Horus and Lorgar stepped onto the blood-soaked soil of Belia IV. They came not with the thunderous march of a Legion but flanked only by a cadre of corrupted warriors from the Black Legion.
Suddenly, Horus raised his head, eyes narrowing as he caught sight of something streaking across the kaleidoscopic sky—a golden eagle, vast and radiant, plummeting from the heavens.
His expression hardened.
Dukel had arrived.
The Warmaster of the Imperium descending onto the battlefield was ill tidings for the traitors.
Fortunately, the daemon cohorts entrenched across the surface should stall Dukel for a time—time enough, perhaps, to reach the Temple-City before he did.
Engaging Dukel now would be suicide.
Horus scanned the ravaged horizon, seeking the four he still called brothers—those once-trusted allies who might delay Dukel's advance.
But they were gone.
No trace. No signal. No help.
"We need to move. Now," Horus growled, urgency tightening his voice.
Around the Temple-City of Synnlaith
Commissar Ciaphas Cain of Valhalla stood at the core of the temple's inner defenses, assigned to its protection by the order of the Living Saint herself.
"May Your Divine Majesty watch over us," he murmured, both hands clenched tight around his laspistol, sweat pooling beneath his gloves.
He was a hero of the Imperium. A legend. The face of courage and Imperial resolve.
But Cain only wanted to weep.
Behind the laurels and medals, behind the stories of valor and victories, he was a fraud—no invincible paragon, no iron-hearted commissar. Merely a terrified man who had somehow stumbled into legend through luck and the Emperor's inexplicable favor.
Now, thrown into the thick of a holy war, surrounded by genuine warriors, Cain felt like a sled-pup abandoned in a Fenrisian wolf pack.
And while he prayed, begging the Emperor for one more miracle, something stirred in his shadow.
Curze.
Konrad Curze, the Night Haunter, ghost of the VIII Legion. One of the last two Lords of Night to haunt the galaxy.
Unlike the crow-cloaked Corvus Corax, Curze was never beloved by the Shadow. But he was of it. He could smell fear like a bloodhound scents prey.
And in Cain, there was much to smell.
The raw, acrid terror that Cain tried so hard to conceal stoked Curze's disgust.
Ten thousand years ago, in the days of the Great Crusade, this kind of cowardice would've earned Cain nothing but flayed skin flying from a flagpole.
Curze could scarcely believe this was the Imperium's idea of a hero.
Poor Dukel, he thought bitterly. How does he lead this broken edifice of fools and pretenders? Must he kill the galaxy single-handedly?
But before he could spiral further into disdain, a thunderous roar shattered the sky.
Cain and Curze both turned their eyes upward.
A massive golden eagle, wings wide enough to blot the sun, was descending with unstoppable force.
The Commissar's spine straightened, heart ablaze.
He knew what that meant.
The Warmaster had arrived.
Victory was no longer a question of possibility—only of time.
Yet joy was fleeting.
The daemon hordes still pressed against the Temple-City's defenses. Cain had a war to fight.
Cackling madness echoed across the battlefield as a swarm of Lost Souls surged forward. Their forms were broken—corrupted meat wrapped in the tattered remains of humanity, puppeted by daemons.
Cain crouched in the trench, laspistol raised, targeting what was once fellow men.
"Open fire!" he bellowed.
Blistering red bolts of coherent light sliced the air, carving holes into the shambling tide.
The Las was a surgical weapon, and death was its art.
Yet the damned things kept coming.
"Headshots! Aim for the head!" hissed a voice—faint, spectral.
Cain shouted the command aloud, almost on instinct. "Headshots! Hit their heads!"
But no sooner had the words left his mouth than dread gripped his gut.
He turned sharply.
"Eugen," he hissed to the sour-smelling soldier firing beside him, "Did you just say something?"
"No, Commissar," Eugen replied, confusion plain on his face. "You're the only one who spoke."
Cain's face twitched. His lip trembled.
He had heard it. Not imagined. Not mistaken.
Hearing voices during battle was a dangerous omen in the Imperium. The taint of Chaos often began with whispers.
"Relax, Cain," he muttered. "You're fine. The Emperor protects. Maybe it was just—just your nerves."
"Or madness," he added under his breath, cold sweat pouring down his neck.
"Commissar? What was that?" Eugen asked.
"Nothing!" Cain barked, regaining his composure. "Eyes on the battle, soldier!"
He blasted another Lost Soul through the skull.
Still got it, he thought. I'm not crazy if I can still aim straight, right?
Another target appeared—a fallen Imperial officer, his decayed corpse clad in a ragged uniform, a monomolecular blade still sheathed at his waist.
Cain hesitated.
"A shame," he whispered. "He deserved better."
And yet, a darker thought crept in.
If Chaos can take them… what will I become if I fall?
His heart skipped. He fired.
The body collapsed, its soul—whatever remained—finally released.
"Eugen," Cain said abruptly, "If I ever end up like that... promise me you'll put me down."
"Of course, Commissar," Eugen replied, flashing a yellow-toothed grin.
Cain squinted. There was something too eager about that smile.
"My dear friend," he muttered grimly, patting Eugen's shoulder, "you're all heart."
And then he turned back to the enemy, praying the next bolt would burn his doubts away.
The Lost Souls were swiftly exterminated.
Yet no cheer rose from the trenches. For these hardened mortal troops, it was but a fleeting skirmish—a mere pause before the next wave. The true threat loomed still.
In a shadowed corner of the trench, Commissar Cain knelt with hands clasped over his head, muttering fervent prayers to the God-Emperor.
Curze—Konrad Curze, the Night Haunter—watched silently from the darkness of Cain's shadow.
The terror of Terra, feared even in the halls of the Imperial Palace, found his restraint slipping. Millennia of patience honed in silent vigil beneath the Golden Throne now stretched to the edge of collapse.
In a heartbeat, ten thousand ways to execute the "hero" Cain flashed through Curze's mind like lightning across a midnight sky.
But before he could act on a single one, alarms blared again through the trench.
"Contact front!" shouted the recon veteran, voice sharp and practiced.
The no-man's-land ahead lit up as muzzle flashes tore through the fog. The thunder of artillery and lasgun fire returned with violent rhythm. Blasphemous creatures, twisted by the Warp, were shredded by concentrated fire, their remains painting the mud with rot and gore.
Yet even through the storm, agile daemons surged forward, slipping through fire lanes like shadows on water. Some reached the edge of the trench—then leapt.
They struck with brutal momentum, their charge slamming into the defenders with bone-snapping force. A few Guardsmen faltered; others died before they could scream.
Cain moved instinctively, retreating for a better firing angle. But then he saw them—young soldiers, barely out of training, surrounded, moments from death.
Terror gripped him. He could have run. Should have run. But something—something fragile and burning—rose up inside him.
"Emperor protect us," Cain whispered. Then he stood—and charged.
Curze, nestled within the commissar's shadow, sneered.
Suicidal. Utterly idiotic.
To him, Cain's courage was not valor—it was ignorance. A fool's death awaited him, and Curze had no intention of intervening.
But then... something changed.
As Cain moved, panic still etched into his face, the laser pistol in his hand blazed with precision. Each shot found a daemon's weakness—joints, eyes, maws mid-scream. The beam struck true. Again. And again.
Even the tech-priests monitoring the data feeds faltered in disbelief.
Cain—terrified, trembling, convinced of his own fraudulence—held the line.
Together, he and the surviving troopers drove back the assault. The trench held.
Breath ragged, heart hammering, Cain stood amid the ruins. Victory, again. A minor one—but real.
Cheers broke out. Soldiers clapped him on the shoulder. They hailed his heroism.
But Cain barely heard them.
He kept his grip tight on the pistol, scanning for threats. His hands shook. In his mind, there was no glory—only luck. The Emperor's grace, perhaps, but fleeting. Nothing worthy of pride.
Curze, still hidden within the commissar's shade, narrowed his eyes.
And then, he smiled.
For the first time, he understood. Cain, for all his fear, did not falter. He feared—and fought anyway. And that was something Curze could respect.
The air grew thick with soot and smoke. Visibility dropped to a haze.
From the murk rose a voice—not a daemon's howl, but a chant. Disciplined. Terrifying.
"When all are mad, I am Vigilant."
"When pride blinds the many, I remain humble."
"Where others charge blindly, I advance with purpose."
The rhythm. The cadence. The black tide.
Cain turned toward the sound, a chill crawling up his spine. His fingers locked tighter on the grip of his laspistol. His knuckles went white.
Around him, the soldiers stood frozen. Then, as the smoke parted, they saw them.
Massive figures stepped forward—power-armored giants, painted in black, trimmed with gold. With every step, the ancient hum of corrupted power packs and armor servos rang through the air like a death knell.
Even a novice Guardsman could recognize them.
"The Black Legion…" one whispered, voice hollow. "They fight for the Warmaster."
Not a Warmaster.
The Warmaster. Horus.
The traitors had arrived.
And not just any warband. The Black Legion—a name that had come to encompass thousands of Chaos Astartes, forged from the remnants of the Luna Wolves. They bore no single heraldry beyond black armor. No banners. No cries of allegiance save to the Warmaster and the Dark Gods.
"Steady!" Cain barked over the vox, his voice tight with strain. "Hold formation!"
He forced the words out with every ounce of discipline he had, hiding the fear clawing up his throat.
But Eugen, and the others who knew him, could hear the tremor beneath the command.
To the mortal legions, facing the Adeptus Astartes—traitor or loyal—was always a moment steeped in futility. Against these demigods of war, their lasguns felt like toys, their courage like a candle in a hurricane.
"Fire!" Commissar Cain shouted before the enemy even entered optimal range.
He knew better. They all did.
Veteran guardsmen had learned the hard way: if you waited until the Astartes were in range, you'd be dead before your finger reached the trigger. The Black Legion moved with inhuman speed—too fast for the slow reflexes of mortal men.
Thousands of barrels flared to life. The sudden blaze of lasfire lit the frontline like a second sun. Crimson bolts lanced forward, hammering the advancing traitors.
The beams struck true.
And yet, the traitors did not falter.
Smoke rose from the obsidian ceramite of their ancient war-plate, but they surged forward, undeterred, heedless of pain or impact. Like wraiths clad in adamantium, the Black Legion bore down on the trenches with death in their eyes and hatred in their hearts.
Their war cries grew louder, closer. Faces twisted by corruption and time emerged from the smoke. Masks of wrath and desecration.
In the shadows, Curze watched. Eyes narrowing.
He knew these faces.
Some of them, he'd once called brother.
He no longer hid. He no longer cared to.
Among the oncoming host, he had spotted veterans—original sons of the Luna Wolves, their faces barely changed despite the passage of ten thousand years. One in particular twisted his stomach with revulsion.
The anger flared. If their genefather had still lived, Curze would have begged for the pleasure of personally unmaking them—limb by screaming limb.
Memories returned like ash on the wind. Of betrayal. Of loss. Of a galaxy bled dry by kin turned foe.
Then a voice broke his reverie.
"Warmaster..." Cain whispered, his voice trembling with reverence and fear.
He was not calling for help. He was reciting a name like a mantra, just to stop himself from fleeing.
Curze followed his gaze—and froze.
Two giants emerged from the ash.
Bare-headed. Glistening with the light of war.
One was resolute, carved from stone and shadow. The other bore a smile—triumphant, malignant, unholy.
They were taller even than Astartes. Monstrous in size, their presence crushed the soul like a vice.
Horus. Lorgar.
Curze's blood turned to ice.
"Horus. Lorgar..." he repeated, voice dry and sharp.
Then the corners of his lips curled upward.
A smile. Twisted. Silent.
Then it grew. Ferocious. Wild.
"You're here?" he whispered, the syllables ragged with disbelief. "You're actually still alive... You vermin, you crawling filth, you're not dead yet! You're not dead yet—hah! Hahahaha!"
Mad laughter ripped through Curze's chest, as if the long-forgotten predator within him had stirred once more. For the first time in millennia, he felt like the creature that once haunted the void between stars—a shade of terror whispered about by both traitor and loyalist alike.
He was no longer the ghost in the shadows.
He was Curze again.
The Lord of the Night.
But no one noticed. Not yet. His hatred still wore its mask.
"Is this it, Father?" Curze muttered to himself, gaze distant. "Is this why you banished me from the throne of midnight? If so... then truly, this is your greatest gift."
And in the veil of smoke, unseen by brother or foe, the Night Haunter vanished again—his soul burning with vengeance long denied.
…
TN:
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