"Erebus is probably trying to punch into low orbit and finish the destruction plan Abaddon couldn't.
Using the Blackstone Oscillator in tandem with the Noctilith Crown to wipe out Vigilus and inflict catastrophic losses on the Imperium…"
Thinking that far, Eden's expression turned grim.
No matter what, he had to stop Erebus.
But stopping that bastard wouldn't be easy—especially with Horus in the mix. Horus was a vessel of the Chaos Gods, something beyond a primarch.
Even daemon-ascended Angron from before probably wouldn't be his match.
In the past, the only one in the Imperium who could deal with Horus was the Emperor himself.
Any other primarch stepping up would likely be sent to their death—just like Sanguinius back then.
But now the Emperor couldn't act.
That left only Eden, the new Emperor of the Imperium.
If he didn't take the field personally, no one could handle the resurrected Horus—Chosen of the Gods.
Eden was, admittedly, a little nervous about the battle ahead. He was about to face the authority of the Chaos Gods head-on.
Ten thousand years had passed. The Chaos Gods, bloated on who knew how many human lives, were stronger than they had been millennia ago.
Which meant the resurrected Horus was stronger than he'd been as well—one of the very apex powers in the galaxy.
"Purely in terms of strength… I should be a little stronger than the Emperor was back then, right?"
Eden measured his own power in his mind.
Back then the Emperor wasn't bound to the Golden Throne, wasn't yet empowered by the faith of untold billions.
Eden, on the other hand, had the Hope Sun—especially the reinforcement of its dark-side authority, Diablo the Destroyer—and he was fighting on the galaxy's main battlefield.
The odds of getting hammered flat shouldn't be high.
Still, that was only conjecture. No one knew what kind of accident or twist might come next.
Eden understood this would be a brutal fight. If he won this boarding action, then the Vigilus campaign was basically his.
Once Horus and the Blackstone Oscillator were dealt with, this chaotic system would have nothing left that could match him in arms.
He looked down the corridor ahead.
The floor was carpeted in meat and shattered remains, seeping tar-thick black blood.
"Your Majesty, the navigation instruments are no longer functioning. The corridor's time and space are in a state of disorder.
We… may no longer be able to guide you."
The Custodes commander dropped to one knee and reported with shame.
Because of blackstone's interaction with the Warp, this Blackstone Omen Ark had amplified part of the Chaos corruption, causing the ship's interior to meld with the Immaterium itself.
Even this corridor now stretched and shrank unpredictably. Time sometimes ran fast, sometimes slow.
It was eerily similar to the scene of the Emperor confronting the traitor Horus.
And just like then, the Custodes were powerless to do anything about it.
That was why they felt even more ashamed. For ten thousand years they had obeyed the edicts and remained within the Palace, conducting almost no deep study of the Warp.
Eden said nothing, only raising a hand to tell the commander to rise.
He had anticipated this.
"That isn't your responsibility. Besides, I can find my way through the labyrinth of the Empyrean.
Stay close. I need your strength to hold off the enemy and reduce my stamina drain."
He brought the Custodes with him precisely to conserve combat power—so he could face Horus in the best possible state.
Asking these warriors to "navigate" the Warp was cruel. At this level of complexity, even a high-grade psyker would struggle—some might simply go mad.
Kekekek—
At that moment, the tar-like black blood congealed into a gigantic face: Erebus.
He looked absurdly pleased with himself.
"Savior… you're even later than I expected.
A pity. You no longer have any chance to stop me. You've already lost this war—lost to Erebus.
I know you won't give up. So come and find me. I enjoy watching you struggle. Heh—"
Eden couldn't be bothered trading trash talk with Erebus.
He merely lifted his gaze.
Invisible psychic force seized the black-blood face by the throat, choking it silent.
Then a stronger surge erupted—crushing the face outright.
The black blood exploded like a flood, surging and thrashing through the corridor.
It sounded like a battle horn.
Countless daemons crawled out of the black blood and rushed them.
Eden watched the oncoming daemons and let out a cold, amused breath.
"Working this hard just to slow me down.
Which means you still haven't truly mastered the Blackstone Oscillator… or this ship hasn't reached a position where it can fire."
Within the Chaos-warped corridor, the black blood continued rising, nearly reaching the warriors' waists.
A nuisance like this couldn't stop an elite Custodes detachment.
Hummm—
The Custodes in golden Aquilon-pattern plate ignited the fields along their guardian spears, then vaulted forward in unison, crashing into the daemons.
They formed a driving wall, shielding Eden as he advanced. Any daemon that tried to close was impaled and annihilated.
These Custodians knew how to kill daemons, and they did it with ruthless familiarity.
Under their cover, Eden strode ahead.
To others, the murky black blood was heavy as tar, resisting every movement. To Eden, it might as well not exist.
He reached the end of the corridor quickly—and stepped across that seemingly endless stretch into the next zone.
But the next zone abruptly became something alien.
It was no longer the interior of a ship.
It looked more like a strange abyssal ocean, packed with unknown aquatic monstrosities.
That was the danger of a Warp labyrinth—stitched-together regions that could make anyone lose their way.
In the crushing underwater pressure, Eden and the Custodes activated their armor's internal circulation to keep breathing.
Fortunately, an extreme environment like this wasn't a major problem for Custodes elites.
Especially with the Aquilon plate having undergone another round of optimization and refit.
They butchered every aquatic horror in their path, leaving the sea dyed red, then pushed on to yet another region.
Step by step, they closed on the target.
They even took the heads of thirteen greater daemons in succession, sending them back to screaming dissolution.
"Savior, you're killing us!"
"Save us!"
"Ah… I want to live…"
But when Eden and his Custodes reached the final hall's approach, they saw a wall made of humans.
A cruelty Erebus had built on purpose—using human bodies as cover, and as an insult to the Savior, the Emperor of the Imperium.
If Eden wanted to enter the hall, he would have to destroy that living wall—personally killing tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of human lives.
Worse still, every step Eden and the Custodes advanced caused the bone-and-skull daemons embedded along both sides of the long corridor to slaughter more humans with bone-spikes and flame.
"Stop!"
"Savior—please, we beg your redemption… save our lives!"
The humans howled in pain.
They desperately wanted the Savior, the Emperor, and the Custodes to stop.
Eden knew it was Erebus's trick.
Even if it couldn't stop him, it could still disgust him. Typical of the galaxy's foulest pile of dog filth.
At last, Eden's anger snapped.
Red-gold flames fused the corridor into glass, and the human wall was sent into another dimension—rescued.
It cost him a fair amount of power.
In a domain fused with the Warp, he—an Immaterium god—could unleash far more of his strength.
"I'm here.
Erebus. Horus. And the Warp vermin hiding behind you…"
Eden stopped before an alloy gate fused with skulls and living flesh. Beyond it, he could sense malice—and the strange energy radiating from blackstone.
Those bastards, and the Blackstone Oscillator, were on the other side.
He lifted his leg and drove a heavy kick into the gate.
The door—more than ten meters tall—collapsed with a thunderous crash, revealing the hall beyond.
When Eden saw what was inside, he froze.
The hall had long since become a Chaos temple.
The floor was half-solidified metal mixed with meat. The "lights" had become living eyes and teeth, slowly writhing in place as they turned to stare.
Worse still, the entire structure resembled a blasphemous replica of the Throne Room of the Imperial Palace on Holy Terra.
Even the central throne looked disturbingly like the Golden Throne.
Seated upon it now was not the Emperor's corpse.
It was the Dark Apostle—Destiny's Hand, Erebus—the shameless traitor who had thrown himself at the Chaos Gods.
"Where is Horus?"
A bad feeling crawled up Eden's spine.
This boarding action had two goals: destroy the Blackstone Oscillator, and execute the resurrected Horus.
A Chosen of the Gods like Horus appearing anywhere was a disaster.
A being that powerful could raid most Imperial regions at will. If he slipped away and assassinated a few returned primarch-brothers…
The Imperium would bleed out, and Eden wouldn't be able to accept it.
Back then, if Horus had simply avoided dueling the Emperor and instead struck at other primarchs—or attacked critical worlds beyond Holy Terra—waging a deep-strike war, severing the flow of the tithe…
The Imperium would have suffered far worse, a slow and ongoing hemorrhage.
Now the Blackstone Oscillator was here—hidden behind the counterfeit "Golden Throne."
But Horus was nowhere to be seen.
That was not good.
"Where did Horus go?"
Eden's mind raced.
"Down to Vigilus to butcher the surface?
Or, while I'm pinned here, did he slip away to ambush my other primarch-brothers?"
Clap, clap, clap—
Erebus looked down from his grotesque flesh-and-gold throne, applauding as he spoke with delight.
"Oh, my Savior. My Emperor of the Imperium.
At last, guided by fate, you've come to this place.
Are you wondering why Horus isn't here?
Go on—guess whether I'll tell you the answer."
He didn't answer. He only smiled with mockery.
"The truth is, whether you know the final answer or not, you can't salvage any of this.
Savior, defeating you doesn't require Horus, or even the power of the great gods.
I, Erebus, am enough…"
The Dark Apostle—Destiny's Hand—loved seeing despair on an enemy's face.
He loved even more to toy with them like pieces on a board.
Especially the Savior—whose fate even the Changer of Ways struggled to read.
"If it's only you here…"
Eden stared at Erebus, voice glacial.
"Then you're the one I'm going to skin and carve."
He had to eliminate this nuisance first—and the Blackstone Oscillator behind the throne.
Boom, boom, boom!
Custodes firepower slammed into the flesh-throne, but the throne raised a Chaos field that swallowed the impacts.
Erebus seemed fused with the throne itself. Dozens of thick flesh-tentacles erupted outward, whipping toward the Custodes with strength enough to shatter alloy.
Then a Warp vortex opened inside the hall.
Endless cackling spilled out, and twisted, prismatic Warp-energy absorbed even more of the Custodes' physical fire.
Erebus mocked them.
"Servants of the Emperor… you're pathetically weak. How could you ever contend with the greatness of the Warp?"
He manipulated the hall's sorcery like a throne-bound emperor.
And he was intoxicated by the idea of "playing" with the Emperor's guards.
Then, in the next instant, wariness flashed across his face.
All the flesh-tentacles stopped, unable to advance even a fraction—as if some vast authority had clamped down on them.
The Savior's power.
Eden stepped forward.
A golden radiance bloomed around him, and greater flames ignited along the tentacles, turning them into charred ash.
He walked toward the throne without obstruction.
Nothing could stop him.
"How boring."
Erebus frowned and discarded the tentacles entirely, unwilling to let the flames crawl back to him.
He could feel the Savior's terrifying might.
"A pity. Force alone can't solve the real problem.
If it could, the False Emperor wouldn't have failed and become a miserable prisoner."
Erebus tapped his own temple.
"Life without intellect is worthless."
He rose.
At the same time, the Chaos fog in the vaulted ceiling peeled away, revealing the void beyond—
Countless warships and intersecting lines of fire. At some point, Chaos reinforcements had arrived, interposing themselves and blocking incoming strikes.
More importantly, looking along the ceiling's opened view, one could clearly see Vigilus itself—dark, burning, and close enough that the outlines of hive cities were visible.
That meant the Blackstone Omen Ark, under Erebus's control, had torn through the cordon at minimal cost and reached low orbit over Vigilus.
Eden halted, stunned, searching for one last opening.
The Custodes commander was wide-eyed, a thread of fear tightening in his chest.
"The Blackstone Oscillator is within its firing envelope. Vigilus…"
"Savior, you'll watch your coveted Vigilus be erased.
Look—this is the control device. If I press it lightly, everything becomes ash.
Even Imperial forces in this sector will be crippled…"
Erebus strode forward a few steps, flaunting the controller—then pressed it immediately.
He wasn't stupid enough to monologue and give Eden a chance to reverse it.
In an instant, the entire Chaos-temple hall shook violently.
Behind the grotesque throne, the Blackstone Oscillator bled an indescribable spectrum of color.
Then a pulse blasted toward Vigilus—intended to truly activate the Noctilith Crown.
The pulse ripped downward at millisecond speed, leaving no time to intercept.
Erebus's eyes bulged as if they might fall from their sockets—one eye fixed on the Savior, the other locked on Vigilus.
He had done it.
He wanted to savor the scene—the grand, terrifying annihilation of Vigilus, a spectacle more dreadful than any planetary detonation.
More than that, he wanted to savor the Savior's despair.
But seconds passed.
Nothing happened.
The planet remained silent.
"How is that possible?!"
Erebus's eyes widened further. Rage and humiliation surged—his plan had failed.
Which meant only one thing:
Something was wrong with the Noctilith Crown on Vigilus.
His whole body trembled.
"Haarken Worldclaimer—useless trash! He couldn't even secure the Noctilith Crown!
That defensive network can withstand Custodes assaults and orbital bombardment!"
"Looks like the Blood Ravens pulled it off."
Eden smiled broadly. If Vigilus hadn't been destroyed, then the Blood Ravens had dealt with the Noctilith Crown—at least enough to prevent it from activating.
In truth, the Blood Ravens had only recently "cut the high-voltage lines," and the Dark Mechanicum were already scrambling to repair them.
If the Blackstone Oscillator had fired a little earlier or a little later, everything would have changed.
But none of that mattered now.
The failure was set in stone.
"Are you ready to die?"
Eden crushed the Chaos field projector embedded in the throne, drew the Emperor's Sword, and started up the steps.
"Wait—"
Erebus stumbled back a few steps, hissing.
"Savior, I haven't lost yet. Watch me—I have another plan!
I can still win!"
Then a shadow fell across the open vault.
Something vast and black emerged from the void—like a small moon in motion.
A Blackstone Fortress?!
Eden looked up and recognized it instantly, disbelief flashing across his face.
Dragging a fortress of that scale into a system choked with Warp-turbulence should have been technically impossible.
And yet, with the aid of some power, it had arrived in Vigilus space.
"Hah…"
Eden sucked in a sharp breath as realization hit.
"Now this is trouble."
The scene was far too familiar.
"Eden" had seen this trick before—Abaddon's side had used something like it to secure the Black Crusade's one truly massive victory.
Aboard nearby Imperial ships, a Cadian Shock Trooper watched the Blackstone Fortress inch forward and immediately teared up.
Old suffering surged back into his mind.
He understood at once:
Vigilus was about to face an unprecedented, nearly unstoppable horror.
Orbital decapitation.
(End of Chapter)
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