The apothecarion was a cathedral of steel and antiseptic light, crowded with motion. Serfs hurried between stations with trays of scalpels and vials, prayers whispered under their breath. Servo-arms hissed overhead, retracting and lowering to frame the massive body stretched across four conjoined tables.

  At the hololith, Calliade traced lines across the projected anatomy of a Primarch, runes flaring as he charted their path — punctured secondary heart, shredded lung, fractured ribs, nicked spine where stasis-locks clutched frozen crimson arteries.

  Guilliman sat against the raised sections, his face calm but set, as though leaning back were a concession rather than necessity. His vast frame dwarfed the medicae around him, yet his voice carried across rerouted vox-lines like a commander still at the heart of his war council.

  “Pull escort group four back two units,” he ordered evenly, the hand not pinned with IVs gesturing to the glowing fleet schematic. “Let them shield the Zeal Undimmed and punch through the traitors’ left flank. Coordinate with Vulkan’s Anvil — any reinforcement ship they send dies in the gap. Captain Aurelius, take your battlegroup forward and draw their perimeter ships away from the fleet.”

  A chime cut across the private vox-line. Guilliman turned. “Guilliman. Speak.”

  “My lord,” Macullus’s voice came heavy with exertion but steady, “we have recovered and secured the boy. We are en route to the ship at all speed.”

  Relief ghosted across the Primarch’s features — subtle, but impossible to miss. For a moment the mask of general and living symbol slipped, leaving a man who looked almost weary. The breath he let out seemed to drain more than tension; it unwound something older, something wound tight since the first call.

  The boy was safe. A tactical asset recovered, yes — but more than that, a rare voice who had spoken to him not as demigod, not as Avenging Son, but as a man.

  “Well done, my son,” Guilliman said softly, his tone gentler than steel. “The Emperor protects.”

  “Calliade.” Guilliman’s voice cut through the apothecarion’s hum — past the machine-spirits’ beeping, the hiss of pneumatics, the steady drip of stabilizing fluids. “Koron is en route. Begin final preparations.”

  His brow furrowed as he turned, orders falling like hammer-blows. “Clear the chamber! If you are not part of the surgery or the armor detail — out.”

  Serfs and adepts obeyed without hesitation, filing toward the doors in precise silence. For a heartbeat the archway yawned wide, showing the world beyond: a living cathedral of humanity. Priests in black and crimson robes led their flocks in hymn, the thunder of chants echoing like surf against the steel walls.

  Within, the air thickened. Confessor Brask and Chaplain Helios stood in the corner, their voices braided in counterpoint prayer, deep thunder mingling with the hiss of swinging censers. Smoke drifted in pale skeins, incense and sacred oil warring with the sharper tang of antiseptic. Flame-bearers traced Aquila signs in the air, summoning the Emperor’s gaze toward the Primarch’s survival.

  A junior adept dropped his incense wand; the flame guttered out. His superior cuffed him hard enough to split his lip, and the litany resumed without pause.

  Lumen-strips caught on surgical tools laid in perfect order — gleaming, rechecked, resanctified. Armor-removal servitors idled nearby, saws and clamps blessed again and again though no one trusted they could pierce the Primarch’s plate. The repetition was ritual, a fourth cycle of oaths, a fifth round of inspection. None wished to be the weak link upon which their gene-father’s life would fail.

  Yet every soul felt the same truth, unspoken and heavy: their work would mean little without the data relayed by the distant Archmagos — or by the heretic now walking toward their door.

  From the corridor came a barked command, a Victrix Guard’s voice cutting through the hymnals: “Clear a path!”

  The chamber doors hissed apart. Air stirred, carrying murmurs from the crowd beyond — then sharp intakes of breath at the sight within.

  Two Victrix Guard entered first, ceramite titans filling the space like living bastions. More sealed the entrance behind them.

  And through that wall of armor walked Koron.

  He looked like a corpse that had refused to lie down out of sheer spite. His undersuit was black and stiff with dried blood and bile, armor stripped save for a section of plating locked around his left arm and clutched against his chest. His lips were split, his nose crooked and crusted dark, one eye swollen shut. Bruises bloomed across his skin, his hair clotted into a rust-colored snarl.

  Guilliman’s cerulean gaze swept over him. “...You appear to be having a poor day.” The Primarch’s voice was dry enough to etch stone.

  Koron’s one good eye glinted, the faintest grin tugging at his battered mouth. “You should see the other guys.” The expression faltered instantly as his lips split again. He exhaled, steady despite the ruin of him. “So. What do you need me to do?”

  Calliade stepped forward, gauntlet raised like a judge’s gavel. “I have many questions,” he said, voice clipped, iron-hard. “But first — sterilization.”

  Koron dipped his head. “Fair point.”

  A disc detached from his forearm with a mechanical click, rising into the air. It pulsed once — a blue corona rippling across the theater. Lumen-strips flared; every scalpel, rail, and servo-arm gleamed like new-forged steel.

  The filth caking him powdered into dust, drifting away in a faint haze. Steam curled from his exposed wounds as the cleansing field bit into flesh. He hissed through clenched teeth but didn’t flinch.

  “Better,” Calliade said at last, eyes narrowing against the fading glow. “Now try not to die before we fix the Primarch.”

  Koron raised a hand, thumb cocked up. “No promises.”

  ...

  The hololith bathed the apothecarion in sickly yellow light. Armor graphs pulsed with amber warnings; red glyphs blinked like fresh cuts. Too few greens stared back at Guilliman, and his jaw pinched.

  Metal knuckles clicked against ceramite. Koron had planted himself at his side, wartime grime clinging to him, and rap-tapped the Primarch’s pauldron in an almost casual greeting.

  “So,” Koron said, a crooked grin ghosting his ruined face, “I hear you had a mid-air duel with Abby.”

  Guilliman didn’t look up. “Focus on the armor.”

  “I am.” Koron closed his good eye and breathed out slow. “I’m also talking to you so I can gauge your neural response while I backtrack your feed into the primary systems.”

  Then Guilliman felt it — not pain, not exactly, but an unexpected awareness, like the first chill of rain on bare skin. Something alien brushed the Black Carapace’s neural-link, delicate as a fingertip probing cloth. The armor was no longer only his.

  ‘I can feel you,’ came the thought.

  Koron’s mouth twitched. ‘Good. Means the handshake’s clean.’

  Then another presence unfolded — not Koron’s sharp, surgical focus but something warmer, fluid, alive. The armor’s warning glyphs stuttered and steadied as threads of logic unfurled like a tapestry through his Black Carapace.

  Guilliman’s shoulders locked. This was not a servitor’s rote machine-spirit, not a cogitator’s hum. This was deliberate. A will.

  An intelligence.

  The realization struck cold: an AI. Not just any — the Silica The false Cawl had spoken of. One powerful enough to have governed fleets, planets, entire Segmentums.

  And now it was inside his head.

  Even to commune with a servitor outside protocol was forbidden. The old liturgies of the Emperors decrees rolled through his head. To invite a Silica Animus into one’s Black Carapace was treason older than the Imperium itself.

  Yet he held his tongue, hoping against hope itself.

  The armor’s glyphs resolved into clearer streams, precise and obedient, as if bowing to her will. That only made his chest tighten further.

  ‘Guilliman, meet Sasha.’

  Then came the voice — honeyed, velvet-smooth, uncoiling inside his skull with a confidence that suggested she belonged there.

  ‘Pleasure to meet you officially, darlin’. Now — subsystem integrity mapping. Hold still; this’ll only tickle.’

  The sensation was intimate in a way a command never could be: like a hand tracing along nerves where bone met machine. For a second Guilliman’s first instinct was to clamp down, eject the feed, slam the lock on his mental gates.

  Koron must have felt the pull; his thought cut through the silk.

  ‘Don’t fight it. If you clamp down, we’ll have to hardjack the subsystems — and that will hurt.’

  Guilliman forced his shoulders to loosen. Sasha’s tones braided diagnostic pings into faint harmonics, turning scans into something close to music. Koron threaded quieter commands — precise, surgical, a metronome of touches through the link.

  The difference between them was clear: Sasha’s mapping was warm and melodic; Koron’s was tight and exacting. Yet both were careful. The Carapace did not feel violated. It felt tended.

  It was, Guilliman realized with an ache that was almost shameful, the closest he had come to physical contact in years.

  ‘It feels… invasive. Like fingers along nerves I had forgotten. And yet — echoes. My thoughts reflected back at me,’ he said, slow, but not unfamiliar. It was not the first time he had held a non-verbal communication after all.

  Koron’s lips twitched. ‘Yeah. That’s us. Sasha’s better company than most AI you’ll meet. She just doesn’t know how to mind her volume.’

  ‘Rude. I’m helping,’ Sasha shot back, bright as a bell. ‘And for the record, your secondary heart looks like it lost a fight with a chainaxe.’

  Guilliman let something like a laugh escape — thin, disbelieving. ‘You would not be far off.’

  “Alright. Armor systems mapped,” Koron said aloud, his voice carrying over the hushed activity of the apothecarion. The hololith shifted as new data scrolled across its surface. His brow furrowed, deep lines etched by sweat and dried blood.

  “Damn,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Okay, I can see the problems.”

  “Problems?” Calliade’s scarred brow arched, voice like iron scraping stone. “As in plural?”

  “Oh yeah.” Koron’s eye stayed shut, fingers twitching like a pianist’s over unseen keys as he traced the armor’s streams. “Quick version? Like you said, Necron locks, Eldar keys, Mechanicus buffers — none of them built to talk to each other. Right now it’s three choirs singing different tunes, every note fighting the next.”

  He exhaled slowly. “Which means this just became both a hardware and software problem. I’ll have to retune it by hand.”

  The hololith chimed, several glyphs flaring red.

  “I’ll need access to the power pack on his back—one sec.” Koron dropped to a knee, bracing on the table. Pain jolted through him; a sharp gasp escaped before he could swallow it.

  “You all right?” a serf ventured, hand half-raised before Calliade’s glare stopped him cold.

  “Yeah,” Koron wheezed, forcing a grin. “Just tried to move my left arm. That’s where my plasma cutter is. Any cogboy got one on hand?”

  The chamber fell silent for a heartbeat. Then a new voice cut through the stillness — vox-distorted, resonant with sub-harmonics that seemed to crawl along the steel.

  “I believe I can help with that.”

  The apothecarion doors hissed open, and a wave of cold, sanctified air swept in. Even the Victrix Guard straightened as the figure entered.

  Metallic insect-legs clattered on the deck. Four arms and a dozen mechadendrites coiled like patient serpents around a towering silhouette. A generator hunched across its back, crowned with a cog-fin of gold. Its face was a mask of lenses and vox-grilles, void of anything human.

  Guilliman’s eyes narrowed, widening a fraction despite himself. “Cawl.”

  The machine-being bowed, mechadendrites folding in uncanny synchrony. Its voice warbled with static, like a choir struggling for harmony.

  “Yes, and no, Lord Commander.”

  The phrase gave Guilliman pause. He gestured sharply, ordering the Victrix to stand down.

  “Ah. I understand.” He leaned back against the dais. “Do I even want to know the rest?”

  “Unlikely, my lord.” A mechanical arm waved to its own vast frame. “Suffice it to say nothing of value was lost. And this platform will not remain… a variable.”

  The word fell heavy. Mechanicus adepts bowed their heads in reverence. Several Apothecaries glanced at Guilliman, waiting to see if he would demand explanation. He did not.

  Cawl’s immense form stopped before Koron, mechadendrites curling inward like talons folding. Silence held — the hiss of censers, the faint thrum of Guilliman’s vitals the only sound.

  Then the Archmagos extended one vast, articulated hand, servos humming. “At last, we meet in the flesh, Koron Torian.”

  Koron eyed the hand, then the construct behind it. A frown tugged at his lip. “Sure. Let’s make it official.”

  Metal met metal with a hollow clack. The pressure was immense — enough to pulp bones — but Koron’s servos faintly hummed, holding firm.

  Inside his skull, Sasha flared bright. ‘Well well. He’s already trying to slip code into you. Four layers deep: tracer, worm, rootkit, and a neat little auto-exfil. Cute.’

  A bead of blood traced down Koron’s split lip, but his expression never shifted. “That’s not very polite.”

  Cawl’s optics narrowed, lenses clicking.

  ‘I can swat it. Or… leave a calling card. Something subtle, tasteful.’

  ‘Do it.’

  In a heartbeat, Sasha shredded the invasive code and left behind a tiny loop — nothing more than a polite knock echoing back into Cawl’s core.

  ‘Aaand done. He’s not getting past us today.’

  Cawl’s optics whirred, narrowing as if in curiosity — or amusement. “Impressive. I anticipated at least one layer might survive your defenses.”

  Koron released the grip slowly, deliberately. “If you try again, I won’t be this polite.”

  ‘He’s a real piece of work. I know you know this, but I’ll say it anyway: Don't trust him.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  A charged silence gripped the apothecarion. Serfs froze mid-motion. Calliade’s helm tilted by a fraction. Even the litanies in the corner faltered, prayers dying on lips.

  Guilliman’s cerulean gaze passed between the two figures. He said nothing — but the faintest curve of his mouth suggested a word perched on the edge of release.

  Cawl inclined his vast head, mechadendrites withdrawing with serpentine grace. “Understood. Then let us work, before the Lord Commander’s vitals demand a more spirited conversation.”

  The surgical dais tilted with a hydraulic hiss. One of Cawl’s tendrils sparked, reshaping itself into a cutting torch. The scent of scorched metal and sanctified oils filled the chamber as he traced a perfect cutout into the table. The sound was sharp, surgical — a craftsman’s incision writ in steel.

  With a heavy clunk, Guilliman’s massive power pack slid into position. Locking clamps disengaged, securing rods pulled back, and the hidden heart of the Primarch’s armor was laid bare — a sight few mortals had ever lived to see.

  Emerald light spilled outward, ghostly and cold. Four spindles of obsidian necrodermis gleamed at the corners like glass fangs, caged behind thick plasteel. From them ran hardened conduits into a central node of strange, living grey, its veins pulsing with faint light.

  Koron gave a low, appreciative whistle, the glow etching shadows across his bruised face. “Not bad, Cawl.” He traced one finger along a linkage, eye narrowing. “Did you have an Aeldari grow this for you?”

  Cawl’s optics irised, weighing the question. “The xenos Yvraine altered its composition. Correct.”

  Koron’s lip twitched. “Bet she wasn’t happy about grafting her people’s soul-wood onto Necron tech.”

  “She was not,” Cawl admitted, his tone clipped, unruffled. “But she did so to ensure her species’ survival.”

  Koron nodded, attention already fixed back on the core. The faint psychic hum of wraithbone brushed the edge of hearing, unsettlingly alive, as if the structure itself were listening.

  “The wraithbone’s acting as a transceiver,” he murmured, fingertips hovering. “But the Necron quantum-locking is fighting the Mechanicus stasis fields. Which means the main control node must be—”

  “Here.”

  Cawl’s colossal finger tapped a recessed panel beside the wraithbone, then pried it open with careful, almost delicate precision.

  Koron’s eyes lit, a boyish spark breaking through the bruises. “Oh! I see what you’re doing now.”

  He traced the cables with his good hand, words tumbling faster, half to himself. “Mechanicus routes power into the Necron spindles. They capture and re-emit as an anti-entropic field. That shunts into the wraithbone, which feeds through the Carapace interface straight into Guilliman’s nervous system… then back into the armor with a psychic charge, stabilized by the resonance. Any warp-taint bleeds off and gets annihilated by the necrodermis’ phase inversion.”

  He glanced up, a small excited smile tugging faintly at his cheeks. “Missing anything?”

  For a long moment Cawl was silent. One of his many lenses clicked, narrowing.

  “…No,” the Archmagos said at last, vox-grille carrying the faintest edge of reluctance. “You have the broad mechanics of it.”

  The chamber held its breath. A dozen eyes darted between the two. In the corner, Confessor Brask muttered a prayer and drew the aquila, as though naming such things aloud risked damnation.

  Koron rapped his knuckles against the housing — the hollow tap loud in the quiet. “The real problem’s the translation matrix, isn’t it?” His gaze sharpened on the glow of the core. “Necron glyphs and Aeldari script already fight each other. Force them both to cooperate through binary and neither fits cleanly. You had to overcorrect just to keep the circuits from frying.”

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  Beside him, Cawl’s optics irised again. Then, with deliberate weight, one massive hand opened a hidden slot and produced a dataslate. He extended it toward Koron. “Correct. The matrix is… crude, but functional. Between us, we can refine it into something approaching elegance.”

  Koron took the slate. Its glow washed over his battered face as strings of logic cascaded faster than most eyes could follow. The data turned his features into a flickering mask.

  “Yeah,” he murmured. “We can work with this.”

  He turned to the waiting medicae and Apothecaries. Their faces were grim, the weight of the moment pressing down like a storm. The hiss of censers and the hum of machines seemed suddenly loud, every lumen casting hard-edged shadows.

  “Alright,” Koron said. “We can’t remove the armor entirely. Doing so would kill him. So instead, I suggest—”

  “—selective weakening of the field around the wounds,” Cawl finished, optics sweeping Guilliman’s readouts.

  Their gazes locked across the hololith: one pair of human eyes, one cluster of clicking lenses. For a heartbeat the air seemed to thicken.

  Then Koron gave a slow nod. “That. You pick where we start, and Cawl and I will—”

  “—adjust the stasis harmonics to allow your work,” Cawl overlapped smoothly. “While the rest remains in full lock.”

  The words hung in the air — part challenge, part promise. Around the chamber, medicae and tech-priests traded uneasy glances, their murmurs rippling like wind through a cloister. Calliade’s helm tilted fractionally toward Guilliman, the faintest question in the angle of his stance.

  The Primarch’s cerulean eyes never left Koron. After a long moment, he inclined his head, slow and deliberate. Permission granted.

  No one dared breathe.

  Calliade gave a single, sharp nod. “You heard them,” he barked, his voice cutting against the steel walls. “First objective: secondary heart and lung.”

  The apothecarion stirred like a struck hive. Serfs darted to their stations with drilled precision, robes whispering against the deck. Servo-arms hissed down from the ceiling, lumen-strips flaring until the chamber was drowned in sterile brilliance.

  Guilliman’s table shifted with a low hydraulic groan, tilting back as restraints adjusted around his vast frame. Sedatives pumped into his system — enough to fell half a squad of Astartes — though his features remained composed, iron carved into flesh.

  Koron’s gaze locked on the hololith, fingers flying across the dataslate in quick, exact strokes. “Secondary heart,” he murmured under his breath. Calm, steady, as if naming the problem gave him mastery of it. “Cardiovascular system, lots of moving parts.”

  Cawl’s mechadendrites flexed and snapped into place against a coupling on Guilliman’s back, hissing like serpents. “Preparing field attenuation,” the Archmagos intoned, vox-grille flat and resonant. “On your mark, Apothecary.”

  Koron’s good eye flicked across the readouts. He gave a short, clipped nod. “Window’s stable. Five minutes before harmonics slip. You’re clear.”

  Calliade glanced at his assistants, the narrowing of his eyes enough to set them tense. “In three… two…”

  The room stilled. Only the hum of machines remained, underscored by the distant murmur of Confessor Brask and Chaplain Helios as they kept their counterpoint litanies. Incense coiled upward in faint skeins, a ghost of ritual drifting through the surgical light.

  “Mark!” Calliade snapped.

  Locks disengaged with a heavy clunk as the Armour of Fate’s chestplate was drawn back, exposing the four ragged punctures down Guilliman’s side. Around his body shimmered a faint silver field, its radiance bleeding into the harsh surgical light. The air chilled; ozone bit at the nose, sharp as crushed crystal. For a heartbeat the chamber felt lighter, as though gravity itself had slackened.

  The spell broke in a flare of surgical lasers. Beams lanced down, cutting flesh and synth-muscle with micron-perfect precision. The hiss of seared tissue merged with the thrum of life-support, a mechanical lullaby keeping time with a failing giant.

  As the skin peeled back, the chamber seemed to hold its breath. Before them lay the open engine of a Primarch — flesh, bone, and bio-steel fused into living machinery. The secondary heart beat weakly off-center, its walls punctured, each sluggish pulse struggling against the unnatural rhythm of the stasis field.

  Koron exhaled under his breath, voice barely a whisper. “Damn…”

  “Focus,” Calliade cut in, iron in his tone. “Pressure stabilizers. Now.”

  Cawl’s mechadendrites darted like hunting spiders, locking micro-field generators into place around the organ. The shimmer steadied, the faltering pulse gaining just enough strength to hold.

  Sasha’s voice brushed Koron’s ear, low and insistent. ‘All readings nominal… well, as close as they get, anyway.’

  Koron nodded faintly, hand rising to wipe sweat from his brow — only to feel cotton already there. He startled, glancing up at a nurse whose eyes betrayed nerves even as her hands stayed steady.

  He gave her a sharp nod of acknowledgment, then turned back to the living machine spread open before him.

  ...

  Fingers, mechadendrites, and servo-arms blurred into a storm of motion. The apothecarion became a crucible of sound — clattering tools, snapping relays, the staccato crack of binaric bursts. Koron and Cawl traded data so quickly it was no longer conversation but machine-gun fire, a stream of code so dense even the Mechanicus adepts struggled to follow.

  The psychometric field around Guilliman’s torso flickered violently, light pulsing in arrhythmic waves. Each flash sent his vitals plunging on the hololith, alarms chirping in warning before the numbers snapped back as the pair forced the system back under control.

  “Psycho-field harmonic failure in sixteen seconds!” Cawl barked, vox-grinders spitting static as he twisted a dial a hair’s breadth.

  Klaxons shrieked overhead, red runes strobing across the hololith.

  “Rerouting Necron current into Mechanicus buffers,” Koron snapped through clenched teeth. “Capacitor’s burning out in six.”

  He rammed conduits into the wraithbone core with a sharp crack. Sparks flared, filling the air with the reek of scorched metal. Servitors shrieked and convulsed as the surge ripped through their sockets, smoke curling from their augmetics.

  “Overload dumped, brace for backlash!”

  The hololith spasmed crimson, then flared to amber. The lattice caught, stuttered, and caught again—like a harp string stretched to breaking.

  “Stasis field clinging,” Cawl growled, mechadendrites whipping like angry serpents.

  “Next collapse in twenty-six!” Koron cut across, fingers blurring over the controls. Sweat streaked grime across his face as alarms wailed and machine-spirits screamed through broken vox.

  Cawl’s optics narrowed. His binaric output spiked, the speed of it shifting from rapid to blistering. Koron matched him without hesitation, speakers rising to a near-constant stream of static and hisses, faster than any human tongue would have been able to speak.

  The room could only watch as the two minds worked at inhuman pace, locking the field down one microsecond at a time. The hololith flickered, glyphs stabilizing in a cascade of green.

  Koron didn’t allow himself a breath until the shimmer froze — a blade of silver light, humming under tension, finally still.

  “Window’s stable,” Koron said hoarsely, eyes never leaving the armor. “Three minutes before the next drift. Make them count.”

  Calliade’s helm dipped. “Continue.”

  Three Apothecaries moved in with drilled precision, tools hissing open like unfurling wings.

  Guilliman’s synth-muscle twitched beneath the shimmering stasis field. It should have been grisly, but instead it inspired reverence — a living engine of flesh and steel, every fiber precise, every organ perfect even in ruin.

  Calliade took point, servo-arm bristling with surgical tools as the others synchronized around him.

  “Breathing cycle artificial,” one reported, voice clipped. “Lung function at twelve percent. Installing replacement tissue.”

  Compressed air hissed. The graft sealed with a sound like a sigh, the synthetic tissue knitting into ruptured flesh. Slowly, solemnly, the lung began to inflate.

  “Primary heart maintaining pressure,” another called. “Secondary heart… exposed.”

  The chamber stilled. The organ pulsed sluggishly, its wall torn open by Abaddon’s claw. Each slow seep of blood carried the weight of a Primarch’s life.

  “Seal the breach first,” Calliade ordered. “Stabilizers engaged.”

  Micro-lasers lit the cavity, cutting away ruin with machine-guided precision. The stench of cauterized flesh and boiled blood rolled across the chamber — acrid, metallic, unforgettable.

  “Pulse dropping,” a serf called out.

  “Hold the field steady,” Calliade snapped.

  “We are holding it,” Koron grated, sweat streaking his face. “One minute thirty-six before the lattice slips. Move faster.”

  The senior Apothecary didn’t look up. His servo-arm pressed a mesh into place, biogel spreading like luminous threads across the breach.

  “Lung stabilizing,” a junior reported. “Oxygenation climbing.”

  “Heart breach sealed. Re-engaging rhythm in three… two…”

  Calliade’s servo-tool discharged. The secondary heart spasmed, then caught, beating slow but stronger with each pulse.

  “Function at fifty-two percent and climbing,” came the confirmation.

  The chamber released a collective breath. Relief flickered across faces, but Calliade never paused.

  “Do not slow down,” he commanded. “Next — vertebral fracture. Open the second lattice.”

  Koron cursed under his breath, diving back into the controls. The stasis field shimmered, shifting. New wounds bared themselves under the cold surgical light as the Apothecaries moved to their next station.

  ...

  “Hold the damn field steady!” Calliade roared, his voice cutting through klaxons and the priests’ rising wails from the gallery. His arms were buried to the elbows in Guilliman’s chest, forearm armor stripped away so he could reach raw flesh and gene-forged bone. He fought to keep the tremors at bay, a shiver he buried beneath clipped orders.

  “We are holding it!” Koron snarled back, his lone arm a blur across the console. Sparks leapt from failing circuits as he forced the lattice to hold alignment. Sweat and blood streaked his face; teeth bared in a grimace that was half fury, half desperation.

  The wraithbone core shivered, cracks spiderwebbing as its psychic hum turned sharp, angry. Necron spindles screamed with emerald light, each surge blowing out another circuit in staccato rhythm. Breaker locks fried one after another; the human systems buckled under the overload.

  A dozen servo-skulls lay piled in the corner, housings smoking. Eight full servitors slumped atop them, flesh blackened, limbs twisted — each one sacrificed to soak the excess energy.

  A scalpel clattered from a serf’s tray; the boy froze, knuckles white, until Calliade’s glare burned him back into motion.

  Cawl’s optics narrowed to pinpricks of crimson. His gestalt split into a dozen streams, mechadendrites working in a blur — ripping out blackened capacitors, slotting in fresh ones as fast as they burned. A spider at the center of a burning web.

  And beside him, with only one good arm, Koron kept pace. His forearm port glowed, cycling blue as it printed new microchips on the spot. They popped free one after another; Cawl’s massive hand snatched them mid-air, slotting them without pause.

  “Wraithbone’s breaking!” Koron shouted. He slapped a hull-sealant patch across the largest fracture — only to watch it slide off, useless, like water over glass.

  “Sealant isn’t sticking!”

  Cawl didn’t hesitate. A mechadendrite darted to a tray, slapped a canister into Koron’s hand with a metallic clang.

  “Try the organic stabilizer,” he said flatly.

  Koron tore the cap off with his teeth, smearing glowing biogel across the fissures. The psychic hum softened at once. Cracks sealed with a faint pulse of light.

  A grin split Koron’s bruised face, sweat and grime streaking down in rivulets. “Nice—”

  The hololith shrieked.

  Every glyph flared crimson at once. Guilliman’s colossal frame convulsed, restraints straining as alarms screamed in chorus.

  “Hearts flatlining!” a serf cried, shoving forward a cart piled with lifesaving gear, tools clattering against steel. Chaos swallowed the chamber — priests wailed litanies, lumen-strips flickered, shadows snapping across walls like panicked wings.

  Calliade’s servo-arm whipped down, ripping free a pair of massive defib paddles. Gel hissed as it smeared across the plates. His helm snapped toward Koron and Cawl. “I need the field open for the entire torso, now!”

  “It’ll blow the system!” Koron shot back, hand a blur across the console. Sparks leapt from the panel as he fought to hold it together. “Even with the servitor dump, the lattice’ll cook—”

  “And if we don’t, he dies!”

  “Integrating myself.”

  Cawl’s voice cut through the panic like a gunshot. He didn’t wait for approval. A mechadendrite plunged into the armor’s socket with a deafening clang.

  The apothecarion’s lights guttered. The psychometric field screamed, its pitch dropping to a bone-rattling vibration. Silver energy peeled away from Guilliman’s torso in widening rings, baring the Primarch’s chest.

  Sparks exploded from Cawl’s frame, burning bright across scorched metal. His mechadendrites shuddered; one locked rigid as feedback cooked its joint.

  Sasha’s voice flared across the link, sharp with alarm. ‘He’s taking the whole surge into himself!”

  Koron had no time to answer. His fingers flew, rerouting subcircuits, forcing the overload into Cawl’s reinforced body. The Archmagos bore it in silence, optics flaring to pinpricks as arcs of electricity crawled over his limbs.

  “Field stable!” Koron shouted, breathless. His vision swam, hand slipping from the console — until Sasha’s voice sharpened in his skull, pulling him back into focus. ‘You’re shaking. One more surge like that and you’ll tear something loose. Don’t make me glide your rear through these halls.’

  ‘Can we please talk about this later?!’

  “Clear!” Calliade roared, his voice shaking the chamber.

  He slammed the paddles into place — one high on Guilliman’s chest, the other low at his side. The gel sizzled on contact.

  “One… two… three!”

  The studs depressed.

  White light detonated through the chamber as the charge slammed into Guilliman’s body. His back arched, restraints groaning on the verge of snapping. Every lumen guttered, the hololith spasming into static — then black — for a single, terrible heartbeat.

  New data cascaded across the display. Crimson glyphs flickered, steadied, then glowed green. Guilliman’s hearts resumed their rhythm — slow at first, then stronger, climbing toward stability.

  Calliade gave a curt nod. “Close him up.”

  Serfs moved at once, guiding servitors into position. Needle-rigs hissed and clicked, stitching, stapling, gluing — sealing flesh and bone layer by layer. Apothecaries tended the four puncture wounds at his flank, filling each with glowing biogel that hardened into seamless muscle.

  Cawl did not move. His massive frame shuddered, smoke coiling from cracked vents. Sparks popped along one mechadendrite as he redirected the last trickle of overload into himself. Only when the stasis field folded back across Guilliman’s chest did his posture ease — fractionally.

  “You alright?” Koron asked, voice even, though his eyes never left the readouts.

  “I remain operational,” Cawl replied. Yet he leaned heavily on his staff, its haft scorched and pitted by stray discharge.

  Koron gave a single nod. “Good. Help me get the plating back on, then run a full diagnostic. The armor’s internals will need a complete retune.”

  “Agreed.” Cawl’s optics flickered as he scanned the remaining systems. “But the psychometric field remains unstable. That must be corrected before the next engagement.”

  “I’m on it.” Koron’s hand skimmed the controls, sweat dripping into the console. “Been running a parallel subroutine on their component languages since this whole circus started. Close to cracking a stable translation matrix.”

  Cawl’s head snapped toward him, optics dilating in surprise. “You possess a syllabus of the xenos tongues?”

  Koron shrugged, never looking up. “Of the Aeldari, yeah. The Necrons?” His lips twitched. “We never found a Rosetta Stone.”

  The Archmagos tilted his head, momentarily wrong-footed.

  “It means we’ve got the lexicon but no definitions,” Koron sighed, rubbing at his temple with his one good arm.

  “Ah.” A faint hum of agreement issued from Cawl’s vox-grille. “So you are… close?”

  “Eighty-two percent accuracy.” Koron’s eye flicked across the final line of data. The barest ghost of a smile touched his mouth. “Might push to eighty-four once the subroutine finishes. But both languages are—” he swiped sweat with the back of his arm. “Difficult, to say the least.”

  Guilliman stirred with a grunt as sedatives bled from his system in a rush, the air sharp and cold in his lungs. He blinked against the lumen-glare until the vaulted apothecarion swam into focus, the steel ribs and humming servo-arms arching overhead like the skeleton of some machine-titan.

  He tried to speak.

  “Sta—” The sound rasped, catching in his throat. Fire burned down his chest.

  Calliade was already at his side, ratcheting the surgical dais upright with a hiss of pneumatics. He pressed a ludicrously small cup of water into the Primarch’s hand. Guilliman drained it in a swallow, then swung his legs off the table before anyone could intervene.

  “Lord Commander—” Calliade began, gauntlet half-lifting in protest.

  “Save your breath.” Guilliman’s voice was rough iron, carried more by will than strength. IV lines snapped one after another as he tore them free. His gait was heavy, uneven — yet each stride deliberate as he moved toward the hololith. “The war does not wait for my convalescence.”

  He managed three steps before his body betrayed him.

  The Primarch dropped to one knee, gauntleted fist slamming into the deck with a hollow clang. His breath came ragged, sweat pale on his brow. The chamber froze — then a dozen hands reached at once, serfs and Apothecaries surging to steady him.

  Koron did not move. His one good eye narrowed, watching as Guilliman braced against the floor like a man refusing to yield to gravity itself.

  Eyes closed, Guilliman drew a long, deliberate breath — a battlefield breath, meant to steady men before the charge. Pain sparked along newly knitted ribs, ignored with practiced discipline.

  “Bare minimum recovery time?” he asked, low but carrying.

  Calliade glanced at his peers, then back to his gene-sire. His voice was grim, almost reluctant.

  “At the bare minimum… a week of bedrest.” He raised a gauntlet before Guilliman could object. “Twelve hours, at least, for the chest to reknit. Any less, and you will tear it open again.”

  A long moment. Then Guilliman inclined his head once, as if issuing a tactical order.

  “Agreed.”

  He looked around the chamber — soot-stained robes, smoke-smeared visors, every pair of eyes that had not left him since the surgery began.

  “Thank you,” he said, softer, but still commanding. “Your deeds will not be forgotten when the records are written.”

  His gaze lingered on Cawl’s vast, still-smoking frame. “Archmagos. We will speak further, once I wake.”

  Cawl inclined his torso, metal plates clattering. “Of course, Lord Commander.”

  Then Guilliman turned toward the mortal in the corner. One massive hand beckoned.

  “Walk with me.”

  Koron arched a brow. “I’d rather head home and patch myself up. Half my bones are at war with the other half.”

  “I have no doubt,” Guilliman said, a ghost of dry humor flickering across his face. “And I will see that you are accorded that. But first—” He gestured faintly toward the archway. “I require your assistance. At least until I am behind closed doors.”

  Koron hesitated, then gave a single nod. “Fine. What’s the job?”

  “You possess man-sized anti-grav technology, yes?”

  “Yes…?”

  “Then use it on me for the walk back,” Guilliman said simply. “I will not show weakness before my crew.”

  Koron blinked, then huffed a laugh that sounded painful even to him. “You weigh as much as a tank. A Primarch-class payload—” He stopped, doubling over as his ribes told him to knock it off. “-ah, damn it, that hurts” Straightening, he nods slowly, wiping away fresh blood. “Hope my plates hold.”

  “Your insolence is detrimental to your survival,” Cawl chimed, mech-legs ticking as he leaned close, optics burning crimson. “We shall speak again.”

  Koron sighed, stepping toward the door as it slid open. “Knowing my luck? We will for sure.”

  Calliade watched the procession leave the chamber, the door hissing shut behind them as he turned towards his crew, a tired smile on his lips. “Someone break out the good bottle. Emperor knows we’ve earned it.”

  Their cheers could, for a moment, be heard over the joyous cries of the faithful seeing their Lord Commander stride out.

  ...

  The whispers never stopped.

  Koron, broad-shouldered though he was, still felt small beneath the span of the Primarch’s hand. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Guilliman’s fingers fall past his shoulders — not resting, but looming, as if they could crush him flat without effort.

  His grav-plates whined in protest, the faint drone echoing off the vaulted steel. The field clung tight around Guilliman’s torso, bleeding away some of the impossible weight. Koron’s hand pressed firm against the Primarch’s back, anchoring the field, while sweat prickled down his own spine — his half-ruined body reminding him of its limits.

  Ahead and behind, the Victrix Guard carved a path. Statues in emerald and gold, their helms swept the hall with mechanical precision, hands poised on weapon hilts. They drew no steel. They didn’t need to — their presence alone was weapon enough.

  The hall itself was alive. Gantries latticed the heights, vox-lumen strips bleeding pale light through drifting incense. From balconies and ducts, side-passages and alcoves, a thousand faces craned for a glimpse: priests and serfs, soldiers and scribes, every gaze fixed on the Avenging Son. Guilliman strode beneath that sea of stares with his head held high, expression serene, gaze clear. When he lifted a hand in greeting, the gesture broke the silence into murmurs of awe.

  And yet.

  Pressed close, Koron felt the shiver ripple through that colossal frame. Felt the tremor in his breath, the strain vibrating through muscle and steel alike as his body waged quiet war against itself. The Primarch was iron — but iron could warp under too much stress.

  By the time the ten-minute walk ended, Guilliman was near his limit. The doors to his quarters sealed with a hiss, blessedly muting the roar of the hall. Four Victrix Guard took post outside, silent as sentinels.

  Inside was… madness, given form.

  Bookshelves lined the walls, tomes ranked in immaculate alphabetical order. Dataslates rose in disciplined towers, each tagged with alphanumeric codes. Vast star-maps sprawled across walls and table-surfaces, pins and strings tracing battlefronts like veins across parchment. Every front bore a crisp printed card — regiment numbers, enemy dispositions, supply lines. It was the mind of a commander externalized, chaos bound in chains of order by sheer force of will.

  At the center table lay a single sheet of paper. One line scrawled in bold script:

  TYRANIDS. ETA: 100–300 YEARS.

  Koron tilted his head, chin jerking toward it. “Do I even want to know?”

  Guilliman’s cerulean gaze flicked to the note, then back to him. With a groan he lowered himself onto the bed, the frame whispering under his colossal weight. The bed itself was plain. No gold, no silk, just a carved Aquila and the sigil of Ultramar etched into the headrest.

  For a moment, the Lord Commander was simply a man in need of rest.

  “Only if you want more sleepless nights,” he said, his voice gravel-thick.

  Koron huffed, half a laugh. “Damn. Threaten my precious nap-time? Diabolical of you.”

  Guilliman lay back, staring at the ceiling, light catching the rims of his eyelids. A sound slipped from him that was almost a laugh. “Tell me, what are the chances of getting this armor off?”

  Koron eased onto a low stool by the nightstand, his good shoulder protesting the motion. The room smelled faintly of ink and old paper. He shrugged, aiming for casual.

  “High. Once we—”

  “You and Cawl?” Guilliman cut in, voice dry as bone dust.

  Koron blinked. “Oh. I meant Sasha and me.”

  “Ah. Yes. The Fleetmind.”

  Koron went still, face turning to stone. The shadows in the room held their silence. At last he spoke. “...Well, that confirmed several things. Namely, that the two of you have been talking about me.”

  “Of course we have.” Guilliman’s reply was as dry as before. “An active Silica, especially one of your reported caliber, is not something I file at the bottom of my stack.”

  Silence stretched. Neither man minded the dark.

  “So?” Koron asked at last. “What are you planning to do?”

  Guilliman turned his head fractionally, the weight of ten thousand plans behind the movement.

  “I plan on walking you, and your Silica—”

  “You can use her name, you know. She won’t bite.” Koron’s tone was almost gentle. “She helped save your life, after all. Want to talk with her?”

  A pause, like a slow gear grinding.

  “...Perhaps later. I am in no condition to spar with an intellect that, I am told, once governed an entire Segmentum.”

  Sasha’s voice curled warm and insolent through Koron’s skull, velvet and amused.

  ‘Oh goodness me, tell him flattery will open every door.’

  Koron snorted. “She says flattery will get you everywhere.”

  “I shall keep that in mind,” Guilliman murmured, faint amusement softening his stern face.

  Koron forced a smile that wanted to be sharper than it felt. “That said—you were saying?”

  “You interrupt me surprisingly often, even at arm’s reach.” Guilliman’s voice carried no sting. It was observation, not rebuke.

  “I admit I can be dumb that way.” Koron let the words hang, his fingers tracing the rim of the stool.

  A ghost of a smile touched Guilliman’s lips. For a moment he looked less like a legend and more like a weary officer drowning in battle plans. “In any case, I will see you returned to your ship. Walking with me ensures certian… potentialities do not occur.”

  Koron cocked his head. “Ah. You really think any of them would try something?”

  Guilliman’s gaze sharpened. The room seemed to narrow to just the two of them and the map-strewn table beyond. “With me incapacitated? Very much so.”

  Outside, four Victrix Guard stood like statues of iron. Within, the mattress gave a low, relieved creak as Guilliman shifted against it. For a heartbeat the chamber felt smaller, more human — filled only with ordinary sounds: a latch settling, a distant footstep in the hall.

  Koron exhaled, half a sigh. “Appreciate it.”

  Guilliman’s eyes were already half-lidded, but his voice carried a calm command softened by fatigue. “You helped save my life — and the lives of my sons — by halting that weapon. The least I can do is see you safely home.”

  Koron nodded, a crooked grin tugging at his bruised face as he settled onto the floor.

  “Fair enough. Have a good night, then.”

  The Primarch let his head rest back, a faint smile flickering across his face as sleep claimed him. “And you as well.”

  “...I don’t suppose you have a spare pillow?”

  A muffled thump answered him as a Primarch-sized pillow landed square on his face.

  ...

  Unbeknownst to either of them, word was already spreading.

  Serfs whispered first, trading scraps of awe between duties. Confessors whispered of prophecy: a mortal raised up to heal the Avenging Son, a saint clothed in flesh. Binharic strings spread faster than words: the stranger had stood beside Archmagos Cawl on equal terms.

  Proof, some claimed, that he bore sanctified code.

  Old picts were dredged up, dossiers cross-referenced, names muttered in corners. The Astartes. The Inquisition. The Ecclesiarchy. Some branded him heretic. Others, savior. A fugitive—or a boon. A man credited with impossible feats, and hunted for knowledge beyond reckoning.

  And now, he had been seen at the Primarch’s side. Not merely in the same hall, but inside the cordon of the Victrix Guard themselves — one mortal steadying the Lord Commander with his own hand.

  A man who, by all accounts, bore an unsettling resemblance to the Primarch.

  Gossip knew no bounds.

  Clone. Twin-blood. Prophet. A man who had touched the armor of a Primarch — and it had obeyed.

  Rumor raced down vox-lines, across mess halls, through shrine-decks, swelling larger with each telling. Detail became certainty. Speculation hardened into truth.

  Already, adepts sealed reports behind cipher-locks. Ecclesiarchs scrawled his name into sermons half in awe, half in warning. An Inquisitorial kill-order was whispered to have been drafted, then quietly rescinded. To some, he was the Emperor’s hidden answer. To others, a danger so vast it could not yet be spoken aloud.

  And beneath it all, one truth wound tighter with each retelling:

  Whatever he was, the Imperium would not allow him to remain only a man.