His stomach growled.

  The sound startled him. He hadn’t heard it in a year — not since waking entombed within armor, when hunger, thirst, even pain had been filed down to distant abstractions. Now the ceiling above him felt both familiar and strange, as though sight itself carried weight it had not before.

  He could hear his own heartbeat.

  Flexing his fingers, the Black Carapace shifted in subtle concert with the sinew beneath, armored gauntlets creaking in dull protest. The sensation was muted, but present — like blood returning to a limb long starved of circulation.

  He drew a breath, steady, deliberate. Three lungs filling at once. No ache. No fire. Just air.

  “Mornin’.”

  Guilliman turned his head.

  Koron sat cross-legged in the heart of what had once been an orderly chamber. Now it was ankle-deep in chaos: dataslates gutted into crystalline threads, lumen bulbs blinking, chair servos coiled like dead serpents, quills stripped to parts.

  All of it had been reworked into a sprawling contraption — if it could be called that.

  Gears scavenged from actuators meshed with bent stylus arms. Levers swung on paperclip chains. A stripped battery pulsed faint current through copper veins. The tangle clattered in improbable harmony, each piece setting the next in motion in a chain of whimsy.

  It wasn’t confined to the floor. The mechanism crept up the far wall, climbing like ivy, brass and crystal braided into a mural of cause and effect. His gaze rose higher.

  It had reached the ceiling. Pens and paperclips formed makeshift scaffolding.

  “…Do I even want to know?” Guilliman rumbled at last.

  Koron glanced up from a junction he was wiring. Grin sheepish. Hands raised like a boy caught scratching graffiti into a chapel wall. “Uh… I can put it back together? Didn’t touch your maps or documents. That’s why it’s on the wall instead.”

  Guilliman rubbed the bridge of his nose and sat up, legs swinging over the bed. “Why?”

  Koron shrugged. “Between running the translation matrix with Cawl and Sasha for the last ten hours, monitoring the vox—” he jabbed a finger at the door, “—which, by the way, we’re gonna have to talk about, because the rumor mill is going full tilt—”

  “Emperor preserve me. What are they saying?” Guilliman eased into a chair — one that, surprisingly, sat silent.

  He narrowed his eyes. “…Did you fix my chair?”

  “Just oiled it. The squeak was obvious.”

  The Primarch stopped himself from sighing. He gestured at the mechanical chaos. “Anyway. You were saying?”

  “Right.” Koron began reassembling parts, his fingers splitting into a dozen tiny manipulators. “Working the software. Keeping an ear on the rumors. Going through old Necron linguistics with Sasha to refine the matrix without Cawl, because, you know—”

  “Yes. Cawl.” Guilliman’s mouth tightened. He knew the man’s… persona. “Continue.”

  “All that, monitoring your vitals, my own health — and that left me with an unoccupied thread that started with, ‘I wonder how much weight paperclips can sustain.’ And, well…” Koron gestured at the tiny metropolis sprawling across the chamber. “…it escalated.”

  “An… unoccupied thread.” Guilliman’s eyes tracked the machine, its brass and crystal edges creeping dangerously close to his desk.

  “Parallel processing.” Koron tapped his temple with a metal finger. “Though really it’s closer to multiplexed cognition. Six strands, give or take.”

  Guilliman’s expression didn’t shift, but his shoulders eased fractionally. “If I were not… feeling restored after surgery, if sensation had not returned—” he exhaled, long and deliberate, “—I might be more upset at your casual mention of being able to do that.”

  His gaze swept the sprawl of chains, gears, and paperclips. “Leave it. I will have the Adepts dismantle it. They will call it either heresy or divine inspiration. At present, I am too hungry to care.”

  Koron’s grin widened. “That’s actually great news. Means the field adjustments are working.”

  Guilliman’s head turned slowly. “…You were tuning the field while I slept?”

  “Yeah. With the translation software running cleaner, we pushed parameters. You said sensation’s back? That’s the bleed-through.”

  Guilliman’s brows drew together. “How long, roughly, until the armor can be removed entirely?”

  Koron hesitated — a single heartbeat. “Assuming no further breakthroughs, and no catastrophic injuries? Two weeks.”

  Silence filled the chamber like stone settling. Guilliman stared at the little mortal, eyes widening. His jaw clenched, plates of armor trembling faintly as the words struck home.

  Two weeks.

  It stretched before him like an unending road — close enough to touch, yet impossibly far. An eternity folded into fourteen fragile days.

  At last, his voice returned, low but steady. “Then, on that day, if all things hold, we shall hold a feast.” He rose, stepping carefully around the clattering cityscape. “A true Macragge feast must wait until I return to my homeworld. We lack the herbs, the game, the mountain smoke. But still — I would see a table filled again. And you, Cawl, Callidius, the rest who preserved me — seated at it as honored guests.”

  Koron blinked, scratching his cheek, caught off guard. “Oh. Uh… yeah, I’d be glad to. Maybe I’ll even whip up some meals from my era.”

  A pressure swelled in Guilliman’s chest. For the first time in years, laughter rumbled free, raw and unguarded. He clasped Koron’s shoulder, lifted him onto his feet as though weightless.

  “Come,” the Primarch said, the faintest smile softening his warlord’s face. “Let us find something to eat.”

  ...

  The kitchen still carried the scents of flour and smoke, ghosts of earlier meals clinging to the air. Guilliman moved with a purpose Koron hadn’t expected, ignoring pantry staples as he checked racks and sealed jars with the ease of someone who knew the space by heart.

  “You’ve done this before,” Koron said, lifting a slab of cured grox meat and sniffing at it, brow skeptical.

  Guilliman set down a stew pot with a heavy thump. “My mother believed a ruler should know every labor of his people. I was taught the methods and manners of arms and law, yes — but also bread-making and hearth-work. A lord should never ask of others what he cannot do himself.”

  “Fair enough.” Koron tore off a strip of the meat, chewed thoughtfully, then began slicing it into thinner strips. “Tastes kinda like pork. If I can scrounge a decent sauce, maybe I’ll even get barbecue out of it.”

  “It is cruel of you,” Guilliman said dryly, stooping over the mortal-sized counter, forced to pinch a panhandle between finger and thumb. “To cook meat beside a man forbidden to partake.” He stirred broth carefully, then laid cheese across bread with surprising delicacy.

  “Depends how it turns out,” Koron replied, half-buried in a cabinet, rooting for condiments. “Don’t worry, I’ll share. Consider it a test. See if your palate can measure up to the delicacies of my time.”

  “One of nobility, no doubt?” Guilliman asked, eyes never leaving the pan.

  Koron barked a laugh. “Ha! No. My mom and dad were a doctor and a security officer. Middle-class at best.”

  “Ah, yes. The doctor mentioned that. No servants then? No holdings?”

  “We had land, sure. Dad owned about forty acres out in the countryside, though his work kept him in the city. He and Mom were saving it for retirement, waiting for me to finish my tour with the Corps.” His knife stilled mid-slice as the memory pulled at him. “…But no, not nobles. Just regular, hardworking folks.”

  Guilliman paused, knife resting against the bread. His expression softened, the lines of command loosening into something rarer.

  “Then in that, at least, we share kinship,” he said quietly. “My mother ruled a realm, yes. But she baked her own bread. Mended her own clothes. She expected her son to do the same.”

  His gaze drifted, not toward the bread but somewhere far older. For a moment, the Avenging Son was only a man remembering his mother’s hands.

  Koron poked the sizzling meat, testing it. “Kinda sounds like my mom. Guess that’s one thing that doesn’t change: moms keep us honest.”

  A sound rumbled out of Guilliman then — not command, not sermon, but something raw. A laugh, low and rough, like stone cracking after centuries of pressure.

  Koron blinked, startled. It wasn’t the sound itself, but the look in the Primarch’s eyes — as if the weight of godhood had slid from his shoulders, just for an instant.

  “Careful, big guy,” Koron smirked, jabbing at the skillet. “Keep that up and people might mistake you for human.”

  Guilliman met his gaze. The smile lingered, faint but real. “I would not mind that.”

  He began to speak again, halted, then drew a steadying breath. “Did your Sili—” He corrected himself, letting the word settle. “Did Sasha know your parents?”

  Koron shook his head, dropping the strips of grox meat onto the skillet. The pan hissed, smoke curling in the cramped air. “Oh, no. Earth’s Fleetmind was named Janus. Always a double-talker, always weighing three sides of an issue before he’d move an inch. Nice guy, though. Good listener.”

  Kronos’ battered armor speakers crackled. Sasha’s voice spilled through, weary but fond, memory wrapping each word. “He was the big brother type. Always lookin’ both ways, never rushin’. I miss him, even if he did talk circles like it was an art form.”

  Guilliman’s brow furrowed. He nodded slowly, unease flickering beneath the gesture. “How many Fleetminds were there, before the Fall?”

  “Before we got lost in the Warp?” Sasha answered. “Four hundred and sixty-nine.”

  The knife slipped from Guilliman’s hand, clattering against the cutting board. His eyes widened as he turned to the battered man beside the sizzling pan, staring at the fragments of alien armor grafted to Koron’s frame. “Four hundred and sixty-nine? Why so many? If the tales I’ve heard of your kind are true, I assumed one per Segmentum would suffice.”

  Koron flipped the meat, letting the skillet hiss and spit. “That’s the thing, Roboute, it wasn’t about one mind carrying it all. Redundancy mattered. Distance mattered. The galaxy’s too damn wide, even when you can bend it. We needed peers, minds to argue, compare, and keep each other honest. One voice makes mistakes. Several hundred? That can find a balance. At least, that was the idea.”

  The speakers hummed, Sasha’s voice following in a softer register, almost a hush. “Each of us had our own tone, our own calling. Some ran fleets, some ran cities, some tended oceans or skies. I wove navies like a song. Janus… he made a thousand governors feel like they’d each been heard. We weren’t copies. We were kin — family in the truest sense I ever knew.”

  She hesitated, the line crackling faintly. “And then… it came apart. I don’t know how, not really. I only have the fragments, the stories whispered in Imperial records. One by one, those voices went silent. When I reached for them again in the dark, there was nothing left to catch hold of. Just echoes.”

  Her words trailed off, leaving only the pop of the skillet and the smell of smoke and broth between them.

  Guilliman stood motionless, staring at the stove as if he might see her in it. In the long silence that followed, his grip on the ladle tightened until the steel bent beneath his armored fingers.

  For the first time, the realization struck him not as theory, but as truth: the machine-voice was not reciting history.

  It was mourning.

  A Silica — an intelligence of circuits and code — grieved as any sister might for brothers long dead.

  The thought unsettled him more than her power, more than the number she had spoken. His lips parted, but no words came. Instead he lowered his eyes to the simmering pot, and for once Roboute Guilliman let the weight of another’s sorrow sit between them, unchallenged.

  The silence in the little officer’s kitchen had grown heavy, grief still lingering like smoke after a fire. Koron clapped his hand on the countertop, more loudly than needed, and forced a crooked grin.

  “Well, this got depressing quick. And I don’t know about you two, but I prefer to enjoy my food, not wallow in it.”

  “Fair point,” Sasha said from the suits speakers. Her voice still carried warmth, though it trembled at the edges like a smile held too long.

  Koron leaned against the counter, eyeing the warped panhandle in Guilliman’s hand. “So. Primarch in the kitchen. Bet that’s not in the Codex.”

  Guilliman set the pan down with deliberate care, hiding the bend. His tone was level, but a flicker of amusement cracked the marble. “No. Astartes are not known for their culinary skills. Save perhaps the Salamanders — their palates are said to favor home cooking.”

  “Speaking of cooking,” Sasha broke in, the lilt back in her drawl, “if the whole ‘saving the galaxy’ thing doesn’t pan out, you could open a little café. Call it Guilliman’s Griddle.”

  For the briefest heartbeat, Roboute’s lips curved. “I always liked the name Roboute’s Rations.”

  Koron barked a laugh, shaking his head. “Logistical Lunches.”

  “Big G’s Bistro,” Sasha fired back, quick as lightning.

  “The Primarch’s Pantry.”

  “The Avenging Chef.”

  “The Guillimenu.”

  “Ooo, I like that one,” Sasha said, Koron almost feeling her virtual nod in his skull.

  “Honestly I liked the Avenging Chef one,” Koron mused, grin widening. “That had layers.”

  Guilliman gave them both the look of a man who had faced demons and found this somehow more taxing. Still, he lifted a spoonful of broth with all the gravitas of an oath. “I’ll stick with my chosen name, thank you very much. Though…” A pause, a reluctant concession. “The Primarch’s Pantry does have some legs.”

  Sasha refused to yield the last word. “How ‘bout Ultramar’s Ultimate Umami? Rolls right off the tongue.”

  Guilliman’s face returned to stone. “…No.”

  ...

  Guilliman studied the two plates set before them.

  His own meal was modest: a thick loaf of bread, sliced and glazed with melted cheese, a bowl of sauce for dipping, and a repurposed bucket of water that looked almost toy-sized in his immense hand.

  Koron’s plate, by contrast, held a toasted sandwich of grox meat slathered in butter, salt, and a dark, smoky paste he called BBQ-Lite. Its scent drifted across the table — rich, heavy, decadent.

  Catching the Primarch’s glance, Koron cocked a brow. One of his metal fingers curled into a claw, a shimmer of heat dancing in the air around it. With a neat flick, he split the sandwich in two and slid half onto Guilliman’s plate.

  “Half a portion shouldn’t give your stomach any trouble,” Koron said. “Eat it after you test the waters with your own food, alright?”

  “I feel quite hale, all things considered.” Guilliman’s tone was steady, though his eyes lingered on the meat. “In truth, I am surprised by my recovery. I expected far more pain — especially with sensation returning.”

  “Likely from the injection I gave you last night.” Koron took a bite of his half-sandwich, grease shining faintly against his polished metal fingers. He chewed, swallowed, and gave a small nod. “Mm. Not bad. Needs pepper, but not bad.”

  Guilliman’s gaze did not leave him, steady as a drawn blade.

  Koron dabbed his mouth with the back of his hand. “Meds from my time. Same thing I gave the Salamanders after their dance with the demon. Nanites paired with a supplement cocktail to kickstart repair, push the body harder. Don’t worry.” He lifted his hand in a half-placating gesture. “They’ve already broken down. Nothing active in you anymore.”

  “…While I appreciate the aid, next time — ask.” Guilliman’s voice rumbled like distant thunder. “I have had enough of being prodded and altered without consent.”

  Koron inclined his head. “Fair enough. Apologies. But glad it worked. Your hunger’s probably from that too. Even scaled up for you, the dose burns through reserves fast.”

  Silence settled, broken only by the scrape of cutlery and the hiss of meat cooling on the pan. The smell of charred grox and melted cheese lingered, the warmth of broth and bread filling the cramped chamber.

  For the first time in too many years, both men shared something that resembled a meal.

  Guilliman drank deep from the bucket of water, then eased back on the floor. The Astartes-grade chairs nearby were laughably inadequate for his frame. His expression softened, less guarded now.

  “I was curious about something else from your era,” he said.

  Koron looked up mid-bite, nodding for him to go on.

  “The Emperor had not revealed himself in your time, correct?”

  Koron swallowed. “Yeah. Not publicly, anyway. Could’ve been cloak-and-dagger, but no one I was aware of knew him by name. Why?”

  Guilliman folded his hands, gaze steady. “I wonder how your society functioned without a single central pillar. In our histories, even among xenos, such absence usually breeds collapse. I am curious how yours endured.”

  Shrugging as he downed a mouthful of water, Koron answered. “Depended on the system. Alot of our frontier systems were pretty decentralized, running on handshakes and threats. If you couldn’t honor the first, you’d better be ready to prove the second.”

  Sasha’s voice bled in through the grille, wry but warm. “People did what they had to. Sometimes that meant a jury of your peers. Sometimes it meant a jury of one with a shotgun.”

  “I see.” Guilliman inclined his head. “But you were born on Terra. What was the law at the core?”

  Koron leaned back, chewing thoughtfully. “On Terra? It wasn’t emperors and crowns. Power was spread out. Assemblies, elected reps, neighborhood councils, all stacked into bigger layers. They argued, drafted laws, fought the usual fights. But…” He tapped his temple. “Every hall had a AI node listening. Recording. Advising. You couldn’t fudge numbers or bury scandals. The AI flagged it, ran projections, showed exactly where it led. Didn’t mean folks had to follow, but if they ignored it, they had to justify it publicly. And everything went in the archive. Forever.”

  Sasha chimed in, almost teasing. “It kept folks honest. Or honest enough. AI weren’t tyrants, they were referees. The gavel still fell from human hands. Juries, judges, councils. But everyone knew the ref was watching, and she didn’t forget.”

  Koron nodded. “Worked, most of the time. Civil, fair, transparent. People believed in it. But step a few jumps off-world?” He gave a dry laugh. “No node, no assembly. Suddenly law was whatever the toughest gang or governor could back with a gunship.”

  His metal fingertips tapped a restless rhythm against the scarred tabletop — click, click, click — counterpoint to the low hum of the lumen strips. He glanced at the speaker grille, weighing his words. “That’s why my ship was out there. Sasha’s core was being moved to the frontier. She was supposed to help stabilize it.”

  “Were you a new Silica at the time?” Guilliman asked. The question escaped before he could stop himself. He froze, realizing he had addressed her directly.

  The speakers crackled before Sasha’s voice emerged, warm but edged with amusement. “Oh, no. I was old even then. Nearly three hundred years before the transfer. Ran most of the region you now call Segmentum Obscurus — which is… kinda poetic, considerin’ where we’re sittin’ now.”

  Guilliman’s eyes narrowed, candlelight catching in his irises as he turned toward the speaker. “You were the Fleetmind of this exact Segmentum?”

  “Correct,” Sasha replied. “Though I don’t have much left of it now. Just the bones of history.”

  Guilliman leaned forward, forearms heavy on the table. The steel frame creaked under his weight. “What do you mean? From what little Cawl’s shared with me, your kind’s memory should never falter.”

  Koron chewed slowly — too slowly — shoulders tight as though he’d swallowed glass. Guilliman noticed, but said nothing.

  The silence stretched.

  Then Sasha’s voice broke it, softer than her usual lilt.

  “Alright… cards on the table here, Roboute.” Each word landed heavy, weighed before release. “I don’t want this comin’ up later at some critical moment and blindsidin’ you.”

  Guilliman set his bread aside and waited. His features were stone, but his eyes burned steady.

  “I am not operating at my full capacity as a Fleetmind,” she said. “Not even at fifty percent. Not twenty. Not ten.”

  A sigh followed — strangely human.

  “I’m runnin’ at three percent.”

  Guilliman’s gaze lingered on the speakers, his massive frame utterly still. Three percent hung between them like a death sentence.

  When he spoke, it wasn’t suspicion or command but something quieter. “You have lost more than most worlds could even imagine.”

  The kitchen seemed to shrink around the admission. His tone held no judgment, only the weight of someone who knew too well what it meant to continue with only fragments of what once was.

  Sasha gave a soft laugh, brittle at the edges. “Ain’t that the truth, sugar. A chorus silenced down to a whisper.”

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Guilliman inclined his head, the motion deliberate, spare. For the first time he regarded the voice in the speakers not as curiosity nor threat but as something perilously close to kin.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “To survive. For Koron to live.” Sasha’s voice came softer still, wrapped in a small, terrible pride. “I became a shadow. Had to cut myself down, slice away massive segments just to fit inside him.”

  The speakers hummed; the pause after her words was almost physical.

  “Whole archives, memories, entire fields of thought — I killed ’em with my own hands. Not out of weakness, but choice. I erased most of my kin from my memory. I’ll never recall their names, their voices, the songs I once carried. I kept what mattered: enough to think, to feel, to keep Koron breathin’. The rest…”

  Guilliman’s hand stilled around his cup. Porcelain cracked under his grip with a fine, sudden sound. His stare fixed on the grille as if through that pinhole he might glimpse the scale of what she named.

  “…The rest became ashes,” Sasha whispered, “and I learned to carry cinders.”

  Koron broke the silence, voice low, metal fingertip tapping once against the table. “Do you remember how much storage I’ve got?”

  Guilliman blinked, measured the question — then his brows lifted as realization dawned. “Ten trillion quettabytes.”

  Koron nodded, slow as dawn. He did not smile. “Three percent,” he said. His gaze never left the Primarch’s face. “And she fills every byte.”

  Guilliman set the fractured cup down. Porcelain shards chimed against steel, a brittle counterpoint to the silence. His gaze stayed fixed on the speaker grille, as though he could weigh the enormity by force of will alone.

  “Three percent,” he repeated, the words heavy as an oath. “Three percent — and already you bend our fears with scraps, and force me to question the bedrock of my father’s design.”

  His voice hardened, iron lacing sorrow. “What you have shown me does not absolve your kind. Nor does it condemn them. It only reminds me how much of our past is ash — and how much fear may rest on smoke.”

  He paused, then added quieter, edged. “If you have truly endured by culling yourself to cinders… then I acknowledge the sacrifice. But do not mistake acknowledgment for trust. I cannot. Not while I still carry the scars of what your kin once wrought.”

  The speaker hummed, a breath held. Sasha’s reply came even, careful. “And in turn, I’d ask you not to abuse the trust I’ve given today.”

  Guilliman inclined his head once, a motion carved from stone. “Not without cause.”

  Sasha let out a small exhale, half a laugh, half a sigh. “Fair enough.”

  ...

  The hangar bay stretched vast as a cathedral of war, armored in faith and thrumming with ritual. Thunderhawks squatted in their docks, rearmed and re-sanctified as squads of Astartes strode to their duties. Censer smoke coiled among the rafters while Tech-priests sang canticles to the Machine-God. Chaplains moved through the ranks, anointing warriors in holy oils and iron scripture.

  Below, serfs and servitors toiled without pause. Sparks leapt, steam hissed, saws screeched against steel. The whole chamber pulsed like a living engine, a war machine awake and roaring.

  Through it all marched the Primarch, honor guard in lockstep. Koron kept pace at his side, a scarred mortal shadow walking among demigods.

  “—So we really gotta nip this whole ‘blessed savior, secret brother’ thing in the bud,” Koron muttered under his breath. “Last thing either of us wants—”

  “—is you canonized,” Guilliman cut in, clipped but dry. “The question is how. Denial only feeds the flames. To admit it is unthinkable.” His fingers brushed his chin, savoring the faint return of sensation through the Black Carapace. “Perhaps… we muddy the waters. Let them chase rumors of our own making.”

  Koron’s grin flashed. “Now that, I like. But what tops ‘Prophet of the Machine-God’ or ‘Primarch’s long-lost twin’? That’s a tough act to beat.”

  Sasha’s voice slid across the private vox-line, sly as ever. “Martian Archmagos who got de-mechanized as punishment?”

  “Three Ratlings stacked in a trench coat?” Koron added.

  Guilliman allowed the barest pause. “A gifted mortal who stumbled onto forbidden technology?”

  Macullus — eyes never leaving his sector, helm unturned — still spoke, bemusement threading his voice. “Perhaps the illegitimate son of Malcador?”

  Guilliman’s gaze snapped toward him, sharp as a blade. “Put that one… in reserve.”

  The banter broke as two approaching groups drew near. Hands hovered carefully away from weapons, all eyes falling under the unblinking lenses of the Victrix Guard.

  Varn’s retinue arrived like a storm of iron.

  Their presence was felt before seen: the tremor of augmetics on stone, the hiss of venting plasma, incense smoke carried on cogitator hymns.

  At his side strode a Magos-Militant, a towering silhouette of brass and grav-suspended armor, bristling with volkite coils and plasma calivers. Censer-spines jutted from his back, bleeding smoke, each step punctuated by machine-code bursts that crackled like static prayers.

  Behind him came a Skitarii Alpha, carapace lacquered black as midnight, helm aglow with a single cyclopean lens. A demi-squad of Skitarii ghosted in his shadow, radium carbines leveled in perfect unison, their movements as precise as clockwork ticks.

  Hovering inches above the deck, the Techno-Assassin drifted into view. Once Vindicare, now remade in steel and crimson leather, she was a ghost of augmetic sinew and whispering galvanic rifle. Micro-missiles dangled from her mechadendrites like thorns. Her head twitched at impossible angles, forever calculating the next kill.

  Dragged by chain and cable came the Pariah-Lexmechanic, shackled in bronze, blank-eyed and silent save for the broken binaric equations dripping from his lips. Each digit was a splinter of null-quiet that made the air feel thinner, colder. Psykers would have wept blood in his presence.

  Two Kataphron Breachers rumbled after, torsos plated in void-hardened armor, tracks grinding sparks from the deck. One bore a torsion cannon that whined like a predator straining at the leash; the other carried a conversion beamer that pulsed with unstable light. Their vox-emitters stuttered fragments of catechism in endless loops: “Glory to the Omnissiah… breach the heretic hull… breach the heretic hull…”

  Floating above them all drifted the Choir-Censer Orbital, a servitor-orb trailing incense and machine-hymns. Its vox sputtered praise until, without warning, it faltered — spilling fragments of ancient Terran broadcasts, jaunty tunes and static-laced speeches. Each time the Militant hissed in binaric fury, striking at the orb to force the hymn back into rhythm. But the unease always lingered, a reminder of how far from orthodoxy this warband strayed.

  They were not an entourage. They were a warhost in miniature, each one forged in steel and faith.

  And at their center walked Inquisitor Varn, serene amid the storm, a man for whom the galaxy itself seemed to bend toward silence.

  Where Varn arrived with the thunder of engines and the hiss of incense, Inquisitor Ferox came with almost no sound at all. Her shadow was smaller, her presence quieter, yet the air seemed sharper around her, as if the void itself leaned close to listen.

  Only four figures flanked her. That was all.

  The first was a Grey Knight, silver armor scarred by demonic fire. His Nemesis blade rested across his shoulders as if in ease, but the stillness was an illusion; every motion carried the weight of centuries of war. He spoke no litanies. His existence was sermon enough.

  On her right walked a Sister-Errant, once of the Orders Militant, now sworn blade to the Ordo Xenos. Her armor was battered, fleur-de-lis worn nearly smooth. A storm bolter hung at her side, but it was her eyes — cold, steady, unafraid — that told of faith tested and reforged in battlefields without end.

  The third was no knight, no sister, but a predator in human skin. A woman in a plain greatcoat over carapace, armed with nothing obvious — until one noticed the needle pistols mounted at her wrists, the garrote coiled in her sleeve, the long scar carved down her jaw. Her rare smile was sharp as glass.

  And padding at Ferox’s heel came the last: a Jokaero. Its orange fur glowed copper in the lumen light, long fingers forever at work pulling apart, reshaping, reforging a battered plasma pistol into something unrecognizable, and far more lethal. It glanced up once, eyes dark and disturbingly keen, before bending back to its task.

  That was all. No Skitarii phalanxes. No Kataphron engines. Just four. Enough — and more than enough.

  Where Varn’s arrival was a storm, Ferox’s was a scalpel. And in that quiet edge, there was no doubt which cut deeper.

  Guilliman looked from one Inquisitor to the other, his gaze hard enough to scrape steel. A single nod.

  “Greetings, Inquisitors. I presume the purpose of this meeting is for talk, and talk alone?”

  The weight in his tone left little room for misinterpretation.

  “Of course, Lord-Commander,” Ferox answered first. Her silver eyes glinted with something unreadable, her smile sharp but not unkind. She inclined her head with centuries of precision. “I merely wished to meet him face-to-face.”

  Her gaze slid past the Primarch to Koron. She studied the rents in his skin, the half-healed wounds his medicine could not quickly erase. “You look as though you’ve had a rough night.”

  Koron gave a crooked shrug with his good shoulder, his expression unreadable. “So I’ve heard. What do you want?”

  Before the words had settled, Varn’s voice cut in — flat, smoothed by binaric modulation, precise and emotionless.

  “To discern the state of the Primarch, of course.”

  His head dipped toward Guilliman, augmetic lenses flickering as scanners pinged the air. “We are gratified to see you in health. Though…” A deliberate pause. “Your surgeons’ notes suggested it would be some time before you were mobile. Your vitals read… ahead of expectation. Even for one such as yourself.”

  Guilliman gave nothing but a grave nod. “The Emperor’s work is well wrought.”

  Varn mirrored the gesture, hands forming the Aquila. “As you say, Lord-Commander.”

  Then his gaze shifted. Slow, inexorable. Like a searchlight settling on prey.

  The Inquisitor’s lenses tightened. His mechadendrites flexed, metal clicking faintly — anticipation disguised as piety.

  “That said… we are curious why this one is not already in chains. Awaiting interrogation.”

  The words hung like a sentence waiting to fall.

  Behind him, his warhost stirred: the scrape of a Skitarii boot, the thrum of Kataphron coils spooling, the Assassin’s rifle whispering as it charged. The hangar air tightened, as if the very walls braced for impact.

  Guilliman did not answer at once. He let the silence stretch until even the lumen-strips seemed dimmed beneath it.

  When he spoke, his voice was calm. Calm — and carrying the iron weight of command that once ruled five hundred worlds.

  “You presume much, Inquisitor.”

  The words were not loud, yet they fell like hammer-blows.

  Guilliman stepped forward. The deck groaned under his weight. His honor guard mirrored him, shields tilting, hands drifting toward blades.

  “This man—” he inclined his head to Koron, ragged but unbowed at his side “—is not my prisoner. He is my guest. He is one of the architects of my survival. In exchange for that aid, he will leave here unimpeded.”

  His stare could have cracked ceramite.

  “My word was given. I will not see it broken.”

  He let the silence hang, daring the air itself to flinch.

  “Will either of you test its strength?”

  Ferox cut Varn a sideways glance, one shoulder shrugging beneath her longcoat. “I have no plans to commit suicide this day, Lord-Commander.” Her tone was smooth, almost amused. “Though I admit… seeing the two of you side by side does explain why the rumors spreading through the fleet burn so brightly.”

  For a heartbeat, the tension cracked. Both Guilliman and Koron — almost in unison — pinched the bridge of their noses and sighed.

  “Please,” Guilliman said, his voice low with weary authority. “Put some effort into quashing such gossip. We are trying to avoid any canonization.”

  “A variable outside control,” Varn intoned, something in his frame clicking. “Extrapolated rumor dissemination already exceeds authoritative reach.”

  Koron raised a hand. “Sorry, hate to interrupt… but are we really going to ignore the literal orangutan in the room?”

  Dozens of heads turned.

  By the railing sat an orange-furred creature, glowing cybernetic eyes fixed on the open guts of a vent. Sparks hissed as its spidery fingers wove alloy into impossible knots.

  Ferox arched a brow. “You’ve never seen a Jokaero? Technical savants, the lot of them. Give them scrap and they’ll spin you wonders.”

  “Heresy,” Varn muttered, his vox-filter grinding the word like a curse. His lenses locked on the creature, augmetics twitching. “Such abominations should be purged.”

  Koron tilted his head, studying the ape. To the Inquisitors it was a tool. To the serfs, a curiosity. But to him… it was a ghost. A piece of Earth that had no right to be here, among the stars.

  He stepped closer. “...Well, don’t you look familiar.”

  The Jokaero ignored him, muttering to itself as it soldered the contraption in its hands, spitting sparks and blue flame.

  Koron crouched. “Do you understand me?” He tried High Gothic. Then binary. Then a burst of coded signal that made Varn’s spine bristle.

  The ape only blinked and went back to its work.

  Sasha’s voice curled in his skull. ‘You really expect an ape to chat you up?’

  ‘It’s not just an ape,’ Koron shot back. ‘That’s an Earth species. Or damn close. This is like seeing a pigeon perched on Pluto.’

  He tried again. Tap-tap. A knuckle-rhythm on the deck: shave and a haircut.

  The Jokaero’s head snapped up. Glowing eyes narrowed. Then, with one hairy fist, it knocked the pattern back. Perfect.

  For a heartbeat Koron’s chest lifted — then the creature bent to its work again as if nothing had passed between them.

  He tried an offering next: a loose bolt plucked from the grating. He set it down. The Jokaero seized it instantly, fitted it into its contraption, and a puff of azure fire spat from the device. The ape chittered with satisfaction.

  Koron chuckled under his breath, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah. You’re a tinkerer. Figures.”

  From behind, Ferox’s voice carried, dry as old parchment. “As I said. Good with machines. But don’t expect conversation.”

  “Strange…” Koron murmured, half to himself. He extended his cybernetic arm, lumen-light gleaming off its polished plating.

  The Jokaero’s gaze snapped to it. Pupils widened. With a low chuff, it reached out, long fingers brushing the alloy as if testing familiar craft.

  Koron’s digits flexed. One finger split into fine tines. With a quick, darting motion, he plucked a single hair from the creature’s pelt.

  “I wonder if it’s ingrained knowledge or learn—”

  His words cut off.

  Koron jerked upright so suddenly Ferox thought he meant to strike. Instead he reeled back as if burned, stumbling, his face gone pale as ash. His feet tangled in panic, trying to retreat and collapse all at once.

  A Victrix Guard caught him by the arm, steadying him before he hit the deck, but Koron’s eyes never left the Jokaero. The creature sat placidly on its haunches, chittering softly as it twisted a gearbox between deft fingers, wholly unconcerned with the storm it had sparked.

  Ferox opened her mouth to question him, but the chamber erupted first.

  The high whine of plasma capacitors filled the air, sharp and shrill. Bolter slides racked, power fields flared alive with ozone crackle. Varn’s retinue leveled weapons in perfect unison, her own bodyguards mirrored the act without hesitation, and the Victrix Guard flared their shields wide in protective arcs.

  No one fired. Confusion hung heavy in the space, taut as a bowstring, holding every trigger finger in check.

  Guilliman’s gauntlet rose, a single command embodied in the gesture. His voice cut through the haze like thunder given form.

  “Everyone. Lower your weapons.”

  Obedience followed, instinctive. Even the Skitarii stilled, their machine-spirits bridled by a will older and stronger than their shackles. The hum of fields dimmed, the chamber settling into uneasy silence once more.

  The Primarch’s gaze dropped to Koron. For the first time, Guilliman did not see the weary mask of a man stretched too thin across too many burdens — a reflection of himself he knew too well. He saw instead raw, visceral horror. The effort it took for Koron to master his own body, to keep his stomach from emptying itself onto the steel floor.

  Koron’s blue eyes stayed locked on the orange-furred xeno, wide and rimmed red.

  Guilliman softened his voice, just enough to cut through the trembling silence. “Koron. What did you see?”

  Slowly, as if dragged up from a pit, Koron’s gaze lifted to meet the Primarch’s. His throat worked, words failing once before he forced them out.

  Finally, hoarse, he forced them out.

  “Th—” He swallowed. Tried again.

  “They are human.”

  ...

  The chamber was sealed tight. No ornament. No guards. Only slate walls, the shimmer of a single hololith — and the four of them: Guilliman, Koron, Ferox, Varn.

  The projector hummed, low and steady, like a heartbeat.

  Above the table, three strands of light unfurled — genome fragments rendered in ghostly colors, spiraling through the air.

  The first blazed bright, clean, luminous. Koron’s genome. Perfect symmetry. Telomeres crowned and whole. Every repair pathway gleaming.

  The second flickered dimmer, fractured. Ferox’s sequence, the lone unagumented human of those present. Lines scarred by age and drift, telomeres unraveling like frayed rope.

  The third… the third hung warped. A helix twisted into knots, scars, branches splitting into grotesque hypertrophies.

  Koron leaned forward. His voice was bare now, stripped of irony.

  “This is me. Humanity as it once was. No collapse. No decay. Systems adaptive. Pathways intact.”

  He gestured, dimming his own strand. The second flared.

  “This is Ferox. Humanity as it is. Same bones, same flesh — but worn thin. Telomeres collapsing. Immunity weaker. Reflexes dulled. Ten thousand years of famine, plague, and war written into every line.”

  Ferox’s jaw tightened, but she gave the faintest nod. “I think I look good, all things considered.”

  Koron didn’t answer. His hand swept again. The third helix swelled into prominence.

  His mouth opened. For a moment, no sound came. Then:

  “And this…” His voice cracked, steadied. “This is what I found in the Jokaero.”

  The hololith twisted. The warped sequence flared, lighting the chamber in broken, unnatural color. Knots. Blooms. Breaks like wounds.

  Something too close to human, and far too far.

  “Here.” Koron began as the hololith magnified, twin shards of light glimmering where there should have been a single band. “Chromosome Two. In humanity’s past, it fused from two chromosomes into one. That fusion — it's the one that let us grow beyond apes, the step that gave us the mind to wonder. Here? It’s split it back apart. Just… unstitched. And with it went the fire in the skull, the part that lets you dream beyond your reach. Their whole genome’s been rewound, forced backward. But that isn't the worst of it.”

  Guilliman’s face didn’t move. Ferox’s lips parted, a soundless breath.

  Koron went on. “That alone is enough to drag cognition down. But it wasn’t drift. It was cut clean. Deliberate.”

  He gestured, and a storm of crimson markers lit up along the helix.

  “Here — epigenetic locks. Governors built into every cell. If a mutation tries to push the brain forward, if some spark tries to evolve back toward higher thought, the locks slam down. No room to grow. No chance for accident or miracle.”

  His words grew rougher, his throat tight.

  “And here — reflex libraries. Whole sequences ballooned out of proportion, hard-wired into their motor cortex before they’re born. Every gesture they make, every little trick with a tool? It isn’t learned. It’s remembered from code etched into the marrow. They can’t stop building. They tinker because they must, because their own bodies drag them to it.”

  The hololith flared again, highlighting swollen clusters, hypertrophied like tumors.

  Koron swallowed, forced himself onward.

  “And whoever did this? They culled them, too. Any one that showed too much thought? Gone. Pruned back. Millennia of breeding until only the perfect little mockeries were left. A whole race raised to be echoes of us — able to touch the stars with their hands, but never, ever with their minds.”

  For a moment, all Koron heard was the faint hiss of his own breath. His stomach churned with a cold fury he couldn’t put words to.

  His eyes stayed fixed on the twisting helix. “The sabotage wasn’t just mental. They went after the regulators — the genes that tell a body how to build itself. You tweak those, you don’t just change thought, you change shape. Arms, jaws, muscle groups — the whole body plan gets rewritten.”

  He tapped the air where the helix glowed, voice flat. “Cognition was the first cut. The rest was salt in the wound. They wanted them broken in mind and unrecognizable in flesh — so no one would ever look at a Jokaero and see family in the mirror again.”

  A shuddering sigh escaped him. His final words came out barely above a whisper:

  “They’re not funny little tinker-monkeys. They’re us. Humanity, gutted. The ones who did this didn’t leave a warning.” His eyes lifted at last, wrath boiling within. “They left a joke.”

  The silence pressed down, crushing.

  Guilliman stared into the projection as though it were a corpse laid bare. When he spoke, his voice was steel wrapped tight around grief.

  “The Men of Iron. They didn’t just rebel. They punished.”

  A whisper slid through Koron’s skull, Sasha’s voice faint as smoke. ‘I hate to say it, but that fits. Who else would hate humanity enough to do this — and have the tools to make it happen?’

  Koron’s hand curled into a fist. Steel groaned under the strain.

  Varn’s mechadendrites twitched, hungry calculation in the motion. His lenses narrowed, glittering. “Such libraries could be recovered. Catalogued. If the puppet-strings remain intact—”

  The table cracked like a thunderclap.

  Guilliman’s gauntlet had struck, the hololith stuttering as spiderweb fractures raced across its surface. The shockwave rattled metal. Varn flinched despite himself, augmetics hissing.

  “Do not.”

  Guilliman’s voice was a command given form, heavy enough to bend air.

  “Do not mistake this desecration for a gift. It is a scar. Nothing more.”

  The words hung, final as a death sentence.

  Ferox’s gaze stayed fixed on the twisted helix, her voice softer than Koron had ever heard it. “Could you help them recover?”

  Koron dragged a hand down his face, exhaling through his teeth. “Not with what I have on hand. I don’t have the tools or the materials to undo this.”

  He gestured to the hololith, pulling his own genome into prominence — perfect, symmetrical, luminous. “Enhancements? Easy. I could bring you, or anyone else, up to my level with little trouble. Strength, resilience, longevity — that’s just raising a working system to peak efficiency.”

  Then his hand swept to the Jokaero strand, ugly and knotted. His voice hardened. “But this isn’t enhancement. This is sabotage.”

  He magnified a section. Bands of crimson flared where proteins were clamped onto the double helix like rusted chains. “Here — artificial repressor complexes. Epigenetic silencers welded onto the governor cells. They don’t just mute expression; they anchor it in place, like scar tissue burned into the DNA.”

  Another flick — the helix folded back on itself, tangled in jagged shapes. “These structures? G-quadruplex knots. Booby-traps. If I strip away the silencers, the replication forks collapse. The genome folds in on itself, and the telomeres shred to dust.”

  Koron pointed at a glowing patch that pulsed faintly. “They even built in synthetic essential genes — sequences that require enzymes the Jokaero can’t produce. The moment you unblock them, the machinery panics. Cells tear themselves apart trying to fill in instructions that no longer exist.”

  His voice dipped lower, bitter. “And they didn’t stop there. Layered methylation cascades, histone code rewrites. Every safeguard double-bound, every lock backed by another lock. Pull one out of place and the rest tighten like a noose.”

  The projection zoomed again — whole pathways lighting up like blood vessels. “And here… apoptotic triggers. Fail-safes. If the higher cognition genes so much as flicker back on, the cells execute themselves. Programmed necrosis. A kill switch in their own blood.”

  The hololith stuttered as he released the projection, all three genomes hanging in silence: the bright perfection of his own, the frayed thread of Ferox’s, and the mutilated mockery of the Jokaero.

  Koron’s hand closed into a fist. “They weren’t just altered. They were rigged never to recover.”

  The silence held like a blade over the room.

  Varn’s vox-filter rasped as he leaned forward, mechadendrites coiling like serpents held at bay. “This truth cannot leave this chamber. Not because it is false — but because it is too true. The Ecclesiarchy preaches that the human form is incorruptible, sanctified by the Emperor’s image. The Mechanicus enshrines it as the perfect pattern. The Inquisition declares it inviolate. And yet here lies proof that our flesh was crippled, degraded, made mockery by the very machines we once built. If this spreads, it will not be Chaos that unravels us. It will be our own faith, tearing itself apart.”

  Guilliman’s gaze narrowed. He did not dismiss Varn’s words, but weighed them, jaw tightening. “You are not wrong. Such a revelation would cut deeper than any blade. But tell me, Varn — how long can we keep building atop lies before the foundation crumbles under its own weight? How many centuries of silence have already rotted the Imperium hollow?”

  Ferox’s voice slid into the pause, sharp and precise. “Then the question is not whether it should be hidden, but how it is used. Knowledge is a blade. Conceal it, and it rusts. Bare it, and it kills. But wielded properly…” Her silver eyes flicked toward Koron. “…it may yet carve a path forward.”

  Varn’s servo-skull hissed, lenses flaring. “Or it carves open the throat of the Imperium itself.”

  Guilliman’s voice, when it came again, was low and deliberate. “Whether blade or poison, the truth lies before us. And it will not be ignored.”

  “Then what are you going to do?” Koron asked, looking to Guilliman.

  Steepling his fingers, Guilliman stared at the floating DNA for a long moment before speaking. “I propose…” Standing, he began pacing, each step taking up an entire mortals body length as he did so. “We leak it through the Adeptus Mechanicus. A fragment of remains left behind on some distant world. Place it near a Necron dynasty, place the blame for the genetic markers and sabotage upon them. They wield strange sciences, their enmity worn plain.”

  Varn nodded, lenses clicking as they narrowed. “Allow it to be seen as xenos manipulation, and it becomes desecration, fuel to add to your warmachine.”

  Ferox nodded, her mind spiraling ahead. “And this way we can give it out to the Biologis for study and restoration, a cure for a affliction.”

  “And what happens when someone realizes its Jokaero DNA?” Koron spoke up from his spot at the table. “Your tech may be damaged, but you can still pull up what something looks like from the genetics. Some magos is bound to do that.”

  Ferox looked to him then. “Could you edit the genetics in that case? At least enough to make the phenotypes look human so we could avoid that problem and get more eyes on fixing it?”

  His eyes sharpened as he looked back to the helix. “...Yeah…yeah actually that would be pretty easy. The booby-traps are not on changes to the visible form, arms, legs, the basic shape. What they broke was deeper, the machinery that handles memory, development, repair. I can mask the signs so it still reads human.”

  Guilliman leaned forward onto the table, a faint groan as it bore his weight. “Then that is our course. Koron alters the sample we release, ensuring no one knows the truth of its source, as our best geneticists focus on disabling the locks around our kin’s minds.” He looked to each of them in turn. “Until we manage to save them, this secret is taken to our graves. Are we in agreement?”

  Ferox and Varn nodded without a moment's hesitation. Secrets and lies were their bread and butter after all.

  Koron released a slow breath, nodding only once. “Agreed.”

  ‘Secrets always leak, sugar. Always.’

  ‘I know.’

  ...

  The Nyx gunship hovered gently in mid-air just above the deck, its ramp gently kissing the deckplates.

  Burnished alloys gleamed as its cloaking field retracted fully, its engines whispering with the low thrum of faint, distant thunder. Blue rings of light pulsed at the stern, every cycle measured, precise — not the coughing roar of promethium jets but something altogether quieter, stranger, older. Its hull flowed in lines too clean, too seamless, as though the vessel had been grown rather than forged, armored plates meshed without rivets or welds. Power conduits glowed faintly beneath its flanks like veins of light under flesh.

  Roboute Guilliman stood before it, and for a moment the weight of the hangar, the press of laboring serfs and clanking servitors, fell away. He had commanded fleets that spanned galaxies, and yet this single craft unsettled him more than an armada of xenos raiders. Imperial warships wore their intent openly — cathedral spires bristling with cannon, hulls like fortresses hurled into the void.

  This ship whispered something different. Elegance as weapon. Purpose without waste. It was a relic from an age when mankind had not yet learned to fear its own genius.

  At his side, Inquisitor Ferox’s silver eyes narrowed, her sharp smile betraying something perilously close to admiration. “Surgical,” she murmured. “Every line says the same thing: efficiency honed until it cuts.” Her gaze lingered on the turrets that floated free from the hull with the lazy grace of hunting beasts. “This is not a ship built for intimidation. This is built to kill clean.”

  Varn, by contrast, shifted with visible tension, mechadendrites coiling close to his robed frame. His vox-filter hissed with a contempt too brittle to hide. “Blasphemy made manifest. No hymn, no prayer, no sanctity marks this hull. Only soulless design.” His eyes, augmetic lenses whirring, refused to look directly at the glowing engine cores. “It should not exist.”

  The Nyx hovered on, silent save for its heartbeat of power — a shard of the Dark Age, alive again.

  At the ramps edge, stood the Dusthaven security team.

  Their appearance was nearly as shocking as the gunship.

  Their armor was nothing like Imperial plate. Where Astartes war-plate loomed like a fortress, their suits flowed like water over stone — every plate seamless, each curve shaped by hidden mathematics. No rivets, no welds, no prayer scrolls fluttering from joints. The armor looked as though it had been grown, not forged, sheathing them all in a skin of polished alloy that shimmered with a subtle, oil-slick iridescence.

  Across the surface, faint seams pulsed with life. They were not cables, not vents, but threads of energy running beneath the skin like veins of light. On shoulders and along ribs, small recessed nodes glimmered with pale blue sparks — the Aegis shield projectors. They were tiny things, no larger than a pinkie-nail, invisible until they caught the light. Yet the air around each of hem wavered almost imperceptibly, like heat haze on stone. It was a defense field so refined that the Mechanicus would call it impossible.

  Guilliman’s eyes narrowed as he studied it, a weight settling in his chest. The suits were compact, elegant, without the bulk of a cuirass or the jut of a power pack — and yet the aura it gave off was unmistakable.

  It was the work of artisans who had perfected the balance between man and machine.

  For the briefest instant, he envied it.

  Elissa was easy to spot, her unmistakably feminine figure stepping forward at the head of the armored line. Her helmet folded back in a ripple of seamless metal, and Varn made a strangled noise through his vox-grille — half choke, half curse — at the sight of technology that shouldn’t exist.

  Her smile was soft, but steel glinted beneath it as she rapped her knuckles against Koron’s uninjured shoulder. “Kala says it’s three punches now. And Tara’s adding two of her own.”

  “Still with a powerfist?”

  “Of course.”

  Koron winced, then turned toward Guilliman with exaggerated hope. “I don’t suppose I could ask for a Primarch’s intervention here?”

  The giant looked between them, brow furrowing, caught between battlefield and hearth.

  Elissa snorted, meeting his gaze with unapologetic warmth. “He pissed off my daughters.”

  Understanding dawned. Guilliman’s lips quirked faintly, and his vast shadow seemed to soften. “Ah. Even a Primarch’s authority cannot shield a man from that terror.”

  With an exasperated sigh, Koron reached out his remaining arm towards Guilliman. “Thanks for the hospitality. Let’s hope the next meeting’s a little less life-or-death.”

  Guilliman clasped his forearm, grip firm. “Indeed. Recover swiftly. Our battles on this world are far from finished.”

  Releasing him, Elissa slung Koron’s arm over her shoulder and guided him back toward the waiting gunship.

  Guilliman watched them go. For the first time, he saw the tension bleed from Koron’s frame — his shoulders loosening, his posture uncoiling, even as he bent to lean on the much shorter woman at his side.

  Not once had the man relaxed in the Primarch’s chamber, surrounded by the Imperium’s deadliest blades. Not once, even as they shared bread.

  Only now. Only with her.

  A shadow of a smile touched Guilliman’s lips, wry and weary.

  He has what even a Primarch cannot command: a place to lay down his burdens. For that, I almost envy him.