“Details.” “Otherwise, I will deem it a lie, and I will punish you!” Two sentences rolled out of the Wolf Shepherd God’s throat, dry and rasping like bone scraping against bone.
He didn’t believe it—or rather, he didn’t dare to believe it.
Karen sighed helplessly and summoned the system panel that only he could see.
Deducting 100 points.
Exchange: [Scrap Historical Holographic Projector].
A palm-sized, patina-covered disc fell into Karen’s palm out of thin air.
He slapped the side of the disc twice and tossed it onto the blood-stained metal floor.
A ghostly blue beam of light projected upwards.
The originally narrow and dark corridor was forcibly stuffed with ten thousand years of blood and tears.
The images flickered and jumped.
In the once-prosperous Imperium of Man, misfortune was everywhere: the arduous struggles of the common people at the bottom of the Imperium, the exorbitant planetary Tithes, and the wars ignited by rebel forces and other races.
The scene shifted.
That was Terra.
The Imperial Palace, which once symbolized the highest reason and glory of humanity.
It remained magnificent, but the throne was piled high with countless pipes, cables, and withered bones.
Upon it sat a shriveled skeleton draped in skin.
Every day, ten thousand Psykers were pushed onto the altar to be drained dry, just to maintain the faint, flickering light of the Astronomican in the darkness.
Shifting again, it reached the Primarchs.
Brothers who once fought side by side and shared drinks had all become indescribable monsters.
Angron, plugged with brass tubes, roared with his maw wide open amidst a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood; Fulgrim, transformed into a giant four-armed serpent daemon, sank into eternal depravity and pleasure with his long tail trailing behind; Mortarion, bearing tattered wings, was covered in rot and maggots; Magnus had become a one-eyed red daemon with wings on his back.
And what of those brothers who did not betray?
Guilliman’s throat was slit by a poison blade, lying lifelessly in a Stasis Field; Lion’s home world Caliban vanished after a civil war; Jaghatai charged into the Webway and his whereabouts are unknown; Corax became a shadow monster wandering the Warp; Ferrus lost his head; and the Archangel Sanguinius, praised by all…
had his wings brutally broken by Horus’s own hands, half his face smashed, drowning in his own blood on the deck of the Vengeful Spirit.
Finally, the image froze in the midst of boundless war.
At the bottom of the Hive City, tens of billions of humans were being drained of their last bit of marrow like livestock, Cultists performed human sacrifices in dark alleys, and Genestealers bred wantonly in the shadows.
“This is the 40th Millennium.” Karen reached out and poked the shadow of the skeleton on the throne in the holographic projection.
“The future you built with your own hands.” “The Horus Heresy ten thousand years ago severely damaged the Imperium, and the Imperium has inevitably begun its slide toward decline and extinction.” “Where is the damned Sigillite!” Horus looked at Karen—the mortal he hated most, the most favored close official beside his father the Emperor, and the highest authority of the Imperial bureaucratic government.
“What has he, as a Perpetual, been doing for these ten thousand years!!?” “Oh, he’s dead too.
Because Magnus destroyed the Webway, and the Emperor had to face the corrupted you, The Sigillite took the Emperor’s place on the Golden Throne.
By the time the Emperor returned to the throne, he was dead.” “He died as Malcador the Hero, the Golden Throne having drained his soul and psychic power.” The light beam extinguished with a soft pop.
The scrap reached the end of its lifespan and shattered into debris on the floor.
In the corridor, even the sound of breathing vanished.
Horus collapsed.
“Throne…
what have I done?” The once tall and upright celestial body, enough to support half the Imperium, was now hunched like a beggar on the verge of death.
The lunar-white Terminator armor clattered against each other, making a tooth-aching sound of metal friction.
He covered his face tightly with both hands, his rough fingers digging deep into his scalp, leaving ten bloody gashes.
There was no roar.
Only a wail from the depths of the throat, like a beast whose bones were bitten through by a trap while still alive.
It was dull and long, striking the walls on both sides and echoing back and forth.
The brightest star of the Great Crusade, the First-Found Son most beloved by the Emperor.
He thought everything he did was for the freedom and glory of humanity, for the Emperor’s grand ideals; only to see with his own eyes that he had pushed all of humanity into the deepest cesspool.
A pair of large hands fumbled through the scattered chunks of meat on the floor.
He grabbed a fragment of a power saw dropped by the Iron Skull Gang thug earlier.
It was a piece of junk metal with jagged teeth and covered in machine oil.
Horus held the metal piece in a reverse grip, aimed it at his heart—the bloody hole that had just been filled with repair fluid—and stabbed down forcefully.
Death.
Perhaps only death could wash away this sin for which even ten thousand deaths would not suffice.
“Goddammit!” Karen let out a roar and lunged forward.
He held onto Horus’s thick arm with both hands, hanging his whole body off it.
A mortal’s strength was insignificant before a Primarch.
The scrap metal was only half an inch from Horus’s chest, its sharp edge already pressing a pale mark into the newly formed skin.
Karen’s face turned red, veins bulging on his neck, feet kicking wildly on the ground, his voice breaking completely.
“Cyannus!” He roared hysterically at that bald head.
“Torgaddon!
Loken!” The moment those three names were shouted, that arm as hard as steel froze in place.
“Think of your excellent sons!
Those sons who respect and love you, who worship you like a god!
If they saw their once-radiant father, the Legion Master of the Luna Wolves, turned into a cowardly wretch trying to escape responsibility through suicide, what would they think?!” Horus’s mouth was half-open, his bloodshot eyes staring intently at Karen.
Karen panted heavily, his hands still hanging from the Primarch’s forearm, speaking one word at a time: “The mess is your doing.
This endless darkness was started by your own hands.
You want to just close your eyes and be done with it?
What right do you have to let the mortals cleaning up after you and your loyalist brothers carry this ten-thousand-year blood debt!” “I need you alive!
You have to work with me to save this Imperium you ruined!” “But it’s not entirely your fault either.” Karen took a deep breath to calm his emotions and changed his tone.
Horus’s eyes were filled with sadness and anger.
“Why?
You just said I caused all this, but why change your tune and say it wasn’t entirely my fault!?” “Your name is Horus Lupercal.
That loyal Warmaster named ‘Lupercal’ actually died long ago in the cult temple on Devon Star.” “The ‘Horus’ who later went to Terra to launch the rebellion was nothing more than a puppet controlled by the Four Chaos Gods!” Karen stared into his eyes.
“You should know the meaning of your name; you are the Wolf Shepherd God.” “That was the glory bestowed upon you by the Emperor himself.
Are you going to throw it on the ground and crush it yourself?”