The air in the vault crackled. Valerian's challenge was not a boast. It was a sacred vow. He and his Shield-Host were the final, unbreakable wall of the Imperium.
"For the Emperor," Valerian's voice boomed.
Fifty demigods charged. A wave of living gold, moving with a speed and grace that defied their immense size. Their guardian spears blazed to life.
The Monarch's five knights moved to intercept, but he held up a hand, and they froze. This was a lesson for him to teach.
"Admirable," he murmured. "But you fight with the wrong soldiers."
He looked around the vast, silent tomb, a graveyard of soulless machines. And all graveyards answered to him.
He did not raise his voice. He merely expanded his will, letting his authority saturate the ancient, alien metal of the vault.
[Command: Arise]
From the seamless black walls and the polished floor, figures began to emerge. They were not smoky, ethereal shadows. These were solid constructs of solidified darkness and captured starlight, their forms mimicking the skeletal, geometric frames of the Necrons who had built this place. Their single, unblinking eyes glowed with cold, violet light. An army of shadow-constructs, born from the memory of the tomb itself, rose in perfect, silent ranks, holding rifles forged from solidified night.
The golden wave crashed against the black tide.
The Custodes were everything their legends claimed. The first ranks of the constructs were shattered. But the shadow-soldiers felt no pain, no fear. For every one struck down, two more rose from the floor to take its place. The finest warriors in the galaxy were drowning in an ocean of silent, reborn shadows.
While the battle raged, the Monarch took a single step.
And appeared directly behind Shield-Captain Valerian.
The din of battle faded away. Valerian froze mid-strike, his finely honed senses screaming a warning that came too late. The Monarch's hand rested gently on the back of his ornate, golden helmet.
The entire battle stopped. The Custodes halted, their eyes wide with shock.
The Monarch's voice was quiet, heard only by Valerian, yet its weight was felt by all. "Your strength is the pinnacle of this age. Your loyalty is a thing of absolute beauty. Your courage would be celebrated in the epics of any galaxy."
He applied a whisper of his true power through his fingertips. Not force. Not energy. But the pure, conceptual authority of the end.
"And it is all completely irrelevant."
The auramite of Valerian's helmet began to flake away, decaying into black, inert dust under his touch. He was not breaking it. He was commanding it to end.
Valerian stood paralyzed. He could feel the cold, absolute truth of the Monarch's power. He could order his men to fight on, and they would all die, here, in the dark, for nothing. His duty was to the Imperium, and the sacrifice of fifty of the Emperor's companions for a gesture of defiance was a price his pragmatic mind could not justify.
With an almost imperceptible gesture, he gave the signal.
Across the cavern, fifty guardian spears were lowered. The sound of their power fields deactivating was the sound of the first surrender in the ten-thousand-year history of the Adeptus Custodes.
The Monarch removed his hand. The decay on Valerian's helmet stopped.
"I am returning to my vessel," he stated. His constructs began to silently submerge back into the floor. "You will return to Terra. Deliver this message to your Regent: I have the knowledge I require to return home. My business in this reality is nearing its end."
He let the unspoken threat hang in the air.
"Do not interfere with my preparations. Any attempt to hinder my departure will be considered an act of war. And I will not be as restrained as I have been."
Without another word, he dissolved into shadow, his knights vanishing with him.
He left them there. Fifty golden demigods, standing defeated in a desecrated tomb, with a weakened, captive god below them and a planetary crisis raging above. They were left with the ashes of their certainty and an ultimatum that would decide the fate of their Imperium.