[By the later stages of the Great Crusade, Konrad Curze's prophetic visions grew increasingly severe.
His mind was becoming more and more muddled, yet Konrad Curze still managed to barely maintain his sanity.
Because until then, he firmly believed that his current actions would ultimately bring justice to this World.
Although he indeed used terror tactics, fear was merely a means; a few had to die in agony to ensure that the many could live in peace.
Until one time, while being bombarded by images of the future as usual, he accidentally killed an Imperial remembrancer.
It should be added that when Konrad Curze was wandering Nostramo in his early days, he lived only on rats.
Even when starving to death, he did not steal others' food, tolerating not even the slightest of sins.
Thus, the act of killing an innocent person had a profound impact on him, for he realized he had become the very sinner he judged daily.
Then there was the Legion; after Konrad Curze left, the proxies he had supported were murdered, and the gangs regained power.
To meet the Empire's recruitment demands, they filled the ranks with prisoners from jails, who were not at all the best and bravest men Konrad Curze had originally hoped for.
Those criminals from Nostramo cared nothing for things like the glory of the Imperial Legion, nor for the methods of fear that Konrad Curze upheld.
This outcome was actually quite logical: a group of criminals, whose moral standards were already lower than average, suddenly gained superhuman strength, and under the influence of his visions, Konrad Curze did nothing to stop this phenomenon.
In short, by the end, most of the Legion's soldiers were completely rotten, and Konrad Curze largely ignored Legion affairs, leaving management entirely to the Kyroptera led by Sevatar.
Afterwards, Konrad Curze returned to Nostramo and delivered his sentence as a warning to other Planets: an exterminatus order.
Then, the crater created by Konrad Curze's landing mentioned above was also one of the bombardment targets.
The bombardment followed the crater deep into the Planet's core, and finally, Nostramo was shattered into pieces.
Furthermore, there were Night Lords at the time who refused to carry out the Order.
After all, it was their homeworld, and some believed that the punishment of an immediate exterminatus order was too severe; at the very least, there should have been a trial before sentencing.
However, the exterminatus order was, after all, a command from Konrad Curze, and those who refused to execute it were immediately put to death.
Watching the destruction of his homeworld, Sevatar had no objections, for he knew very well the crimes committed by the people of his Planet.
When a mob of thugs seized control of the government, the screams of the bullied and the raped were everywhere, and most people lived in dire misery.
Even so, everyone still provided the vilest scum to the Legion—an organization founded by the Emperor himself—just to let their own relatives and friends stay behind.
With such conduct, was Nostramo's society as a whole guilty or innocent?
So, from the perspective of Konrad Curze and Sevatar, Konrad Curze's destruction of the Planet followed a logic as simple as: there is guilt, and thus judgment descends.]
——————
Russ took a large gulp of mead and wiped his mouth. This time, there was less mockery in his laughter and more of the understanding shared between kindred spirits:
"Tsk, smashing your own nest with your own hands! That kind of ruthlessness is quite to the taste of us Fenrisians! If the nest is rotten to the core, burn it clean with a single fire to keep your hands from getting dirty! But then again..."
He changed the subject and looked at the image of Konrad Curze.
"Bat-brat, you acted as an Inquisitor and ended up 'judging' your own home out of existence, not even leaving a scrap of rat meat behind. Isn't that a bit... too thorough?"
Rogal Dorn's brow furrowed. "It seems you did not follow procedural reporting when implementing the exterminatus order."
"Nostramo may have been guilty, but to execute the ultimate punishment—the exterminatus order—based solely on a judgment of 'collective guilt' without a full investigation and trial of all those responsible is a major procedural flaw."
"This seems more like an emotionally driven destruction than a dispassionate judgment. Furthermore, for the Empire to lose a potential recruitment World is a loss from a long-term strategic perspective."
Sanguinius let out a long, sorrowful sigh, his snow-white wings appearing to dim slightly:
"Oh, Konrad... Did he ultimately use the destruction of his homeland to prove his original 'justice'?"
"What a... cyclic tragedy."
"He tried to wash away the stain of accidentally killing an innocent with the blood of Nostramo, unaware that this would only stain his hands with deeper sins from his own kin."
"He became the very image of what he hated most, and punished the cradle that 'bred' this hatred in the most extreme way... Poor soul, he never managed to step out of the cage of that Midnight City."
Jaghatai Khan tilted his head and commented:
"Fast, truly fast! His way of solving problems is just like how he conquers Planets, pursuing ultimate 'efficiency'."
"Homeworld's rotten? Just scatter it to the winds and be done with it, to avoid being annoyed by the sight and to end future troubles."
"Ha! That certainly fits his character."
"However, even if the White Scars were to purge their own, they would give the loyalists a way out and give those rotten to the core a fair chase."
"To do it like this... indiscriminately turning the whole Planet to ash, tsk, it's still too... crude."
On Fulgrim's face, his former playfulness and elegant mockery receded like a tide, replaced by a deep silence that was almost contrary to his nature.
It was a silence mingled with immense pity and... profound self-reproach.
His long, perfect fingers unconsciously stroked the cold embroidery on his magnificent robes, as if he could draw a trace of strength from the cold sensation.
After a long time, Fulgrim finally spoke slowly, his voice no longer high-pitched.
Instead, it carried a low, lingering pain, like the haunting resonance of a precious lute string accidentally plucked:
"Pity..." he whispered the word, as if tasting a bitter fruit.
"Yes, I pity you... my brother whose soul's texture I most failed to see clearly, Konrad."
He raised his eyes—those eyes that once reflected only perfection and harmony.
Now filled with complex emotions, he looked at Konrad Curze's figure on the screen, as if piercing through time and space to look back at his past as a mentor.
"I once thought that by teaching him etiquette, rhetoric, and how to sublimate that innate... dark sense of drama into a more 'aesthetic' art of deterrence."
The corner of Fulgrim's mouth curled into an extremely bitter arc, an arc that was in itself a mockery of 'perfection.'
"I was like an arrogant craftsman, concerned only with polishing his external edges and coating him in a glaze that met 'courtly' expectations."
"Yet I never thought... never truly peered beneath that glaze to see what kind of foundation lay there—one already riddled with holes, gnawed into instability by prophecy and darkness."
His voice was full of unprecedented regret: "I saw the coarseness in his manner, yet ignored that it stemmed from fear;"
"I heard the paranoia in his words, yet thought it was merely an unrefined personality;"
"I even... secretly admired that morbidly contradictory temperament of his, fused with terror, viewing it as a unique 'material,' never realizing that the material itself was constantly disintegrating from within!"
Fulgrim's hand tightened slightly, his knuckles turning white. "I was his mentor... I should have been the person most likely, and most responsible, besides Father, to glimpse that endless midnight within his heart."
"I could have... perhaps earlier, before he was completely swallowed by the visions, handed him a dim lamp."
"Even if only to tell him that beyond the mad path of pursuing 'Order' and 'judgment,' there existed other... less self-destructive possibilities."
"But I did not." His tone carried deep helplessness and self-condemnation.
"I was immersed in my own pursuit of 'beauty' and 'perfection,' satisfied with performing superficial 'embellishments' on him."
"Yet I turned a blind eye to the never-ending, brutal war between 'the midnight shade' and 'Konrad Curze' deep within his soul."
"I, Fulgrim, who pride myself as an artist and mentor, committed the most unforgivable... sin of oversight upon the brother who most needed my insight and care."
He turned his gaze once more to the image of the destroyed Planet. "He used the destruction of his homeworld to practice his twisted 'justice'."
"This act itself is such a desperate, such an imperfect finale... but in this imperfect tragedy, how could I not have played my part?"
"If I had shown a fraction more sincere concern back then, and a fraction less flamboyant guidance, would the ending... have been even a hair different?"
Fulgrim finally let out a long, leisurely sigh.
In that sigh, there were no longer the flowery words of the past, only the pure sorrow and regret of a failed mentor.
"Konrad, my poor brother... I failed to teach you what true 'perfection' is, yet I watched helplessly as you walked toward the most extreme and heartbreaking... imperfect destruction."
"This regret of dereliction will be like the finest yet indelible flaw, forever branded into my memory."
"Fulgrim," Konrad Curze spoke, his voice raspy yet strangely clear.
"Put away your... artist-like remorse."
These words made Fulgrim shudder slightly, and he looked up at him.
Konrad Curze continued slowly, his tone flat, without resentment or gratitude.
It was more like stating an objective fact, like reading a cold verdict:
"The rhetoric you taught failed to gloss over the bloodstains on my hands; the etiquette you guided never managed to restrain the... madness in my marrow."
"Those lights and shadows, words, and gestures... to an actor who has long seen the script's ending, they are nothing more than irrelevant scenery on the stage."
He tilted his head slightly. In the shadows, those eyes that seemed to pierce through everything were, for the first time, without mockery or pain.
Instead, they held a heart-stopping, knowing calm as they looked at Fulgrim and swept across the other brothers watching him.
"Fate is sealed, whether yours or mine."
These words were like a final sentence, striking the hearts of every Primarch.
"I have seen your end, and I have seen my own."
"The visions that haunt me are not a curse, but... spoilers."
I struggled. I tried to establish Order through fear, tried to prove worth through judgment, and even... tried to sever that sickening connection to humanity by destroying my homeworld..."
The corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly; it might have been a self-deprecating arc, but it vanished in an instant.
"But it was all in vain. The river will eventually flow into the predestined sea, no matter what shoals and canyons it passes through."
You, Fulgrim, your perfection will eventually shatter, falling into an abyss you cannot even imagine;"
And you, Sanguinius, your radiance will be extinguished in the most tragic way;"
"And all of you... Horus, Angron, Mortarion... even you, Dorn, your indestructible logic will eventually be swallowed by incalculable darkness..."
His gaze finally seemed to fall upon the Emperor's radiant figure, lingering for a moment, yet he said nothing to his creator, returning instead to a pre-silence calm.
"So, there is no need to feel regret for my path, nor to fear or struggle for your futures."
"The script is already written; we are just... actors following our cues."
"My madness, my pain, my destruction... even the dust of Nostramo, are but pre-marked chapters in this grand tragedy."
Konrad Curze's voice grew lower and lower, as if he had exhausted his last bit of strength, curling back into his own shadows, leaving only one last whispered sentence echoing in the deathly silent hall:
"Fate is sealed. Struggle is useless, and regret... is superfluous."
The Emperor sat upon the Golden Throne, shrouded in endless light, without a word.
Yet all the Primarchs could feel that from within that light, there seemed to come a sigh heavier than the galaxy, containing endless disappointment and complex expectations.
The tragedy of Konrad Curze, from birth to destruction, seemed to follow a predetermined track at every step.
And this track, perhaps as early as the "God-Emperor's" initial design, had already seen the shape of the end—an end full of pain that he might not have wished to see, yet had to acknowledge its "logic."
Just then, Perturabo stood up abruptly from his seat, which was like an iron throne, his massive frame carrying an aura like a metallic storm.
On his iron-like face, his usual gloom was replaced by a near-furious refutation.
"Destined? Futile? Absurd! Konrad Curze, your failure lies in the fact that you gave up on calculation and construction all too early!"
His voice boomed like a battering ram striking a city wall, shattering that suffocating fatalistic tone.
He extended a thick finger, suited for gripping a forge hammer, pointing at the image of the shattered Nostramo on the screen, and seemingly at Konrad Curze's curled-up soul.
"You saw the end of the river and were content to drift with the current, even accelerating toward the waterfall yourself?"
"What cowardly logic! A true architect, upon seeing unfavorable terrain, would choose to dig canals, build dams, and divert the river!"
"Instead of sitting by the riverbank lamenting that everything is already destined!"
Perturabo's words were sharp, carrying his characteristic extreme loathing for inefficiency and surrender.
"Nostramo has rotted? Then rebuild it! With stronger materials, more rational layouts, and stricter systems!"
"Instead of blowing it to pieces just because the first construction failed, and claiming it was the arrangement of 'fate'!"
"This is merely an excuse for your inability to handle complex governance issues! You were frightened out of your wits by those visions, losing the basic courage of a builder and a ruler!"
He strode forward, his iron boots making heavy sounds against the floor, his eyes burning as he glared at Konrad Curze in the shadows.
"You claim to have seen our end? So what?! The greatest value of precognition lies in providing data."
"So that we can adjust variables, reinforce weak links, and avoid risks!"
"Instead of using prophecy as a license to lie down and do nothing like you!"
"If I knew a section of wall was destined to collapse, I would build it thicker than any other wall!"
"If I knew a siege was destined to be brutal, I would prepare ten times the necessary munitions!"
"This is the way to fight fate—using absolute rationality and unremitting effort to calculate every variable and solidify every cornerstone!"
His roar vibrated through the hall, filled with the characteristic stubbornness of an Olympian against an uncertain World.
However, after a series of intense refutations, Perturabo's voice paused unexpectedly.
On his habitually tense, hard-lined face, a very unnatural and awkward expression appeared. He seemed to be forcing himself to speak words he was extremely unaccustomed to, his tone dropping stiffly:
"As for you..." He looked at Konrad Curze, his gaze still stern, but deep down there seemed to flash a... feeling mixed with regret and unwillingness, similar to seeing a well-designed creation on the brink of collapse due to defects in the base materials.
"Obsessing over those unverifiable visions, letting yourself and your Legion become this... fragmented mess. This is not just stupidity; it is... a great waste."
He turned his head stiffly, as if the next words were hard to say, almost muttering as he added:
"If your cursed brain cannot handle real-World data, at least... at least you could come to me."
My smiths and engineers might be able to help you design a... logical framework to shield against interference, or... a more efficient model of governance."
"It's better than you rotting in the dark and blowing everything up in the end."
After finishing these extremely awkward words of "care" that hardly sounded like care at all...
Perturabo immediately, as if to hide something, sat back heavily in his seat, folded his arms, and resumed his unapproachable, gloomy demeanor, only occasionally glancing toward Konrad Curze out of the corner of his eye.