Dark clouds followed the fluttering of moth wings, and a scythe swung down, swirling with toxic gas. Ears of wheat, charred by fire, soared with the sweep of the blade, and golden ash twined around the Lord of Shrouds.
"Father!" Perynsipherly cried out in near-delight.
"Fall back!" Mortarion's sullen bark echoed. Without a moment's hesitation, Perynsipherly obeyed his gene-father's command, leading the remaining seven Death Guard Plague Marines in a rapid retreat, all while unleashing a hail of bolter fire at the girl.
But before the bolts could touch her, they were incinerated by that pitch-black flame.
Simultaneously, twenty-one Deathshroud Terminators teleported in from three directions. Clad in heavy, oppressive Cataphractii-pattern Terminator plate and wielding manreapers, they charged the girl through thick plumes of poisonous smoke. The brown-skinned girl extended a bare, slender foot. Her delicate ankle twisted slightly as her toes touched the ash-strewn ground. A piercing spark of dark-red fire ignited beneath her step, expanding rapidly into a ring of flame that shielded her. As the blast kicked up the dust, the ash took form.
Formed by fire, ash-wrought Astartes emerged around her, each bearing a glowing ring of fire above their brow—a sign they were warriors recalled from death by her will. Manreapers clashed with the dead; ash and sparks flew. However, the fallen could not hold for long. Mortarion took flight, tracing a lethal arc through the air. In a single stroke, his massive scythe, *Silence*, shattered the ash-warriors surrounding her.
But the girl raised her hand. Dense ash rose, flickering with embers, and dozens more Astartes manifested from the dust, wielding an array of weapons as they swarmed Mortarion...
"Seventh Company..." Mortarion's lips twitched. The movement of his scythe involuntarily slowed, and he was forced back by the sheer weight of the spectral assault.
Though they were mere ash and ghosts, Mortarion recognized them. These were the souls of the Seventh Company—those who had abandoned him at the dawn of the Heresy to remain loyal to the Emperor.
"You abomination..." The pale, gaunt face of the Lord of Shrouds twisted into a mask of hideous rage.
+Mortarion, my son.+
The girl raised her golden eyes to stare at him.
+You always pride yourself on your endurance, but your mind is more fragile than you believe.+
+When it concerns your sons, you are incapable of calm, resilient thought.+
The girl's golden gaze flickered toward Perynsipherly, who was busy directing mortals to flee the estate.
+He is but one of your many sons, one of the Barbarans who followed you. Yet you could not contain your restlessness. You rushed headlong from your fortress to stand before me.+
+You fear me. Your psychic instinct warned you that you were stepping into a trap of grave danger.+
"You are but a microscopic thread of His power. Horus is not by your side. What power do you possess?" Mortarion snarled. But his heart—his heart was indeed pounding. He felt fear... how strange.
The girl said nothing. She simply focused her gaze on Perynsipherly.
Perynsipherly felt a change. He looked down at his body in confusion. Brightness. Fire. Fire was burning within his frame. Beneath this radiant flame, the blessings of the Grandfather became hazy and blurred. In the light of the fire, he saw his mutated body for what it was: shattered organs, intestines drooping outside his torso. The pain, once shielded by "blessings," came rushing back.
Then came the burning. Every part of him was on fire. His verdigris power armor was stripped away inch by inch; his necrotic flesh turned to soot upon exposure to the air. The blessings of the Plague God were deserting him. He turned frantically to look at his father, his eyes meeting Mortarion's amber gaze.
He reached out, but instinctively, he did not reach for his father. Instead, he tried to touch the ear of wheat upon his brow—the one that had lived in symbiosis with his flesh for ten thousand years—as if trying to grasp something long lost. "Father."
Perynsipherly's throat rasped out the syllable. Suddenly, he felt he had so much to say. He wanted to say goodbye, to apologize, to ask his father to remember his name, to tell him he missed Barbarus...
But in the end, he whispered only one sentence: "I'm going back to Barbarus..."
The wheat turned to ash in an instant.
Mortarion's amber eyes caught only the final moment. He exhaled slowly, a silent, stagnant fury rippling in his gaze. His fingers gripped Silence so tightly that the veins stood out clearly against his pale skin.
The Plague Planet seemed to sense its master's mood. Poisonous clouds pressed down toward the earth, and a brownish-green storm coalesced in the sky, carrying sharp shrieks within the gale.
The mutated creatures roaming the planet's surface let out wails of sorrow. Mortarion spun around, his being seeming to merge with the storm of the Plague Planet, forming something vaster, more terrifying, and more primal.
Scythe swinging, censers swaying, the toxins of Barbarus swirled around him as the Lord of Shrouds transformed into a blur of grey light. Wrapped in endless dark clouds, he charged the brown-skinned girl.
In this moment, all logic, calculation, self-restraint, and numerology were cast aside. Only the most primitive rage and madness remained. The power originally gifted to him, hidden within his shell—power far beyond what reason could describe—was unleashed.
The girl showed no fear. She simply looked up, her golden eyes reflecting countless deaths and... hatred. Ash, corpses, fire, lost souls, screams, curses, and despair poured from her eyes like a lanced boil. In the blink of an eye, they transformed into thousands of twisted figures made of ash and flame, screaming in desperation as they rushed Mortarion. It was raw hatred.
Mortarion saw souls cut down by his scythe, poisoned by his gas, and extinguished by his lantern. Those souls, shrouded in ash and ignited by their own desperation, had come for revenge. But Mortarion had lost his reason; the freezing anger and primal loathing drowned his soul. He was submerged in the ash within an instant.
Mortarion saw a scythe—a scythe wreathed in toxic gas cutting through his body like a wheat stalk. It was the Siege of Terra. He saw himself, harvesting the lives of mortals and Astartes alike. He saw conscripted humans screaming for mercy, only to be slaughtered. Hatred. They hated Mortarion. Every lash of hate was like a white-hot blade stabbing into him, burning away his armor and tearing at his wings. His scythe destroyed a thousand ash-forms in a heartbeat, but the dust did not vanish; it settled on him, burning him. With every speck of ash that landed, Mortarion saw himself become someone he had killed, experiencing their death over and over. With every death, he felt himself weakening.
The robes he wore were shredded, overwhelmed, and assimilated by the ash.
+You once claimed to be the protector of the weak.+
+Why then do you slaughter us now?+
+Look at you. You are the tyrant.+
Mortarion roared, swinging his scythe and sowing poison in a frenzy.
He saw more Astartes—the Loyalists. White Scars, Raven Guard, Imperial Fists, Blood Angels—they appeared in succession, wielding weapons and cursing him. Their hatred was stronger, more lethal than that of the mortals.
+This is your endurance?+
+Nurgle's corruption, a disgusting body.+
+Look at you. You are the sorcerer.+
A layer of his power armor was peeled away. The metal became thin and brittle, finally shattering under the ravages of ash and fire, leaving only his pale, gaunt body.
Yet Mortarion still swung *Silence*, shattering the ash-Astartes. He could see her at the end of the storm—the girl with brown skin and golden eyes. *Kill her.* The ash burned his broken body, but he advanced tirelessly. Mortarion didn't care about the hate. Mortarion didn't care...
**+Father.+**
The Death Guard. Those who chose loyalty. Many who never even had a choice before being sent to Isstvan III. Those ghosts looked at Mortarion.
A wave of intense nausea surged up Mortarion's throat. The arm swinging the scythe finally lost its strength.
That list. The list of names sent to Isstvan III. Mortarion remembered every single one. He remembered how he had lied to himself for each name: *This one is a stubborn Terran who won't accept our traditions... this one isn't resilient enough to be my son... this one worships the Emperor more than me... this one... this one... this one...*
From the moment the rebellion began, Mortarion knew he had to make these choices. He had tried to send as few as possible to Isstvan III, secretly protecting some who were marked for death. He told himself he had done his best; he had to protect the sons more worthy of his love.
Mortarion argued with himself, but his soul felt increasingly hollow.
+Lies.+
Low voices of condemnation rose from all sides.
Mortarion found himself standing on the battlefield of Isstvan III.
Sons loyal to Mortarion were slaughtering sons loyal to the Emperor. Blood flowed, but the battle was chaotic. Mortarion heard the pleas, the questions, and the confusion over the vox. His purge of the Legion had not been thorough enough. Some of his sons refused to fire on their former brothers; they asked why the Legion was devouring itself.
They even turned their guns toward Angron, the Daemon Primarch of the World Eaters, who was fighting alongside the Death Guard.
Finally, in the chaos, the endurance the XIV Legion took such pride in collapsed. They fell into total disorder. Loyalists and Traitors alike pulled their triggers in a daze, unable to distinguish friend from foe. And Mortarion stood there, standing silently in the midst of the slaughter...
The Veil of Grief. Mortarion remembered this tragic madness. Within the Legion, it was still called the "Veil of Grief."
+Is this your love for your sons?+
Mortarion was submerged. Ash, hatred, death, and grief drowned him. "I was neither resilient enough, nor did I love you enough."
Mortarion allowed his hateful sons to drive blades of ash into his body. "I am so incompetent that I can only let you rot with me."
"I truly am the worst father and commander."
His moth wings were burned away. His pale, weak body fell uncontrollably into the depths of the ash.
Suddenly, an arm bearing the marking of a partial Aquila reached out from the ash and caught Mortarion.
"Death is not the end, Mortarion."
A voice spoke to him from within the dust.
"Nathaniel?"
Mortarion whispered: "Garro..."
"...I used to imagine that if you, whose loyalty was second to none, had turned to me, no one would have questioned my decisions, and our Legion would not have fractured."
"And I used to imagine that you would find your way back. But in the end, you betrayed Terra, the Legion, the Emperor... and yourself. You have been lying to yourself."
The figure appeared for only a fleeting second before collapsing, but his arm held Mortarion firmly, injecting a spark of strength into him.
Mortarion could not imagine the sheer resilience of a soul that could pierce the influence of the Dark King to reach out to him. He stood up in the ash. He had broken through the layers of dust to stand before the girl. His armor was gone, his wings stripped away; only his gaunt primarch-frame and the scythe in his hands remained.
But he still had strength. Enough to kill the thing before him...
The scythe cut through the air, swinging toward the girl.
+I thought I could have you.+
Suddenly, the flow of time slowed to a crawl. Mortarion was frozen mid-swing. **+But this works too.+**
The girl slowly reached her hand toward him.
"How... can you be... so strong..." Mortarion was in disbelief. The power she displayed was overwhelming; it felt as if he were facing a complete deity.
+It is not that I am strong. It is that I am strong against you.+
Mortarion stared at her, his amber eyes twitching. Suddenly, he understood. "Those followers of the Emperor within the Grandfather's realm that you killed... it was their hatred for me and the Grandfather that gave you strength."
"You didn't kill them out of mercy or to end their pain. You did it to harvest power, to trigger the hatred for me stored within the husk of the Dark King..."
"But why do all this? To corrupt me or destroy me?"
Mortarion struggled to break free, but it was difficult. That hatred and loathing were directed clearly at him. Ravaged by the ash, Mortarion was nearly powerless to resist.
+Just as you would risk danger to save your sons...+
+There happens to be one among the Gods who shares a similar trait with you.+
Time and space fractured. The smell of decay wafted from behind Mortarion. A massive, viscous, rotting hand reached out suddenly, grasping for him.