Part I - Never Love, only Duty
She had taught herself to stop—pages, not books; sips, not seas—from the Basilica Liminali where knowledge waits like a lake that wants to be drunk. It kept her whole.
Then, one courier from the void brought a short reply to a long report:
It is good. Good job. —The Master of Mankind
Two small words did what storms could not. Proud felt like sunlight she had not known she needed. She began to hear it again. Enough learned to bend. She told herself it was for the Imperium, for her brothers at the edge of maps. It was also, quietly, for him.
Malcador saw the change first: lamp‑smoke mornings, ink‑stained nights; a girl at a bench drawing hull ribs until her shoulders shook; whispers like prayers she would not call prayers: one more design and he will speak; one more and he will trust; one more and the door will open.
He tried to name the fence again. "Pages, Aurelia. Not books."
"I know," she said, eyes bright and far. "Just one more page." The page did not end.
The Great Crusade shone at its noon; the long evening already stirred in its shadows. Praise, ungentled by presence, became a drug. She did not break. She thinned.
He wrote where no ink dried: She does not sleep. She thins. Obedience braided to love becomes a noose when the hand that ties it stays remote. Secrets make hunger; hunger makes work; work makes the secret feel earned. We will have to teach her to stop again. Praise must be rarer, and presence more often. The one thing the Master withholds is the one thing she is breaking herself to earn. If we do not mend this, the Crown we are building will be heavy with regret.
He found her once, face salt‑streaked and dry already, drafting ribs for a hull too large to name. "It will be enough," she whispered to no one. "Then he will speak. Then he will open the door."
"Child," he said, and did not say your father may never . He set the quill down himself. For an hour, the page was allowed to end. And so, the walls built around her, were stopping her to grow.
Part II - Ullanor—The Noon Hour
The void burned green with Ork fire. Vox‑nets snarled. Macro‑batteries answered in paragraphs. On the approach vector, Aurelia's works did what works are for—they kept men alive long enough to matter.
"Stellaris holds at one‑jump," a fleet‑adept reported. "Pharos lanes steady. Choirs clean. Regia/Pharos‑Three/Choir‑Green reports ninety‑seven percent clarity."
"Keep them clean," Aurelia said, eyes tracking the constant updates spilling to her across the vast vox‑nets. "Sword and shield, not spear. Regulate heat on the Corona Aegis; no redlines without my word."
Two Aquila‑class battlecruisers cut wide arcs, Corona Aegis shimmering as they soaked the first crude salvos. Stellaris‑class Battleship pickets bled speed from Ork kill‑fleets with Grav‑Shear bursts; Ferrum‑Cantor tanks rode their dropships down and hit the ground running, ventral gravs hissing over slag. In orbit, an escort screen traded bones for seconds; on the decks of the Stellaris command behemoth, a mortal Saturnine Bridge‑Mind stitched ten thousand stations into one thought: hold the corridor, hold the hour.
On the surface, the Emperor and His Legions broke the great war‑engine empire of Ullanor. The Ork Overlord—Urlakk Urruk—roared his last, and silence, finally, had room to stand. Soot fell like black snow. Someone laughed once and then remembered where they were.
A chorus of channels flooded open at once.
"XVI reports breach complete. Casualties within projection."
"IX holds Angel's Lane—civilians clear."
"VII confirms clean terraces. Pattern Tempest holds."
Horus's voice found her across the net. "Your ships held our flanks for six hours," he said. "That's three cities of the living."
She smiled at a bulkhead and forgot how tired she was. "Then the math was worth doing."
Dorn's approval came as sparing words: "Clean breaches. Keep the pattern." Sanguinius sent only a soft, private: "Fewer names for the lists," and she knew he meant dead. Fulgrim called her patterns "a grammar for victory," and added, wry, that even a peacock could admire utility.
The Emperor spoke least. On the triumph field He set the Imperium's noon in a single gesture—He named Horus Lupercal Warmaster —and gave His daughter the small , businesslike nod that meant continue . Praise would have been mercy. The nod was command. She took it as love.
Part III - Nikaea. The Room Without Her
The summons went elsewhere. A Council to reason about psykers convened on Nikaea; the Princess was not invited.
She sent a sealed question: Am I not to be heard?
The Emperor's return message was iron pared to a sentence. "You are needed on Terra. Be Regent. You will be told."
She obeyed. Obedience felt like swallowing a key. When word came back—edicts curtailing the Librarius—she called the only brother who would answer plain.
"Is it true?" she voxed Magnus. "Did He threaten you with erasure from the record?"
Magnus's voice was level, hurt wrapped in dignity. "It is true. He invoked the law of ghosts. And I, who have loved knowledge as other men love life, am told to put down the book."
"I am afraid of what I am," she admitted. "And more afraid of what I could become."
"Be afraid of silence," he said gently. "Not of learning. And be afraid of men who deny you the why and demand only the obey ." A pause; then, lower: "Father keeps doors from you that he leaves ajar for others. There are things in the warp, and under Terra, that you have not been shown."
"What doors?"
"Not here," he said. "Face to face, or not at all."
The channel clicked quiet. She set down the receiver and stared at her hands until they looked like someone else's. Remembrancers would later call this the last quiet night of her youth. Magnus and she would not meet again.
Part IV - Prospero Burns
Orders went to Fenris. Wolves ran. The planet of sorcerers burned in colors no man should see; Sisters of Silence and a Custodes cadre went with the rout to make it clean.
Aurelia stood in the strategium and shook. "Why brother against brother? Why this?"
The Emperor's answer was a door closing. "Magnus defied Me. He opened what I sealed. He broke trust. The law must stand."
"There must be another way."
"I have made My will. I will not speak of it again."
She bowed as if the motion could keep her heart from showing. "Yes, Your Majesty." The title tasted like iron. Later she wrote humane protocols into Choir‑Forts, a way to try to save civilians in Prospero and watched astropath attrition fall; it felt like mending one thread while the tapestry burned.
Part V - The Webway Breaks
The warning came like sickness. Wards in the deep Palace screamed; locks shuddered in their housings; the air tasted of iron. Sisters signed fast and cold. Custodes ran without seeming to.
Aurelia reached the Throne vault and saw the truth like broken glass: the Golden Throne buckled, the great gate it anchored splintering; the Immaterium clawing to get in sideways. The Emperor sat upon that engine and held a broken world together with the weight of His will. Arkhan Land was already shouting at physics and making it behave.
"Go," He said without looking at her. "This is not your fight."
"It is my home," she answered, voice shaking. "And you are my father."
He did not argue because there was no time to. "Then listen: this was to be a road that is not the warp. A web of safe paths. It is open in the wrong places. Hold the pieces while I set the locks."
Her mind went to her father, a way she could do it a no one else. The Emperor knew what she could be capable, with just asking. But there was no time to explain what he knew little, but for now, they focus on the the broken door.
He worked like a maker, not a priest: numbers for stitches, angles for prayers. "Keep it together, focus on what's scattered," He said. "No more. No less."
"I'll hold it," she answered, hands already moving.
Together—His will like iron bands, her presence like a solvent that made ugly seams behave—they stabilized the shattering edges, or picking up broken glass from the floor and trying to put it together. Sisters of Silence burned quietly as nulls; the Ten Thousand made a wall of gold and oath; Mechanicum detachments died in place and called it function. Valdor's voice never rose. Krole's hands said BURN / SMALL / TO SAVE / ALL.
"Who broke it?" she asked between clenched breaths.
"Magnus," He said, not unkindly, not forgiving. "Trying to warn me. Disobedience with love at its root still breaks a door."
She swallowed the answer like fire and worked. It was not hours or days but a grinding campaign—months stretched thin by time‑shear—in which nothing was "fixed," only held: she used her not-so Psyker abilities to stitch the torn rims while the Emperor drove His will inward to rebuild from the far side of the gate. Between shifts at the Throne she armed and supplied the Ten Thousand and the Silent—Nullfire Projectors, Laurel Scuta, Mark Aurelia‑Tempest Plate—so they could buy minutes and corridors in Calastar. There was no final lock to set, only a net of imperfect closures; and when it held enough to keep Terra breathing, the Emperor did not rise. He remained upon the Throne, laboring within the Webway because nowhere else was strong enough to bear Him. And because, they must make sure to retreat their troops from Calastar. The battle was not over, just in a small break.
Later, when the alarms dimmed enough for words, she ventured, "You could have told me."
"I needed you elsewhere," He said. "And you obeyed. Keep the Ten Thousand and the Silent supplied; hold the seams—but you will not go inside."
She bowed her head so He would not see her face. The shard in her hair warmed in sympathy; she commanded it to be only light.
Part VI - War Within and Tools and Lines
Calastar burned like an idea that had gone bad. Through shattered webway halls, Custodes and Sisters fought creatures that had never been born. Aurelia armed them with what she dared: Nullfire Projectors that sang the warp empty; Laurel Scuta for breach teams; Corona‑Edge blades for quiet work where thunder failed. From the Throne vault she learned a second craft—to mend without touching: she braided a low, steady cadence through Pharos links, choir harmonics, and Sister null‑sigils, a power‑current from her that kept the Ten Thousand's breath deep, their hands sure, hunger and lactic fire held at bay. It was not sorcery, only numbers sung softly; while the link held, they did not feel weak or tired, and when it faltered, fatigue hit like gravity returning.
Still, they were losing. Even with the Princess's new patterns in their hands, the tide did not tire and the daemons did not run. It was not enough; they needed something else—more time, more endurance, more bodies that would not break.
The Mechanicum's magi insisted on inspecting the Princess's automata before any sanction; the war needed every tool. She answered with law: "No coercion. No forcing. No abominable intelligences. The pattern stays with me. I know the dangers, and I will not loose them."
A Magos counter‑proposed a narrow compromise: allow the Princess's new frames to receive Custodians at the brink of death. Aurelia met their lenses without blinking. "They are not machine‑minds," she said. "They are dreadnoughts done rightly—no spirit, no false cogitation—only a vessel to carry a willing warrior's animus."
Valdor weighed, Krole signed in terse Thoughtmark, and the Magos relented. Under hexagrammic and pariah seals, the first volunteer was enshrined; his will woke in a gilded exo‑sarcophagus—no AI, only Soul‑Transference, an operation, if it could even be called that, made by the Princess's herself and no one else.
A new cohort took its name: the Custodes Immortalis Laureate. They would stand where flesh failed, and answer to special keys as surely as to their own oaths. Like their Dreadnought‑brothers, they remained fully conscious—lucid minds in auramite coffers—cycling between battle‑wake and null‑trance when the strain rose, never slaved, never asleep against their will.
Field Note — Custodes Immortalis Laureate
Roles: last‑wall anchors; breach holders; Golden Throne Gargoyles, Webway and Warp enders; standard‑bearers for portable pariah fields; Princess's personal Automata.
Keys/Armour/Weapons: auramite nano‑sarcophagus (self‑reknitting microplate "nanosuit" matrix); if a single sanctified mote endures, the whole frame will re‑form when fed matter and oath‑signal; black pariah glyphs along the spine; (Keys for awaking) Knight-Commander of the Silent Sisterhood-key‑sockets at the collar; Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes-laurel‑crest over the heart; (Weapon) forearm Aquila‑Lances (Princess‑pattern, highest‑yield directed lances).
Constraints: Triply oath‑bound—to the Master of Mankind, to the Princess‑Regent Aurelia, and to the Ten Thousand; rousing requires the warrior's assent and dual keys (Silent Sister Matriarch and Captain‑General of the Custodes); no auto‑aggression routines; battle‑wake limited by heat and psyche‑load; pain‑gating humane; conscious at all times; interred souls rest in Solace Vaults or Golden Throne between deployments.
Laurel Oath (spoken at interment):
"By aurum and oath, I, [NOMEN CUSTODIS], set my will in the Immortalis Laureate. By the Light of the Emperor, the will of the Anathema, and the Scion of Terra, I bind myself to Custodia, to the Master of Mankind, and to Aurelia Aeternitas Primus. Not slaved, never unwilling, I rise only at dual‑key and my own assent. I am wall and witness; I break for mankind and I mend until Sol is safe ."
"Unwise," a Magos rasped. "Inefficient."
"Humane," she said, and signed the writ. The machines went where men would die too quickly to learn nothing; they did not think, and that was the point. The Custodes Immortalis Laureate, were not machines, but more. A Hetaeron Guard bled out with a smile when the line held; "Little light—walk back," he said, and vanished cleanly as the Nullfire peaked.
Vulkan came much later, through hidden roads and ruin, to help haul survivors out of Calastar and collapse the passage behind them. Finally, the Webway was close. He found her at the gate, eyes red, hands steady.
"Little sister," he said, rough with relief.
"I'm still here," she answered, and believed it for the span of a breath.
"You're burning too bright," he murmured.
"Be my shade then," she said. He nodded and stood between her and the light.
Part VII - Terra Besieged—The Foolish Hope
The sky over Sol went to war. Ullanor's noon was memory; midnight found its hour. Walls that had been geometry became faith, then prayer, then simple breath held against breaking.
Against Sanguinius's counsel, against Dorn's plans, against the Emperor's silence, Aurelia did something unwise and human: she warped alone to the Vengeful Spirit, because she asked herself to do it, her power allowed it. Her strength was thought and presence, not blade. Still, she hoped. She kept her palm to a bulkhead as if it were a living thing and told herself—once, twice—that hope was not a foolishness. The vox‑nets she had woven now carried only screams and the flat sound of broken channels; where her Choir‑Current should have soothed, there was only static and teeth.
The corridors were wrong—longer than they were, and shorter, and hungry. Lights arrived before they shone; shadows waited like decisions she did not want to make. She walked until the ship decided she had found him, until the air changed the way it does before a storm.
"Horus," she said. Not Warmaster, not warlord. "Brother."
He turned. The thing riding him smiled first. "You should have stayed in your gardens."
"I came to bring you home."
"Home?" He laughed, cruel and surprised. "Little sister, you are Father's favorite servitor. You obey. You glow. You forgive. You will forgive me, too?"
She stepped close enough to touch his face. "I will forgive you when you stop. Come back. We will make the stopping together."
Horus's smile thinned. "Forgiveness is long gone," he said. "I know what Father hid from us—what he hid from you. Blind hope won't mend this. It's stupid, little sister. Naive."
Aurelia didn't look away. "Then let it be naive," she breathed. "If the choice is between a clever cruelty and a foolish kindness, I'll take the kindness and wear the fool. Hope isn't a cure; it's a way to stand. It's the refusal to become what hurt us. I believe we can stop—because someone has to believe first. I will be that someone, even if I stand alone. I would rather be naive than cruel."
Horus's eyes hardened. "Hope failed you when you failed us," he said. "You had the reach to end this—to see beyond, to learn, to change—and you chose chains. You chose the rules of a man who thinks you a tool. That is your crime: all that power, and you did nothing."
The words landed like a blow. Aurelia flinched, hurt plain on her face; some small, honest part of her agreed, and the admission hollowed her voice. "Maybe," she whispered. "Maybe I did. But even so… I will not become what you've become." She drew a breath that shook. "I know my failures. I will carry them—every one. If you stop, if you turn, I will learn, and I will spend the rest of my life becoming someone you could be proud of. It isn't too late for you. It isn't too late for me. It isn't too late for any of us."
For a heartbeat something old looked out through his eyes—a man who had once carried her on his shoulder and taught her a word in the language of hungry streets, a man who called her a small, private name no one else heard. It reached for her and almost made it. Then the voices came back, a tide with hooks, and the ship seemed to lean toward them.
"No more stories," Horus whispered, almost kind, and the Talon of Horus found her body. The claws punched through silk and bone with a wet crack; air fled her like a candle blown. She made no scream—only a small, involuntary gurgle as bright blood slipped over her lip and pattered against his plate. Her hand lifted, small and steady, and she set her palm against his cheek while more blood threaded from the corner of her mouth. The laurel worked into her glove left a faint red print—half oil, half red—on his skin. "It's too late for me," he said, almost to himself.
"Brother," she said softly.
He laid her down as if laying down a weapon he loved. He brushed hair from her forehead the way a brother does in a memory that hurts to touch. For three breaths he stared at his hands as if they were not his. "What did I just do?" he asked the dead air, and for a slivered instant he looked terrified of himself.
Elsewhere on the ship an angel walked toward his death. Elsewhere still a god made of will prepared to spend the last of Himself, not weeping his mistakes, there was not time. Horus straightened; the moment passed. The tide took him. There was no turning back.
And for the next 10,000 years, the Imperium would suffer Horus's ultimate sin.
Until, the Laure of Terra, the Princess's returns.
Malcador — Last Entry from the Ledger of Terra
There is work that ends a man and work that finishes the world. I have been given both. I am told the Princess fell aboard the Vengeful Spirit, by Horus's own hand. The message came thin and bleeding through the vox—enough to wound, not enough to deny. I write this line so that some witness exists beyond memory.
The Emperor goes now to meet His son, and Sanguinius walks with Him. He has set me to the Golden Throne in His stead while He steps into the storm. I know what the Throne asks; I have watched it eat kings, and it will gladly eat a regent. I will sit. I will hold the locks as long as hands can hold.
My ledgers have always balanced, but some columns will not resolve. I kept truths from her at His command. I called it necessity. I called it mercy. I watched her starve for the word why and praised the bread she baked from silence. This is my small guilt, and it is not small to me.
Yet I will spend what remains of me to buy them minutes enough to matter. If there is a world on the far side of this hour, it will be because the price was paid without counting. She once spoke of a quiet room beyond names—a place of stars and still pools where light thinks before it shines. She said it was not the warp and not the web, only hers. If there is any justice left in the sum of things, her ember has gone there to breathe. If there is any grace, it will return when Terra needs a sunrise.
A long night is coming. We will set candles where we can.
— Malcador the Sigillite, Regent of Terra, last line set before the Throne