=== Sebastian ===
The Black Templar circled the abomination, boots grinding against the scorched earth. Smoke and embers drifted between them, the only sound his labored breathing and the low hum of the Darksaber in his gauntleted hand.
Abeloth stood utterly still. Her arms hung loosely at her sides, palms turned outward as if in mock surrender, or invitation. Her smile was faint, almost gentle. She left herself open on purpose.
Sebastian knew it. He also knew that nothing he did could truly harm her. That she was something far beyond daemons or psykers, a being that existed above mortality, above gods.
But retreat? Never.
Could he ever stand before his brothers again, before the Emperor Himself, knowing he had fled from battle? Against Abeloth, perhaps even cowardice could be forgiven. Yet his heart burned with defiance. He was a Black Templar. His oath was iron. His faith, eternal.
He roared, the vox turning his cry into thunder.
"For the Emperor!
He charged, shield raised, Darksaber drawn high behind his head. The black blade screamed as it came down in a strike meant to cleave her skull in two.
She stepped aside.
Effortless. Elegant. The weapon slammed into the ground, carving a molten scar through the dirt.
Suddenly, his body seized. His limbs turned to stone, the air around him thick as liquid metal. His vision blurred, sound distorted, time itself seemed to slow to a crawl.
He could only watch as Abeloth glided toward him.
Her eyes gleamed with fascination. She ran a single pale finger along the length of his blade, tracing the edge up to his armored hand, then along his forearm.
"How… intriguing," she murmured softly, as if inspecting a curious specimen.
The pressure lifted. Time snapped back to normal.
Sebastian tore his blade free with a snarl, swinging it in a wide arc. The Darksaber passed cleanly through her, through smoke and light, her body reforming as if she were never there.
She drifted closer, tilting her head in amusement. "I can see everything," she whispered.
Her form flickered, gone from before him, reappearing to his right, floating just above the ground.
Sebastian tried to leap back, to bring his shield to bear, but his body was frozen again, as if her will alone bound his very muscles.
"I can see your mistrust of the Salamander," she purred, her voice layered, echoing within his mind. "Your disgust that he shelters the Twi'lek slave."
Her finger traced down the side of his helmet, slow and mocking.
The hold shattered. Sebastian lunged, swinging his sword with righteous fury, but she only smiled, dissolving into mist as his blade passed harmlessly through her.
"I can see how you resent the Ultramarine," she continued from behind him, her voice everywhere and nowhere at once. "That he is the Emperor's favored warrior in this new galaxy… while you are left behind, unacknowledged."
He turned, striking again and again, each swing a blur of rage and faith. His movements were faster, heavier as his fury gave him strength, even as his strikes found no purchase.
Abeloth's smile grew colder.
"And I can see your hatred for the girl, Nira." Her tone dripped with pity and delight all at once. "Chosen by your Emperor's will to harbor His angel. To lead your Imperium's remnant while you, His most devoted servant… are ignored and forgotten."
Sebastian's armor whined with power as his rage reached its peak.
"I feel no such thing, witch!" he bellowed, swinging again, his blade cutting through her chest, through nothing.
Abeloth only laughed, the sound soft and terrible, like the voice of a mother who'd already decided her child's fate.
Her visage began to change. The monstrous beauty of Abeloth melted away, her form rippling like smoke until it settled into something far more human, far more horrifying.
It was a face Sebastian thought he would never see again.
The face of a young woman, framed by dark hair, eyes warm and kind, a face from another lifetime.
A face from before the wars. Before the crusade. Before the Black Templars had claimed him.
The world around him cracked like shattered glass. Then everything went black.
When he opened his eyes, he was no longer on the battlefield of Mortis.
He stood in a snow-covered field, the air filled with screams and the thunder of bolter fire. Massive shapes moved through the smoke, Astartes in black armor, their pauldrons emblazoned with the sigil of the Black Templars. They walked like reapers through the chaos, cutting down all who resisted.
The village burned. Ash and fire turned the white snow to black mud and crimson blood.
Sebastian stood amidst it all, but his body was different. Smaller. Weaker. He looked down and saw the hands of a boy.
A boy he once was.
The realization hit him.
He was home. His homeworld. The day the Black Templars came.
He watched in horror as the Astartes tore young boys from their families, shoving them toward the waiting dropships. The strong were taken. The weak were silenced. Mothers screamed, fathers fought, all for nothing. Those who resisted were butchered. Those who pleaded were shot.
"Sebastian!"
The voice cut through the chaos like a blade. A woman's voice, ragged and desperate.
He turned.
A woman in her late twenties, clothes torn and bloodstained, sprinted toward him, stumbling through the snow. Her eyes were wild and terrified.
"Mother?" he breathed, disbelief choking his throat.
Before she could reach him, one of the towering Black Templars stepped forward and struck her across the head with his bolter.
The sound was sickening. She fell to the snow, unmoving, crimson spreading quickly beneath her.
Something in Sebastian snapped.
He looked down at his small trembling hands, and in that moment, he remembered everything.
He wasn't the crusader. He wasn't the templar. He was the child again, the boy who had been taken.
"Mother!" he screamed, running toward her fallen form.
A massive gauntlet closed around his arm, jerking him backward.
"No!" he cried, thrashing. "Let me go!"
The Astartes holding him only laughed, a low, cruel sound echoing through the helm.
"We've got a fighter over here!" the giant called out. Laughter followed, cold and heartless.
Sebastian was thrown to the ground, pain shooting up his spine as a boot crashed into his back, kicking him toward the dropship.
He gasped, tears mixing with the snow as he tried to crawl back to her. His vision blurred, his breath short.
He saw his mother, pushing herself up on shaking arms, blood running down her face.
"Sebastian!" she cried, reaching out toward him—
—and then a Black Templar stepped up behind her and stomped down on her back. Her scream tore through him, echoing across the battlefield. Blood sprayed across the snow.
"No…" he whispered. "This… this isn't right…"
Her voice came again, warped and hollow. "Sebastian!"
The world tilted. His vision twisted until he was staring at her face from the same broken angle as her corpse.
Her mouth moved, but the rest of her body did not.
"They took you away from me," she whispered. "They took you and turned you into a monster."
The snowstorm began to swirl, the world spinning faster and faster around her corpse.
"They took you away… and now you serve them without question. Come back to me, my son. Come back to your mother. Let me show you the life you never had…"
Sebastian stared at her lifeless face. His chest rose and fell with trembling breaths.
For a moment, something inside him, something buried under centuries of faith and battle… wavered.
Then he clenched his fists.
He shut his eyes.
When he opened them again, his voice was small, but unshakable.
"No. This is wrong."
"It… didn't… happen like this…" Sebastian whispered, eyes darting around the scene.
Bodies lay strewn across the snow, their blood painting the ground crimson. The air was filled with screams, bolter fire, and the thunder of drop ships descending from the heavens. Families were torn apart, children ripped from the arms of their parents, and anyone who resisted was cut down where they stood.
His gaze flicked across the chaos, a village hound fleeing with its tail between its legs, burning buildings collapsing under their own weight, a man staring at him in the distance his simple, unremarkable garb set him apart from the chaos, as though he did not belong here. Astartes in black armor executed civilians with mechanical precision, their shoulder plates emblazoned with the sigil of the Black Templars.
"Move, whelp!" barked a voice behind him.
A gauntleted hand clamped around his arm, yanking him forward.
"You keep struggling and I'll flay you alive," snarled the towering Black Templar, shoving him viciously toward the transport.
Sebastian stumbled, hitting the frozen earth hard. He scrambled to his feet, shivering violently, clutching his small arms around himself as though they could shield him from the cold, or from what was happening.
Around him, other boys wept uncontrollably. Some struggled; those who resisted met a swift end, their cries cut short by the roar of bolter fire. The snow melted under the heat of the drop ship's thrusters, turning to slush stained red with blood.
Sebastian turned again and froze.
The man was there once more. But now he wore a simple white robe bound by a golden sash that draped over his arm. A wreath of gold rested upon his brow, his bare feet sunk into the snow, yet it melted around him, steam rising in soft tendrils.
"Sebastian," the man said gently from afar. "This is not real. Open your eyes."
His voice rang clear through the madness, like the toll of a sacred bell, calm, pure and undeniable.
Sebastian turned to the Astartes looming behind him as the world fractured.
For a single instant, the illusion faltered, and he saw the truth.
Where once the sigil of the Black Templars adorned the warrior's pauldron, now there was only the twisted, jagged symbol of the Eight-Pointed Star.
"You little bastard, MOVE!" the Chaos Marine snarled, his voice distorted and guttural. Rusted armor, oozing corruption, glistened under a false sun before the vision snapped back, the false Black Templars returning once more.
Sebastian stopped cold, his eyes narrowing.
"How dare you," he growled, voice trembling with fury. "How dare you twist my memories of what truly happened."
He looked toward his mother's broken form in the distance, her lifeless eyes somehow still filled with warmth. Her lips curved into a faint, bloody smile.
"Come now, Sebastian," her voice whispered, though her body never moved. "Join me. All this can be undone. Come back to me, my son…"
His rage ignited.
"You vile abomination," Sebastian thundered, his voice echoing through the false world. "How dare you wear her face, how dare you profane her memory!"
The world trembled. Light and shadow swirled around him. In an instant, he was once again clad in his black ceramite armor, his storm shield raised, the Darksaber igniting with a scream of obsidian energy.
Before him, the Chaos Marine's expression shifted from malice to fear.
Sebastian roared, a sound of unbridled fury and sacred wrath, and brought his blade down in a single devastating arc. The Darksaber cut through corrupted flesh and ceramite alike, bisecting the heretic in a flash of searing black light.
The two halves fell to the snow, hissing and burning away into ash.
He turned slowly, the world now silent, to find Abeloth floating above the field, her face unreadable. The snow around her melted as she hovered, eyes glowing like twin suns.
Sebastian raised his weapon, his breath heavy, his hatred pure.
Then, with a battle cry that shook the illusion itself, he charged.
"By the Emperor Himself, you will rue this day, Witch!" Sebastian roared, charging forward with unrelenting fury.
The world shattered, and in the blink of an eye, he was no longer standing in the snow of false memory. The battlefield of Mortis stretched out before him once more, a realm of fire and storm, where heaven and hell seemed to collide.
He slammed into Abeloth once more, his shield raised, the Darksaber screaming in his hand. Yet once again, the obsidian blade carved through her form as though she were nothing but smoke and shadow.
Sebastian snarled, his rage burning brighter with every futile strike. "Fight me, you coward!" he bellowed, the fury of a thousand crusades behind his voice.
Abeloth's smile returned, serene, taunting and eternal. Her eyes glimmered with something close to amusement before her expression hardened.
"Very well," she said, her voice rippling through the air like a whisper. "It has been millennia since I fought with my own hands… but I will humor your desire, my child."
Her tone darkened, a note of cruel delight threading through it. "When you lie broken and bleeding upon the ground, you will understand the mistake you have made in daring to challenge one far beyond your reach."
In the next instant, she struck.
Her open palm collided with his storm shield like a hammer of gods. The sound cracked through the realm, BOOM! as the force hurled Sebastian backward.
He hit the ground hard, his armor digging furrows into the scorched soil before he rolled to his feet, shield raised once more. His breathing came heavy, furious, his eyes blazing with divine wrath.
Abeloth extended one pale hand toward him and curled her fingers. His shield began to scream.
Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface, spreading faster and faster until the entire relic trembled violently in his grasp. With a deafening shatter, it exploded outward into shards of bone and metal, the fragments suspended in the air before streaking toward her outstretched palm.
From within the remnants, something tore itself free and flew to her. She caught the item in her hand, her smile widening as it flared to life between her fingers.
"Come then, Black Templar," she said softly, igniting what she now held.
A blade of pure amethyst light roared to life with a hiss, casting violet fire across the ruined plain as she activated Mace Windu's lightsaber.
"I will make you a martyr," Abeloth said, her eyes glowing like dying stars. "And send you back to the god who ignores you… in favor of others."
===
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