Part I - Times of Change
To walk among the ruins was a pilgrimage of purpose. Aurelia moved through the scarred sectors of Terra not as a distant icon, but as a physician attending to a wounded patient. The Heresy had taught her a brutal lesson: gods in high towers were abandoned gods, and a people who felt abandoned would inevitably seek solace in darker faiths. Terra was her home, and she would not allow its people to feel like orphans in their own house.
Her retinue was a moving fortress of gold and white, a testament to the collective anxieties of the Adeptus Custodes and the Lionguard. They had been aghast at her proposal to leave the sanctuary of the Golden Tower. It had taken months of planning, of Officio Assassinorum sweeps and meticulous defensive preparations, to placate their overprotective instincts. But Aurelia had been insistent. She had read the chapter and had seen the necessity of this journey. Her being seen by the common folk was a vital strike against the despair that festered in the city's bones. And, in the gilded halls of the Senatorum, it would give the serpents she hunted just enough rope to hang themselves.
The sheer, insulting audacity of the conspirators still made her head shake. To undermine Guilliman, to sabotage the Crusade, to drag the Imperium back into the comfortable, rotting stagnation they had known for millennia, and to assume she would simply allow it. It was a profound miscalculation. But she knew that the roots of corruption ran deep. This was a necessary pruning. And Jek, her Jek, was finally finding her steel. This crucible would forge her into the confidant, the envoy, the voice that Aurelia knew she was destined to be.
"They are in for a surprise," she whispered to herself as she moved through the throngs of kneeling, weeping faithful. The sheer, suffocating weight of their adoration was a physical thing, and she felt a familiar cringe, a recoil from the idolatry she so despised. Patience. Just patience. She offered them more than speeches; she offered them food, sweet fruits for the children that tasted of a forgotten, sun-drenched earth, and a gentleness that was anathema to the brutal despotism they had always known. She was chipping away at a mountain of faith, one small act of humanity at a time.
"Your Highness?"
Leontus's voice pulled her from her reverie. She was in a small, hastily reconsecrated monastery, the air still thick with the lingering ghosts of battle—the acrid tang of promethium, the metallic scent of spent bolt casings, and the faint, sweet smell of decay. Her guard, a formidable host of Custodes, Lionguard, Silent Sisters, Hestias, Ultramarines, and Imperial Fists, had turned the surrounding ruins into an impregnable encampment.
"My apologies, Leontus," she said, her voice a soft melody against the grim backdrop. "My mind was elsewhere." She sat at a simple, wooden table where the Hestias had laid out a meal. "It has been… an experience… to see Terra again."
"I would that it were in a time of peace, Your Highness," the Chapter Master replied, his voice a dry rasp.
"Peaceful times," Aurelia sighed, plucking a single, dark grape from a bowl. "I fear the Imperium has forgotten the meaning of the word." She saw the tension in him, in all of them. The way their hands never strayed far from their weapons, the way their gazes constantly swept the ruins. She, by contrast, had played with the children, had embraced an old woman whose tears had streaked the dust on her cheeks, a gesture that had nearly given her entire security detail a collective coronary. The memory brought a flicker of amusement to her eyes.
"I know none of you are pleased by this excursion," she said, a soft chuckle escaping her. The exasperated shifting of auramite from the Custodes Immortalis was answer enough. "But the people must see that I am here. That I am real. It is a thing I cannot do for the rest of the Imperium, but I can do it for Terra."
"Your light is sufficient, Your Highness," Leontus insisted.
"So is hope," she replied gently. "And warmth. People live on actions, not just words. This visit, this small mercy, can change the course of a life." She fell silent for a moment, and then a giggle, a bright, unexpected sound, bubbled up from within her. It grew, a cascade of genuine, unrestrained mirth that left her guardians staring in stunned confusion.
"Your Highness?" Leontus asked, a hint of concern in his voice.
"Ah, it is nothing," she said, wiping a tear of laughter from her eye. "I was just reminded of a story. Of my father, and my brothers." She gestured with her grape towards a towering, soot-stained statue of the Emperor that dominated the monastery's courtyard. "Believe it or not," she said, her voice laced with a conspiratorial glee, "my father could be terribly clumsy."
The silence that followed was absolute, the attention of every demigod in the room fixed upon her.
"When the Palace was still being built, Father and my brother Dorn would often... debate... certain architectural choices. Father, for all his pragmatism, had a love for grand, beautiful craftsmanship. Dorn, as you know, valued function over form, strength over beauty."
She popped the grape into her mouth, her smile widening at the memory. "They argued, for a week, over a particular corridor. Father envisioned it lined with colossal, ornate pillars, a testament to the Imperium's artistic genius. Dorn saw them as useless obstructions, a tactical liability that would impede movement and offer no structural support. In the end, of course, Father won. Because he was the Emperor, and Dorn was the most dutiful of sons."
She paused, letting the story breathe. "So the pillars were raised, magnificent and utterly impractical. The corridor was… snug. And as many of you know, my father was a man of… considerable stature. As were his guardians."
Another giggle escaped her. "It was only a matter of time. One day, Father had cause to use that very corridor. The moment he stepped into it, he realised Dorn had been right. There was a great, grinding clang of auramite on marble as his pauldrons scraped against the pillars. He tried to turn and became wedged. His Custodes, following in perfect formation, piled up behind him, a magnificent, golden traffic jam of demigods."
Aurelia laughed freely now, the sound echoing in the silent courtyard. "Dorn, I am convinced, had been waiting for this very moment. He arrived, drawn by the cacophony, and just stood there, his face an impassive mask, watching Father and the glorious Ten Thousand grunting and scraping, utterly stuck. My brother was not a man given to smiling, but I swear, on that day, I saw the corner of his mouth twitch."
She turned her gaze to the Custodes Immortalis, their ancient, implacable helms hiding memories that were now hers to share.
"After a few hours of what I can only describe as profound, humbling penance, Father declared, with the gravest of expressions, that the pillars constituted a severe tactical vulnerability. Dorn, his face a perfect mask of solemn agreement, suggested they could be used to trap invaders. I saw my uncle Malcador turn away, hiding a coughing fit that sounded suspiciously like laughter. A few days later, Dorn personally oversaw the demolition of the pillars. I am quite certain he did it with joy in his heart."
She leaned back, the warmth of the memory fading, replaced by a sudden, poignant chill. To her guardians, this was a myth, a fragment of a lost gospel. To her, it had happened last week.
"It has been a year since I awoke," she whispered, the joy draining from her voice, leaving behind a hollow ache. "But that memory… it is as fresh as yesterday's rain." The abyss of ten thousand years yawned before her, a chasm filled with all that she had lost.
She saw the concern on their faces, and with a visible effort, she shook off the melancholy, her gentle smile returning.
"To many of you, he is a god to be worshipped," she said, her voice soft but clear. "But to me… he was just my father." She hoped the story, this small act of humanisation, would be a single stone chipped away from the temple of lies they had built in his name. A start. It would have to be.