BOOM!
A thunderous impact echoed across the battlefield.
From the direction where Angron had crashed, a colossal section of wall—constructed from rare, reinforced alloys and weighing tens of thousands of tons—was hurled through the air like a boulder fired from some ancient siege engine.
It tore through the gale, spinning end over end, and hurtled straight toward the Emperor.
The Emperor did not even glance at it.
His focus remained entirely on the dying Sanguinius and Rogal Dorn. With a calm fury, He flooded their bodies with psychic power, reigniting what little life remained and dragging them both back from the edge of death.
The instant the massive wall reached Him, the golden aura surrounding His form shimmered—just once.
The immense structure disintegrated into dust, dissolving like sunlit frost.
A material strong enough to withstand starship broadsides simply ceased to exist before the Emperor's radiance.
And as the debris evaporated, the figure behind it was revealed.
Angron, empowered by his ascension, charged forward with wild laughter.
He tore against the pressure of the golden light as though hauling an entire mountain, raising his enormous, warp-enhanced blade high overhead.
"EMPEROR!!"
His roar was overflowing with hatred, rage, and the exultation of finally venting a grievance he had carried since the day the Emperor tore him from Nuceria.
The more he thought about it, the more his fury surged. Warp power flooded his mutated frame, the blade in his hands erupting in a prismatic, unnatural glow.
Faced with this blow—one fueled by wrath older than the Imperium itself—the Emperor's expression finally tightened.
He no longer dismissed the attack as He had the flying wall.
He raised His golden blade and met Angron's strike with unrestrained force.
At the same moment, He extended a portion of His attention backward, enveloping Sanguinius and Dorn in psychic light and teleporting them to safety.
Just as they vanished, Horus materialized in their place—silent as a shadow.
Dark energy crackled along the talons of his armored gauntlet as he lunged, aiming to seize the Emperor from behind.
A perfect pincer assault—Angron from the front, Horus from the rear.
But the Emperor was not deceived.
With His free hand, He clenched a fist and drove it backward.
The instant Angron, Horus, and the Emperor struck together, the battlefield was drowned in a blinding eruption of energy.
Psychic force surged like a stellar plasma storm, vaporizing everything nearby.
Mortals who dared watch, even from great distance, were struck blind—temporarily or forever—just from witnessing the radiance.
When the brilliance finally faded…
A vast crater several kilometers wide lay at their feet.
Everything within it had ceased to exist.
Jagged black rents in space itself—like colossal centipedes—crawled outward from the impact point, stretching toward the horizon.
Even Terra's reinforced spacetime structure, shaped and strengthened during the Dark Age of Technology, had been torn open.
It would take time—significant time—for the planet to heal.
The Emperor frowned.
The raw power of His two wayward sons had surpassed His expectations. Defeating them would not be quick or simple.
Angron and Horus themselves were equally unsettled.
They had thought their newfound strength placed them beyond reach. But the Emperor had taken their combined assault head-on—and endured.
Before any of them could move again, however…
The surrounding spatial fractures suddenly trembled.
Two scale-covered arms burst through a widening tear, forcing the rift open from the inside.
Arik Taranis, Daemon Prince—
the very being the Emperor had earlier fought and sealed away—
pulled himself through the breach.
Having been trapped beyond the lab's closed warp conduit, he now clawed his way back into reality, eager to resume the battle he considered unfinished.
The Emperor's burden grew heavier still.
He understood: today would be a bitter fight indeed.
No words were exchanged.
Horus, Angron, and Arik exchanged a single glance—
—and vanished.
The three materialized simultaneously at different angles around the Emperor, striking in perfect coordination.
Not one of them had any intention of fighting honorably.
They wanted Him dead, nothing more.
The Emperor's expression hardened.
Calm confidence had given way to solemnity.
Individually, none of the three could surpass Him—even weakened by years on the suppression device.
But the difference was no longer absolute, and each of them wielded warp-corrupted weaponry capable of inflicting catastrophic harm if He misjudged even once.
Far beyond them, loyalists and traitors alike could only watch helplessly.
Ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine percent had no right even to observe such a battle.
To them, the clash was only streaks of impossible light, the roar of ruptured dimensions, and pressure so immense it warped the very atmosphere.
Like mortals witnessing gods at war, they held advanced weapons in their hands but could not even conceive of intervening.
The gap between the strong and the weak—
in this realm—
was absolute.
...
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