When the Death Guard began to speak his name, reality seemed to tremble. For one fleeting moment, the world withered, shook under an immense will—and darkened.
A choking fog, thick with death and corruption, devoured everything. Hughes stood alone, entombed in a mirror of a murdered world.
The land was black and broken. Gaping chasms yawned like wounds in a slain corpse. Ruins and shattered masonry lay strewn in silence. From the cracked earth, tendrils of toxic mist rose, and even the incessant chitter of the Death Guard's insect swarms had stilled. Silence reigned.
The air twisted with decay, saturated with the stench of poison and the mourning of countless dead. Hughes looked up. Above him, the sky was a dead thing—bloated corpses of stars hung in crooked postures, their dying light dim and feverish.
"You wear your chains still, my former son," a voice whispered behind him.
Hughes spun around.
Through the pallid death mist stood a giant—three times his height, ten paces distant. Arms outstretched, the figure gazed skyward. The swirling toxins around him cloaked his features in a veil of death. A scythe, forged for titans, rested easily in his grip, spinning idly like a child's toy.
"Life is not equal, child," came the rasping voice—hoarse, yet somehow alive in this land of decay.
The sound dissipated quickly, as all life does.
And the giant vanished with it, swallowed by swirling dust.
"You've disgraced us!" Hughes bellowed into the emptiness.
Only silence answered—an ominous, suffocating silence that reeked of ancient wrath. He would bring death to all. Sooner or later.
As the fog thinned, a corridor emerged—black and broken. Its once-proud spires had been scoured away, leaving bare foundations behind.
"Hughes?" a voice called, distant but real. "Hughes!"
A hand grasped his shoulder.
He flinched, reality slowly rebuilding itself in his rotting eye sockets.
"What did you see?" a fellow Death Guard asked, voice flat.
"It was him… or maybe not. He's… changed too much," Hughes muttered. "Whatever it was… it's not good."
Then, agony. A burning spike of pain lanced through his skull, and Hughes howled. His muscles writhed beneath decaying flesh, as if some ancient chain within him was shattering.
His eyes—already half-rotten—died. Parasitic worms slithered free from ruined sockets. He was blind.
But he moved still—fumbling, stumbling—guided by pain. Pain that granted him strength. With a wet crack, he broke free from some unseen, decaying bond.
"It wasn't supposed to be like this…" he murmured, turning blindly, searching. His brothers were gone.
That much he was certain of.
He raised trembling fingers to his face—only to touch emptiness where his eyes once were. Panic threatened to consume him.
His eyes were gone.
"I will give you truth," came a voice from within his mind—ancient, deathless. "I will let you see the infinite."
"No—!" His protest was choked as a violent retch overtook him. A mass of filth spilled from his throat, steaming with corruption.
It stank of meat and nightmares.
"See for yourself, my son."
And with those words, the poisonous mist surged—boiling, alive—as it poured into his ruined eyes.
His vision returned.
Seven layers of miasma unfolded, and Hughes saw—not with eyes, but with something deeper. Like looking through a prism carved from the warp.
Below, rotting organs writhed with green maggots. The corpses of his battle-brothers lay scattered at his feet.
Yet he felt no sorrow. Instead… a flicker of joy. Why?
Before he could dwell, the giant returned—walking past without pause. He knelt and picked up the bloated, fetid organs.
"There was a time when I, too, mourned life's fading," the voice echoed. "And I was proud of its endurance. But in death… I found its truth. Freedom."
"No more tyrants. No more slaves. No more lies of balance. In death, there is gospel."
The figure extended a hand.
"Come, my son," said Mortarion, Primarch of the Death Guard. His voice echoed not just in the air, but in the souls of all who bore the mark of Nurgle. "Join me. Our holy work awaits."
"Yes… Father." Hughes reached up and took the iron hand.
Together, they walked into the fog. Toward the real world. Toward war.
"I am here, Dukel." As the Lord of Death vanished into the mist, his whisper lingered in the space between worlds.
Seven days, seven hours, and seven minutes after the Purifiers' sacred rite, as the seventh chime of the ancient rusted bell tolled—Mortarion set foot upon the ashen soil of Vigilus.
A Daemon Primarch now walked the world.
His arrival turned the tide. The Purifier Plague Host, long beleaguered, surged with renewed fury. Under Mortarion's command, they scoured the warbands that once besieged them.
The death fog spread. Orcs, daemons, and cultists alike were swallowed whole. It rolled relentlessly toward the last human fortress on Vigilus.
Inside, Bishop Jason, commander of the Mortal Astra Militarum regiment stationed there, watched cultists die screaming in the poisonous mist. He felt nothing. They had chosen Chaos—and earned their fate.
"No matter their cause, heresy is treason," Jason said coldly.
The cultists were crushed in Chaos' own internal war.
Jason had yet to learn of Mortarion's arrival. But as the fog crept closer, unease gripped him.
"Bishop, the orks are fleeing—headed for Giant North City. Should we intercept?" crackled a vox report from the recon team.
Jason studied the glowing tactical display, watching the orks' trajectory.
"Let them go," he said. "Orks are hounds of war—feed them war. Send a decoy team. Draw them to the heretic cities."
"And the rest of you, fall back. Hold the line. For the Throne."
Orders given, he watched the spreading fog with grim eyes.
The feeling wouldn't leave him. The gnawing dread. The sense that something monstrous approached from the rot.
He wasn't alone.
Across the sector—across light years—others watched too.
Something was coming.
And the Regent King, Dukel, was not there to stop it.
The headquarters bustled with movement. Across its grand halls, adepts and officers of all ranks scrambled, their robes and armor swaying with urgency. Vox-casters flared with overlapping voices. Auspex readings were parsed, compared, and dispatched through the noospheric relays to frontline commanders in real-time.
Upstairs, in a towering conference chamber overlooking the stars, two giants stood apart from this chaos—Primarchs, demigods among men.
Dukel and Roboute Guilliman stared in silence at the massive hololith projection dominating the room. It depicted Vigilus, unfolding its surface layer by layer, exposing terrain data, troop deployments, and—most critically—the ever-expanding miasma of toxic fog spreading like a rot across its surface.
The vastness of the chamber could not diminish the presence of the two Primarchs. Every seat and throne along the curved table stood empty, yet the room still felt crowded—as if reality itself strained under their gravitas. The vaulted ceiling of armored plasteel reflected the starlight behind them, turning their towering forms into silhouettes against a cosmic sea.
Guilliman was the first to react. His eyes narrowed, the light from the projection dancing across his features as his jaw tensed.
"…Duke. That fog—"
"I know." Dukel's voice was calm, even thoughtful. "Mortarion."
He spoke the name like one naming a forgotten scar. But unlike Guilliman, who bristled with fury, Dukel's expression showed only a glimmer of disappointment.
"I had hoped he wouldn't come alone," Dukel continued. "I thought Perturabo might show as well."
As he stood, his blood-red cloak trailed behind him, whispering against the cold adamantium floor. His black-and-gold power armor shifted, its plates groaning with layered strength. The dragon-shaped reactor at his back exhaled with a low, resonant growl—alive, eager, ready.
A storm was coming, and Dukel would meet it himself.
He moved to leave. With a few strides, he approached the gateway to the Immaterium-spliced transit system—the virtual realm corridor that would deliver him to the surface of Vigilus within minutes.
But before he crossed the threshold, a mechanical hum sounded behind him—the activating systems of the Armor of Fate.
Guilliman stood. His voice rang out.
"I'm coming with you, brother."
Dukel stopped, halfway through the gate, his figure backlit by the flickering warp-light. Slowly, he turned his head.
"Guilliman…" His tone was measured, almost dry. "What exactly do you intend to do?"
The Lord Commander of the Imperium met his gaze. "Fight," he replied plainly. "With you. Mortarion has earned my fury—and much more."
There was steel in his voice, but Dukel didn't respond immediately. Instead, a shadow passed behind his golden eyes. The corner of his mouth twitched, and he sighed inwardly.
Still hasn't learned... Hasn't learned a damn thing.
Mortarion was no longer just a traitor. He was a Daemon Primarch—one who had gnawed on the fringes of divinity, who wielded some fragment of their father's divine authority. This wasn't like Lorgar, blustering with faith and words. Mortarion had become something else, something more dangerous than Guilliman realized.
And unlike during the last conflict, the Emperor could not intervene now. He was deep in psychic war with the Dark Gods themselves, unable to lend Guilliman even a sliver of divine strength.
Dukel still remembered Fulgrim. That fight had been over in seconds—lightning, fire, then poison. Guilliman hadn't even seen the dagger that pierced his neck.
And Mortarion… he was worse.
Dukel could face Mortarion. He could endure that foul fog, the agony of corrupted souls, and the rot of a dying world.
But Guilliman?
He might get himself killed.
Dukel eyed his brother with grim patience, watching the controlled fury simmer beneath his noble features.
Guilliman still thought of this as a matter of honor, of retribution.
But Mortarion had become something that could not be measured in such human terms.
And Dukel, alone, could maneuver with caution, adapt to the surreal battlefield that Mortarion's presence would inevitably twist and corrupt.
But with Guilliman by his side, pride and righteousness would soon demand a direct clash.
And that would be suicide.
Dukel sighed again, his back still to the gate, and looked over his shoulder.
In that moment, he wasn't a demigod or Warmaster. He was simply an older brother, staring at a man who kept rushing into a burning building without checking if the floor would hold.
Looking into Guilliman's storm-filled eyes, Dukel found himself weighing his next words carefully.
How do I keep him here without wounding his pride?
A dilemma fit not for a warrior, but a diplomat—yet one the Warmaster had to solve before stepping foot onto the battlefield.
"You can't go," Dukel said at last, voice calm and steady. "You must stay here."
Guilliman's anger faltered, giving way to confusion. "Why?"
"Because you're needed here, brother." Dukel shifted his gaze toward the command hall below them, where dozens of Magos and officers moved like currents in a sea of data.
"Look there, Guilliman. If you leave as well… who will direct this war?"
The Lord Commander followed his brother's gaze, watching the flickering hololiths and rushing personnel with dawning realization.
The Imperium was not a single battle. It was a constellation of wars, each raging across a dying galaxy. The High Lords could barely manage logistics. And some decisions—those that shaped sectors, not regiments—could only be made by minds bred for empire.
He knew Dukel was right.
A flicker of hesitation crossed his face, but it didn't last long. Guilliman was a Primarch. And with that divine intellect came boldness—and solutions.
"Then you stay," Guilliman offered, his voice resolute. "I'll take the field. I will bring you Mortarion's head."
Dukel blinked.
He didn't immediately reply. For once, words escaped him.
Guilliman, however, was already seizing the moment.
"Brother, leave this to me. I will cast the traitor's head at the foot of your throne."
Then, as if sensing Dukel's hesitation, he added, "Don't you trust me?"
Dukel turned back to him, eyes steady. "I'm asking you to stay because I trust you."
He paused, choosing his next words like a swordsman testing the wind.
"The Imperium's wars are complex—chaotic, shifting with every passing hour. Guilliman, who among us can adapt and coordinate faster than you?"
"I…" Guilliman started, caught off guard by the sincerity in Dukel's tone.
But Dukel continued before he could reply. "Who else can command entire warzones across the Segmentum and adjust strategy in real-time? Who else has the clarity to wield the Imperium as a blade, not a bludgeon?"
His voice softened. "I cannot do what you do, Roboute. Not like that."
Guilliman stared at him, quiet now.
Down below, the noosphere pulsed with endless data—reports from Hydraphur, Callix, even Ghoul Stars. The Magos and the Fabricator-General's emissaries bent to their calculations, but none could decide.
"You are the mind of the Imperium, Roboute. I am its blade. Let me fight. You make that fight mean something."
For a moment, Guilliman said nothing. The sincerity in Dukel's words struck deep.
Among the Primarchs, Guilliman had few peers—fewer still whose praise carried such weight. And Dukel was not one to flatter idly.
"You honor me, brother," he murmured, his voice quieter now.
He had always admired Dukel's strength—his fearless leadership, his indomitable presence on the battlefield. But he had never imagined Dukel saw such value in him.
"You are exceptional, Roboute," Dukel said again, and this time it was not flattery, but conviction.
There was no trace of mockery, no hidden smirk. Just truth.
And perhaps a slight touch of strategy.
Because Guilliman truly was better suited for high command in a thousand-war front.
But more importantly—for Dukel, at this moment—it was crucial the Regent not appear on the battlefield.
For his own safety.
For the war's success.
And perhaps… for the Emperor's will.
"I will not fail you," Guilliman said, straightening, his tone grave with purpose.
"I know," Dukel replied, exhaling softly as the weight lifted from his shoulders.