Standard Terran Year 976.M30, Day 318, 14:47.
The main doors of the Conmo Dynasty's grand hall stood fifteen meters tall, cast from a dense alloy and etched with the Imperial Aquila and the dynasty's crest.
At this moment, the doors were tightly shut. There was absolutely no sound or movement from within.
It was as if nothing existed inside at all.
But the sheer volume of viscous, almost tangible Warp energy spilling from the doorframe made it blatantly obvious that something was very wrong here.
Sanguinius halted his advance.
His psychic perception told him exactly what lay beyond the doors: nine powerful Warp entities, and a... meticulously prepared ritual.
"Father, allow me to breach first." Azkaellon stepped forward, dragging his injured left arm.
"No," Sanguinius raised a hand to stop him.
His pristine white wings unfurled completely, psychic runes flowing across every single feather.
He raised the Blade Encarmine, the tip pointed directly at the heart of the grand hall.
"If anything unexpected happens after we enter..." Sanguinius projected his voice directly into the minds of every Guardsman present. "...you are to retreat immediately, regroup with Tobias, and then..."
He paused for a fraction of a second.
"...if I have not emerged within seventy-two hours, you will withdraw all forces from the planet and execute the Crimson Protocol."
The Crimson Protocol.
Every Blood Angel knew exactly what that meant. When the Primarch was trapped in an inescapable, fatal situation, the fleet was to initiate Exterminatus, purging the entire planet with cyclonic torpedoes.
Including their own Primarch father.
"Father!" Azkaellon tried to protest.
But Sanguinius had already pushed the massive doors open and stepped inside.
The thirty Sanguinary Guard Terminators followed closely behind.
The interior space of the grand hall was vastly larger than its exterior dimensions suggested.
It was the result of Warp warping reality, stretching the internal dimensions. What used to be a two-thousand-square-meter hall now looked like a sprawling plaza, the domed ceiling rising nearly a hundred meters high.
On the floor, a massive ritual array over eighty meters in diameter was actively operating.
The array was formed from flowing blue-purple energy, behaving simultaneously like a liquid and a gas, constantly shifting its form. The sheer complexity of the geometric patterns was enough to drive any mortal insane with a single glance.
Hovering at the nine nodes of the array were nine entities. Each was entirely unique.
The one on the far left resembled a humanoid constructed from countless books, the pages constantly flipping.
Next to it was a cloud of iridescent mist, from which hundreds of eyes protruded, every single eye staring in a different direction.
The third was a polyhedron; every facet reflected a different future possibility. In some visions, Sanguinius was victorious; in others, he was torn to shreds.
The fourth bore the head of a raven, its three beaks simultaneously chanting three different incantations.
The fifth was a spinning astrolabe, the positions of the stars upon it shifting three thousand times per second.
The sixth...
The seventh...
The eighth...
The ninth.
Sanguinius's gaze locked onto the ninth entity.
It was the most humanoid in shape, but its skin was semi-transparent, revealing countless microscopic gears, levers, and clockwork mechanisms whirring within. It had no fixed facial features; its face constantly morphed between an old man, a child, a man, a woman...
These were nine Daemon Princes of Tzeentch, entities second only in power to a Greater Daemon.
Of course, Sanguinius would not call them daemons.
Under the framework of the Imperial Truth decreed by the Emperor, in Sanguinius's perception, gods and daemons did not exist in the Warp.
These were simply nine powerful, morphologically distinct Warp entities.
"Welcome, Great Angel of the Imperium of Man," nine overlapping voices echoed simultaneously, each Daemon Prince speaking in a completely different pitch. "We have been waiting for you for a very long time."
Sanguinius did not reply.
He was observing the array.
He raised the Blade Encarmine slightly, the tip pointing at the center of the array, where a sphere of hyper-compressed Warp energy pulsed.
That was the core of the trap.
"Where is Garrison Conmo?" Sanguinius finally spoke, his voice freezing cold.
"Are you looking for that pathetic avenger?" The Daemon Prince made of books let out a laugh that sounded like rustling paper. "He has completed his purpose. He lured you here. And now, he is fulfilling an even greater purpose."
The hundreds of eyes within the iridescent mist blinked simultaneously. "Are you not curious, Sanguinius? Are you not curious why we went to such great lengths to lure you to this specific location?"
Sanguinius was, of course, curious.
But logic dictated that he could not ask, could not listen, and could not think about it.
To Warp entities, words themselves were weapons. Every question was a trap, and every answer was laced with poison.
So, he chose the most straightforward approach.
He charged.
With a beat of his pristine wings, the Primarch's body became a streak of golden light, plunging straight toward the center of the array!
The Blade Encarmine was raised high, the psychic energy condensed upon the blade ionizing the air around it, sparking with fine arcs of lightning!
This strike possessed enough kinetic force to cleave through the armor plating of a battleship!
But the blade never fell.
Because the instant Sanguinius stepped within the boundary of the array, the nine Daemon Princes moved simultaneously.
By igniting their own souls, offering them entirely to the Changer of Ways, they completed the final step of the ritual.
Nine pillars of purple light erupted from their bodies, converging at the apex of the dome before refracting downward, entirely enveloping the array!
The patterns on the floor came alive!
They peeled themselves off the ground, intertwining and reconstituting in mid-air, ultimately forming a complex, constantly shifting three-dimensional cage!
Sanguinius was trapped dead in the center.
The Blade Encarmine struck the edge of the cage with a deafening metallic clang, but it only sent a single ripple across the barrier.
The cage did not budge an inch.
"It is useless, Great Angel of the Imperium."
The three beaks of the raven-headed Daemon Prince spoke simultaneously. "Your power is indeed formidable. Formidable enough that we had to burn our very souls in offering to the great Changer of Ways just to activate a cage capable of holding you! But you are not facing a contest of martial might. This is a battle of knowledge."
"Every single bar of this cage is forged from mathematical theorems and physical laws. It is a cage of absolute logic, constructed from the burning of our souls."
"To break it, you must simultaneously prove that every single one of these theorems and laws is false. Can you do that?"
"Unless you wait for our souls to burn out completely, you will never escape. Kekeke."
"Everything is according to plan. Your pride as an Imperial Angel truly did drive you straight into the cage we set for you."
Sanguinius remained silent for a moment.
"What exactly are you trying to accomplish?" he finally asked.
The Daemon Prince with countless faces answered, "We want you... to bear witness."
"Witness what?"
"Witness how Aurelian IV goes from being a mining world of the Imperium..."
All the Daemon Princes spoke in unison, their voices dripping with a deranged joy: "...to finally plunging into the Warp."
As the words fell, Sanguinius's amber-gold slit pupils flashed frantically. Fragments of visions from his precognitive abilities flooded his mind, showing him exactly what was happening right at this moment.
Deep at the bottom of the crater in the Aru Industrial Zone, the Warp rift that the Mechanicus had been repairing was being forcefully torn open by a viscous, green power—a power overflowing with the grotesque fecundity of life and rot.
That rift connected to a different domain.
An ancient, numb... and putridly bountiful domain.
Sanguinius finally understood.
Every action taken by these Warp entities—the corruption of the City of the Holy Anthem, the fall of Garrison, even the chaos sparked by the Champion raiders...
It was all bait.
It was all designed to draw the main force of the Blood Angels here, to lure him, the Primarch, personally into this trap.
And then, while everyone's attention was entirely focused on the purple corruption of the City of the Holy Anthem...
The green would surge from the depths beneath the earth.
"You actually collaborated with other heretics?" For the first time, Sanguinius's voice carried a trace of... sheer disbelief.
According to his understanding, the different energies of the Warp actively repelled one another, and different Warp entities were inherently hostile to one another.
How could they possibly collaborate?
"It is not a collaboration. It is a transaction."
The eyes within the iridescent mist blinked. "We shall offer the souls and the infinite possibilities of change on this world to the Changer of Ways. The Plague Father, in turn, shall receive the soulless husks and the rot."
"As for you, Lord Sanguinius..." The book-daemon flipped its pages. "...you shall become the witness to this transaction. You will be trapped here, forced to watch helplessly as an entire planet slides into the Warp."
"Will it cause you pain?"
"Will it make you doubt?"
"Will it make you... fall?"
The nine Daemon Princes threw their heads back and laughed, the sound resembling millions of madmen shrieking simultaneously.
Sanguinius tightened his grip on the Blade Encarmine.
He looked outside the cage. Over twenty Sanguinary Guardsmen were frantically hacking at the exterior of the barrier, but their weapons were utterly useless.
Mass-reactive bolts detonated against the purple shield without causing even a ripple.
Azkaellon hacked at the barrier with his power sword, his face twisted in absolute despair beneath his helmet.
"Father!!!!"
Sanguinius closed his eyes.
Three seconds later, he opened them.
Within those amber-gold slit pupils, all hesitation, all compassion, all the gentleness characteristic of the Great Angel... vanished completely.
All that remained was the absolute, freezing cold of a Primarch bred for war.
"Azkaellon."
His voice transmitted directly into the mind of the Guard Commander via psychic projection.
"Father! I am here!"
"Hear my command."
Sanguinius enunciated every word with absolute clarity.
"Evacuate the grand hall immediately and regroup with Tobias. Transmit a distress signal. Commit all available forces to Aurelian IV to execute absolute purification and judgment upon the Warp Entities. If the tide cannot be stemmed, and I have not broken free within seventy-two hours, then follow my previous orders. Execute the Crimson Protocol."
Azkaellon froze.
The Crimson Protocol.
It was the highest-level emergency contingency of the Blood Angels Legion, authorized for use in only one specific scenario:
When a Primarch was trapped in an inescapable, fatal situation, and the battlefield presented an Exterminatus-level threat.
The protocol demanded that the Legion use every single forbidden weapon in their arsenal at any cost, including psychic annihilation warheads, even if it meant... mutual destruction with the enemy.
"No... Father, we can still—"
"This is an order." Sanguinius's voice brooked absolutely no argument. "Tell Tobias. Tell all my sons. I, Sanguinius, Primarch of the Ninth Legion, authorize you to execute the Final Purification."
"For the Emperor."
"For humanity."
"And for... the souls we could not save."
With that, Sanguinius severed the psychic vox-link.
He turned around, facing the nine Daemon Princes, leveling the Blade Encarmine.
His pristine white wings unfurled completely, and every single feather ignited with fire.
It was the release of hyper-compressed psychic energy and the very biological essence of a Primarch.
"You wish for me to witness the fall of Aurelian IV?" Sanguinius said softly.
Then, he smiled. A smile that was divine, yet utterly, terrifyingly cold.
"Then watch closely. Watch how an Imperial Angel, the Ninth Primarch, in the face of absolute despair..."
"...tears your trap to pieces."
The psychic luminescence wreathing the Blade Encarmine began to amplify exponentially.
Outside the grand hall, Azkaellon fell to his knees, his face soaked with tears beneath his helmet.
But he forced himself to stand up, turning to face the twenty-seven remaining Guardsmen.
"All units. Fall back."
"Execute the Final Purification and Judgment upon the Warp heretics."
His voice choked, but his resolve was absolute.
Because they were Blood Angels.
Because their Primarch father had given the order.
Because to the glorious Imperium of Man, sacrifice was the greatest form of loyalty.