Vwoooom—!
When those immaculate, holy wings of the angel—so pure it seemed they had stepped straight from a divine painting—unfolded above the blood-soaked slaughterfields, a note rang out. A sound pure and crystalline, like a bell tolling across creation. The burning, warped sky was torn open and illuminated by its radiance.
With the cataclysmic explosion of an entire Traitor Titan Legion serving as its fanfare, the light descended—shattering the Chaos tide into frozen silence.
The Daemons, howling moments before, suddenly fell mute—as if an unseen hand had seized their throats.
Terror, confusion, disbelief… emotions that should never have existed on the faces of Chaos cultists or Warp-spawned fiends now flickered across their features. Within the mad cacophony of the Black Legion's victory, these notes of dissonance clashed violently.
And there he stood—the golden angel, towering upon the earth like a blade cleaving through the chaos.
Magnificent, radiant, every inch of his form was perfection. His armor was an exquisite work of nano-precision craftsmanship, a masterpiece of divine engineering. His face—flawless, sculpted by the hands of gods themselves—was framed by flowing locks of golden hair. A laurel crown of gold leaves rested upon his brow, gleaming with triumph and sanctity.
He was everything mortals imagined when they spoke the word angel.
"Impossible!"
Rip—!
The sound of tearing steel split the air. A figure encased in dark green ceramite shattered apart, fragments of armor and flesh scattering across the scorched battlefield. Crimson blood and the ichor of transhuman organs spilled onto the twisted metal—stark and terrible in the golden light.
"Lies! Sorcery!"
A grotesque figure, its talons thick with mutated chitin, crushed the severed head of a fallen brother and hurled it aside. The Chaos Marine, clad in blood-red armor trimmed with brass, the eight-pointed star and daemon skull of Khorne engraved upon his chest, screamed in incoherent rage.
"He's dead! Our gene-father Horus himself slew him—he fell aboard the Vengeful Spirit!"
The warrior's voice, filled with hate and madness, echoed across the ruin. His mouth—now a cavernous, fanged maw—howled venom and fury at the immaculate angel above.
"Pathetic tricks of a rotting corpse! Sorcery—more cursed witchcraft! Psychic illusions, cowardly sorcerers hiding behind their false light! You think a shade of a long-dead corpse can frighten a warrior of the Blood God?!"
His voice was a cacophony of fury and hate, the resonance of his armor fusing with his flesh into a single monstrous roar. The Champion of Khorne—leader of one of the Black Legion's blood-crazed warbands—stepped forth, towering and wrathful.
"The age of the Primarchs is over!"
"The galaxy belongs to Abaddon—to Khorne!"
As his fellow Khornate berserkers and other Chaos Marines stared in shock, the towering champion leapt forward—his movements like lightning.
"Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!"
He swung a massive daemon-possessed chain axe, its teeth shrieking as it tore through the air. Like a meteor, he surged straight toward the golden archangel floating before the ruined husk of a fallen Titan.
A lone warrior of the Blood God.
"Stop him…!"
Wounded Blood Angels and Ultramarines, leaning on one another for support, raised their bolters, trying to halt the corrupted champion's advance.
Sanguinius watched the charging berserker. The creature still bore the faintest echo of humanity—his face pale as death, covered in crisscrossing scars that made his features look like a patchwork of mangled flesh. Fanged teeth gleamed within a mouth stretched too wide to be human.
Sanguinius' right arm shifted slightly, his hand closing around the hilt of his blade.
The divine weapon—Crimson Blade, a Divine Key blessed many times by Selene herself—rose into the air.
Shiiing—!
Like the first light of dawn, its brilliance was blinding. It burned away every shadow, every trace of darkness.
CRACK!
No one saw the strike.
In an instant, the berserker was split cleanly in two from head to waist. The molten fragments of flesh and ceramite scattered like shards from a forge mid-strike. The daemon possessing him—a Khorne blood-spiller—let out a dying scream before bursting into a crimson mist, vaporized by the searing Honkai purity of the blade.
BOOM!
The crimson-gold shockwave erupted outward, consuming everything in its path. The Khornate warband led by the slain berserker champion was the first to be caught in the blast. The blazing explosion, laced with divine power, swallowed the traitors whole—those who had drenched themselves in the blood of mortals and brothers alike.
It was as though a spear of light had been hurled across the battlefield, slicing through the frontlines along the path of Sanguinius' blade.
The roar of the crimson-gold strike shattered the silence. Daemons and cultists screamed in terror, while the shattered Cadia lines erupted in thunderous cries of renewed hope.
The golden archangel did not heed the differing reactions of daemon or man. He beat his mighty wings, moving with precise rhythm, saving any soldier or Space Marine caught within his reach.
No matter which regiment or Chapter they hailed from—Imperial Guard or Astartes—he rescued them all without discrimination.
He lifted them from the wreckage of steel, from the buried trenches, from piles of the fallen dead…
Facing the oncoming deluge of Chaos—the storm of bolt shells, the inferno of plasma fire, the melting flood of fusion weapons, even the blasphemous psychic noise—Sanguinius charged silently into the desecrated front led by the Black Legion.
Slash—!
Flesh burst. Limbs scattered.
The bloated warriors of Nurgle roared their wet, fetid challenge, hoping to test their so-called immortality against the angel's might—but the hurricane from Sanguinius' wings hurled them kilometers away, their bodies vanishing into the storm with a wet splat.
A Tzeentchian sorcerer began chanting a blasphemous elegy, channeling the power of ten thousand corpses into a psychic storm meant to tear the veil between worlds. The air shimmered as reality began to fracture—Warp rifts writhing with the promise of more Daemons to come.
But Sanguinius' speed defied comprehension. Like a falling star, he struck the ritual circle before the incantation could finish. The warband was incinerated in an instant, the sorcerer himself reduced to dust by the Crimson Blade's divine strike.
A Daemon half-emerged from the ritual portal, its monstrous form writhing with dark hunger—only for Sanguinius to swat it aside with a single blow. The creature's head and torso separated instantly, its remains hurled back into the Warp.
It was a massacre.
A storm of divine wrath.
The onslaught rained down like a torrential deluge. Cultists, Bloodletters, Horrors of Tzeentch, Plague Zombies, Daemons of Slaanesh, Chaos Marines, corrupted Knight Houses, Defilers, and profane engines—all were cut down without pause.
In moments, their screams filled the air. Metal shrieked. Flesh was torn apart. Entrails splattered across the ground, mingling with the shattered remains of armor and steel. It was swift, ruthless, and absolute.
The Chaos offensive broke in two.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM—!
One man had become an army. The tides of cultists shattered beneath his blows. Every swing of the crimson-gold blade unleashed a concussive wave so intense it ruptured organs and pulverized bone. Shockwaves carried shrapnel, debris, and fragments of armor through flesh and steel alike.
A demigod of the Great Crusade had returned to the mortal plane—bearing once more the fury and judgment of the Emperor and His Primarchs.
Golden light like a spear of dawn swept across the battlefield. The shockwaves tossed Chaos Marines into the air, and the soil, rocks, and wreckage buried the cultists and Daemons that followed. Suffocating heat and overwhelming pressure erased everything in his path.
"Is that… truly the Emperor's son?"
Every surviving Cadian defender watching whispered in awe.
"Our Father! Our Lord Sanguinius!"
From among the Blood Angels and their successor Chapters, every Astartes—regardless of rank—was overcome with trembling reverence.
They saw their Gene-Father upon the battlefield, standing alone against the endless tide, cutting down foes by the thousands, and carrying the survivors to safety. They fell to their knees, tears streaming down their faces as they beheld him.
The pain, the burden—they could no longer hold it in.
For millennia, since the death of their beloved Father, the Blood Angels and their kin had endured endless suffering. The twin curses of the Red Thirst and Black Rage haunted every son of Sanguinius, threatening to drag them into madness or heresy.
And yet, despite everything—he had returned.
But now, ten thousand years later, those elders who had once fought beside the Primarch himself were long gone.
If any still lived, they were surely on Baal—the homeworld of the Blood Angels—but here on Cadia, there were none.
Those who remained were "young" by comparison—veterans of a century or three at most. Many had thought they would soon return to the Golden Throne and rejoin their Father in death… until this moment, when they witnessed before them a radiant, majestic being—so powerful, so noble, so perfectly identical to the golden archangel immortalized in the statues and frescoes of Baal.
I don't care—you are our Father!
Before the tears and cries of those he had rescued—some weeping with joy, others shouting his name—Sanguinius' flawless, compassionate face remained silent and still.
Because he knew the truth.
He was not that Sanguinius—not the one they spoke of.
He was Selene's warrior—not the Emperor's son, and not their Gene-Father.
In the depths beneath Kasr Kraf, after briefly conversing with the living-metal skeleton of the Necron, Sanguinius had seen the disbelief and suspicion in the eyes of the Inquisitor and several Astartes officers nearby—but he offered no explanation.
After speaking briefly with the wandering merchant Dubois—whom Selene had called the "lucky one"—Sanguinius gained a simple understanding of the situation in this world. Then, without hesitation, he departed.
He exchanged comm frequencies with a few of the higher-ranking Astartes officers—these "devolved" versions of the Astartes—and ascended to the surface. The air above was thick with pain, hatred, and despair, growing heavier with every passing second.
He needed to see it for himself.
To understand the truth of this world's battlefield.
From their words, he learned that this world had an Emperor, twenty Astartes Legions, and twenty-one Primarchs—one of whom was also named Sanguinius.
Only then did he begin to comprehend the meaning behind Selene's cryptic instructions: "Seek. Discover. Expect the unknown. Be not surprised."
Was this… a mirrored universe?
With that thought, Sanguinius burst through the surface, scanning the battlefield beyond—and in an instant, he made his decision.
Fight.
Fight those wretched abominations!
What were these creatures? Grotesque, ulcered, reeking of rot and filth, their twisted limbs writhing in blasphemous mutation. A festival of corruption and deformity.
Having inherited much of Selene's influence, Sanguinius—truthfully speaking—was something of a beauty fanatic. He judged by appearance.
You could be fanged and monstrous, even inhuman—handsome in your brutality, striking in your ferocity—that was fine. The Sacred Selene Empire was inclusive, even if your social standing depended on the judgment of the administrative officers. But Chaos…?
Their aesthetic was too far ahead of its time—too disgusting for even Selene's boundless tolerance.
Sanguinius could not stand them—and neither could Selene.
Even though parts of this "Imperium of Man" already reminded Sanguinius uncomfortably of his old comrade Konrad Curze and the VIII Legion's extremes, Chaos was something else entirely.
They stood upon a swamp of rotting flesh and blood, a mire of bone and corruption.
"Do not kneel. Rise."
"Though it pains me to say this…" Sanguinius looked at the kneeling Astartes who regarded him as their Father, sorrow flickering in his golden eyes. "I am not the Gene-Father you believe me to be."
Warriors deserved respect.
Even in defeat, their courage deserved honor—and Sanguinius, among Selene's Primarchs, was known as one of the most empathetic, sincere, and grounded. He could not, like Selene herself, accept undeserved reverence without guilt.
"No…"
"No! Father, please, do not abandon us! For ten thousand years, we—your Blood Sons—have fought and suffered! Our flaws, our rage, our curses—they've shamed you, but we—"
It was as if lightning had struck their hearts. A Blood Angels Captain tore off his helmet, revealing short golden hair and tearful blue eyes. His voice broke, trembling with desperation.
"Please… don't leave us again!"
"No… I am not abandoning you," Sanguinius said softly, kneeling. His pure white wings enveloped the wounded Captain as he placed a comforting hand on the warrior's shoulder.
He could see it clearly—the hope that had reignited in the battle-worn faces of those who had lost all reason to believe.
Just as he was about to speak further—
ROOOOOAR—!!
A world-shaking bellow tore through the air, filled with hatred and fury. The Chaos tides surged anew, their psychic chants echoing through the heavens as the sorcerers of the Thousand Sons and the Dark Apostles of the Word Bearers called upon the Warp.
"Calling reinforcements again?" Sanguinius muttered coldly. "Then I'll just finish you first."
He rose, turning toward the battlefield. "Perhaps I am not your Father," he said, his voice calm yet commanding, "but now is not the time for explanations."
His left palm shimmered with golden light. From it, a teardrop-shaped spearhead of radiant energy took form, solidifying as his expression hardened.
Without another word, he stepped forward—standing proudly at the vanguard, facing the churning sea of Chaos.
Under the gaze of every Blood Angel and allied Space Marine, his voice rose—strong and unwavering, carrying both serenity and power.
"Draw your blades. Follow me."
"Yes, Father!"
"We shall not shame the Blood of Sanguinius!"
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