Sleep came like surrender.
Cain's body, curled against the seal herd beneath the open sky, had grown heavy from exhaustion. The Light Stone in his tiny hand pulsed softly against his chest, syncing with his heartbeat — slow, steady, impossibly ancient. The Arctic winds whispered through the crater walls, and the stars blinked above, unfamiliar and eternal.
Then the world shifted.
He was not on Meighen Island anymore.
There was no snow.
No cold.
No sound.
Only the Void.
Cain floated — or perhaps simply existed — within a sphere of silence so vast, it made space feel claustrophobic. All around him, the dark shimmered with distant motes of memory: battle cries, sobs, laughs, prayers, and a sound like millions of boots marching on hollow metal. None of them were his, but all of them belonged to him somehow.
His breath caught.
The Light Stone hovered beside him, now a pale sun radiating soft pulses in every direction. As he turned slowly in the void, it drew his attention to something ahead.
A shape.
No—a mirror.
It hung without anchor, a ring of fire and gold, wider than any portal he had ever seen. But it wasn't made of glass. Its surface rippled like liquid sunlight, reflecting nothing.
It wasn't meant to show him.
It was meant to show truth.
And as Cain floated closer, the surface stilled.
A vision coalesced.
A throne room — but not one of the Imperium.
Twisted. Massive. Alive with the pulse of unnatural power. The walls flexed like veins, runes crawled across the air, and the floor was fractured obsidian lined with gold veins that pulsed like a heartbeat.
At its center: Horus.
Not the warrior. Not the Warmaster. But the Ascended.
The Chosen of the Ruinous Powers, clad in dark brilliance, towering like a god, radiating malice and majesty. His clawed gauntlet crackled with raw Warp energy, and his eyes were pits of dying galaxies.
Kneeling before him, wings spread like broken hope, was Sanguinius.
His armor was cracked. His golden hair matted with blood. His chest heaved with pain and pride. One wing hung limp, shattered. The other twitched, feathers falling like dying stars.
Cain stared, horrified.
He knew this place.
He shouldn't, but he did.
This was the final moment.
The moment everything ended.
"What in the Emperor's name is this?" Cain whispered.
"Is this… real?"
The mirror rippled, but did not answer.
Sanguinius looked up, lips parting in one final breath—
And Horus raised his talon.
Something snapped inside Cain.
A tremor, deep and primal, surged from the center of his chest.
His Red Core roared to life — fury, willpower, defiance.
His White Core followed — compassion, sorrow, love.
And then the Golden Core blazed — command, destiny, judgment.
Cain's eyes widened, and the Light Stone beside him flared so brightly it burned his shadow from the void. He felt his tiny muscles tense, energy coursing through him like solar fire.
He screamed.
Not a war cry.
A refusal.
"NO!"
The mirror shattered.
But not like glass.
It broke like reality tearing at the seams.
Light flooded the void — golden, white, and red — and Cain felt his wings erupt again, searing from his back, spreading wide with explosive force. His hair spiked upward, crackling with raw aura. The stone in his hand became a conduit, feeding the transformation, anchoring him in the impossible.
He didn't move through the mirror.
He became the force that shattered it.
And with a soundless explosion of light and will—Cain felt himself pulled—no, launched—across eternity.
He tore through a vortex of color and thunder, past the bones of dead stars and the hollow echoes of forgotten prayers. Time buckled. Space wept. The Warp itself recoiled from his passage, unable to parse what he was, why he was, or how he dared.
And then—
Light.
Cain didn't step into the throne room of the Vengeful Spirit.
He detonated into it.
A blinding beam of golden-white fire carved through the Warp-corrupted sanctum like a blade through rotted flesh. The floor cracked. Reality buckled. The stench of Chaos retreated, if only for a moment.
Horus turned mid-kill.
His claw was poised to strike down the kneeling, blood-soaked form of Sanguinius—the angel brought low. But the light Cain carried — the power born of healing, defiance, and furious, impossible hope — washed over the Primarch just before the killing blow could fall.
And in that instant—
Sanguinius breathed.
His lungs filled. His fingers twitched. His eyes opened.
Not fully healed.
But enough.
Cain hit Horus in the face like a flaming, screaming cannonball made of toddler muscle and righteous rage.
"NOBODY MURDERS ANGELS WHILE I'M NAKED!"
The impact cracked the air. Horus staggered back, more stunned than hurt, blinking through the afterimage of divine light.
Cain bounced off Horus's cheekplate, spun mid-air in a glowing blur, and was smacked across the room by a reflexive backhand from the Warmaster. He hit the floor harder than expected. Not because of the impact—he'd been hit harder by falling crates on a transport ship—but because of what came next.
Cain rolled, coughing golden mist, wings twitching like the stumps of a shot-down valkyrie. He barely made it to one knee, hands shaking. His Light Stone was cracked now, pulsing unevenly in his grip like a damaged heart.
But Sanguinius caught him before he could fall again.
The angel landed beside him like a thunderbolt landing softly. One hand on Cain's shoulder. One eye still bloodshot from wounds not fully healed.
"Are you all right?" Sanguinius asked.
Cain spat a clot of blood. "I'm good. I've been hit harder by my own side. Once got kicked in the ribs by a Commissar—long story." He winced. "Let's show this big bastard that nobody betrays the Imperium and walks away smiling."
He stood. Somehow. Glowing. Bleeding. Tiny fists clenched.
And beside him, the angel rose to full height, his expression unreadable, his sword dragging against the stone like a promise.
Horus laughed. It wasn't a hearty sound. It wasn't sane. It was the laugh of a god who'd bled too much hope and filled the hole with rot.
"You dare," he said. His voice thundered through the throne room, bouncing from wall to wall like artillery echoes. "You dare defy me? You dare—interrupt me? You dare—exist like this?"
From the walls, from the floors, from the air itself, they came.
Daemonkin. Flesh and hate made meat. Creatures of unspoken laws, poured into frames of bone and madness. Khorne's gifts. Tzeentch's mockeries. Claws where fingers should be. Jaws where thoughts once sat. They surged from every corrupted surface, howling their hatred, and all of them turned toward Cain.
The child stood his ground. He smelled the Warp in them. Felt the pressure behind their presence—the push of gods enraged by something they couldn't comprehend. They weren't just coming to kill him. They were coming to erase him.
Because he shouldn't exist.
Because he wasn't supposed to be here.
Sanguinius moved first. He didn't speak. He didn't roar. He simply flew.
He hit the first daemon in midair, driving his blade through the thing's chest with a single downward slash that tore the creature into fire and vapor. Another followed, leaping like a hungry wolf, and the angel's wing snapped sideways, feathers gleaming, slicing the thing apart without breaking momentum.
Cain turned to the swarm. He raised his cracked Light Stone, and it pulsed with raw, radiant spite. The air around him shimmered, not from heat, but from holy contradiction — a light so out of place in this chamber that even the Warp itself seemed to flinch.
The nearest daemon, a Bloodletter of Khorne, halted its charge.
It towered over Cain — lean and red-skinned, covered in ritual scars that throbbed with a life of their own. Its eyes were twin coals of pure rage. Its hellblade pulsed like a living artery, serrated edges dripping with ember-bright ichor.
It hesitated.
Cain didn't.
He ran toward it — not away — legs pumping, wings flaring, a blur of white and gold and raw baby fury. The daemon slashed downward in a brutal arc meant to cleave him in two, but Cain dove sideways, tucking into a roll so tight he could've slid under a Chimera.
The blade missed by inches.
He came up behind it, twisting his body mid-movement, planting a bare foot against the creature's leg and launching upward.
The Bloodletter turned — too slow.
Cain caught its wrist mid-swing and twisted hard with both hands. The Red Core flared in his chest. His grip — impossibly strong for someone his size — cracked bone beneath daemonflesh. The sword clattered to the floor, sputtering in protest.
"Mine now," Cain muttered, snatching the blade before the creature could react.
The moment his fingers wrapped around the hilt, the weapon screamed — not aloud, but into his mind, a chorus of rage, betrayal, and sheer wrongness.
The sword did not want him.
Cain didn't care.
"You're not the worst thing I've had to stab," he growled, and turned the blade back into the daemon's gut.
The Bloodletter howled — a sound like boiling iron — as the weapon pierced its chest and exited between its shoulder blades. It thrashed. Cain yanked the sword free in one clean, fluid motion, bloodless ichor spraying in a spiral.
The daemon collapsed, already dissolving into ash.
Cain stepped back, adjusting his grip on the weapon. It was longer than his entire body — a grotesque sword he could barely lift with both arms — but something in the Red Core corrected his balance. His fingers found just enough leverage. His stance shifted. His strength flared.
He turned to face the next wave.
There were nine more.
All lesser daemons. Bloodletters mostly. Watching. Uncertain.
They weren't afraid. Not exactly. But they were cautious now. This child had just slain one of their own — and in doing so, announced himself as a threat. Not an equal. Not yet. But a problem.
More importantly — they had their orders.
Horus was the weapon. They were the distractions.
Let the Warmaster kill the angel.
Let the Warp's chosen son finish what they couldn't.
They surged anyway — in twos and threes, blades sweeping low.
Cain met them in a blur.
He ducked under the first swing, using the daemon's own momentum to leap up and kick it in the throat — sending it crashing into the wall behind. He landed, spun, and swung the hellblade in a sweeping arc that caught two more in the legs, carving one clean in half.
The sword howled with joy, now thirsting for more, its previous resistance buried under the scent of daemon blood.
"Thought so," Cain grunted, flipping it once in his grip. "All bark."
He caught another incoming blade with the flat of his own and shoved hard, sending sparks raining as he parried and sidestepped in one motion. A claw raked across his chest — his skin split — but the White Core surged instantly.
The wound closed mid-battle.
Cain screamed — not in pain, but in challenge — and drove his blade into the daemon's eye socket.
Another gone.
Three left.
He darted back, panting now, wings dragging, arms aching from the sheer size of the blade.
But he was still standing.
His enemies were not.
The three remaining daemons stepped back.
Not in fear.
But in strategic acceptance.
This one was too stubborn to kill quickly.
Better to let Horus finish him — as planned.
Cain turned, bloody and breathless, toward the center of the throne room.
Sanguinius met Horus in a clash that split the air, angel's sword against Warmaster's claw. The sound was like thunder in a cathedral — sacred things breaking under unholy weight.
Every blow Sanguinius landed reopened old wounds.
Every strike Horus landed healed as it landed, the Chaos Gods feeding his rage like kindling into a storm.
Cain charged the remaining daemons, blade raised — not to win, but to keep them from joining the real fight.
He fought alone. But never without purpose.
He was the child.
The glowing anomaly.
The impossible angel with no name.
And he would not die quietly.
The throne room burned around them — not with fire, but with war.
With broken fate. With fraying time. With the will of gods made manifest in muscle, light, and rage.
Sanguinius fought like the last breath of a dying sun.
He dove through the air, his blade catching the light like a comet's tail, slashing down Horus's flank again and again, always moving, never stopping long enough for the Warmaster to retaliate with full force. And still — every cut he made closed itself. Horus's wounds healed before the blood had time to fly free.
Cain circled the edge of the fight, wreathed in the golden glow of his core and the rhythmic pulse of the cracked Light Stone still clenched in his fist. His other hand gripped the daemon sword — a weapon far too large for him. It dragged against the floor when he wasn't swinging it, the point clanging and screeching like a squealing tantrum of metal.
It was grotesque.
It was ridiculous.
It was perfect.
"That's right," Cain grunted, ducking a loose bit of debris that nearly took his head off. "Fear the war-crab with a tantrum blade."
The blade was nearly as wide as he was tall — which wasn't saying much. Fifty centimeters of divine baby rage holding a two-meter daemon weapon made him look less like a hero and more like a hallucination carved out of stained glass and bad dreams.
He wasn't fast. He was blisteringly fast.
Too small to track properly.
Too low to target without aiming down.
And Horus—Horus, master of war, breaker of brothers, slayer of hope—was getting annoyed.
The Warmaster hurled a punch at Sanguinius, then turned, scanning the periphery. Cain darted under his line of sight like a glowing bullet with wings. Horus bent, slowly, reaching with one massive claw.
Cain darted left.
The claw scraped stone, gouging a furrow where he'd just been.
"You're going to pull something doing that," Cain called up, sword trailing smoke.
Horus growled, narrowed his eyes, and kicked.
He kicked the child.
It wasn't elegant. It wasn't even strategic. It was the motion of a god enraged that he had to fight a baby.
Cain saw it coming.
Barely.
The boot—the size of a Rhino's side hatch—came sweeping across the floor like a moving wall of spiked ceramite.
He leapt.
High. Too high for a human. Just high enough for him.
The boot whooshed under him. Cain landed on it — rode it for half a heartbeat — then used the momentum to springboard off Horus's shin, flipping once in the air like an acrobat covered in divine plasma burns.
"That's the worst attempt at punting I've seen since the underhive leagues."
Sanguinius lunged again. His sword bit deep into Horus's shoulder this time. The wound smoked — refused to close — then did so anyway, as if the gods had to think about it first.
Cain landed behind Horus, crouching in a small crater, sword raised.
He stood — bloodied, grinning, wings fluttering with effort.
"I'm not the strongest," he muttered to himself, "but I might be the most annoying."
He sprinted forward again, zigzagging like a rogue servo-skull on bad code.
Horus turned, snarled, and swung his hammer—not at Sanguinius.
At Cain.
The blow missed.
Not because Cain dodged.
Because he wasn't tall enough to be hit.
The hammer howled over his head and annihilated a section of wall behind him. Stone turned to glass. Time convulsed. Warp fire curled outward.
Cain kept running.
Kept swinging.
Kept being alive, in a place where no one was meant to be except gods and monsters.
He ducked under another claw, kicked a Bloodletter in the shin so hard its knee bent backward, and cleaved another daemon in half with the sword that still pulsed with rage every time it touched his skin.
A daemon roared:
"THE INFANT BLEEDS BLASPHEMY!"
"The infant bleeds victory," Cain shot back.
Sanguinius looked over his shoulder, face smeared in ichor and soul-light.
Their eyes met.
And they both smiled.
Because absurd or not — doomed or not — they were still fighting.
And that was enough.
There are moments in battle where time stops lying. Where it peels back its warped flow and lets you see — truly see — what's about to happen. This was one of them.
Sanguinius felt it first.
A pull.
A shift.
The gods screaming louder.
Cain, blood-smeared and wheezing, still held his ground beside the angel, clutching the chaos-forged blade in one hand and the cracked Light Stone in the other. He could barely keep his wings extended now, their radiant tips flickering like dying torches in the wind. His legs trembled, muscles screaming for rest, regeneration stalling from overuse.
But he stood.
Small. Glowing. Radiating absurdity and defiance in equal measure.
Horus loomed before them. The Warp storm that wrapped around him boiled. His silhouette distorted — no longer just a Primarch, not even just a god. He was the will of the Chaos Pantheon made manifest. Flesh of their hate. Voice of their hunger.
And they were furious.
"I OFFERED YOU GLORY," Horus thundered, turning his full gaze on Sanguinius.
"You offered extinction," the angel said, blood trailing from his lip.
"AND YOU," Horus growled, pointing now at Cain, "YOU ARE AN ERROR."
Cain spat onto the floor, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Not the first time I've heard that. Still here, aren't I?"
Horus snarled, rearing back.
He raised his hammer.
Warp-light gathered along its edge, growing so bright it cracked the air with thunderclaps. The shadows recoiled. The daemons screamed in delight. The Warp shuddered. And Sanguinius — broken-winged, soul-burned, and dying on his feet — lifted his blade and took one step forward.
Cain didn't hesitate.
He raised his Light Stone again — it was crumbling now, splintered and gasping light with each pulse. He let the last of his White Core's power flow through it. The stone flashed one final time and then shattered in his hand.
But it was enough.
A dome of light formed — soft, not strong. Not a shield, but a gesture. A final act of resistance. It flickered under Horus's hammer.
And then—
Another light bloomed.
Brighter.
Colder.
Older.
From behind the veil — through the cracks in the Warp itself — he came.
The Emperor.
He didn't step into the room.
He arrived.
One moment the throne room was the last battlefield of a dying future.
The next, it was his.
Gold. White. Radiance incarnate.
The Warp screamed. Daemons burst into flame. The walls recoiled. And for the first time in hours, days, years — the throne room was clean.
The Emperor of Mankind stood at the far end of the room. His eyes did not glow. They blinded.
He walked forward, each step like gravity reasserting itself.
Horus turned.
He lowered his hammer slowly.
Even now, he looked at his father with something between loathing and yearning.
"You're too late," Horus said.
The Emperor looked past him.
At Sanguinius, who stood, bloodied but alive.
At Cain, who was now on his knees, clutching the broken remains of his Light Stone, chest heaving, wings scorched, but eyes defiant.
The Emperor smiled — barely. Almost imperceptibly.
"No," he said. "I'm right on time."
And then he raised his hand.
The Warp tore open.
And the final battle began.
There are lines that even gods cannot bear to see crossed.
And Cain — absurd, glowing, bleeding Cain — had crossed them all.
The child stood beneath the Emperor's light. His cracked Light Stone clutched in one hand, a daemon-sword of purged corruption in the other. Beside him, Sanguinius — angel of the Ninth, risen from death — raised his blade in defiance.
And behind them, the Emperor of Mankind walked forward, each step reforging the broken sanity of the throne room.
Horus watched them.
He watched his brother live.
He watched his father return.
And he watched the infant — the screaming, impossible infant — stand between them with fire in his veins and defiance in his teeth.
Something broke.
Not in the room.
In him.
Horus roared.
It wasn't a battle cry. It wasn't language.
It was a sound the Warp had no word for. A rupture. A scream of betrayal and abandonment. It echoed through the ship like a wound that would not close. It ruptured the walls. Cracked the pillars. Froze the daemons mid-step.
"I GAVE YOU EVERYTHING!"
The Warp surged.
His hammer fused to his arm — the haft sank into bone, fingers merged with grip, and the metal hissed with Warpsteel made flesh.
His spine snapped backward, then regrew in horns and hooks. Bone erupted from his shoulders, unfurling into demonic wings, stretching outward with a sound like meat tearing in slow motion.
His eyes — if they could still be called that — burned black with Khorne's will.
No longer the Warmaster.
Not even a man.
Just a vessel of wrath without end.
"AND YOU CHOOSE… THEM?!"
The Warp crashed back in.
The throne room shattered like brittle glass.
Reality fractured.
The light of the Emperor was blown backward like a tidal wave. Even he took a step to brace.
Cain was hurled into the air, wings twisting, Light Stone bursting in his hand.
He landed not on stone, but on something else — something wrong.
He stood up, dazed.
This wasn't the throne room anymore.
It was the skyline of Terra, flickering between ruin and memory. In one blink, the Palace burned. In the next, it stood untouched. Blood rained upward. Then sideways. Then time reversed, and Cain saw Sanguinius and Horus dueling again — behind him, above him, beside him.
He was inside the raw marrow of the Warp, where truth and possibility were torn apart and stitched together wrong.
And Horus was the needle.
He stepped through a dozen versions of himself — armored, winged, crowned — all of them wrong.
All of them monstrous.
His hammer swept sideways, and the landscape of Terra screamed and collapsed into fire.
Cain rolled.
He dodged without thinking, lungs burning, feathers on fire.
Sanguinius appeared beside him, grabbed him mid-dive, and flung them both out of a collapsing timeline.
They landed again.
This time in a battlefield crater on Luna, but only for a heartbeat.
A blow from Horus's wing collapsed the moon beneath them.
Then they were back in the ship — what was left of it.
It was dying.
Just like the galaxy.
"Cain!" Sanguinius shouted.
The baby turned — covered in ichor, daemonic blood and plasma — and nodded once, face wild with holy rage.
"He's losing control."
"Then we break him before he breaks the stars."
The Warp screamed again.
Horus lunged.
They braced.
And the world tore open again.
Reality lost its coherence.
The Warp had always been a liar. A painter of falsehoods in screaming color. But now, beneath Horus's fury, it stopped pretending altogether.
The Vengeful Spirit broke apart—not in a single cataclysm, but in layers, realities, reflections. Every impact between Horus and the Emperor, between Horus and Sanguinius, between Horus and Cain—shattered space itself.
The battlefield changed with every blink.
One moment they stood beneath the blood-lit skies of Terra, where ash rained like snow and corpses littered the battlements. In the next, they stood before the Eternity Gate, the last threshold of the Palace, flames reflected in the golden walls as banners of the Aquila fluttered in warp-sick wind.
Then Luna—cold, cratered, indifferent—beneath the shadow of Earth, with dust swirling around broken helms and cracked armor.
And then—memories.
Cain landed on a field that no longer existed, standing amid statues of himself in mockery. The Triumph of Ullanor played out around him like a ghost opera — the Emperor in gold, Horus smiling beside him, laurels on his brow, before the betrayal. Before the lie.
He screamed.
And then Horus was there again, no longer simply a creature — but a storm in a body, the Chaos Gods flowing through him with abandon.
His limbs warped.
His wings tore open fully, vast enough to block out stars.
He struck the Emperor with a blow that split the floor of the ship and fractured its hull.
The Emperor took the hit.
He grunted.
He bled.
But he did not fall.
Sanguinius flew behind Horus, striking from above like a hawk at a mountain. He aimed for the spine—again, again, again—and was caught mid-strike.
Horus grabbed him by the wing and hurled him through three walls.
The angel vanished into light.
Cain charged again. Ridiculous. Glowing. Bloody.
He screamed, a sound of pure defiance, and jammed the light-forged sword into Horus's side.
It bit deep.
It bit true.
For one second—just one—Horus faltered.
And then he punched.
The force of it wasn't just impact.
It was history ending.
All three—Cain, Sanguinius, and the Emperor—were blasted through the hull like discarded relics.
The ship ruptured.
It exploded behind them in a ring of warp-light and soulfire.
Decks peeled away like parchment in a storm. Void shields failed. Daemons screamed as they were torn into nonexistence.
And into space the three were flung—scattered, spinning, radiant.
The void was cold in a way even Cain had never imagined.
Not the numb chill of wind or winter. This was the cold of uncreation — the breathless stillness between stars, where even light forgot what it was supposed to do.
Cain drifted through it, arms slack, wings torn, eyes glazed. His once-blazing hair floated around his brow like a crown extinguished. The cracked remnants of his Light Stone scattered behind him like dust from a shattered prayer.
He was dying.
No.
He was already half-dead.
His Red Core sputtered like a choking flame. His White Core was cracked and hollow, bleeding its last warmth into the abyss. His Golden Core… that pulsed still. Slowly. Like a failing heartbeat. Like a bell waiting to toll one last time.
Cain blinked.
Below him — above him — beside him — reality meant little now — he saw Sanguinius, wings bent, spinning in the void, blood trailing like comet fire behind him. His sword floated nearby, out of reach. His armor was blackened, stripped down to cracked ribs and cracked hope.
And further still, the Emperor — the man, the god, the father — knelt in vacuum, his gold flaking away, his chest cracked open, his arms trembling. His head hung low.
The stars wept in silence.
Something inside Cain broke.
A scream crawled from his soul before it ever reached his mouth.
He screamed not like a child.
Not like a man.
But like a force.
Like the light of a galaxy finding its voice.
It tore from his throat and into the dark, and the dark could not hold it.
His three cores surged as one.
The Red Core exploded in his chest, rewriting his nerves with fire. The White Core reignited, flooding his body with renewal, restoring what could not be restored. And the Golden Core — the divine spark — caught both and bound them, like a star gripping its own gravity.
Cain burned.
Not literally.
Existentially.
He glowed brighter than anything had a right to. And as he did — he changed.
Not taller.
Not older.
Just… more.
His skin was wrapped in celestial gold. His frame was sheathed in angelic plate — not forged, but grown, ribbed in red, edged in silver-white. A cuirass of light. Greaves of sunrise. Pauldrons like burning wings curved inward toward a helm that formed and faded in and out of view — he needed no crown, for his presence was sovereign.
The daemon blade at his side cracked once… then twisted. Warped. Cried.
It shattered in his grip.
And from the shards, his sword was reborn — not metal, but light. A blade forged of corelight, pure and cold and patient as judgment.
Cain hovered in the void, armor humming, eyes now halos of azure fire.
He turned toward Sanguinius.
He reached out.
And light flew from his hand — like forgiveness in motion.
It wrapped the angel's broken form in streams of gold and white. His armor reformed — no longer the battle-worn plate of the Blood Angels, but something older. Something purer. Wings of holy flame spread behind him, remade.
The sword snapped back into Sanguinius's hand, crackling with renewed power.
He gasped awake.
"Cain…?"
Cain didn't answer.
He turned to the Emperor.
And he touched him.
The touch was not flesh to flesh.
It was soul to purpose.
Golden plate reknit itself across the Emperor's shoulders. His gauntlets — scorched and fractured — pulsed with restored energy. His chest sealed with divine radiance, the raw wound glowing not with blood, but with justice.
For the first time since this battle began, the Emperor stood tall.
Cain looked at them both.
Then he said, voice clear and echoing in the vacuum:
"Let's finish this."
They turned as one.
Behind them, wings of fire spread wide.
Before them — far off, massive, terrible — was Horus.
He had followed.
And now he came.
Space itself twisted as Horus gave chase.
Behind Cain, Sanguinius, and the Emperor, the shattered wreckage of the Vengeful Spirit drifted like the bones of a slain god. Warp smoke bled from the torn ship, staining the stars with filth. Daemonic wreckage burned in every direction, bodies of neverborn war beasts unraveling into howls and memory.
And Horus came through it all.
He flew now — not with mechanical thrust, not even with wings of bone, but with will. His newly-grown demonic wings beat against nothing, tearing gravity into submission. Each flap distorted realspace, sending spirals of ruin through the debris fields.
His body was titanic.
His armor had fused with his flesh, warped and scaled, veins pulsing with molten hatred.
Where once a hammer had been, there was now a war-spear of fused bone and bronze, dragging a comet tail of screaming Warp energy behind it.
His eyes bled red.
His voice tore from his throat like a world ending in slow motion.
"I AM WAR!"
The Emperor met him first.
They collided in a sphere of blinding gold and pitch-black flame.
Time stuttered. The Warp recoiled.
Cain followed, sword of light raised, trailing streaks of white brilliance behind him like a newborn comet. Sanguinius arced overhead, wings flaring wide, sword singing through the void like a cry for redemption.
Together they fell into the Chaos fleet.
It didn't stand a chance.
The renewed light — Cain's divinity, the Emperor's wrath, Sanguinius's fury — burned through everything it touched. Battleships cracked in half. Warp drives imploded. Great daemon-engines screamed as their cores were torn out by wings and blades and holy fire.
One by one, the Chaos fleet died.
And still Horus came on.
The three heroes struck in rhythm — light, steel, fire.
The Emperor held him with force beyond comprehension.
Sanguinius danced across his blind spots, each strike piercing through wards and lies.
Cain burned through reality itself, slashing at the seams of the monster Horus had become, every blow undoing corruption by existing.
But Horus was not just powerful.
He was relentless.
He lashed out with claws of soulsteel, wings of scorched voidstuff. Every time he was struck, the Chaos Gods poured more into him. His blood became fire. His wounds healed mid-blow. The Warp coiled tighter around him like armor.
"YOU CANNOT WIN!" he bellowed. "YOU FIGHT A GOD, AND YOU ARE BUT SPARKS IN THE DARK!"
And yet—
Sparks burn brightest in the void.
Cain saw the moment.
A hesitation.
A flicker in Horus's form — not weakness, but imbalance. His soul, fractured by rage, by betrayal, by fear.
Cain didn't hesitate.
He surged.
"NOW!"
All three struck together.
The Emperor's fist cracked against Horus's chest, splintering bone and belief.
Sanguinius's blade plunged into his back, sending Warp energy spraying like ruptured light.
And Cain—
Cain drove his sword of light straight through Horus's throat.
They didn't kill him.
They hurled him.
The force of their unified blow blasted Horus backward.
He flew across space — a streak of darkness trailing blood and Warpflame — toward Luna, the moon of Earth, hanging pale and still in the distance.
He hit like a meteor.
The impact lit up the moon's surface like a dying sun.
The crust cracked.
Mountains exploded.
Dust surged outward like a planet exhaling its last breath.
And at the heart of the crater — smoke rising, bones broken, soul trembling — Horus rose again.
But this time—
He was something else.
The moon cracked beneath him.
Not just the dust and stone — the core. The heart of Luna trembled. The blow had driven Horus so hard into the surface that tectonic plates flexed like ribs under strain. Fault lines spiderwebbed out in every direction, vomiting light and Warp flame. Entire mountains split. Craters collapsed.
And at the center of the blast—
Horus rose.
No longer a Primarch.
No longer a man.
Not even a god.
Something worse.
His body was blackened and steaming, cracked open like a furnace held together by hate. Horns arched from his skull in spirals, runes carved along their length with such violence that they bled light. His wings had lengthened into barbed, bone-plated sails — massive, skeletal, and twitching with Warp-born muscle.
His armor was gone.
His flesh was armor now — a carapace of daemonic bone and obsidian muscle that flexed and wept molten ichor with every breath.
He looked at his arms.
He didn't scream.
He didn't hesitate.
He ripped them off.
One.
Then the other.
The wet sounds were dull compared to the thunder that followed.
From the stumps, lightless fire spewed. Warp energy convulsed, condensing. And then—
The arms grew back.
Not hands.
Not fingers.
Blades.
Two massive, jagged bone-sabers, fused with shrieking Warp-metal and edged in screaming souls. They pulsed with every heartbeat — not Horus's, but the Chaos Gods' — a living rhythm of murder, desecration, and victory denied.
He stood there for a moment, just breathing.
Each exhale scorched the dust around him.
Then he laughed.
It wasn't noise.
It wasn't voice.
It was destruction, given sound.
The walls of the crater shattered.
The skies above cracked.
The laughing shook Terra's orbit.
"Now," he said — not to them, but to himself —
"I am perfect."
Cain, hovering in low orbit, cradled by the Emperor's psychic field, stared down into the crater.
He whispered, "That's a problem."
Sanguinius, beside him, adjusted his grip on his sword. His armor still smoked with divine light, but the exhaustion in his wings was plain. Still, he nodded.
"Big problem."
The Emperor didn't speak.
He was already descending.
The three fell from Luna like meteors.
The sky above Terra split in three streaks of gold, red, and white — burning trails that arced across the void, past shattered orbital stations, through the broken bones of the Warmaster's fleet, and into the upper atmosphere like the swords of angels cast down for judgment.
They landed together.
The Emperor.
Sanguinius.
And Cain.
Terra shook.
The cradle of mankind wept beneath them — ash and glass fountaining upward from the impact zone, tectonic plates groaning in protest. The desert outside the shattered ruins of the Imperial Palace became a war zone in miniature — broken towers half-buried in sand, mechanized ruins still thrumming with static from wars lost millennia before.
And from the sky above, the final enemy came.
Horus descended.
No longer Horus.
Not anymore.
The thing that dropped like a god-shaped bomb was the living amalgam of everything the Chaos Gods had to offer. His new blades extended from his forearms like obsidian executioner's guillotines. His wings didn't flap — they beat, and the sky screamed.
He landed in a rolling surge of Warp fire and moon dust, cracking the crust of Terra beneath his clawed feet.
Cain landed last, bouncing twice before skidding to a halt, leaving a trail of scorched glass. His armor flickered. His sword was cracked. His Light Stone — gone. Only the Core remained, glowing weakly in his chest, pulsing slower than it had ever dared.
He couldn't stand.
His body shook.
He was too small for this.
But still—
He crawled.
Toward the Emperor.
The battle had already begun.
Sanguinius met Horus first. His wing was half gone, one side of his face blistered with Warp-burn. Still, he fought like a creature born for vengeance. Every strike was a hymn to defiance. His sword burned brighter than suns — and still it wasn't enough.
He was hurled aside.
Armor shattered. Blood painted the sands.
The Emperor stepped forward next, his gauntlets coated in golden flame. His chestplate hung open, raw muscle visible beneath.
They clashed.
Time buckled.
Space split.
The sands became vapor. The sky bent. Light and darkness roared as if creation itself had become an audience.
Cain reached them.
He knelt — shaking, hollow, crying without sound.
And he reached out with what remained.
Please. Just one more time.
His hand touched the Emperor's boot.
And the White Core flared one final time.
A surge of power — all that he had left, every scrap of strength, every shard of soul, poured into the Emperor.
His Core dimmed.
Cain collapsed.
Not unconscious. Not dead.
Just… empty.
And before him, the Emperor rose again.
Taller.
Brighter.
Burning.
Not to save.
Not to spare.
But to end.
The battlefield was light and fire.
The Emperor stood, reborn not by the Warp, not by science, but by the gift of a dying child. His wounds were sealed, his armor reforged in radiance, golden fire flowing from the cracks in his gauntlets, from his eyes, from the hallowed wrath of his presence.
Horus charged again, wings stretched wide, blades drawn back for the killing stroke.
The Earth quaked beneath his steps.
The sky turned to screaming flame.
The Warp itself bowed around his form, a cyclone of hate, pride, and pain made manifest.
The Emperor met him with silence.
Their blades clashed again — gold against damnation.
Steel and soul.
Creation and corruption.
Sanguinius, broken but not defeated, pulled himself from the wreckage. His left wing was gone. His breastplate was open, ribs shattered. But his sword still glowed, and his will still burned.
He threw himself back into the fray, beside his father.
Together, they fought Horus.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Each blow struck from the Emperor carved away layers of corruption, searing runes from Horus's flesh.
Each strike from Sanguinius was a scream of betrayal turned to justice.
Cain, lying motionless nearby, watched through half-closed eyes. His body broken. His Core silent. But his heart — small, stubborn, absurd — beat on.
Then came the moment.
Horus staggered, smoke billowing from his wounds.
He turned slowly, staring down at his ruined body — the broken wings, the bladed arms, the Warp bleeding out from the cracks in his flesh.
He looked at the Emperor.
At Sanguinius.
At Cain.
And something… shifted.
The Warp flickered.
Just for a heartbeat.
His blades dropped.
His shoulders sagged.
And in the middle of his monstrous face — a single, human expression returned.
Regret.
His voice came — not in a roar, not in fury — but in a whisper of ash.
"Father…"
The eyes that looked into the Emperor's were not the eyes of a god.
Not a daemon.
But a son.
"Please… end it."
The Emperor did not speak.
He looked upon Horus — his greatest creation, his fallen pride, his once-beloved son — and saw the ruin.
The truth.
The failure.
And the man who still, somehow, asked for mercy.
The Emperor raised his hand.
And his blade — forged not of steel, but of purpose — ignited one last time.
Cain couldn't look away.
He didn't want to.
He wanted to remember.
The Emperor stepped forward.
And struck.
The light that followed wasn't brightness.
It was purity.
A silence deeper than the void. A brilliance that burned not just flesh or soul, but possibility.
Horus didn't scream.
He only closed his eyes.
And was no more.
Not slain.
Not scattered.
Unmade.
The Warp recoiled.
Reality groaned.
The skies cleared.
The daemons that still lingered screamed and evaporated.
Silence fell.
The battle was over.
The Heresy was over.
The Emperor fell to his knees.
And Cain…
Cain, with the last breath his Core would give him, crawled across the glassed sands, up to the Emperor's side.
He reached out.
Laid a hand on the shoulder of a god who had saved the species Cain barely belonged to.
And said:
"You're not allowed to die. Not yet."
The Emperor breathed.
Weakly.
But he breathed.
The dust settled slowly.
Wind moved again — a true wind, not Warp-twisted or fueled by psionic pressure. Just air. Warm, almost clean. The sky above Terra, choked for so long by fire and ruin, began to clear.
The battlefield was silent.
Not dead.
Not destroyed.
But still.
Sanguinius knelt beside his father, broken and bloodied, one wing trailing in the ash. His sword lay embedded in the ground beside him, quivering faintly in the dirt like a tuning fork resonating with the last note of war. He breathed shallowly, staring at the fallen body of what had once been his brother.
Cain lay in the Emperor's shadow.
Small. Burned. Wrapped in cracked golden-white-red armor, the light within it dimmed but not extinguished.
His face was turned upward, toward the sky.
He blinked slowly, unsure whether he was awake or dreaming still.
Then, from behind him—
A sound.
Applause.
Then cheering.
From the ruins of the Palace walls, from shattered trenches, from orbital vox-relays still broadcasting through the scrap of the fleet, voices rose.
Some screamed.
Some cried.
But all of them knew.
They had won.
Across Terra, soldiers dropped to their knees.
Astartes bowed their heads.
Mortals wept.
The Heresy was over.
The Emperor stood.
He stood slowly. Every movement a statement. His wounds glowed with soft light — no longer bleeding, no longer failing, stabilized by the tiny soul curled at his feet.
He looked down at Cain.
At this ridiculous, absurd, glorious little miracle.
And for the first time in memory, the Emperor smiled.
Not with pride.
With recognition.
He reached down.
Lifted Cain — armor, wings, soot, and all — into the air.
The crowd below, the surviving faithful across Terra, beheld the image:
The Emperor of Mankind, standing in victory, holding aloft a glowing, angelic child.
A child with one cracked wing.
A chipped sword.
And a grin full of idiotic defiance.
"This child," the Emperor said, his voice echoing across vox-channels, across minds, across the remnants of reality.
"This… is my son."
"My heir."
"And through him, mankind shall never fall again."
The cheering became roars.
The surviving Primarchs, watching from orbit or from across time-warped realities, bowed their heads.
Sanguinius smiled. And then passed out.
Cain blinked.
Then muttered:
"Please don't drop me."
And just like that—
The galaxy didn't end.
It changed.
Light returned to a world that had forgotten what light could mean.
And in the throne room of victory, standing amid the ashes of betrayal, the Emperor held the smallest, strangest, most wonderful hero the Imperium had ever known.
And somewhere, deep inside the Warp, the Chaos Gods screamed.
---
Then, back on Meighen island, light returned slowly.
Not the light of cataclysm or golden thrones. Not Warp Fire. Not Emperor's wrath.
Just dawn.
Thin, pale orange brushed the horizon, staining the ice with a gentleness that felt alien after everything he had just seen—no, after what he had just lived.
Cain's eyes blinked open.
He didn't move at first.
Not out of pain — though every muscle felt like it had been rearranged with a blunt spade — but out of confusion. Profound, cosmic confusion.
He was lying in a heap of fur and oil. A soft, fish-scented furnace of snoring bodies.
Fatsquatch lay across his legs, his bulk twitching with seal-dreams. Another snorted beside Cain's head, letting out a wheezing sigh that smelled of low tide and poor hygiene.
The sky above was clear.
No Warp rifts. No lunar craters. No gold-lit cathedrals.
Just sky.
The real sky.
Cold, endless, unfamiliar.
Cain slowly propped himself up on his elbows.
"What in the Emperor's flaming codpiece…"
His voice came out as a whisper, rough and dry. He looked down at himself — still absurdly muscular, still absurdly small. Naked, save for a few half-frozen fish scales stuck to his chest.
He blinked again.
The Light Stone.
Gone.
Broken.
His hand clenched around nothing.
"Dream," he muttered. "Definitely a dream. Couldn't have been real."
But it had felt real. The warmth of the Emperor's gauntlet. The weight of the daemon blade. The moment Horus begged to die. It hadn't just been vivid — it had meant something.
He shook his head, scattering tiny flecks of frost.
It didn't matter now.
Because just past the seal pile, life went on.
Fatsquatch stirred, yawned, and flopped toward the shoreline, joined by several others. Their fat, slick bodies bounced across the stone as they slid into the sea one by one, splashing into the still, icy water with surprising grace.
And then — they vanished.
Only to reappear seconds later, each with a wriggling fish in their jaws.
Cain blinked.
Then blinked again.
He sat there, watching.
One of the younger seals clumsily copied the adults, face-planting into the shallows and then flailing in what looked like enthusiastic futility before actually catching something.
Cain tilted his head.
"Huh."
It was primitive.
Messy.
Wet.
But it worked.
He stood slowly, stretching, wincing as every bone reminded him of a dream-battle he supposedly hadn't fought.
He took a cautious step toward the shore, peering into the shallows.
The fish were there.
Not many. But enough.
"Right," he muttered. "If they can do it…"
He crouched low.
Examined the water.
Waited.
And then lunged.
He missed.
Face-first into a tide pool.
Water up his nose. Slime in his hair. Something cold and scaly wriggled past his cheek like it was laughing.
He surfaced, sputtering.
The seals barked — loudly.
He could swear one of them was laughing.
Cain wiped his face, dragged a hand through his soaked gold hair, and stared at the waves.
"You're all going to die laughing when I figure this out."
He crouched again.
Wings folded.
Fingers twitching.
Because dream or not, angel or not, chosen heir of mankind or not —
He was hungry.
And these fish weren't going to catch themselves.