---o---
In Slaanesh's palace, the atmosphere had become genuinely strange.
A place that should have been one of unending indulgence was, for the first time anyone present could remember, quiet.
Slaanesh had no interest in the followers gathered around the throne. Even the dancer who had always been the Dark Prince's most prized and cherished attendant could not hold his attention for so much as a glance.
Slaanesh had been born from the pinnacle of Aeldari emotion, and was therefore exquisitely sensitive to the texture of feeling and the quality of souls. The last time the Dark Prince had felt this particular kind of longing, it had been for Fulgrim. But what had just appeared before him a moment ago was the most extraordinary soul he had ever witnessed in all his existence.
And beyond the simple fact of its brilliance, there was something more important still.
In that soul, Slaanesh had glimpsed another possible path.
Slaanesh's fundamental nature was the pursuit of escalating sensation, but Slaanesh was not complete. Strictly speaking, the Dark Prince was a premature being, born before his time, and fundamentally incomplete in ways that the other three Chaos Gods were not.
The others were incomplete too, in their own ways, but far less so.
Tzeentch loved change. Khorne loved killing. Nurgle loved eternal and enduring life. Each of their roads was, in its own way, broad. Khorne did not care where the skulls came from. Tzeentch did not care about the scale of the scheme. Nurgle did not care what form life took, only that it persisted.
But Slaanesh had to pursue escalation. One layer of sensation led to the next, then to the next beyond that. Only a greater stimulation than the one before it could generate any genuine pleasure. Without that escalation, there was only emptiness. Endless, gaping emptiness.
When Fulgrim had first been obtained, he had been one of the most powerful Primarchs in existence, and the pleasure of that acquisition had been rare and genuine. But ten thousand years was a long time, and even that had grown somewhat stale.
All of Slaanesh's followers needed ever-increasing stimulation to feel anything. And if that was true of the followers, what did it mean for the source of everything they were? What would it take to make Slaanesh himself feel something?
The Dark Prince knew the answer to that question better than anyone. He knew that one day, when the last available sensation had been experienced, when there was nowhere left to escalate to, he would feel the final pleasure. And after that?
The Laughing God had said it once: one day Death will tear his way out from within your belly.
If the Emperor stood up from his Throne and humanity's faith coalesced into actual divinity, all of Slaanesh's followers would ascend as daemons into the Warp, and Holy Terra itself would become a new Eye of Terror. What remained of humanity would be almost nothing. And if what the Emperor feared was never himself but always Slaanesh, then Slaanesh would genuinely die.
But from within that soul he had just seen, he had glimpsed a different possibility. A path that was entirely unlike his own Slaaneshi way.
It was so beautiful. It was so perfect.
A special kind of perfection, one that no one could predict or anticipate. An unpredictable joy. A delight that no observer could foresee, because it followed no pattern and obeyed no threshold. Laughter as the exclusive privilege of thinking creatures, a full and uninhibited laugh that came from nowhere and landed everywhere at once.
The image of it left Slaanesh transfixed.
He could feel it. A perfect road, appearing directly in front of him. He wanted to seize it. He would seize it regardless of what it cost. Compared to that, every pleasure he had ever felt or collected was, on some level, worthless.
Slaanesh wanted it. He wanted it intensely. The desire blazed up in him like something he had never experienced before.
And as the craving swelled, unsatisfied and impossible to satisfy in the present moment, the entire palace dissolved into chaos.
The Greater Daemons Slaanesh had created in his own image brought every capability they possessed to bear on the problem of making him smile. Everything that had previously worked was tried simultaneously. Nothing produced any result at all.
Howling and wailing echoed through the palace chambers.
When pleasure was absent, every Slaaneshi daemon felt it as an emptiness that had no bottom. The wanting without receiving. This was a sensation that only Slaanesh himself could experience in its true form, and now every being connected to him felt the echo of it.
He did not know how long it would last. But he felt, for the first time in a very long time, that he had a purpose.
He wanted that. He was going to have it.
"..."
There was one figure in the palace whose face showed something other than vacancy or distress.
Fulgrim. The Dark Prince's great prize. His expression, in this moment, was a contortion of emotions that had not been used in ten thousand years.
He clenched his fist slowly.
He could feel it. Slaanesh's affection for him was draining away completely, pulled toward something that was not him, consumed by something he could not see. Fulgrim had spent ten thousand years in this place. The ancient and distorted face twisted with something old and cold and violent.
"I can sense a family bound to you by a blood covenant approaching this place."
"Yes. My Lord."
It was worth noting, even here, that not all Daemon Primarchs were treated equally by their patrons.
Mortarion's arrangement with Nurgle was by far the most favorable. Angron was a different case entirely. Khorne had never truly wanted Angron. Lorgar had maneuvered the Blood God into accepting him, and it stood as one of the few genuinely competent political acts Lorgar had ever managed. He had stolen Khorne's greatest prize by filling the slot with someone Khorne had not chosen. Khorne had wanted Sanguinius. After that, Rogal Dorn would have been acceptable. Guilliman perhaps, as a distant third option.
Instead he received Angron. And so that was how things were.
But Fulgrim's position before Slaanesh was visibly inferior to Mortarion's standing with Nurgle. That much was plain.
"Go and bring that person to me."
"My Lord, the current conditions are insufficient for me to descend into the material universe. Even if that ritual had been completed, I still could not have appeared there. Not fully."
Fulgrim's expression showed genuine difficulty.
The ritual, despite its significant scale, had lacked the necessary soul-mass. Sixty-six thousand, six hundred and sixty-six souls was not a small number, and their quality had been high. But the quantity was insufficient. For Fulgrim to descend completely, the minimum requirement was six hundred and sixty-six billion, six hundred and sixty-six million, six hundred and sixty-six thousand, six hundred and sixty-six.
This was functionally impossible to achieve. Large-scale sacrificial events of the necessary magnitude were not impossible for want of willingness among Slaanesh's followers. They were impossible because the other three Chaos Gods were always watching and always ready to intervene. Combined with the Tyranid Hive Fleets' disruption effects, achieving a mega-scale sacrifice had become a state of managed impossibility, locked in dynamic equilibrium.
There was also the straightforward reason that Slaanesh was called the weakest of the four powers. It was not wrong. The Dark Prince had no grand strategic project. Nurgle had the Plague Wars. Khorne had the Blood Crusades. Tzeentch had the Webway War. Slaanesh had nothing comparable. The followers were lost in pleasure. Future? What was a future?
The performance of the fallen Emperor's Children during the Siege of Terra, which had reached a standard of uselessness that was almost impressive in its own right, told you everything you needed to know about what Slaanesh's forces were worth when a real plan was required.
"There is a vast derelict void-hulk drifting in the Warp nearby. I will use your blood as the targeting coordinate and push it into the material universe. In the moment of its emergence, the resulting Warp surge will be sufficient to allow you to manifest briefly. Find one of your descendants to serve as a temporary vessel."
Slaanesh regarded Fulgrim and gave the instruction in a level tone.
An Avatar manifestation drawn through the Warp surge of an emerging void-hulk, using a bloodline descendant as the physical anchor, would allow Fulgrim to appear in the material realm in a reduced but still formidable form.
"...Yes."
A faint and genuine light entered Fulgrim's expression for the first time. He ran his tongue slowly across his lips.
An Avatar manifestation would not permit his full power. But it would be more than enough to demonstrate his capability. A Primarch Avatar form surpassed even a Custodes Shield-Captain. Whatever the thing that Slaanesh desired turned out to be, he would show it what cruelty meant.
---o---
Quintus Hive.
Chris was reading the reports in front of him with his brow creased.
The Chapter's cleanup had not been thorough. He knew that was deliberate. A Space Marine Chapter deploying Terminator units to eliminate a sector-level noble family entirely was an act with significant political consequences. The evidence that had been left behind was not accidental. It was a message, specifically structured for an Inquisitorial follow-up team.
He was not particularly invested in overseeing the ongoing purge of this hive. The local Inquisitor had been lost, which meant a new Ordo Malleus team was already on its way. His interest was elsewhere.
Specifically: the Aestia records.
He was watching footage from an Astartes helmet-mounted recorder, the Victrix Guard veterans watching beside him. Everyone in the room had the same expression.
This time there was no need to risk a dangerous prophetic vision into the Warp. The footage was right there in front of them.
Then silence.
"That is one of our Ancients."
Metaurus said it before he had finished processing the image. He recognized the Ultramarines Contemptor Dreadnought immediately, even without the livery. But it was not only the Ultramarines Dreadnought.
Imperial Fists. Blood Angels. Space Wolves.
In that single instant, even Metaurus felt a cold drop run down his spine.
The Chapter composition was extraordinary, and a substantial portion of the available footage had clearly been excised. Someone had deliberately cut the recordings. Whatever this Chapter concealed, they were not willing to share it freely.
That was not even the main concern. The main concern was that the Ultramarines had submitted a claim that this was a successor Chapter. He could already feel what would happen if word of the Imperial Fists Ancient reached the wrong ears. Macragge was not going to be peaceful after this.
The ten-thousand-year-old Imperial Fists Dreadnought alone, if the Black Templars and the other successor Chapters learned of it, would unleash a political situation that would not resolve quickly. The sons of Dorn were facing serious difficulties and they would not handle this calmly.
But then everyone in the room stood up.
They stood because Mortarion appeared in the footage.
At that moment, hope went away entirely. A company of ten-thousand-year veterans was a formidable thing, but no composition of Astartes, however ancient, was a match for a fallen Daemon Primarch. When it came to raw power, Mortarion and Fulgrim occupied the highest tier of the four fallen Primarchs. Both of them retained complete Warp essence. Magnus was a fragment of himself. Angron could barely be called a Primarch anymore, the most lethal killing engine imaginable, but already more beast than being.
Metaurus covered his eyes. The conclusion of this engagement was obvious. They would fight. They would all be massacred. In the final moment someone would trigger the Exterminatus to stop Mortarion's advance.
And then.
Black armor. A golden sword.
The Emperor's fire swept through the Nurgle daemons in a wave.
The Daemon Primarch was pressed to the ground by a single combatant and held there.
In that instant every person watching had only two words in their mind.
Primarch.
Everyone knew that when the Great Rift tore open, the Imperium had entered its darkest hour. But that was also, in truth, the darkness before a new dawn. Guilliman's return had brought the first genuine thread of hope to a dying empire. But the 41st Millennium before the Great Rift was itself the Imperium's most desperate period, a time when the Imperium was fractured in every direction, when no single figure could hold it together and make the rotting machine function. Chaos influence was limited outside the Eye of Terror. The Tyranids had not yet committed to a full-scale assault. The other xenos races were suppressed. The 41st Millennium was an era of endless internal competition and endless internal collapse.
And everyone was exhausted. There was a pervasive despair. The only hope that the vast majority of the Imperium's people, aside from a small number of High Lords, truly wanted was for a Primarch to stand up and lead.
Someone to sweep away the chaos. Someone to be in front.
But there had been none. Not a single one.
Now there was.
A figure with an artifact that burned with the same golden fire as the Emperor's own, wielding His flame against the daemons of Nurgle. Which specific Primarch this was did not matter nearly as much as what followed from his presence.
Look at the Ancients under his command. Ancient warriors from ten thousand years ago. And among them, the Imperial Fists Dreadnought, who could personally invoke the Last Wall Protocol that Rogal Dorn had left behind. The moment this Primarch chose to return to Holy Terra, the Adeptus Custodes would not block him. No one would block someone who wielded power like this. He would become the true Lord of Terra from the moment of his arrival.
"We are going to the Space Wolves immediately. I need the complete and unedited footage."
Chris took a slow breath.
The Space Wolves had the full recording. The Black Ship needed to move.
"Report. Severe Warp storm activity. We cannot enter the Warp at this time. And something appears to be emerging."
The Navigator came through the door at a run, his expression not fully composed.
Every person in the room stopped moving.
---o---
Meanwhile, in a room in the upper hive.
"This agreement is indistinguishable from robbery. You can keep dreaming."
Zhou Ye read the document in his hand, dropped it into the waste bin beside him without a second look, and reached for his glass.