Part I - Terra
Terra was a lie the catechisms told to the faithful. Once, from the spires of the Palace, the void had seemed a clean and proximate thing, a velvet tapestry upon which a child might count the familiar lanterns of the Sol System and believe the heavens an ordered, obedient sphere. Now, the sky wore its grime like a penitent's habit. The Cicatrix Maledictum, the Great Rift, had torn the firmament to the quick, a festering, impossible wound of nightmare energies. Through this celestial mire, the light of the Astronomican reached the Throneworld as if drowned in smoke, a beacon labouring against an encroaching tide of absolute night. From the high windows of the Sanctum Imperialis, only a few defiant stars held their ground. All the rest were rumours.
Orbital lanes, once highways of Imperial commerce, now pulsed with cautionary sigils and the hard gleam of void-shield emitters. Macro-batteries, silent for millennia, slumbered with one cyclopean eye open. On the planet's surface, hive-spires leaned into the ribs of ancient mountains, as if bracing against a psychic wind no sensorium could measure but which every soul could feel. On the night side, the oceans, which should have been black mirrors to the void, instead reflected the city's perpetual, feverish pall. The Throneworld glowed like a lighthouse buried in its own mist.
And yet, it was still Aurelia's home. After all that had been lost, after all that had been broken, Terra remained the first name she had for the concept of belonging. Homes changed. She could change with them. But first, she had to permit her body to awaken.
She was not, in truth, trapped in flesh. The form resting within the Golden Tower was an avatar, an anchor of honest, temporary matter; her true scope, her truer self, lay elsewhere, in the patient, silent geometry of the Basilica and the boundless ocean of the Empyrean. But to return to the vessel had a price, and the bill always arrived in the currency of nerves.
Her ancient shell lay cradled in the device she had once built for her brothers, a marvel she had prayed never to need herself: the Eden Stasis Pod. It did not merely still the passage of time; it was designed to teach matter to remember its own ideal state, to insist upon the blueprint of life against the slow decay of ages. Suspensor rings held the cradle weightless within its housing. A web of micro-filaments, finer than spun light, constantly read the quiet arrangement of her cells and, where it found deviation, insisted upon better answers. At the margins of this silent work, cherub-servitors fussed with censers and sanctified syringes, while a red-robed Magos Biologis watched from behind a triptych of purity seals and pretended not to pray.
Cables nourished her, needles read her, and alchemical fluids maintained the long, delicate truce between cell and spirit. A filtration mask covered her mouth and nose; a nutrient tube ran down her throat, and she had to consciously insist upon the act of breathing when her ribs had forgotten the rhythm of it. The effort was agony. The scar the Talon of Horus had left upon her—a wound once warped and twisted by the favours of gods she would not name—burned like a fuse drawn out across ten thousand years. The pain, at least, had etiquette; it arrived, made its formal bow, and remained.
Good, she thought, the concept forming without words. Hurt means I am here.
She did not tear free from the machine's embrace. Impatience was a form of pride, and she had learned its cost a lifetime ago. She began where all true beginnings must: with an act of honoured patience.
"Fingers," she commanded herself in the silent chamber of her mind. "One. Then the next."
She could not yet open her eyes; the Eden medium had its own disengagement rituals that could not be rushed. Instead, she imagined her hands, thin and pallid as they must be, remembering their weight against the anvil in a life that no longer had a workshop, and she waited. Hours passed. The profound numbness conceded a fraction of its territory. A single knuckle twitched. A tendon argued with itself in a series of minute spasms and then, at last, acquiesced. The body began to remember it had owners other than pain.
Memories, fluid and silver, moved under her skin like fish in a dark river: Dorn, laughing only with his eyes after a shared victory; Ferrus, setting a heavy, perfectly balanced power hammer in her palm and calling it a promise; her father's silence at dawn, which had been a form of blessing when she had been too young to name it.
A pressure, a deep and resonant tremor, rolled through the Palace like distant thunder.
She paused her efforts. Not the Throne. Its agony was a constant, a known quantity. This was something else—a disturbance, eastward. The ancient walls of the Palace seemed to recognise an old enemy, and in her mind's eye, she saw them square their shoulders.
She sent her consciousness outward, a tendril of perception flowing along the well-worn habits of stone and plasteel. The world met her not as light, but as pressure, as taste, as scent. The Lion's Gate Spaceport bristled with weapons-fire, and the air tasted of ozone and vaporised copper. The metaphysical stink of the Warp, the cloying stench of Chaos, lay upon the paving like a mortal insult. It was not a full invasion; had it been, the sky would have been all teeth and screaming madness. This was a feint with claws—a talon's reach of daemonic incursions designed to overwhelm weak lines, to break the carefully rehearsed rhythms of defence while the Astronomican still stuttered and the High Lords of Terra argued by candlelight.
Gold moved in that storm of unnatural fire. The Ten Thousand were there—Shield-Companies shifting with the fluid, lethal grace of a single, many-jointed thought. With them, a handful of the ancient entombed moved: auramite sarcophagi of Contemptor Dreadnoughts, waking to a war they had never wished to see again. They cut and were cut; even perfection bleeds when the sky itself is wrong. Around them, Legionaries of the Imperial Fists held the hard places, their yellow armour a stark promise against the encroaching dark, while endless lines of the Astra Militarum bowed under the psychic onslaught, but did not break. A single Null-maiden, a Sister of Silence, walked a high parapet, and where she passed, the very air learned how to be clean again for twelve measured heartbeats.
Aurelia did not mistake herself for a general. Her orders were simple, written on the first page of her own internal scripture. The battle she had to win today was the one against eyelids and breath. But even the most sacred texts allowed for marginalia.
She laid her mind like a gossamer veil over the battlefield and did what she could without summoning the notice of the things that watched from beyond. She did not unleash fire or lightning; she simply took the sharpest edge off a soldier's agony. She steadied hands that were shaking from old wounds and new terror. She reminded lungs, seared by promethium, how to draw a clean breath. No warp signature rode upon her work. It was the opposite: a profound absence of the unnatural, a pocket of absolute quiet, thickened where she passed, as clean and as silent as snowfall.
And from the storm, voices answered her—the thoughts of men who had never met her and never would, but who knew her all the same.
"We stand," came the bronze-throated thought of the entombed Custodians. Their mighty helms turned as one, as if a banner only they could see had just been raised. Their voxless cant, a language of pure, sworn duty, ran along old circuits of their shared oath: Her voice. Our Princess. Souls braided to hers since the days of Unification knew her at once. Purpose and vindication flared like a second sun within their sarcophagi, and they fell upon the daemonic host with the calm, terrifying intensity of a deity's divine attendants.
This is the Princess's home, they whispered on a frequency where auspex arrays heard only silence. We will clean it.
"Rise, sons of Dorn. Rise. Fight. Hold. Hope. I am with you," she whispered into the mind of a fallen Imperial Fist, and the grievous wound in his side decided it had been premature. Along the length of the bastion, warriors of the VII Legion lifted their helms as one, hearing her as if she stood upon the wall beside them. Aches born of a hundred battles slid from their limbs, breath levelled in their chests, and rents in their ceramite seemed less severe. Yellow shields locked together with a resounding crash that promised the line would not move another inch.
"Rise, brave guardsman. You are not alone." The thought found battalions of the Astra Militarum, as clear as a sergeant's bark at their shoulder. For a single, glorious breath, they felt braver than Astartes, their backs straightening as a wave of supernatural fatigue fell away. Ranks tightened, lasguns came level with renewed purpose, and the panicked chatter on the vox-net stilled. The line held because ten thousand men simultaneously decided that it could.
"Rise, Adeptus Custodes—be my spear, be my shield." The golden line advanced three measured paces and refused to cede them again. Auramite sang along the armour joins as if the metal itself remembered a vow, and the Ten Thousand set their weight as one. On the inner wall of the Palace, Shield-Captain Valerian felt the words like a hand on his shoulder—his Highness, his Princess—an order that was also a benediction. For once, there was no doubt, no doctrine to be interpreted. She had spoken, and so he stood. The purpose he had not known he lacked rose clean and sharp in his chest. His next step bit into the stone as if the world had been waiting for it.
To the Anathema Psykana, her voice came not as sound but as a diagram of absolute quiet: Stand. Be the knife of stillness.
A Sister of Silence, her blade slick with ichor, signed to her squad, Our princess commands. We obey. Then, after a breath, she added, We stand.
Aleya, the Knight-Centura, halted on the stairs as the pattern of that silent command wrote itself through her—absence given form and purpose. She answered with two precise cuts of her hand in the air, an affirmation without a word. The Quiet that had always been a solitary burden now pressed back like a comforting palm. For the first time in a very long time, she was not alone, and she knew she would not be again. Nearby, a Shadowkeeper, one of the grim hunters of the Custodes, cocked his head, listening to a silence that had shape, and then went on killing, his every movement a study in methodical lethality.
Daemons shrieked as the very air they sought to corrupt learned, briefly, how not to be their food. On the vox-nets, panic found a lower, more manageable octave. In the manufactorum-habs three levels down, knives that had been drawn in fear went back into pockets without anyone admitting why.
Then, something larger grazed the edges of her sense—a vast fleet-mass, an aura of iron discipline, a familiar shape cut against the chaos. It was not a rumour this time. Roboute Guilliman had come to Sol. Across the system, vox-nets crackled with his fleet's identifiers. The spectral shadow of the Ynnari, who had escorted him, flickered at the edge of the Mandeville Point and was gone. Imperial augurs learned the faces of friend and kin again and began to speak in clear declaratives instead of panicked questions.
Aurelia's breath hitched in a throat half-owned by life-support hoses.
She smiled. And then she sobbed once, a single, quiet sound, because the body, after all this time, still remembered how.
"Follow the page," she told herself again, her resolve hardening. Your battle is to wake.
Still, she sent one last, fine thread of thought across the dark, speaking into a mind that had carried too much, for too long.
"My beloved brother—steadfast, storm-worn—come back to me. Nothing is lost. Hope breathes still. If your own faith has failed, then borrow mine; I have carried it for you across the ages. Lay down the sentence you wrote against your own heart, and let me lighten the ledger. Be not only a lawgiver, a primarch, and an avenging son. Be a brother. Be a saviour. Walk toward me, and I will meet you. Believe in me until you remember how to believe in yourself; I have never stopped believing in you. Let me bear your quill, and I will ease your guilt."
On the bridge of the flagship Macragge's Honour, a giant in blue armour, a demigod who had forgotten he was once a brother and a son, stiffened. Then, he allowed an impossible expression to touch his lips: a smile, small and entirely unarmoured. For a breath, he suspected a daemon's trick, a subtle corruption to exploit his deepest grief. The thought faded the way frost fades in honest sun when a second murmur, a final psychic touch, reached his mind—amused, tender, and utterly, achingly unmistakable:
"And no, Roboute, only I would dare to hide your favourite quills. And if you skip your meals again, I will set the entire Ultramar household guard to hunt you down."
Guilliman let out a breath that might have been a laugh, and belief, pure and unconditional, settled over him like a weight finally set down. "Sister," he said, and the word, spoken aloud on his bridge, made pilots fly straighter and voidsmen stand taller. On some quiet, forgotten shelf of his mind, a boy on Macragge looked up from a data-slate and found that his hand no longer shook.
Part II - The Golden Tower
Movement returned by painstaking degrees—each motion painfully precise, like a master craftsman testing every hinge of a long-unopened machine. The ache was good news: it signified that nerves were alive, that neural pathways were answering, that the body was recalling itself after a long and profound forgetting. The form was frail, yes, but it was not failing. Ten thousand years sequestered within the Eden Pod had not been part of its original design charter, yet her creation had held true, without the subtle betrayals of long-term stasis—no rot of the mind, no deadening of a limb. She knew that once she stepped free, the process of healing would need to be slow and human. She would permit it to be slow, so long as it was right.
Beyond the crystalline shell of the pod, the Four would notice soon enough. Their great, infernal feast would pause when they perceived the Astronomican steadying from a desperate blink to a focused, unwavering beam, a sign that its master was gathering more than just function. They would see the change in the cosmic weather and yet remain blind to the hand that guided it. For now, that was enough.
The cradle that held her began to complain in a series of small, honest groans. Servo-skulls whined as their diagnostic routines accelerated, ancient seals flexed under new pressure, and the amniotic, life-sustaining fluid trembled around her. She stirred—a small, deliberate movement, just enough for any watchers to pretend they had not seen it. Hours had passed since her first effort; the fighting at the Lion's Gate had ebbed, the daemons routed and running backwards into their foul holes in reality. Their dark masters would be tasting confusion, a dish they were unaccustomed to. The plan, her plan, went on.
She could not open the pod from within. That had never been part of its governance; it was a sanctuary, not a cage to be escaped. So she waited—and she felt presences moving through the Palace, their approach like weather that had names: Guilliman, his soul an alloy of iron will and measured mercy; Trajann Valoris, his presence a monolith of purpose without panic. Others, clad in gold and grey and red, fell into formation around them, a procession of living legends moving toward her.
They entered the Golden Tower at a pace that did not insult reverence. The machinery of the chamber spoke in diagnostic languages that only lifetimes of duty could properly interpret. Unfamiliar harmonics rode the deep hum of the pod's power source; the stasis field tightened, then eased, like a vast chest learning how to breathe again.
"Status," Trajann said, his voice level and calm, cutting through the mechanical symphony.
One of the presiding Magos inclined his head, his own binharic vocalisations clicking like dry rain on brass. "The pod speaks, Captain-General. The machine-spirit says: Respirare. To breathe."
Custodians who had not abandoned their watch even during the height of the assault stood like inscriptions chiselled into the marble floor. Several had sensed the same phenomena: a change in the machine's cadence, a slight tremor in the deck plates, a shadow that moved within the pod where there should have been only perfect, unending sleep. At the crystalline face of the pod, Guilliman saw that shadow, and he felt the lingering echo of a voice he had already chosen to believe.
Brother. Open the pod. I cannot do it from within.
"Open it," Guilliman commanded.
The Magos looked to Trajann for a single, significant heartbeat—protocol saluting hierarchy, the ancient dance of Imperial authority. Trajann's short, sharp nod cut the question in half. Rotes of activation unfolded. Seals hissed and released. Pressure vented in carefully controlled stages; ancient valves screamed in protest and then remembered their manners. The machine's awakening rolled on like a litany. The green, life-sustaining medium receded in a slow, controlled whirl, and clarity began to rise. A halo of faint golden light, an inherent part of her being, steadied into shape within the pod. A figure moved within—thin, fragile, yet answering the call to wakefulness.
The cradle yawned open. Guilliman stepped forward without hesitation and caught her as gravity remembered its work, gathering her into his arms. She went limp, a sigh escaping her lips, recognising the absolute safety of his embrace.
"We must remove the tethers," a Magos stated, already moving with purpose.
"Do it," Guilliman answered, his voice softer than a command.
Cables hummed as they retracted, needles slipped free from their ports, and a host of delicate augmetics surrendered their claims on her flesh. He drew his own magnificent cloak around her, a swathe of royal blue and gold, because dignity is a form of armour, too. The last cruelty was the mask; the tube came out long and slow, and she gagged, choking on a breath that had been borrowed for far too long. Had there been anything in her stomach, she would have lost it. Instead, the air of the chamber, thick with ozone and incense, arrived in her lungs like a hard-won victory.
Her eyes opened.
A wave of disciplined shock travelled the room in utter silence. The histories, it seemed, had not lied. There was a depth in her gaze that made men remember star-charts and forgotten maps, and a warmth that made them forget the existence of fear.
"Guilliman," she said. The voice was raw, hoarse with the disuse of millennia and the recent memory of the breathing tube, yet it still sounded like a door being opened into a sunlit room. She raised a hand—unsteady, yet warm—and set it gently against the cold ceramite of his cheek.
"You believe," Aurelia whispered.
"Now I do," he answered, and for the first time since his return from stasis, the immense weight he carried shifted from the burden of a punishment to the honour of a purpose. Outside, the warp storm raged on; the Imperium remained a kingdom split in two by a wound that named itself. But inside the Golden Tower, something older and more resilient than despair remembered how to stand.