Behind the girl, a Chaos Star—an interweaving of demons, flesh, metal, bone, and cables—rotated slowly. The power of the minor domains, those not yet aggregated into the Eightfold Realm, was being harnessed by her through this ritual and the mass sacrifice of tens, even hundreds of thousands of Chaos Astartes to Chaos itself.
Simultaneously, she usurped the power of the domain known as "Amorphous Distortion." As the final corner of the Chaos Star, a domain that technically remained "unborn" would normally be impossible to borrow from in such large quantities; in the Warp, to be born is to exist at every point in time, and conversely, to remain unborn means to not exist in the past, present, or future.
However, Amorphous Distortion was the exception. It symbolized the unknowable and the unnamable; even its status of existence was a mystery, granting the girl a narrow opportunity for opportunism.
The waves of faith directed toward the Eternal Dragon and the Machine God revitalized Chaos, revealing its yearning to drag Alexander into its depths. The souls of countless Chaos Astartes, the lost, and the damned rose wailing from the tide of Chaos, reaching out their hands to pull at the realm of Saint Doraemon, dragging it toward the abyss.
The Immaterium surged with violent waves, and Saint Doraemon's realm swayed, momentarily revealing its colossal divine form. His realm was himself; his divine body was his divinity. Within this grand divinity were children laughing, teachers instructing in schools, commuters crowded on subways, women cooking at home, elders pruning bonsai—Alexander had hypnotized every part of himself, fragmenting them into tiny pieces.
Through his tools, he convinced them they were mere humans living and working in the Tsukimidai district. Their daily lives were, in fact, the very mechanism through which Alexander mobilized his power.
But as the faith surging from Chaos poured into Alexander's realm, the district began to expand. Twisted, chaotic things began to manifest in Tsukimidai. Bloodthirsty, maddened battle cries rang out as numerous Chaos Astartes, clad in spiked black power armor, materialized from nothing. They were the projections of the Chaos Astartes' faith—the tentacles of Chaos itself piercing into Alexander's domain.
"What's all this shouting?! Where did these foreigners come from, acting crazy in our Tsukimidai?!"
"The world is going to the dogs! Strange clothes, weird outfits—lock them all up!"
Almost as soon as these Chaos Astartes appeared, the police of Tsukimidai rushed forward, swinging batons. Even under normal circumstances, the emotions and faith flowing toward Alexander inevitably contained extremes and distortions.
The forms these faiths took within his divinity could be maddened and difficult to control. The original duty of these policemen was to imprison and manage these projections of erratic faith; they were the self-defense mechanism born of Alexander's will, the manifestation of his authority in the hearts of the masses.
They possessed a strong deterrent power and could normally control extreme faiths because, ultimately, those faiths still worshipped Alexander as an individual or the identity of Saint Doraemon. But the faith of the Chaos Astartes... they worshipped power itself, they worshipped Chaos, the Warp, and the two domains Alexander occupied.
"You dare fight back!"
The Chaos Astartes began a brutal struggle with the Tsukimidai police.
The entire realm vibrated and shook, locked in mutual conflict and contradiction, tearing apart in one moment and being mended in the next. The most lethal aspect of this ritual was that Alexander could not actively resist the faith coming from Chaos itself.
To do so would require him to truly wake up, awakening the hypnotized and sleeping parts of his divinity—but that would also cause his individual identity to be drowned in the boundless sea of faith, losing his sense of self.
He could only rely on the fixed programs established through hypnosis and self-fragmentation to combat the influence of Chaos.
But the girl did not believe Alexander would simply wait for death. The simplest and most direct countermeasure would be to destroy the ritual itself.
The tides of the Warp rolled, and the roars of the Gods echoed across the wastes. Tides of purple, green, red, and blue lunged toward Lorgar's daemon world.
The girl lightly adjusted the hideous Chaos Star behind her. The power of Amorphous Distortion was released. A thin black mist, composed entirely of shadow, expanded from the Star toward the orbit of the daemon planet.
This shadow was fundamentally different from the Shadow in the Warp manifested by the Tyranid Hive Mind; it was a formless, shapeless, boundless black mist. Within it, thousands of eyes flickered with thousands of strange colors—indescribable, incomparable, and unnamable. A single glance made one feel as if the boundaries of their mind were being torn asunder.
That was the unborn divinity of Amorphous Distortion. Since Amorphous Distortion was the ultimate "unknowable," whether it was born or not remained unclear—neither alive nor dead. Therefore, it was "alive." Leveraging the unique nature of this realm, the girl forcibly brought a portion of its divinity into the present.
The daemon world Sicarus was enveloped by this mist of the unknowable, falling into a deep abyss. The claws, mandibles, tentacles, feathers, and wings of the Four Gods tore at the mist, but its thickness seemed to be unknowable as well. No matter how they tore, it remained inexhaustible, temporarily stalling the Gods' assault.
"What magnificent power," Lorgar whispered, gazing at the Chaos Star with fanatical eyes. He could feel the boundless warp-energy within; the power of the Gods was but a fraction of Chaos. Only this Primal Truth was truly worthy of worship.
The girl remained silent, staring at the sky. She knew the power of the Star was limited and could not hold the Gods for long. Amorphous Distortion, after all, had not been born; being "neither alive nor dead" could also mean it was dead.
Currently, she controlled this borrowed power through her status as the Dark King and the "Favor of Chaos," but that favor was temporary. In reality, she was at most the avatar of an avatar of the Dark King, and the power she could wield had its limits.
Most of the strength she could borrow was spent fending off the Gods, inevitably leaving gaps. It was entirely possible for smaller entities to slip through...
Especially those already close to the realm of Amorphous Distortion.
"LORGAR!!!!"
A sharp raven's cry was the first to tear through the unnamable mist. A pitch-black shadow dove in from the indescribable gloom. Black raven eyes quickly scanned the planet, locking onto Lorgar atop the tower instantly.
"Corax?" Lorgar's voice trailed off as he instinctively sought to flee. But almost instantly, a bolt of pale lightning struck his bald head. Claws pierced directly into the skin of his face, which was covered in scripture. A hideous figure with a pale face and raven feathers appeared within the lightning, his frenzied countenance filled with hatred.
"Father! Save me!" Lorgar let out a terrified shriek. After many encounters, he was certain: he was no match for Corax. Facing Corax would only result in being brutally toyed with and killed.
Corax let out a bloodthirsty low growl, his claws lunging for Lorgar's throat.
Then, a power maul whistled through the air. The force of the swing was so immense that the air itself shattered. Corax barely had time to react, managing only a slight shift to shed a tiny fraction of the impact.
His power armor, forged of shadow itself, shattered instantly. Pale flesh twisted as if struck by a meteorite; bones snapped, and organs ruptured. Blood sprayed from his mouth as he was slammed heavily into the tower wall.
Corax struggled to look up to see who had delivered such a terrible blow. He saw a tall figure clad in moonlight-white armor. The power armor itself bore no decorations, looking as though it had been hastily modified from an ancient set of Cataphractii Terminator armor. And the face within that armor...
Corax saw those eyes—full of passion, flowing with rage, like an apex predator, like a stallion galloping across a battlefield. Those were the eyes of Lupercal. The eyes of Horus Lupercal.
Corax spat out a mouthful of bloody mist.
"Corax." Horus gazed at his brother's pale body, lightly gripping the warhammer. The weight was a bit off; his armor was a temporary modification of a relic Terminator suit from the Word Bearers' armory, with no time for decoration—just a hasty coat of white paint. The hammer was one of Lorgar's spares; it was a bit light and didn't feel quite right in his hand, but it was better than nothing.
Horus took a step forward, slow and deliberate, accumulating immense potential energy. The moment his foot landed, the entire tower trembled. In the next instant, the air was torn asunder, and space itself let out a wail. Horus' face magnified instantly as he appeared before Corax, along with the hammer that once belonged to Lorgar.
The power maul fell with a thunderous boom. Pitch-black energy exploded from the head of the hammer; searing light and fire erupted like the prominence of a dead star, turning into a surging tide that blasted out of the tower and into the distance.
"Horus," came a low murmur. Corax had dodged at the last possible moment. He leapt up, wreathed in blood, suspended in mid-air with an agility that would be considered exaggerated even for an Aeldari. Though he did not understand how Horus had returned, in that single instant, Corax realized Horus' power far exceeded his own. Or rather, Horus surpassed him on almost every level. The power of the Dark King flowed within him; he was the Primarch of the Dark King.
Faced with such a power gap, his other Primarch brothers might have already fallen. But Corax... Corax understood what he was. He was born of the courage of the weak; deep in his soul was the fighting style of one who struggles from below. This was something the other Primarchs did not possess.
Only in agility could he somewhat keep up with Horus. And the shadows... the shadows were his companions.
Corax's form dissipated like water beside Horus, vanishing into a sliver of shadow.
Horus held his warhammer, scanning the surroundings, his gaze piercing every shadow in search of Corax. A trail of blood flowed down Horus' cheek; Corax's figure flashed by, his claws leaving a bloody furrow on Horus' face. Horus reached out to seize him, but Corax vanished in a heartbeat, retreating into the shadows again.
Then the chest—claws tore a deep rent across the breastplate of Horus' armor. Then the shoulder, the arm, the leg, the back. Wounds slowly accumulated on Horus' body. None were lethal, but they were bothersome, like a sparrow coming for an occasional peck. But Corax knew this was the tactic of the weak: hide in the shadows, gather and scatter suddenly, appearing and disappearing without warning.
No single blow was fatal, but they would let the enemy slowly bleed to death.
The abdomen. Corax's claws aimed for Horus' stomach—but they were caught.
Horus' hand clamped onto Corax's wrist. Corax had to admit that the current Horus was powerful to an exaggerated degree. His wrist was held in a death grip. Horus violently slammed Corax into the ground; the sheer force made Corax feel as if his spine, his organs, his soul, and even things deeper within had been severely traumatized.
"I really should have taken my Talon of Horus back from Abaddon."
"Otherwise, the moment I caught you just now, you would already be dead."
Horus' voice rang out. Corax saw him raise the warhammer.
"Once again," Corax said softly.
"Hmm?" Horus grunted with a hint of confusion.
"Betrayal," Corax said. "Betraying our Father."
"I have not," Horus shook his head. "Not this time."
"That is merely an evil god."
Corax's voice was as thin as the shadows themselves. "Our Father is humanity. All of humanity. Only humanity."
A moment of hesitation flickered across Horus' face.
At that moment, another brilliant light tore through the shadows covering the planet. Pure white wings unfurled slightly, feathers drifting slowly from the sky. The Spear of Telesto, with its teardrop-shaped tip, shimmered with a metallic blue light.
Seizing the moment of Horus' hesitation, Corax's figure vanished into the shadows once more.
But Horus no longer cared. He turned his head and looked at the figure in the sky.
"Sanguinius," Horus said.
"Horus," Sanguinius replied.