Chapter 289: Konrad Is in Pain, but the Psyker Is Clearly Detestable Too
The ground was covered in blood—his blood, Mortarion's blood.
Milky-white mist drifted across the floor, rolling like ocean waves.
Blood trickled down his cheek. Slowly, ever so slowly, he lifted the dying Sevatar into his arms.
Stumbling with uneven steps, crushed flesh and bone fragments crunching beneath his feet, he carried his still-living son away, deeper into the Night Haunter's shadows—
Golden flames ignited.
"Konrad Curze."
Malcador's voice pulled Curze back to awareness. He looked at the Regent, at the eyes beneath that hood—gloomy, unfathomable, and fixed upon him.
He looked at Malcador—and he saw a withered corpse, burned by golden fire.
That light he had just seen had come from here.
Curze's eyelids twitched unnaturally twice, but he swallowed hard, keeping his posture and his silence.
Mortarion glared at him from across the chamber.
Malcador continued, his tone utterly flat, "He has granted you sight and judgment."
Konrad Curze hid his face behind tangled hair, but at Malcador's first words, his body shuddered faintly.
Mortarion gave a mocking laugh, while Horus fixed his full attention on Malcador.
"As His son, why have you allowed yourself to fall so low?"
It was still a trial—a trial aimed at him. Deep within, Curze trembled.
The old Konrad Curze would have roared, raged. He would have demanded to know why he was cursed with sight. He would have asked why his father was so cruel.
He would have asked why—why was he the only one made to bear it all?
But now…
The faint poisonous reek of the Lord of Death's aura stung Curze's nose, sharp reminders of the Night Haunter's past.
Unlike Mortarion, who lived constantly in his recollections, Curze had locked that part of himself away, burying it deep in endless night.
He lowered his head and rasped, "The Great Crusade was a mistake."
He did not raise his eyes, but he heard Horus stir restlessly at those words. The supposedly noble figure seemed ready to smash his fist into Curze's face, but then the air chilled—Malcador was using his psychic power.
The old man's lips moved slightly.
"Continue."
"Tens of millions of worlds were laid waste by war. Billions of lives were extinguished. All became guilty of the crimes of war. Soldiers committed atrocities on battlefields without number—and I tolerated them."
"Because I could not control it all, just as I could not change…"
Curze fell silent, listening to Mortarion's breathing.
"Fate."
He uttered the word in a low voice.
All sinners would one day face the judgment of fate. No one could escape—not even the Emperor, godlike though He was. His so-called righteous brothers would also be judged.
And if the galaxy held no executioner to deliver that judgment… then they would pass judgment upon one another.
Inside the chamber, Malcador's sigh was drowned out by Mortarion's rasping laughter.
Just as Mortarion was about to sneer, Malcador raised a hand, silencing him.
The Lord of Death begrudgingly fell quiet again.
"You have been too deeply shaped by Nostramo, Konrad."
Malcador spoke evenly.
"Nostramo made you into a thorough pessimist. Its imprint on you has even twisted the Emperor's original design."
Curze began to laugh.
"So what will the Imperium do with me, old man? The same as my brothers who disappeared?"
He extended the index finger of his right hand and drew a line across his throat in the air. The finger that Mortarion had once broken had long since regrown, its nail sharp and claw-like once more.
"The guilty must be punished—and I am nothing but a defective, useless remnant. Death is as good an ending as any."
He laughed with a trembling voice. Was it fear?
Or was it because the death he had foreseen in his visions was not this one?
Or perhaps… he truly longed to embrace punishment?
He drank in those gazes with abandon: Malcador's calm, yet laden with frustration as though scolding a wayward son; Mortarion's resentful glare, the look one gives a madman; Horus's severe expression, torn between pity and disgust.
At length, Malcador sighed.
"Fate can be changed, and it can be chosen. I once thought Mortarion had already shown you another path."
Mortarion's eyes now turned upon Malcador, filled with both horror and loathing. But Malcador ignored him; he had long grown used to such looks since Mortarion's days of study on Terra.
The old man's gaze settled upon Konrad Curze once more. Golden fire smoldered quietly in his eyes.
"You wish to forget—but no. You must still learn."
Konrad Curze parted his lips.
A ripple suddenly disturbed the still waters of his memory. The ripples spread outward, forcing Curze down into the icy depths.
He sank, suffocating slowly.
He remembered Sev.
Was Sev dead? That boy who always wore a frown, who never could sleep?
Beneath the black waters, Curze opened his eyes wide, tearing through the seaweed made of the dead's hair.
He found Sev's remains—some skulls half-smashed, some corpses pierced through the chest, others long decayed to brittle bone. He pushed the strands of hair aside and saw Sev's face, aged beyond all recognition.
Was Sevatar dead?
He asked himself, but the voice that answered was not his own. It was venomous, as though soaked in poison for a thousand years.
He must be dead.
Curze thought: Sev was no immortal. He had only his allotted span of life.
But… when he looked back, he saw mountains of corpses piled beneath the water.
Which one was truly his son—Sev?
Which one?
Could he even choose?
He began to claw frantically through the swollen, waterlogged bodies. Ice-cold water filled his lungs, searing his airways like poison gas, screaming inside his body.
The crushing weight of the water pressed down on him. He was failing. Wounds opened across his torso. He watched as strips of skin peeled from his face, until even the tip of his nose dropped away—
Too late! No, too late!
At last, Konrad Curze seized upon one corpse—an aged but more intact body of Sevatar. He clutched it and fought to rise toward the surface. The dead he had slain sprouted hair and hands from the depths, shrieking as they tried to drag him back into the abyss of nightmares.
He thrashed upward desperately, water rippling around him like scythes, carving wounds into his flesh, tearing him apart.
Almost there—almost there! The ripples of the surface reflected in Curze's eyes…
His pupils dilated sharply—
Above the surface, an infinite darkness pressed down, with the will to annihilate everything.
No. No no no no no no no!
Below him lay judgment for his sins; above him, the end of all things. What could he do? What was left for him to do?!
Fate had never left him any way out! He was doomed to destruction! And with him, even his innocent sons!
Konrad Curze hung there in despair, feeling like a corpse adrift, suspended just beneath the surface of the water…
His wrist tightened.
Curze jerked his head downward—Sevatar's lifeless body had seized his wrist.
Sev didn't want to die.
Below lay death, and above… lay destruction, the kind even Konrad Curze could not foresee.
But… but Sev said he didn't want to die.
Curze felt as though he would explode. Where should he go? Where could he turn?
At last, he abandoned the fragile, tormented remnants of his reason. He chose instead to obey his instincts…
Buoyancy gave him the answer.
Curze burst upward through the water's surface, clutching the corpse of his loyal son. In the next instant, boundless darkness swallowed them whole—
Curze gasped for air in great, ragged breaths.
He saw himself kneeling on the ground, Sevatar lying at his side. Was he dead?
Konrad trembled.
The darkness had a scent. That was… that was—
He looked up, shuddering, toward the figure across from him.
It was the poisonous reek of the Lord of Death.
"You have made your choice, haven't you? After all, you are His creation."
Malcador's voice was calm.
"I think now you are able to negotiate rationally with Mortarion over the conflict between you."
"I will never negotiate rationally with him."
Mortarion answered immediately, clearly pleased at Curze's pitiful state, yet as blunt as ever.
Malcador frowned, displeased with Mortarion's interruption.
"If you cannot be rational, then let Hades come and speak with Konrad instead."
"I will negotiate rationally with him."
Mortarion corrected himself at once, his expression unchanged.
Konrad Curze sucked in huge gulps of air, feeling as though he might vomit. But aside from Horus, who stared at him in astonishment, the others—locked in their bickering—paid him no attention.
Was Sev truly alive, or was he dead?
Curze wondered.
In the next instant, he saw the life-sign rune flashing on Sevatar's armor.
Sevatar still lived.
His noblest and most loyal son.
He still lived.
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