Guilliman approached the doorway, his steps hesitant. A flood of golden light poured from beyond, twisting and pressing against his will. The brilliance was suffocating, yet within it, he found no warmth, no familiarity—only an overwhelming presence that made him dread stepping forward.
"Dukel... where is this? Should I really go in?"
In the strange vastness of the Warp, Guilliman's voice wavered. He felt unmoored, uncertain.
The flame that had guided him through this treacherous journey flickered in response.
"This is the true north of the Immaterium, the sanctum where our Father, the Savior of Mankind, the Master of the Imperium, resides."
The voice was both scorching and unwavering.
As Guilliman watched, the flames churned and stretched, contorting into something incomprehensible—until at last, its true form emerged. He beheld a colossus of countless interlocking wheels, each wreathed in fire, all supporting an enormous, radiant eye at their center. It was sacred. It was terrifying. It was beyond mortal comprehension.
The vast, all-seeing pupil turned toward him. Though its light lacked malice, it bore an unfathomable weight, an omniscient pressure that settled deep into his bones. The pain in his body stilled, his breath caught in his throat. He felt as though he was drowning beneath an unseen tide.
"No... no! You are not Dukel! Who are you?!" Guilliman shouted in alarm.
"Do not fear. It is I."
A psychic resonance poured from the burning eye, soothing his soul like a whisper against his mind.
"This is but a fragment of my essence, an echo of my power, and a glimpse of our true nature. Here, within this realm, there are no lies, no masks. Whether you accept it or not, Guilliman, we are not mere mortals."
"Please, do not recoil, brother. I wear this visage only to instill terror in the Ruinous Powers."
Even with this reassurance, Guilliman struggled to accept what he saw.
"This... this is madness!" he gasped.
"Madness?" The voice, though calm, carried something deeper—something immeasurable. "Then steel yourself, for what comes next will challenge your sanity far more."
The great eye turned toward the radiant doorway.
"When you step through that threshold, be prepared."
Guilliman hesitated. "Why? What lies beyond?"
"He is not as you remember."
The burning entity's countless wheels shifted, the massive eye rolling within its divine frame. "The Imperium was shrouded in darkness for ten millennia. Daemons ravaged its soul. Through it all, He endured ceaseless torment. Now, His human self is wounded beyond reckoning—diminished, but not undone."
Guilliman recoiled. "No... impossible!"
To hear such words about the Emperor—his father, his god—was unthinkable. His mind reeled, his heart clenched. For a moment, he was not a Primarch but a lost son, unable to bear the enormity of the truth.
"Do not despair." Dukel's voice was steady. "Hope yet remains. You must remember one thing: the Emperor is the Emperor of Mankind—unchanging, eternal. No matter what He says, do not waver. The words you hear may not be His true will."
Guilliman swallowed hard, forcing a nod. "I will remember."
The flames flickered in approval before sending him forward.
The moment he crossed the threshold, he froze.
A ruined Imperium lay bare before him.
Light and fury burned through a wasteland of human corpses. The air crackled with psychic agony. Wails of suffering hung in the void, ceaseless and unrelenting.
The psykers—those accursed conduits—were writhing in silent torment, their souls drained dry to sustain His terrifying majesty.
"Dukel..." Guilliman whispered. "Have you seen this, too? Even with my own eyes, I struggle to accept it."
Silence answered him.
The crimson flame had vanished.
His guide had not followed him through the gate.
He was alone.
His gaze swept across the abyssal chamber. He saw gods and demigods, warriors clad in gold, men in simple leather, robed figures with hollowed eyes. He saw them in all their diversity, all their grandeur. He saw them all betrayed.
There was Malcador. There were his brothers. There were countless specters from history, their forms shifting, ever-changing.
A deluge of thoughts flooded his mind. Ten thousand years of whispers. Fragmented memories. Echoes of voices, familiar yet alien, their words intertwining in chaotic harmony.
Too many voices. Too many truths. Too many horrors.
At the heart of it all sat the Golden Throne.
A colossal machine, veiled in dust spun from broken dreams.
Upon it rested a corpse—a skeletal husk, a ruinous echo of what once was.
And yet, in that lifeless form, there was power.
Guilliman saw a ruler of infinite dominion, a sovereign bound in endless meditation.
He saw a father, weary and wounded beyond measure.
He saw a force so great it rivaled the Dark Gods themselves.
He saw everything—and nothing human.
No face. No voice. Only a chorus of murmurs, only the echoes of eternity.
And then, clarity struck.
Dukel's words resurfaced in his mind.
These are all Emperors. Yet none of them are the Emperor.
Guilliman's soul recoiled.
His very existence trembled beneath the revelation.
The Emperor is the Emperor of Mankind. From eternity to eternity, He is unchanging.
The words steadied him. Kept him sane. Kept him from drowning in sorrow.
Slowly, deliberately, he dropped to one knee.
He knelt before the Eternal Emperor.
"Father..." The word came with difficulty, torn from the depths of his being.
"I have returned."
"Tell me, Father... what must I do?"
He lifted his gaze, peering through the blinding radiance, through the ceaseless wails, through the skeletal remains of a once-living god.
He sought guidance from the being that was, and always would be, the Master of Mankind.
He looked at the Emperor of Mankind but could not truly see. The radiance, the sheer overwhelming presence, was too much. The unreality before him consumed his senses entirely. A hundred different impressions—false yet true—rushed into his mind.
Then the thing on the throne, the terrible, magnificent thing, noticed him.
"My son," it spoke.
"Thirteen."
"Lord of the Limit."
"Savior."
"Hope."
"Failure."
"Disappointment."
"Liar."
"Thief."
"Traitor."
"Guilliman."
"Roboute Guilliman!" The howling storm pronounced his name like a dying sun collapsing upon its planets.
"Guilliman, Guilliman, Guilliman!"
His name echoed on the eternal wind, ceaseless and directionless.
—The Emperor is always the Emperor of Mankind. Guilliman kept repeating the phrase in his mind.
"Father!" he cried.
Far from this moment, beyond the northern outskirts of the Garden of Nurgle, Dukel stood, gripping the Eagle of Destiny. He raised his head, looking into the indescribable sky, his psychic senses keenly attuned to this forsaken realm of filth and decay.
He was waiting, like a hunter in the dark.
"I wonder what Guilliman is experiencing now," Dukel mused.
He had faced the Emperor three times.
Thus, he understood far too well the nature of the being that now dominated the Golden Throne.
Thousands of years of ceaseless worship had made the Emperor greater than any could comprehend. His power had grown beyond that of a single Chaos God. Not long ago, He had clashed directly with Khorne.
Such a vast being was beyond mortal perception—even beyond the comprehension of a Primarch.
It was like a blind man attempting to grasp the full form of an elephant. Humanity could never see the whole picture. The best one could do was select an aspect of Him, like tuning to a single frequency amidst a storm of voices, hoping to establish a fragile connection.
Dukel had learned this truth through his three encounters with the Emperor.
Yet each time, the aspect of the Emperor he perceived was different—ordinary, divine, distant.
Even so, he had only managed this after grasping his own essence.
Guilliman, however, had not.
Guilliman rejected his own psychic nature, even the mere concept of the Warp. His understanding of its mysteries was at times even less than that of an Imperial scholar. He was blind, deaf, and crippled in the Immaterium, exposed to all aspects of the Emperor at once—unable to separate the cacophony of signals, unable to truly hear any of them.
Pain was inevitable when such minds met.
To ease this burden, Dukel had given Guilliman a warning.
He had also cleared the northern expanse of Nurgle's domain, ensuring that the Emperor's power could pierce through unimpeded.
Just as he was considering these things, the Sky Eagle of Destiny in his hand trembled.
One of his million eyes witnessed a golden radiance cutting through Nurgle's realm—a blazing sword of light.
"Ha! At last!"
With a roaring laugh, Dukel swung the massive Eagle banner.
A surge of unrelenting battle fervor radiated outward, heralding the onset of war.
The Garden of Nurgle trembled.
A golden sun tore through the diseased heavens. Daemonic entities wailed as the putrid landscape shifted and groaned.
"This... This is impossible..."
Mortarion whispered, his gaze locked onto Guilliman's broken form.
The Lord of Death watched as the corroded shell of the Armor of Fate stirred, responding to some unseen force.
Guilliman's plague-ravaged face twisted unnaturally. Then, suddenly, his eyes snapped to Mortarion.
Mortarion felt it—a presence moving through the Warp, something ancient, something he had not felt in a long, long time.
He tightened his grip on the Silent Scythe. This was a threat, an unforeseen variable in his grand design. He would put an end to Guilliman here and now.
But Guilliman's eyes flared with incandescent light—pure, white brilliance.
The last remnants of his decayed flesh ignited, replaced by newly formed veins and pulsating life. The Armor of Fate shimmered, reshaping itself as if alive, casting away the filth of Nurgle. Its fractured wires mended, reconnecting like sinew, mirroring the rebirth of the Primarch's own flesh.
The very ground of the Garden cracked and ruptured beneath his feet as radiant power surged outward.
Guilliman rose.
His hands stretched forward, and in an instant, the Emperor's Sword materialized—wreathed in a thousand blazing suns, ready to incinerate the heavens.
"He spoke to me," Guilliman declared. "Tell me, Mortarion, did you not hear?"
The blinding light consumed everything, forcing Mortarion to shield his eyes.
"Father?" Mortarion's voice trembled, uncertain. He sounded like a child who had erred gravely.
"I am His Arm, brother," Guilliman continued. "I am His Champion. I am the Son of Vengeance. And I am preserved by His will."
As he spoke, his armor burned with renewed intensity. The golden Aquila upon his chest ignited with crimson fire.
"Impossible! What is this?!"
Mortarion recoiled in horror.
Amid his cries, the hidden power within the Armor of Fate—the lingering soul and flesh of the Aquila—awoke. An ancient bond stirred, like long-separated comrades reaching out across the abyss of time and space.
That tenuous connection solidified, forging an unbreakable bridge. The chains of the Garden shattered as a massive rift opened in the sky—a colossal, flaming triumphal gate, towering over the battlefield.
Through it, an Imperial fleet emerged, descending into the heart of Nurgle's blighted domain.
Reality itself flickered as the Immaterium trembled.
At the prow of a grand warship, a towering figure held aloft a golden Sky Eagle banner, radiating unrelenting might.
It reached just short of the Plague God's festering palace.
War had come.
Nurgle's Garden was ablaze. Crimson flames erupted across its vile landscape.
"Dukel?!" Mortarion's shriek was filled with rage and disbelief.
He had thought Guilliman alone was his to break. But now everything was unraveling.
"Revenge, my brother," Dukel called to Guilliman. "Do not squander this moment."
Then, he turned to Mortarion.
"I heard that the Plague God was hosting a grand feast in his realm. So I came! I crossed mountains and oceans, braved horrors unimaginable, just for this… a celebration!"
Behind him, the Imperial war machine was ready.
Dukel raised his voice, calling out to his soldiers:
"My warriors! My sons! My brethren! The great feast is laid before us, and the Plague God pays the bill! Drink deep! Laugh! Pillage! Burn!"
"Let the revelry begin!"