"...As promised... I have come..."
Jaghatai and Russ could hardly believe their eyes.
That pale, mottled light with a golden halo—an image that seemed like the Emperor yet not quite him—shifted and flickered, taking on countless shapes that conveyed vastly different impressions to those who beheld it.
From a man to an old sage.
A majestic monarch dressed in splendid robes; a scholarly man, neither tall nor short; a withered, broken corpse; an unremarkable middle-aged man; a scientist in a plain white sterile suit; a priest in emerald armor with a hooded head; a tall, robust barbarian from the wilds...
At once young and ancient, reckless yet wise, saintly yet imprisoned. One who loved all humanity as his children, yet regarded mankind as mere clay.
Pain, cold, arrogance, gentleness, wisdom, kindness, and age—countless conflicting and contradictory essences entwined around the sorrowful light like serpents coiling upon every strand of it.
At last, the ceaseless shifting ceased.
A towering giant stood revealed—clad in an ornate, almost blasphemously intricate golden armor. His shoulder-length black hair shone faintly; his square jaw radiated strength; his every gesture brimmed with austere authority. A golden halo—angelic, divine—framed his noble, perfect face in dim radiance.
"That is a curse!"
"The corpse-god of the human apes!"
Countless Dark Eldar convulsed violently beneath the Emperor's psychic brilliance. Their hands flew to their eyes as though to tear them out, shrieking in agony. Piercing screams echoed through every corner of the blackened hive-city, rising and falling in chaotic chorus.
"The Emperor! It's the Emperor! Our Holy Lord—he has returned among us!"
"Light shall return to mankind! Praise the God-Emperor—we are saved! Humanity is saved!"
When the Emperor appears, the universe itself is reborn.
Within Commorragh's endless labyrinth of thorns, countless human captives—freed by the infiltrators of the Midnight Lords—cast aside their weapons and fell to their knees, praying fervently toward the golden sun that now blazed upon the horizon. Some even wept in rapture.
"Waaagh... Waaagh... it's the super shiny golden shrimp!"
A panicked Ork warboss bellowed.
"This is divine providence! All is guided by the Omnissiah!"
Aboard the Sacred Selene Empire's naval vessels, the forge-sages of the Mechanicus—tasked with guiding and relaying data—chanted in ecstatic prayer. The Astartes of the human Imperium knelt, trembling, hands raised toward that radiant apparition.
The Emperor neither responded nor smiled, nor did his brow furrow. Not a trace of emotion stirred upon his face. It was as if he merely reminisced about walking among mortals—or perhaps, he had long grown weary of their worshipful cries.
"...Number Five, Number Six... my two perfect creations that remain..."
With words of light and fire, the Emperor spoke softly.
His voice rasped with hoarse echoes, almost blind in tone, yet it carried across all of the Dark Sun's ruins and Commorragh alike. The psychic resonance—layered with endless sorrow and fury—swept into Jaghatai and Russ's minds, its psychic reverberations like a sandstorm within the skull.
Jaghatai frowned deeply.
The thunderous psychic communication itself was not what drew his attention—but rather the realization that his father, his Emperor, had seemingly lost the subtle humanity and genius he once held when he still walked the mortal realm.
Creation, not sons.
The Emperor had acknowledged him and Russ, but not as a father greeting his long-lost children. No—it was like a craftsman finding his favorite tools once more.
Perhaps, once, the Emperor had loved them.
But now, from this being called the "God-Emperor," Jaghatai could sense only an icy coldness.
The chill of the void.
It was like facing humanity's greatest enemy—the destructive powers born from the Warp, the supreme entities of the Immaterium. From their father's form, Jaghatai and Russ could both feel that same terror—different from Chaos, yet disturbingly similar.
Every line, every contour of his presence was familiar—yet the whole was utterly alien.
They were tools.
Jaghatai, Russ, and all their brothers were merely instruments—means to the Emperor's end.
"Number Eight... You are not Number Eight, Konrad Curze. You are not my Executioner..."
"Of course not. I am the ruler of the human natives of Composite Universe No. 42000, directly under the jurisdiction of the Internal Affairs Ministry of the Imperial Domain. I am Konrad Curze, Primarch of the Eighth Legion of the Astartes, Warlord and Executioner of the Sacred Selene Empire. I am the Night Haunter—but not your Night Haunter."
"No matter how similar the reflection, it remains only a reflection. There are no two identical leaves in this world. The tragedy of those who chose betrayal lies solely in your failure."
Konrad Curze's unrestrained words cut cleanly through Jaghatai's thoughts.
Whoosh— A thunderous intake of breath stirred the air around them, creating cyclones of frost. Jaghatai instinctively reached out to grab Russ by the arm as the latter bared his fangs, growling, his expression twisting into that of a predator on the verge of pouncing.
"Russ..."
Almost at the very instant Jaghatai restrained him—
The heavens above exploded. The Imaginary vortex, having reached its critical threshold, erupted in a surge of unmatched light and heat.
Tssssk—
The Webway tore open.
Within that gaping rift appeared a pair of magnificent eyes—vast and fathomless, like an inverted abyss hanging above the universe itself.
From within, a crimson, star-like presence of organic luminance gazed down upon all of Commorragh.
Then, without warning, an immense shadow engulfed the entire city.
Crack—crack—crack—
The Warp boiled.
Arrogance churned into violent maelstroms; rage and ecstasy fused into storms of madness. The horns of annihilation blared.
Every soul trembled at the sight unfolding beyond the outer realms. The Sea of Souls roared and churned, its tides of destruction lashing just short of the Webway's veil. Despair took form—a jagged strait of psychic torment. Upon its cliffs swarmed uncountable pale-white Honkai Beasts.
They roared and trampled, while the boundless, famished Daemons of Slaanesh hurled themselves against the Honkai Beast ranks, their cries shaking the realms, their seductive wails mingling with fury and lament—as though accusing.
Accusing Finality of overstepping, claiming that this prey—the Dark City—belonged to their Prince of Pleasure alone.
"My apologies," came a serene, imperious voice. "It seems that pervert Slaanesh is rather displeased that I took what was once their forbidden pleasure. I was... slightly delayed."
It was a sight few could ever imagine in a lifetime: light from the Warp itself piercing into the material world, growing stronger with every heartbeat.
Having registered her new divine identity—the Chaos God Finality—Selene descended silently.
From the boundless maelstrom of higher dimensions, the residual storm of her arrival coalesced. Using every 'Black Sun' construct of Commorragh as a vessel, the universal laws bent, condensing into a stream of radiant energy that outlined a majestic, awe-inspiring form.
No torches were needed. Her very existence was flame—her presence alone illuminated the rift between the Emperor and his sons.
Rain of light washed away the darkness, casting brilliance over the ruined nightmare city.
Her form—smooth, ethereal, shaped from the silhouettes of countless stars—radiated a sacred silver glow beneath the violet-red firmament, the divine luminescence tracing her graceful curves with impossible clarity.
"Well, well," Selene mused softly, her voice rippling with lazy amusement. "It seems my gift was not in vain. You've recovered... at least a fragment of your humanity."
The collision of transcendent telepathic power unleashed a deafening roar. Every being present felt the psychic shockwave—a dreadful screech reverberating through flesh and bone alike.
The invisible force expanded outward like a wave of unseen light. Even Jaghatai and Russ staggered, their faces twisting in pain.
Konrad Curze, experienced and pragmatic, subtly stepped backward a few paces. From his waist's magnetic holster, he drew out his finely crafted bat-winged helm and slipped it on with an emotionless gesture.
Click—hiss. A faint burst of compressed air accompanied the locking of the soulsteel seals. Curze activated the internal low-frequency dampening system.
As one who had long served beneath Her Majesty Selene, he knew her temperament all too well.
If the Emperor's psychic communications struck like thunder, he could already tell—Her Majesty would certainly answer in kind.
"...Your Fifteenth... Terra... Golden Throne... replacement..."
Impatiently, the Emperor spoke—cutting straight to the core, without pleasantries.
Once more, the sound exploded like a psychic detonation. The Emperor's voice—his raw psychic broadcast—pierced directly into Selene's consciousness, the sensation scraping through her mind like a storm of knives and sand.
In truth, the Emperor did not need a vocal device—He had always been capable of "speaking." It was just that the power behind his words was... excessive.
Though the rotted lips and decayed vocal organs of his corpse upon the Golden Throne had long turned to dust, psychic communication remained within his grasp.
Unfortunately, as everyone knew, the Emperor's psychic strength was...
To issue a telepathic command to a mortal or psyker was enough to kill an entire generation of High Lords of Terra before he even finished a single sentence. Even Astartes and Custodes could barely discern a few words—and only at the cost of permanent brain damage or death.
To hear him speak was to risk annihilation.
The cost was too great.
Perhaps only Alpha-level psykers or the Primarchs themselves could endure the orbital-bombardment-like intensity of the Emperor's voice directly invading the mind.
And since his enthronement upon the Golden Throne, his psychic might had only grown—exponentially, unceasingly.
Thus, few could withstand his communication now.
"Not my Fifteenth," Selene mused softly, smiling faintly. "But the Primarch of my Fifteenth Legion."
The thought amused her. Unlike the Emperor, whose divinity had utterly eclipsed his humanity, Selene still retained a spark of humor. With a flick of her finger, she tore open the veil of spacetime. A feather of fractured light and shadow appeared between her fingers. She flicked it gently, and it floated forward, stopping before the Emperor's chest.
"The second batch—doubled. The essence of life from one hundred thousand colonial worlds that I have harvested. Within it are my subjects' daily joys and sorrows, their fleeting sweetness and lingering bitterness—the flavor of mortal life itself."
It was the application of the Herrscher of Sentience's authority.
After all, she was meeting an old veteran who had once walked the same path—perhaps even to cooperate, perhaps even to sin together. How could Selene come without a gift prepared?
And what was it the Emperor lacked most, after ten millennia bound to the Golden Throne?
Humanity.
Did anyone truly believe that Selene's "inspection tours" were nothing but indulgent revels—shirking her duties for feasts and leisure? That might have been Alyssa, but certainly not Selene.
Selene had personally harvested the beliefs of her vassal worlds—the countless whispers of the populace beneath her rule. Their devout faith, their fervent prayers—those she would never gift to the Emperor. That would be murder, a cruelty beyond measure. His humanity was already eroded enough.
No, what she gathered were the mundane fragments of her subjects' lives—their humble memories, their ambitions, their small victories and quiet griefs. The laughter and tears that shaped billions of souls.
That was what formed humanity.
And that was what the Emperor lacked.
In the vast Imperium of Man, prayers over trivial matters did exist, but compared to the grand, militarized faith of the Ecclesiarchy—the fevered devotion necessary to sustain the Imperium's endless war—they were infinitesimal, nearly forgotten.
The Emperor, unlike Selene, possessed neither the capacity to seize from infinite worlds nor the protection of the Imaginary Space to preserve himself.
"...Thank you... If your memory extraction is no elaborate deception, then... I look forward to witnessing your world, Selene... I shall honor my promise..."
The Emperor took hold of the mental vessel—the Feather of Fenghuang Down.
Selene felt it—just for an instant—as he made his decision. A ripple of boundless sorrow emanated from the fragile vestiges of his humanity. Yet it no longer mattered. The decision was made.
The Emperor was formidable beyond measure—unyielding as adamantine. Were he to refuse, Selene's grand plan of devouring this composite hyper-dimensional universe would be severely hindered. Without his cooperation, her designs would lose much of their potential yield.
If she forced the matter, the consequences were clear: the material universe shattered to dust, the Warp's Sea of Souls annihilated in swathes. It was inevitable.
But persuading him—convincing him to cooperate—had cost her almost nothing.
Sensing the weight of the gaze upon her, Selene turned, her silver eyes glinting with mirth. She looked down upon the Warhawk Jaghatai Khan and the Wolf King Leman Russ, who now faced Konrad Curze.
The towering horse lord's expression was contemplative; the Space Wolf was bristling with raw tension, eyes glaring defiantly at Selene. His mouth opened slightly—as though to speak.
"Hmm. Good child. Don't rush. Slowly... slowly... You seem to have something to say to me? You know, I have a 'husky' of my own—he's far more boisterous than you."
Amusement flickered across her lips as she leaned down, her voice soft and melodic—gentle and magnetic, like a hymn sung by a celestial choir. The soothing tones carried an unearthly grace, calming even the most turbulent hearts.
"Hmph... you said it yourself. I'll admit—you're easier on the eyes than those old Chaos scum."
Having steeled himself, the Wolf King planted his frost axe into the ground and lifted his gaze—not toward Selene, but toward the Emperor. His expression was a storm of conflict.
"Father! Tell me! The other half of what we are—our very essence—did you obtain it from her? In other words..."
The words caught in his throat. For a moment, even Leman Russ's rugged, bearded face showed an awkward hesitation—quickly masked by anger and anguish.
"You failed, didn't you? And now, the other half of our origin—the so-called 'Mother'—has come to reclaim us? To reclaim dominion over the Imperium?!"
Selene's smile froze.
Jaghatai's eyes widened.
Curze removed his helmet.
And the Emperor—the faintly revived form whose humanity had flickered, if only for a heartbeat after absorbing the Feather of Fenghuang Down—visibly trembled.
—
—
40 Advanced Chapters Available on Patreon:
Patreon.com/DaoOfHeaven