The Myrridian sky was clear for the first time in months when the summons came.
Not through Guard channels. Not even from the Segmentum command.
It came on a transmission frequency that no mortal could have accessed — encrypted in the language of the Ten Thousand, sealed with the sigil of the Aquiline Eye.
By order of Constantin Valdor, Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes:
Aurelius. Return to Terra.
The words glowed in his helm's display for only a moment before vanishing, replaced by coordinates for an extraction vessel already on its way.
Departure
The Guard wanted him to stay for the celebrations. The Governor begged him to witness the formal raising of the Imperial banner over the last Chaos redoubt. The Mechanicus petitioned for his presence at the reactivation of Myrridian's forges.
But he did not linger. Custodians were not heroes to be paraded. They were the Emperor's will made flesh, and when the Palace called, nothing else mattered.
Still, Aurelius walked the trench line one last time before boarding the Thunderhawk. He stopped at each bastion, speaking not in formal addresses but in low, direct words to the commanders and soldiers who had stood beside him. His Haki was quiet now, but it lingered — a steady, unseen thread that left them straighter, steadier.
When the engines roared to life, the Guard saluted as one. He didn't look back.
The Palace
The journey through the Sol System was a ritual in itself. Myrridian's grime and blood washed away in the Thunderhawk's sanctum. Golden plate repaired, polished until it caught the light like a blade's edge. By the time the vessel passed Mars and entered the inner defense cordons, Aurelius was not a battlefield commander returning — he was once again the silent sentinel, perfect and unyielding.
Terra filled the viewport like a living shrine. Even before the Thunderhawk entered the atmosphere, he could feel the psychic hum of it — billions of lives, the colossal weight of the Throneworld's history, the pulse of the Emperor's will.
The Palace was not entered. It was ascended.
Miles of gold and marble, watchful statues older than entire worlds, vaulted halls that seemed to bend time with their sheer scale. And above it all, the Custodians themselves — brothers whose eyes marked every step, their stillness more threatening than any weapon.
The Debrief
Valdor waited in the Hall of Shield-Captains. He stood as unmoving as the statues around him, the plumes of his helm like the banners of a war won before time began.
"Aurelius." His voice was a quiet weight, the kind that could break a lesser man's posture without rising in volume. "You return from Myrridian with… results."
The debrief was not a recounting of events. Valdor already knew them. Every engagement, every maneuver, every anomaly in the morale of the Guard had been recorded and analyzed before Aurelius even set foot on Terra.
What Valdor wanted was not fact. It was measure.
"Your conduct," he said finally, "has drawn notice. The Palace does not often concern itself with the talents of a single Custodian beyond his oath. Yet this… 'gift'… the Emperor will see it for Himself."
It was not a request.
The Audience
The private chambers of the Master of Mankind were vast, yet felt smaller under the pressure of His presence. The Emperor sat upon no throne here — only a high dais, the air around Him thick with the scent of ozone and the hum of psychic force.
Aurelius knelt. Even through the layers of his helm, the Emperor's gaze was absolute, stripping away armor and thought alike.
Stand, the Emperor's voice pressed into his mind, though His lips did not move.
When Aurelius obeyed, the weight intensified. He felt the Emperor's will probing, not just at his mind but at the core of the power within him — the thing Aurelius knew as Haki.
It was not an attack, but it was a test. A pressure so vast that even his Conqueror's Haki strained, forced to its limits simply to keep his own will from being swallowed whole.
"This power," the Emperor said aloud now, voice like the edge of a starship's hull tearing open, "is not of the Warp, nor bound to it. It resists me even as it yields to my command. That is rare."
"It is my own, sire," Aurelius said, the words steady despite the strain. "But it is yours to direct."
The Emperor studied him for a long, silent moment — long enough that the edges of Aurelius's vision began to whiten from the effort of standing unbowed.
"Serve as you have," the Emperor said at last. "But understand — there are eyes upon you now, not all of them loyal."
The pressure lifted.
Orders
Valdor was waiting when Aurelius stepped from the chamber. The Captain-General's gaze was unreadable, but there was no mistaking the slight incline of his head — a gesture reserved for victories worth acknowledgment.
"Deployment orders," Valdor said, passing a data-slate. "The Segmentum Obscurus front. The war on Myrridian was your proving ground. Now you will command a detachment in a theatre already lost by lesser men. Consider this your true beginning."
Aurelius accepted the slate without hesitation. The mission name was simple: The Myrridian Protocol — Expansion.