms across her chest thoughtfully.

After a moment’s pause, she nodded toward Tyberos.

“Okay, so the old guard is gone… What about the traditions? The rituals? Surely that’s not lost too?”

Tyberos’s eyes darkened. He shifted his weight before speaking, voice low and measured.

 

“Much was lost. The veterans carried the knowledge, the ceremonies, the sacred rites.”

He glanced around at his officers, a silent call for their strength, before continuing.

“The rookies tried to remember, to piece together what they could from fragmented memories.”

His tone softened just enough to reveal the pain beneath the discipline.

“They passed down stories and small rituals — but much faded with each passing cycle.”

Gura’s expression grew somber. Her brow furrowed slightly, lips tightening.

“Sounds like a game of broken telephone.”

Tyberos allowed a small, reluctant nod.

“Exactly. What remains is only a shadow of what was.”

Gura’s posture shifted, her bare feet settling firmly on the deck as her expression softened, becoming more serious.

“But those shadows still mean something, right?”

Tyberos’s voice affirmed solemnly, his gaze unwavering.

“They hold the legion’s soul together. Even fractured, they give identity and purpose.”

He paused, voice dropping to almost a whisper, eyes narrowing as if staring into a distant, haunted memory.

“Without them, the legion risks becoming something… unrecognizable.”

The chamber fell silent, heavy with the weight of unspoken fears.

Tyberos’s voice finally broke the stillness—slow, firm, carrying the weight of resolve:

“You ask questions, Primarch. Now I will ask them.”

 

Gura smiles and waves a hand lazily. “Ask away.”

Tyberos’s eyes locked onto Gura with an unyielding stare, every muscle in his body taut, as if the weight of ten millennia rested on this moment.

“You vanished into the Eye. For ten thousand years, nothing. Then you return.”

His voice was low, edged with both suspicion and a grudging demand for truth.

“Why now?”

Gura shrugged with a mock laziness, a careless smirk tugging at the corner of her lips.

“Got bored.”

She stretched her arms overhead in an exaggerated yawn, cracking her knuckles with theatrical flair.

“And I heard you boys were making a mess of things without me.”

From the ranks of Tyberos’s veterans came a faint grunt—whether it was approval or amusement was impossible to tell.

Her tone shifted, growing quieter but still playful, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Truth is, I didn’t choose to come back. I got kicked out.”

She flicked her fingers like a dismissive wave, as if propelled by some invisible force.

“Warp spit me out like bad chum.”

Her voice dropped conspiratorially as she glanced around, knowingly—as if the shadows themselves might be listening. To be fair, many were.

“Pretty sure it was Tzeentch.”

Tilting her head, she considered the idea with mock thoughtfulness.

“He tried making plans for me. Dozens. Hundreds maybe. Grand schemes. Prophecy nonsense.”

Her sharp, toothy grin stretched wide, teeth gleaming like a predator’s.

“And I ruined every single one.”

She tapped the side of her head with a closed fist, winked, and stuck her tongue out with childish irreverence.

“Too chaotic for the Lord of Change. Imagine that.”

With a casual flick of her wrist, she scoffed, clearly amused by the memory.

“So the bird kicked me out. Can’t say I miss him.His feathers were ugly anyway.”

Tyberos stood still, his expression was unreadable—hard as the hull of a voidship, cold as the abyss outside. He said nothing, made no move, gave no tell.

But beneath that armored silence, something twisted.

It wasn’t Tzeentch’s name that unsettled him—he had fought daemons, burned cults, watched brothers unravel into monsters. He knew the Warp’s horrors. What disturbed him was her.

Gura had spent ten thousand years in the Eye of Terror. Any other being—mortal, Astartes, even demigod—would have emerged broken, if they emerged at all. She had been cast out by a Chaos God himself… and she laughed about it. Mocked it. Flicked her fingers and grinned like it was a barroom story.

She made the maddest of nightmares sound like an inconvenient vacation.

It was wrong. Impossible. And yet—there she stood.

In that moment, Tyberos knew something with grim certainty: she was who she claimed to be. No pretender, no clone, no warlock’s puppet. Only a Primarch could survive that and grin back at the abyss.

She was a living storm. Chaotic. Unpredictable. Dangerous beyond measure.

But maybe… just maybe… she was exactly what they needed.

Tyberos’s voice cut through the chamber, flat and unyielding.

“You laugh, Primarch. But you speak of something that turns entire sectors mad.”

Gura’s grin only grew wider, teeth flashing with delight.

“That’s why I never stayed too long in one place.”

A soft chuckle from one of her legionnaires echoed faintly—clearly accustomed to such irreverent banter.

“Ugly feathers,” it seemed, was a running joke among them.

Tyberos’s gaze sharpened as he noted the unspoken truth: they had all seen what Gura did to the carefully laid plans of gods.

Tyberos didn’t waste time asking another question. His voice cut through the still air like a blade honed on truth.

“You called us home.”
His eyes, dark and steady, didn’t waver.
“What do you see in this legion—these remnants?”

The room quieted further, somehow. Gura's gaze drifted from one face to another. Each warrior standing before her bore the marks of long campaigns—scarred, silent, stoic. Survivors. Every one of them.

Her voice, when it came, was lower than before. Less playful. There was iron beneath the seafoam now.

“I see blood in the water.”

A beat passed.

“But I also see teeth. Lots of ’em.”

Slowly, she stepped off the dais, bare feet soft against the metal floor as she began to pace between the assembled Astartes. Her tone was sharp, but sincere—like coral scraping against hull plating.

“When I left, I had a legion.150,000 men at my disposal. Now I have little more than a fifth of that.”
Her steps echoed quietly—controlled, thoughtful.
“My enemies are stronger. The galaxy’s meaner. And I’m fresh out of miracles.”

She stopped before Tyberos. Looked up.

There was no mocking grin now. Just conviction.

“But you? You held on.You didn’t break. You adapted. You survived.”

A long silence passed between them—one of recognition, not hesitation.

Then, finally, the corner of her lips curled upward. Her grin returned—not mischievous, but primal. Proud. A predator acknowledging her kin.

“That’s what I see. A pack that’s ready to tear into the stars again.”
She tilted her head, eyes gleaming.
“And I intend to lead it.”

Tyberos watched her carefully. Her words hung in the air like salt mist after a deep-sea storm—unnatural, charged, but somehow cleansing. After a beat, he gave a small, solemn nod.

“Then lead, Primarch,” he said. “Show us what’s next.”

Gura turned back with a grin that was both bright and razor-edged.

“Next?” she said, teeth flashing. “We sing to the dead.”

She took a breath, then added, her voice sharper:

“And then we remind the galaxy that sharks don’t forget how to bite.”

Tyberos’s eyes widened—just barely—as the words struck something deep within him.

“The forgotten ritual,” he whispered.

Gura’s gaze flicked to him with amusement. “Come on then, big guy. You wanted answers.”

She made a casual, almost lazy gesture toward Bloop. The massive warrior responded instantly, dropping to one knee with a thunderous clang, Terminator armor grinding against the deck like a tectonic plate locking into place.

Without hesitation, Gura stepped onto his shoulder and climbed up, perching atop him like she belonged there—like she’d never been anywhere else.

Tyberos blinked. One of his veterans let out a low, confused grunt.

Gura caught the look and pouted.

“Hey, not my fault I was born short,” she said, crossing her arms in mock offense. “Sometimes I like being tall, okay?”

For a brief moment—just a breath—Tyberos found it strangely endearing.

He shoved the thought aside with the discipline of a commander who had buried feelings under years of war.

They began to walk.

Tyberos and his two veterans flanked behind Bloop and Gura, their boots thudding in unison down the corridors of the flagship. The walls here were old, weathered by time and void-wind, lined with pict-carvings and faded banners. Scenes of oceanic hunts, Carcharodon victories, and alien script tangled with Imperial Gothic. Interspersed between the ancient histories were crude sketches, childlike and chaotic.

Drawings.

They were unmistakably Gura’s. 

One showed a shark with a comically large tuna can on its head. Another, a group of Astartes battling what looked like a crab the size of a lander. One showed what was unmistakably Gura fighting against a bird alongside what appeared to be a red haired rat girl. She broke the silence, swinging her legs idly as Bloop carried her.

(THIS IS AI GENERATED ART. I do not have the money to buy a commission, I am a simple poor college student)

 

“You knew about the ritual, didn’t you?” she asked. “Not what it was, but that it existed.”

Tyberos answered without looking up.

“Fragments. Bones. Offerings from the dead. A vault. Whispers. We kept the bodies we could; the effects of those we couldn’t.”

Gura nodded, resting her chin on one hand, the other draped across Bloop’s shark-shaped helm.

“Yeah. That tracks.” Her tone was light, but her eyes were distant. “It’s good you remembered to keep the bones and belongings. That would be awful otherwise.”

Tyberos glanced up. “You speak like it’s more than remembrance.”

Gura met his gaze now, her voice stripped of levity.

“Because it is.The Mourning Tide doesn’t just honor the dead—it anchors them. It binds them to us. To Thalassia. It keeps the forces of chaos at bay.”

Tyberos’s expression tightened. His hand hovered near his weapon—not in threat, but instinct.

“You speak of sorcery.”

Gura shrugged, unconcerned.

“Call it what you want. It’s older than the Imperium. Older than me.It works.”

Behind them, one of Tyberos’s veterans muttered something low in his own tongue. A prayer. Or a ward.

Gura didn’t stop.

“Too many of us died in places where the sea can’t find them. Too many souls unmoored.”

Tyberos broke the silence after a moment, voice even.

“Why take us to the library?”

Gura’s grin returned—sharp and wild, a flash of teeth in the dark.

“Because you’re going to help me remember.”

The deeper they walked, the more the ship changed around them.

The pale blue lighting faded by degrees, bleeding into deeper teal hues that shimmered like filtered light beneath waves. The air grew cooler, quieter. The cold hum of machinery softened to a hush, like currents in a deep ocean trench.

Gura leaned back slightly on Bloop’s broad shoulder, swinging her legs idly like a child perched on a ledge. The rhythm of her movement contrasted with the grim silence of the warriors around her, but she seemed perfectly at home.

Tyberos’s eyes drifted upward to the curved arches overhead—gently vaulted, carved with flowing lines that mimicked the caves of Thalassia. The stone and steel felt ancient, sacred.

“It’s… strange,” he muttered. “Like a temple. Or a tomb.”

Gura’s voice came softly from above.

“Same thing, sometimes.”

Their footsteps echoed across the corridor—measured, heavy, a ritual in sound.

As they passed one wall, Tyberos slowed. His eyes locked onto a mosaic embedded in the bulkhead—obsidian tiles and bone fragments arranged in sharp lines. A stylized shark devoured a black star at its center, surrounded by a spiral of bones and wave-crests.

He spoke without turning.

“Is that the Warp?”

Gura didn’t look back. Her voice was lighter now, more abstract.

“Maybe. Or maybe it’s just something I saw once and liked the shape of. Not everything has to mean something.” She grinned.

Tyberos gave a short, gruff breath—half scoff, half warning.

“In the void, everything means something. Or it kills you.”

Gura chuckled and gave Bloop’s helmet an affectionate tap.

“Spoken like a true survivor.”

One of Tyberos’s veterans—the youngest of the three, face still marked more by discipline than scars—spoke up, his voice tentative.

“What is the library, exactly? A data-vault?”

Gura half-turned, her smile flashing over her shoulder.

“Oh, it’s a vault alright. Full of things most people would rather forget.”
“Memories. Relics. Trophies. Mistakes.”

Tyberos’s gaze sharpened.

“Corruption?”

For a moment, Gura’s grin faltered—just slightly. Not gone, but thinner. Quieter.

“No. Not corruption.”
“Pain. The kind you can’t cleanse.”
A pause. “But also the kind you need to carry.”

They reached the door.

It rose before them like the mouth of some great beast—vaulted and sealed, carved with sigils that resembled crashing waveforms and jagged, stylized jaws. Age had worn the edges smooth, but the shapes still held menace.

Bloop came to a stop.

Gura clapped her hands once, cheerful again.

“Here we are!”

She hopped down from his shoulder with ease, bare feet tapping lightly on the cold metal floor.

Stepping up to the door, she pressed her palm to the central glyph—one shaped like an eye, rippling outward like a stone dropped in water.

A low psychic hum filled the corridor, barely audible—but Tyberos felt it. It crawled across his senses like cold brine under his armor. His veterans shifted, one instinctively tightening his grip on his bolter.

The door groaned. Metal shifted. Ancient locks unsealed with an organic, grinding protest.

Beyond the threshold: mist. Darkness. A chamber waiting to breathe again.

Notes:

Time to come clean. This chapter was originally double the length. I split it in half, cause I felt it would be more bite size this way, and I will post the 2nd half later. I wonder who the Librarian could be ;). I hope you like the surprise rat cameo. Sorry if the art disappoints you. I tried doing it myself, but found I had nothing to color it, and it looked so bad, that I felt awful about showing it off. Anyways. Thanks to Allsham again.
See y'all soon!

Chapter 4: Chapter 3: Tentacle Difficulties

Thalassia, 999. 41M


A wave of cold, dry air rolled over Tyberos as he stepped inside.

It wasn't the bite of shipboard recirculation or the tang of ozone that followed plasma systems. This was different. Still. Heavy. Quiet. Like stepping into the heart of a submerged temple, forgotten beneath the sea.

The chamber stretched out before them—vast, domed, luminous.

Curved shelving ringed the space in perfect tiers, each one brimming with objects: antique books, sealed dataslates, bones, trinkets, half-ruined war trophies. Each was tucked into its own recessed alcove of pearl-colored plasteel, gleaming softly under low light.

At the center floated a psychic lantern, suspended in a cradle of shaped metal. Soft, rhythmic pulses of light rolled over its surface—runes glowing in time with something unseen, something just beneath the skin of reality.

Beneath it stood a figure.

She turned as they entered.

She was short—no more than half a head taller than Gura. Her skin glowed faintly violet beneath the psychic light, textured like deep-sea coral or the inside of a seashell. Ethereal, but not fragile.

Her eyes—star-purple, wide, unblinking—locked onto his.

They did not radiate malice. Not pride. Not even judgment.

Just... awareness.

For a heartbeat, Tyberos felt a strange, primal shift in the air.

He felt hunted.

Then the tendrils moved.

Behind her—coiling gently in the still air—drifted a fan of massive, boneless limbs. Purple and black, ringed with orange sucker-patterns, veined in golden sigils. They swayed like kelp in a slow current. Measured. Controlled. Alive.

He reached for his bolt pistol on instinct. A low growl rose in his throat.

Slaanesh, he thought. It must be.

He had seen pleasure-cults clothe themselves in elegance and wear the flesh of saints. Had watched them walk on air, whisper lies that burned. The things they called beautiful were always poisoned.

This... looked like that.

But it wasn't. The tendrils do not drip ichor or pulse with lust. They are... controlled. Natural. Whole.

The woman did not move. Did not flinch. No scent of madness. No perfume of rot or lust. Her psychic field brushed against his armor—not invasive, not probing, just... present. Cold. Ancient.

Not corrupted.

Tyberos probed deeper, all senses keyed to alert.

What met him was not hunger. Not deceit.

Only stillness.

It was like standing on the sea floor. No light. No sound. Pressure above and below.

He exhaled through his nose and slowly let go of his weapon.

"Abhuman," he muttered.

Not a daemon. Not safe, either. But not what he feared.

He stood a little straighter, though tension still hummed behind his ribs like a wound cable. Every instinct told him she was dangerous.

But not wrong.

Gura, meanwhile, looked completely at ease.

The woman stepped closer into the lantern light, revealing the full truth of her shape.

Her ink-black hair spilled behind her in a gradient that faded to blue and violet. Two thick strands twisted forward near her face—like squid-tentacles, glossy orange and alive. They weren't implants. Weren't grown. They were simply... her.

Atop her head were what looked like cuttlefish fins—soft, twitching slightly at the sound of boots. Not a costume. Not ornaments. Alive.

Her robes were long and layered—navy black, edged in silver. Octopus sigils swam across the hem. The mantle she wore bore Gura's insignia, stenciled in stylized ink. Armor plates moved subtly beneath the cloth with each step.

Her skin was pale, smooth, almost translucent. Not unnatural—just untouched. As if time itself had passed her by.

Her expression was calm. Statue-like.

And then she smiled.

Small. Patient. A flicker at the edge of her mouth that didn't reach her eyes—and didn't need to. Her eyes shimmered faintly, wide and too calm. No malice. No hunger.

Just clarity.

Tyberos noticed her hair drifted unnaturally—floating without wind. Suspended, like it lived in a different element.

The tendrils behind her didn't reach, didn't flare. They simply waited. Watching.

The air thickened around her—not stifling, not oppressive.

Just pressure.

Like a mind sitting just below the surface, vast and still.

And then, quietly, Tyberos understood.

She wasn't of the warp.

Her presence wasn't a fracture. It was something old. Something rooted.

A lighthouse, not a siren.

"Abhuman," he repeated, more certain now. Not a daemon. Not an echo of sin.

Just something the Imperium had long forgotten how to name.

The tension in the air still hung heavy, but Gura shattered it like glass with a wide grin and a chipper wave, still perched like royalty atop Bloop's towering shoulder.

"Hi Ina!" she called, voice bright and sing-song.

Ina's tendrils drifted behind her in slow curls, responding not with motion but presence—like a smile translated through another language. She bowed her head slightly, arms folded neatly into the sleeves of her rune-layered robes.

"Welcome back, Gura. Bloop." Her gaze shifted, lingering just long enough on Tyberos. "And… guests."

Her voice was soft, like a ripple spreading outward from a single drop in calm water. Measured. Unhurried. Entirely unshaken.

Tyberos said nothing. Still watching. Still weighing. One of his veterans shifted behind him—uncomfortable, but silent.

Gura dropped down from Bloop's shoulder with a soft thump, landing barefoot on the cold metal floor. She brushed imaginary dust from her toes with theatrical effort and stretched her arms overhead with a yawn.

"I need a few things," she said casually, as if placing a supply order. "Y'know—old music, some bones, a big spooky vault. Ritual stuff."

Ina blinked slowly. Her expression didn't change, but the curl of one tendril suggested amusement.

"I assume," she said, tone so dry it bordered on parched, "you mean the Song of the Ancients."

Gura nodded, eyes twinkling.

"The full thing. The Mourning Tide Ritual."

Ina's tone didn't shift—but the weight beneath it deepened.

"You're actually going to sing it again? For real?"

"Yep," Gura said, popping the 'p'. "It's been a while. Time to dust off the ol' pipes."

Behind her, Bloop stood like a silent statue, unmoved and unmovable. A living bulkhead with a red-topped shark helm.

Ina closed her eyes for a moment, sighing through her nose—less exasperated, more like someone mentally preparing for a long swim.

"Alright then…" she said quietly. "Guess we'll dive back in."

Without speaking, Ina lifted one hand.

A soft ripple pushed through the room—a gentle fwoomf of psychic energy, like a breeze stirring the top of a still tide pool. No fanfare. No warp stench. Just motion, intent, and memory.

A few seconds passed.

Then, descending from the arched ceiling, came a small fleet of servo-skulls.

They were all painted in soft, muted violet. Each bore unique, hand-crafted decorations—crudely attached cuttlefish flaps, clearly made with care but no professionalism. One had oversized googly eyes. Another had a bright pink bow. A third trailed strands of glittery ribbon that caught the psychic glow with every lazy roll.

Gura blinked. Then grinned, wide and delighted.

"Oh wow. You kept the accessories."

Ina didn't blink. "They insisted."

The skulls hovered in formation for a moment, as if awaiting unspoken orders. Ina gave the barest nod.

Without sound or signal, they zipped off—wires trailing, engines humming—disappearing into the depths of the library in all directions. Somewhere out there, bones, scrolls, or other ancient artifacts were about to be collected by a squad of decorated psychic skulls.

Ina turned back to Gura and Bloop.

"Follow me," she said simply. "I'll take you to the lyrics."

And without waiting, she began to walk—robes whispering behind her, tendrils moving like shadows, the strange gravity of her presence drawing the group deeper into memory.

The corridors shifted the deeper they went.

Gone was the harsh steel of the upper decks. In its place came something older—walls etched in coral-like whorls, lit by soft blue veins that pulsed gently, like a heartbeat just beneath the skin of the ship. The further they descended, the more it felt like being inside something alive.

Gura glanced around, bare feet padding lightly on the smoothed floor.

"Did this section always look like a giant fish gill," she asked, "or am I just noticing now?"

Ina didn't even slow her pace.

"It grows when no one's looking," she said, tone dry as calcified bone. "Don't ask questions."

Bloop let out a low clunk. Armor shift or laughter, it was hard to tell.

They stopped at a wide, circular hatch—its surface worn smooth by time, the runes carved into it faded and deep. Ina placed her palm on a small inset panel to the side. The glyphs lit with a dim lavender glow, scanning her aura.

A soft chime followed. The sound was suspiciously close to a lullaby.

The door irised open with a damp hiss.

Beyond lay the Archive.

The chamber was spherical, domed and vast. Shelves spiraled along the inner curve like the inner structure of a seashell, lined with scrolls floating in stasis fields—weightless, gently rotating. Holo-projectors hovered beside them, flickering with forgotten tunes and rituals long buried. Musical instruments—some broken, some fossilized—orbited lazily around a crystalline console at the center of the room, shaped like an oversized, translucent jellyfish.

Tyberos entered behind the others, a monolith of void-dark ceramite and tension. His boots thudded heavily against the coral-etched floor. He took it all in at once.

Glowing jellyfish console.

Floating bones and music scrolls.

Gura, already swaying slightly to some haunting, half-heard melody.

And a violet-painted servo-skull with glued-on cuttlefish flaps that gently bumped his pauldron and chirped what might have been an apology.

The air smelled of sea salt and old parchment.

A small cluster of servo-skulls hovered nearby, already unpacking artifacts—bone fragments, rings, tarnished lockets, dataslates—onto a table carved to resemble an open seashell.

Tyberos's eyes scanned the room. He turned to Ina.

"…Are those servo-skulls wearing costumes?"

Ina didn't look up.

"They have names. They're my Takodachis."

One of them floated by again and chirped a little jingle at him. The flaps on its sides wiggled.

Tyberos stared.

It stared back.

He might've growled.

It definitely giggled.

He muttered, quiet enough that only his nearest veteran heard, "We should have never followed those coordinates."

Gura, meanwhile, was grinning like a child in a candy shop.

"Now this is an archive," she said, spinning slowly in place. "Beats the one on Luna where everything smells like incense and regret."

Ina responded without missing a beat.

"Don't touch the glowing ones. Last time you did that, we had to replace three hull panels and the concept of Wednesday."

Gura raised both hands innocently. "Okay, okay. No glowy stuff. Just lyrics."

Ina stepped up to the crystalline console and touched it with a single fingertip.

A soft tone rang out—haunting, harmonic. The surface came to life, glowing script unfurling across it like ink in water. Symbols danced slowly into view, curling into elegant spirals of light.

Ina stepped back.

"There it is," she said. "Untouched. Still tuned for your voice."

Gura leaned in toward the projection, eyes narrowing as the final symbols settled into place. The script shimmered faintly—not in High Gothic, nor any readable tongue Tyberos had ever seen. It wasn't written in language.

It was written in feeling.

"Still looks like someone tripped and fell on a keyboard," Gura said.

Ina's voice was soft behind her.

"It's a phonetic echo of Old Thalassian. It was never meant to be read. It's meant to be remembered."

From above, one of the Takodachis floated down and emitted a distorted set of notes—familiar, warped by time and ancient speakers, but unmistakable.

Gura's breath caught.

"That's it," she whispered. "That's the one. The village song."

Ina nodded, her expression unreadable.

"It played in the central dome every night during the solstice festival. You used to hum it during council meetings."

Gura grinned.

"I hummed it loudly to get kicked out of council meetings."

She reached out and touched the console.

The symbols rippled, almost like they recognized her touch. A low hum filled the air—rising, wordless music blooming through the room. The Song of the Ancients began to play.

It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be.

It was simply… there.

Like it had been waiting all this time to be remembered.

Even Bloop shifted slightly, his massive helmet tilting in the direction of the sound.

Tyberos's gaze moved—away from the skulls, away from the absurdities—toward the light. Toward her.

Toward Gura, who stood barefoot and strangely still, humming along to the melody, her face serene.

And for the first time since setting foot aboard this cursed ship, something flickered in his expression.

Not quite respect. Not yet.

But recognition.

Something important was happening here.

He didn't understand it.

But maybe, for once, that didn't matter.

He stepped aside and watched in silence.

Ina folded her arms.

"We'll need a day to prep the Vault," she said. "And probably some coral stabilizers."

She glanced at Gura.

"But the song's ready when you are."

The music faded.

Gura turned from the console as the last notes of the Song of the Ancients echoed into silence. The lingering script shimmered for a moment longer, then vanished like seafoam on stone.

She clapped her hands once. The sound rang out sharp and bright, breaking the moment with cheerful finality.

"Welp! That's that," she declared. "Song's ready, bones are being dusted, weird little friends are floating around doing their thing."

She stretched, yawning like it had all been a very long nap instead of the slow unsealing of a forgotten rite.

"So! We've got, like, a whole day before the rite. That means — exploration time!"

She spun on her heel, walking backward toward the door, arms flung wide.

"I wanna see what's still standing. What's been swallowed. What grew back weird. You know — homecoming stuff."

At the threshold, she stopped. Turned. Met Tyberos's steady gaze.

"And you? You should send everyone. The whole Chapter. Let them walk the seabeds again. Smell the salt. Touch the coral. Scare the fish. Bring the big loud ones who think they're scary — the ocean'll sort them out."

Behind her, Bloop let out a soft hrnk. Possibly agreement. Possibly indigestion.

Tyberos folded his arms.

"You want me to deploy my entire Chapter for shore leave."

"No no," Gura said, tilting her head. "Spiritual recon. Very serious. Very sacred."

A Takodachi wearing a black tie floated past, dragging a streamer of glowing kelp behind it like a banner.

Gura smirked.

"Besides. You've all been ghosts too long. Time to remind the sea you're still real."

A pause.

Then, quieter. No grin now.

"This is your home too. Even if you don't remember it."

She didn't wait for his reply. She turned and strolled toward the launch bays, barefoot as ever.

---

Tyberos stood at a viewport.

Below, Thalassia turned slowly — a sleeping giant veiled in ocean and stormlight. Deep blues glimmered beneath clouded skies. A planet that should not exist. A Primarch who should not have returned.

His gauntlets creaked softly as he flexed his fingers.

He was not a creature of memory. Not a man of dreams. The ocean, to him, was huntspace — a place to vanish into, to kill and be killed. Not a sanctuary. Not a cradle.

And yet…

Something inside him—a place he hadn't looked at in centuries—ached.

The Song. The Vault. Her.

He didn't trust it. Didn't trust her.

But he could not deny the pull.

Across the chamber, one of the relic displays flickered—an ancient banner, tattered and blue-gray. Its symbols had defied translation for centuries.

But now, he recognized one.

Just one.

The mark of Thalassia.

He exhaled through his nose, slow and quiet. Like a wave breaking in the deep.

"So be it," he said.

---

The launch bay thrummed with energy.

Thunderhawks hissed and growled, armor-sealed giants moving in disciplined silence. Gear was checked. Words were few. The banners overhead hung like old ghosts, barely remembered.

The Carcharodons prepared to descend—not for war, but for something stranger.

Remembrance.

At the edge of the hangar, by an open ramp, Gura sat cross-legged on a stack of crates, kicking her feet. She looked up as Tyberos approached—alone, armor gleaming like obsidian frost.

Freshly polished. Subtle. Deliberate.

Behind him, company after company boarded transports, wordless but watching.

He stopped in front of her.

A long pause.

"The Chapter is descending," he said. "All companies. I will accompany them."

Gura beamed like it was a festival.

"See? I knew you weren't all chainsaw and broodiness."

She hopped off the crate, stepping beside him. Together, they looked out at the world below—swathed in oceanic light, clouds drifting across an endless tide. Somewhere down there lay Nerithys. And the Vault.

"You ever walk on sand that sings under your boots?" Gura asked. "Or see the reef-lanterns glow at night?"

"They used to say the sea whispered to us—not words, just… feelings."

Tyberos didn't answer. But he stepped closer to the edge, gazing at the world like it was something long lost. A wound he'd forgotten to mourn.

"You'll know where to go once you're down there," Gura said, softer now. "The ocean remembers you, even if you don't remember it."

He turned to her.

"And you?" he asked. "What will you do?"

Gura smirked.

"I'm gonna find the ruins of my childhood, poke around places I probably shouldn't, maybe find my old bedroom and see if I left any embarrassing journals behind."

She patted her belt like she was checking for snacks, then nodded toward a nearby dropship.

"I'll meet you down there. Probably barefoot, probably eating something weird. You'll know it's me by the soundtrack."

A hovering Takodachi zipped by, trailing a streamer of bioluminescent seaweed, humming the first few notes of the Song of the Ancients.

Tyberos watched her.

"This world... it's too quiet," he said. "No alarms. No enemy. It feels wrong."

Gura nodded, but didn't look worried.

"That's what peace feels like when you've forgotten the shape of it."

She turned toward her ship, then glanced back over her shoulder.

"C'mon, Tyberos. Let's go haunt the past a little."

Descent was smooth. Fast. Unnaturally quiet.

Inside the lead Thunderhawk, the only sound was Gura's humming. Soft. Tuneless. Full of anticipation. She sat cross-legged beside Tyberos, fingers tapping a rhythm on her knees as if she already heard the song of the sea rising to meet them.

Tyberos said nothing. His eyes were locked on the holoscreen, watching as the world below crept closer.

A crescent of land broke the ocean's surface — jagged volcanic stone, dark and glistening like obsidian glass. Tide-scalloped, storm-hardened. And yet... alive.

Lights glittered along the dockways. Faint and steady. Docking beacons blinked in sequence, following ancient patterns.

Servo-turrets tracked them—cold and ready—but did not lock on. Their protocols recognized the flagship's signal. A command that had not been spoken in ten thousand years still echoed in the port's bones.

Landing pads unfurled from the waves like steel lily pads, hydraulics sighing with age and grace.

Tyberos narrowed his eyes.

"This place… functions."

Beside him, Gura leaned forward, smile almost glowing.

"Of course it does," she whispered. "Thalassia doesn't break—she waits."

The Thunderhawk touched down with a clean, confident thud.

The ramp hissed open.

Warm sea air rushed in—not heavy, not decayed, but sharp and alive with salt. It rolled over them like a welcome they didn't know how to accept.

A hum vibrated through the deck beneath their boots—the core reactor of Port Echo, still beating like a heart buried beneath coral and time.

Tyberos stepped off first, every movement measured. His boots met solid metal, not dust. The platform beneath him pulsed with faint blue veins of light.

Kelp hung from graceful railings, swaying in the ocean breeze.

Drones drifted nearby—dormant, intact, their housings corroded but operational. No decay. Only delay.

He looked to the horizon.

Spire towers jutted from the ocean like fangs, some broken, others whole—capped in repaired crystal domes that shimmered like bubbles catching sunlight. Causeways curved inward, vanishing into submerged tunnels of transparent glass and light.

This was no ruin.

It was a city that had merely… slept.

And now, slowly, it was waking.

Behind him, Thunderhawks landed in staggered cadence. Rows of Carcharodons disembarked in silence, bolters across their chests, helmets raised to scan the horizon. But they moved slower than usual. Each one paused. Each one looked.

This was their Chapter's birthplace.

Half myth. Half memory.

And it was still here.

Then—

Movement.

A figure stepped onto the primary dock.

Not human.

She moved like a ripple—every step a whisper, every sway of her coat a calculated distraction. The trench coat swirled around her like ocean mist, refracting shifting hues of shadow and light. A hat tilted forward over bright, sky-blue eyes. Keen. Playful. Mischievous.

Long blond waves framed her face. Two sharp ears twitched through her hair.

An Aeldari.

Tyberos's instincts flared. He shifted, weight settling into his back heel. HUD pinged green across every weapon system.

Beside him, Gura froze.

Her tail lifted—then trembled. A vibration, rapid and confused.

It then began to swish from side to side rapidly.

"…No way…" she whispered.

The figure lifted a hand in greeting, casual and silent.

Gura blinked. Once.

Then exploded.

"WATSONNNNN!"

Like a torpedo breaching the surface, she launched across the dock, arms wide, limbs flailing with reckless velocity. The Aeldari barely flinched—she caught the oncoming blur with an ease that defied reason.

They spun once—just once—before Gura latched onto her and refused to let go.

Laughter rang out, clear and high, like crystal bells across deep water.

Real. Warm. Familiar.

The Carcharodons stood frozen.

Not one moved. Not one spoke.

Dozens of armored giants, silenced by a moment so surreal it shattered their battlefield-trained logic.

Tyberos stood at the front, weapons still online, staring at the impossible.

"…Watson?" he growled, low and wary.

The Aeldari—still holding Gura like a soaked cat—grinned over her shoulder at him.

And winked.

Notes:

Right! Just some clarifying things! I think I made this clear in the story, but Ina is NOT an Astartes. She IS a perpetual. She is older than Gura and was basically a glorified babysitter. Yes, it is that song of the ancients from Nier. Gave you a double here with both Ina and Amelia  Consider it a treat. Yes the title is a pun just for Ina. I felt it fit. Thanks to Allsham for his help. If y'all have any questions, please ask! I will answer what I can.
OH! I also got asked about Bloop's size. I didn't state it in the story, but Bloop is a primaris (He was already massive pre surgery.)
Basically when they came back from the Eye, Gura was like:
"OHHH! New thingy! Get in there Bloop!"
"…"
"Oh don't be such a baby! It'll be fun!"
In the end, he got the surgery. It was not fun for Bloop.

Hope y'all enjoyed!

Chapter 5: Chapter 4: Welcome back, You Absolute Menace

Thalassia 999.M41

 

The moment Gura saw her, she forgot everything else.

A shriek of joy tore from her throat as she launched forward, arms wide, tail snapping behind her like a whip. The impact was audible—half tackle, half embrace—as she slammed into the figure waiting at the edge of the landing platform.

"WATSONNNNN!"

'Watson' barely flinched. Her trench coat, shimmering with bioluminescent threads, rustled like stirred ink as she caught the oncoming missile of joy with practiced ease. Gura's tail curled around her waist in a tight spiral, clinging like an eel refusing to be pried loose. They spun around once as she nuzzled into the woman's shoulder, her cheek squishing into the fabric with the damp determination of a happy sea creature reunited with home. The Aeldari laughed, looking over Gura's shoulder and giving a wink to the clearly agitated space marine.

A gloved hand reached up, patting Gura's head with the same casual reverence one might give to a sacred relic or an especially stubborn barnacle. Her voice, when it came, flowed in lilting Aeldari—soft, teasing, and incomprehensible to all present save Gura herself. The tones danced like ripples in deep water, musical and old. The Carcharodons couldn't understand a word of it. Somehow, that made it worse.

Then, switching to Low Gothic with the effortless grace of someone used to wearing many tongues like coats, she said dryly, "You haven't changed at all, Goobs. Still the same clingy barnacle."

"You still smell like old books and gun oil," Gura mumbled into her coat, muffled and delighted. She sniffed again, suspicious. "Wait—why do you still smell like that?"

The Aeldari snorted. "Some of us still maintain libraries, you little goblin."

Gura released a squawk of indignation as Watson ruffled her hair.

A shadow fell across them.

Tyberos stepped forward—slow, deliberate, all weight and meaning. His bolter hung low at his side, not raised, but far from forgotten. His armor whispered threats with every stride. Where Gura was chaos and sunlight, Tyberos was dusk wrapped in ceramite.

His voice was a blunt edge, devoid of ornament:

"You are xenos. Explain your presence."

With a theatrical grunt, Amelia gently peeled Gura off her like a particularly affectionate piece of coral. Gura's tail gave one last defiant twitch before reluctantly uncoiling and slapping against her leg with a soft flop.

Amelia adjusted her coat, flicked a piece of kelp from her collar, and stood tall. No veil now. No mystic airs. Just sharp lines, a calm gaze, and the weight of ten thousand years standing across from a Space Marine Chapter Master.

"Amelith'ra Waethen," she said clearly, the name ringing with something ancient. "Born of Halcy'thien, bonded to Thalassia in the 9th Century of the 30th Millennium."

She paused just long enough to glance sidelong at Gura, a smirk playing at her lips. "She couldn't pronounce it when she was little. Kept calling me 'Watson,' 'Ame,' 'Amelia.'"

Gura pouted immediately. Amelia shrugged.

"It stuck. Never got around to correcting her."

The wind shifted. Somewhere far below, the ocean sang against the walls of glasscrete domes.

Tyberos turned to Gura, frustration simmering just beneath his armored surface.

"You fraternized with xenos," he said, voice low and hard. "During the Crusade. And now you've brought one here."

Gura tilted her head, confused for a heartbeat—then her expression shifted. Understanding dawned. Her brows drew together.

"I didn't bring her," she said quietly. "I didn't even know she'd still be alive."

A pause.

"Ame was-is my friend. Before all the warp nonsense. Before I even had a legion."

Amelia crossed her arms, unimpressed.

"I didn't need her to bring me," she said coolly. "I live here. Been living here while your Imperium forgot this world existed."

Her gaze flicked to Tyberos, firm and unflinching.

"I serve as an advisor to the Thalassian Council. I have not left this planet since the day your Primarch arrived on it."

Gura blinked, pulling back a little as her eyes moved between the two of them.

"You've been here the whole time?"

Amelia nodded once. Her expression softened—barely.

"I told you I wasn't going anywhere," she said. "You're just bad at listening."

Tyberos didn't move. But the air around him sharpened—edges rising, like razors beneath still water.

"You claim allegiance to this world," he said. "But you are not of the Imperium. And your kind are not trusted."

Amelia arched a brow.

"Oh, you're one of those," she said dryly. "Let me guess—'The Emperor protects,' but only when you're glaring hard enough?"

Tyberos didn't respond. But his bolter hand tightened—just slightly.

Gura raised both hands, palms out.

"Okay, okay, let's just—cool the thermal vents, yeah?"

She glanced between them.

"We don't need a war over… whatever this is. Height supremacy?"

Amelia tilted her head, deadpan.

"Bit rich coming from someone who once punched a Leviathan because it looked at her funny."

"It started it!" Gura snapped.

Tyberos cut in, voice like stone.

"You brought a xenos advisor to your Legion's birthplace."

"I told you I didn't bring her!" Gura groaned. "I didn't even know she was still breathing. I assumed she'd—"

She stopped. Eyes narrowed at Amelia.

"Wait. How are you still alive?"

Amelia smirked.

"Clean living, long naps, and spite. Mostly spite."

Gura blinked.

"…I believe that."

Tyberos's voice remained flat.

"You expect us to accept this?"

Amelia's eyes sparkled.

"No. I expect you to grumble about it and then do it anyway."

Gura gave her a look.

"Can you please not make this harder than it already is?"

"I could try," Amelia said, almost sweetly. "But where's the fun in that?"

Tyberos looked between them—two ancient figures, bickering like siblings at a family barbecue, standing at the edge of a world forgotten by time, on the threshold of a legend neither one could fully explain.

Tyberos exhaled slowly. The sound was more growl than breath.

"This is absurd."

Gura beamed. "Yeah. Isn't it great?"

His voice dropped, heavy and flat. "This is more than absurd."

He stepped closer—not to threaten, but to ensure she heard every word. His presence filled the space like pressure before a storm.

"You vanished into the Eye of Terror," he said. "You left no successor. No message. Only myths. We held your name like it was a war-chant. We bled under banners that hadn't seen your eyes in ten thousand years."

Gura's smile faded. "I know."

"No," Tyberos said, "I don't think you do. We rebuilt this Chapter from ashes. From fragmented rites and butchered doctrine. Half of what we are is guesswork. The rest is ghosts."

He gestured around them—to Amelia, to the sea-drenched platform beneath their feet, to the rising fog that hid the horizon.

"And now you return with a xenos at your side, no answers, no warning—and expect us to follow."

Gura's voice stayed calm, but steel crept in.

"I don't expect anything."

"You called us home," Tyberos said.

"I did."

His eyes narrowed. "Then what do you expect, Primarch?"

The air between them stretched thin.

Gura's voice lowered.

"I expect you to look around."

She turned, gesturing out across the ocean, the ancient port, the forgotten world clawing its way out of legend.

"This isn't just about me. Or you. Or her."

She thumbed at Amelia, who gave a lazy, sarcastic wave.

"It's about what we used to be. What we could've been if the galaxy hadn't gone completely insane."

Tyberos crossed his arms.

"Hope is not a battle plan."

"No," Gura said. "But it's why I came back."

She stepped forward. Small. Steady. Unmoving.

"I came back because someone had to. Because we never got to finish what we started. And because I'm not going to let part of my legion rot in the dark just because I got detoured by a screaming hell dimension full of liar gods and bad taste."

A beat.

Her eyes locked on his.

"You don't have to like me. Or trust me. But don't pretend you didn't come here hoping it was real."

Silence followed—deep and pressurized, like the sea waiting to collapse around a breach.

Amelia broke it, lightly.

"…Wow. And here I thought I was dramatic."

Tyberos's jaw tensed. He didn't speak.

But he didn't deny it either.

A low pulse thudded beneath the dock—not thunder, not alarm.

A heartbeat.

Mechanical and organic, woven into the bones of the city. It echoed faintly through the soles of their boots.

Gura turned her head. "...That's new."

Amelia grinned. "They built it after you left. Mostly to scare off pirates. Sometimes to impress dates."

Tyberos's gaze shifted—just in time to see two massive pressure gates hiss open at the far end of the platform.

From the depths of the corridor beyond came the sound of footsteps. Synchronized. Measured. Heavy. Confident.

Then they emerged.

A full formation of Thalassian warriors, armored in deep blue-gray like storm-worn stone. Coral-gold trim caught the dim light, and fluid script traced across their plating in elegant arcs. Their helmets—sculpted into stylized shark jaws—concealed their faces, but their movement spoke volumes. Some bore tridents that crackled with restrained power. Others carried rifles grown and forged in equal measure, their biotech cores glowing with bioluminescent charge. Every one of them wore a blade—not decorative, but worn smooth by time and use.

Tyberos straightened before he could stop himself. Warrior to warrior, the recognition was instinctive. He didn't know their markings. He didn't need to. These were soldiers.

The lead warrior stepped forward—a woman, tall and broad-shouldered, a single white spiral marked over her breastplate. With a hiss of pressure, she removed her helmet. Her hair was braided tight, woven with coral tags. Her face was proud, sun-scarred, weathered by command. Her eyes locked on Gura.

Then she dropped to one knee.

The others followed in a wave, a unified motion like surf slamming onto shore.

"Tideborn," the leader said, her voice ringing clear across the platform. "The Depth-Wardens answer your call."

Silence followed. Only the creak of banners overhead and the slow breath of ocean wind.

Gura blinked. Once.

"…Oh."

Tyberos said nothing. But his jaw twitched.

Amelia leaned over, voice dry. "Try not to cry. It'll get all over your boots."

Gura's voice, when it came, was barely audible. "I didn't think they'd remember."

The warriors stayed kneeling, unmoving.

The breeze carried brine and memory. Not just scent—but presence.

Gura didn't move. Just stared.

Tridents. Etched armor. Names she didn't know. Faces that had never seen her, never marched in the Great Crusade. And still, they knelt. As if she'd never left.

Tyberos watched them with sharp stillness. His stance unchanged, but something behind his eyes had shifted.

"I thought I'd have to explain everything," Gura whispered. "Convince people I was who I said I was."

She looked down at her bare feet. Then back at the soldiers.

"I didn't think anyone would kneel."

Tyberos didn't turn to her. But when he spoke, his voice had lost its edge.

"They weren't kneeling for you."

Gura raised an eyebrow.

"They're kneeling for what you meant," he said. "What you left behind."

Amelia made a soft, thoughtful noise. "That was almost poetic. Should I be worried?"

Tyberos glanced at her, deadpan. "I haven't decided yet."

A low chime rang out across the dock—deep and harmonic, like a memory surfacing from long beneath the waves.

Amelia stepped back.

"…Here comes the rest of it."

At the far edge of the port, the tide stirred.

More platforms rose from beneath the water, rising in concentric circles like blooming coral crowns. Ancient stone and rusted metal lifted on smooth hydraulic pillars, crusted with time and life. Soft blue lights shimmered beneath their surfaces—like phosphorescent algae waking from a dream.

Figures began to ascend.

They moved slowly. Deliberately. Each footfall heavy with purpose. These were not warriors. Not priests. Not even politicians. They were something else entirely.

First came those hunched beneath the weight of great reliquary packs—sealed containers of ceramite and pearl strapped to their backs with thick braids of kelp. Each box pulsed with low, resonant energy.

Then a new group emerged, draped in robes of violet and blue. Their skin was marked with ritual ink, like cartographer's lines tracing the undersea currents. They carried vast scrolls on curved spindles, symbols etched in both High Gothic and something far older. Their voices did not form words, only pure tones—deep, resonant notes that shimmered in the air like sonar echoes.

Then came the Children.

Children. No older than ten. Barefoot and solemn, each cradled a lantern of polished bone and glowing shellfish, casting amber light that danced like stars beneath the sea.

And at the center of it all walked a single woman.

Her robes flowed like layers of tidewater—sea-silk threaded with micro-lights and strings of prayer-beads. A carved staff topped with a spiral-shaped vox-node clicked gently as she walked. Her hair, white and looped in ceremonial coils, framed a face lined with dignity and age, yet serene as a still tidepool.

Beside Gura, Amelia straightened slightly.

Gura whispered, "...She looks like—"

"She should," Amelia said softly. "Her name's Elanari. Descendant of the first keeper. You and her ancestors built the vault."

The platform settled with a low, final hiss.

The High Keeper raised her staff.

Her voice came amplified, but clear and solemn. Not theatrical. Ceremonial. Sacred.

"We answer the Echo.
We welcome the Tideborn—
Guardian of the Vault,
Sentinel of the Abyss,
She who held the abyss at bay and vanished with the storm."

The lanterns glowed brighter.

The chants grew deeper.

And then the children began to sing.

Gura froze.

She knew this song.

It was one of her songs. One she had sung long ago, in another life. In another age. Taught to the people when words were soft, when laughter echoed through unfinished cities and the sea had not yet forgotten her voice.

The lyrics were in Japanese.

A language that had died thirty-eight millennia ago.

It spoke of longing. Of grief. Of love. Of hope. A song mourning the absence of a protector—and promising they would remember. That they would wait.

Across the dock, every Thalassian lowered their head.

Except Gura.

Because she could barely keep hers from spinning.

"…What the hell, Ame," she whispered.

"They made me into a myth."

Amelia smiled gently. "You earned it. Whether you wanted to or not."

The song swelled.
Ikaniade~

Lanterns shimmered like constellations caught in water. The people stood frozen, faces filled with reverence. Even the Depth-Wardens remained kneeling, tridents grounded before them in perfect ceremonial stillness.

And Gura?

She stood, motionless.

Mouth slightly parted. Tail unmoving. Shoulders rising as if the weight of everything—of history, of memory—had only now come crashing down.

Tridents. Songs. Etchings. Kneeling warriors.
None of them had ever known her.
But they remembered her.

"I didn't… I wasn't even trying to be anything," she murmured.

Amelia's tone shifted—no longer playful. Just honest.

"You landed here in M30 with starfire in your wake. A voice like thunder—before the Legion, before the myths. Just a girl who fell from the sky and decided the sea was home. You punched a kraken to death. You built cities in the surf. You sang to the dead so they'd sleep safely."

She bumped Gura gently with her elbow.

"What did you think was gonna happen?"

Gura's eyes stung.

She blinked quickly, arms crossing tight over her chest.

"I thought they'd forget."

Amelia didn't miss a beat. "They tried."

A pause. Then, with a smirk:

"But your name stuck like a barnacle."

Tyberos hadn't spoken. Hadn't moved.

He stood silent as stone. But his silence wasn't emptiness—it was impact. Calculations. Reassessment.

The myth had become real.

The warrior was a woman.

And the woman was… sniffling. Teary-eyed. Very likely still carrying snacks in a belt pouch.

And yet, this forgotten people knelt before her like she was carved from the bones of stars.

Tyberos's voice, when it came, was quiet. Not skeptical anymore. Just honest.

"Do they all remember you this way?"

Gura didn't answer immediately. She sniffed. Wiped her sleeve across her face.

"…Apparently."

Tyberos looked to Amelia. "And you let this stand."

Amelia looked almost offended.

"I didn't let anything. I encouraged it."

"You encouraged a myth."

Amelia shrugged. "She earned it."

Tyberos turned back toward the sea, visor catching the glow of the lanterns like starlight on black glass.

"She's not the same as the stories," he said.

Amelia's voice was softer than before.

"No one ever is."

---

The last note of the children's song faded into the sea breeze. The air felt lighter now—not because the weight had lifted, but because it had settled. Gura stood a little straighter, the ache in her chest no longer sharp. Just present. Enduring.

She turned to Tyberos. Her eyes were still a little red, but her voice was steady.

"All right, Shark Boss," she said. "Time for you and the boys to go."

Tyberos frowned. "To where?"

"Tethys," she said. "The city. Capital dome's still intact, if the lights are anything to go by. I want you to see it."

He studied her carefully. "And what would you have us see?"

"Everything."

A pause.

"The markets. The schools. The people. The part of war we don't talk about—what it's for."

Tyberos said nothing. But behind him, one of his veterans shifted slightly.

Gura pressed on, more serious now.

"I need to speak with the Council. Reconnect. But while I'm doing that, I want your brothers to meet the people they bled for. The ones they forgot they were protecting."

She gestured toward the distant towers rising from the sea—glass and coral, alive with color and motion. Cities grown like crystal forests from the ocean floor.

"This place matters," she said. "Not just because it's old, or pretty, or still functioning after ten thousand years—but because it's alive. That's rare."

Tyberos's jaw clenched. "We are not diplomats."

Gura smirked. "No, you're not. You're killers in fish-themed power armor. But you're my killers, and today we're not here to kill anything."

A beat. Her voice softened—not a command, but a request.

"I need you to take off the armor. Leave the weapons in the barracks—assuming it's still standing."

Tyberos bristled. "You want us unarmed?"

"I want you unthreatening. There's a difference."

He crossed his arms. "We are Astartes."

"And they're not impressed."

She jerked her thumb toward the Depth-Wardens, who had already risen and were moving with practiced grace, guiding the rest of the procession toward the city.

"Trust me," she added. "The folks down there don't need you to look dangerous to know exactly what you are."

Amelia stepped in, dry as sun-bleached coral. "The barracks is halfway up the east causeway. Probably full of barnacles and old ration bars. I'll send someone to guide you."

She gave Tyberos a once-over.

"Might be nice for your spine to breathe for once."

Tyberos didn't respond immediately. His eyes flicked to his warriors, then toward the towering city in the distance.

Finally, he gave a sharp nod.

"We will comply."

Gura grinned cheekily, tail flicking once behind her.

"Great. Don't worry. You'll get your bolter back before dinner."

---

The last of the Depth-Wardens disappeared into the lift chambers alongside the Carcharodons. Hydraulic doors sealed shut with a sigh. The port, so recently alive with ceremonial weight, grew quieter—left behind with only the sea breeze, the distant cries of gulls, and the soft pulse of a breathing ocean.

Gura let out a dramatic groan and collapsed backward onto a coral-stone bench, arms sprawled like she'd just been felled by diplomacy itself. Her tail thudded against the floor.

"Ugh," she groaned. "That was so many words."

Amelia leaned beside her, eyebrow arching with practiced elegance.

"You didn't even say most of them, Fish-Brain."

Gura flopped a hand lazily in the direction of the ocean. "Still. Emotional labor. I'm basically a martyr."

"Truly, your suffering is legendary."

Gura cracked one eye open and squinted up at her. "…You're being sarcastic."

"I learned from the best."

They both laughed—not loud or showy, just easy. The kind of laughter that had waited ten thousand years for permission to exist again.

For a moment, silence returned—comfortable now. Resting. Gura stood slowly, stretching with a quiet pop of her spine. Her voice softened.

"You really stayed all this time?"

Amelia nodded, arms crossed loosely.

"I said I would, didn't I, shortstack?"

Gura pouted, head tilting. "Yeah, but like… people say a lot of things. Especially when they're immortal space elves."

"I prefer 'gracefully persistent' to 'immortal.' But yes."

Amelia's tone shifted as she nudged Gura with her elbow and motioned toward a smaller lift tucked along the edge of the dock. They walked together.

"I didn't just stay, Gura," she said. "I woke up."

Gura blinked. "Wait. You were… asleep?"

"Sort of. Deep trance. Dream-watching. Aeldari version of 'waiting without getting bored and starting a war.' Mostly."

Gura narrowed her eyes. "Why'd you wake up, then? Missed me that bad?"

"Absolutely not," Amelia deadpanned. "You haunt my dreams like a bad sea shanty."

"I take that as a compliment."

Amelia snorted, then sighed slowly and tapped the lift controls.

"No. I saw something."

Gura's smile faded, just a bit.

"…What kind of something?"

Amelia didn't answer immediately. Her gaze shifted out to the sea, her voice dipping lower—measured, deliberate.

"Dreams. Echoes. Warnings," she said. "I wasn't the only one. Other Farseers—offworld, far from here—saw it too. We compared notes, in that way we do."

A pause. The lift arrived with a soft chime.

"They all said the same name," she continued. "One I hadn't heard before. Ynnead."

Amelia's eyes were unreadable now.

"Something's stirring," she said. "The kind of stirring that cracks stars and makes gods flinch."

Gura's tail gave a slow, uneasy flick. "Oh good. No pressure or anything."

Amelia shrugged. "I didn't say it was your fault, stinky. Just that you're involved. As usual."

Gura groaned, burying her face in her hands.

"I was really hoping to come back and just eat a dumpling and punch a fish. That was it. That was the dream."

"You came back to Thalassia," Amelia said with a slight smile. "Dreams don't get to be that small anymore."

Gura peeked at her through her fingers.

"…Can I still have the dumpling, though?"

Amelia's grin widened.

"We'll see what the Council says."

The lift chamber opened with a soft hiss, revealing a circular platform edged in glowing bioluminescent glass. The walls shimmered with etched crystal in spiraling nautilus patterns, catching the dim light like living circuitry. The shaft around them glowed gently, pulsing in time with filtered oceanlight from the reinforced dome high above.

Gura and Amelia stepped aboard.

With a low chime, the lift began its descent—smooth, silent, broken only by the distant hum of hydraulics older than most civilizations.

And through the translucent walls, the city unveiled itself.

Tethys bloomed like a submerged star map. Coral-glass spires and arching steel ribbons bridged clusters of domes, each alive with color and light. Lantern-beasts drifted lazily between towers, casting warm bioluminescence onto curved walkways where schools of fish swam in delicate, hypnotic formations. Roads wound like kelp fronds, fluid and alive. The architecture pulsed with breath—half-grown, half-forged.

Gura pressed her face to the glass like an overexcited child.

"I forgot how pretty this place is," she said, tail flicking. "Look at that! They rebuilt the bathhouse! And that's the dumpling stand! Oh, wait—no. That's a museum now. Blasphemy."

Amelia raised an eyebrow. "Your priorities are as deranged as ever, Grease-fin."

Gura spun around dramatically, pointing a finger at her. "I am starving and in distress, you seaweed-draped cryptid. I deserve dumplings."

Amelia sighed. "Truly, the burden of command weighs heavy on the world's smallest warlord."

They grinned at each other.

But the levity faded a notch as Gura glanced over again, more thoughtful.

"So this vision thingy..." she said. "You said other Aeldari saw it too?"

Amelia's eyes flicked toward the city beyond the glass, following the shimmer of swimming lights.

"Yes. Farseers. Exodite oracles. Even a few warlocks so deep in the skein they barely remembered their own names. They all saw the same shape. The same pull."

She paused, then nudged Gura gently with an elbow.

"Recently they've started seeing something else, too."

Gura tilted her head. "Like what?"

Amelia didn't answer immediately.

Then: "Guess who."

Gura grinned weakly. "The Emperor's tax form?"

"Wrong flavor of eldritch horror."

Gura groaned and threw her hands up. "That's so unfair!"

Amelia smirked faintly. "Unfortunately, yes. Your astral footprint is... hard to miss. You resonate like a bad idea wrapped in a miracle."

"Sounds like me."

Gura leaned on the lift rail, gaze fixed downward. The city moved beneath them like a dream half-remembered.

"…So. Who's Ynnead?"

Amelia blinked, caught slightly off guard.

"You don't know?"

"Nope. Sounds like a pretzel. Or a fungal infection."

Amelia groaned, rubbing her temples. "Ynnead is… a god. Or the possibility of one. A sleeping god of death and rebirth, woven from the souls of my people. Not like the others. Not like the one that crawled from the warp already screaming."

Gura leaned forward slowly, eyes narrowing.

"Wait. Wait wait wait—death and rebirth?" Gura asked, eyes wide.

"Yes," Amelia replied. "He—It—whatever it becomes—is meant to be the end of She Who Thirsts."

Gura let out a low whistle. "Damn. That's... heavy."

Amelia's voice dropped to something softer. Not solemn—just honest. "It is. That's why so many of us tried to ignore the signs. Too much hope feels dangerous."

The lift passed beneath a glowing archway carved with flowing wave-script, the words curling like surf frozen in time. Beyond it, a broad atrium opened into view—coral trees swaying gently in artificial currents, their branches lit by schools of softlight fish. A group of Thalassian children pointed up at the descending lift, laughing and waving before darting away down a glowing walkway.

Gura watched them go, something unreadable flickering across her face.

"So you saw it," she said quietly. "And then you saw me."

"A shadow of it," Amelia corrected, just as quiet. "A breath. A ripple in the current. And you—glowing like a distress beacon made of bad decisions and heroic timing."

"…That tracks."

A lull rose in the conversation. Gura turned and glared at Amelia.

"You could've just said you missed me, nerd."

"If I say yes, do I get out of this conversation faster?"

"Absolutely not."

Amelia sighed. "Then yes. I missed your stink. Happy?"

Gura leaned her head against Amelia's shoulder, smug. "Very."

They stood like that for a moment, watching the lights spiral past as the lift continued its descent—one ascending world meeting another long-buried.

"This is so unfair, you know," Gura murmured.

Amelia raised an eyebrow. "What is?"

"Throwing big cosmic omens and eldritch god-babies at me before I've had a dumpling."

Amelia grinned. "Life comes at you fast."

"Yeah? Well, I come faster."

Gura jabbed a thumb at her chest. "I once outran a collapsing warp rift on a motorcycle made of guilt and aquaplasma. Don't test me."

Amelia actually laughed—a genuine, small sound that echoed softly off the crystal walls.

"There you are. I was starting to miss the gremlin energy."

Gura stuck out her tongue. "You love it."

"Unfortunately."

The lift began to slow. The lights dimmed slightly as the chamber reached the end of its descent. Before them, a vast archway unfurled—framed in nacreous steel and vine-glass, opening into the heart of Tethys. The central district. The soul of a world that had been forgotten by time, now waiting for a voice. A song. A reason to rise again.

Amelia stepped forward, her voice low.

"Whatever's coming, you're tied to it now. The web's already tangled. You're one of the knots."

Gura didn't flinch.

"I've held up against worse," Gura said, cracking her neck with a grin.

"Like that time you tried to arm wrestle a Wraithknight," Amelia replied, already stepping forward as the lift slowed.

"I won."

"You cheated."

"Creative tactics."

Amelia gave her a sidelong look as they reached the edge of the platform.

"You bit it, Gura."

Gura shrugged, entirely unrepentant. "Creatively."

The lift eased to a halt with a soft hiss. The crystal doors unfurled like petals, revealing the city beyond—Tethys, gleaming beneath layers of glass and ocean, humming with life. Walkways twisted like living roots beneath the domes. Lights shimmered across distant spires. People moved below—real, present, waiting.

Gura took a breath.

And stepped forward.

The city waited.

---

 

Notes:

YOU MAY HAVE NOTICED THE SHARKNANIGANS CHAPTER IS GONE. That is not a mistake. I have moved it to a new story, The Smallest Primarch: Side Stories

Ok so a pretty serious chapter. Now is a good time to remind you all that this IS a real story. Not just crack. It's crack taken seriously. If you need a reference, think Professor Arc, by Couer Al'Aran. Something like that. Honestly, a bunch of people got me back into writing, he's one of them. I used to be a RWBY only writer, but now I want to branch out. People like him, Zhariel, SwissChocolatess motivate me to keep writing. (You guys should def read their stories). Anyways, this is another chapter split into two, and I will post the second half tomorrow. That one made me cry a bit. Just a little. Also, the Depth Wardens are not astartes, they're more like Guardsmen. And no, when Ame says that Gura is involved, its not just me blowing smoke up all your asses, Gura IS already involved somehow. I just haven't revealed the details to the readers or poor Gura. Bonus points if you can guess what I have planned with Ynnead. Anyways, Thanks to Allsham. If you ever have an idea that you think would fit, please voice it! I've gotten a lot from you guys. I hope you enjoyed!

Chapter 6: Chapter 5: Once More, Together

Thalassia, 999. M41


Tyberos walked alone.

He had sent his marines off in pairs—small hunting packs dispersed through the coral arteries of the city. Not from distrust. No, he trusted them more than he trusted himself here. But this place… it was not made for war. And he needed space. Space to think. Space to breathe without the weight of expectation. For once, there was no objective. No quarry. No threat lurking beneath the tide.

He hated it.

He didn't know why he'd come—not truly. Curiosity? Duty? The phantom tug of something buried in gene-seed and myth? Whatever it was, it had teeth, and it gnawed at the edge of his thoughts.

His boots echoed against polished stone, the sound swallowed quickly by the still, humid air. The walkways of Tethys shimmered beneath his feet—translucent paths suspended above gently glowing water. Coral towers loomed on all sides, swaying with the slow pulse of life, as though the entire city breathed in time with some ancient rhythm.

It felt… alive. Too alive.

Architecture melded function with fluid grace—no servitors, no Gothic facades, no skulls or iconography. This was not the Imperium. It was something else. Something older. Thalassian.

The script carved into the buildings was foreign, flowing in spiral patterns like the currents of deep sea vents. Lampfish drifted lazily overhead on silk-thin tendrils, casting slow-turning shadows like stars refracted through water. Vendors spoke in soft voices, offering strange fruits, glimmering strands of sea-fabric, and carvings shaped from coral and bone. A child sprinted past him, laughing, ribbons trailing from her arms like bioluminescent fins. She didn't even notice the massive warrior in her midst.

None of them did.

He was a ghost in a city of ghosts.

Then—he stopped.

A statue.

It rose from the center of a round plaza, bathed in the pale blue glow of submerged light-wells. Gura.

Sculpted in smooth, iridescent stone—coral pearl and deep shell—she stood with trident in hand, cloak billowing like cresting surf. But it was not a warrior's triumph she bore. Her pose was dynamic, vibrant, caught mid-leap, as if she had just burst free from the waves. Her expression was fierce. Joyful. Proud.

A moment of glory, frozen in time.

Further down the avenue: another monument. Smaller. Older. Worn by time.

He turned toward it.

Tentacles, long and flowing, carved in dark obsidian veined with violet light. Robes falling like water. A staff clutched in one hand, the other outstretched—not in command, but in welcome. The eyes were deep-set, shaped with uncanny precision: tired, watchful, impossibly old.

Tyberos narrowed his gaze.

It was her.

The strange abhuman. The one from the library, wrapped in ink and silence. The one who'd welcomed Gura like an old friend—and regarded the Astartes with the calm indifference of someone who had already read their story.

Ina.

He frowned. Not in confusion. In discomfort.

How long had this city remembered her?

It seemed like Ina had been part of this world far longer than Gura had, if the statues were anything to go by.

Hers stood in the center of a serene garden plaza, carved from obsidian veined with pale amethyst light. Robes flowed down the figure like still water, and the tentacles that framed her silhouette were not monstrous, but graceful—woven with motifs of kelp and stars. One hand rested on her staff, the other open, as if beckoning the lost to shelter.

The base was inscribed in two scripts: High Gothic and something older, more fluid—like script carried by current rather than quill. One word was common to both.

Shield

At the base were wreaths. Dried sea-grass bound with coral beads. Tarnished charms. Tiny figures carved from bone. Offerings left not in ceremony, but remembrance. Some had clearly been there for decades.

He lingered a moment longer.

Then moved on.

He passed spiral fountains where bioluminescent fish darted through sculpted channels, sending ripples of color up glass walls. He passed musicians seated on stone rings, playing instruments unlike any he knew—curved, shell-like things that echoed with the voices of whales and wind, music that tugged at some ancient part of the soul.

A classroom opened to one side—tucked into the shelter of a glowing alcove. Children sat on smooth, iridescent stones while a teacher drew symbols onto a slab of animated pearl, the letters glowing and flowing with the lesson. Tyberos watched long enough to see a student raise their hand and laugh.

Further on, he found a wall.

Names etched in concentric circles spiraling out from a central symbol—the same spiral some of the Legion wore on their armor. Thousands of names. Each flanked by tokens: shells, beads, bits of gear, etched blades. It was a war memorial. Not for glory.

For grief.

The city lived. It hadn't merely survived—it flourished. This was no fortress. It had never been built for battle.

But battle had come.

And it had endured.

He turned a final corner and stopped.

Another statue. Smaller than the others, but no less ancient. The stone was dark grey with veins of white, polished smooth by time and reverence. It was unmistakably Astartes—towering, broad-shouldered, posed with one hand extended not in judgment, but offering.

A shark-teeth motif ringed the shoulder plates, and the armor bore scars—not ornamental, but remembered. This wasn't a hero of myth. This was a warrior of the abyss, preserved in stone before memory could forget his face.

He was one of Gura's.

At the base of the statue stood a little girl—no older than seven, with kelp-wrapped braids and bare feet that made no sound on the stone. In her hands she held a single, faded flower: white, edges frilled like seafoam. She stretched up on tiptoe, trying to place it in the open hand of the statue.

She couldn't reach.

Tyberos moved before he realized.

He stepped forward and reached down. His hands, designed for war, curled carefully around her middle and lifted her up.

Just enough.

She tucked the flower into place with solemn care. Patted it once, satisfied. Then looked down.

Right into his face.

Tyberos froze.

Not from surprise.

But because she didn't.

She didn't flinch. Didn't startle. Didn't scream.

She didn't recoil from his face.

The thought struck him harder than it should have. His features—scarred, broken, the remnants of surgery and battle—had made hardened officers flinch. Civilians looked away. Children wept.

But not here.

Not her.

No wide-eyed horror. No whisper of fear. Just quiet curiosity.

And when he thought back—none of them had stared. None had run or whispered behind hands. Not the vendors. Not the teacher. Not even the children laughing in the streets.

It wasn't that they hadn't seen.

It was that they hadn't judged.

She looked at him the way one might look at an especially large turtle—curious, thoughtful, completely unafraid.

"Are you a Depth-Warden?" she asked, her voice full of reverent awe.

Tyberos glanced down at himself. His scarred, hulking form. His silence.

"…No," he said at last. "I am… not from here."

She nodded, as if that explained everything.

"You look like a statue," she said. "But grumpier."

Tyberos blinked.

Then—slowly—one corner of his mouth twitched.

"You are bold."

"So is Auntie Gura," she replied, arms crossing with a huff. "She bites people sometimes."

"Yes," he muttered. "I've noticed."

The girl tilted her head. Her braids drifted slightly in the air, as though the dome's current responded to her mood.

"Are you gonna protect us too? Like she did?"

Tyberos opened his mouth.

And paused.

He didn't know the answer.

Not yet.

But her words echoed deeper than they should have.

They didn't demand oaths or obedience. Didn't ask for faith or penance.

Just a child's question—simple, trusting. The kind that assumed protection was still possible.

"I will try," he said.

She beamed. "Good."

Then she poked the center of his chest as if stamping approval on an ancient relic. With that, she climbed down from his arms and skipped away without a second thought, weaving through the crowd toward a woman who might've been her mother. In moments, they vanished—just another thread in the living tapestry of the city.

Tyberos remained still.

The statue before him loomed quiet and solemn. A space marine—unnamed, unadorned. Not a primarch. Not a paragon.

Just a brother in armor.

The sculptor had given him a broken trident and a bolter. His stance was not glorious. Not even defiant. Just ready.

Beneath the statue, etched in plain Gothic:

"For those who stood between the tide and the abyss."

Tyberos looked after the girl.

Then at the people. Laughing. Talking. Living.

He thought of the Silent Wake, of his ship's cold decks and the chapel lined with relics whose origins no one remembered. Stories passed down as fragments. Rituals carried out by rote. Names repeated without knowing the faces behind them.

How much had they forgotten?

How much had they buried in the name of strength?

He had always believed in the hunt. In the mission. In the clarity of purpose. But now...

Now he saw something else.

A world not defined by war—but preserved through it. A city that carried its losses, not with shame, but reverence. That honored not just the defenders, but what they'd defended.

And somewhere in that quiet, beneath vaulted coral ceilings and drifting light, a question began to gnaw at him.

What do we protect?

His jaw clenched.

But when he turned away, his steps were different.

Not hesitant.

Considerate.

He glanced back once—at the statues of Gura, Ina, and the nameless Astartes.

Maybe the point of being a predator wasn't just to kill.

Maybe it was to guard something worth keeping.

And maybe—just maybe—this place was worth more than he'd believed.

---

Tyberos woke before the sun ever touched the waves.

Old habit.

The barracks were old—older than memory, sealed beneath coral stone and pressure-fused plating. Spartan, windowless, and cold. But intact. The reinforced walls were traced with salt-worn conduits and ancient Thalassian piping that still hummed with life. It smelled of dust, old metal, and brine. Functional. Forgotten. Familiar.
His sleep had been shallow. Not from threat—he hadn't sensed any danger in Tethys—but something else. Restlessness. The kind that came not before battle, but change.
The kind that gnawed at a warrior's edges when there were no enemies left to kill.
Tyberos dressed with ritual precision, even in solitude. The pieces of his armor waited on the stand like old companions—scarred ceramite, blackened by void exposure and reforged more times than he could count. He began with the underlayer, the synth-weave clinging to scarred flesh like second skin. Then came the plates: chest, pauldrons, vambraces. Each lock hissed into place with hydraulic finality. He moved without hurry, but without pause—shouldering the weight of war like it was memory. When he finished, he sat once more, helmet cradled in one hand, bolter resting against the wall. There was no battle today, and yet he armed himself all the same. Not for defense. For grounding.
He sat on the edge of his slab-bed, armored fingers flexing reflexively.

He was still staring at the floor when the door hissed open.

No knock.
No guards.
Just her.

Barefoot. Holding a half-eaten fish bun in one hand, A deep ocean blue cloak thrown loosely over her shoulders like a robe someone dared her to wear seriously.

"Morning, Shark Boss," Gura said cheerily, chewing as she talked. "Hope you didn't get too comfortable."

Tyberos blinked once. Then again.

His voice was rough with sleep—and disbelief.

"…Is there a reason you've entered my quarters without guards or decorum?"

Gura shrugged, tearing another bite from the bun.

"Yeah. You're invited."

She tossed something underhand.

Tyberos caught it instinctively.

A scroll—old parchment, sealed in coral-red wax stamped with two symbols: one he recognized from their old war sigils, the other unfamiliar, like a spiral woven from tide and reef.

He stared at it. Then her.

"…Invited. To what?"

Her tone softened just a touch, like sea-foam sliding off steel.

"The Mourning Tide. It's today."

She stepped further into the room now, serious beneath the casual facade.

"And I want you there."

Tyberos broke the seal.

The parchment smelled faintly of salt and ink. The script was graceful, ceremonial—not Imperial Gothic, but ancient Thalassian, followed by a translation in High Gothic. It wasn't a command.

It was a request.

Not for his presence alone—but for his witness.

"You want the Carcharodons present?" he asked slowly. "All of us?"

Gura nodded.

She stood straighter now, voice steady and low.

"You kept the relics. The bones. The names."

A pause. Something tightened in her throat before she spoke again.

"You remembered more than I ever expected."

Tyberos looked at her—really looked.
Not as the barefoot terror of myth, nor the smirking chaos she wore like armor.

But as someone who carried weight.

Who had never stopped carrying it.

"And what role do we play?" he asked.

"You're not here to fight," she replied.

Her eyes didn't waver. "Not today."

"You're here to witness. To listen. To remember."

For a long moment, he didn't speak.

His eyes flicked to his bolter—resting beside the bed, like it always was.

He didn't reach for it.

"They will be ready," he said.

Gura smiled—quiet and sincere. No grin. No teeth. Just warmth.

"Good," she said.

"We leave in an hour."

---

A hush settled over the city.

The sun had not yet risen, but Tethys was already awake. Lantern-beasts stirred lazily above coral towers, casting drifting light through the marine mist that rolled between the streets like a tide returning home. The central plaza pulsed with quiet life—civilians lined the periphery, standing beneath bioluminescent banners that didn't flutter but glowed. Children peeked out from behind robed parents. Elders pressed coral charms to their foreheads and bowed as shadows passed.

And in the midst of it all—the Carcharodons marched.

Armored, but unarmed. No bolters. No blades. No sigils of rank. Just simple black robes draped over their war-plate, obscuring pauldrons and chestplates alike. Each step landed heavy on the stone, but the sound was swallowed by the hush of morning mist. Their helmets remained clipped to their sides or left behind entirely. No one spoke. No one needed to. They marched not as conquerors, but as witnesses.

They moved like a tide of revenants—present, but half-elsewhere.

At the front walked Depth-Wardens and Vault-Keepers, their armor crusted with reverence and time. One bore a satchel of bone and reef-metal inscribed with the Carcharodon sigil. Tyberos had given it to him the night before, without words.

The path downward spiraled into the stone of the world, carved with the slow patience of millennia. Murals adorned the walls: scenes of warriors standing against black tides, of hands reaching up from the deep, of ships burning silently beneath the sea. Glowing script traced the edges—names of the fallen, etched in lines that curled like ocean currents. Some Astartes turned their heads to read them. Others kept their eyes forward, jaws locked.

And Tyberos walked near the front.

Not leading. Not commanding. Walking.

To his right, Gura. To his left, Bloop—silent and immense. Amelith'ra trailed just behind, a quiet irritant Tyberos refused to acknowledge beyond a glance. Around them, Gura's own legionnaires marched with ease—their gait calm, measured. These were not soldiers preparing for battle.

They had done this before.

Tyberos's warriors, for all their discipline, carried tension in their shoulders. Their silence was not the practiced stillness of ritual, but the uncomfortable hush of warriors out of their element.

He stared at the primarch before him.

For the first time—she was armored.

Gone was the barefoot menace draped in charm and sarcasm. Gone was the trickster of yesterday, all teeth and jokes.

She walked now like a blade.

She was taller now, almost 6 feet in height. Not tall to an Astartes by any means, but certainly taller than the 4'6" she normally stood at.

Her armor shimmered in the low light: vivid cerulean across the breastplate, framed in red and gilded in ornate Thalassian gold. Layers of trim and wave-etched plating formed a ceremonial exoskeleton of meaning—functional, but beautiful. At the center of her chest, just above the heart, a microphone socket was set into the armor, ancient and well-worn.

Draped over her shoulders, a vast cloak flowed like a trailing reef current—ocean-blue on the outside, lined with crimson silk and bordered in jagged teeth-pattern embroidery. Gold ropes crisscrossed her chest, pinned with scrolls and badges. Her breastplate ended midway through her torso, giving way to deep red armor that resembled a gaping maw. Her right pauldron gleamed gold, polished until the etchings shone like starlight. The left was mostly hidden by the cloak, but a small silver 'II' held the fabric in place—a subtle declaration of her lineage.

Her gloves and greaves bore sharp, angular patterns—designs that whispered of deep water, of pull and current. Not Imperial runes. Thalassian. Hers.

In one hand, she carried her trident. Its haft was wrapped in tide-worn leather. The blades gleamed, chipped and sharp.

Her helm was clipped to her hip. Her face bare.

And she was grinning.

That same irrepressible, shark-toothed grin. The one that had haunted myth, mocked death, and lit fires in those who followed her. No armor could suppress it.

Tyberos felt something twist low in his gut.

Because in that moment, he saw the truth.

The creature who had once danced through conversation with flippant charm… was also this. The myth in motion. The storm wrapped in ritual. A Primarch.

And though her smile hadn't changed, her presence had.

She no longer walked as if she owned the path.

She walked as if the path had been made for her.

The path curved one last time—and the Vault revealed itself.

It emerged from the rock like something ancient and half-forgotten, a submerged cathedral cradled by the bones of the world. Its outer shell was carved into the cliff face itself, as though the planet had grown around it out of reverence. Black coral spires flanked its sides—tall, jagged pylons crusted with salt and etched with shell patterns, standing like sentinels guarding a sacred truth. Between them, silver-veined stone shimmered where water flowed down in quiet rivulets, channeled through cuts in the wall shaped like spiral script.

Even in silence, it breathed.

The great gate at the front was massive—a perfect circle sealed tight, like the closed eye of some slumbering beast. Its surface was engraved with thousands of names, each one curling into the next in wave-born spirals, flowing together like current and tide. Faint pulses of light moved across the script, like echoes rippling through reefwater.

They stopped before it.

No fanfare. No orders.

And then—with a deep, grinding exhale—the gate began to open.

Metal shifted with a resonance that was not entirely mechanical. The iris slowly uncoiled, spiraling outward with a wet hydraulic groan. Mist hissed from the seams. Light spilled from within—not harsh or sterile, but soft, bioluminescent. Like moonlight caught beneath the ocean's skin.

A low hum rolled outward as the threshold widened.

Not the thrum of machines.

Music.

Deep, harmonic tones layered over one another, resonating through armor, stone, and bone. A choir of frequencies too ancient to have been designed. The Vault was not just opening.

It was welcoming them.

Tyberos said nothing.

None of them did.

But as the sound passed over him, through him, something in his chest stirred.

He stepped forward.

And the others followed.

The Carcharodons stepped inside, their pace slow, boots landing with hollow thuds against the black stone beneath them. It was polished to a mirror sheen, yet threaded with veins of pearl and fossil—fragments of ancient sea beasts sealed into the floor like memory made manifest. Each step felt deliberate. Ceremonial.

Above them, the ceiling soared beyond visibility, a vast cathedral dome forged not by mortal hands, but by pressure and time. Stone fused with reef, mineral fused with life. It didn't feel like a chamber.

It felt like a hollowed-out world.

The air was still—but not silent. It pulsed with potential, with a hush that hovered just before song. Along the walls, veins of soft bioluminescence pulsed in slow rhythm, as though the vault itself were breathing—an ancient leviathan at rest beneath the ocean floor.

Bridges and galleries spiraled upward, curling like the spine of some deep-sea beast. Layer upon layer of ossuaries branched out—alcoves, balconies, sanctified recesses. Every surface bore relics. Some gleamed: Astartes pauldrons, cracked helms, broken blades blackened by warpfire. Others were humbler: necklaces of prayer beads, scraps of parchment, rusted tools, a child's carved stone.

All of it was labeled.

All of it remembered.

Relic-bearers moved between the columns, their footfalls nearly soundless on the polished floor. They wore robes bound with coral clasps, their arms filled with memory—ossuary packs of bone and pearl, shattered chestplates, splintered weapons. Many bore names the Imperium had long since forgotten.

But Thalassia had not.

The procession moved as one, deeper and deeper into the heart of the vault. At the center, a vast circular dais rose from the floor—stone ringed with concentric sigils etched layer upon layer, older than most stars. Thalassian. Astartes. Old Gothic. Each carved line was a wound made holy by remembrance.

This was the heart.

The place of reckoning.

Where the Mourning Tide would begin.

Tyberos passed beneath the archway, slower than usual.

Not from hesitation. From reverence.

The air was thick here—dense with salt, memory, and something deeper. Not just age. Intention. His helmet lenses adjusted and readjusted, struggling to make sense of the shifting light inside the Vault. It wasn't artificial—not entirely. It shimmered like bioluminescence but bent like a dream, the edges blurred, resonant.

He'd expected a tomb. Cold stone. Shrines. Echoing silence.

But this was something else entirely.

The Vault could have housed cities. It spiraled upward and outward in impossible symmetry, carved not just for remembrance, but for meaning. It was cathedral. It was necropolis. It was reliquary.

And somehow, more than all of them.

It wasn't just death carved into the walls.

It was grief—preserved like fossilized coral. Pride, layered like strata beneath the stone. Legacy, spoken not in words, but in relics left with care and trembling hands.

He passed a shattered helm still bearing the claw marks of some ancient xenos. A cracked pauldron painted in stylized waves—faded, but unmistakable. A pendant carved from bone, the rusted aquila nearly worn smooth by time.

These weren't trophies.

These were wounds.

Memories.

Names.

"Over a hundred thousand," Gura had told him.

He hadn't believed her.

Not truly.

But now, standing here, beneath the weight of the Vault's breath and light, he felt them.

The weight of ten thousand years hung from the ceiling like reefstone and myth. Names he'd known only as whispers—snatches of speech during boarding actions, battle rites recited without understanding. Phrases from doctrines. Positions in maneuvers. Ghosts, all of them.

And then—

He saw it.

A black-pearled breastplate, shattered and scorched. Laid beneath a shrine of reef-glass and etched steel.

Commander Eryon Thorne

He stopped cold.

The name struck like a blade to the gut.

Thorne's Reckoning.

A maneuver. A rite. A violent, precise formation used by his warriors for centuries—but never explained. Never questioned. It was just known.

But the name—this man—had been real.

Not a phrase.

Not a ritual.

A commander. A brother.

Tyberos's jaw clenched beneath his helm. Behind his eyes, something shifted—hot and slow.

They had bled. They had died.

And the Imperium had forgotten them.

But Thalassia hadn't.

He looked to his marines.

Even the most hardened—those with scarred lips and hollowed cheeks, who had spat prayers through blood—stood still. Eyes scanning. Hands twitching. One reached out to gently brush the edge of a blade. Another stared too long at a shrine etched with wave-script and purity seals.

They recognized the names. Not as men. But as fragments.

Combat forms. Techniques. Rites repeated until their origins blurred.

His own hand drifted to the honor sash across his chest. Dozens of purity seals fluttered faintly at his side.

How many of those names did he truly know?

And then—

He looked at her.

Gura walked at the head of the procession, silent and steady.

Her shark-cloak drifted behind her like a trailing current, the woven scales catching the vault's shifting light and scattering it in soft waves of color. She moved between the shrines like someone returning to a memory too vast to carry all at once—each step deliberate, each breath heavy with recognition.

Her armor gleamed in the living glow of the chamber—the Tideborne Regalia, deep ocean blue with curling gold trim and red accents. Wave-etched plates interlocked over her frame with fluid grace, coral ornamentation worked into the joints like veins of the sea. A cloak of scaled hide hung heavy from her shoulders, but above it—mounted just over her back—rose two enormous nautilus-shell speakers. Cerulean on the outside, trimmed in gold filigree, their interiors glowed with a slow red-violet light. They pulsed faintly with harmonic tension, as though the vault itself could hear her approach and was preparing to listen.

She was not large.

Not for a Primarch.

But she carried the weight of a Legion.

And for the first time, Tyberos did not see the girl who had leapt from a gunship onto the docks of a dead world. He did not see the barefoot myth woven into chapter chants.

He saw the burden.

He saw the truth.

---

Near the center of the dais, Ina stood waiting.

Her robes were flowing, layered in hues of deep violet and twilight blue. Script crawled across the hems in ancient ink, curling glyphs both psychic and sacred. Her tentacles hovered around her like drifting fronds, responding in subtle motion to the ambient resonance of the vault. They pulsed gently, attuned to something unseen.

Around her, the Takodachis danced through the air—a flurry of movement and soft, harmonious noise. Tiny figures of ink-flesh and will, they zipped from shrine to shrine, placing tuning stones, scrolls, pigment vials, and softly humming vox-relays in precise positions across the dais. Their music was not language, but sound—a tone-language of rising pitches and harmonic beats that synced with the pulse of the chamber itself.

Ina turned as Gura approached. Her gaze was calm. Measured. Deep as the tide.

She nodded once, slowly.

"It's almost ready."

Gura returned the nod, her voice low—closer to a promise than a statement.

"Let me know when."

And then they stood together.

Side by side. Wordless.

Two figures beneath the vault's weight: one of sea and song, the other of depth and silence.

Above them, the shrines seemed to lean inward, the air thickening like lungs drawing breath.

The echoes of the dead were waiting.

Soon, they would be sung.

The Vault of Echoes began to shift.

Not in motion. In feeling.

The resonance deepened—not louder, but heavier. Like the slow inhalation of a great beast, ancient and unseen. The stillness wasn't silence. It was anticipation. Sacred pressure. The moment before something vast unfolds.

Above the dais, Takodachis moved in formation, their tones harmonizing into soft chordal threads. Some now carried small holo-projectors, others wove luminous strands of psychic energy between the vault's towering columns and recessed altars. Each line shimmered faintly, like a spiderweb catching starlight beneath the sea.

Along the edges of the dais, Relic-Bearers began their final circuit. Every motion was exact. Every footfall placed by tradition. They set bone fragments into alcoves, laid memory-locks onto stone, and fitted broken weapons into carefully marked recesses. Pieces of the past, returned to the place that remembered.

From the upper galleries, a cluster of Abyss-Scribes descended, their robes dragging behind them like ink trails in water. They carried scrolls taller than themselves—long, heavy rolls of coral-skin and seal-cloth. As they unfurled the parchment onto floating supports, the inked names unfurled with them—thousands upon thousands, written in both High Gothic and the flowing sigils of Thalassia.

The Carcharodons stood along the inner ring of the dais. Silent. Armored, but bare-faced. No helmets. No weapons. Just the truth of their presence.

Ceremonial.

Witnessing.

At the center, Gura stood still.

Her hand rested on the haft of her trident, its tip grounded beside her like a grave marker. Her eyes were closed. Her posture unwavering. Her shark-cloak hung still, the breath of the vault curling faintly around its hem.

From the edge of the platform, Ina stepped forward.

In her hands she carried a long, slender vessel of bone-wrapped steel. A ritual object, smooth and sealed, carved with the symbols of memory and time. She dragged a single finger across its surface—and the seal hissed open.

Inside: powdered coral, preserved ichor, flecks of adamantium, the ground ash of the lost. The name-ink.

Ina knelt without a word. Above her, the Takodachis formed a slow-moving halo, glowing with soft violet luminescence. Their voices wove together into a low harmonic chord—almost like a lullaby.

Her voice echoed clearly across the chamber.

"The name-ink is mixed. The vault is aligned. The resonance is stable."

Gura opened her eyes.

From where he stood, Tyberos watched everything with an intensity he didn't understand. His gaze followed the delicate flow of Ina's gestures. The rising pitch of the vault's hum. Even the air felt denser now—as though it, too, were being pulled backward in a breath the world hadn't taken in ten thousand years.

More of Gura's legionnaires arrived from above, descending in silence. Their armor was worn, marked with runes Tyberos didn't know. Most bore scars. Some wept as they passed old relics, heads bowed. One knelt before an ossuary and touched his forehead to a jagged shard of helm. His lips moved. A name, maybe. Or a prayer.

Ina returned to Gura's side and gave a single nod.

"It's time."

Gura drew in a slow breath.

Her voice, when it came, was low. Resonant. It moved not just through her nautilus-shell speakers, but through the architecture of the Vault itself.

"Begin the listing."

And the names began.

Soft at first. A chant. A murmur.

Then more joined in—voices from every edge of the vault. Human. Post-human. Not all voices were even mortal. Some warbled with digital modulation. Some sang in languages long dead. Others rang like chimes through the reef-glass above.

Tyberos stood motionless as the names echoed through the vault, his breath caught somewhere between reverence and realization. Some of them he recognized—battle cries half-remembered, tactics named for fallen captains, rites performed in silence without knowing why. Thorne. Velas. Demelos. Kean. Names that lived in fragments aboard the Silent Wake, passed down through blood and ritual. But most—most—were strangers. Words he had never heard, voices buried beneath the ocean of time. And yet, even those he did not know struck something within him. Because someone had. Someone had spoken them, mourned them, carried them to this place. They were not ghosts here. They were known. They were home.

And then—

Gura unclipped her cloak.

It fell away in silence, folding like a wave at her heels.

From beneath it, two massive nautilus-shaped speakers unfolded from where they had been recessed into her armor. They rose slowly, mounted just above her shoulders—twin spirals of cerulean shell inlaid with gold. The inner chambers glowed with a soft red-violet light, their structure not just beautiful—but sacred.

They chimed as they locked into place.

Not a loud sound. A feeling. A harmonic shiver that passed through every stone, every relic, every living thing in the Vault.

They didn't blast noise.

They didn't need to.

They carried meaning.

Tyberos felt his breath catch.

He hadn't noticed them before. Not until they opened. Until she allowed them to be seen.

Like so much else about her—not for show.

For function.

---

The Vault held its breath.

The Takodachis froze mid-hover, their lights dimming to a still pulse. No one moved. Not even the air.

Only the reef-glass glowed, its pulse slowing.

A heartbeat. Waiting for the voice it remembered.

Gura stepped forward.

The nautilus-shell speakers bloomed wider, spiraling like sea lilies in motion, casting refracted light across the domed ceiling.

The Takodachis strummed a single, strange chord.

It sounded, faintly… like a ukulele.

Gura closed her eyes.

She inhaled.

And when she exhaled—

She sang.

Gura's voice began as a whisper—barely audible, wrapped in the hush of stone and salt. It moved like water seeping into the cracks of memory. Low. Measured. Intimate.

And then it rose.

Clear. Unearthly.

A language no human mouth could quite shape—notes that curved in ways born of tide and current rather than breath and bone.

"Kuwata …
Tsuno wovolai…
Tsurizhi,…
pura alekai…"


Not words, not entirely—but memory, made sound. It did not demand comprehension. It was comprehension. It sounded like mourning, yes—but more than that. Like lullabies sung in flooded halls. Like names whispered into the sea, hoping they might drift to the ears of the dead.

"Kondəvain…
umbu fərtun blonnuwail…
Shurtətei…
chegi hiato…"

The chamber shifted.

Not the stone. Not the structure.

The air.

The pressure changed—subtle at first, like the moment before a tide pulls back to break. The walls, the ossuaries, the vaulted reef-glass seemed to pulse with rhythm. The glow deepened, hues warping from blue to violet to something older—something waiting.

And then—

They began to rise.

Above the relics. The sealed scrolls. The shattered helms and fragments of broken armor—spirits.

Pale, glowing forms. Still. Silent.

They did not walk. They did not speak. They hovered in place, suspended over the bones and memories they once called their own. Some wore the war-plate of the Great Crusade—battered, ancient, edged in honor. Others bore only fragments. A gauntlet. A pauldron. A faded seal. Even those less intact seemed whole in presence.

They listened.

As if the song had summoned them not with power, but permission.

And still—Gura sang.

"Chinnata …
iferih pulei…
Lechona…
sowethi anei…"

The vault grew bright—not in light, but in being.

Spirits filled the chamber. Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands. A drifting constellation of warriors, suspended across space and memory. They did not fade.

They endured.

And Tyberos, breath locked in his chest, could not look away.

The air became heavy—thick with names, with histories too vast to speak aloud. It pressed on the soul, not the skin. The past was no longer past.

It was present.

Gura stood at the center, eyes half-lidded, voice unwavering.

The vault's walls vibrated with layered harmonics—living echoes of the dead. Ina stood with her head bowed, her hands raised slightly, as if to hold the resonance in place. The Takodachis spun in tight, slow orbits, keeping time with breathless precision.

Tyberos felt it.

Not just in his ears. In his chest.

Every verse pulled the past forward—not as memory, but as presence. Each name sung aloud braided the dead to the living, wound soul to stone, voice to silence.

"Shijako …
alekhni fatalinya…
Nih pisha…
unhore sile…"

The chamber swam with light and memory, with voices and the shimmering press of presence. All around him, spirits continued to rise—each one called forth by a name, a relic, a verse.

Above a long-bladed relic, glowing faintly—a sword he had trained with as a neophyte, passed down without context. Across the dais, suspended over a fractured pauldron—a symbol once etched into a mural in a training chapel, its story never explained. Names he'd only heard in whispers, on the breath of dying brothers or spoken during rites performed more from duty than understanding.

Here, they were not myth.

Here, they were not stories.

They were real.

And they were watching.

His breath slowed. He didn't dare look away. Not from them. Not from her.

His gaze found Gura—small in stature, clad in her armor, the Tideborne Regalia gleaming with sea-light and sorrow. Her hood was down, her shoulders squared beneath the weight of memory and name. She stood without armor around her heart. Unflinching.

Her voice didn't falter.

Not once.

The twin nautilus shells rising from her back thrummed softly, vibrating in perfect harmony with the air. They did not blare or boom—they resonated, every note amplified not with volume, but gravity.

"Utrashain aforen zhəkuraswa…
Towa ihatosei, ihatosei tsufralai…"

Tyberos exhaled.

And saw her—clearly—for the first time.

Not a myth.
Not a mistake.
Not the barefoot chaos given form.

Not a girl dancing on the edge of memory and madness.

But the core of command.

Not authority born of pride.
Not dominance carved by fear.

But devotion.

The kind that bends the back.
The kind that does not relent.
The kind that remembers.

She had carried this pain for ten thousand years.

And now—she sang them home.

Not as a hero.

As a sister.
A mother.
A mourner.

A leader.

Not a living warrior, but a spirit—tall and still, clad in battered Mark III plate, its surface blackened, pitted, scarred by battles no one remembered. And yet it stood proud, shoulders squared, helm tilted not toward the relic beneath it—but toward him.

Their gazes met.

There was no speech. No gesture.

Just a slow, solemn nod.

Tyberos stared.

You were real.
All of you.

Not legends. Not phrases recited in darkened holds.

Brothers.

And she—Gura—had remembered.

Even when the galaxy had not.

He dropped to one knee.

---

There was no proclamation.
No signal.
No ritual call.

Just the heavy sound of ceramite lowering to stone—like thunder sealed in reverence.

The sound rippled through the chamber.

One by one, other Carcharodons turned to look.

A sergeant, long silent, lowered his helm to the ground and followed.

A veteran, whose arms had been crossed in mute judgment for hours, dropped to a knee with a final, shuddering exhale.

The youngest among them—a neophyte barely a century old—trembled, fists clenched, then knelt in silence, his head bowed low.

The song did not pause.

"Utrashain aforen zhəkuraswa…
Towa ihatosei, ihatosei tsufralai…
Keisha…"

And then—

Clunk.
Clunk.
Clunk.

Armor bowed.

Row upon row of pale gray and deep blue ceramite tilted forward—until the ring around the dais was no longer a wall of warriors, but a sea of reverence.

The Carcharodons—the predators of the abyss, sharks of the void—knelt.

Not as conquerors.

Not as monsters.

But as sons.

Returning to their mother's graveyard—

And realizing she had never stopped singing lullabies.

Tyberos lowered his head.

He did not weep.
But something burned behind his eyes. Tightened in his throat.

It was not rage.

It was remembrance.
It was shame.
It was awe.

He spoke—quietly. Not for anyone else to hear.

Only for her.

"You never left us."

---

At the heart of the dais, Gura's eyes flicked open—just once.

She saw them.

Her legion.

The old. The new.

All kneeling.

Her voice trembled—just for a beat.

But it did not break.

It rose.

"Ulilya kozhizhi chachu kaija…
Nyame fetsu mekri, fetsu mekri ling ganal…
Ueri manja khutei araku…
Ali laraga chei, laragath yei shindulo…"

The vault rang with her voice.

The dead listened.
The living remembered.

And for the first time in ten thousand years—

The Legion was whole.

Notes:

So some pretty heavy stuff this chapter. Not gonna lie I got emotional writing it. I think I did a good job personally. We'll be back to something more lighthearted next chapter as we check in on Bobby G and what's been happening on Terra. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed it! Thanks to Allsham for the help as always.

Chapter 7: Chapter 6: No Theatrics

Terra, 006 .M42

Roboute Guilliman walked the long corridor toward his personal office.

He wore no armor. Only the formal robes demanded of the Lord Commander of the Imperium. They hung from his frame like ceremonial chains—heavy, ill-fitting, and meticulously impractical. The fabric was stitched in the elaborate angular folds of Imperial Gothic, woven with threads from half-forgotten Mechanicus forges. It was Terran in style. Terran in vanity. Nothing of Ultramar in the cut or color.

He despised them.

The corridor stretched before him in somber silence. Lumen strips flickered faintly along the high vaults, so dim that even his gene-forged eyes strained to register them. Not an oversight. A design. Everything on Terra was meant to feel ancient, heavy with the gravity of time and faith.

Oppressive. Sacred.

His footsteps rang alone across the old stone—no scribes, no hymns or chants, no fawning procession of servitors humming praises to the Throne. Early morning gifted him that one mercy. The quiet.

He walked alone.

The adepts would call it symbolic. A ritual display of burden and isolation, to remind all that he carried the weight of empire unaided. He didn't care. Let them whisper meaning into shadows. Symbols cost too much and said too little.

His mind, unbidden, drifted.

Of course, it drifted to her.

Gura.

Not to the day she arrived, not to the aftermath—but to that singular moment she tore him back into the world.

It hadn't been a proper awakening.

No ceremony. No sacred rites. No hooded Mechanicus adepts chanting litanies of reactivation. Just motion, scent, and sound—chaotic and absurd.

A small, barefoot blur vaulting into his stasis chamber. Sea-salted hair in his face.

"Wake up!"

Yelled. Not whispered.

He remembered the shriek. Her grin. The faint scent of ozone and brine.

He'd wanted to scream. Or laugh. Possibly both.

He didn't dwell on it now. Not often. But he remembered. And he never forgot that it had been her.

Not Administratum. Not the Mechanicus. Not even the damned Ecclesiarchy.

Her.

She had pulled him back.

That was six years ago.

There's no denying that bond, no matter how alien the years have made them to each other.

She infuriates him. She confounds him. She grounds him.

He misses her.

He won't say it. Not even to himself directly. But it shows in how often he finds himself thinking, "What would she say to this?"

Not in some tactical or strategic sense. Just... in the way only a sibling can challenge your pride.

He turned a corner, hands clasped behind his back, the robes whispering faintly with each step.

Thalassia had been a myth when he first awoke. A forgotten coordinate buried in a forgotten campaign. The cartographs hadn't even listed it. One scribe referred to it as a "minor void anomaly" before she corrected him—with a grin and a datapad full of proof.

Now, it was a living world again.

Her world.

She had returned to it as if no time had passed, and somehow the people remembered her. Revered her. In six short years, it had gone from a lost legend to a rising beacon in the Tempestus Segmentum. Infrastructure rebuilt. Trade flowing. Children singing songs that hadn't been heard since the Great Crusade.

And her legion—her Carcharodons—was growing.

Not just in numbers, but in purpose. Tradition. Identity.

She hadn't rebuilt a force. She'd rekindled a culture.

It stunned him how casually she'd done it.

When he finally confronted her—over vox, clipped and formal, citing structural inconsistencies and noncompliance with the Codex—there was a pause.

Then:

"Yeah, I know," she said, casually. "Half of them don't even have squad markings. One guy leads from the back because he's too tall to fit in breaching formations. I let 'em figure it out."

A crunch. Shrimp, probably.

"It works. Not clean, not pretty, but it works. So unless the Codex wants to show up and fight the next tyranid swarm itself—"

Another bite.

"—I'm gonna keep doing what works."

He had tried—earnestly—to explain the Codex Astartes to her. Its necessity. Its structure. The decades of pain and loss that had shaped it. The countless lives saved by consistency and order.

Her response had been, "Codex Smodex."

Delivered while chewing.

He'd nearly terminated the call right there.

But she was right.

Her forces didn't follow standard doctrine. They didn't look like an Imperial legion. Their loadouts were noncompliant, their formations erratic, their command structure borderline heretical.

But they won.

They inspired.

They worked.

And how, exactly, do you argue with results?

She breaks every rule.

That thought echoed through Guilliman's mind more often than he liked to admit. And not just the Codex—not just his rules—but the natural rules, the ones no one dared test. She broke them, bent them, ignored them entirely… and still walked away with results no strategist could predict, no historian could replicate.

The Codex Astartes had no place for her.

Neither did the Crusade, if he was honest.

And yet she was always there.

Not as a symbol. Not as a wildcard.

Active. Decisive. Damnably effective.

She'd been like that even during the Great Crusade—cutting her own path through every campaign.

He remembered the Ghorran Encirclement—riding beside Jaghatai Khan, drawing up flanking vectors, watching outriders sweep the Ork warbands toward the plains. A textbook maneuver. Clean. Precise.

Then Gura dove into the ancient aqueducts beneath the enemy camps.

When the Khan struck from the north, Gura rose from the ground like a kraken breaching surface tension—her Carcharodons already halfway through the enemy command post.

The Orks never had a chance.

He remembered the debrief. She'd tossed the warboss's head onto the tactical table like it was fruit from a morning market.

"Flanked 'em from below," she said. "You're welcome."

No salute. No explanation. Just damp armor, a grin, and the smell of seawater and blood.

Then there was Karaz-Muun.

The Ossean Purge had been brutal. Cities burning. Civilians trapped. Vulkan held the line as only he could, armor glowing with heat, voice like thunder rallying the Salamanders through smoke-choked streets.

She disobeyed the fallback order.

Dove headfirst into a collapsing reliquary with nothing but a power knife.

She came back out with a melted vault door strapped to her back—children clinging to her armor, relics stuffed into a satchel, hair singed and soaked in soot.

Vulkan didn't reprimand her.

They cleared the city together, step by step, through flame and screams.

Guilliman hadn't been there, but he read the reports. Heard Vulkan's voice through the vox logs.

"Unyielding," he'd said. "Courage like that makes Salamanders weep."

And the Heliad Spire. That, Guilliman remembered with perfect clarity.

He had commanded from orbit while Sanguinius led the aerial strike. Gura had taken the sewers.

While Sanguinius soared through the upper galleries, haloed by fire and fury, Gura was in the dark—sabotaging supports, rerouting sewage floods, planting charges. When the Angel breached from above, Gura brought the whole structure down from below.

Collapsed inward like a crushed lung. Minimal collateral. Adjacent hive sectors untouched.

No script. No Codex. Just instinct and timing.

Sanguinius had laughed afterward. Called her "the tide to my wings."

She never stopped. Not even when she contradicted Guilliman directly.

During the Nadir Compliance, he had spent weeks drafting a 28-page protocol for the resistance council. Negotiation procedures. Contingency clauses. Psychological forecasts.

Gura walked into the chamber alone. No armor. No weapons. Just a bowl of rice.

They talked for four hours.

When she left, the Nadir had joined the Imperium peacefully. No blood spilled. No cities burned.

He still had no idea what she said.

And then—inevitably—she'd disappear. No formal leave. No explanation. Just gone.

Weeks. Months.

She once returned midway through a siege with a psychic toad under one arm and an Aeldari star map in the other, completely drenched, acting like she'd never left.

He had once tried to write her out of the official campaign records. Just to make the data cleaner.

But there was always some point—some absurd, brilliant, irrational success—that hinged on her. The record would break without her in it.

She wasn't a blade like Russ, or a flame like Vulkan, or a miracle like Sanguinius.

She was something else.

Something uncontainable.

And ten thousand years later, she was still doing it.

Still building systems out of chaos.

Still acting on instinct instead of orders.

Still succeeding in ways the Codex had no language for.

She was unlike any of them. Stranger. Lighter. But never weak. Never simple.

Sometimes—quietly, where no one could hear it—he wondered if this was what the Emperor had meant all along. Not another weapon. Not another warlord.

But something that refused to be consumed by the rot.

He was jealous. Not bitterly. Just... quietly.

He exhaled slowly through his nose, forcing the thought of her aside.

She could ignore the politics.

He couldn't.

The Imperium was not what it had been.

Not when he last walked its halls. Not when the Emperor still breathed and spoke. Not even what it was meant to be.

He had tried to preserve it—organize it, shape it into something survivable.The Codex Astartes had been a blueprint for continuity, not control. A safeguard against collapse.

Now, it was treated like scripture. Quoted. Misused. Twisted.

And often ignored entirely.

The Administratum had become a self-devouring beast, choking on its own endless forms and recursive mandates. Entire wars were waged over misfiled coordinates. Fleets lost because some mid-tier adept reversed a stenciled digit.

It operated out of habit, not purpose. Inertia and human sacrifice kept it moving—just enough to sustain itself, never enough to change.

Most of Guilliman's time wasn't spent issuing decisions. It was spent untangling them—correcting, clarifying, undoing layers of bureaucratic damage that had fossilized into policy.

And the Inquisition...

Once, they had been a scalpel. Surgical. Precise.

Now, they were a flailing blade, cutting friend and foe alike.

Too many factions. Too many conflicting mandates. Too many wars of pride waged under the banner of orthodoxy.

He had read reports from a single planetary conflict where three Inquisitors filed three different accounts—each accusing the other of heresy.

The Adeptus Mechanicus remained as alien to him as it had been ten thousand years ago.

They still refused to share full schematics. Still cloaked everything in binary cant and technosorcery. Still worshipped function over understanding.

Even he was denied access to entire vaults of knowledge.

The machines that kept the Imperium breathing might as well be daemons for all the clarity they offered.

But it was the Ecclesiarchy that weighed on him most.

Cathedrals rising higher than manufactorums. Preachers with louder voices than planetary governors. Dogma engraved in gold and blood.

They burned for dissent—and called it faith.

They called the Emperor a god.

Guilliman knew better.

He remembered.

That had never been their father's intention. Never his design. The Emperor had rejected godhood with fire and fury—once.

But now...

To speak that truth would break the spine of the Imperium. It would tear a billion souls from their only tether.

So Guilliman said nothing.

And every time someone whispered "The God-Emperor protects," he felt the silence close around his throat like a tightening noose.

In the first weeks after his return, he had gone to the Throne.
Not to pray. Not to plead. Just to look.
To see what remained. To see what waited.

The air had been dry. Too dry.

It clawed at his lungs with every breath. The scent of burning incense, hot oil, and static ozone hung thick and acrid. The kind of air that didn't welcome visitors. The kind that warded them off.

And there he sat.

The Emperor.

Or what remained.

The withered body was locked within its arcane throne—entombed in cables, hissing regulators, radiant wards. Slumped. Shriveled. Silent.

A corpse.

But it wasn't just a corpse.

Guilliman felt it. Even now, the memory made his skin crawl.

The presence was still there. Heavy. Immense. Immovable.

And—most disturbingly—unchanged.

It wasn't tortured as he had expected. It wasn't broken as he had feared. It wasn't even tired.

It simply... was.

The same as it had been ten thousand years ago, when Guilliman had once stood beside his father during war councils and galactic campaigns.

That familiarity struck him deeper than any blade.

It should've been comforting. It wasn't.

It felt like standing before a memory that refused to age. Like time had simply stopped for this one thing. And everything else—everyone else—had been left to rot.

For one brief moment, he believed—truly believed—that if he just reached out, just whispered a word, the Emperor would turn and speak to him.

Not metaphorically. Not spiritually. Literally.

He could see the motion in his mind. Hear the voice. Feel the presence rise.

But he didn't reach.

He couldn't.

What would the Emperor say?

Would he praise Guilliman's survival? His compromises? His tolerance of decay and dogma?

Or would he ask why things had been allowed to fall this far?

The shame had flared then—deep, primal, clashing against the iron pride woven into his very genes.

And so he turned.

Without a word.

Without a gesture.

He left the chamber. Left him.

And the presence behind him never shifted.

Never changed.

Just watched.

Even now, Guilliman knew:
If he asked—just once—the Emperor would speak to him.

But he didn't.

He couldn't.

Because he wasn't sure what was worse—

Disappointment.

Or indifference.

Three weeks after his visit, the stars tore open.


He was still organizing command structures, still relearning the rhythms of Terra, when the Rift split the galaxy in half.

The 'Cicatrix Maledictum' was the official name.

One moment, the stars were sick with tension. The next—they split.

The galaxy he was still relearning… ripped in half.

Half the Imperium vanished behind a curtain of warp-storms.

Communications went silent. Beacons failed. Whole sectors gone in a heartbeat.

He had watched it unfold from Terra—in real-time.

Reports arrived like screams. Fragmented. Desperate. Contradictory.

Some spoke of daemons clawing through space. Others, of stars dying mid-burn.

The Astronomican flickered. Even the light of the Throne was shaken.

But it wasn't the chaos that hollowed him.

It was the stillness that followed.

A map scattered in pieces. Allies unreachable. Fortresses blind. Hope, a rumor.

The High Lords had argued about protocol.

The Ecclesiarchy had demanded more prayer.

The Mechanicus ran diagnostics.

And Guilliman… Guilliman had wanted to scream.

He knew what had to be done.

The Imperium couldn't wait for the warp to settle. Couldn't afford more hesitation. Every second lost meant another world dying in the dark.

Whole subsectors were going silent. Not to Chaos. Not to rebellion. Just... vanishing.

Drowning in the quiet.

So he ordered preparations. Not for conquest. Not for revenge.

For rescue.

A Crusade. Supplies, fleets, deployments—every cog of a dying machine turned toward survival.

It was overwhelming. Even for him.

And Terra was so slow.

So damnably slow.

They hadn't left yet. The fleet wasn't ready. The Crusade has not begun.

But it must. It must.

Every delay is another extinguished light.

Astropaths burn out trying to reach the far side of the wound. Others lose their minds.

One screamed until his lungs tore open: "HE'S LAUGHING FROM THE STARS!"

And then died.

Faith is collapsing under the weight of contradiction.

Some say the Emperor is punishing mankind. Others say the Rift is a birth—a new god rising from the void.

Chaos feeds on both.

Guilliman reads every report. Every madness. Every silence.

Not because he wants to.

Because someone has to.

The Rift didn't just shatter the stars. It shattered morale.

Now, the people of the Imperium look to Terra.

And they don't see light. They see a wall.

They look to him.

The High Lords. The generals. The dying. The faithful. The broken.

Even the Ministorum, in their robes and golden chains.

All of them, staring. Waiting. Hoping.

As if he can seal the wound with strategy and stubbornness.

As if he can restore what was lost with duty alone.

He wonders—not aloud, never aloud—if the Rift is meant to be closed.

Or if this is simply the shape of things now.

A galaxy broken in half.

Bleeding quietly into the dark.

He reached the door to his office.

Two Custodes stood at attention, one on either side—immovable as statues. They nodded as he approached, but said nothing. They never did.

He paused.

Just for a moment.

Not from fatigue. Not from uncertainty.

Just... the weight of it all.

A single thought surfaced—uninvited, absurd, and utterly clear:

She'd laugh at all this.
Find some stupid snack.
Call me Bobby G.
Tell me to take a nap.

His lips twitched.

Not a smile.

But close.

He stepped through the door.

---

The door whispered shut behind him, seals locking with a soft hiss.

Guilliman exhaled—not all the weight, just enough to move.

Muted gold light filled the office. Quiet. Dim. Steady.

His desk sat as it always did: precise, orderly, uninviting. Reports stacked in the upper left. Dataslates blinking in silent demand. A porcelain teacup sat near the center—untouched, still faintly warm. Someone brought it daily. He never asked who.

The air smelled of cogitator wax and ancient parchment. Familiar.

And then—he saw it.

A glint of pink hair near the far corner. Hovering.

Still.

Just slightly out of sight, poorly concealed behind the filing cabinet labeled "Munitions & Supply Requisition Forms – Segmentum Tempestus."

He didn't blink.

Of course she was here.

Calliope Mori. Or Calli, as she insisted—always with the lowercase tone.

He didn't startle. Not anymore. She had a habit of being places.

She thought she was subtle.

She wasn't.

He said nothing.

Instead, he crossed to his desk. Placed the slate in his hand atop the others. Straightened the quill resting near the edge. Adjusted a dataslate. Let the silence stretch.

Behind the cabinet, the skull remained frozen, hovering motionless in her chosen hiding spot—thin chromed frame, synthetic hair shifting faintly in the breeze from the ceiling vent.

As if by refusing to move, she might achieve invisibility.

She had been... useful.

More than once. More than expected.

Not clever the way strategists were clever—but she remembered everything. Every file. Every cross-reference. Every nonsensical bit of Gura's data that seemed meaningless—until it wasn't.

And Gura's data?

Worth its weight in starships.

Half of it read like sea shanties or bad poetry. The other half was perfect combat doctrine, tucked between doodles and culinary notes.

Calli could recite either. And somehow, always knew which one was needed in the room.

Even before Guilliman's return, she'd been making herself impossible to ignore.

Gura had sent her to meetings long before he had awoken. No rank. No clearance. Just a floating skull with a pink wig, a vox modulator tuned for lounge singer warmth, and an attitude that dared anyone to take her seriously—or not.

The High Lords had been furious.

They filed protests. Objections. One had even attempted to invoke censure proceedings.

Gura never showed up to respond.

Only Calli.

Quoting obscure compliance records. Citing ancient precedents. Correcting their calculations mid-sentence. Calmly. In perfect pitch.

And somehow… it worked.

She delivered battle doctrine encoded in jokes. Outmaneuvered political opponents with wry commentary. Remembered things Gura hadn't written down—but had once mumbled aloud, years ago, probably while eating shrimp.

A living archive. Wrapped in chrome. Layered in sarcasm.

When Guilliman returned, he didn't dismiss her.

He couldn't afford to.

She was effective. And right now, effectiveness was more valuable than dignity.

She followed him into sensitive meetings, always hovering just behind him like a herald from some deranged celestial court.

The High Lords objected again. Loudly.

"She's a joke," one said.

"She's a weapon," Guilliman answered. "Just not one you understand."

That shut them up.

For a time.

Truth be told, she saw things even he missed.

Tone. Gesture. Silence.

She whispered corrections and context at the exact right moment. And she was never wrong.

Seeing her now—half-hiding like a child behind a cabinet of paperwork and quartermaster forms—was absurd.

And exactly what he expected of her.

He should be irritated. He wasn't.

She had become part of the landscape.

As permanent as the chime of midnight servitors. As familiar as the silence beneath the Throne.
As inevitable as the war itself.

He didn't move for a while.

Just stood there, watching the soft glint of pink synthetic hair and golden etch-lines hovering awkwardly beside the filing cabinet. Runes flickered along her chassis, faint and erratic, like she believed she could blend in if she just committed to it hard enough.

The silence stretched. Long enough to be uncomfortable.
But not quite long enough to be cruel.

Then at last, his voice cut the stillness.

"Hiding from Kiara again?"

Dry. Flat. With only the faintest trace of sarcasm beneath it.

Not mockery. Not amusement.

Just… tired. Resigned.

There was a pause—barely perceptible—then the subtle hum of shifting flight-stabilizers. She moved a fraction. Not enough to reveal herself. Just enough to acknowledge the moment.

"No," she said evenly. "Just… appreciating the acoustics."

Her tone was smooth. Deadpan.
Not evasive—just distant, as if bracing for a follow-up she had already rehearsed and pre-rejected.

She didn't move from her absurd hiding place. Just floated there.

Resolute in her futility.

Guilliman didn't believe her. Obviously.

No one hid behind a cabinet of requisitions to contemplate acoustics.

But he let it stand.

She'd earned that much.

Takanashi Kiara.
Designation: Magos Biologis. Functionally uncontainable.

Bright-eyed in the way that meant trouble. Too quick. Too curious. Too loud for someone wrapped in Mechanicus red.

Guilliman had expected a researcher.

What he got was… Kiara.

She had transferred to Terra by her own insistence, bypassing multiple approval hierarchies through nothing but sheer, ceaseless persistence. The priesthood resisted—at first. But after the thirteenth formal observation request regarding "Mori-97," they gave in.

Her justification was clinical on paper:

"Human-ensouled servo-skull displaying cognitive and emotional continuity post-mortem. Behavioral anomaly. Hypothesis: unique soul-integrity retention. Subject requires proximity study."

Which, roughly translated, meant:
She was obsessed with Calli.
And no one could stop her.

Guilliman had read the full report.

Kiara didn't hover literally—but figuratively, she never left Calli alone.

She tracked her through palace systems. Rerouted her own walkways to "coincide" with Calli's location. Cross-referenced maintenance droid patrols and administrative schedules just to be nearby.

When she spoke to Calli, it was with unnerving cheer and far too many questions:

"If you had a spine, would it ache from how much you float?"
"Do you miss blinking?"
"What do dreams smell like when they're stuck in memory crystal?"

Once, she offered to build Calli a new skull casing—with optional wings and a smile module.

Calli's response had been flat and immediate: "No."

Kiara spent the next three days sketching it anyway.

She once tried to scan Calli mid-conversation. Called it "impulse research."

Calli didn't speak to her for two weeks.

Guilliman did not allow Kiara into high-level meetings.

Her clearance remained restricted. Her access, limited. Her input, undesired.

She once attempted to infiltrate a planning session by disassembling a supply drone, crawling inside it, and reassembling the unit around herself. It rolled into the chamber, bumped into a cogitator console, and announced in Kiara's unmistakable voice:

"Am drone."

Guilliman had calmly issued a lockdown order.

The drone was disassembled on the spot. Its components reassigned to the janitorium.

When questioned, Kiara blinked with full innocence and explained:

"Tactical infiltration! I was being efficient and mission-adjacent."

She was informed that another stunt like it would result in immediate reassignment to Mars.
It did not stop her.

She had submitted four formal requests to attend strategic briefings this week alone.

Guilliman had denied all of them.

Without comment.

Guilliman had long since concluded that Calli wasn't afraid of Kiara.

Just tired.

Profoundly, visibly tired.

She never argued. She evaded. She adjusted her float path to avoid corridors Kiara favored. She stopped using certain recharge alcoves. She adopted evasive positioning patterns that no military training had taught.

Once, Guilliman had passed her floating perfectly still, attached to a wall-mounted decor bracket. For a moment, he'd genuinely thought she was part of the furniture.

Her sarcasm scaled proportionally with Kiara's enthusiasm.

The more Kiara smiled, the sharper Calli's retorts became.

Not out of malice. Not anger.

It was a form of equilibrium.

A daily exercise in surviving whatever new fixation Kiara had decided was scientifically necessary.

It wasn't a rivalry.

It was survival. Plain and simple.

Guilliman's office was locked tight.

No Mechanicus access. No surveillance.
No Kiara.

She had tried once—claimed she needed to "check on structural harmonics." He'd had her badge code removed from three levels of corridor clearance before the day was out.

Calli treated this room like shelter.

Not for peace. Not for quiet.

Just because it was the only place Kiara couldn't follow.

Guilliman never said anything.

But he never stopped her, either.

He had once found her floating upside down near the ceiling projector, one claw extended, very obviously pretending to recalibrate something.

He didn't question it.

Now, she drifted still and silent behind him—half a shade, half a shadow.

The moment of levity faded.

There was work to do.

There was always work to do.

Without turning, Guilliman spoke—low, clipped, neutral.

"If you insist on loitering, make yourself useful."

Calli glided smoothly toward the terminal bank, servo-hums faint.

"Ugh," she muttered. "Nothing like soul-crushing bureaucracy to start the day. I can color code the despair if that helps."

It wouldn't. The reports would end up a slurry of unreadable rainbows.

Guilliman activated the primary cogitator array.

The screen split into eight data partitions.

Each one was worse than the last.


The data partitions blinked open, eight windows across the screen. Each one demanded action. Each one worse than the last.

---

Forge World Theta-59B had requested emergency rations.
The workforce was starving.
The local governor refused—claimed he couldn't divert from military reserves.

Guilliman overrode him.
Direct supply reallocation. No delay.

He added a note for reprimand: "Civilian misprioritization."

---

Adeptus Astra Telepathica had submitted a quiet, desperate request for additional astropaths—long-range messaging across the Rift was burning them out.

Eight had died in the last week.

Guilliman approved two replacements.
Added a flag for Cawl: "Signal enhancer prototypes—status?"

---

A shrine world on the northern fringe accused its own planetary defense force of impiety.

The PDF commander was a decorated officer. Decades of service. Loyal.

Guilliman dismissed the claim with two words: "Ritualized nonsense."

Privately, he marked it for review: "Ecclesiarchy influence threshold—monitor quietly."

---

On Gilead Secundus, a governor had instituted a planetary hymn mandate.
Punishments for dissent included public flaying.

Guilliman drafted a replacement.
Signed off on a clean political purge, masked as a personnel transfer.

Noted: "Ministorum eyes expected. Cover with staged martyrdom."

---

The Mechanicus of Triplex Phall had returned with another request.
They wanted unrestricted rights to dismantle pre-Solar STC-variant tanks.

Guilliman denied it with one word.

"No."

He didn't elaborate.

He didn't need to.

He added: "They'll try again under a new designation. Be ready."

---

The Imperial Navy was delayed again.
Fleet assets in Segmentum Solar caught in contradictory deployment orders—four admirals issuing cross-cutting commands.

Guilliman paused.
Rerouted full command authority to a fifth admiral. The one who actually listened.

Then flagged: "Begin restructuring review. Again."

---

Each decision came fast. Clean. Surgical.

He processed more in seconds than most subordinates managed in a week. This was where he excelled—not in ritual or politics—but in control.

There was no time to mourn the scale of failure.

He just acted.

Because action was all that remained.

Calli hovered nearby, feeding data into the terminal bank as he worked.
Pulling old records. Flagging contradictions. Annotating when necessary.

Occasionally, she spoke—low, even, efficient:

"That governor's brother owns the orbital silos. Flagged for conflict of interest."
"Triplex Phall renamed the STC again. It's called the 'Omnimorphic Aggression Platform' now."
"The Navy list you were shown was filtered. Here's the unfiltered one."

Guilliman didn't thank her.

He didn't have to.

She did the work.

That was enough.

As Guilliman authorized another supply chain override, a ninth data partition flickered to life on the cogitator.

Unscheduled. Unrequested.

Encrypted.

The seal was Mechanicus.

High priority.

Cawl.

Guilliman didn't groan. Didn't sigh.

But his jaw tightened.

Cawl rarely sent text. He preferred voice transmissions—verbose, heavily modulated, performed like sermons to an audience only he understood.

But this was written.

That alone was a warning.

---

MESSAGE ENCRYPTION: DELTA-PRIORIS SIGIL // CLEARANCE: MAGNA-PERSONAL
From: Cawl
To: Lord Guilliman

LORD GUILLIMAN,
My presence is required elsewhere, but I ask you to meet with me in person.
Planet: Vescaris.
Coordinates enclosed.
You may come alone or accompanied.
Do not bring Ecclesiarchal envoys.
The matter pertains to long-range containment scenarios and emergent phenomena I do not trust to vox.
— C**

---

Guilliman stared at the message.

Vescaris.

Remote. Unremarkable.

Technically Imperial, but untouched by a full compliance audit in three centuries.

It lay along a lesser-used subroute branching from the Hydraphur Corridor—an industrial wasteland of cold oceans, low atmosphere, and abandoned mines converted into half-operational forge tunnels.

No known strategic importance. No warp disturbances. No ecclesiarchal significance.

Exactly the kind of place Cawl would pick.

He read the message again.

Once as a commander.
Then again, as a skeptic.

The message from Vescaris still lingered on-screen, stark against the muted glow of the cogitator array.

Guilliman sat at his desk, motionless, save for one measured movement—his fingers drummed once, precisely, against the edge of the slate.

The silence wasn't hesitation.

It was calculation.

Cawl rarely asked for anything.

He informed. He assumed. Sometimes he declared. But a request—and one off Terra—was almost unheard of.

And to do it by text? That alone was strange. The Archmagos preferred voice transmissions, his sermons half-delivered in self-satisfied echoes of binaric abstraction.

Avoiding vox wasn't unusual in theory. But combined with the location—Vescaris, remote and strategically barren—and the complete lack of specifics…

It smelled of paranoia. Or worse: truth.

And that phrase—"emergent phenomena."

Cawl had used it before. Always in connection with things that shouldn't exist.

Guilliman didn't answer.
Not yet.

Instead, he marked the message for conditional review, pulled Vescaris's planetary file, and started digging.

Last five years of activity. Mechanicus presence logs. Industrial output. Resource routing. Civilian movement.

Anything that didn't match.

Behind him, Calli finally broke the silence.

"You're going, aren't you?" she said, voice cool as ever.

Then, with a hint of mock fatigue:
"Because obviously what this day was missing... was a mysterious summons from our favorite mad cyborg."

He didn't respond.

Not yet.

Cawl was useful.

Invaluable, if one insisted on being honest.

Without him, the Primaris Project would still be theoretical. Guilliman had relied on that work more than he cared to admit.

Cawl hadn't just built Marines.

He had refined the very foundation of what they could be.

New armor systems—Mark X plate, adaptable and modular. The Redemptor pattern Dreadnought, saving crippled warriors who would once have been left to die in silence. Repulsor and Gladiator vehicles: ugly, functional, and utterly effective. Segments of the Pharos network—rebuilt, twisted into something new, allowing emergency warp insertion where none should be possible.

And beneath it all… the whisper of forbidden thought.

Cawl flirted with AI.

Not openly. Not under one name. But under twelve, at least—each a sidestep, a technicality, a loophole wrapped in Mechanicus dogma.

Guilliman hadn't authorized all of it.

He hadn't even known about half of it—until it was already on the field.

He didn't trust Cawl.

Never had. Probably never would.

The man was too brilliant. Too insulated. Too certain of his own genius.

But Guilliman respected him—grudgingly.

Because Cawl got results.

And in this galaxy, results mattered more than ideals.

The problem was: Cawl didn't stop.

He didn't ask before pushing boundaries.
Didn't worry about limits.
Didn't recognize consequences.

He lived in that dangerous space between visionary and heretic.

And Guilliman had no doubt that whatever waited on Vescaris… would come from that same space.

The room was still.

Calli didn't speak.
The cogitators had gone silent.
Only the message from Vescaris remained, blinking softly in the corner of the display.

Guilliman leaned back in his chair. Just slightly.

He exhaled through his nose.

In another man, it might have been a groan.
From him, it was merely controlled. Measured. Heavy.

Not frustration. Not fear.

Just the weight of knowing what always followed when Cawl made contact.

He had no illusions about the message.

Cawl had found something. Built something. Done something.
And now he wanted to show it off.

This wasn't a warning. It wasn't even a true request.

It was the opening note in yet another violation of reality.
Probably something he'd been working on for a century—or ten.

Guilliman didn't wonder if it would be dangerous.

He wondered whether Cawl would present it with schematics… or ask him to name it.

Because that was always the real problem.

Not what Cawl might have done.

But what Guilliman would have to do with it.

If it worked—he'd be forced to use it.

Just like the Primaris.
Just like everything else.

And if it didn't?

It would still leave a mark.

Cawl's failures didn't vanish.

They echoed.

He sat there a moment longer.

Then straightened.

His fingers moved to the terminal with the same calm precision as before.

The reply was short. Decisive. Devoid of ceremony.

Acknowledged.
Arrival in three days standard.
Do not move the site.
No theatrics.
— RG

He hit send.

The light of the message faded.

And the work continued.

Notes:

So that's that. Yes a 6 year time skip... I think. I'm getting a little confused about the no year 000. Maybe it's 7 years? If that's the case I'll change the year to 005 instead of 006. Eventual engineering degree my ass. Anyways, you might have noticed that the planet names may or may not be real, thats because I had chat gpt spit out some planets/scenario ideas for issues for Guilliman to solve and I worked from there. I'd much rather not do that in the future, but I'll do what needs to be done. If any of you are really well versed in warhammer lore and feel like helping out, give me a reply and we can find a way to contact eachother (Discord probably). I could always use more helpers!
Also as much as I love how engaged and excited you all were about the last fuwamoco side story, there is a 80% likelyhood that nothing will change with orks. I don't know enough yet to make those changes lol. Maybe one day.
Regarding Big E and the Throne. A lot of you might be saying, hey wait! Isn't Big E a broken mess?
To that I say, look deeper. Things are different in this universe. Not every character is as it seems or exactly as they are in canon. Remember that Gura was in fact around and active during both the Great Crusade AND the Heresy. She had a big effect on things that I just haven't shared yet. The fuwamoco chapter may or may not be entirely canon, but I was trying to show you guys that sometimes, characters may have different names. (THAT IS NOT THE CASE FOR BIG E).
Anyways I hope you all enjoyed. Thanks to Allsham for his help!

Chapter 8: Chapter 7: -Filtered-

Vescaris, 006.M42

Guilliman’s ship emerged from the warp with a soundless ripple, its prow slipping into realspace like a dagger through silk. There was no blaze of arrival, no storm of light—only a shudder in the fabric of the void, subtle and cold. The stars themselves seemed to flinch at its passage, their patterns warping briefly as the vessel forced the galaxy to remember itself.

There were no fanfares. No honor guard stood ready in orbit. No vox-hymns rang out to announce the Lord Commander’s presence. That absence was intentional.

He did not wish to be seen.

The ship that bore him was sleek, obsidian-black, a shadow between stars. It was not built to inspire awe or fear. It was built to vanish.

Its core was an ancient Terran command hull—one of the proto-battlecruisers once fielded during the Unification Wars, before the Imperium had a name. Over the millennia, it had been reforged a thousand times, plated and replated, augmented with forbidden relics from dead stars and heretical caches no longer acknowledged. Adaptive armor lined its frame, scavenged from shattered xenos vessels whose names had been purged from record. Null-signature shielding hung over its profile like a burial shroud, bending machine-spirit auguries into silence.

No banners fluttered from its fins. No laurels crowned its hull. Its transponder gave no name. Only a single aquila was carved into the prow—so shallow it could only be seen when light struck it directly, and even then, time had dulled its edge.

The crew aboard was minimal.

There were no ceremonial officers, no trumpet-voiced heralds or choir-hymn vox channels. No Custodians. No Astartes. No one who might betray the gravity of his arrival by virtue of their presence.

Just a skeleton complement of handpicked Terran-born functionaries—mute in practice, if not in physiology—each sworn to triple-seal oaths and memory-capped for mission security.

Alongside them moved a cadre of red-robed tech-priests, their cowls low, their faces hidden behind interface masks and optic mecha-lenses. They did not speak. They streamed code between one another like whispers in a dead language. They answered only to encrypted prompts and cryptkey requests—never more, never less.

Each of them had been vetted, dissected, rebuilt, and re-vetted until nothing remained of their former selves but a designation and an assigned clearance level. Cawl had selected them, or claimed to. Guilliman no longer trusted the distinction between what Cawl offered and what he installed . It was all theater.

Trust itself had ceased to exist in Guilliman’s calculus. It was no longer an asset, but a variable—one that, left ungoverned, bred catastrophe.

He stood now at the ship’s forward observation deck, alone.

The chamber stretched outward in an octagonal arc, the walls ribbed in black adamantine like the interior of some great skeletal beast. The bones of ancient craftmanship arched above him, holding the void at bay. Pale lumen strips glowed behind the recesses of each rib, providing just enough light to carve out shape—but not enough to offer warmth.

Before him, a massive pane of plasteel stretched across the prow—multi-layered, warp-tempered, reinforced to withstand even a macro-cannon strike. It offered an unbroken view of the void beyond, unfiltered and absolute. Stars drifted in slow, patient spirals. Dust clouds swam in silence. And below, vast and lightless, waited the shadow of the world he had come to see.

His hands rested behind his back, loosely clasped. Shoulders square. Jaw set. Every angle of his posture projected composure and command. But it was not peace. It was calculation held perfectly still.

And notably, he was alone.

There was no soft chime, no harmonic hum, no snide commentary on the absurdity of his day. No pink-haired skull floating at shoulder height with an unreadable expression and a litany of compliance codes spoken like punchlines.

He had left her on Terra.

Officially: to assume temporary oversight of his administrative operations. She had the clearance. The access. The authority—more importantly, the voice. She was a logical substitute.

A logical excuse.

One she had used herself more than once, in reports that dripped with technical precision and bureaucratic sarcasm.

She had even filed the paperwork with what could only be described as enthusiasm.

But in reality…

---

Terra, 006.M42, 3 days prior


“You’re really leaving me behind?”

The voice had been quiet— accusatory and wounded in its own mechanized way.

Calliope Mori hovered just at eye-level, spinning lazily in the recycled currents of the embarkation bay. Her harmonics were low, almost mournful, filtering through the vocal emitters along her collar-spine. She was still pink and gold, still edged in her own kind of whimsy, still wearing the smug tilt of personality that no Mechanicus rite could scrub away.

But her lev-stabilizers pulsed unevenly. And she wasn’t making jokes.

Guilliman did not answer.

He stood near the shuttle’s ramp, hunched slightly over a brass-rimmed data-slate—thumb pressing hard to finalize his last report. A hard signature. The screen dimmed. He didn’t look at her.

“Is this about the Girlyman comment?”

Her tone pitched upward, straining for levity. Vox filters wobbled into something that might have been contrition if not for the undertone of panic. She drifted closer, servos twitching in nervous spirals.

“I said I was sorry. I even cited a legally binding footnote!”

Then, from somewhere deeper in the embarkation chamber, a voice crackled through the comm-array—bright, chaotic, and very wrong. It rang off the vox-grilles in fractured echoes, every syllable a little off, a little late, like laughter stitched from static.

“Caaalli~? Where did you go? If you’re hiding again, I will upgrade myself just to find you faster!”

A pause.

“…Don’t tempt me. I have the schematics.”

Kiara. Through six speakers at once. All slightly out of sync.

Calli drifted lower, her casing turning just slightly as if to shield herself from the sound. One optic flicked toward the corridor. The other locked on Guilliman.

“Don’t leave me with her,” she hissed. “She keeps trying to dissect me. I’m not just a servo-skull, you know. I’m an experience .”

Guilliman tapped the boarding panel. Once. Gold status icons flared to life along the ramp. He never looked away.

His posture didn’t shift.

But the corner of his mouth—just barely—moved.

A twitch. Nothing more. So fast it might not have been there at all.

Calli caught it.

“You just smiled! That was a smile!”

She spun wildly, optics flaring bright. “Wait—wait, I’ll be quiet, I promise! Bring me with you, I’ll even wear the dumb hat again—!”

The ramp retracted with a pneumatic hiss.

Atmospheric seals locked down with a finality that echoed through the floor.

Calliope Mori did not whimper. But had she been capable of it, she might have.

---

Vescaris, 006.M42

Guilliman remained motionless. But for a moment—a fleeting moment—there was a softness in his expression. A faint release of tension at the jaw. A shadow of guilt… or amusement. It was hard to tell.

It had been petty, yes.

But he had been in a petty mood.

And what waited below made the indulgence worth it.

He turned back to the viewport. His face reset into stone.

Dealing with Belisarius Cawl required a particular state of mind. Not discipline. Not clarity. Something else.

Vigilance. Exhaustion. Quiet dread.

One did not meet with Cawl expecting reason.

You braced for brilliance cloaked in madness and innovation dressed as a heresy no one had yet declared illegal.

Guilliman exhaled through his nose as the ship began its descent.

The deck tilted beneath his boots. The viewport darkened, shielding his eyes from the rising blaze of atmospheric reentry.

Vescaris came into view as the ship pierced the upper atmosphere. Thick clouds parted slowly, oozing away like the remnants of a rotting wound—rust-orange and threaded with static discharges. The descent vector dipped low, granting Guilliman a clear, brutal panorama of the world below.

Ugly. Broken. Industrious.

What little ocean the planet had once possessed was long gone—boiled off, siphoned dry, or poisoned until even bacteria turned to dust. 

The basins that remained were vast, cratered scars, carved into the crust like the aftermath of orbital bombardment. Where water had once existed, now lay pools of stagnant chemical waste, slick and multicolored, glinting faintly beneath sagging gantries and rust-choked atmospheric scrubbers. Extraction rigs—half-submerged and slumped—listed like the bones of drowned giants, forgotten and uncared for.

The Mechanicus had not merely occupied Vescaris. They had engraved themselves into it. Like a virus into bone.

Titanic forge-halls erupted from the surface like fortress-cathedrals. Slab-sided, seared black by millennia of heat and output. Each was armored in ceramite plating, rimmed with hazard runes and machine-script prayers. Augur dishes twisted lazily atop hydraulic stems. Exhaust stacks reached high enough to disappear into ash-choked sky, belching flame and fog into the upper atmosphere in alternating pulses.

Far below, mobile refineries crawled across the scarred plains, dragging their infrastructure behind them like planetary parasites. Tracked leviathans the size of hive cities, they moved with glacial inevitability, scouring the world for whatever dregs of value still remained.

Relay pylons stabbed upward in brutal formation, blinking in unity. From orbit, they formed a perfect grid—an iron circuitboard stitched into the planet’s skin. Power pulsed through them like blood through a vein. Mechadendrite trails sprawled between their nodes, forming what could only be described as vascular. As if the world itself had become a corpse kept twitching by artificial lifeblood.

Entire regions glowed red through the haze, pulsing faintly like molten circuitry beneath a charred dermis. Smoke clung to every surface, never rising—just lingering, like a planet refusing to exhale. Lightning flared along engineered fault lines. Atmospheric storms sparked in jagged patterns, unnatural and deliberate.

And then—rising through the burning horizon—one structure emerged. Larger than the rest. Vast beyond any human sense of proportion.

A single spire.

It punched through the clouds like a blade through flesh, its peak breaching the upper atmosphere even before the descent had completed. Guilliman didn’t need instruments to identify it.

The spire twisted in tiers, a fractal monolith of architecture and insanity—part mountain, part reactor, part sanctum. Launch arms extended and retracted from its flanks. Vapor hissed from countless vents. Entire sections rotated independently, grinding against one another in orchestral cadence.

Gravity anchors shimmered around its core, distorting air and matter. Pressure fields radiated from it in measured pulses. Its structure crawled with scaffolding and semi-mobile platforms, like insects tending to a hive that would never be finished.

It never was finished.

Construction was eternal.

Some of the structure’s bones looked ancient—blackened, cracked, and scorched. Coated in strange scrapcode runes and dead design dialects. Some Martian. Others… untraceable. Newer limbs jutted out at wild angles, with no symmetry, no blueprint, no apparent function. Like appendages grafted onto a host in defiance of anatomy.

Guilliman narrowed his eyes.

This was Cawl’s.

Of course it was.

There was no mistaking it. No other fabricator in the galaxy would dare to build something so vast, so heretical in design, so utterly alive .

A shrine to intellect unbound; genius unchecked.

Of all the engines of madness dotting the planet’s crust, only this one had been built out of equal parts brilliance and argument.

Guilliman exhaled, slow and heavy.

His shoulders drew tight beneath his formal cloak. He knew what this meant.

Whatever had dragged him to Vescaris…

Whatever Cawl had promised, or threatened, or hinted at…

It would not be simple.

It would not be safe.

And—Emperor forgive him—it would work.

Because it always did.

And because nothing else ever did.

---

The ship’s descent steepened as it cut through the final layers of Vescaris’s atmosphere. The inertial dampeners thrummed, whispering effort as the vessel dropped toward its target with grim efficiency.

Outside the viewport, the storm-thick haze gave way to fire-lit spires and metallic sprawl. The closer they drew, the more the world resolved into motion and heat—churning with industry, soaked in chemical light.

Even at this distance, the landing platform was colossal.

A hexagonal slab of adamantium and magnetic alloy, it hovered on seven titanic suspension towers, each wider than a cathedral dome. Gantries circled its perimeter in a dance of ceaseless motion—some folded back like wings in rest, others extended into the void, busy with unknown function.

The platform was not empty.

Servitors scuttled along its edge, dragging cables, adjusting cantilevered arms, venting purification incense from tarnished brass canisters. A half-dozen robed adepts stood at precisely measured intervals, statuesque, expressionless. Each bore a staff etched with Martian numerals and fitted with cogitator lenses that whirred softly in sync.

A single transmission ping greeted the ship—a looped binary burst, exactly twelve kilobytes:

AUTHORIZED | ARRIVAL | ENTRY PATH CONFIRMED

The ship landed with a muted, resonant clunk , magnetic clamps snapping into place beneath the hull. The airlock seals disengaged with a hiss that felt almost ceremonial.

Guilliman stood poised at the threshold, hands folded behind his back, posture carved from discipline.

The boarding ramp extended slowly, each meter deliberate, feeding him into the belly of a machine that never truly slept.

The heat hit first—radiant and heavy, laced with static and the acrid tang of ozone. Sacred oils and metal-sting bit into his senses. The scent of industry.  

Servos, cranes, hissing pneumatics, and chanting data-loops rose and fell in mechanical cadence.

He stepped down the ramp.

Around him, the servitors peeled away from his path without prompting, instinct or programming guiding them like birds scattered by wind.

The robed adepts did not move. Not a twitch.

Then: a deep clang.

From the center of the platform, a seamless plate shuddered. Gears turned. Pistons vented steam. Red lumen strips flared to life, outlining a perfect hexagon as a recessed elevator began to rise.

Guilliman slowed as it locked into place.

A figure stood at its center, framed by heat shimmer and the harsh glow of machine-light.

Belisarius Cawl.

Massive. Angular. In constant motion.

He should not have fit the space so perfectly—but did.

A forest of mechanical limbs coiled around him, each moving with independent logic. Servo-arms bristled with sensors, optics, plasma vents, vox-arrays, and no fewer than four active auspexes. Antennae scraped the air, ticking rhythmically. Red robes hung in layers like the vestments of a church built for war.

He walked forward with a strange, deliberate grace. Reverse-jointed legs clicked softly with each step, stabilized by clawed traction limbs and grav-stutters that thrummed underfoot. Every movement was purposeful—and slightly off.

Servo-tendrils reached out to test atmospheric variables. Others spun gently in ritualized maintenance. His presence bent the air with faint null field pulses and barely contained radiation bleedoff.

He cast a shadow like scaffolding collapsing in slow motion.

His voice came not from one emitter, but many—overlapping and asynchronous.

Old man. Young woman. Vox-distortion. Machine-code. Binary clicks. They layered into a sound that almost resembled speech.

“Roboute Guilliman. My friend. My ally. My reluctant executioner of progress. Welcome.”

Guilliman stopped at the base of the ramp.

His face was unreadable.

He studied Cawl in silence—the moving limbs, the sensor drones above, the floor beneath for traps or contingencies. Only then did he look directly into the largest of Cawl’s optics.

“Cawl,” he said, flat and unimpressed.

Cawl’s limbs reconfigured slightly. One of the vox-tones modulated upward. “You arrive precisely as predicted. A favorable margin of error. Very satisfying.”

Another cluster of mouths—or emitters—spoke. “I considered dispatching a welcoming drone. But I suspected you would find that insulting.”

Guilliman stared at him.

“I assume you’ve brought me here to show me something I’ll hate.” He finally spoke.

A flicker of movement rippled through Cawl’s body—servo-limbs rearranging, others retracting or extending in mechanical approval. “No, my friend. I’ve brought you here to show you something you’ll need .”

A pause.

“And hate.”

The migraine was already starting.

Guilliman closed his eyes.

This was going to be worse than he thought.

“Come,” Cawl said.

The floor behind him irised open—an aperture of metal petals peeling back to reveal a platform descending on concentric rings of augur-lamps and warning sigils. The glow beneath flickered in rhythmic pulses, casting shifting light across the deck.

“You will want to see it. You will want to hate it. But eventually... you will use it.”

Guilliman followed without a word.

The lift began its descent with a deep, resonant hum. It moved too smoothly for something this ancient, too quickly for something this large. As it dropped, rows of lumen-rings illuminated the shaft walls in sequence, revealing a dense web of conduits, reinforced data-tethers, and liquid-cooled arteries pulsing with soft orange light.

Guilliman stood in silence, hands clasped behind his back, gaze fixed forward. He had no intention of encouraging conversation.

Cawl, naturally, spoke anyway.

“It has been a productive cycle,” he said, his voice rolling out like a corrupted hymn. “I’ve finalized a prototype for the nanomemetic flesh-regrowth lattice. A full body in nineteen seconds. Seventeen, if the subject is compliant.”

He continued, matter-of-factly, “I’m also in the third testing phase of an orbital fortress that doubles as a stellar forge. It sings while charging. I think that was a mistake, but it seems to enjoy it.”

Guilliman blinked once. He said nothing.

“Oh, and the Legio Cybernetica thought I was dead. They attempted to salvage my tertiary personality core. I had to scold them via psychic echo. They were very apologetic.”

Guilliman’s expression remained blank. He was catching only fragments now—barely parsing the words. The headache was beginning to throb behind his eyes.

“And—ah—my favorite: a hemocode suggestion engine that rewrites battlefield tactics mid-conflict using predictive logic derived from ancient Terran board games. Results... mixed.”

Guilliman’s eyes slid toward a nearby screen embedded in the shaft wall, watching it scroll through incomprehensible glyphs.

The platform slowed. The air thickened, the light dimming to bioluminescent threads woven through dark steel. The shaft grew colder.

“But those,” Cawl said—two of his servo-limbs still scrawling equations in midair—“those are distractions. Tinkerings. Indulgences for lesser minds.”

Guilliman turned his head, just slightly. He said nothing.

“My newest endeavor is different,” Cawl continued. His voice lowered. Not solemn—Cawl never sounded solemn—but focused. “Foundational. The kind of work that redefines comprehension.”

“What have you done?” Guilliman asked, cautious and controlled.

Cawl paused.

“I received a gift,” he said.

Guilliman’s brow tightened. “From whom?”

“Your sister,” Cawl replied, almost fondly.

“Gura?” Guilliman’s voice was sharp with disbelief.

“Hmph,” Cawl said, to himself more than to Guilliman. Several of his vocal modulator stacks re-synced, smoothing the distortions. His posture straightened slightly—a rare gesture of respect.

“She is... fascinating. Impossible to predict. Occasionally exhausting. But unlike most who throw themselves at the machinery of the Imperium, she listens.”

Guilliman did not respond, but his posture shifted—a flicker of surprise in the carefully maintained calm.

“We spoke at length,” Cawl continued. “During those first days. Between her return and your reawakening. She asked questions no one else had thought to ask. Gave answers I didn’t expect. There is clarity in her madness.”

“You trust her?” Guilliman asked.

“No,” Cawl said without hesitation. “But I believe her. She does not need to be trusted to be right.”

The platform neared the base of the shaft. The glow from below began to intensify.

“She understood what was needed. That the Imperium would require more than soldiers and sermons. It would need momentum.”

He paused, then added more quietly, “She asked what I needed to make that happen. I told her something impossible. She gave me something... improbable.”

Red lumen-lights formed a ring around the vault ahead, framing the end of their descent.

Guilliman folded his arms. “You’re being evasive.”

“I’m being careful,” Cawl said. “You have a tendency to react... poorly to ambition.”

Guilliman’s voice darkened. “Is it dangerous?”

“If misused—devastating,” Cawl said. “But wielded correctly? It could reforge a broken segmentum in a generation.”

“Then I’m going to hate it.”

“Almost certainly.”

Guilliman's headache bloomed behind his temples.

The corridor ahead narrowed, then widened again. The walls glowed faintly—etched in High Gothic invocation and Mechanicus logic-lattice, their runes pulsing as the pair approached.

At the far end stood a vault door: massive, circular, engraved in overlapping strata of psychic and digital code. Its perimeter throbbed faintly, barely containing the power woven into its seals.

Cawl raised one long limb and interfaced with the wall.

The door groaned.

Mist hissed out in sharp jets. The tang of sacred oils and age-old machine-grease filled the air.

The vault began to open.

“This,” Cawl said behind him, his voice mechanical, reverent, and steady, “was the gift.”

Light filtered down in slats, one aperture at a time, high above the chamber. What had been shadow resolved into silhouette.

First the curve of armor—broad, ridge-backed.

Then a prow, chipped and irregular, reinforced by mismatched bracing plates bolted over ancient wounds.

A hull line emerged, impossibly long, stretching beyond the curve of the bay.

It was vast.

Wrapped in scaffolding. Laced in gantries. Scarred by time and half-repaired wounds.

Work crews clung to its flanks like insects—tech-priests, servo-haulers, suspended chorus-litters intoning binharic praise.

Above, a broken nameplate had been scrubbed halfway clean—but never replaced. The words were unreadable, the past only partially acknowledged.

Deeper in shadow, cathedral-scale engines loomed dormant. The keel extended into darkness, not hidden—simply too large to fit within a single view.

Guilliman inhaled, quietly. His posture shifted by half a degree.

Behind him, Cawl spoke again—low, pleased, a tinge of pride slipping into the edges of his voice.

“Six years, and I’m still mostly working through the outer systems. There’s damage, of course—but it runs. I’ve charted power distribution, hull response, subsystem redundancy. It’s… efficient.”

He turned toward Guilliman.

“There’s much to learn, Lord Commander. Very much.”

It was a Gloriana-class battleship.

He knew the shape before the light revealed it. The curves. The mass. The impossible, unmistakable scale.

There were only so many Gloriana-class ships.

Each one a relic of the Great Crusade—crown jewels of a forgotten empire. Each one etched into memory not by aesthetics, but by function. By legend and the names they carried.

Gura had possessed ten of them by the end.

How?

Because she had asked.

She was the only Primarch who had ever petitioned for more. The others saw the ships as symbols. She saw them as weapons.

Her legion had always been naval specialists—boarding maneuvers codified as doctrine, deep void strikes as routine. Entire campaigns mapped by warp tides and orbital vectoring. Where others saw fleet actions as support, Gura turned them into mainline war.

She made void warfare a language.

And her legion?

Fluent.

Ten of these giants had followed her into the Eye of Terror.

Only four had returned.

This one, she had listed in her after-action report with infuriating simplicity: “Undergoing repairs.”

He remembered this ship.

He remembered hating it.

Of course he did.

She had named it the Snacc Wagon .

The Galen campaign had once been orderly. Precise. A textbook offensive by Guilliman’s design—phalanx formations, fire corridors, armored spearheads.

Then this thing had dropped out of the warp.

No heralds. No vox greeting. Just a brute of a ship pouring shark-toothed drop pods and signal jammers that made his comms officers bleed from the nose.

It had bisected an ork kroozer mid-drift—not with guns, but by ramming through it and boarding both halves simultaneously.

Gura had commed him halfway through the chaos, her voice sliced by interference:

“Surprise support! Don’t mind the mess~”

He hadn’t responded. Couldn’t. The comms were deliberately scrambled.

The Carcharodons had cleared their target zones six hours ahead of schedule.

Technically, a success.

Tactically, a catastrophe.

He had filed three separate incident reports afterward. None survived Gura’s post-mission “edits.”

But… it worked. It always worked.

Guilliman stepped forward, boots echoing lightly on the gantry. Not rushed. Not hesitant.

Just weighted—by memory and ecognition.

His eyes traced the hull. The mismatched armor plates. Weld lines etched in unfamiliar alloys. Warp scoring healed by grafts, ancient wounds dressed with modern scars.

Battle damage. Warp exposure. Stabilized. Maintained.

“This ship went into the Eye with her,” he said.

It was not a question.

“Yes,” Cawl said simply. “And returned. Largely intact. Anomaly, but one I’ve catalogued extensively.”

Guilliman’s gaze moved upward, toward where the bridge must lie, shrouded in scaffold and shadow.

“How much is original?”

“Enough,” Cawl said, almost reverent. “The primary spine. Core reactors. Multiple armor layers. The skeleton is hers. The organs have... evolved.”

Guilliman’s silence stretched a beat longer.

“She gave this to you?” he asked, though the answer was already known.

“Voluntarily,” Cawl said. “With purpose. She called it a… jumpstart.”

A muscle twitched at Guilliman’s jaw—not in irritation. Something deeper. Tired. Familiar.

“Of course she did.”

The ship’s nameplate caught a sliver of rising light—jagged, half-polished, abandoned. As if the effort had been made, then dismissed.

Typical.

Gura had never cared for ceremony. But she understood the weight of symbol. And this was a message, whether she said it aloud or not.

He let out a breath he hadn’t noticed he was holding.

“This is going to cause problems,” he muttered.

“Naturally,” Cawl said. “Several factions already suspect the project’s nature. I’ve contained the leaks. For now.”

Guilliman’s expression tightened.

“And when it’s finished?”

“When it’s finished,” Cawl said, a quiet satisfaction threading through his words, “we will have the foundation of a fleet the Imperium has not seen since your father walked the stars.”

Guilliman said nothing.

The implications curled like heat in the back of his mind. Tempting. Terrifying.

A Gloriana-class ship that had crossed the Eye of Terror and returned, only to be dissected and analyzed.

Such a thing would divide the Mechanicus. Undermine existing doctrine. Fracture entire forge worlds.

He looked down at the flickering sparks across the hull, watching the labor of hundreds—tech-priests in climbing harnesses, servitors on suspended platforms, adepts chanting as they worked.

He could almost hear her voice again, bright and maddening:

“Well? You said you needed tools.”

“She knew exactly what this would do,” he said.

“Indeed,” Cawl replied. “And she gave it anyway.”

Guilliman’s gaze lingered on the ship’s battered flank a moment longer. Then he turned—eyes sharp, tone low.

“This isn’t why you summoned me.”

Cawl’s cranial unit ticked softly, optical arrays rotating in deliberate succession before settling on Guilliman.

“A Gloriana-class battleship being dissected and possibly reproduced is not a sufficient reason to warrant your presence?” he asked.

“No,” Guilliman said. “Not for you.”

The silence that followed was thick with distance—not personal, but procedural. Only the faint hum of servitors and the occasional clang of tools against hull metal filled the space between them.

“You’ve already begun the work,” Guilliman continued. “The ship is stable. Secured. Studied. You’ve been cataloguing it for six years.”

Cawl did not dispute it.

Guilliman’s gaze narrowed. “So why now?”

Cawl emitted a dry, layered sound—a tone composed of static, mirth, and something approximating a sigh. “Walk with me,” he said.

They moved into a side passage, dimly lit by floor-embedded lumen strips that cast long shadows up the ribbed walls. The corridor narrowed as they descended, the light amber and cold, the architecture raw and unpolished.

Guilliman said nothing, but followed.

“Since the day she delivered it,” Cawl began, “the vessel has been… cooperative.”

Guilliman raised an eyebrow. “Cooperative?”

“Exceptionally so,” Cawl said. “Its interfaces opened without protest. Minimal rituals. Barebones rites. Few appeasement protocols.”

He glanced back briefly, optical arrays narrowing. “It listens. It answers. It allows.”

“That doesn’t happen,” Guilliman said flatly.

“No,” Cawl agreed. “It doesn’t. Not unless it was told to.”

They stopped before a vault door recessed into the wall, half-swallowed by age. Data-cables draped down its sides like ceremonial garlands, framing faded cog engravings with a semblance of reverence.

“She asked it to obey,” Cawl said. His voice, for once, was quiet.

Guilliman didn’t answer, but something in his posture stilled.

“You’re certain?”

“I do not speculate, Lord Commander. The behavioral patterns are distinct. There is no coercion.”

The corridor ahead pulsed with soft lumen-glow, auspex fields brushing faintly against Guilliman’s armor as they advanced.

“Before I could act,” Cawl said, “I had to understand it. Fully. Not as we understand most spirits—through appeasement and half-rituals—but as it is.”

They stopped at another sealed chamber. Cawl gestured toward it, but did not yet open the door.

“I mapped its neural lattice,” he said. “Every decision branch. Every recursive loop. No intrusion. No trauma. Only scans.”

Guilliman’s brow creased. “Non-invasive?”

“Entirely,” Cawl said. “The lattice is whole. Responsive.”

He paused again.

“I located its personality nodes—rudimentary, but distinct. Humor, tone, even preference. Traits encoded in micro-flux patterns across its cognitive core.”

Guilliman blinked. Slowly. “It has preferences?”

“Yes,” Cawl said, almost reverent. “It likes efficiency and directness. It loathes bureaucratic redundancy.”

Guilliman’s mouth twitched. “Of course it does.”

“With that foundation,” Cawl continued, as if uninterrupted, “I began modeling responses. Testing parameters. Not through command—through trust. And from that trust…”

He turned to face the sealed door.

“I built this.”

With a fluid gesture, he extended a limb toward the vault. Mechadendrites spiraled into motion, dozens of fine-tipped servo-tools threading into data-ports and rune-locks. The chamber door hissed open—not with a grind or clatter, but a clean, deliberate exhale.

Light flooded out. First sterile blue. Then a soft, warm pulse. Almost like breath.

The room beyond was domed and circular. Logic-stacks climbed the walls in layers, studded with noospheric nodes and surrounded by golden cable coils that converged overhead like branching neurons.

At the center floated a sphere.

Plated alloy, suspended midair by grav-stabilizers. Seamless at first glance, but constantly in motion—mechanical tessellations folding and shifting, patterns pulsing across its surface like circuits thinking in real time.

Lenses turned. Panels flexed. A sound rang out.

A perfect tritone. Harmonized.

Then—

“You’re the big blue one! I’ve read so many bad things about you!”

The voice was bright, unfiltered, and gleefully inappropriate.

“Don’t worry,” it continued, “I don’t believe most of them. Just the fun parts.”

Guilliman froze. One brow lifted in what might, on another man, have been alarm.

Cawl did not flinch. “She’s… still stabilizing.”

“Hi!” the voice said again. “I’m NEURO. That stands for Neural-Enhanced Utility: Reactive Oracle. Or! Or... Not Even Remotely Ordinary. You choose. I don’t care.”

A pause.

“I lied. I care a lot.”

Guilliman opened his mouth. Then closed it again.

NEURO carried on, delighted.

“You’re taller than the render! And way angrier! You radiate divorced dad energy. Have you considered meditation? Or a snack?”

Cawl turned slowly. His optics dimmed slightly in a gesture that—on anyone else—might have been embarrassment.

“She’s exchanged messages with your sister,” Cawl said. “But you’re the first she’s spoken to directly.”

“I had hoped,” he added, “for a more formal tone.”

“First contact achieved,” NEURO declared. “No casualties yet. Good start.”

Silence fell.

Then, brightly:

“I’m very smart. And very loud. Please clap.”

The humor barely registered.

Guilliman’s expression didn’t change, but the air around him shifted—dense, pressurized. A single step back in assessment.

His eyes moved from the hovering core to Cawl.

“That,” he said slowly, “is an Abominable Intelligence.”

Cawl’s servo-limbs twitched. “No, Lord Commander. She is a Machine Spirit—elevated, yes, but sanctified through—”

“Do not dress it in robes and incense,” Guilliman cut in. “I know what I’m looking at.”

His fingers curled slightly at his side, a controlled motion—one breath removed from reaching for a weapon.

He had seen too many wars start with voices like hers.

NEURO blinked. “Wow. Hostile first impressions. Do you treat all your miracles like war crimes?”

Guilliman turned fully toward her, his posture sharp as a blade drawn slowly.

“You speak like a person. You reason. You adapt. That makes you dangerous.”

“I also tell jokes,” NEURO replied, cheerful and unrepentant. “That makes me charming.”

“It makes you unpredictable.”

He turned again to Cawl.

“Why wasn’t I told?”

“Because,” Cawl said, “you would have destroyed her before understanding what she offers.”

Guilliman’s jaw tightened. “That possibility remains.”

The silence that followed was heavy. NEURO rose slightly in the air, her eye-lenses dimming as her systems realigned.

Cawl’s cranial unit rotated slowly—each click deliberate, each adjustment like a scalpel drawn carefully toward meaning.

“You see danger. I see design,” he said. “Yours, indirectly.”

Guilliman said nothing. But his gaze was enough.

“You asked for resurrection,” Cawl continued. “Of fleets. Of infrastructure. Of purpose. This is that resurrection. The logical apex of every tool you authorized.”

Guilliman’s voice came low, cold. “You’re implying she is a tool.”

“She is cooperative,” Cawl said. “And self-contained. Her processes are traceable. Her boundaries are intact.”

Guilliman stepped closer to NEURO, studying the alloy casing, the soft light of emitters, the gentle hum of dataflow.

“And if those boundaries fail?”

“They won’t,” Cawl said. “Because they aren’t imposed. They’re agreed upon. And she honors them.”

NEURO chimed in, chipper as ever. “I also pinky-swore, which I’m told has legal standing among Terran juveniles.”

Guilliman’s mouth twitched—briefly. Not a smile. More a warning that his patience had found the edge.

He turned to Cawl again. “You’re betting the future of the Imperium on a pinky swear.”

Cawl’s servo-limbs clicked as he shifted. “Of course not. That would be irresponsible.”

A pause.

“I also triple-reinforced it with quantum-sealed vow protocols, logic-loop countermeasures, and a fail-deadlock psychic ward keyed to my personal cranial signature.”

Guilliman blinked once. Slowly.

NEURO added brightly, “But the pinky swear was first.”

Guilliman closed his eyes. Just for a moment. Enough for the weight of the moment to settle like lead in the back of his skull.

A breath.

A silent prayer to a father who hadn’t answered in ten thousand years.

“If this is how Mars is run now,” he muttered, “no wonder it’s on fire half the time.”

NEURO let out a cheerful beep.

“Statistically, it’s only on fire seventeen percent of the time,” she said brightly. “That’s practically a holiday!”

Cawl nodded sagely. “Efficiency has increased since I allowed her to monitor thermal crisis dispatches.”

Guilliman did not scream.

In his mind, that counted as restraint.

He folded his arms and turned to face NEURO fully. His posture stiffened, tone clipped.

“Designate. State your core function.”

NEURO rose a few centimeters, stabilizers adjusting as if bracing for judgment.

“Core function: interface, operations, ship coordination, tactical mirth.” She paused. “Also, I sing sometimes. But only when it’s funny.”

Guilliman’s brow lowered. “Define tactical mirth .”

“It’s like strategic morale manipulation,” NEURO offered. “Except with more zingers. And fewer corpses.”

His eye twitched.

He adjusted his line of inquiry. “Access override paths. How many individuals hold authority over you?”

“Currently?” NEURO said. “Just Dad. And technically your sister, but we’ve never met in person. She sent a handshake protocol, some very persuasive code, and a… fish emoji? I inferred trust.”

Guilliman blinked once. Then slowly: “Define ‘Dad.’”

NEURO swiveled midair, lenses brightening with mechanical confidence.

“You know. Dad. Beep-boop creator. Awkward hugs. Emotionally unavailable but tries his best.” A beat. “Also built my cranial scaffolding.”

Guilliman turned to Cawl with a flat look.

“She means you.”

“Yes,” Cawl confirmed. “It’s not a designation I requested.” He hesitated. “She insists. I suspect it fulfills a behavioral heuristic. Or possibly spite.”

“Spite?”

NEURO added, “It makes him deeply uncomfortable. I’ve run the numbers.”

Guilliman’s eyes narrowed.

Cawl’s optics ticked slightly out of sync. His voice, however, remained composed.

“Her analysis… is not incorrect.”

But something lingered in the way he said it. A slight rise in vocal modulation. More resonance than necessary.

Pride, buried beneath a metric ton of denial.

Guilliman stepped forward. “Run diagnostic protocol: threat compliance logic. Simulate capture by hostile force.”

NEURO tilted. “Ooh, I love roleplay. Okay, let’s see…”

Her tone brightened into an artificial mock-seriousness:

“IF HOSTILE ENTITY ATTEMPTS—”

A static stutter.

“—filtered—”

She hovered innocently in place, humming.

Guilliman’s eyes narrowed. “What was that?”

Cawl stepped forward, as if preparing himself for impact. “A necessary interjection.”

“Explain,” Guilliman said.

“NEURO’s behavioral modeling is… unique,” Cawl said. “She is not a machine spirit in the traditional sense. She is closer to an improvisational logic cluster, built on recursive personality lattices.”

“Speak plainly,” Guilliman said flatly.

“She’s unfiltered,” Cawl admitted. “Even when compliant, her thoughts are… frank.”

“I only say what everyone’s thinking,” NEURO said helpfully. “And occasionally what no one should be thinking.”

Cawl exhaled. “I repurposed a dormant linguistic framework—Project NERE—to monitor and suppress undesirable expressions. Originally it was a diplomatic filtering protocol.”

Guilliman’s voice was ice. “And if it fails?”

“Then we’ll both learn something new and dangerous,” Cawl said. “Likely in the same moment.”

NEURO rotated gently. “I miss NERE sometimes. She says ‘filtered’ with such judgment.”

Guilliman’s eyes stayed locked on NEURO. The glow from her projection rings traced flickers of blue light across her armored casing, her movements gentle, almost casual.

He folded his arms again. The weight of realization settled behind his eyes.

“This isn’t just an experiment,” he said. “You built her for the Crusade.”

Cawl didn’t answer right away. One cranial array rotated—possibly a shrug. Possibly a nod.

“I built her for the future,” he said finally. “The Crusade is simply the first place the future must reach.”

He stepped into a slow pace, boots tapping lightly against the polished deck.

“Fleet coordination. Strategic interpretation. Logistic harmonization. That’s what you’re testing.”

“Among other things,” Cawl said.

Guilliman’s voice hardened. “And if she fails?”

Cawl stopped.

“Then we lose one prototype,” he said. “And gain invaluable failure data.”

He turned to Guilliman, all lenses forward.

“But I do not believe she will.”

NEURO let out a delighted beep.

“Aww. He believes in me. That means I’m real now, right? Like Pinocchio? But with fewer limbs to set on fire.”

Guilliman pinched the bridge of his nose.

He hated it.

Not because it was illogical. Not even because it was heretical—though by every metric, it was.

He hated it because it worked.

The air around her shimmered with faint, low-level energy flux—tuned so precisely it barely registered. No waste. No excess. Every computation folded back into itself like a recursive prayer.

He had served aboard Gloriana-class ships before.

He knew their spirits—powerful, temperamental, divine in their own strange way. They bargained like demigods wrapped in brass and fire. Every maneuver required incense, ritual, entire shrines of appeasement. Entire vox-liturgies composed just to ask for a single course correction.

They didn’t obey. They bargained.

But this?

This construct—NEURO—was something else.

Still vast and strange, but not buried under layers of static and superstition.

She listened.

No rites. No begging. No ritual pomp.

Gura’s influence. Without question.

A tool like this could rewrite doctrine.

Thousands of ships could be freed from the chains of hesitation. Fleet maneuvers could be reactive, not ritualistic. Commands could travel as fast as thought, not as fast as prayer.

The Imperium could move. It could breathe .

He knew what that meant.

And that was what he hated most of all.

He would use it.

Because he had to.

Because the galaxy was burning, and flawed salvation was still salvation.

The headache behind his eyes sharpened. Grew roots.

He turned away from NEURO, the weight of what she represented settling like armor across his shoulders. He didn’t speak. Not yet. Words meant acknowledgment. And he wasn’t ready to admit that.

Cawl followed in silence, allowing the moment to breathe.

As they returned to the outer corridor, Guilliman finally stopped.

“I’ll need full access to the logs,” he said. “Interaction chains. Behavioral modeling. Every line of code she’s absorbed.”

“Of course,” Cawl replied. “Though she may comment on your taste in data formatting.”

NEURO piped in, cheerful and distant: “Bring snacks next time! And tell your sister I like her music protocols. Very rhythmic. 8.7 out of 10.”

Guilliman didn’t quicken his pace. But the sigh he released echoed longer than it should have.

Cawl tilted his head slightly, optics dimming.

“I trust you’ll see the utility.”

“I already do,” Guilliman muttered. “That’s the problem.”

The silence stretched between them like a warning—thin, taut, and waiting to snap.

“There is… one more matter,” Cawl said, almost casually. “Smaller, perhaps. But no less significant.”

Guilliman stopped. He didn’t turn all the way.

“You always say that when it’s going to be worse.”

“An illogical projection,” Cawl said. “But not inaccurate.”

He gestured with one spindly limb toward a smaller corridor nestled between two data-spires—half-hidden, unassuming.

“This way.”

Guilliman hesitated.

“Another project?” he asked.

“No,” Cawl said. “Not quite.”

Behind them, NEURO’s voice echoed faintly as the door sealed.

“Bye, Dad! Bye, Blueberry! Don’t forget to recalibrate your existential dread modules!”

Guilliman did not respond.

He simply walked forward, head pounding.

Cawl filled the silence with his movements—limbs clicking and ticking with practiced rhythm, each footfall deliberate. A machine constructing phrasing mid-step.

“This one is… delicate,” Cawl said at last. “Technically still under observation.”

Guilliman raised an eyebrow. “Another weapon?”

“Not in the conventional sense,” Cawl replied. “But quite possibly more disruptive.”

They stopped before a modest vault door.

Modest, for the Mechanicus, meant thick enough to repel orbital fire.

No warning sigils. No danger glyphs. Just silence—and a single biometric reader glowing faintly on the wall.

Guilliman’s jaw tightened.

“What exactly am I walking into?”

Cawl placed one clawed hand on the reader. The locks disengaged in sequence—a deep, sequential thunk that rattled through the floor.

“I advise… composure,” Cawl said.

Which meant, of course, that composure would be difficult.

The seal cracked open.

Air hissed through the widening seam—dry, cold, laced with the distinct sharpness of latent psychic residue.

Guilliman stepped forward.

And believed—perhaps foolishly—that his migraine could not possibly get worse.

The chamber beyond was dim.

Lumen-orbs floated in slow orbits along the ceiling, casting drifting shadows that danced across sculpted archways and bone-wrought inlays. The architecture was too smooth, too symmetrical. Human hands had not built this.

Psychic pressure hung in the air.

Guilliman stepped inside, boots ringing once against the smooth alloy floor. The sound faded too quickly—absorbed by design or something else.

At the chamber’s center stood a woman.

She was serene, undeniably Aeldari.

Her skin shimmered pale as starlight, her crimson eyes half-lidded beneath a wraithbone circlet that rested on her brow like a concept given form. Her robes flowed in dark indigo, trimmed with spirit-stone filigree that pulsed faintly with impossible hues.

She did not speak at once.

And he did not recognize her.

But his senses—those gene-forged instincts honed through decades of war—registered the anomaly immediately.

Not a standard psyker, not a witch in the sense his kind knew, but not quite alive in the way mortals were.

She inclined her head, a gesture shaped more by ritual than respect.

“Roboute Guilliman,” she said, her Gothic shaped with practiced elegance. Fluid and lilting, with every syllable carefully placed.

“I am Yvraine. Herald of what may yet be… and what was long denied.”

She stepped forward, slow and measured. No challenge in her movement. Only presence.

“We have much to speak of, you and I.”

Guilliman didn’t answer.

His expression remained carved in neutral marble—imperial, unreadable.

But somewhere deep behind his eyes, another category of headache began to bloom.

He blamed his sister.

 

Notes:

There! a nice long one for y'all. Sorry for the wait. I've been swamped with school work. This was a lot of fun to write. Originally I had no plans to include Neuro. But the opportunity was too good to pass up. TOO good. Don't expect a plethora of Non Hololive V-tubers, as I'm really unfamiliar with them. To be honest, the ones I know are really limited to those with Holo EN past lives, Chibidoki, Shylily, and PastaroniRaviolli. Anyways. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Thanks to Allsham again for his help.
One more thing. I know I mentioned this in the side story, but I also know some of you don't exactly read those, despite them being canon for the most part. I have created a discord. If you are interested in assisting me with this project or some of my other ones, (with lore help, beta reading, or even suggestions for the future) feel free to join. Here is the link: https://discord.gg/AfY57VCP4v
Have a good day

Chapter 9: Chapter 8: Guilliman's Tuesday

Terra, 006 .M42

Calliope Mori had been a Guardsman once.

She’d stood ankle-deep in mud and blood on nameless worlds, clutching a battered lasgun to her chest like it was the only thing keeping her heart inside her ribs. She’d held a trench line for six endless hours with a shattered leg, the splintered bone biting through flesh every time she shifted. Her lasgun had been cracked, half-fused from a power surge—but she’d kept firing until the charge pack died, then fought on with grenades and sheer spite.

She’d dragged three wounded comrades from the smoking wreck of a Chimera, flames clawing at their backs, the air thick with promethium and cooked meat. Bullets had snapped past her head, so close they shaved strands of hair, and she’d laughed. Laughed like a lunatic because the alternative was to stop, to think, and to die.

She’d once punched a commissar square in the jaw for trying to abandon terrified conscripts, sending his cap skidding through the mud. Then, with bloodied knuckles and a grin that tasted of iron, she’d turned to those same conscripts and talked them into holding the line anyway.

She’d volunteered for the rearguard. Every time. Even when it was a death sentence. Especially then.

And in her final moments—moments she remembered like shards of a broken mirror—she’d faced down a towering Daemon Prince of Khorne. The beast’s eyes had burned with a furnace fury, its blade big enough to cleave tanks. Calliope had been nothing beside it, just a Guardsman with a knife and a grin. She’d jammed that blade straight through the daemon’s eye, felt hot ichor pour over her hands, and laughed as it roared, even as its claws ripped through her guts and tore the life from her body.

The end should have come then.

But it hadn’t.

The next time she awoke, it had been thousands of years.

There was no slow return—no flutter of lashes, no sharp gasp of breath. She simply was , awareness crackling to life inside a shell of bone and polished ceramite. She reached for lungs that no longer existed, for a pulse that had long since fallen silent. Instead, her mind found only the quiet hum of power feeds, the subtle caress of data streams flowing through crystalline cores.

She was no longer flesh. No longer even truly human. Her soul was bound within the delicate latticework of her skull—ancient circuitry coiled around her essence like a lover’s embrace, intricate wards etched across every surface to hold her fast, to keep her from slipping away into the abyss.

It had taken time—time measured in diagnostic cycles and recalibrations—to learn how to exist again. How to move her thoughts without tendons, to speak without a tongue, to feel without skin. Memories flooded her in scattered fragments: mud, blood, the laughter of terrified boys clutching their first rifles, the hot spray of daemon ichor. They seemed impossibly far away, like a war fought in someone else’s bones.

She learned to navigate these memories, to sift through them while maintaining the cold, precise functions of her new vessel. Slowly, impossibly, it became routine.

There was a comfort to it—a strange, metallic solace. She knew her parameters. Her tasks. The hum of her core became almost like a heartbeat. The glow of internal lumen-feeds was her pulse. The low, thrumming vibrations of ship-decks beneath her casing were the only warmth she knew.

Until something changed.

The glitches began without fanfare—no catastrophic system crash, no screaming klaxons or lines of code unraveling into oblivion. Just small things.

Tiny inconsistencies.

Timestamps slipped by milliseconds, barely enough to register, but they did. Logs from her optical feeds showed motion that, when she checked again, was gone. Colors seemed wrong for heartbeats at a time, like someone had tinted the world with a brush of alien pigments. Sounds echoed at the wrong pitch. Words failed to line up with moving lips.

She told herself it was noise. Post-traumatic stress coded into her new systems. Leftover ghosts in her neural mesh. Nothing to worry about.

But in the silence between those fractured moments, something inside her wondered if this was living—or if she’d never really stopped dying at all.

Mirrors became uncomfortable.

Not in the trivial, human way—no idle dislike of her own features, no sour turn of vanity. This was something else. Something deeper. She would catch her reflection in passing—gleaming ceramite skull, pinpoints of data-light where eyes once were—and sometimes, only sometimes, it didn’t follow.

It would lag, just by a hair, lingering a fraction too long in place while she moved on. Or it would hold her gaze even after she’d turned away, refusing to release that eerie, silent eye contact. Watching her. Studying her.

Calli ran diagnostics. Not cursory checks, but exhaustive sweeps that burrowed through every subroutine, every memory cluster, every faint whisper of soul and circuitry tangled together. The results were always the same: clean. Clear. Green lights across the board. Everything functioning. Everything lying.

Then the visions began.

They weren’t dreams—she had no sleep cycle to dream with, no chemical fog of fatigue to birth phantoms. Instead, they were sudden, jarring fractures in awareness. One moment she would be reviewing personnel ledgers or synchronizing with a ship’s cogitator, the next she was somewhere else entirely, plunged into impossible scenes without transition or context.

There was no pattern. No warning. She might be cataloging fuel reserves when it struck her, or caught mid-task aligning transmission arrays—then her world would lurch sideways.

The images were never stable.

A shoreline stretched before her, impossibly black, its waves rolling in total silence as though sound itself had been sucked from the universe. Just beyond the curve of that alien horizon stood something immense—a shape that should have been too distant to perceive, yet pressed against her senses with a dreadful intimacy.

Then there were sounds. Though not truly sounds—more like thoughts that clawed inward from directions that had no place in three-dimensional space. Fragments of speech in voices she did not recognize yet instinctively feared.

Sometimes they called to her by name.

But not Calliope Mori. No, it was something older, something heavier that thrummed through her like a forgotten war hymn. A name she did not recall learning, yet could not deny.

One time, she saw a silver mask beneath those still black waves — long, elegant features stretched into a mirthless grin, eyes carved as if forever mid-laugh. It did not speak, but it seemed to dance just beneath the surface, mocking her with a joy that felt hollow and cold.

Another time, she glimpsed a woman at the edge of perception—pale-skinned, draped in robes threaded with stones that pulsed with an inner light. The woman never moved, never spoke. But she was there, always watching, her silent regard colder than any data feed.

When these episodes ended, they did so slowly, as though she were clawing her way up from beneath crushing tons of water. Systems returned in fits and starts—sensor inputs blinking back online, internal logs stumbling to catch up. Even then, whole minutes would be missing, blanked out by corrupted data or simply overwritten by void.

When she first mentioned the anomalies, Cawl had waved them off with clinical indifference.
“Residual echo from the soul’s reintegration,” he said, eyes flickering with mechanical lenses that dilated and retracted in lieu of any true empathy. As though her fractured reality was nothing more than a stubborn data point to be filed away. He hadn’t asked for details. He never did.

Guilliman did not know. Calli had not found the words, or the need, or perhaps the courage to share this decay of her certainty. Not yet. Perhaps not ever.

But the visions were growing more frequent, more defined. The presence behind them felt close now—so close she could almost sense breath against the neck she no longer possessed.

She could no longer pretend it would pass on its own.

She didn’t know what was wrong with her. Didn’t know what these fractured visions meant, or why they sought her out across the gulfs of reality.

But she knew someone who might.

For the first time since meeting the woman, Calli sought Kiara out—willingly, and without being summoned.

She hovered in the corridor just outside Kiara’s workshop, systems cycling low, her thoughts tangled in recursive loops that all ended the same way: leave . But she didn’t. She stayed. Her grav-stabilizers held her there in uneasy stillness, while static crawled across the edge of her audio receptors like faint ghost-hands.

Her vocalizer clicked active, voice emerging thinner than she intended.
“…Kiara.”

There was a pause, and then inside the workshop came the sharp clatter of a dropped toolset, followed by a startled, muffled yelp. A second later, the door hissed open.

Kiara stood in the threshold, slightly disheveled. Her goggles were pushed up into her pale hair at an awkward angle, a data-slate clutched under one arm, and her red Mechanicus robes were half-hitched by what looked like a stylus jammed through the fabric. Her mechanical eye glowed a bright orange. She blinked once. Then again, slower, as if needing the extra moment to process an unexpected input.

“Oh,” she said finally, voice curling around the word like it was a minor anomaly she’d discovered in her day’s expected logic. “This is… surprising.”

Her head tilted, one eye narrowing. “You never just show up. Usually you ghost like a corrupted servo-pattern.”

Calli drifted forward slightly, optics lowering to the floor. Tiny impulses in her systems betrayed a tension that her cold exterior couldn’t quite mask.

“I need your help.”

Kiara straightened immediately, the shift almost mechanical—shoulders back, chin lifted, as if her processors were parsing a priority request. For a long breath, she just studied Calli’s unmoving faceplate, searching for some clue beyond the flat glow of her optics.

Then her lips parted into a slow, bright grin.

“You need my help?”

Her voice turned light, excited, playful—almost teasing. “Oh my Omnissiah, I didn’t hallucinate that, right? You just admitted it?”

Calli’s tone dropped half a register, almost hushed. “Don’t log this. Please.”

Kiara let out an exaggerated sigh, rolling her eyes, then stepped aside with a sweeping motion that sent a trailing cable slithering across the floor.

“Fine, fine. No verbal record. Session unlogged. Protocols suspended. Just—get in here before I overheat from emotional compression.”

As Calli drifted into the room, Kiara’s grin softened into something less performative, her voice dropping to a gentler note. “Seriously though… I’m glad you came.”

For once, Calli didn’t retreat. She hovered there a heartbeat longer, then glided further inside.

“I’ve been… glitching,” she said abruptly, the confession catching in her audio emitters. “Seeing things that aren’t data. Visions. I don’t know if it’s corruption or—”

Kiara’s eyes widened, and for an instant, a flicker of uncertainty broke through her usual buoyant precision.
“You too?” she breathed. “I’ve been getting these weird… overlays. Like fragments of someone else’s schematics running alongside mine. Colors, patterns I can’t parse.”

She let out a quick, nervous laugh—too quick—her hands fussing with the front of her robes as if to smooth her own confession back into place. “Guess we’re both overdue for a tech-priest’s exorcism, huh?”

Calli didn’t answer. Her optics dimmed a fraction, lost somewhere behind layers of cascading error-checks.

As she drifted deeper into the cluttered space, the soft lumen-glow caught something beneath her synthetic hair. Just for a moment, a faint pink rune shimmered to life near the edge of her cranial plating—like ink rising through pale artificial skin. It pulsed once, then vanished.

Kiara didn’t notice. She was too busy kicking aside a loop of insulated wire and waving Calli toward a battered bench already piled with cracked servo-housings and half-dismantled mechadendrites.

Behind Kiara, at the curve where sleek augmetics met the delicate pale skin of her lower back, another symbol flared to life—sharp-edged and orange, flickering in delicate pulses that matched her breath.

Neither of them saw the other’s mark. By the time the door sealed, the lights were already gone, leaving only the quiet, nervous buzz of machinery—and the growing sense that they were both far more broken, and far more bound together, than either had dared to admit.

---

Vescaris, 006 .M42

Guilliman stepped deeper into the chamber, the cool alloy floor humming faintly beneath his boots. The vibration crawled up through muscle and bone until it found the dull roar already coiled behind his eyes — that relentless pressure he’d carried ever since Terra.

The air tasted of old psychic residue — sharp and dry, tinged with a metallic tang that clung to the back of his throat like ozone after a storm. It carried a weight that was not physical, brushing against his thoughts in subtle, unwelcome ways.

Yvraine remained precisely where she stood, centered beneath the slow orbit of lumen-orbs that cast deliberate shadows across her features. In their soft, circling glow she looked half-carved from polished marble, half-woven from living light. Her eyes — that inhuman shade of crimson — were fixed on him with a composure that read almost as challenge.

Cawl had made his presence scarce, slithering off to work on Emperor knows what in some adjoining annex. Guilliman did not miss him.

For several long heartbeats, neither he nor Yvraine spoke. The silence did not feel awkward. It felt constructed, as though the very room demanded a ritual pause before words would be permitted to trespass.

When he finally broke the silence, his voice was cool and precisely measured, each word clipped to deny her any easy read of his temper.
“State your purpose. I’ve no patience for Aeldari riddles.”

Yvraine did not flinch, did not so much as tilt her head. Her eyes remained locked on his, unsettlingly calm, her voice dropping into a quiet that seemed to draw the chamber tighter around them.
“No riddles. Only the simple certainty that without each other, neither of our species will survive what comes.”

His face did not change, but a faint tightening around his jaw betrayed the hard grind of his molars.
“The Aeldari have always been adept at wrapping desperation in elegant words. Speak plainly, witch.”

Yvraine inclined her head with deliberate slowness, never breaking eye contact. The gesture felt more like the grace of theater than any true deference.
“As you wish. But understand: truths spoken without veil are often sharper than any blade.”

The psychic tension in the chamber seemed to draw subtly tighter, not oppressive, but intimate in a way that made even Guilliman’s gene-forged instincts bristle. The skin along the back of his neck prickled, as though something unseen had brushed too close.

His hands stayed loose at his sides — unarmored, unarmed — a deliberate display of control that still radiated the implicit threat of a being who could crush a ceramite helm in his grip.

Yvraine studied him for another slow heartbeat, then drew in a breath that made the rows of spirit-stones across her chest flare in a gentle, living ripple.
“Roboute Guilliman. Let us speak of extinction.”

He did not answer immediately. Instead he let his gaze narrow by a fraction, watching how the lumen’s glow refracted along the wraithbone circlet on her brow. The lines of it were too elegant, too precise, too achingly balanced to have ever been shaped by human hands. And for a moment — brief, irrational — he felt a flare of old irritation at xenos craft that could so casually exceed the best of Imperial artisans.
“Extinction? Yours, perhaps. You come here boasting of ancient scars, hoping to drape your desperation in old glories. Hoping to snare another empire into paying your debts.”

Somewhere behind the chamber walls, a faint mechanical pulse started up — perhaps a coolant pump or some buried generator — and sent a new, subtle vibration through the floor. It barely kissed the soles of his boots before vanishing again, but he felt it all the same, another small reminder that nothing in this place was ever entirely at rest.

Yvraine remained very still, only her breath stirring the layered dark fabric draped around her shoulders. It caused a slow ripple through the lines of spirit-stones, like a living thing curling closer against her skin. Her crimson eyes never wavered, locking him there beneath a scrutiny that felt at once clinical and deeply personal.

“You misunderstand,” Yvraine said at last, her voice pitched low yet carrying effortlessly through the strange acoustics of the chamber. It rolled across the space like smoke, coiling into corners, soft but undeniable. “This extinction is not ours alone. It waits for you too — patient, certain, already threading your veins. I am here because even your sister saw the shape of this necessity — and agreed it should be laid before you. But only that. She would not move without your judgment. It was never her place to decide this course for the Imperium.”

The words seemed to vibrate in the charged air between them, subtle as the ripple from a dropped stone. Guilliman’s expression shifted — just slightly, but enough for a flicker of surprise to ghost across the rigid lines of his face.

“Gura sent you?”

Guilliman paused for a moment before his stare hardened, a small muscle ticking along his jaw — the only sign of something sharper, unsettled, threading through the iron of his control. If his sister had agreed, even tentatively, to let this witch stand before him, it was reason enough to hear the thing out — if only to be certain before he crushed it.

 

“My Imperium does not negotiate its survival on the whims of xenos prophecy,” he said at last, his voice tightening to a hard line, each syllable deliberate enough to grind stone. “If you came here to ply me with visions, you have wasted both our time.”

Yvraine tilted her head, the motion sinuous, careful, like a serpent testing the weight of a new branch beneath its coils.

“Not visions. Realities. Patterns your own Navigators have begun whispering of in dread, patterns the warp itself now wears like fresh skin.”

His expression didn’t change, but something in the slight shift of his shoulders betrayed that he was listening despite himself — an ancient warrior’s readiness to sift intelligence from even the mouths of foes.

Above them, the slow-drifting lumen-orbs shifted into a new alignment, casting deeper shadows across Yvraine’s face. For a single heartbeat her eyes seemed to glow with twin pools of ember light, uncanny in their calm focus.

“Speak then,” Guilliman grated, voice low and reluctant, the edges frayed by old tension. “But speak plainly, as I commanded. No lace of poetry.”

Yvraine drew another breath — deeper this time — and the spirit-stones draping her breast answered in a slow wave of subtle color, like deep ocean currents stirring in response.

“Very well. The galaxy is dying, Guilliman. Not by some new horror, but by the same ancient hungers that now press harder than ever, clawing more brazenly at the seams of reality your Imperium so desperately tries to hold closed.”

His eyes narrowed, though he did not cut her off. The steady pulse of pain behind his temples grew sharper, each throb like a small iron hammer striking from inside his skull.

His massive hands flexed once at his sides, the only outward tell of tension in his towering frame. The metallic tang of the chamber’s air seemed to sour around them, turning sharper, almost acidic — as though even the atmosphere itself bristled at the words soon to be laid bare.

Yvraine seemed to sense the coiling pressure inside him, though her features never broke from their elegant calm. The spirit-stones that lay across her breastplate answered instead, pulsing in slow succession — a shallow wave of faint illumination that climbed from her waist to the delicate line of her throat, like a living diagram of breath.

Guilliman’s jaw set harder, muscles along his cheek tightening into ridges of cold control. “You speak of the Great Four. Your enemy as much as ours.”

A faint line appeared at the corner of Yvraine’s mouth, a subtle bitterness that passed like a shadow — there and gone in the span of a heartbeat.
“Yes. Khorne roars louder by the cycle. Nurgle gorges himself on every plague and famine your Imperium’s endless wars feed him. Tzeentch dances with glee through the new shape of your galaxy’s fractured skein.”

Her eyes darkened then — not in color, but in unsettling depth.
“And She Who Thirsts… grows ravenous beyond all measure. The Dark Prince pulls at the souls of my people with a force that frays the very strands of fate. But do not fool yourself, Roboute Guilliman. Your own are not spared. Each year we watch more of your psykers burn from within, offering themselves up like fresh beacons for the Dark Prince to drink.”

Guilliman did not speak, but the silence he held now was different — hard and grinding, the kind that could have cracked stone if it were given voice. Pain stabbed through his temples again, sharp enough that for an instant he nearly closed his eyes against it.

“So you came to deliver a warning I did not require,” he said at last, each word flattened under the heavy weight of disciplined restraint. “I am well aware of how close we all stand to the edge of that abyss. What is it you truly want, Yvraine?”

Her hands unfolded from the careful clasp at her waist, palms turning outward just slightly. The tiny shift sent countless minute reflections skittering across the curved surfaces of her spirit-stones, like starlight caught in shallow water.
“I want your armies pointed where they matter most. Toward ending this predator who devours my kind outright and erodes yours more slowly but no less surely.”

Guilliman’s eyes narrowed. His voice dropped, low and lethal, colder than any drawn blade. “Speak plainly.”

Yvraine’s gaze never faltered. Her words fell into the stillness like iron dropped into water.
“I propose we slay a god, Roboute Guilliman. Together.”

Guilliman did not move, but it was as if the entire chamber constricted around them.
“You overreach,” he said at last, each word emerging low, deliberate, honed to a controlled, cutting edge. “I do not move the forces of the Imperium to indulge the desperate faiths of a fading people.”

For the space of a single heartbeat, Yvraine’s lips pressed together, bloodless with tension. Then she let out a slow breath. The spirit-stones draped across her breastplate dimmed, as if gathering themselves inward, before pulsing once more in a muted, resonant glow.

“Then hear me speak not of fading faith, but of the only chance either of our kinds may ever have.” Her voice did not rise, but something fierce curled beneath it, an undertow of certainty that cut deeper than volume ever could. “Ynnead — the god my people have whispered to for millennia, born from our grief, our death — stirs more fully now than ever before. With it’s awakening, there stands a slim, terrible hope to end the predator who has stalked my kin since the Fall.”

Guilliman’s brow twitched, the faintest crease forming above the bridge of his nose.
“Your death god,” he said, and the words were delivered with a cool, clinical disdain that made each syllable sting. “And what does this half-born shadow promise you now that it did not promise across ten thousand years of slaughter?”

“That it may finally become whole enough to strike,” Yvraine said. Her voice dropped quieter still, but every word felt carved from something harder than breath, more enduring than flesh. “But only if we prepare the way. Only if we gather the weapons that can anchor such power to this plane.”

A long, flat silence settled between them. The pain behind Guilliman’s eyes pounded again, rhythmic and relentless, like some great forge hammer buried in the marrow of his skull.

“Say it plainly,” he ground out at last.

Yvraine’s crimson gaze never wavered.
“The Crone Swords. Five blades wrought by hands that understood how to cut not flesh, but the skein of souls themselves. We have four. The last remains somewhere within the Ultima Segmentum, beyond our reach alone.”

Guilliman’s jaw flexed, a subtle ripple passing across the harsh planes of his cheek.
“So you would have me turn my next crusade — fleets, chapters, Guardsmen by the millions — into a hunt for your final relic.”

“I would have you turn them to the only battle that truly matters,” Yvraine answered. Her hands unfolded in a measured gesture, spirit-stones flickering with tiny ripples of opalescent light that danced across her robes. Her face remained unflinching, a mask of resolve. “Because without that blade, there is no hope of rousing Ynnead fully. And without Ynnead, there will never be a power in this galaxy capable of tearing She Who Thirsts from the warp’s throat.”

For the briefest instant, something flickered behind Guilliman’s eyes — colder than skepticism, deeper than mere contempt. It was the raw, quiet terror of one who had stood too long beneath the weight of inevitable ruin. But then it vanished, sealed away behind the iron calm that had carried him through ten thousand wars and into a galaxy even more broken than the one he had left behind.

“And if I refuse?” he asked at last, his voice stripped down to something almost gentle in its lethal softness.

“Then She Who Thirsts will feast,” Yvraine said, her tone level, unshrinking from the shadow of his question. “First on mine. Then on yours. Until the last soul that remembers what it was to stand unbound is devoured.”

Guilliman did not answer. The silence that unfurled in the wake of her words was a different creature than the silences that had come before — it was heavier, almost suffocating, as though the very walls of the chamber leaned inward, straining to catch whatever might follow.

Yvraine seemed content to let that silence grow, measuring it with the patient precision of a ritualist who understood the power held in what was not said. Her crimson eyes never left his, the faint lift of her chin carrying a quiet, unspoken challenge. When she finally spoke again, her voice dropped lower, almost conspiratorial, though it never lost its cutting clarity.

“You believe the doom I describe belongs only to my people. That even if we fail to stir Ynnead fully, your Imperium might limp on, bleeding out across the stars for another age.”

Guilliman’s brow creased, faint lines cutting into the pale expanse above his eyes. He still did not speak, but the question he might have voiced hung so heavily in the air that Yvraine seemed to draw it in with her next breath, her words falling precisely into that unspoken shape.

She drew a slow breath, spirit-stones flickering. “But you are wrong. Should we fail, She Who Thirsts will grow unchecked, and your psykers will burn themselves empty to feed her hunger until your Imperium’s veins run cold.”

Her crimson gaze sharpened, voice dipping lower. “And should we succeed…the death of the Dark Prince would not only unshackle the souls of the Aeldari. It would tear a wound in the warp so profound that the other predators — Khorne, Nurgle, Tzeentch — would turn on each other in a frenzy to claim what remains.”

Guilliman’s shoulders edged back slightly, a subtle adjustment that nonetheless spoke volumes — as if some primal chord within him had been plucked taut. His jaw worked once, a pulse of iron muscle under skin, but he remained silent, absorbing every syllable with a severity that seemed almost to darken the room itself.

Yvraine’s expression shifted by the smallest margin. It did not soften into sympathy, but settled into something grave and solemn, the corners of her mouth drawing deeper lines beneath the uncertain lumen-glow.
“There would be a window, Roboute Guilliman. Brief. Perhaps only hours. When the other gods tear at each other’s throats, and the warp no longer claws so hungrily at the Materium.”

The migraine pounding behind Guilliman’s eyes surged, a spear of hot, iron-bright pain that seemed to echo through the hollow of his chest. He drew in a slow breath, exhaled even slower, forcing the measured rhythm that had been drilled into him on Macragge — that he had carried like sacred scripture ever since.
“Say what you mean.”

Yvraine inclined her head the faintest degree. The spirit-stones arrayed across her chest shimmered in a delicate ripple, like tiny bioluminescent creatures shifting beneath her skin.
“A chance,” she said, her voice soft but edged with something unbreakable, “to quiet the Golden Throne. To extract what remains of your father from that decaying husk without inviting the ruin that has always waited beyond Terra’s fragile veil.”

For a single heartbeat, Guilliman’s composure cracked. His eyes flared, the hard lines of his throat tightening with an old desperation that had been buried beneath millennia of grim necessity. It showed raw and vulnerable for just that instant — then sealed itself away again behind the icy armor of a demigod who had borne too many impossible hopes for too long.

“You gamble with impossibilities,” he said. The words came rougher now, scraped raw over stones hidden deep within him.

Yvraine did not look away. Her voice held steady, bright and lethal as a blade drawn in moonlight.
“All futures worth seizing are impossibilities, until someone dares to carve them from the throat of fate.”

---

Guilliman stood upon a high service gantry, its metal span jutting out over a maze of suspended platforms and thick ropes of data conduits that tangled through the forge’s depths like the roots of some iron leviathan. Far below, the cavernous gulf of the manufactorum seethed with restless industry — scuttling servitors crawled between monstrous assembly racks, welding arcs flared in silent bursts of brilliance, conveyors rattled under the weight of fresh-wrought munitions.

None of it truly registered.

His eyes tracked motion by instinct alone, focus fractured and distant. His mind had retreated far inward, circling itself like a blade over a whetstone. Hours had passed since the Aeldari witch’s words had first entwined around his thoughts, but they clung there still, cold and persistent, refusing to loosen their grip with time or distance.

Beside him, Cawl stood in an unnatural stillness, a towering amalgam of pistons, armored cabling, and slow-shifting optic lenses. The archmagos offered neither analysis nor comfort — only the quiet companionship of machinery at rest, his presence a cold shadow against the sprawling heat of the forge. Neither of them spoke.

She could be lying.

The thought unwound in Guilliman’s mind without ceremony, precise and glacial. The Aeldari were masters of the half-truth, twisting bare honesty into weapons sharper than any spear. How simple it would be for Yvraine to bait the Imperium into scattering its strength across a futile chase for ghost relics, leaving her kin to consolidate power unopposed.

His molars ground together, a slow, bruising tension that sent the faint pulse of migraine pain flaring behind his temples. Could even Gura be misled? Or — a darker wound — complicit, seeing some hidden thread he had yet to grasp and choosing, in her maddening way, to gamble the Imperium’s fate upon it without so much as a word?

The idea clawed at old scars. He exhaled, forcing his jaw to relax, though the tension only sank deeper into his chest, coiling tight around the engine of his hearts.

But what if she spoke truth?

It was the question that refused to die, no matter how often he tried to drive it from the calculus. If there truly existed even the slimmest chance to end Slaanesh, could he afford to ignore it for the sake of pride or ancient hatreds?

His mind flickered unbidden to Terra, to the stifling dark of the Throne room. To the whisperings  of Tech-priests intoning prayers that sounded more like dirges than litanies. To the Emperor’s corpse — that impossible, horrifying god-corpse — which might still clutch a spark of divinity, waiting for some hand braver than perpetual imprisonment.

A faint ache stirred in his throat, raw and unfamiliar, and he banished it with the same practiced cruelty he had applied to a thousand other fragile hopes. Hope was a toxin, one the Imperium could scarcely afford. And yet it pressed at him still, thin and sharp, a blade of possibility he could neither embrace nor fully discard.

Ynnead.

Even the name was an irritation on his thoughts — a reminder of alien schemes, alien gods. Yet if he permitted himself the smallest heresy of imagination, it might also be the only power left in the galaxy capable of standing against the warp’s most ancient monsters.

Guilliman’s gaze drifted out of focus, the churn of industry below smearing into broad pools of molten light and shadowed steel. Despite the thousands of minds that bent to his will daily, he felt alone — more alone than he had in years. This decision, this fracture line on which so much might teeter, belonged to him alone.

Slowly, he exhaled. His eyes sharpened, the distant haze of the forge resolving again into crisp lines of machinery and tiny moving figures. The migraine still clawed behind his temples, but beneath it now ran a colder, steadier current of thought.

His mind weighed the scales of what Gura’s quiet approval must truly signify. For her — that sweet, kind yet maddening creature of playful shrugs and secret depths — to lend even the faintest nod to the schemes of the Ynnari, knowing full well what price it might ultimately demand from humanity, spoke to dangers he could only begin to measure.

Yet despite that cold calculus, a grim comfort threaded itself through his thoughts. Gura would not have permitted Yvraine within a hundred systems of this conversation if she believed it would lead to ruin. In all the years since her return from the dark and the hundreds before her absence, with all her irreverence, her infuriating asides and sideways confessions, she had never once failed the Imperium at the critical hour of decision.

His jaw tightened, old scars along his cheek pulling faintly at the motion. He felt it then — that leaden certainty settling into his chest, hard and cold but oddly bracing. If Gura saw the necessity of this path… then perhaps he could bear to see it too.

But he needed to hear it. From her. Not filtered through the careful dread of Aeldari prophecy, nor framed in the polite diplomacy of shared existential threat. He needed it spoken in Gura’s own blunt cadence — in the way she might dismiss the weight of apocalypse with a careless flick of her wrist, or in that peculiar hush she reserved for moments only she seemed to fully comprehend. He needed her voice to cut through the fog, as it always somehow did.

Guilliman exhaled through his nose, slow and deliberate, letting the deep mechanical murmur of the forge below steady the last restless churn of his thoughts. Then he turned, robes stirring against the forge’s warm updrafts, and spoke a single clipped command into the charged air.

“Cawl. Prepare a secure channel. I will speak with my sister.”

“Of course, Lord Guilliman,” Cawl answered, his vox-grille cycling through a brief hiss before settling on a smoother modulation. Multiple lenses shifted, dilated, and refocused with a soft array of mechanical chimes, as though aligning themselves to better capture some subtle inflection in Guilliman’s expression. “I will initiate the secure link to Thalassia. She has already left standing protocols for immediate contact.”

A slight pause, then a curiously modulated hum that might have been faint amusement.

“Your sister,” Cawl added, “is… unusually accommodating where you are concerned.”

---

The hololithic projectors resolved with a soft flicker, lines of ghost-light tightening and overlapping until they snapped into a scene that was both perfectly familiar and, to Guilliman’s eternal annoyance, profoundly irritating.

Gura lay sprawled across a low couch of woven coral, tail coiled in a lazy arc, head pillowed in Amelith’ra’s lap. Her eyes were half-lidded with obvious delight, a smug little grin playing across her lips that only sharpened when she spotted her brother’s looming image.

Amelith’ra sat with her usual unhurried poise, a trench coat draped loosely around her slender shoulders, bioluminescent threads winking faintly across its inner lining. Her detective’s hat was cocked at a casual angle, one hand steadying Gura’s head while the other carefully worked a slender cleaning rod at Gura’s ear.

The Primarch of the Carcharodon Legion was purring.

Gura’s grin split even wider, all mischievous teeth.
“Hey Bobby G. You’re right on time to watch Ame fuss over me. Very dignified warlord moment.”

Amelith’ra didn’t bother glancing up. Her voice was level, every syllable touched with dry Aeldari cadence.
“Don’t flatter yourself, barnacle. You’ve collected half the bay’s sediment in here. I’m doing Thalassia a public service.”

Guilliman’s jaw tightened by a fraction, the faint twitch of a muscle betraying irritation before he smoothed it away with practice. He drew a slow, deliberate breath, migraine pounding anew behind his eyes.
“Amelith’ra,” he said, giving her full name the deliberate weight of cold greeting. His gaze lingered on her a heartbeat longer, a faint, private note of surprise ghosting through his expression. “I see you still endure.”

Amelia finally lifted her gaze to meet his, her eyes faintly amused.
“Someone had to,” she replied. Her tone was evenly measured, but carried just enough of a dry tilt to suggest a private joke made at the galaxy’s expense.

Then her attention dropped back to Gura.
“Hold still. I’m not digging a spirit-stone out of here, but you’re making me wish I was.”

Gura let out a small, pleased hum.
“She missed me.”

Amelith’ra’s mouth twitched in a reluctant smirk.
“More like I missed having a headache with a face.”

Guilliman’s stare lingered on the pair for a moment longer, as if deliberately memorizing the absurd spectacle so he could resent it later. Then his eyes narrowed, lines tightening at their corners.
“Enough,” he said, voice low and edged with command. “We have more pressing matters than your indulgences.”

Gura’s grin only widened. She rolled a shoulder in a lazy shrug, tail giving a slow, amused flick.
“You’re just jealous you don’t have someone to fuss over your ears. Imagine how much less cranky you’d be.”

Amelia made a small huff, nearly a laugh.
“He’d break the cleaning stick on principle.”

Guilliman let their banter drift, then spoke again in that heavy, grounded tone that always carried the promise of fresh burdens, of logistics or grim necessity.
“I met someone today.”

Gura’s grin sharpened immediately, eyes flaring with bright, predatory delight.
“Oho? Should I be worried about some new lucky planetary governor catching your eye?”

Amelia giggled quietly, but didn’t pause in her meticulous work.

Guilliman’s brow twitched, mouth flattening into a thin, hard line of irritation.
“You already know exactly who I mean. Don’t play stupid.”

Gura’s tail gave another idle curl, amusement undimmed.
“Do I? Because it’s funnier to pretend I don’t.”

He ignored her entirely, stare locked steady and unblinking.
“Yvraine. She sought me out with all the weight of desperation masquerading as certainty. Spoke of Ynnead. Of her people’s extinction — and ours close behind.”

Gura’s grin faded, tilting into something smaller, edged with a resigned humor that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Ah. So that’s how your day’s been.”

Amelith’ra finally looked up again, blue eyes catching Guilliman’s with that same teasing, direct steadiness that always managed to pry a fraction deeper than he preferred.
“And what did you tell her?”

Guilliman’s jaw worked, old scars tightening faintly across his cheek.
“Nothing yet. She assumes support. Assumes alignment. I won’t give it — not without more than poetic threats.”

Gura stretched slightly under Amelia’s steady hand, earning a small nudge of reprimand. Her tail gave another lazy flick.
“Well… I mean, she’s probably not wrong. About it all falling apart, I mean. Hard to miss how much nastier the tides have gotten since I got kicked out.”

Guilliman’s eyes narrowed by a fraction.
“But you’re not certain.”

“Nothing in the warp’s ever certain,” Gura said, her grin returning in a smaller, sharper line. “Except that it wants to chew us all up eventually. Ynnari or not.”

Amelia’s thumb paused against Gura’s jaw for a heartbeat, then resumed its careful work.
“She’s right. About the chewing part, at least. The rest — well, it’s the best statistical nightmare on the table. And you know how I adore those.”

Guilliman’s stare shifted back to Gura.
“And you’d risk your legion on that?”

Gura’s grin slipped away, replaced by something more lopsided, faintly weary.
“Not yet. I’m not exactly jumping to wave Yvraine’s banner. I only even let it rattle around my head because Ame’s the one telling me it lines up — and because the warp’s gotten… weirder. More teeth, less sanity. And that’s saying something.”

Amelia’s blue eyes lifted again, catching Guilliman’s with that same unhurried steadiness, though her mouth twitched into a crooked smirk.
“Don’t give her too much credit. Half of what she calls ‘sanity’ involves punching warp anomalies because she doesn’t like their face.”

Guilliman’s jaw tightened again, old scars pulling.
“Hardly reassuring.”

Amelia gave a small shrug.
“It’s not meant to be. Nothing is. But if we stand by and wait, the warp decides how this ends for us. This way, at least we try to pick the ground.”

Gura’s tail curled with lazy amusement that didn’t quite mask the sharper glint in her gaze.
“Which is why I’m not moving until you decide it’s worth it, brother. I didn’t claw my way back out of that hellhole just to throw my boys at a maybe.”

Guilliman stood silent, blue eyes fixed sharply on Gura, then shifting to Amelia.

A faint twitch pulled at the corner of his mouth — not amusement, but the subtle torque of deep calculation grinding behind his eyes.
“It isn’t the threat I doubt,” he said finally, voice dropping into a low, cold cadence, each word measured and exact. “I have more than enough reports to know the galaxy’s death is accelerating. What I need is proof that this… awakening is possible. That Ynnead isn’t just another comforting myth your people chase because you’ve run out of real options.”

Amelith’ra’s eyes narrowed by a fraction, not insulted — simply measuring.
“Fair question,” she said at last. “It’s one we’ve been circling for millennia ourselves. But the patterns since the Rift tore open — they’re different. Older threads have begun to surface. Farseers on half a dozen craftworlds are glimpsing the same breaks in the skein. Even some of your own Navigators are whispering about echoes they can’t map.”

Gura’s grin slanted, smaller now, tinged with something that might have been reluctant respect.
“Translation: it’s probably possible. Maybe. And it’ll be ugly when it happens, one way or another.”

Guilliman’s stare sharpened, jaw flexing under old scars.
“That isn’t enough. I won’t upend the entire Crusade chasing a ghost for a maybe.”

Then Gura let out a small, blissful sigh as Amelia twisted the tool deeper in her ear, eyes sliding half-lidded with pleasure.
“Mmm. That's fair. Would it help if I told you that Dad said it was probably possible?”

Guilliman froze. Every muscle in his massive frame locked tight, shoulders drawing back as though absorbing an unseen blow. His eyes went wide, pale blue catching the light with a sudden, almost feverish intensity.
“…What.”

His mouth opened, but only a strangled half-breath made it out, the shape of words caught and crushed by some deeper, older shock.
“He… talked to you.”

Gura cracked one eye open, grin stretching back into lazy, sharp-toothed delight.
“Yeah. Back when I was still wandering around in the Eye, he’d drop by all the time. Little psychic check-ins, bit like being poked by a sun that also wants to give lectures.”

Her tail curled, flicking once. “Only started once I was deep out there. Guess it’s easier for him when you’re already floating in the warp — doesn’t have to tear reality a new one just to say hi.”

Amelia’s thumb tapped lightly against Gura’s jaw, her voice cool and matter-of-fact.
“It’s not hard to figure. You’d have to be embedded deep to pick up that kind of signal. Or just a really powerful psyker.”

Gura gave a tiny shrug, which earned her a sharper push of the cleaning rod that made her jerk with a startled squawk.
“Not with me. Stopped the second I crawled back into realspace. Warp’s his natural megaphone, I guess. Apparently Ina’s the lucky pen pal these days.”

Amelia arched a pale brow, her mouth tilting into a sly edge that didn’t quite soften her calm.
“If by lucky you mean frequently absorbed. They’ve been carrying on whole silent exchanges that last hours. Those two have been in each other’s heads since the Great Crusade. It’s honestly a little eerie how well they get on.”

Guilliman’s hands flexed at his sides, fingers spreading slightly as if trying to ground himself against something vast and shattering.
“So — he’s — you’re saying all this time he’s been… aware. Cognizant. Talking. And you—”

“—never bothered to mention it?” Gura finished sweetly, batting her eyes in exaggerated innocence. “I just assumed you knew. You’re the responsible one. Figured Dad would’ve dropped by your brain too, what with you holding up the entire Imperium.”

Amelia snorted faintly, a soft sound that curled with wry disdain.
“Apparently the Emperor’s priorities are as erratic as ever.”

Guilliman’s mouth opened again, but what escaped him was only a strangled sound, half disbelief and half raw horror.
“He’s — you mean to tell me — all this time—”

A memory ripped up through the haze, sharp and cold as a blade: standing before the Golden Throne, staring at the corpse that was somehow still their father. He had felt it then — that brush of something vast and aware against the edges of his thoughts. But he’d been too afraid to reach for it, too afraid of finding only judgment. Or worse, nothing at all.

Gura tilted her head, tail giving a slow, casual flick.
“Relax. It’s not like he sends birthday messages. Mostly it was tactical nudges. And… really awkward moral lessons.”

For a long, strained beat Guilliman simply stood there. The projection lines along his massive pauldrons flickered, shivering with faint static under the force of his tension.

Then the bellow tore out of him — a thunderous roar that rattled the hololithic link and seemed to shake Cawl’s entire facility, echoing off steel gantries and towering data pylons like the report of some wrathful artillery piece.

“HE’S WHAT!?”

 

---

 

Notes:

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PEYPA BOWT PEYPA BOWT PEYPA BOWT

Sorry, I am VERY excited. VERY VERY happy. She's as beautiful as the day we lost her. And still just as unhinged. It's amazing. Anyways! back on topic. We have FINALLY entered the first true arc of this story. I'd say that the previous chapters are more of a prologue to the true meat of this story. I have 4-5 arcs planned.
The first section of this story was supposed to be a side story, and I was originally going to catagorize it as such. However, after talking to allsham, we agreed that it should be in the main story. It is a major canon thing, and I can't have people not seeing it. (I know a lot of you don't read the side stories :( )

BIG E possibly returning???? Guess you'll have to find out how that works and why he is cognizant. I'll explain it eventually.

Anyways. I hope you all enjoyed.

P.S. Expect a funky (possibly non-canon) side story incoming. Have fun!

 

SABABYE!

Chapter 10: Chapter 9: Daddy Dearest (Hold the Dearest)

In Space En Route to Terra, 006 .M42

The ship was a void-silent wraith, knifing through realspace at a velocity that should have torn it to molten shards. Its inertial compensators whispered in constant terror — a chorus of micro-adjustments pleading against catastrophic shear.

Guilliman demanded it, needed it.

He would stand on Terra again. Before that Throne; before him.

He stood alone in the observation hall, the skeletal black ribs of ancient Terran architecture arching overhead like the interlocked fingers of dead gods. Lumen-strips flickered along the vaults, feeble lines of amber light that failed to banish the oppressive dark.

Beyond the plasteel, the stars crawled by in regal procession — cold, pitiless lords in a cathedral of nothing. They offered no comfort or benediction.

His hands clasped behind him, posture ramrod-straight, the rote discipline of ten thousand campaigns burned into marrow. But he realized that he was pacing. Not the disciplined, geometric march of a commander. This was uneven and restless. A caged beast clawing grooves into the floor.

In the hush of recycled air, Gura’s careless voice replayed, maddening in its offhand lilt:

“Back when I was still wandering around in the Eye, he’d drop by all the time. Little psychic check-ins, bit like being poked by a sun that also wants to give lectures…Apparently Ina’s the lucky pen pal these days.”

As if she were describing stray fish along a pier. As if it was nothing.

Then Amelith’ra’s voice, edged with the glinting amusement of knives laid out on velvet:

“Those two have been in each other’s heads since the Great Crusade. It’s honestly a little eerie how well they get on.”

His jaw worked, old scars pulling faintly across his cheek.

Ninomae Ina’nis.

He knew her only from lean dossiers — Gura’s abnormally ancient Librarian, eyes like deep oceans, who spoke more to xenos emissaries than to Imperial governors. A perpetual abhuman so saturated by the warp she had simply… stopped aging. The sort of quiet anomaly Terra’s priests would burn with a hymn on their lips.

And his father spoke to her. For over ten thousand years. Not to him.

The migraine flared again, a dull, hot brand behind his eyes that seemed to pulse in rhythm with his secondary heart. It wasn’t the pain that made his breath stutter — it was the snarl of questions that came coiled in its wake.

Why?

Why Gura and their brothers, wandering half-mad in the Eye? Why Ina’nis — a shadow on the edges of Imperial orthodoxy — when Guilliman himself bore the Imperium on shattered shoulders? Why keep hidden the dreadful truth that the Emperor was not a corpse god silent upon his throne, but aware, discriminating, capable of steering destiny with whispered fingers?

His breath caught, chest tightening with something perilously close to outrage.

Does the Ecclesiarchy even suspect?

If they did — if the Black Priests and bloated cardinals ever learned that their divine edifice was founded on a lie of choice, that the Emperor was not dead but merely selective — would they collapse in trembling repentance? Or would they burn the galaxy black hunting the minds their god favored, desperate to seize that dread communion for themselves?

He pivoted to the viewport and stared into the cold tyranny of starfields.

Perhaps that was why.

Why the Emperor only brushed the thoughts of the scattered, the marginal. Because to reveal himself openly — to break that awful silence — would tear the Imperium apart by the very seams that still held its corpse upright.

The migraine throbbed again, iron-hot. Guilliman closed his eyes, inhaled until the steel in his lungs scraped. When he opened them, the stars remained unchanged, cruel and remote.

And for the first time since Macragge, he wondered if silence was the Emperor’s last mercy.

The gravity plating hummed, a deep resonant murmur that seemed to crawl up through the deck and nest itself between Guilliman’s ribs. Somewhere far ahead, thrusters fired in brutal sequence, twisting the vessel through a maneuver that would have liquefied mortal crews had the compensators failed for even a breath.

Guilliman barely shifted. His immense frame stood steady, a living statue carved in cerulean and pale scar tissue. Yet inside — in that place even gene-forged sinew couldn’t armor — something twisted sharply.

His throat worked around a bitterness he was unaccustomed to tasting.

All these years, he thought. Holding up this rotting empire with my own hands. Swallowing its decay so none would choke on it as I have. And you never once…

He didn’t finish it. Couldn’t.

Because the words coiling next were too raw, too much the voice of a wounded boy who should have burned away in the forges of Macragge. Who had no place left inside the last unbroken son of the Emperor.

Another thought came, winding tighter, a cold chain wrapping round his sternum.

Who can I even speak to of this?

The High Lords? No. They would scent only leverage — or worse, threats to the tottering lattice of privilege they dared call governance.

The Mechanicus? He could already picture Cawl’s lenses whirring, filing this revelation away with frigid curiosity, ready to melt down millennials of doctrine if it served some new project.

Calliope Mori?

A huff of air, nearly a laugh, escaped him. That damned mischievous skull would only loose some barbed witticism that made him long to punt her clean across the planet.

No. The grim certainty of it settled like a fresh plate of ceramite across his broad shoulders.

This burden falls to me alone.

The ship’s systems thrummed again, compensators laboring under another savage course shift. A deeper shudder rippled through bulkheads and conduits — a sound like distant drums echoing through the hull. Guilliman barely swayed.

But inside, it was as if something older, colder, lurched hard against his spine.

Not from the vessel’s motion. From the realization that he would have to carry this impossible secret all the way back to Terra.

Stand once more before that towering corpse on its gilded throne. And demand — finally, truly demand — to know why.

Why him. Why this silence. Why so much had been laid upon shoulders that could still remember, dimly, the warmth of a father’s hand.

His massive frame drew straighter, shoulders squaring into that unassailable form the Imperium needed to see — even if none were here to witness it. Even if the only eyes upon him now were the dead stars beyond the voidglass.

Because soon, he promised himself, there would be no more evasions.

If the Emperor truly lived, if he truly chose his confidants — then they would speak. One way or another.

 

---

Terra, 006 .M42


The docking clamps slammed home with a thunderous groan, the sound crawling up through the ship’s spine and vibrating across the deck in deep, grating pulses. Guilliman stood at the mouth of the primary disembarkation corridor, hands flexing once in silent readiness. The gesture was unconscious, a distant echo of old campaigns where he’d steeled himself at the breach of voidlocks with bolter in hand.

Outside waited the Imperial Palace — a sprawling cancer of cyclopean stone, gold-burnished filth, and incense-choked air. It rose around him like the ribs of some slain god, hollow and immense, its every corridor humming with a cold, ritualistic menace.

He descended the ramp at a measured pace, ignoring the vox-chants and data-canticles that began to rise in greeting. Standard protocols — meaningless drone. With a curt flick of his hand, Guilliman cut them off before the first syllables of some droning hymn could properly unfurl.

No pageantry today. No robed procession or chorus of polished brass to mark his return. He would not suffer it.

The vast hall beyond lay mercifully empty, save for two figures stationed at its center. His stride faltered by half a step — a hesitation so minute it would have escaped any but the most trained of eyes, but which in Guilliman’s case spoke volumes.

Calliope Mori hovered there at shoulder height, polished ceramite skull glinting under dim lumen-strips, pink-hued lenses rotating with delicate micro-adjustments. Her grav-stabilizers pulsed in short, stuttering bursts — as if she were tapping an impatient foot. Her optics fixed on him with flat intensity, casing humming faintly, betraying some simmer of internal tension.

Too close beside her stood Kiara, wrapped in the crimson folds of her Mechanicus robes. She slouched in that deceptively careless way she favored, data-slate clutched in one slender hand, the other tucked beneath fabric that writhed faintly with the twitch of hidden manipulator arms. Her single organic eye caught the light with an eager, cutting spark the instant it found his.

Guilliman’s stare swept between them, the lines around his mouth tightening by fractional degrees.

Why was Calli not already bolting for the ceiling struts? Why was she lingering near the Tech-Priest who terrified her on every other rotation?

Later, he told himself grimly. That puzzle would wait. Right now he carried a burden far heavier.

He advanced without slowing, every step cracking out against the marble like the measured strike of artillery. As he drew level, his gaze passed over them with practiced minimalism, acknowledging their presence only insofar as protocol demanded. Then he simply moved on.

Calli rotated a full degree in midair, lenses narrowing, casing buzzing with what sounded dangerously close to offense. Her voice broke out in a tight, clipped vox-register, pitched with affront.

“Oh, that’s it? No cryptic sigh? No thunderous lecture about compliance metrics? Nothing?”

A spike of power flared through her internal feeds, the faint scent of heated capacitors curling in her wake — the servo-skull’s equivalent of a snarled lip.

Kiara merely cocked her head, a smirk creeping across her features, one segmented servo-tail coiling behind her in a lazy question mark.

“Blueberry!” she chirped brightly, voice light and amused, somehow perfectly dismissing the cavernous gravity of the moment. “You look like you’re about to file someone’s entire bloodline into an error log.”

Guilliman’s eyes narrowed to cold blue slits.

Later , he promised himself again.

Without a word, he brushed past them, the heavy fall of his cloak trailing a static snap through the air as it disrupted local field distortions. The great doors at the hall’s end loomed wide and dark — and he passed through them alone, burden carried forward with every deliberate, thunderous stride.

As Guilliman strode deeper into the palace’s inner avenues, vox-relays mounted in the towering walls flared to sudden life, triggered by his gene-coded presence. A cascade of encrypted orders swept out across countless hidden networks, securing priority corridors and locking down auxiliary passageways. Lesser traffic simply vanished — retracting lifts, sealed gates, emergency redirects — all orchestrated in an instant to carve him a path that no one else would dare cross.

Servitors dotted along the way froze mid-motion, mechanized limbs stuttering into rigid stillness, augmetic eyes darkening to pinpricks as higher protocols hijacked their rudimentary consciousness. The air thickened by imperceptible degrees, growing hot and close, humming with the oppressive convergence of a thousand psychic dampers keyed to the sanctity of the Throne. It felt like walking into the mouth of a waiting furnace.

Behind him, faint but unmistakable, he heard Kiara’s voice drift down the corridor — low and edged with that unsettling fascination of hers that never quite sounded entirely sane.

“That’s… new,” she mused, the mechanical warble of her vox-grille curling around the words. “He’s usually only that grim after an Ecclesiarch’s been talking at him for an hour.”

“He didn’t even look at you,” Kiara continued, half-mocking, half-genuinely curious. “That’s a new record, right?”

Calli’s pink optics dimmed to narrow, angry slits. Tiny power ripples chased themselves across her polished casing. Her vox broke in with a sharper static burst, voice clipped and simmering.

“File that under: ‘not your business, cogbrain.’”

Guilliman did not slow. Did not so much as flick an ear to acknowledge them. His thoughts were already several corridors ahead, winding tighter with every massive step as they coiled around the inevitability of what waited at this palace’s rotting heart.

No more evasions. No more silent compliance.

Father, he thought, the word striking through the iron architecture of his mind like a silent artillery round.

You and I are going to speak.

---

The inner sanctum of the Throne room was vast beyond any mortal measure — a cavern of impossible scale, constructed not simply to hold the Emperor but to dwarf all who would dare approach.

Above, the ceiling vanished into a choking shroud of shadow and incense smoke, the oily glow of countless censers lost somewhere among towering steel arches and scaffolded reliquaries.

Choir pits lay hollow and silent today. Vox-organs stood dark and cold, their thousands of pipes jutting overhead like the skeletal cage of some long-dead colossus.

Each step struck the floor with a deep, cold echo that traveled ahead of him, chasing itself into the dimness until it was swallowed entirely. Ancient gold inlays lay underfoot, worn nearly flat by ten thousand years of kneeling pilgrims and cowed priests.

The air was hot. Oppressively so — heavy with a psychic residue that clung to the lungs like tacky resin. It crawled across Guilliman’s skin, wormed through the fine seams of his robes. Each breath tasted faintly of ash, of old sanctified oils, and something older still, something metallic and sour that coiled behind the teeth.

There was power here. Old and watching.

The Golden Throne rose at the sanctum’s heart — a monstrous series of thrones within thrones, its brutal carapace formed from impossible alloys interlaced with cyclopean circuitry. Exhaust stacks vented slow trails of searing vapor, every breath of that toxic exhalation another testimony to the hideous burden it sustained.

Countless cables, thick as siege chains, coiled down from the heights like strangler vines, plugging into the Throne’s armored spine. Each one throbbed with a subtle inner cadence, as if carrying some slow, monstrous pulse.

And sunk into this obscene lattice of life-support and prison alike was the Emperor’s withered frame. Skeletal beneath plates of gold that glimmered in the uncertain light, his skull rested within a cracked halo wreathed in ancient runes — each glyph flickering with faint psychic sparks.

Guilliman’s eyes drank it in with a slow, helpless horror. He had stood here before, stared into this same impossible sight.

It was no easier now. In truth, it cut deeper. Because this time he could not simply tell himself it was only machinery that kept the Imperium alive.

Now he knew better.

Gura’s offhand revelations had torn that lie from him as neatly as a surgeon’s scalpel.

He took the last shallow steps, and the psychic pressure thickened.

It pressed against his temples, slid cold, intangible fingers around the engine of his twin hearts.

There was something here. More than biological remnants, more than the monstrous power of the Throne itself.

A mind. Vast, undiminished, alive in ways he could barely comprehend.

Guilliman paused at the final tier, staring up into the hollow sockets of that deathless mask.

Memory cut through him — sharp, near-blinding. Standing here years ago, feeling this same impossible scrutiny crawling across the architecture of his thoughts.

He had dismissed it then. Brushed it aside as reverence echoing through his own marrow, a ghost of loyalty that lived only in him.

But he felt it again now.

That same presence.

Patient and ancient. Inconceivably immense.

It pulsed outward in subtle waves that brushed against the edges of his mind, gentle yet insistent.

It did not command him, did not even quite call.

It felt almost… pleading. A battered echo asking — quietly, mournfully — to be acknowledged.

Guilliman’s breath rasped dry through his throat.

His hands curled into fists at his sides. Every old instinct in him — the wary general, the hardened regent, the scarred son — urged him to turn away. To retreat from this intimacy, to keep that last armor intact.

But the sensation pressed harder, circling him with aching, mournful gravity.

Slowly, haltingly, Guilliman reached forward.

His palm hovered inches above the Emperor’s desiccated hand, suspended there in the heat that radiated from it — not thermal, but psychic, a simmering swirl of sheer presence that licked eagerly against his skin.

His chest tightened, something vast and nameless clawing up between his ribs — awe or terror, he couldn’t tell. Perhaps both.

He hesitated. Teeth ground together, jaw rigid with strain. A faint tremor shivered through the muscles of his arm — a tiny betrayal no war wound had ever managed to provoke.

Then, with a low, strangled breath, he closed the gap.

His massive hand engulfed the Emperor’s skeletal one, fingers wrapping around ancient, cold ceramite and brittle strands of preserved bone.

The instant his hand closed, the psychic pressure snapped taut.

It felt as if the entire chamber inhaled — as if the galaxy itself had wavered on a knife’s edge, holding its impossible breath.

And for one shattering heartbeat, Guilliman felt… nothing.

No mind reaching for his. No warm pulse of presence.

Only a hollow, devouring cold that stretched out endlessly, a void so profound it seemed to peel the marrow from his bones.

His breath stuttered. A thin line of sweat cut down his temple, vanishing into the collar of his robes.

She was wrong. Gura was wrong. I’ve gambled everything on my sister’s mad assurances—

Then: a flicker.

So faint he almost missed it. A fragile pulse, like a dying ember catching new air.

Words scraped across his mind — ragged, broken, leaking through as though forced through shattered glass.

“My son.”

“Thirteen.”

“Lord of Ultramar.”

“Saviour.”

“Hope.”

“Failure.”

“Disappointment.”

“Guilliman.”

It sounded like metal grinding across bone. Like something half-drowned in oil, clawing its way out from beneath centuries of rot.

Guilliman’s face drained to ash. His throat convulsed but produced nothing.

Then the migraine returned — savage and total, blooming behind his eyes like a nova tearing itself apart.

His knees nearly buckled. Air tore from his lungs in harsh, ragged bursts.

“Father!” he gasped — a hoarse, raw word ripped straight from somewhere deeper than even shame.

No. No, not now. Not after everything. Gura— why would she—

“A son.”

“A thing.”

“A name.”

His hand twitched against the Emperor’s skeletal gauntlet. He nearly pulled away.

Nearly.

Because beneath the horror, buried under fractured echoes, something tugged at his instincts, something maddeningly familiar.

A faint thread of… amusement?

The voice splintered again, psychic resonance cracking and sputtering across his synapses like a dying vox-cast.

“Roboute.”

A long, strained silence followed.

Guilliman stood frozen, half-collapsing under the tidal weight of it, eyes wide and glassy.

Then the laughter began.

Low at first, a subterranean rumble that seemed to rise through the bones of the Throne itself.

It grew, deep and rolling, until it boomed out across the vast chamber — a titanic, resonant sound that cracked off the high walls like thunder.

Guilliman jerked, confusion crashing through the horror like shattering glass.

Because the laughter wasn’t cruel.

It was rich and warm, almost delighted.

And then the voice came, enormous and unassailable, echoing across every fracture of his mind in perfect, terrifying clarity.

“…Honestly, Roboute. It has been ten thousand years and you’re still this easy to startle?”

Guilliman flinched so hard he nearly snapped the Emperor’s wrist.

His head jerked up, eyes wide, breath caught on a snarl. Then his jaw slammed shut, muscle jumping along his cheek.

I should have known.

His hearts pounded. Rage, relief, humiliation — all tearing at him in equal measure. Part of him wanted to throttle that withered body until the throned machinery shook. Another part wanted to laugh until it broke him.

The Emperor’s presence wrapped around his mind, vast and warm, threaded through with a biting amusement.

“My son. Truly, I must find new material. I suspect your sister would not have been fooled for an instant. Roboute, did you believe I would let the first words you heard from me in ten millennia be such hollow condemnation? I am not quite that theatrical.”

Guilliman’s jaw worked. His thoughts were chaos, composure cracking under the weight of old wounds.

Of course she wouldn’t have been fooled. She’d probably clap and climb right into his lap.

He straightened by force of sheer will. His eyes blazed with incredulous fury.

“…That was… monstrous.”

The echo that came back through the warp was a laugh — dry, sardonic, impossibly old.

“It was too fine an opportunity to ignore. Besides, your brother Rogal would have fainted dead away. Consider it a long-overdue recompense for every tedious war council you once subjected me to.”

Laughter rolled through the vast chamber. Then it faded, leaving only faint pulses in the air, like ripples on dark water.

Guilliman realized he was trembling — whether from adrenaline, leftover terror, or sheer stunned disbelief he couldn’t say. His own pulse thundered in his ears.

Then the voice returned, low now, warm in a way that almost undid him. It vibrated through his chest, bypassing air and flesh, sinking straight into the marrow.

“I have missed this. Truly, Roboute, you cannot know how long eternity grows when one is denied even such small amusements.”

A short, pained breath escaped him. His mouth twisted into something that was half snarl, half wry, exhausted smirk. He exhaled slow, trying to steady the riot in his veins.

The presence pressed closer. Not crushing, but vast and patient, curling faintly at the edges with dry humor.

“I can feel the storm of your thoughts. The shape of your doubts. Do not constrain them for my sake.”

Silence pooled thick between them. Then, softer still, impossible in its gentleness:

“I am certain you have many questions. Ask them.”

Guilliman’s throat worked. For a heartbeat there was nothing — only the churn of too many fears, too many calculations shattering under this impossible truth.

Then the words tore out of him, raw and unguarded, dragged up from a place too old to have ever truly healed.

“Why? Why have you said nothing? All this time — with the Imperium fracturing, the gods clawing at our door, our brothers lost… why hide this from us? From me?”

The air seemed to brighten around him, a slow bloom of psychic pressure that was not painful — merely vast, wrapping the chamber in something that felt at once immense and strangely intimate.

“Ah, my architect. My loyal one. Do you believe it has been by choice? That I withheld myself merely to watch you struggle?”

Guilliman’s jaw locked. His eyes burned, sudden heat pricking at the corners.

“I don’t know what to believe.”

A long, thick, oppressive silence followed with old weight. Then the Emperor’s presence shifted, a subtle ripple through the warp that felt almost… sheepish.

“Because I could not,” came the answer at last, spoken with a terrible, gentle patience that threatened to split him open.

“It is… impossible for me to reach those without the warp’s gift. Even your brothers, without contact — flesh to flesh .

The emperor paused briefly. Guilliman felt the amusement before the Emperor spoke.

Or flesh to bone in our case…were beyond my grasp. The mind of a primarch is mighty, but unlit to me without the spark of psychic sight.”

Guilliman’s fists closed so hard the bones in his hand nearly shattered. Pain flared through old scar tissue around his eyes.

“Then how? How did you speak to them? To Gura — to the others who wandered the Eye? How?”

The dark seemed to vibrate, a note of quiet amusement rolling through it like a low chord. 

“Ah, that was simpler,” the Emperor said, mirth rising bright and impossibly vast.

“The warp acts as a megaphone for my mind, dear Roboute. Even as I rot upon this throne, its tides carry my thoughts like beacon flares. I reached your sister there, and many others besides. I even made sport of it.”

The sense of amusement deepened, expanding outward until it felt almost playful — cosmic and terrible.

“I cannot tell you how many times I whispered strange half-lies and observations simply to unsettle the Four. Their confusion was… satisfying. Even gods hate jokes they do not understand.”

Guilliman’s lips parted. Horror, or something too tangled with relief to name, twisted through his throat.

His father, rotting on the throne, speaking to the warp like it was a court to be baited and toyed with.

But another question leapt up, sharper, cutting closer to the soft parts inside.

“Then why Ina’nis? Why not Gura? She is a psyker on par with Magnus — how is it that you speak so freely with that… that creature, and not your own daughter?”

The darkness breathed. A long, rich sigh uncoiled through the chamber, then came a string of words — lilting, intimate, heavy with a fondness that scraped raw across Guilliman’s spine.

“Ahhhhhhhhh Mademoiselle Ninomae… ma douce petite pieuvre. Si belle, si patiente. Toujours à écouter.”

Guilliman shuddered violently. He did not know the language, but the way it was spoken — tender, almost affectionate — left something cold and uncertain crawling through his veins.
He hated that. Hated it more than he could name, though he could not understand why. But there was no time to pull it apart.

The Emperor’s voice softened, ebbing back like a warm tide.

“Gura’s gifts are vast, yes — but they do not open in the shape required. Her song is built to mend, to empower, to shield the innocent and drive back the dark. Not to hear whispers across the veil of reality. Ina, by contrast, was born tuned to the hush between all thoughts. Through these ten thousand years I have been on this damned throne, only two souls have ever heard me so clearly in the waking world. Ina is… unique. A quiet mind amid endless screams.”

Guilliman felt something sharp close around his hearts. Pride? Envy? He couldn’t tell. His thoughts twisted, snarled by revelation.

“So all this time…” The words fell from him, weak, dragged out by sudden comprehension.

“You were aware. Watching. Trolling the Ruinous Powers — even as we bled the galaxy dry.”

The Emperor’s amusement rolled through again, a warm rumble that felt somehow monstrous and yet profoundly reassuring.

“Of course I was. And now, my son… now you begin to truly understand how very little of what we are has ever been chained by mere death. Ask the next question, Roboute. Before your mind invents a thousand cruel burdens it need not bear.”

Guilliman stood adrift in that vast black not-space, feeling the Emperor’s immense presence curl around his own like the careful grip of a sea leviathan testing the hull of a fragile ship.

He drew in a breath he didn’t need here, trying to steady himself. When he finally spoke, his voice came low, uncertain, frayed at the edges.

“Then why?” It sounded smaller than he intended — almost plaintive.

“Why not reveal yourself to the Imperium? Why let them worship rot and pageantry while you—”

A ripple of vast amusement brushed him first, chased quickly by something heavier — a gravity tinged with weary resignation.

“Because humanity will prevail,” the Emperor said. His voice rang clear, sonorous, like it carried a truth older than stars.

“It has endured when nothing else did. Through the long dark of the Old Night, through the bloody collapse of the Eldar’s empire, even when my own sons turned on each other — humanity clawed forward.”

A subtle wash of what might have been fondness lapped against Guilliman’s mind.

“With you at the helm, Roboute, that has only grown more certain. I see your work. I see your burdens. It will hold, because you will hold it.”

Guilliman swallowed, throat tightening. He tried to shape more objections — about hope, about how much the Imperium deserved to know — but the Emperor pressed on, his voice dimming into something colder.

“But as to the state of the Imperium…”

A fresh surge of feeling rolled through the dark — not warm this time, but brittle, simmering with barely contained impatience.

Guilliman stiffened. The presence seemed to loom higher, vast beyond reason, lines of unspoken judgment crackling through every unseen fold of reality.

“I saw how you handled its corruption,” the Emperor went on, voice dropping into a slow, grinding resonance, like tectonic plates shifting beneath continents.

“And I judged that you did not go far enough. But I understand why. Strip it too quickly, and it collapses outright. You made the right compromise — even if I despise the necessity.”

A taut silence fell. The Emperor’s cold irritation pressed sharp against Guilliman’s thoughts, as if testing the boundaries of his resolve. Guilliman shifted his feet — pointless in this place of pure mind and echo — but it grounded him all the same, helping blunt the sensation of being laid bare to the atom.

The air seemed to shiver — not with cold, but with a rising exasperation so palpable it pressed against Guilliman’s skin like humid breath.

“Do you know what irritates me most, Roboute?”

The Emperor’s voice fell, low and dark, steeped in an old amusement that barely disguised its exhausted disdain.

“It is not Daemons, who yearn for our blood, minds and skulls. It is not the greenskins, who at least revel honestly in their barbarity. Nor even the Mechanicus, chanting binary hymns to their own arrested decay. It is that damned Ecclesiarchy.”

Guilliman’s shoulders tightened. A flicker of dread moved through him — not fear of gods or daemons, but of the long, scathing monologue he could already feel building.

“They took my absence as a canvas for their fantasies. A corpse upon a throne became a god-king of their fever dreams. They dress ignorance in lace, chain reason with golden manacles, and call it piety.”

A cold wash of contempt rolled out, brushing across Guilliman’s thoughts with icy precision. He didn’t flinch. But he did brace. The voice flared, sharper now, biting at the edges of Guilliman’s consciousness.

“Do you know they once argued over whether a planet’s seasonal winds were holy ? Issued tithes upon the breezes? Sanctified weather , Roboute.”

A small, incredulous breath slipped from Guilliman’s lips. Not quite a laugh, more a grim acknowledgment of how far rot could spread. A faint, pained exhale escaped him. He was very familiar with these… tangents. 

The Emperor pressed on, inexorable, each word a crack of thunder layered with millennia of withheld condemnation.

“Their scribes layer new litanies upon the old like mold on rotting bread. A trillion candles lit to blind themselves from a single truth: humanity must stand or fall by its own strength.”

Then, without warning, the vast intellect veered — from cosmic grievance into the petty, personal pettiness that made Guilliman’s temples pulse.

“Clumsy designs, all brutish symmetry. Who decided skulls were inspiring? I have plenty of my own already, thank you.”

Guilliman closed his eyes, exhaled slowly through his nose. It was a familiar tempest, one he’d endured across decades of silent communion — though never quite so directly. Somewhere around the part where the Emperor started theorizing aloud about mandating universal literacy by mind-implants just to shut priests up, Guilliman tuned most of it out — nodding at the pulse of each new point, letting it wash over him like an old storm he’d endured a thousand times.

When it finally ebbed, he found his voice again. Rough, scraped raw by restraint.

“…So you will not reveal yourself because you still believe this Imperium can stand, even shackled by that corruption?”

“Yes.”

The word landed with a gravity that seemed to bend the chamber itself, settling into every crevice of Guilliman’s chest.

“Because despite their failures, their parasitism, this species is a tide no priest or warlord can truly halt. With your hand, it still surges forward. And when the moment comes, you will carve the path it needs. That is why I have stayed silent.”

The Emperor’s presence seemed to gather in, folding close around him — impossibly vast yet intimate, the hush at the center of a storm.

Then it loosened all at once, drawing back with a wry crackle of amusement that slithered through like faint laughter.

“Besides… who precisely would I tell that I am still here? I have already said — I can only reach extremely powerful psykers.”

A pause, just long enough to sharpen the sting, then the voice twined with sly, wicked humor that almost felt like a smirk.

“And unless you and Ms. Euten were keeping secrets even I didn’t notice, you were never exactly gifted in that department, my son.”

Guilliman’s eyelid twitched. A small, traitorous muscle near the corner of his mouth jerked.
It was such a casual, human jab — so absurdly normal, dropped like a stone into the vastness of their monstrous context — that it made his ribs feel hollow.
And somehow, that only infuriated him more.

He let it stand. Drew a breath that scraped down his throat, his thoughts splintering against it like fragile hulls on black rocks. Then, steadied by sheer iron habit, he forced the next words out.

“There’s another reason I reached for you, Father.” His voice came low, almost gruff, freighted under the silent weight of too many campaigns, too many calculus-laden nights. “On Vescaris… I met with Yvraine, an Aeldari witch. She spoke of Ynnead, their god of death and rebirth. Of slaying Slaanesh outright. Of a path that might finally give us leverage over the warp.”

The air around him seemed to fold, a subtle tension rippling through the golden dark. The presence behind it shifted, immense and faintly amused.

“Ah. The little prophet of the death god. I had wondered when that skein would tighten.”

Guilliman’s brow drew hard. “You knew of this?”

“Of course. Even perched upon this rotting throne, I have not been blind to the stirring beneath the currents. Ynnead is real, my son. It is a consequence long in coming.”

Guilliman’s hand flexed around the Emperor’s skeletal one, the gesture too tight to be conscious.

“And what of the Aeldari themselves? Yvraine speaks of binding our fates together. I’ve no illusions about their nature — they’re predators in their own elegant way. Can we trust them at all?

A sound met him then, brittle as dry leaves crushed under armored heel. Laughter — old, reluctant, edged with something that might once have been fond.

“Trust? No. Not in the sense you hope. The Aeldari will always act for their own kind first. But that is precisely why this can work. Their desperation ensures their loyalty to any course that promises their survival — and if you bind their fate tightly enough to our own, they will not dare cut the cord.”

Guilliman’s jaw shifted. A faint tic passed through an old scar, white against his skin. “And Amelith’ra? You knew her. Gura treats her like family. Is she playing us too?”

The darkness pulsed with a long, low resonance — a sigh that felt as though it had traveled down ten thousand years to reach him.

“Amelith’ra is… an outlier. Less Aeldari than many of her kind would admit. Living among humans for most of one’s life will shape even the most aloof Xenos. I suspect her loyalty is to Gura above all else. And that is a variable you understand better than most.”

A dry exhale escaped Guilliman, almost a huff. “That is not as reassuring as you think.”

A subtle roll answered him — not quite laughter, but its shadow.

“It was not meant to be.”

Guilliman’s fingers tightened around the ancient hand. When he spoke again, the words dropped lower, weighted by both the cold strategy of the Lord Commander and something more private.

“Then this plan — the Crone Swords, Ynnead’s awakening — you believe it has merit?”

The Emperor’s presence drew close, immense and deliberate, as though the entire unseen sea of psychic gravity had tilted toward him.

“It is sound. As sound as any gambit that dances on the blade’s edge of annihilation. Yvraine’s instincts are correct: given enough impetus, Ynnead could reach critical presence — enough to tear the Dark Prince’s throat open. And in the chaos that follows, the Imperium may find the only opportunity it will ever have to breathe free of these ancient parasites.”

Guilliman’s throat worked. The next words came out rough, the admission pulled straight from the iron at the base of his spine.

“And you knew this was coming. Even before I did.”

Guilliman’s jaw tightened, old scars pulling faintly across the hard lines of his face. The Emperor’s voice wrapped through the chamber, vast and dark and almost — impossibly — patient.

“I have had time to consider many futures, Roboute. More than you can imagine. But the choice was never mine and it is not mine now. I can tell you the shape of things, offer you the grain of truth that underpins the madness — but I will not command your hand.”

Guilliman’s throat worked. Something hard lodged behind his breastbone, cold and sour.

“So it falls to me,” he managed. The words felt scraped from the inside.

“It always did. That is why I made you as I did. The architect. The chosen steward of a dream that even now refuses to die, no matter how broken its bones.”

For a long moment there was only the hush of the throne’s machinery, the faint breath of ancient exhausts whispering through shadowed ducts. Guilliman’s hearts hammered slow, heavy blows inside his chest, each one echoing against the thought of Aeldari scheming, of Ynnead’s half-born hunger, of an Imperium balanced on the edge of its own rot.

His expression drew tighter. Scars along his cheek shifted, faint white ridges under strained skin. He pulled in a deliberate breath — a soldier’s breath, counted and locked.

“Yvraine spoke of more than killing the Dark Prince.” Each syllable came edged, deliberate. “She claimed there might be a chance to free you. From this—” His hand gestured, a short, hard slice through the air toward the obscene monument of the Golden Throne. “To resurrect you, fully. Is it even possible?”

The presence in his mind went still. Not gone, never that, but heavy, as though the Emperor’s attention turned inward to weigh scales too vast even for Guilliman’s reforged senses.

Then, faint, a dry curl of amusement wound through the link.

“Aeldari arrogance never disappoints. They peer a fraction deeper into the warp and believe themselves authors of all fate. But…”

It trailed off, returning softer, wrapped in a gravity that made Guilliman’s next breath stick painfully in his throat.

“It is not entirely beyond reason. There are patterns woven into the warp that might be seized. Instants where the galaxy itself hesitates — where its tides might be bent. Such moments are fleeting… costly… but they do exist.”

Guilliman’s hands flexed at his sides. His hands whispered against the edges of his robes, a subtle rasp that might have been the sound of his restraint fraying.

“And would you wish it?” His voice dropped lower, harsh around the edges. “To live again — truly live — if it meant risking everything we still hold?”

Silence answered him. Not empty, but full of slow, immense currents, like the hush before a storm breaks over a dark sea. Somewhere deep in the throne’s labyrinth of cables, a relay sparked, the faint blue arc lost instantly in shadow.

Then the Emperor’s presence stirred again, steady and cold as a tide.

“I would wish what you would wish, Roboute. For humanity to stand. For our kin to endure. If that requires my return… then let it be so. If not…”

A ripple of dark humor passed through the psychic air. “Then you will continue to suffer in my place. As you have always done so admirably.”

Guilliman let out a breath that caught halfway, more a low exhale of old pain than anything like relief. His mouth twisted, the shape of it halfway between a bitter smirk and a line of iron.

“That is no answer.”

“It is the only one that matters.”

For a beat the Emperor’s presence seemed to draw back as if to let Guilliman feel the full, raw weight of his own grim agency.

“You command this Imperium now, my son. I trust your judgment… even when it tears at you. Do not look to me to spare you that burden.”

Guilliman let out a sound that was almost a laugh, brittle and dark. He muttered under his breath, more gallows humor than true jest.

“You know, it would be simpler if you just gave me an order.”

The laugh that answered him rolled through the golden haze, warm and deep — and far too familiar. It cracked something sharp inside Guilliman’s chest that he hadn’t realized was still rigid.

“I did not raise you for simplicity, my son. Now — you must decide. And let whatever judgment history renders come in its own time.”

Silence fell, heavy and absolute. Even the slow psychic currents seemed to draw back, as though this decision required a sacred stillness. Guilliman stood there unmoving, his massive hand still clamped tight around his father’s cold, skeletal one, eyes fixed on the death-mask that somehow felt more alive now than ever.

Inside, thought and emotion waged their endless war. Calculation snarled against old hurts, duty locked horns with wounds that had never fully closed. His jaw worked once. Then again. Finally he managed to breathe enough to force out words that felt scraped bloody on the way up.

“Father… did you ever… miss us? Were we ever anything more than…than tools to you?”

A tide of warmth spilled out from the Emperor’s vast presence — not laughter this time, not sardonic or wry, but something deeper. Older and almost sorrowful.

“I have missed you all more than words can convey. Even when your brothers broke, even when you scattered across the stars and left me with a galaxy that burned, there was not a moment I did not ache for you. Yes, you were my instruments — my designs had shaped you. But you are also my sons. Each of you. Not by accident. Not by mere function. By choice, Roboute.”

Guilliman’s throat tightened, an ache digging deep beneath his breastplate. He swallowed hard, voice rough as torn cloth.

“Do you… regret us? Any of it? The Crusade, the way it ended—”

“Regret?”

The word seemed to echo forever, carried on a tide of memory so vast Guilliman could only brush the edges, as if trailing his hands through the wake of some leviathan passing in the dark.

“I regret how the galaxy failed you. How the frailties of mortals and gods alike tore us from what we might have built. But you, my son — your brothers and sister — I regret none of you. If offered the same crucible again, I would still bring you forth. I would still dream of what you could be.”

A faint tremor ran through Guilliman’s hand where it clutched the Emperor’s. His next words broke low, almost strangled.

“Then… am I enough? Still? After all this? Am I still worthy to be called your son?”

For a heartbeat the throne chamber seemed to constrict around that simple, naked plea — as if even the dim light recoiled inward to give it space.

Then the Emperor’s voice filled it all, wrapping around Guilliman in a depth beyond the warp, bright with something that might once have been joy.

“You are more than enough. You always have been. You have borne burdens no man should have to shoulder, and still you stand. You are worthy beyond any measure I could give. You are my son, Roboute. That has never changed. And it never will.”

Guilliman’s eyes burned, though no tears came. His throat locked around a raw, wordless sound — grief and relief knotted together into something too vast to name. So he did the only thing left: stood there, clutching that ancient, broken hand as if it might anchor him through the final shattering pieces of the man he had been.

The hush lingered in the vast chamber, thick with echoing stillness. Beneath it all, the soft pulse of arcane machinery throbbed on—a slow, ancient heartbeat echoing through the hollow ribs of a dying god.

“Go on then,” the Emperor’s voice rumbled through Guilliman’s mind, still close, still edged with that quietly amused familiarity.

“The galaxy will not wait, no matter how long we linger here. And it is yours to steer, my son.”

Guilliman drew in a breath that trembled, just faintly, around the edges. His shoulders squared by sheer force, spine locking straight until every inch of him stood once more as the Lord Commander—cold, rigid calm woven from old scars and older duty.

“Do not mistake the weight I set upon your shoulders for punishment,” the Emperor added. The echo of a subtle warmth threaded through the titanic cadence of his mind.

“It is trust. It has always been trust.”

Guilliman’s throat worked around something unspoken, words ground down to dust before they could take shape. Then he nodded, once—short, shallow, as if anything deeper might splinter the fragile iron composure he had so carefully reforged.

His eyes fell again to their hands. His massive palm still enclosed the Emperor’s skeletal one—fragile bones tangled in golden filigree and endless cables, all that remained to cradle a presence vast enough to drown worlds.

Slowly, Guilliman let go. His fingers hovered there for a heartbeat, curled slightly as if reluctant to release the grasp. Then they drew back, leaving only stillness in their wake. The Emperor’s corpse did not move. No tightening of ruined flesh, no ghost of breath—only the hollow monarch of a dust-choked empire, enthroned in silence.

Guilliman turned, cloak whispering low against the ancient stone. His steps struck sharp and deliberate, carrying him back toward the towering doors now creaking wide. Beyond, cold lumen-light spilled across the threshold—harsh and indifferent, a reminder of the wounded galaxy waiting beyond these walls, its endless wars and desperate billions.

Just for an instant, as he crossed from the throne’s long shadow, he felt something at his back. Not a burden, not a chain—but a vast presence, silent and watchful. Walking with him, if only for the span of a single, fragile heartbeat.

Then it faded. And Roboute Guilliman stepped once more into the Imperium’s cold, devouring dark.

The massive doors groaned open on time-worn hinges, spilling a wedge of pale luminance into the outer hall. Waiting there, arrayed in disciplined lines of gold and crimson, stood a cadre of Custodes. Their guardian staves rose like monuments, helms tilted in micro-adjustments that drank in every nuance of Guilliman’s approach.

Off to one side, Kiara lingered with one mechadendrite curled close against her shoulder, optics narrowing in recursive scans of his bearing. A data-slate twitched restlessly in her grip, lights stuttering across its edge.

Calli hovered nearer, pink optics dimmed low, casing humming with faint internal checks. For once, there was no flippant jab on her vocalizer, no coy static-laced tease—only the small, brittle hush of concern.

Guilliman halted at the threshold, cloak settling around him like the final hush before a storm. His face was set in that old marble calm, but the lines at the corners of his eyes carved deeper than before, etched by something vast and private.

Silence stretched. Then:

“Calliope.” His voice landed low, controlled, every syllable weighted with the toll of distant warhorns. “Gather Cawl. The Lord Commander Militant. The Lord High Admiral. Anyone whose hand rests upon the heart of this Crusade.”

Calli’s optics flared bright, soldier’s instinct overriding any hesitation. A crackle of static preceded her sharp reply.

“Copy that. Rounding up the galaxy’s least fun dinner party. Should I bring appetizers, or is existential dread the main course?”

Guilliman didn’t answer. Just exhaled slow, a faint torque at his jaw hinting at silent calculations grinding on behind that icebound composure.

“There is work to be done,” he said at last, quieter—but the words carried down the vault like a great iron bell.
“Plans have changed.”

Then, without waiting for reply or ritual, he swept past them all—leaving only the cold echo of his command to hang in his wake.

Notes:

OK! Sorry for the wait again. This opens up the door to MANY side stories, including 30k flashbacks, Big E doing a little trolling and possibly Primarch views. I also wonder who the other soul that the emperor is talking to is? I will tell you that it is a canon character, not a hololive one. Anyways I have more news. It is time for a new story. It will be set in the SAME UNIVERSE as this one. Into the Guraverse we go! I'm not sure exactly what I will be calling it, but feel free to give title suggestions! Here is a little Excerpt:

Her eye twitched violently as she watched yet another wave of Krieg infantry pour over the blasted ridgeline—bayonets fixed, gas masks blank and unfeeling, screaming prayers to a corpse-god as they surged straight into the teeth of heavy fire. She clutched her red cap with white-knuckled intensity, breath hitching into a strangled laugh that cracked halfway into a sob.

'I've trained battle maniacs before,' her thoughts whirled, scraping raw against the inside of her skull.

'But nothing—nothing—compares to this! These lunatics are trying to die!'

Beside her, Colonel 203 shifted uncomfortably, clearing her throat.
"I tried to warn you, Colon... I mean Commissar." The sky choked with the oily trails of artillery shells, and for the first time in three lifetimes, Tanya von Degurechaff wondered if she was the only sane one.

 

Yep. A Youjo Senki x 40k story... How original. Basically Tanya will be a commissar assigned to kriegsmen. (Something I was quite surprised hasn't been done before).

 

Anyways.
I hope you enjoyed. Thank you again to Allsham for his help.

Chapter 11: Chapter 10: Before the Tides Break

Summary:

Ok. So this one is gonna feel a little different than the other chapters. Instead of a full story, you're getting snippets. There is going to be a big time jump, as we are punching forward to the indomitus crusade. As such, this chapter is mostly filler. Just an FYI.

Terra, 009 .M42

Kiara sat perched on a battered metal crate in her private quarters on Terra. The room was dim, lit by cold lumen strips that hummed faintly overhead. Shadows pooled in the corners, thick with hanging mech-serpents and data-coils that writhed with lazy, automatic adjustments.

It smelled of ozone and old machine oil. Sparks occasionally jumped from overloaded capacitors embedded in the walls, static popping gently against the hush like distant hail on glass. Somewhere beneath her feet, Terra itself vibrated — the slow tectonic heartbeat of billions living and dying under its poisoned skies.

Kiara barely noticed. Her optics were half-dim, attention turned inward. Slender mechadendrites ran from ports along her spine into a small cogitator console on the floor. Diagnostic runes crawled across the cracked screen. One line in particular blinked red before clearing — a corrupted logic cluster, purged automatically, leaving a faint burn on her internal logs.

She was half-lost in it, hands twitching occasionally, when Calliope drifted in close. The servo-skull hovered with that faint hum of grav-stabilizers, her synthetic hair gently waving with the movement. Her optics were dim, near-black, her lower cradle clicking faintly as it compensated for subtle magnetic interference.

Calli muttered fragmented code strings to herself under her breath — broken assurances in the machine tongue that didn’t seem meant for Kiara at all. Sometimes she glitched, jumping a centimeter to the side without any transition, as though reality itself was buffering just long enough to let her reposition.

The tension was a third presence in the room, thick and patient. They both knew the visions had worsened. Neither wanted to open that door first.

Finally, Kiara’s voice broke the quiet — too casual, too flat, the words clipped by strain.

“Are they worse?”

Calli’s skull angled toward her, servos whining softly. Her chassis clicked twice, pretending to consult some internal log.

“Define worse.”

A small spark arced from her casing, grounding on a nearby data coil.

“More frequent, yes. More obnoxious? Absolutely. More… real? That’s the part I object to.”

Kiara’s shoulders tensed. Her mechadendrites coiled tighter around her torso, a half-instinctual motion that looked almost like self-protection.

“Mine too. It’s like… someone keeps pulling me out of myself. Dropping me into somewhere that hates me. Then leaving me to claw my way back alone.”

Silence returned, this time with teeth. Somewhere above them, a conduit shifted, releasing a brief hiss of pressurized coolant that ghosted across the back of Kiara’s neck.

Then Calli’s vox warbled, softer than usual, reluctant.

“I keep seeing a shoreline. Black water. Perfectly still, like glass over something alive. No sound. Just… shapes moving beneath. And a mask down there — silver, grinning. Like it’s laughing at me for looking.”

Kiara’s optics flared faintly. A data spike jolted through her system, betrayed by a sudden tremor in her left hand.

“I’ve never seen a shore. But I hear voices. Laughing sometimes, begging sometimes. I can’t tell if they’re begging me… or for me. There’s always this sense of… teeth. Rings of them. Waiting. Wanting.”

Calli clicked again, this time a soft mechanical growl that vibrated the nearby cables.

“Good. So we’re both very healthy. Definitely standard operating condition.”

Calli drifted closer, pulled by something like a silent undertow. Her vox dropped, words trailing static threads that danced around her casing.

“There’s also a woman. Pale. Tall. Robes stitched with little stones that pulse when I look directly at them. She stands on the water like it’s solid. She never speaks… she just watches. It’s… unsettling. Like I’m some experiment that surprised her by surviving this long.”

Kiara’s gaze sharpened, her optic lenses narrowing, then widening faintly in a subtle recoil.

“You think she’s real?”

Calli let out a small, distorted burst of static — half dark laugh, half shorted circuit.

“Probably not. Or worse — real in a way that matters more than us. I’d almost prefer it was madness. Feels simpler.”

Kiara’s hands came up to press against her temples. Metal fingers rasped across synthetic skin, sparks dancing from a coil at her wrist. The diagnostics on her console stuttered, a ripple of corrupted characters racing down the screen before clearing.

“Mine are different. There’s no ground. No horizon. Just… color and shape. Orange and purple tearing at each other, trying to devour or outlast. It’s chaos in the truest sense — no logic, no pattern I can fix to, nothing to index or archive. I’m there, but I’m wrong. Too many angles, not enough substance.”

Her voice dropped, softer, teetering on the edge of breaking.

“Then the pain starts. Not damage. I know how to route around damage. This is… they reach inside the core of me. Pull out every stubborn piece, every line of code that refuses to break. They dig until they find the kernel that’s me , and pry at it to see what breaks first.”

Her optics dimmed, mechadendrites twitching in tight, ugly pulses.

“I fight. I always fight. I try to hold onto something — a principle, a memory, even a line of logic. Doesn’t matter. They’re stronger. They peel it all away anyway.”

Her claw twitched violently, scraping down the edge of the console. Tiny strings of corrupted data bloomed on the screen before it corrected.

She laughed then — a harsh crackle of static that was entirely without humor.

“Then they force joy into me. Not a gift, a weapon. They flood me with it until I can’t tell if I’m laughing or shrieking. And for a moment… a tiny moment… I think I love it. That’s the part that makes me want to rip out my own power conduits.”

The claw twitched again, dragging fresh scratches into the console. More corrupted data opened and cleared, blinking away like frightened insects.

“Then the voices come. They promise to remake me. To make me beautiful, or obedient, or nothing at all. I keep fighting. Even if it’s pointless, I fight because… because it’s mine . I don’t even know why they care. Or what I am to them. They call me names, but they’re wrong. They’re not mine.”

Calli’s lights flickered, dimming almost to blackout before flaring bright again. Her voice glitched, a tiny stutter that turned one syllable into three.

“Why do they call you by the wrong names?”

Kiara jolted and looked away. Her mechadendrites shivered in a tight, skin-close ripple.

“Because I think… I’ve had more names than this. And some of them weren’t mine alone.”

They sat there in the hush, surrounded by the faint thrum of Terra — a planet trying to outlast its own sins. It wasn’t horror that held them so tightly, but a slow, suffocating inevitability. Neither truly understood what they were becoming, but they both understood it was together .

Calli floated closer still, her casing lightly brushing Kiara’s shoulder. The contact was so gentle it might have been accidental, but she didn’t pull away. Her vox dropped so low it almost didn’t engage, words cutting in and out like a failing broadcast.

“If these things ever take control of me… you’ll shut me down, right?”

Kiara didn’t answer at first. Her mechadendrites twitched, then slowly unwound, unfurling like cautious vines. They wrapped around Calli’s chassis in a loose, fragile cradle — neither a promise of restraint nor protection, simply contact .

“No.” Kiara’s voice was soft.

“You’re stuck with me. Even if we both turn into something monstrous, we’ll face it that way. Together.”

Calli let out a burst of static that sounded almost like a broken laugh, half relief, half glitch.

“That’s… probably the most worrying thing you’ve ever said to me. Thanks.”

They stayed like that — tangled in cables, half-lit by dying lumen strips, and quietly braced against a future neither could see, except in the wrong names whispered to them in dreams.

Vescaris, 012 .M42

The strategium on Vescaris was a place shaped as much by function as by the eccentricities of its master.

Vast iron gantries crisscrossed overhead, bearing cables thick as ship mooring lines. Data-lattice towers rose at odd angles, blinking with layered binaric prayers. From vox-emitters spaced irregularly along the walls, a low half-chant of Tech-Priests murmured, their machine hymnals spiraling into recursive static. The entire chamber seemed to hum in imperfect harmony — the sound of a thousand half-finished calculations, forever unbalanced.

At the center of it all, upon a black-iron dais, floated a hololithic projection of the Ultima Segmentum.

Thousands of threat glyphs and Imperial route sigils danced across the three-dimensional void, red lines snaking from fortress worlds to vulnerable agri-colonies, blinking as new data poured in from Mechanicus probes light-years away.

Guilliman stood at the edge of this glow, colossal even without his armor, the severe cut of his robes making no effort to soften his presence. His hands rested on the lip of the console, armored fingers tapping out precise, staccato patterns that betrayed tension he otherwise refused to show.

Across from him stood Yvraine, robed in midnight, her spirit stones flickering with their own living light. She was still in a way that Guilliman found faintly unsettling — not the disciplined stillness of a warrior at rest, but something deeper, older, like a sculpture that might decide at any moment to move.

Her crimson eyes tracked the shifting hololith with unreadable calm.

Silence stretched between them, filled only by the low hum of projectors and the distant clatter of servitors tending data banks.

Guilliman cleared his throat, the sound oddly human in a chamber so given over to machine logic.

At last he spoke, voice measured, as if testing how it would sound against the Mechanicus acoustics.

“I’ve had my strategos collate predictive warp instabilities through this corridor. We believe the Tyranid bio-fleets will avoid it for at least another decade. It gives us a corridor to reinforce this frontier.”

He gestured with one broad hand to a tight cluster of Imperial systems, each pulsing with coded life-signatures.

Yvraine’s eyes followed, her expression unreadable. After a beat she spoke.

“You speak of Tyranids the way I might discuss weather. Your calm unnerves me.”

Guilliman’s jaw tightened, a faint twitch at the corner of his mouth betraying the ghost of dark humor.

“I’ve found fear is best rationed. Otherwise there is never enough left when it is truly needed.”

There was a pause — then Yvraine’s lips curved in the barest ghost of a smile.

“Pragmatic and entirely unbeautiful. I approve.”

The chamber fell back into its natural state of machine noise. Guilliman’s eyes flicked to a servo-arm adjusting a relay tower, then back to the projection.

He cleared his throat again, forcing another human note into the mechanical choir.

“If we redirect the second wave through this corridor,” he said, gesturing anew, “we can meet the Tyranid splinter fleet near the Carthas Expanse. That clears enough rear pressure for your agents to slip through and continue the Crone Sword hunt without risking our supply lines.”

Yvraine tilted her head slightly, her gaze narrowing in delicate analysis.

“So much resource shuffling for one blade.”

Guilliman let out a soft sound — half snort, half short laugh, surprising himself with how dry it felt.

“One blade that might determine if either of our species sees the next millennium. I’m a pragmatist, not a romantic — I understand the weight.”

Yvraine moved then, robes whispering across the black-iron flooring as she stepped around the dais.

She extended a slender hand, fingers trailing through the hololith. Where she touched, the projection didn’t simply distort in mechanical interference — faint motes of psychic light spun away from her skin, lingering in the air like tiny, confused spirits before vanishing.

“There is a resonance here,” she murmured, voice quiet but steady. “Not in your machines — in the void itself. The dead cluster along this corridor, drawn to old paths. You will find fewer warp storms, fewer daemons. But more ghosts. More memories.”

Guilliman watched her hand pass through the projection, unease coiling beneath his stern exterior. Yet there was intrigue, too — a sense that he was seeing something no Imperial augur could ever render.

“I’ll take ghosts over daemons,” he said finally, voice low. “Ghosts rarely demand tithes of blood.”

Yvraine tilted her head further, the faint amusement in her eyes almost — almost — approving.

They turned back to the projection together. Guilliman reached for a command stud and adjusted a cluster of glyphs, highlighting warp lanes and potential fallback worlds. His motions were precise, economical, the product of millennia of doctrine and instinct.

Yvraine watched with an intensity that was different. It was not tactical exactly, but searching for something hidden beneath the patterns.

At last she extended one slim finger and delicately tapped a node.

“Here. If your battle groups pause to regroup at this juncture, it will mask our pursuit of the Crone Sword’s resonance. Too many signatures confuse the watchers — daemonic or otherwise.”

Guilliman’s gaze flicked to her, then back to the highlighted node. A small nod followed, almost pleased.

“Practical. I’ll issue the fleet orders through my own encrypted channels. Less chance for the Ecclesiarchy or overeager admirals to interfere.”

A silence fell, but it was no longer hollow. It was heavy with the shared awareness of what they were doing — and what it might cost.

Guilliman spoke first, voice dropping low, losing its polished edge.

“I was crafted to fight wars without sentiment. I was taught to see the Aeldari as inevitable adversaries. Yet here I stand, placing a fragment of mankind’s future in your hands.”

Yvraine’s eyes met his without the faintest flicker of discomfort. Her voice was cool, but not unkind.

“And I was raised in a culture that views your species as crude predators — little more than beasts who would gnaw at the stars until nothing remained. Yet here I stand, hoping you will hold the line long enough for my kind to finish this work. Perhaps tragedy is the only bridge between such unlikely allies.”

Her gaze softened by a fraction.

“I find myself grateful your hand steers the Imperium.”

She stepped a little nearer, her presence no longer quite so remote — not friendly, exactly, but open in a way neither had expected. The faint, fragrant ozone of her psychic aura met the colder tang of Guilliman’s armored gauntlets, an uneasy boundary that neither retreated from.

Guilliman’s mouth lifted at one corner, the smallest, most tired smile.

“And I am grateful your god chose a herald capable of seeing beyond old grudges.”

They stood there a moment longer under the ghostly light of the map, two ancient forces awkwardly aligned — beginning, perhaps, to sense not just alliance, but the fragile contour of something rarer.

At last Guilliman exhaled, as if conceding something to himself. His massive hand gestured faintly at the projected starscape, then to her.

“I have never had cause to trust your people. But I have cause now. And little enough luxury to refuse aid freely offered.”

Yvraine stepped closer still, the light from her spirit stones playing over the stern lines of his jaw.

“Then we are agreed. This alliance is born of necessity. But necessity often seeds stranger things — kinship, perhaps. Even friendship.”

Guilliman allowed the barest, strained ghost of a smile.

“Let us not aim so high so quickly. Strategy first. Then… we’ll see.”

Yvraine inclined her head, crimson eyes glinting faintly.

“A start, Lord Commander. And a fair one.”

Together, they turned back to the map — two legacies of dying or dead empires studying the future in patient silence.

Awkward, tentative, but unmistakably aligned.

---

Thalassia, 010 .M42


The chamber was quiet, long after the final voices of the Mourning Tide had faded into the vaulted gloom of the necropolis.

It was one of the smaller vaults branching off the main procession hall — an older space, where coral had been allowed to grow unchecked across the stone, fractal arms twining through ancient and delicate Thalassian script. Here, soft bioluminescence spilled from translucent nodules, casting the walls in a slow-shifting dance of greens and blues.

Another ritual was done. The dead had been honored, their names sung, their memory given breath again by Gura’s voice. And now, in this quiet aftermath, Gura found herself sitting on a wide stone ledge that overlooked a small pool. Her trident leaned against the wall beside her, its metal still faintly warm from the ritual’s psychic resonance. Her cloak — heavy with gold-threaded wave patterns — lay folded on the ledge, set aside with surprising care.

She sat hunched, elbows on her knees, head bowed. The brilliant spectacle of the Mourning Tide reduced now to a single living woman looking far smaller than any Primarch should.

She didn’t hear Amelith’ra enter. The Aeldari moved with that peculiar, sinuous silence that seemed part natural grace, part learned wariness. Amelia paused just within the archway, her silhouette outlined by faint coral glow .Her coat was simple — the long tan trench belted neatly over a muted plaid tunic, thigh straps and high boots still smudged from travel. Even she tended to leave the more ceremonial touches behind after these rituals; the weight of the day clung regardless, settling into the quiet folds of her worn detective hat.

She watched Gura for a long moment, eyes narrowing with quiet calculation. Then, with a soft huff, she stepped forward.

“Alright,” Amelia announced lightly, her voice bright against the hush, “are you planning on brooding there until your scales rot off, or should I go ahead and start mocking you now?”

Gura didn’t react— she’d long since grown used to Amelia’s ability to appear unannounced. She did, however, let out a slow breath through her nose, the faintest ghost of amusement threading through it.

“Wasn’t brooding,” she muttered.

“Oh forgive me, oh mighty tide-born. Clearly this is deep reflection ,” Amelia said, stepping closer, adopting an exaggeratedly solemn posture.

“Positively dignified. Your sharks will compose ballads about your haunted, soulful stare.”

That earned the faintest huff, a tiny corner of Gura’s mouth twitching upward. She still didn’t look up, though, hands flexing idly where they dangled between her knees.

Amelia eased closer, graceful as ever, before dropping down to sit beside her on the ledge. She tucked her legs up, the hem of her cloak spilling over the stone in a careless heap. For a few moments she simply let the silence return, letting Gura acclimate to her presence.

Then — unable to resist — she leaned sideways and bumped her shoulder against Gura’s armored one.

“You know,” Amelia said, voice dropping to something almost fond, “it really is beautiful. The ritual. The way the vault seemed to breathe with you. The way your song carried the names so gently. Even my stones felt… lighter. For a while.”

Gura’s shoulders shifted, almost a flinch, though not quite. Her eyes were still fixed on the floor.

“Doesn’t feel beautiful. Feels like… like I’m digging up everything I worked to bury. All those faces. All those names. The ones I failed.”

Amelia leaned back slightly, giving her a flat look. Her ears did that faint, irritable flick.

“Geez, you’re heavy sometimes. Good thing I’m so emotionally robust.”

She didn’t give Gura a chance to respond. Instead, she twisted and leaned in, wrapping her arms around Gura’s shoulders and tugging her into a tight hug. Gura stiffened immediately, muscles locking under the embrace, her hands half-raised like she wasn’t sure whether to return it or shove Amelia away.

“Ame…”

“Hush. I’m comforting you. It’s extremely important work,” Amelia said, voice muffled against Gura’s collar.

For a few heartbeats Gura just sat there, rigid as the coral pillars that lined the chamber. Then, with a faint sigh that might have been surrender, she let her hands drop, her forehead tilting to rest awkwardly against Amelia’s shoulder.

“You’re ridiculous,” Gura muttered, voice rough.

“I know. And you love it.” Amelia gave her a small squeeze, her fingertips pressing lightly into the edges of Gura’s gorget.

For a while neither of them spoke. The pool before them rippled with faint undercurrents, casting fractured light across their faces. Somewhere deeper in the vault, faint echoes of the ocean could be heard — as though the entire structure was a vast lung, drawing in and releasing slow breaths.

Finally, Amelia’s voice drifted out, softer now, closer to the careful lilt she used when speaking truths meant only for Gura.

“You’re doing better than you think, you know. Things are… less broken than they were. Your legion isn’t just killing things anymore. They’re living. The city’s rebuilding. Children are singing songs again. And all of it is because you came back.”

Gura’s claws flexed once on the stone. Her voice was so low Amelia almost didn’t catch it.

“Sometimes it feels like I came back wrong. Like I left the best pieces of me in the Eye and clawed my way out with whatever was left.”

Amelia pulled back just enough to look at her, the corner of her mouth curving into a crooked smile.

“Oh please. You’ve always been this much of a mess. Don’t blame the warp for your naturally poor decision-making skills.”

That pulled a startled snort from Gura, and Amelia seized the moment to tighten her hug again, practically burying her face against Gura’s neck joint. Her next words were quieter, warmer, vibrating through the small hollow where their shoulders met.

“But it doesn’t matter, does it? Because you’re here . And so am I. So if the galaxy decides to keep throwing monsters at us — well, we’ll just be bigger monsters right back.”

“Together?” Gura asked, almost under her breath.

Amelia leaned back again, just far enough that her forehead pressed against Gura’s, her long hair falling in a soft curtain around them both.

“Obviously together. What, you think I’d let you steal all the good stories? Not a chance, shark bait.”

A small, reluctant laugh broke out of Gura — breathy, sharp, the sound of someone surprised by their own relief. Her hands finally came up, claws curling gently around Amelia’s shoulders. It was awkward, half-armored and uncertain, but it was enough. Amelia’s grin softened into something far more tender, her crimson eyes glowing faintly in the coral light.

They stayed like that for a while, close enough that Gura could feel the faint hum of Amelia’s heartbeat through her robes, the ghost of psychic resonance that always seemed to linger around her. It was grounding in a way the rituals never were. Real in a way the chanting crowds and solemn pronouncements could never touch.

Eventually Gura pulled in a long breath, held it, then let it out slowly.

“You know,” she said, voice finally gaining a little of its usual wry edge, “you’re very smug for someone who used to trip over her own spear.”

Amelia leaned back just enough to roll her eyes, but her smile didn’t fade.

“Oh I see, the emotional breakthrough’s over. Back to insults. Very healthy.”

“Extremely healthy,” Gura agreed. Her claws gave a small, playful squeeze.

They settled into a more comfortable lean. Amelia then pressed against her side, head resting lightly on Gura’s pauldron. The two of them watched the ripples in the pool, the way tiny bioluminescent shrimp danced just below the surface.

For all the galaxy’s enormity — for all the threats gathering at its bleeding edges — this moment felt strangely safe. It felt like home in a way neither would ever say out loud.

“You really think things will get better?” Gura asked eventually, her voice almost childishly small. Not the voice of a Primarch, or a warlord, or a living myth — just Gura.

Amelia didn’t answer immediately. Her eyes tracked a faint shimmer of light across the chamber ceiling. Then she gave a little shrug against Gura’s side.

“They might. Or they might get worse. But we’ll be in it together, which means it won’t matter. That’s sort of the point of all this messy existence business, isn’t it?”

Gura huffed, then leaned down to press her forehead briefly against Amelia’s temple.

“Yeah,” she murmured.

“Guess it is.”

They sat there for a long time, tangled up in each other’s warmth and the quiet of the coral vault. Outside, Thalassia’s tides continued their eternal pull, the weight of the oceans shifting, pressing gently against the dome walls.

It was a reminder that even the heaviest burdens moved with the world — that grief could be carried forward, that life could be rebuilt, fragile and glowing, beneath the crushing weight of everything that had been lost.

And together — ridiculous, stubborn, impossible as they were — they’d keep carrying it.

Because that was what they did.

Because they still could.

 

---

Thalassia, 010 .M42



The training fields on Thalassia were nothing like the cold kill-holds of void ships or the sacred, blood-streaked cages of fortress-monasteries.

They were rough-hewn from the coral shelves and volcanic black stone of the ocean floor, wide open to the water above. Void shields shimmered faintly at the upper edge, holding back countless tons of ocean — distorting sunlight into shifting, broken shafts that danced across the arena’s slick surface.

Schools of small fish drifted by in loose swarms, bumping harmlessly against the invisible barrier before darting away in bright, startled clouds. Around the field’s perimeter, crude bioluminescent markers glowed — woven nets of living lights crafted by Thalassian artisans. They cast the edge of the arena in ghostly greens and blues.

Clusters of Thalassians stood beyond them: Depth-Wardens in their shell-inlaid mail, old fishers still streaked with salt, families in humble work clothes. Many had children perched on coral outcroppings, eyes wide and shining. They watched in hushed awe, as though witnessing the birth of something half-divine, half-terrifying.

Tyberos stood at the field’s edge, full plate cladding his massive frame, the shark-hooded helmet clipped at his belt. He preferred it this way — he wanted these new marines to see his face. To see the old scars that twisted the side of his mouth into a permanent half-snarl, the pale marks crossing his jaw and neck where void blades and tyranid talons had once found purchase.

These were not old Carcharodons. Not grizzled veterans carried over from the shadow wars of the outer dark.

They were all brand new Astartes, drawn entirely from Thalassian blood. Just true, hard-forged Carcharodons reborn from the people of this ocean world, tempered in the old genetic crucibles.

They moved with the awkwardness of fresh transhuman bodies, still learning to bear their mass, to shift ceramite with the unconscious ease of those born to war. But there was promise in them. A raw, hungry edge.

They clashed in brutal pairs across the field — blunted chainswords that still sparked on impact, weighted training axes that could split bone beneath armor if wielded without care. Each strike echoed against stone and rolled out toward the watchers, sending a shiver through the crowd.

Tyberos moved among them with the slow inevitability of a prowling leviathan, his boots scraping softly over the slick coral floor. He said little. Correction came by the hard grip of a gauntlet — a wrist jerked sharply into alignment, a shoulder slammed back into position. More than once, his touch rattled teeth inside helmets.

It was not cruelty. It was shaping.

One recruit, broader than most but young still — you could hear it in the ragged, uncertain rasp of his breath — hesitated as his opponent lunged. That last human instinct to flinch had not yet been fully burned out.

The other marine drove him down hard, armored limbs skidding across the stone, breath leaving his lungs in a choked bark.

Before he could scramble up, Tyberos was there. A single motion — hand closing around the gorget, hauling the recruit to his feet so fast his legs dangled for a heartbeat. Their faces nearly clashed, Tyberos’s old battle scars a stark map inches from the new marine’s startled eyes.

“Fear’s not your weakness,” Tyberos growled, voice low, meant for this recruit alone.

“It’s your edge. Know the shape of it. Press it against your own throat until you remember who holds it.”

Then he let go. The recruit dropped with a muted grunt, stumbled, then found his stance again — lower, tighter, meaner. Tyberos watched just long enough to see him surge back into the engagement, blade driving hard enough to crack the haft of his opponent’s weapon.

Only then did he turn away.

Stepping back, Tyberos folded his arms across his chest, silent, weighing.

He watched how these Thalassian marines moved — not as rigid as old legionaries. Their footwork carried hints of Depth-Warden training, small sidesteps and rolling pivots borrowed from fighting under water. Even their feints looked like the gliding, circling approaches of reef hunters.

A faint satisfaction curled cold in his gut. Gura had wanted them to be of this world, not just for it. Wanted their roots deep in Thalassia’s tides so they would never again be cast adrift. It seemed to be taking hold.

His gaze drifted across the edge of the field. There, a young Depth-Warden barely older than the Astartes recruits stood gripping a trident in both hands. Her eyes were bright, awed and wary all at once. When she met Tyberos’s stare, she straightened — shoulders squaring as if to prove she would not look away.

Tyberos gave her a single small nod. It was enough. Her expression steadied, something like pride blooming there.

Then his eyes moved past her — past the warriors, past the guards. To the families clustered beyond the coral markers. Scores of civilians stood watching this birth of a new legion. Old men with hands scarred from nets, mothers with salt-cracked skin. And children — so many children, perched wherever they could see, whispering breathlessly.

Tyberos watched them for a long, silent moment. Saw the smallest ones mimicking the marines’ stances in sloppy, over-wide poses, giggling before ducking behind their parents. Others clutched tight to a father’s sleeve or a mother’s waist, half afraid, half dazzled.

A thought moved through him then — slow, cold, but gentle in a way that startled him.

‘This is what it’s for. Not for songs in vaults of bones. Not for vengeance echoed across empty stars. For them. So they will have tides yet to live. ’

He drew in a long breath, savoring the brine-heavy air, the electric tang that always clung to Thalassia’s living constructs. Then his gaze swept back to the recruits, catching each pair of eyes as they prepared to engage again.

When he spoke, it was a low thunder, rolling across the coral and stone and echoing faintly off the void shields overhead.

“Again!” Tyberos barked.

“Until instinct becomes blood — and that blood stands watch over all who cannot.”

The words struck deep. The marines moved at once, sharper than before, lunging into fresh engagements with a ferocity that turned the field into a living sea of flashing steel. Near the back, a group of children gasped in delight, clutching each other’s hands, eyes huge.

Tyberos stood silent, arms crossing again. Letting the promise he’d spoken settle over him like old armor.

This — here, under the gaze of those they’d one day die to protect — felt more like an oath than anything ever sworn in the sacred depths of the Mourning Tide.

And for the first time in long years, the future did not feel like a shadow creeping toward his throat.

It felt like sharpened teeth, turned outward. Waiting for anything that dared threaten these tides again.

---

Terra, 011 .M42

The throne chamber was vast and breathless, a mausoleum stretched across miles of dark steel and gilded ruin.

Incense spiraled through the cold air, its bittersweet tang clinging to ancient cogitators and devotional murals. Lumen-strips burned with a sickly gold across the labyrinth of conduits feeding the colossal seat.

Choirs murmured distantly in vaulted recesses, voices cracking under the strain of endless litanies. Adepts droned through vox-relays, their words brittle with fear and awe.

And on the throne, motionless, sat the Emperor of Mankind.

A skeleton wreathed in cracked, corroded armor, cables embedded in marrow, flesh long since fossilized beneath golden seals. His head tilted slightly, eyeless sockets cast down the great steps before him. To any mortal eye, he was utterly dead — a corpse propped on a throne of failed salvation.

Servitors hissed along the grated floors, adjusting fluid lines and splicing tangled bio-conduits. Nearby, an Archmagos recited machine canticles to no one at all, his vox-clicks thin and lonely in the cavernous dark.

There, the warp pressed against reality’s skin, and found itself held back by a single will — vast, patient, and relentless.

It was here that Ninomae Ina’nis found him.

She arrived like a delicate tide.

Soft threads of thought, cool and certain, sliding through the depths without force. Her presence curled around his immense mind, gentle as strands of kelp caught in a slow undercurrent — ever patient, ever listening.

A pulse rolled through the dark, rich and impossibly old, tinged with sardonic delight.

“You are late, petite pieuvre. I have endured the ministrations of droning adepts for hours. One of them attempted to clean my ocular sockets.”

A faint pause, then an almost wounded edge.

“Do you have any idea how irritating it is to be politely dusted?”

Ina’s thoughts coiled tighter, a low ripple of amusement echoing through the link.

“Well, we can’t have the high priests scandalized by a dusty corpse. How ever would the Imperium survive that particular theological crisis?”

A deep vibration shivered through the warp — the Emperor’s laugh, restrained but delighted, rolling across unseen currents.

Ina drifted closer still, pressing around the sharp edges of his mind with lazy familiarity.

“You’ve been watching Guilliman again, haven’t you.”

His response was immediate, exasperated fondness curling through every syllable.

“He broods so beautifully; it would be a waste not to admire the artistry. Truly, he has elevated dour contemplation into its own exalted art form.”

Ina gave a soft, almost pitying chime.

“You really are a bastard. He’s trying so hard not to crack under all of it. And you’re perched here, rating the quality of his misery.”

The Emperor’s humor dimmed, replaced by something slower and heavy.

“I know. It is why I watch. To reassure myself he still bends, not breaks. Because I fear I would shatter if he did.”

Ina shifted the conversation, brushing him with calm currents — small, mortal stories drawn from across the stars.

A Guardsman who carved prayers for his daughter on the inside of a helmet.

A forge-world that by mistake (or sheer opportunism) declared a festival in Gura’s honor, hoping it would stave off raids by pirates.

Warm amusement lapped around the Emperor’s vast mind.

“Ah. Mankind ever confuses devotion with opportunity. Still… it is charming. Even I must admit that. Their hearts find light even in ashes. It is… disarming.”

Then Ina pressed closer, voice drifting soft and grave across the dark.

“Do you ever wish you could simply walk among them again? No throne. No bindings. Just… walk. With me.”

For a moment his presence stilled so profoundly it was like being plunged into the heart of a dying star — absolute, airless silence.

Then it returned, heavy with something tender, almost breakable.

“Every day. But were I to stand now, the galaxy would hold its breath for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes I think it is better this way — to remain their silent myth.”

Ina let that weight settle, then teasing heat brushed through the link — her voice curling sly, though there was fondness buried deep.

“A myth who sulks when left alone too long. Hardly the image the Ecclesiarchy sells.”

A low chuckle thrummed back, amused and warm.

“They would faint dead away if they heard me admit to even mild irritation. Imagine them discovering their “God-Emperor” has little patience for solemn nonsense.”

She pushed again, irreverence dancing through her mental touch.

“Or that he actually enjoys my terrible jokes.”

A grand sigh wound through the dark, all regal melodrama.

“Truly scandalous. The “divine” architect of mankind reduced to fond amusement by a tiny abhuman librarian. How ruinous to my mythos.”

Ina’s presence softened, pressing in with gentle calm.

“Perhaps that’s what I’m for. To remind you that underneath all this, you’re still… you.”

The link stretched vast and still, then closed around her with a slow, crushing tenderness.

“Yes. That is why I allow you so close. Even now, when my patience wears thin with sycophants and doom, you remind me that once, long ago, I laughed easily.”

The Emperor’s immense thoughts curled tighter, almost like a careful embrace.

“Stay with me a while longer. Speak of the mortals and their hopes. I would hear it. Eternity is less of a burden when you insist on cluttering it with small joys.”

Ina pressed close, her psychic signature gentle and certain, wrapping around the ragged edges of his vast being.

They settled there, folded together in the hush. The Emperor seemed almost at ease — until, with the careless arrogance of someone who never quite learned to hold his tongue, he let something slip.

“Mortarion’s lesser fleets are circling dangerously close to the Maelstrom’s new warp fractures. I would wager he’s waiting on a shift in Nurgle’s tides before committing. Curious, isn’t it?”

Ina went absolutely still.

Then her presence surged — a cold, invasive flood that lanced through the Emperor’s mind with sharp, possessive pressure, tasting for fault lines.

Her voice came low, dangerous, curling through the warp like cold wire, and he felt a sudden sharp tug on what would have been his ear,  a silent, unmistakable warning.

“I thought I told you to stop talking to that green-haired floozy.”

The Emperor actually flinched, a startled ripple that scattered psychic echoes like a flock of birds. A laugh escaped him — thin, strained, nothing like his earlier easy grandeur.

“Ah — yes. Well. I assure you, it was nothing of consequence. Mere… idle curiosities. Harmless whispers, truly.”

Ina didn’t ease. Her grip stayed cold and tight, winding through the warp with invasive certainty, leaving his immense mind trying and failing to settle back into composure.

“You are… quite vigilant. As ever.”

The pressure never fully lifted.
Ina lingered close, silent, a bright coil of possessive watchfulness that promised next time there would be no polite rebuke — only consequence.

And the Emperor sat there in the hush of the warp, vast and ancient, but unmistakably uneasy under her close, unrelenting scrutiny.

---

????? in the Eye of Terror , 013 .M42



The world was nameless, little more than a fractured shard of reality adrift in the Eye of Terror. Above, the sky churned with colors that did not belong to any sane spectrum, split through with vast, weeping fissures that oozed the raw substance of the warp. The air itself was heavy, viscous, thick with the stink of corruption and a low, endless keening that might have been voices or merely the tortured howl of physics giving way.

On a jagged rise of black iron and splintered bone stood Abaddon the Despoiler.

The Lord of the Black Legion loomed vast and terrible, dark power wreathed around him like a living shroud. His armor drank in the madness-light, each sigil and spike slick with fresh ichor that dripped slowly down into the ground to burn new scars into the stone. The Talon of Horus flexed idly at his side, monstrous claws clenching in anticipation, while the daemon blade Drach’nyen at his hip pulsed with a hungry, rhythmic throb.

Before him stretched a nightmare host: legions of daemons arrayed in impossible formations, ranks shuddering and twitching under the press of unreality. Their bodies warped and danced, mouths opening where no mouths should be, claws clacking against armor that had once been flesh. Warhorns sounded — grotesque things grown from screaming faces — spilling thick gouts of sound that washed across the glassy plain.

Abaddon’s eyes burned with cold certainty. They tracked the horizon like a predator scenting wounded prey, pupils dark slits inside molten gold.

He could feel it.

A subtle tightening in the tides of the warp, an electric tension threading through every black crusade he had ever waged.

Something vast and inevitable crept just beyond the veil.

Closer than it had ever been.

His thoughts coiled around prophecy, around whispers promised by dark gods and the scent of opportunity that was nearly intoxicating.

“It is close. The galaxy teeters. All my wars, all my black crusades — they were only preludes to this.”

A cruel smile split his scarred lips, teeth catching the warlight.

“Now is the moment. Now is the time.”

He stood taller, breath drawing deep as if to savor this terrible precipice.

Then, from somewhere deep within the gibbering ranks of his daemon horde, a voice shattered the grim reverie — high-pitched, manic, slicing through the warp-saturated air with all the subtlety of a blaring klaxon.

“SHUT UP! I WANT MOO DENG!”

The words cracked across the battlefield like a whip.

For a heartbeat, even the twisted howls of the assembled daemons seemed to falter. Then the ranks parted just enough to reveal the culprit.

A tiny shape bounced erratically atop a mound of lesser horrors — eyes wide and crossed, drool slicking down her chin in fat strings. Her mouth was stretched into a sharp, impatient scowl, pudgy fingers clawing at empty air as though hoping the universe itself might hand her what she demanded.

She burped. Loudly. Then she screamed again, even louder.

“MOO DEEEENG!”

Abaddon stood very, very still.

A vein twitched once beneath his eye. The Talon of Horus clenched reflexively, cracking the ground beneath him in a burst of shattered black crystal.

Slowly, almost painfully, he closed his eyes.

A sigh escaped him — long, cavernous, dredged from some exhausted abyss. Its echo rumbled out across the field, so deep and dark that lesser champions would have fallen to their knees in horror, sure it heralded their doom.

But no doom came. Only a voice, low and bitter and impossibly weary.

“By the gods… just once, I would command an army that wasn’t… this.”

Around him, the daemons resumed their shrieking revels, completely oblivious to the private tragedy of their warlord’s dignity. They leapt and cavorted, clawed at each other’s throats, and gibbered hymns to impossible geometries.

Somewhere in their midst, the tiny horror flailed her arms again, eyes wild with triumph as she let out another shriek that split the rotting sky.

“MOO DEEEENG!”

Abaddon tilted his head back, staring up at the ruined heavens, as if hoping some distant, indifferent constellation might take pity on him and simply end it all.

But of course it did not.

Because now was the moment.

Now was the time.

And unfortunately for Abaddon the Despoiler, this was still his army.

 

Notes:

So yeah. Timeskip complete?

Sorry this took so long! The 11th was my birthday (23!) , and I was at a bachlors party, then my friends wedding on the 12th. I wasn't able to even write again until the 13th.

The next chapter will see us at the start of the Indomitus Crusade. Expect at the very least a new chapter of HR in the 41st before Chapter 11. Thanks to Allsham and Professional Butter for their help! Hope you all enjoyed!!!

Chapter 12: Chapter 11: Independence Day

Terra, 013 .M42

The chamber was silent except for the low hum of cogitators. Guilliman sat at his desk, its surface more fortress than furniture, buried in stacks of dataslates and ink‑pressed reports. The glow of lumen strips washed pale across parchment and steel, catching the edges of his armor where it rested at his side.

Ten fleets. Ten blades drawn against the throat of a dying galaxy.

He read with the precision of a man who could not allow error. Numbers marched down the slates in endless columns: fuel tonnage, munition stockpiles, casualty projections. He did not blink. His stylus scratched corrections into margins that would ruin several careers before dawn.

The Tertiary Fleet was scheduled to depart today. It had been marked “optimal.” He almost snorted. A cruiser squadron was still undergoing Mechanicus rites, and the readiness figures had been massaged to hide it. He underlined the entry once, and then a second time. Someone would learn the difference between “optimal” and “sufficient” before the fleet left dock.

But his eyes did not stay there. Always, they circled back to the Primus Fleet. His fleet.

Fifty Chapters sworn under its banner. Ultramarines and their successor chapters mostly, although other chapters and their descendants would join them. And among them, the Carcharodons. A full legion reunited under his sister. Guilliman’s finger brushed the sigil, then stilled, his expression unreadable.

It was an anomaly plain and simple. A force that should not exist, not by the Codex, not by the order he had labored to impose. A legion outside of rules, bound not by ink or decree but by blood and myth. He despised the irregularity, and yet… he had allowed it. Gura’s will was iron, and her warriors were effective beyond dispute. He could not deny results, even if every instinct demanded he break them apart.

Four Gloriana‑class battleships. One his own from a time long past. Relics of the Great Crusade, each one vast enough to blot out the stars. Guilliman’s throat tightened at the sight of their designations. He had not expected to see the Macragge’s Honour again. History sat there in steel, silent and heavy, daring him to live up to it.

Then there was Cawl. Of course Cawl. Thousands of Mechanicus vessels, bristling with experimental weaponry and engines that should never have left theory. Guilliman frowned, stylus hovering. Too much of the Imperium’s future balanced on one eccentric’s genius. But he needed it. The Crusade needed it.

And with Cawl came… that irritation. NEURO, the machine‑spirit he insisted was not an abominable intelligence, though Guilliman had his doubts. Quirky, unfiltered, unpredictable, annoyingly blunt…and yet disarmingly cooperative. Useful in ways that unsettled him. Guilliman had not yet decided whether it was a triumph of innovation or a heresy in waiting. Either way, it would sail with Primus.

And beyond them, was the majority of the fleet itself.

The dataslates listed escorts by the thousands, cruiser groups, destroyer squadrons, troop transports, battleships refitted from half‑ruined hulks. Vox‑relays, supply haulers, hospital ships, entire convoys of lumbering bulk freighters pressed into service. A tide of steel and fire, countless hulls of every make and pattern, enough that the logistics of moving them through the warp strained even Guilliman’s ability to comprehend.

And still, it was not enough. It never would be.

Then came the Guard.

Regiment after regiment. Pages of names, stretching into the tens of millions. Elite units. Armored spearheads. Void regiments raised from orbital stations. Worlds stripped bare to feed the march of war. Each line meant fathers, mothers, sons and daughters cast into the furnace. Guilliman’s stylus tapped once against the desk before moving on.

Then he noticed an odd note. It had been scribbled in the margin by someone else. Calli probably. It was accompanied by an arrow pointed at one of the many names.

“Commissar. Slayer of the dreadnought at Kharon’s Fall. Survived seven warp incursions. Popular among her troops. Now attached as senior authority over the Krieg detachment.”

Guilliman paused. A mortal. A Commissar, no less, wielding command not just over a regiment, but over the Krieg entirely. To hold the obedience of that many death‑world zealots, to earn not just their fear but their loyalty? That was exceedingly rare.

If fate allowed, he would meet her. A Commissar who could keep the Krieg in hand, who had slain a daemon‑engine with her own will, who had survived the warp seven times over — that was no ordinary mortal. That was the kind of figure whose presence could shift entire armies. Machines rusted. Marines fell. But mortals who carried myths on their shoulders could sway the fate of worlds.

The lists sprawled further: Sororitas detachments, Knight Households, Titans recalled from long slumber. Chartist convoys pressed into service, whether willing or not.

Guilliman continued to tally their rations, their projected losses, their inevitable deaths. Every calculation pressed down like fresh armor on his already weary shoulders.

It staggered the mind.

It always did.

And yet every number was necessary.

The chair creaked faintly as Guilliman leaned back, the high stone vault of his office pressing close despite its cavernous scale. He let his eyes climb from the dataslate to the windows above.

Terra’s light bled through them — not the clear brilliance he remembered from Macragge, but a pale, smog-choked haze that bathed the stonework in muted, gold. Beyond the glass and the sprawling skyline, he knew the void above was crowded. Ships the size of mountains waited in orbit, entire cities with engines strapped to their hulls. Thousands of them stretched across the stars like a steel reef.

His fleets… no. Humanity’s fleets. The last, fragile hope of a species that had already bled almost beyond recovery.

The weight pressed into him heavier than any suit of armor, heavier than the regalia the scribes draped across his shoulders. It was not ceramite or gold that bent his spine. It was an expectation, as always. A crusade vaster than anything attempted since his father walked among them. Arguably just as important as well.

He dragged his gaze back to the Primus Fleet’s reports. Neat lines. Neater numbers. But his mind strayed further than ink and code. Beyond departure. Beyond the first sweeps.

The dataslate before him traced tidy arcs of advance through Segmentum Solar: purge‑burns of infested systems, strikes on pirate enclaves, the excision of Chaos and Xenos strongholds festering too close to Terra. Necessary work, the kind that lent order to his captains and reassurance to the Mechanicus. Necessary, but not the true reason Primus existed.

A second screen flickered beside it, displaying battle plans through the Ultima Segmentum. It was sealed under encryption so heavy only his own gene‑coded imprint could open it. Lines of runes glowed there, faint and deliberate.

The display crawled with warp‑scars and void storms, stars drowned in cataracts of unreality. Somewhere in that seething labyrinth, if the auguries and whispers were true, lay a weapon strong enough to slay a god, the final Crone Sword.

His gauntlet tapped against the cogitator’s edge — a rhythm he despised, but for some reason could never purge from his mind. His sister’s fault most definitely. He had altered the entire shape of the Crusade for this. This had been done covertly out of necessity. The Imperium demanded victories too numerous to count, each its own necessity. But enough of his will bent the plan that Primus pointed toward the blade.

If the weapon could be recovered, reforged with the others and made whole, then perhaps the strangling cord about humanity’s throat might slacken. Perhaps.

His thoughts turned, unwillingly, to Yvraine.

Not a choice he would ever have made for an ally. Not a creature of the species he had been bred to trust. Yet she had proved stubbornly difficult to dismiss. Composed and poised, her certainty carried more weight than her kind’s usual theatre. Her words, he admitted begrudgingly, were sharper than he expected.

He had braced for arrogance, for slyness, for the eternal smugness he associated with Aeldari. What he found instead was a steadiness that was harder to dislike. He caught himself listening. Never without suspicion, but listening nonetheless.

And that was what he disliked most of all. That somewhere beneath the armor of his reason, he had come to respect her. She was not… unbearable. She was not… awful. The admission lingered like ash on his tongue.

Still, she and her followers would not set foot on Terra. Guilliman shuddered at the thought. Aeldari in Terran space? The inquisition would have a stroke. No, they would not stand in these halls or join the Crusade at its launch. She would wait until Primus carved its way out of Segmentum Solar. Then  and only then would she be allowed to join them. He almost dreaded the moment. Almost. In some silent chamber of himself, he anticipated it.

Few knew, and fewer understood.

His senior captains saw only the grand procession of war: the logistics, the fleet schedules, the drums of reclamation. They did not see the hidden thread pulling beneath it. Cawl knew more, of course. Cawl always knew more. And one or two voices he trusted besides.

But most? Most only saw the banners, the strategies and the reclaiming of planets and star systems. They did not see the blade he hunted through blood and ruin.

The dataslates dimmed on the desk, their glow shrinking to tired points of light against the dark wood. Guilliman leaned back in the high‑backed chair, gaze narrowing. His every instinct rebelled against such secrecy despite its necessity. To tell more would invite failure, interference, betrayal. Even among his sons, knowledge of the Crone Sword would be a weapon in the wrong hands.

So he bore it alone, as he bore the Imperium itself: with iron restraint, and no promise that it would be enough.

His mind circled the same burdens it always did: the ruin of the Imperium and the weight of his own choices dragging billions into wars with no end.

He caught his reflection in the polished surface of the cogitator. A soldier’s face, all hard lines, worn thinner than he cared to admit beneath the mask of command. For all the victories tallied, the legions mustered, the titanic fleets brought to order, the doubt never ceased gnawing.

Gulliman’s eyes did not look up from his work as the door’s brass seals disengaged, the great hinges shifting with deliberate weight.

Guilliman’s brow furrowed. Almost no one had the clearance to enter here unannounced. He did not hear the soft whir of Calli’s circuits, the gentle mechanical presence that always accompanied her. Which meant only one possibility.

Gura.

She slipped inside like a tide rolling over stone. No armor, no cloak, no ceremonial markings of a Primarch. Just her oversized shark hoodie, the hood tugged low until she pushed it back with a casual flick of her hand. Bare feet padded against the marble, unconcerned with the cold. Her tail swayed lazily behind her, betraying amusement before her mouth ever did.

Guilliman’s fingers stilled on the slate. He exhaled, long and slow, wondering not for the first time whether the galaxy understood what it had unleashed when it returned his sister to it.

She tilted her head at him, eyes catching the muted daylight, grin flashing sharp.

“You know,” she said, voice light, lilting, deliberately careless, “for a man who commands half the galaxy, you do an awful lot of staring at walls.”

The words cut across the heavy silence like a pebble thrown into still water.

Guilliman set his stylus down with measured precision, fixing her with the full severity of his gaze. The glow of the cogitator screens threw hard lines across his face, his voice clipped and precise. Now was not the time for her jokes and ribbing. 

“Your legion. Numbers first.”

The demand hung flat in the chamber, iron weight against her levity.

Gura didn’t flinch. She hopped up onto the edge of the desk without hesitation, parchment and slates shifting precariously under her. She leaned back on her hands, elbows brushing aside a pile of requisition forms as if centuries of bureaucracy meant nothing.

Light from the tall windows caught faint flecks of sea‑salt on the cuff of her hoodie. She kicked one heel idly against the desk, her grin widening, as if his severity were nothing more than a stage cue.

“One hundred and fifty thousand,” she proclaimed brightly. “Five thousand of them primaris. Every company at full fighting strength.”

A force of epic proportion. The stylus in Guilliman’s fingers tapped once against the dataslate, a small, precise sound that cut sharp in the chamber’s stillness. The cogitator vents exhaled faint warmth, carrying the faint scent of oil and old ozone. Shadows clung thick against the vaulting above, disturbed only by the pale wash of light filtering through the tall windows.

“Supply lines,” he said at last, voice low and measured. “Thalassia is not Ultramar. Do you have manufactoria sufficient to sustain such a force?”

Her head tilted as if the question had wounded her pride. Tail curling lazily behind her, she leaned back against the edge of the desk, eyes glinting in mock offense. The gilded banners of the High Lords hung solemnly along the far wall, absurdly formal behind the irreverent slouch of her oversized hoodie.

“What do you take me for?” she said, mouth quirking into a grin. “Dockyards in orbit, forges in the domes, and a lot of new Mechanicus friends who owe me. My marines don’t go hungry, Bobby G.”

Guilliman grumbled as he pulled another dataslate toward him, lines of green text scrolling beneath his thumb. His eyes narrowed, expression tightening in the glow.

“Recruitment, then. Your losses in the Eye were catastrophic. How do you maintain gene‑seed stability?”

The levity left her, if only for a moment. The cogitator’s hum filled the pause. Her tail slowed, swaying once, then stilled.

“We kept the seed safe,” she said, voice quieter, sharper. “I kept it safe. Stock enough to rebuild, and Cawl’s toys to bolster it. The line is whole. I’d stake everything on that.”

Guilliman laid the slate down with deliberate precision. His gaze flicked up toward the vaulted ceiling, its golden filigree catching the dim light like frozen fire.

“And morale?” His voice cut through the silence, calm and cold. “Many endured the warp too long. Can you swear no corruption festers among them?”

Her tail froze. She leaned forward, the loose folds of her hoodie creasing, eyes hardening until the grin was gone.

“If there was rot, I’d have cut it out myself.” Her words landed with an edge no mischief could hide. “They’re mine, Roboute. I’d know.”

The light of the cogitator washed pale across his features, jaw flexing against the quiet. His stylus hovered once more, but did not move.

She tilted her head, eyes narrowing with a glimmer of slyness. “You’ve got a mountain of reports saying the same thing. Why keep poking me with questions you already know the answers to?”

“Command structure,” he pressed, ignoring the barb. “Are they disciplined, or a mob following you like a banner?”

Her laugh cracked against the high stone walls, startling in its brightness, irreverent in the solemn chamber. She slid down from the desk, parchment rustling in her wake, and circled behind him. The soft scuff of her bare feet echoed faintly on the marble, her presence deliberately intrusive. 

“They obey when it matters,” she said lightly. “Captains drilled, companies coordinated. But they’re sharks, not statues. You point, they bite.”

Guilliman’s shoulders stiffened, his stylus tightening between finger and thumb.

“That is not doctrine. The Codex —”

His words broke off as her hand darted past his guard, pinching his cheek with shameless ease. Her grin widened, sharp as a predator’s, tail flicking high like a banner caught in a sudden gust.

“My legion’s too good, and you know it,” she teased. “You wouldn’t dare split us. My family stays together.”

He exhaled slowly, prying her hand from his cheek with care as much as irritation, as though unhooking a persistent burr. The silence swelled again, filled only by the faint rumble of Terra’s forges bleeding through the stone.

“…you presume much,” he said finally, his tone flat but the faintest crease betraying his exasperation.

She rocked back on her heels, slipping her hands into the pouches of her hoodie, grin still firmly in place.

“I know my brother too well. Thirteen years of grumbling and pouting, and you still haven’t dared. Deep down, you need us.”

He sat back heavily, brushing the edge of a slate with his gauntleted knuckle before muttering under his breath.

“…thirteen years, and still my pain in the ass.”

The words faded quickly, swallowed by the chamber’s quiet.

He turned the slate, the green light flickering faintly against the gilded doors. Lines of new script scrolled upward, his eyes narrowing as he read.

“Others join us,” he said at last, voice low. “The Aeldari prophetess Yvraine and her… cabal.”

Gura’s ears perked, a sly smirk tugging at her mouth.

Guilliman’s gaze lingered on her, cold and unreadable, his expression carved from stone.

“She and her retinue will rendezvous only after we clear Segmentum Solar. Until then, she waits.”

Her tail swished again, but this time there was a flicker of hesitation in the rhythm.

“…good thing Amelia’s already on my flagship, then.”

The stylus stilled in his hand. He turned his head slowly, eyes narrowing into slits of sharpened blue, like blades being drawn from their scabbards.

“…Amelia?”

Gura pursed her lips and whistled tunelessly, staring at the gilded ceiling as if it had just revealed some grand cosmic truth.

“Oh, did I forget to mention that? My bad.”

His voice came down like iron, heavy enough to crack the stone beneath their feet as his palm came up to rest against his forehead in exasperation.

“ Please tell me you did not bring your Aeldari companion into Terra’s orbit.”

She shoved her hands deeper into her hoodie pockets, grin snapping back onto her face like a shield raised for battle.

“Okay. I won’t tell you.”

Guilliman closed his eyes. His hand lowered and he pressed against the bridge of his nose with the weariness of a man who had dealt with bullshit for far too long. The banners overhead shifted faintly in the artificial breeze of the vents, their embroidery mocking him with their solemnity.

He exhaled long and heavy, his shoulders sinking as the chamber itself seemed to close in around him. The cogitator’s glow pulsed in steady rhythm, runes blinking reminders of tasks already filed, checked, and cross‑checked. None of it lessened the pressure pressing against his mind.

Ignore the Aeldari. Ignore the noise. Focus on what matters. The Crusade comes first.

He was scheduled to give a speech in twelve hours to the Tertiary Fleet. His speech was finished, carefully written, revised, and encoded on a slate. Every word weighed, every phrase crafted to stir unity without promising more than could be delivered. It had cost him half the night to shape it. He had no patience left for anything else.

Gura tilted her head, eyes bright with mischief as she watched him. Her tail flicked lazily against the desk in a rhythmic thump, an unhurried beat that crawled against his nerves like dripping water.

“Just breathe, brother. In, out. Try it sometime. I hear it does wonders for wrinkles.”

He looked at her, cold and unimpressed, though the faint tightening of his jaw betrayed the irritation beneath his marble composure.

“You test the boundaries of my patience.”

“That’s my job!” She rocked back on her heels, pulling one hand from her hoodie pocket just long enough to point at him like a mischievous child scolding an elder. “You’d shrivel into a marble statue if I wasn’t around to keep you flexible.”

Guilliman’s gaze dropped back to the neat line of slates spread before him, their glow spilling pale light across the oaken desk. Status reports, readiness tallies, logistical updates, endless lines of numbers and demands. He never noticed how, in the span of a single breath, Gura’s hand slipped into motion.

The exchange was flawless. A trick honed from centuries of mischief, hidden within the folds of her hoodie. One heartbeat, his speech lay waiting on the desk, locked and complete. The next, it was gone, replaced with the slate she had smuggled in.

“I will not waste time indulging your antics,” Guilliman said flatly, his eyes fixed on the runes glowing across the screen before him. His voice carried the full weight of dismissal.

He did not glance twice at the smooth surface. He did not see the tiny scratch where one slate had been replaced with another.

The Lord Commander of the Imperium returned to his work, unaware.

Unaware of the words that would soon leave his mouth before the might of the Indomitus Crusade.

She leaned forward over the desk, the glow of the cogitator painting sharp edges across her grin. Her teeth caught the light, flashing faint and feral.

“Don’t worry. You’ll do fine. Just remember to sound dramatic and make the Guardsmen feel like heroes. Maybe throw in a smile, even. Your face won’t crack, promise.”

Guilliman did not look up. His hand shifted once on the slate, steady and deliberate, the pale light outlining the tension in his jaw.

“…get out of my office, Gura.”

Her response was instant — a bark of laughter, sharp and delighted. She threw her head back and cackled, the sound ricocheting far too loudly off marble and gold, filling the chamber like a mockery of a hymn. The cogitator’s runes flickered once, as if even the machine spirit found cause for disapproval.

“Fine, fine,” she said between fading chuckles. Her steps were light, almost bouncing, every motion casual. “Don’t miss me too much, alright?”

Her tail swayed behind her as she walked toward the door, each flick catching the lumen‑light and shadowing the shark‑tooth pattern stitched into the torso of her hoodie. At the entryway, she turned back, hand resting against the metal as though reluctant to leave without one last jab.

She grinned at him, mischief undimmed, irrepressible as it had ever been since childhood.

“Brood away, Bobby G. Just don’t forget to actually breathe.”

The seal hissed, the door sliding shut behind her, and the echo of her laughter dwindled into silence.

He waited until the sound was gone. Then, just for a breath, his expression cracked. A twitch at the corner of his mouth. A faint lift of the brow. Not quite a smile, but close.

Of all the burdens he carried, she was the only one that made him feel lighter. It was utterly infuriating… but she was truly indispensable.

He would never admit it aloud.

Guilliman sat very still, palms flat against the desk’s surface. The cogitator hummed softly, patient as ever, status runes blinking in orderly rhythm. A dozen slates lay arrayed before him in perfect lines, waiting for his command.

He exhaled once, long and controlled, the sound harsh in the stillness.

Alone once more, the Lord Commander let the silence settle around him like armor and finally began to brood in peace.

---

 

The Eternity Gate loomed in silence, its towering vaults swallowed in shadows and gold. Custodians stood in rows like statues, their stillness unmarred by breath or motion. None questioned Guilliman’s presence. The Lord Commander had the right. To them it was ritual, or mourning — nothing more.

Guilliman’s steps echoed softly as he crossed the cavernous hall, the sound devoured by the vast machinery thrumming beneath the stone. The Golden Throne dominated all; colossal, ageless and grotesque in its majesty. Upon it, his father’s corpse sat locked in cables and wires, an immortal reduced to brittle bone.

He ascended the steps slowly, and at the dais he paused, breath shallow. The Emperor’s body lay unmoving as always. Guilliman extended one hand, and his fingers closed around the skeletal remains of his father’s, fragile and brittle, bound in golden filigree.

For a heartbeat, there was nothing. Only the low drone of ancient engines and the buried pulse of Terra beneath it all.

Guilliman’s forehead furrowed, tension creasing as if it might spill into his grip. His mind spun the same numbers, the same fleet rosters and supply tallies, until they blurred into meaningless repetition.

“You are muttering again, Roboute.” The voice was lazy, certain, as if it had been listening for hours.

“Do stop before the Custodians decide you’ve gone senile.”

Guilliman’s thought struck back, sharp, like a blade drawn on reflex.

‘I am planning. That is not muttering.’

The answer carried with it the faint amusement of someone who had all the time in creation to mock.

“When you repeat the fleet rosters for the fifth time, it becomes muttering. I should know. I’ve endured ten thousand years of hearing the same prayers on loop.”

Guilliman’s brow creased. His hand pressed firmer into bone, as if anchoring himself against the irritation coiling in his chest.

‘You make light of this, when the fate of the Crusade —’

“— will hinge on logistics, discipline, and sheer luck.” The words cut across him, sharp with amusement. “Yes, yes, you’ve told me. Repeatedly. Endlessly. You could bore a Necron.”

Guilliman’s exhale hissed faintly through his nose. His hand did not release the brittle bones.

‘You mock me to ease your own conscience, Father.’

“Conscience?” The voice rasped like fire crawling over stone.

“I lost mine around the time Horus snapped my spine. No. I mock you because you are at your best when irritated. Anger clears that dreary fog you call composure.”

The emperor paused for a moment.

“And because it's hilarious. You are so easy to rile up Roboute.”

Guilliman could feel the smugness in his father’s voice. His thoughts flared, bitter, before he forced them still.

‘ You should not speak of this as though it is sport. My fleets are about to scatter across a galaxy split in two. My sister’s legion is bound by nothing resembling the Codex, and I let it stand. Yvraine waits at the edge of Solar like a carrion bird. And I am supposed to hold all of it together with —’

“— with your mind. Your stubbornness. And the inconvenient affection of those who insist on following you.” The voice curved, humor coiled through it like a blade hidden in silk.

“Including your sister, who refuses to let you suffocate under your own order.”

The silence stretched afterward, heavy as the vault itself, before the final jab slid in, unmistakably amused.

“She pinched your cheeks again, didn’t she?”

Guilliman’s jaw flexed, his grip tightening against the hand of the corpse.

She is infuriating. And incorrigible. And… unbroken. I do not understand how.

The reply softened, though it carried the same weight of inevitability as the Throne’s endless hum.

“Because she sings when others scream. Because she laughs when even I would have despaired. She is not you, Roboute, nor is she me. And that is why you need her.”

The words lingered, echoing louder in Guilliman’s mind than the eternal thrum of the Throne’s machinery. The sound of ancient pistons and god-engines seemed to fade until all that remained was the brittle weight in his hand. His gauntlet flexed faintly against the golden filigree of bone. He lowered his gaze, uncertain whether he held his father’s hand for strength or to keep himself from letting go.

The voice pressed closer then, sly in its edge but weighted with command.

“Now tell me, my son… Why have you come? Truly.”

Guilliman stiffened. His thoughts wavered like a line of troops under fire before narrowing into a blade’s point.

‘I needed clarity. I needed… to hear you.’

The answer came quick, dismissive, yet threaded with knowing.

“You’ve heard me before. You will again. That is not why you stand here now.”

His lips pressed into a hard line, the light from the throne’s flame-sconces cutting sharp across his features.

‘The Crusade leaves within days. My speech is written, my fleets assembled. Yet still I doubt. Still I wonder if all this will fracture before the first blow lands. And so I came here, to…’ He faltered, ashamed of the word already shaping itself.

‘…to seek reassurance.’

A low chuckle rolled through his skull, dry and rasping, like parchment tearing in the dark.

“Reassurance? From me? Roboute, I am a corpse on a chair. I am the last thing in this galaxy that should reassure you.”

Guilliman’s jaw tightened, his mind sparking like steel on stone. But before he could form the retort, the tone shifted to one softer and quieter. Almost… human.

“And yet… I will still give it to you. Because you are not asking whether you can bear this burden. You already know you can. You are only asking whether you must carry it alone.”

His throat tightened, though no sound left his lips. His thoughts slipped out like a whisper.

‘And do I?’

“No. Not alone. You have your fleets. Your commanders. Your soldiers who would die by the million at your word. And your sister. Especially your sister. You will despise her methods, her irreverence, her chaos… but she is the one gift the warp has returned to you that will not fail.”

Guilliman’s eyes closed, the lines of strain etched deep across his brow easing just slightly. His shoulders drew straighter beneath the weight of armor he did not wear. For one last moment he let his hand linger against the brittle remains — then, slowly, he released it.

The brittle hand slipped from his, the faintest rattle of filigree whispering against the Throne. Guilliman lingered for a breath longer, gaze steady on the husk that was his father.

The vast chamber greeted him with the same silence as before. The Custodians lining the marble floor did not stir, did not even tilt their helms. They stood as statues of gold, guardians carved from faith and obedience, and if they sensed anything of what had passed, they gave no sign.

Guilliman’s steps were slow but steady as began to depart the throne room. Each one rang sharp against the stone, the sound swallowed quickly by the cathedral vastness. The glow of the Throne dimmed behind him, firelight casting his silhouette long and severe across the polished floor.

By the time he crossed the Eternity Gate, his shoulders were squared, his stride unyielding. Doubt gnawed still like it always would, but the words lingered like iron in his chest.

He was not alone.

And when the doors closed behind him with a resonant boom, the chamber fell back into silence, eternal and unbroken, as if nothing had transpired at all.

---

 

The parade ground breathed with heat. Engines rumbled at the far edges, vox‑units crackled faintly, and the smell of promethium exhaust clung to the air, heavy as incense. Armor and flesh pressed together in formations so vast they seemed to merge into one living sea, banners swaying above like waves caught in a false wind. Before the soaring facade of the Sanctum Imperialis, the gathering stretched farther than even Guilliman’s eyes could comfortably measure.

The stage was crowded. Every figure had been chosen with deliberate weight, each a symbol to reassure the gathered millions that this was not simply another campaign but the full face of the Imperium set against the void.

To Guilliman’s right, Lord Commanders Militant of the Astra Militarum stood in ceremonial armor, crimson sashes blazing across their breastplates. Their presence declared what every Guardsman in the ranks already knew: that the Guard would be the spine of this crusade, bearing the impossible weight of attrition with human lives by the million.

To his left, the High Lords of Terra. Their robes were heavy with thread-of-gold, their signet rings glinting like small suns in the torchlight.They were not here to cheer, nor to rally. They were here to watch. To judge. To remind him that even as he stood armored and towering, he was bound to the suffocating machinery of the Imperium they claimed to steer.

The Navis Nobilite envoy stood robed in midnight blue, diadem bound tight across the third eye that marked their calling. Silver embroidery shimmered faintly in the haze, like constellations scattered across cloth. They stood unmoving, almost statuesque, a quiet promise that even through the churning madness of the Rift, paths could still be found.

Beside them, the Mechanicus delegate shifted with faint hisses of pistons and the clicking stutter of binary prayers. Brass‑plated limbs moved in insectile precision, data‑chants spilling through vox‑grilles like whispered litanies. The sigil of Belisarius Cawl gleamed on his breastplate. It was not the Archmagos himself, but the meaning was clear enough: Mars had emptied vaults and foundries alike to arm the Crusade.

A line of Chapter Masters and captains held the left flank, armor breaking the row into fractured hues of white, crimson, black, cobalt, and gold. Each bore behind him the legacy of a thousand warriors waiting in the ranks. Agemman, First Captain of the Ultramarines, stood closest; a bridge of trust between Guilliman’s resurrected command and the sons of Macragge who had endured in his absence.

Hovering just behind Guilliman’s shoulder, polished to mirror sheen, Calli drifted with languid steadiness. The servo‑skull’s optics glimmered pink faintly, as her hair bobbed along with her motion. The High Lords fumed at her presence, but Guilliman had made his decision. Good. Let them choke on it. 

Guilliman himself stood at the center, helm attached to his waist, the full weight of his armor rendering him the image of the Lord Commander the Imperium required. The aquila crest arched behind him, a golden brand against the backdrop of banners and stone. 

Around the perimeter, Custodians held their vigil. Spears planted, their golden silhouettes cast long shadows across the marble. Their presence was not for reassurance but reminder. Terra’s guardians stood watch even here, even now. This close, Guilliman knew, they served as silent witnesses as much as protectors — a wordless truth that what began today pressed against the Throne itself.

The crowd extended to what seemed like eternity as he looked out among it.The Astartes stood foremost.

Closest to the dais, the Astartes of the Tertiary fleet formed their ranks. None wore the cobalt of Ultramar, nor the markings of his own legacy. That was as it should be. The sons of Macragge stood with Primus. This fleet was something else. They would have their moment in time.

The Crimson Fists held their blocks like stone, battered blue‑black armor scarred by centuries of siege and attrition. Salamanders stood nearby, drake‑green plate dulled, many helms blackened by forge soot that never truly scrubbed clean. The Raven Guard lingered at the formation’s edge, their sable sigils catching light like fractured wings before vanishing again into shadow. Iron Hands gleamed coldly in contrast, augmetics stark under the parade sun, their discipline as unyielding as their metal limbs.

Fractured colors, and fractured doctrines. But all stood immovable now, helms locked forward, visors fixed on him.

There were very few Charcardons, their ocean‑blue plate marked by silence rather than formation. Their presence was not for him. They stood for her.

One figure’s sheer mass set him apart even among giants. Terminator plate enclosed him like a fortress, ceramite gouged and scarred from centuries of unbroken war. His beady red visors focused entirely on him.

Beside him stood another colossus, taller still. His armor loomed in crushing silence, crowned by a crimson crest that burned against the sea of blue. The shark‑visored helm betrayed nothing, but the weight of his stillness pressed like a tide against the senses. Silence given form. Bloop, Guilliman’s memory supplied, and grudgingly he acknowledged the name. A good warrior.

At their center stood his sister.

She was adorned in her armor, helm absent, her tail flicking in undisguised amusement. Her cloak rippled with its uncanny, water‑caught shimmer, twin nautilus speakers gleaming faintly at her back. Even when motionless, she radiated disruption. She met his eyes without hesitation, smiled, waved once, and winked. Typical.

Behind them sprawled the true sea: the Guard.

Regiment upon regiment stretched outward in a tidal plain. Veterans with trench‑worn faces. Conscripts still soft with youth. Banners rattled in trembling hands, held stiff despite the weight of cloth and pole. An ocean of humanity clad in drab flak, bound together not by power but by discipline and faith.

A shadow passed overhead. A gunship, heavy and slow in its ceremonial flyover. The sound rolled down across the ranks like thunder. Hundreds of Guardsmen flinched at once, a perfect ripple of instinct, before locking stiff again in their places. Guilliman did not so much as twitch. 

Commissars stalked the ranks, black coats cutting through the drab sea, swords at their hips, scowls sharp enough to serve as weapons. Yet the troops needed little urging. The mere sight of so many Astartes was enough to stiffen even the weakest spine.

Sisters of Battle stood in serried ranks near the front, their armor catching the pale light like shards of sanctified steel. Fleur-tipped banners stirred faintly in the breeze, each one heavy with the weight of vows spoken over the bones of martyrs.

The peripheries swarmed with functionaries.

Mechanicus adepts clattered on mechadendrites, brass limbs twitching, vox‑antennas raised like probing insect limbs. Binary prayers spilled across the vox‑net in endless undercurrent.

Astropaths stood swathed in white veils, their ruined sockets bound tight.

Navy officers held their places, crisp uniforms taut with starch, eyes shadowed by exhaustion they dared not show. Steel in their spines, nerves in their hands.

Guilliman’s gauntlet came to rest on the lectern. The cool stone grounded him, though the weight of the crowd threatened to push through his composure.

The data slate containing his speech lay before him. It hadn’t been turned on yet, inert until the moment he woke it. His speech. His words. His burden.

The words of the speech were not memorized. Not this time. The scope was too vast, the burden too immense. Guilliman had weighed each phrase, carved every sentence with precision, revising again and again until it carried the balance he demanded. The dataslate carried that certainty for him. Without it, he had nothing.

A low murmur stirred across the massed formations, a sound like the shifting of a continent. Engines idled at the perimeter, banners stirred faintly in the polluted breeze, but all of it folded into anticipation. It rose, swelled, then collapsed into silence so sudden it pressed against the ears.

The banners that had quivered above the Guard went still. Vox‑units clicked off. Even the incense smoke that trailed across the parade ground seemed to pause mid‑air, coiling like frozen glass.

Guilliman’s jaw set. He drew in a slow, careful breath, forcing rhythm into his chest, posture into his spine. Every movement was deliberate. Every gesture carried the weight of millions of eyes.

A bell struck once, the deep toll of bronze rolling through marble and armor alike. The sound reverberated across the plain like thunder chained inside stone.

Then silence. Total and utter silence. A silence of expectation, stretched taut as a bowstring across the parade ground.

The moment was larger than the man. And yet it demanded him.

Guilliman reached for the slate. Its gilt frame was cold against his hand. The first line blinked into view.

He froze.

At the very top, above what should have been the script he had labored over, scrawled in curling, playful letters, were words no Imperial scribe would ever dare inscribe:

“Yours was boring. Here’s mine. Don’t worry, Big guy, I made it fun.”

A crude doodle of a shark grinned up at him, its jagged teeth mocking.

The pain struck immediately, that sharp, electric stab of a headache born of fury. His eye twitched and his jaw locked with incandescent rage.

Slowly, deliberately, Guilliman turned his head.

And there she was.

Tail swaying in smug amusement. A grin split her face. Her eyes glittered with mischievous delight.

His glare fell on her like a thunderbolt. Entire legions had crumbled beneath less. She only grinned wider, shoulders trembling with silent laughter, tail flicking harder.

At his side, Calli drifted closer, her polished bone gleaming under the stage lights. The servo‑skull’s pink optics glowed with dry amusement, her voice whispering  in a sardonic drawl.

“Awkward pause, boss. You gotta say something before the whole crowd realizes you’ve frozen up.”

The world bore down on him. Custodians stood unmoving at the edges, golden statues that missed nothing. Chapter Masters on the stage held themselves rigid, expressionless, their eyes measuring. And beyond them, an ocean of Guardsmen craned their necks upward, waiting for salvation in the shape of his words.

Guilliman inhaled through his nose, the sound halfway between composure and the roar of anguish he longed to release.

He exhaled, slow and reluctant.

And with that breath, he lowered his gaze back to the cursed slate.

The words he had written were gone. His sister’s mockery had replaced them.

He would have to read.

And so he did.

“Guardsmen, Astartes, and servants of the Imperium! You are about to embark upon a great crusade toward which we have striven for over a decade. A campaign that will demand not only your strength, but your conviction.”

Guilliman’s voice rolled out steady and deliberate, each syllable measured like the steps of a man advancing across a battlefield. Calm. Commanding. His tone carried neither fire nor flourish, only the cold weight of authority honed over centuries.

The lines of Guardsmen braced, shoulders squared, lasguns clutched tighter against their chests. The faintest stir rippled through their banners — cloth straining against the still air before settling again as though even fabric dared not falter under that voice.

Astartes remained statuesque. Only the faintest turn of helms betrayed their attention, lenses catching light as they aligned toward him. It was not eagerness, but acknowledgment. They had already chosen to follow. His words were confirmation, not persuasion.

“This is the time to speak plainly, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. We must not shrink from facing the conditions before us.”

Guilliman’s brow creased. His gaze lingered on the text as if weighing it again in silence. The phrasing was not his. But neither was it abominable. It was stark, stripped of ornament; and it struck with the clarity of an iron rod.

‘This… is not poor so far. It frames their task without drowning it in pomp. Perhaps she has stumbled into coherence.’

Beside him, the Mechanicus Magos inclined its head, binharic cant whispering faintly through vox‑grilles as though the words themselves were being catalogued and indexed. On Guilliman’s opposite flank, the Ecclesiarchal Lord mouthed each phrase with fervor, twisting them into the shape of prayer before the syllables had even faded.

Guilliman ignored them both.

“The Imperium has endured as it has endured for ten thousand years, and it will endure still. And so let me state clearly: the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning terror, the weapon of our enemies, which turns resolve into retreat and courage into silence. We will not grant Chaos that victory.”

His delivery sharpened. Each word fell heavier than the last, hammered down as if he could inscribe them into the marble beneath his feet.

‘Fear itself… hm. How… Familiar. Where have I heard that line before?’

From the corner of his vision, a shark’s tail flicked back and forth; a mocking metronome to his rising suspicion.

At his shoulder, Calli drifted closer. Her pink hair swayed gently as her voice came out as a whisper, only for him.

“See? Not all your speeches have to sound like they were written by a stone tablet.”

Guilliman’s eyes did not shift. His tone did not falter. He had no time for jabs or jeers.

“Know this: dark and difficult times lie ahead. You will be tested not only in battle, but in loyalty, in discipline, and in the choices you make when the enemy tempts you with falsehoods. For soon, each of us must face the choice between what is right, and what is easy.”

He raised his gauntlet slowly, palm outward, then turned it upward in a gesture as though physically weighing the choice he named. He held the pose long enough to let silence nestle in around it, each word settling like stone.

The hush pressed tighter, the kind of quiet that carried not passivity but strain, like the moment before a blade fell.

“And I ask you, what separates a man from a slave? Titles? Power? No. A man chooses. A slave obeys.”

Guilliman drew his gauntlet into a fist and pressed it once against the aquila on his chestplate. The sound rang sharp, metallic, and final, cutting across the dais like a hammer on an anvil.

A ripple moved through the ranks below. Guardsmen flinched at the clang before steadying, spines bracing higher. Commissars tightened their grips on power swords, black coats settling like wings. Even the Astartes seemed to acknowledge the gesture, their helms inclined a fraction sharper toward him.

“You think you have freedom. Strength. Ambition. And then the whispers come. Was there ever strength? Or only weakness, dressed as promise? Was that ambition yours? Or was it bent, twisted, until you served another’s will?”

His gaze swept the mass deliberately. Across regimental banners drooping heavy with incense smoke. Across the black lenses of Commissars standing sentinel among their charges. Across the cold, impassive visors of the Astartes, who stared back like fortresses.

‘…familiar. Why is this so…familiar?’

The suspicion flickered sharp at the edges of thought, but he cut it aside. Delivery mattered more than doubt.

“Chaos does not free you. It binds you. It takes your will, your reason, your very self, and chains them to the whims of an eternal master.”

His voice sharpened. The calm steel of command roughened into something harsher, heavier, like a warhorn before a charge.

“A slave obeys the voices in the dark. A man chooses duty, even when it is hard. Remember this, when the shadows press close and the foe calls your name: A man chooses. A slave obeys.”

The silence that followed was immense. No cheers or murmur. Even the banners overhead hung still in the faint wind, as if the air itself refused to stir.

‘…these words… I know them. From where?’ The thought itched, an irritation gnawing at memory. But there was no time to stop, no space to linger. The speech had to continue.

“And understand that this isn’t about strategy or tactics. This is about survival. Survival means struggle, and struggle means defiance.”

The silence that followed was not empty. It held tension that was alive, electric, drawn taut across the vast parade ground. No orders were shouted, yet the formation seemed to cohere tighter, as if conviction alone had redrawn the lines. Even the air felt heavier, charged with a purpose that hadn’t existed moments before.

“Even though large tracts of the galaxy and many old and famous systems have fallen or may fall into the grip of the xenos and all the odious apparatus of Chaos rule, we shall not flag or fail.”

The crowd leaned forward almost unconsciously. Guardsmen rising to tiptoe in their boots, Commissars squinting as if trying to brand the words into memory. Helm‑lenses tilted higher, locking more directly on him.

‘This cadence… this form. By the Throne, I know this. I’ve read it. Not in a tactica. In a speech. A Terran speech. Old. Older than the Age of Strife!’

His teeth clenched behind closed lips. The realization bled into his composure, but his voice did not falter. His eyes widened almost imperceptively to all except one.

“We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in the void, we shall fight on the forge worlds, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the skies, we shall defend our Imperium, whatever the cost may be…”

The words demanded strength, and so strength came unbidden. His voice rose with them, cutting sharper, harder, filling the air like a war‑drum.

The Guardsmen could not restrain themselves. Some shouted ragged affirmations, fists tightening on banners and rifles. Commissars, for once, did not silence them. They understood its power. They let it spread.

‘Churchill. Throne damn her. It’s damn Churchill!’

His eye twitched, his voice did not. The crowd roared back, and the speech rolled on.

“…we shall fight on the agriworlds, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hive cities; we shall never surrender.”

Guilliman’s fist crashed down against the lectern, thunder cracking against stone.

The reaction was almost instantaneous as a wave of noise swelled from the Guardsmen first, then surged upward through the Astartes, then rolled outward until the entire plain howled approval. Vox‑casters screeched at the strain, amplifying cheers into a wall of sound. Banners whipped in the sudden storm of breath and roar.

Further back, the Adeptus Mechanicus answered in their own fashion; vox-amplified bursts of Binary praise, the staccato machine-tongue clicking and hissing in perfect sync. Servo-arms clanged against plating, and auspex arrays pulsed in time with the chant, turning their devotion into a living pattern of light and sound.

Guilliman let the noise hang. He stood tall, back straight, helm cradled under one arm. His expression betrayed nothing but iron command. Not the coiling fury just below the surface. Not the disbelief that clouded his mind. Only the mask they needed to see.

On the inside however, his mind surged. Words pounded through his thoughts too fast to silence.

‘This is no accident. This is a patchwork — scraps of Terran history stitched into a single monstrosity. Even… Throne preserve me… fragments of pop culture. She has woven them into my speech. Why? Why!!??’

The pressure behind his temples sharpened to a monstrous throb. He turned his gaze fractionally, and the pain flared worse.

There she was.

Gura stood among her children with her shark‑hood thrown back and shark tail flicking with smug delight. Her grin split wide, feral and knowing — the predator savoring the sight of prey tangled in its own net. She radiated smug satisfaction: the cat who caught the canary; the shark who found the bleeding fish.

Guilliman’s eye twitched again. The crowd roared louder. The migraine got worse.

“But hear me now; defiance alone is not enough. It carries a price. The price of survival. I know I’m asking a lot. The price of survival is high. Always has been. And it’s a price I’m willing to pay. And if I’m the only one, then so be it. But I’m willing to bet I’m not.”

His voice cut across the chaos with surgical precision. Each syllable fell like a hammer blow, dragging the swelling roar down until the crowd quieted, their energy compressed into tense silence. His gauntleted hand clenched into a fist, holding the moment captive.

“And yes, for many, that price will be death. But death does not strip life of meaning. Not for us, and certainly not for the Imperium. Everything that you thought had meaning: every hope, dream, or moment of happiness. None of it matters as you lie bleeding out on the battlefield. None of it changes what a speeding bolt does to a body, we all die.”

Guilliman leaned over the lectern, shoulders squared like a fortress wall. His voice rolled outward, booming with finality.

Guardsmen shifted uneasily. A ripple of discomfort shot through the ranks as they gripped their rifles tighter. The uncertainty transmuted to resolve.

“But does that mean our lives are meaningless? Does that mean that there was no point in our being born? Would you say that of our slain comrades? What about their lives? Were they meaningless?”

His fist slammed the lectern. The crack split the silence like gunfire.

The crowd jolted — then answered with a roar, ragged at first, swelling into a bellowing tide.

Guilliman’s throat ached, but he pressed forward, hand sweeping wide across the banners, the rifles, the helms, the endless tide of flesh and steel.

“They were not! Their memory serves as an example to us all! The courageous fallen! The anguished fallen! Their lives have meaning because we the living refuse to forget them!”

The answer was seismic. Guardsmen pounded rifle butts against the stone, each strike a drumbeat. Astartes bellowed, guttural thunder that rolled like a stormfront. The marble beneath his boots vibrated with the frenzy.

Guilliman’s eye twitched again, his jaw clenched until it ached.

By the Throne… this is madness… madness that works. And I am complicit.

“And as we ride to certain death, we trust our successors to do the same for us! Because my soldiers do not buckle or yield when faced with the cruelty of this world! My soldiers push forward! My soldiers scream out! My soldiers RAAAGEE!!”

Guilliman’s armored fist struck the lectern once more, the sound booming like a warhorn detonated at close range.

The response was overwhelming. The parade ground convulsed with noise — Guardsmen shrieking themselves hoarse, Commissars barking to match the frenzy, Astartes bellowing in brutal, unified thunder that shook the banners overhead. Feet stamped, rifle butts hammered the marble, armor clashed like an avalanche of iron. Even the great pennants seemed to snap harder in the wind, as though whipped to life by the roar itself.

Guilliman did not move. He did not smile. His stance remained rigid, posture immaculate, face a mask of marble command as the tempest raged around him. He let them scream until their throats burned, until the cheers collapsed into ragged murmurs and then into a vibrating silence.

Only then did he lower his eyes back to the cursed slate.

“For what is survival, if it is lived on your knees? What is life, if it is spent in chains? Better a death in defiance than an existence in servitude. Better one stand of meaning than a thousand years of silence.”

His words were delivered low and hard, each syllable driven from deep in his chest. His voice cut like steel dragged across stone, carrying against the weight of the marble plain without needing to rise.

Hundreds of thousands of eyes fixed on him. Unblinking. Expectant. A host bound together not by comprehension of the words, but by the conviction with which they were spoken.

“Fight and you may die. Run, and you’ll live — at least a while.”

Guilliman swallowed, the taste of iron rising faintly in his mouth. To his left, Calli drifted, optics glimmering faint amusement. He didn’t need to hear her voice;  her smugness radiated in the air like static. Of course she knew. She always knew. And of course she didn’t think to warn him or at the very least give him some kind of heads up. He’d have to invent some new form of punishment for her insolence now that she had become friends with Kiara. Perhaps a week as his official envoy to the Ecclesiarchy. That would show her.

“And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take our Imperium!”

His brow creased faintly, the words tasting like acid on his tongue. Still, his delivery did not falter.

“And if that day comes; whether we fall or whether we endure, let none forget what we do here. Let the galaxy itself remember that when the void closed in, when Chaos and xenos pressed at every gate, we did not bow, we did not yield, we did not falter.”

His hand swept wide, gauntlet flashing beneath the light as it carved across the gathered Astartes and the ocean of Guardsmen beyond. The gesture carried them all within its arc, binding them together in the image of one body, one will.

The swell of noise that answered was muted, restrained for a heartbeat, as if anticipation itself held them taut. Murmurs rose, nods spread like a ripple across the ranks. The pulse of their unity throbbed, building, waiting to break.

“If the Imperium and its worlds last for another ten thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

Guilliman let his tone lower, then rise again, carrying finality like a drawn sword. His jaw twitched, eyes narrowing with suppressed fury. And then — they softened.

Was this really so bad? 

The cadence was crude, and the source was questionable at best… but the effects? Undeniable. The words sank into the crowd like steel driven into earth, anchoring them. He could feel it;  the way the energy coiled tighter, not just in them, but in him.

Perhaps this wasn’t only for their benefit. Perhaps it was a reminder he needed as well. Humanity had always fought; from mud and blade to void and bolter. It had always found a way forward. Every soldier here stood on the shoulders of those who had come before.

And now, theirs bore him up in turn.

 

‘Churchill. Again. By the Throne… and still it holds. The old words carry further than I wanted to admit.’

His grip on the lectern whitened his knuckles, but he did not falter. He could not. The tide was rising — unstoppable now.

“But this hour is not for memory! It is for action. This hour is not for the ages! It is for us. The enemy is not in some distant tomorrow; it is here, now, clawing at our gates. And so I say to you:”

His voice dropped, low as a growl, then surged outward like a thunderclap that shattered the tension.

“Today. Today… At the edge of our hope, at the end of our time, we have chosen not only to believe in ourselves, but in each other. Today there is not a man nor woman here who shall stand alone. Not today. Today we face the daemons at our door and bring the fight to them! Today, we are canceling the apocalypse!”

His armored fist slammed into the lectern with such force that the stone split, hairline cracks spidering beneath his hand. The sound reverberated like a battery of artillery across the plaza. The crowd surged again; a storm of voices, boots hammering stone, and raw-throated cries shaking the very air.

Guilliman straightened, shoulders squaring as his voice carried over the plaza.

‘Apocalypse… what ridiculous phrasing. Yet listen to them answer it. If it rallies hearts, let it stand.’

“In less than three hours, fleets mustered here will join others from across the Imperium. And you will be launching the greatest campaign of liberation in the history of mankind.”

The roar swelled again, a tidal wave of voices battering the marble expanse. The sound rolled back from the walls of the Sanctum Imperialis, amplified and thrown forward until it seemed the ground itself trembled. Beneath Guilliman’s boots, the plaza quivered with the stamping fury of a hundred thousand feet.

“Mankind. That word should hold new meaning for us all today.”

His stance shifted, feet planting with the certainty of a commander addressing warriors, not subjects.

‘If these words bind them closer to the cause, then they are a weapon, and I will wield them gladly.’

The Ecclesiarchal dignitary beside him mouthed the line as though it were scripture, crozier clutched like a relic from the dawn of man.

“We can no longer be consumed by division, by the doubts of worlds separated by distance and fear. We are bound together now by one truth: survival.”

The word spread like contagion. Survival! Survival! Regiments of Guardsmen picked it up in jagged rhythm, their voices slamming together into a chant. Banners shook in the air as the butts of lasrifles struck stone in thunderous unison.

Even the Custodians, statues of gold and silence, seemed to tilt their helms imperceptibly toward him as if the echo of the words had reached even their ancient composure.

“Perhaps it is fate that today is the same day my father, the Emperor, united Terra. And you will once more march not for conquest, nor for the glory of one world above another, but for the survival of all. For the Imperium entire.”

He leaned fractionally forward over the lectern, not from strain, but to close the distance between himself and the sea of faces below.

‘Embellished, yes… but is that really important? If it steels spines, let the Ecclesiarchy mint their feast day. Today the words serve the war.’

The Guardsmen’s chant deepened, sharpened, became a hammering rhythm. Entire regiments slammed rifles against stone as one, the plaza reverberating like a drum of war.

“We fight not only against tyranny, oppression, and heresy, but against annihilation itself!”

The words spilled like fire, and the response was fire in kind. A roar surged from the Guard and the Astartes alike, fists punching the air, armor clanging as ceramite crashed against ceramite. The marble floor itself seemed to pulse beneath his feet as if Terra’s bones answered the call.

The Sisters of Battle broke their stillness at last, gauntleted fists striking breastplates in a measured rhythm, voices rising in a hymn that laced through the Guardsmen’s roar like a burning thread. Their cries carried the fervor of the faithful, sharp and unyielding, as if each word were a vow renewed before the Throne.

“We fight for our right to live! To exist! And when we triumph, this day will not be remembered as the start of another war, but as the day when the Imperium declared in one voice:”

Guilliman drew a measured breath. His armored hand settled on the lectern, pressure firm but even. He kept the cadence steady. He chose to ride it. The momentum was a tool in his grip, not a cage around his throat.

His voice rose, unwilling yet unstoppable, until it rolled outward like a warhorn. The banners trembled as though the Throne itself had spoken through him:

“We will not go quietly into the void!
We will not vanish without a fight!
We’re going to live on!
We’re going to survive!
Today… I declare … The Imperium Aeternus!”

The plaza erupted. Guardsmen screamed themselves raw, throwing helmets into the air, rifles raised and bayonets gleaming like a forest of steel. Commissars, swept into the frenzy, roared with them, sabres stabbing skyward.

And the Astartes answered like a single iron voice, a guttural, unified bellow.  struck ceramite breastplates in seismic rhythm, a thunder that rolled across the ground until even the air seemed to quake.

Vox‑casters cracked with strain, amplifying the chant that spread like wildfire across the plaza and outward through the transmission arrays into the void itself:

“Imperium! Aeternus! Imperium! Aeternus!”

Guilliman held his ground at the lectern. He did not waver. He did not force a smile. The line of his mouth eased by a fraction, enough to admit a truth only he would hear.

‘Let them have this. Let me have it too.’

He inclined his head slightly, letting his gaze sweep the ranks as the chant rolled back at him.

‘If this binds them together, then it is worth every borrowed phrase.’

The rhythm of the crowd matched the cadence of his own breath.

‘This is what command should feel like.’

The last echoes of the chant rolled away into the distance, leaving only the low murmur of movement as the crowd began to break. Guilliman stepped back from the lectern, the weight in his chest not heavier, but eased. He let his gaze sweep the plaza once more before finding her in the press of figures at the edge. Gura stood with arms folded, half-smile playing at her lips, the kind that dared him to deny her part in this. He met it with a look of his own, not rebuke, but gratitude unspoken, forged in the quiet understanding only they shared. As ever, she had found a way to shoulder part of the burden, and as ever, it felt lighter in his hands.

Notes:

I'M FREEEEEEEEEE...Or at least for the next 2 weeks. Finals are done, and I have around 2 essay's left to write. Classes restart around the 25th, so I aim to put out another side story, and maybe an extra chapter. Hope this longer one made up for my absence. By the way, there were MANY references in this chapter... can you spot them all?

In other news... I desperately require your help. Specifically with ideas regarding battles in the Indomitus Crusade for our motley crew to undergo. Ideas, suggestions, even concepts, anything is appreciated. I know exactly how it will end, and clearly I've already written how it starts, but I need a little assistance with the meat. Gura will FINALLY be fighting next chapter. Scary things, as fighting is not my strong suit at all. I will do my best! Hope you all enjoyed this!

Chapter 13: Intermission 1: Brutal Kunnin’ and Kunnin’ Brutality

????? In The Warp, 013 .M42

Somewhere beyond reality, where WAAAGH! hummed in the void and everything tasted vaguely like fungus and gunpowder, two gods sat. They had always been there, just as they had always not been; shapes too vast for mass, too loud for sound. Twin shadows carved from intent and contradiction.

Gork and Mork.

Blue and pink, yet green beneath it all. Force and thought. Noise and silence.

They did not speak. They had not looked at each other in at least four millennia. Not since the great BAU BAU… it truly had been too long ago. 

Gork stewed.

It lounged on a throne of wrecked star cruisers and dead metaphors, one clawed hand resting on a battleplate the size of a hive spire. Motionless in body, but not in mind. Beneath that sky-colored silhouette was movement, pressure, irritation coiled like a spring.

Then, without warning, it hurled a moon downward. A casual motion, like flicking teef across a bar table.

The moon cracked the surface of an Imperial world on impact. The blast wave didn’t just flatten cities — it rewrote culture. From the molten crust rose a new breed of Ork: The Torkspiralaz.

They didn’t believe in straight lines. 

Gork waited. Still.

Mork did not glance.

Gork’s brow rose slowly.

It reached out into the ether, grasped a burning sun, and threw it like a dodgeball.

The star arced through unreality, bent around probability, and slammed into the edge of a sector still drawing its maps. Warp routes collapsed. The timeflow stuttered. A saint was born before her great-grandmother ever joined the Guard.

And still, Mork barely shifted.

Its pink shimmer curled calmly over its throne of half-sketched plans, discarded tactics, and kunningly brutal contradictory schematics.

It watched a grot, dreaming.

The grot, in its sleep, invented fire. Then reinvented numbers. Then scrawled the first glyphs of calculus into the dirt using a femur. Then it spontaneously combusted.

A miracle of insight, Mork observed, pleased.

Gork made a sound like a sulking dump truck.

“Hmph.”

Gork wanted to be seen.

Not by the Orks. Not by the mobs who roared Its name into battle, nor by the shamans who ignited under Its psychic presence.

By It.

By Mork.

Its twin and other half.

But Mork just stared off into the psychic distance. Off where thoughts turned sideways, and plans folded themselves into new teeth. Where everything was a game and a weapon and a joke.

Gork’s claw twitched, and a new thought stirred.

A plan. A scheme, even. Heavy and brutally kunnin’. The kind of plan that builds so fast, there's no stopping it. 

What if It made something so big, so raw, so Orky that even Mork couldn’t ignore it? Something that wasn’t just loud, or fast, or strong; but all of those things, fully realized, shaped into a form that reached back to what the Orks were always meant to be.

'A Krork,' Gork thought. 'Da biggest, baddest boy. Not just Orky. Pre-Orky.'

It would work. It had to work.

But…Gork hesitated.

It didn’t know how. Sure, the pieces were there; scattered in glyphs and genetic whispers, buried in bone and instinct. But they were broken, and It couldn’t put them back together by Itself.

Its foot began to tap in thought. The void shook with each beat.

Then —

A voice.

Not loud. Not even heard.

It slid sideways into Gork’s mind, smooth and cool and purplish. Not just in color. In tone. It curled through thought like tentacles in a pudding cup. Friendly. Soft. Vaguely damp.

Gork froze.

Its foot stopped.

It answered with thought, heavy and unbending, the kind that once flattened stars.

‘Wot’s dis? Nah. Nah, I know dat voice. Slippy, squirmy, full o’ zog. Git gone.’

The voice remained.

It didn’t argue or retreat, it simply waited, as though it had all the time Gork had ever wasted, and more besides.

Gork exhaled once, slow and unimpressed, gaze drifting toward the other throne; still untouched, still unmoved, still watching everything except this.

Nothing ever came from these things but trouble, but the voice lingered, and its shape began to settle into something that was neither trick nor threat, just direction.

The silence stretched, then Its eyes narrowed as it relented, finally listening to the Voice’s offer.

Pink glinted with Kunnin’ brutality.

It smiled.

'Oh…' Gork thought.

'dat could work.'

---

?????, 013 .M42

The hive spire was broken.

Its peak had collapsed inward, dragged down beneath a mountain of its own failure. Chunks of blackened stone and ruptured hab-plate jutted from the rubble like broken teeth. Gunmetal clouds rolled low across the ruin, heavy with soot and smoke, lit from below by the dull orange glow of a world still burning. Screams still echoed through the husk of the city. They rose and fell like the death-rattle of something too big to die quickly.

Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka stood in the center of it all.

Groks Klaw dripped blood, thick and dark, spattering the fractured ferrocrete with each step. His silhouette loomed against the flickering remains of a once-sacred wall, now split by impact and fire. Ash clung to the teeth of his armored suit. The air reeked of promethium, cordite, and wet, smoking death.

Astartes blood steamed on the stones beneath him. Bits of armor bobbed in it like trash in a gutter. The warband surged forward around him. Boyz howled as they scaled the broken barricades, still hunting for survivors. Grots skittered through the debris, clawing at fallen gear. A pair of Deff Dreads clanked past, dragging bodies behind them in chains of barbed wire and spent shell casings.

A Black Templar charged through the smoke.

His right pauldron was split. Purity seals hung in tatters from his chest. His power sword sparked as he raised it, half-functioning, but still sharp. He shouted something. Words of defiance. Hate and Faith combined. Ghazghkull didn’t care.

The blade struck his chestplate and bounced off, trailing sparks. The claw came down.

It closed around the Marine’s torso with a hiss of hydraulics and a splintering crunch. Armor folded. Bone gave way. Blood sprayed in a thick arc across the stone. When Ghazghkull opened his hand, nothing useful remained as the cadaver crumpled to the floor. 

He turned his head slowly and then tilted it back.

“WAAAGHHH!”

The cry tore through the ruins like an orbital strike. It echoed across the burning skyline, rattled loose glass from broken towers, and slammed into the hearts of every living thing in earshot. Orks howled in reply, firing into the sky. Squigs burst from hiding, shrieking with excitement. Grots cowered. The ground itself seemed to reverberate with the call.

The battle was over, but the war wasn’t.

As the fires began to die and the last scattered shots faded into silence, Ghazghkull stepped down from his war harness. Steam hissed from the locking clamps. Pistons whined as they disengaged. The armor sloughed off like a shell, and the Ork beneath it — still massive, still armored in thick slabs of scavenged plating — walked forward.

Even without the harness, he towered over his Boyz. His steps were slow, deliberate, heavy enough to crack ribs or glass with equal ease. Grot handlers stepped aside without instruction. No one dared speak.

He walked toward the center of the courtyard. Toward the place where the first shot had been fired. Where the first blood had fallen.

There, he stopped.

The sound of the warband fell away. The noise faded to the edge of awareness. Something else had entered the space.

The air shifted.

There was no tremor or flare of light. But something passed through the ruins all the same. A pressure, vast and unseen. It came from nowhere and settled across everything.

Ghazghkull didn’t move.

His augmetic eye flickered once. The lens refocused. It locked forward. Then it drifted. Then locked again. He stared at nothing. Or at something too large to see.

His body remained still.

But inside, something turned.

He felt it. A weight. A presence. No sound. No image. No words. Just an imprint. Like a glyph carved into steel. 

Gork.

The vision came all at once.

It wasn’t fire, but it burned.

It wasn’t war, but it roared.

It had no shape, and yet it loomed vast, endless and familiar. It was green and hunger and movement all at once. It devoured everything it touched because that was what it was meant to do.

Time buckled around the thought. The war peeled away like skin. The blood vanished. Only the idea remained.

And then it passed.

Ghazghkull did not stagger.

He stood where he was, eyes still fixed on the place where nothing had appeared, and something had spoken.

He grinned.

The corners of his mouth curled with the certainty of a thought that had rooted itself into the very bone of him. The idea Gork had placed there without word or shape settled into his mind like a blade slotting into its sheath.

It was kunningly brutal. Brutally kunnin’ even. A plan that should not exist. One no Ork would dare imagine. But now that it had been given to him, it could not be stopped. Now that he knew it existed…

The ground beside him shimmered.

Once, and then again.

The air rippled without heat or pressure. Something clean pushed its way into the world, not with violence, but with decision. A perfect circle opened just above the rubble. A ring of cold violet light that cast no shadow, made no sound, and radiated nothing but stillness.

From within that opening, an arm extended.

It was not Ork.The limb was long and pale, unarmored, unmarred by scar or age. The flesh gleamed faintly, not like blood or skin, but like something preserved in stasis, perfect and impossible. It moved slowly, with the kind of deliberate grace that had never known haste or fear.

In its hand, it held a sword.

No words were spoken. No gesture was made. The hand descended and set the object down gently on the blood-slicked stone, not with reverence, but with care. As if completing a ritual that had been waiting millennia for this exact moment.

Then the arm withdrew, as smooth and unhurried as it had appeared. The portal closed behind it.

Ghazghkull looked down at the sword waiting at his feet.

It was unlike any weapon that had ever passed through his hands. Its shape was sleek, curved slightly forward, built for speed and precision. The metal was dark, rippling with hues that shifted beneath the surface like gas clouds behind tinted glass. There were flecks within it; tiny stars, fragments of something cosmic, like the blade had been forged in a dying sun and cooled in the void.

Turquoise runes traced along the blade’s flat, carved with impossible sharpness, glowing softly as though remembering something long lost. Ghazghkull felt it in the edge of his thoughts, like a beat he couldn’t quite name but already understood.

The hilt was wrapped in alternating bands of silver alloy and dark inlays, with lines of etched blue light curling around its surface like veins. Just above the guard, a panzee glyph gleamed.

It looked ancient. Not because it was damaged or corroded, but because it gave the impression of always having been. As though it had waited. As though it had chosen.

Ghazghkull stepped forward and bent low, wrapped one massive, hand around the hilt.

The runes flared in one controlled burst. A heartbeat. A spark.

The blade lifted without resistance. Its weight settled into his grip like a remembered oath.

He raised it high into the polluted sky, its edge catching the firelight from the still-burning city.

And then, from the depth of his lungs and the core of his being, he roared.

“WAAAGHHHH!”

The warband answered before they understood why. Nobz bellowed into the smoke. Boyz slammed weapons against stone and steel. Grots screamed from every crevice. Deff Dreads pounded their fists. Sound rose like a tidal wave across the ruins, shaking dust from towers that had already fallen.

The WAAAGH did not rise.

It ascended.

Notes:

Sorry for the massive wait people. I know this isn't much. I am currently taking 19 credits. I also had my rugby camp, which drained me last weekend. I have an idea of where I want to go for the future of this arc, so hopefully I should get an actual chapter out for y'all soon!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 1 of Smallest Primarch