For the people of Barbarus, sunrise had once been myth.
For generations, the sky had been smothered beneath toxic cloud strata and corrosive vapors rising from the planet's poisoned valleys. The pale, dying sun of the system barely pierced the chemical haze. Light was diffuse, sickly, insufficient.
Barbarus had survived in half-darkness.
Now, the horizon burned.
A muted orange glow spread across the fields—real fields—where engineered soil matrices supported structured crop growth. Atmospheric processors hummed in the distance, drawing toxins upward into filtration towers that rose like metallic spines across the landscape.
The fog had thinned.
Water ran clear through reinforced aqueducts.
Mortarion stood in silence.
The land before him felt alien.
Too open.
Too clean.
The lake reflected sunlight instead of chemical sheen.
Children ran along irrigation banks.
Workers harvested in orderly rows.
It felt fragile to him.
Like a constructed illusion that might collapse at any moment and reveal the old rot beneath.
"Why don't you walk through it?" Lorgar asked quietly beside him.
Mortarion shot him a look.
"I am aware of my options."
Lorgar inclined his head slightly.
He had learned when not to press.
After a long pause, Mortarion spoke again.
"How?"
Lorgar blinked. "How… what?"
"How did you do this?"
Lorgar hesitated.
He answered plainly.
"I began by restructuring industrial distribution. Then I recalibrated the atmospheric processing arrays you left behind. The initial prototypes were inefficient because they were designed for rapid toxicity suppression, not long-term stabilization. I modified the catalytic lattice structure to reduce warp-reactive interference patterns."
Mortarion's expression darkened slightly at the word warp.
Lorgar continued carefully.
"There are anomalies in the upper atmosphere. The particulate composition reacts unpredictably to standard purification methods. The solution required understanding those irregularities."
Mortarion raised a hand.
"That's enough."
He did not want further detail.
He had spent his entire life attempting to tame Barbarus through endurance and force.
Lorgar had approached it as a system.
Mortarion felt something sharp and unpleasant rise in his chest.
Jealousy.
He crushed it.
"Reduce reliance on warp-adjacent methodologies," Mortarion muttered. "And stay away from Magnus."
Lorgar nodded, almost indulgently.
"As you wish."
After a moment, Mortarion added, in a tone far more complicated:
"I expected you to turn this place into a shrine."
Lorgar's eyes brightened instinctively.
"May I—"
"No."
"If you attempt to establish a cult here," Mortarion continued evenly, "I will remove you from the equation."
Lorgar lowered his hands.
He had anticipated that answer.
Mortarion shifted his scythe to his shoulder.
"I'm going to walk."
He began to leave, then stopped.
Without turning back, he said:
"You have my gratitude."
It cost him something to say it.
"If you ever require aid, ask."
Lorgar inclined his head.
Mortarion walked away into the fields.
Near the waterline, Yuki sat with her knees drawn close, watching the sun climb higher through thinning cloud.
Lorgar approached.
"You exceeded expectation," she said calmly.
Lorgar stood beside her.
He had done nearly everything himself.
He had studied Mortarion's incomplete atmospheric models.
Reconstructed abandoned filtration schematics.
Reorganized labor allocation.
Spoken to workers not as subjects of doctrine, but as engineers of survival.
He had not preached.
That alone had been discipline.
"…Regent," Lorgar said after a pause.
Yuki smiled faintly.
"You are closer than you were."
He exhaled slowly.
For once, the competition with Guilliman did not burn as sharply.
They sat in silence.
Then Lorgar spoke again.
"Aren't you going to correct me?"
"About?"
"My faith."
Yuki did not answer immediately.
Instead, she asked:
"When you worked here, did you see anything… unusual?"
Lorgar nodded slowly.
The atmospheric anomalies were not purely chemical.
There were distortions in particulate suspension.
Subtle.
Warp-adjacent.
He had not named them aloud.
Yuki began to explain.
The Immaterium.
The entities that dwelled within it.
The danger of sentient reflection.
The difference between belief and manipulation.
She did not embellish.
She did not dramatize.
She described.
Lorgar listened in stillness.
When she finished, he asked quietly:
"Why tell me this?"
"Because you deserve truth."
"And if I choose to worship those beings instead?"
"I am afraid of that," she admitted calmly. "I once was very afraid."
"Were?"
"Yes."
"Why no longer?"
"Because you are not a fool."
Lorgar stared at her.
She continued:
"Why do you call Father a god?"
He almost laughed.
"Are we debating theology again?"
"No. You may believe as you wish."
That startled him more than argument would have.
"But you cannot be a false believer," she added.
His expression hardened.
"Explain."
"If a god protects you because you worship him," she said evenly, "then your faith is bargaining. Not devotion."
"That is sophistry."
"Is it?"
She looked toward the fields.
"Omnipotence and perfect goodness cannot coexist without contradiction."
He opened his mouth to respond.
She continued before he could.
"If a god is all-powerful and all-good, suffering should not exist. If suffering exists and is allowed, either the god is not all-good or not all-powerful."
Lorgar's arguments assembled automatically in his mind.
Free will.
Testing.
Divine plan.
But none of them left his mouth.
Because she was not attacking his belief in the Emperor.
She was attacking his motivation.
"You once believed faith would shield you," she said quietly. "That devotion would grant protection."
He did not answer.
"You were afraid," she continued.
That struck.
In Colchis, he had destroyed the Covenant to prepare the world for the Emperor.
He had believed obedience would guarantee approval.
He had believed worship would guarantee purpose.
On Barbarus, he had worked not to earn divine favor—
But to prove something to himself.
To surpass Guilliman.
To achieve.
Without miracles.
"You led these people," Yuki said, gesturing toward the workers. "No god descended to complete this for you."
Lorgar looked at the fields again.
It was true.
He had acted.
Not prayed.
"…You say I was cowardly," he murmured.
"I say you were hiding."
Silence stretched between them.
After a long time, he asked quietly:
"…If I continue to worship Father?"
"You are free to do so," she replied. "I will not forbid it."
He looked at her sharply.
"But I will not protect you from opposition," she added. "If your brothers challenge you, you stand alone."
That was fair.
Painfully fair.
"It is enough," he said at last.
Yuki reached into her cloak and withdrew a small golden scepter.
It was simple.
Elegant.
Unadorned by overt iconography.
She placed it in his hands.
He examined it closely.
She rose, wings unfurling briefly in the rising light.
"You may return to Terra," she said. "Or remain here as long as you wish."
He hesitated.
"I will stay a little longer."
She nodded.
And left.
He watched her until she vanished beyond the hill crest.
Only then did he lower his gaze to the scepter.
Fine engraving ran along the handle.
He traced the letters with his thumb and read softly:
"The greatest practice of faith comes from love for humanity…"
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