The fires of Deliverance burned for three days and three nights.
From orbit, the black manufactoria looked like a dying constellation — patches of light flickering in oil-dark seas, each one a forge, a battlefield, or a grave. The planet's surface groaned beneath the weight of its own industry and the bodies it had made.
Even the storm-swept upper clouds had changed color, smudged by the ash of men who had flown too close to the Emperor's dream and fallen.
The Watcher Above hung in the upper atmosphere, engines silent, smoke trailing from its forward plating. Her guns were cold. The crew worked like ghosts. They moved with the steadiness of habit, their faces shadowed and grim, their eyes ringed in soot and fatigue.
They had seen what the Alpha Legion left behind — vats full of corpses that had never lived long enough to be mourned.
Kael stood on the bridge, still in his armor, helm mag-locked at his waist. His gauntlets were blackened with oil and blood. He hadn't removed them since the battle. His black eyes watched Deliverance below without flinching.
"Repairs proceeding," Malchion said quietly from behind him. "Minimal losses aboard. Joras's team cleared the relay grid. No sign of enemy signal ghosts."
Kael nodded once, distracted. "The Ravens?"
"Gathering their dead. Corax has ordered the remaining gene-vaults destroyed. What's left of his tech-priests are... complying."
There was something in Malchion's tone — respect, perhaps, or pity. He didn't know which would offend his captain more.
Kael said nothing for a long moment. Then, finally, he asked, "Did we save enough to matter?"
Malchion hesitated. "That depends what you think matters."
Kael didn't respond. He didn't need to. Both men knew the answer.
He turned from the viewport. "Prepare my drop-pod. I'll see him myself."
"Alone?" Malchion asked.
Kael's gaze was calm. "He won't tolerate an audience."
Malchion inclined his head. "Understood. We'll hold position."
Kael's armor hissed faintly as the seals engaged. The shadows pooled at his boots like liquid mercury, rippling with his mood. Then, as the drop-pod bay opened to the storm, they stilled — disciplined, waiting. The pod's clamps released. Gravity took him.
The pod screamed down through the cloud layers, fire streaking its sides, the sky flashing red and white. The interior shook with re-entry turbulence.
Kael closed his eyes. His mind moved ahead of him, five seconds at a time — the descent, the crash, the hiss of steam, the smell of burned air and regret. He landed in the ruins of what had been a Raven Guard fortress.
The pod's doors blew outward.
Kael stepped into a courtyard filled with silence and ash. Bodies lay where they had fallen — Alpha Legion and Raven Guard alike. Some had died mid-strike, blades still locked in each other's armor. The black and green were indistinguishable under the soot.
He moved through them with the quiet grace of a man walking through a chapel. His boot left prints in the ash, and each one filled itself again with dust as if the world wanted no record of him being there. His sword, Veilrender, hung at his side. He didn't touch it.
Corvus Corax was waiting for him atop the citadel's ramparts.
The Primarch of the XIXth stood bare-headed in the wind, his long black hair whipping like torn banners. His armor was battered, one pauldron cracked, his gauntlets streaked with the blood of his own sons. He looked less like a demigod and more like a man who had seen the thing he believed in break in his hands.
Kael ascended the stairs without haste. When he reached the top, he stopped three paces away and inclined his head.
"Lord Corax."
Corax didn't turn. "You came back."
"I said I would."
The Primarch's voice was quiet, but every word carried weight, like a hammer falling through sand. "You saw it. The things they made. What they did to us."
"I did," Kael said. "I killed the ones who made them."
Corax's eyes closed for a moment, the lines around them tightening. "You can't kill an idea."
Kael's reply was flat. "No. But you can make it regret being born."
For the first time, Corax looked at him. The Primarch's eyes were black, endless, bottomless — like Kael's, but older, heavier, and filled with something far more dangerous than hate. Grief.
"They were my sons," Corax said softly. "I tried to make more of them. To give the Imperium back what it had taken. And they made monsters."
Kael's voice was calm, even, but not cold. "Then you learned what my father never did. That perfection is a lie men tell themselves to forgive failure."
Corax's jaw tightened. "And what did you learn, Night Lord?"
Kael met his gaze without hesitation. "That monsters can still choose which way their claws point."
The wind howled between them. The sky cracked open with lightning, throwing both men into stark relief — one wreathed in shadow, one in stormlight.
Corax turned away, staring down at the blackened manufactoria. "When the Alpha Legion came, I thought they were my brothers. They wore our colors. They spoke with our voices. I didn't see the lie until it was too late. How do you fight an enemy that becomes everything you trust?"
Kael stepped beside him. "You don't. You kill the trust before it kills you."
Corax barked a short, humorless laugh. "You speak like Malcador."
"I learned from him," Kael said. "And I learned from Curze."
Corax's head tilted slightly. "A strange pair of teachers."
"They taught opposite lessons," Kael said. "One built in the light, the other in the dark. Both believed they could control what men fear. Both were wrong."
Corax's gaze softened, just slightly. "And you?"
"I learned to walk between them."
Corax studied him for a long moment. "I think the Emperor meant us to be that," he said at last. "Balance. He gave each of us a piece of the spectrum. You... were given the night."
Kael smiled faintly, bitterly. "Then I suppose I should thank Him for the gift."
"Do you still believe in Him?" Corax asked quietly.
Kael didn't answer immediately. He looked out at the ruins, at the pyres of broken clones, at the Raven Guard laboring below to bury what couldn't be redeemed. The smoke rose in steady black pillars, blotting out the stars.
"I believe in the men who still fight for Him," Kael said. "That's enough."
Corax nodded once, as if that answer satisfied him in a way none other could. He reached up and unclasped something from his pauldron — a small piece of blackened plate, forged into the shape of a feather. It shimmered faintly in the light, an alloy of ceramite and symbolism.
He held it out to Kael. "A token. Not of thanks — of understanding. There are few enough of us left who know what it means to carry the dark without letting it own us."
Kael accepted the gift with both hands. "Then I will carry it until I fall."
Corax's gaze lingered on him, unreadable. "If you ever come to Terra, Kael Varan, and find me dead — remember that I died trying to build something better."
Kael inclined his head. "And if you live, remember me as the one who burned the shadows that tried to consume you."
For a long time, neither spoke. The wind hissed between the ruined towers. Far below, the Raven Guard gathered their fallen, singing in low, wordless tones that carried on the air like mourning bells.
At last, Corax broke the silence. "You'll leave soon."
Kael nodded. "The Sol lines are collapsing. Dorn needs every ship. I've been away too long."
Corax's lips tightened. "And yet you came here."
"I saw it," Kael said simply. "Five seconds. That was enough."
Corax's gaze hardened. "Then see this, Kael — when you return to Terra, it will not be the same. The throne will burn. The Emperor will bleed. The sons will kill their father and each other, and you will have to choose what kind of monster you wish to be when it's over."
Kael's voice was quiet. "I already did."
Corax turned, a ghost of approval passing through his eyes. "Then go. You have my debt."
Kael bowed once. "And you have my respect."
He turned and descended the steps without looking back. The storms had broken over Deliverance, washing the ash into black rivers that shimmered like veins of iron. The Watcher Above waited in the clouds, her lights dimmed, her prow already facing home.
Malchion met him at the docking bay, helm under his arm. "Corax?"
Kael held up the feather of blackened plate. It caught the light of the hangar, gleaming like obsidian. "Alive. Angry. Human."
"Then he's better off than most," Malchion said.
Kael smiled faintly. "Perhaps."
The Watcher Above pulled free of Deliverance's gravity well, engines burning pale blue. Below them, the planet's lights dimmed, one by one, until only the fires of the forges remained.
As the ship slipped into the cold dark, Kael stood at the viewport, the feather resting in his palm. It felt heavier than it should have — not with weight, but with meaning. It was a promise, and a warning.
"Set course for Sol," he said quietly. "We've lingered in grief long enough."
Malchion nodded and turned to the helm. "Course laid in. Estimated arrival: twelve days."
Kael closed his hand around the feather and whispered to the void, his voice almost lost in the hum of the engines.
"Keep counting."
The shadows stirred at his feet, and the Watcher Above answered with a deep, resonant pulse that echoed through every deck, a heartbeat of iron and purpose. Then the ship vanished into the warp, leaving Deliverance to its ghosts.