"Do enough evil, and eventually, the ghosts will come."
Fabius Bile had once dismissed such proverbs as superstitious nonsense. He had no faith in ghosts, no belief in gods. But now? Now, he felt as though a ghost had indeed come for him.
His mind, honed by centuries of cruel science, told him there must be a logical explanation for Fulgrim's sudden appearance—some connection between this being and the Endless. After all, both were infamous throughout the galaxy for theft, deceit, and ruin. They knew each other too well.
But logic faltered in the face of what stood before him.
No Astartes—traitor or loyalist—can sever the bond to their Gene-Father. That connection is not one of the mind, but of blood and bone, encoded into their very essence.
As Fabius stood frozen, one of his mutant bodyguards—a twisted creature with a goat's head—lunged forward, brandishing a cleaver-sized blade toward the figure in the clearing.
"Stand down! Drop your weapons, or we will open fire!"
The Fallen Warriors of the Screaming Warband immediately raised their bolters, blocking the attack. The capture of their warband master had forced their hand, but preserving his life remained paramount.
For a moment, the battlefield stilled. A tense silence hung in the air, and though all forces held their fire, emotions churned beneath their armored visors—rage, fear, reverence.
"You shouldn't be here, failure."
Fabius, always the image of composure and calculation, was the first to crack.
He spat the insult, but only he knew the truth behind it. When he succeeded in crafting his clone of Fulgrim—his Gene-Father reborn—he had handed it over to another. A transaction, yes, but one weighted with guilt, pride, and emotions he could not confront.
"Why shouldn't I be here?" the giant replied calmly, lifting a gloved hand toward his hood.
"Don't show that face!" Fabius snapped, his voice trembling with fury and dread.
"You are nothing more than a crude replica! A puppet twisted by those skeletal manipulators! You are not him!"
But the giant ignored him. The buckle on his hood clicked open. Fabric was drawn back.
Silver-white hair. Eyes like twin amethysts. The moment the hood fell away, the presence radiating from him silenced even the most mindless mutants. He was noble—undeniably so. Every creature present knew that he was royalty among the stars.
His lavender eyes met Fabius's.
In that gaze, a thousand memories surged. In an instant, it became a psychic blade, cutting through Fabius's sanity.
"Don't you want to see me, Fabius?"
Fulgrim's voice was sonorous—gentle, resonant. The tone of a Primarch.
A clatter rang across the field. An Emperor's Child, long since lost to the excesses of Slaanesh, dropped his blade. His trembling fingers could no longer grip it.
Others wept openly. Twisted and mutilated faces contorted with emotion. A few of the Emperor's Children slipped away into the shadows, unable to face the phoenix that had seemingly risen from the ashes of the past.
Even Fabius staggered. After all, he had created this being. He understood better than anyone the weight this reborn figure carried.
To the modern Emperor's Children—now largely perverted by Chaos—the original Fulgrim was a paradox. A daemon prince, yes—but once the most radiant of the Primarchs. Proud. Perfect. Terrifying in his beauty.
The one standing now embodied that legacy too perfectly.
A Gland-Hunter—one of Fabius's feral creations—crawled low from the shadows like a hunting beast, stalking Fulgrim with predatory intent.
"You're an error. An insult to everything he was. Kill him!" Fabius snarled.
The Gland-Hunter sprang.
With a single, flawless motion, Fulgrim drew his narrow-bladed sword and sliced through the beast mid-air. It split apart without resistance, its blood painting the ground red.
The elegance, the precision—it was unmistakable. And it stirred ancient memories, ones many here had tried desperately to forget.
Fulgrim stepped forward, his sword now stained but steady.
"Fabius," he said evenly, "it's time to end this."
Fabius stared at that face—his masterpiece and his mistake. His voice was quiet now, almost sorrowful.
"Why did you return to this wretched system?" he asked. "You should have remained a relic. An exhibit in a stasis tomb would be a kinder fate than this. That would be... a better ending."
He could feel emotions he thought long buried beginning to swell again. Fulgrim's eyes mirrored too much—memories of Terra, of brotherhood, of what they all had lost.
But Fulgrim shook his head gently and raised his bloodied blade.
"I carry his memories. I am his legacy. And I will finish what he could not."
"You idiot!" Fabius screamed, all composure lost. "You are not him! You are a mistake! A glitch that should never have existed!"
He raised the Scepter of Torment, its coils crackling with arcane power. A rune orb shattered beneath his grip, unleashing a torrent of psychic energy.
Lightning arced through the air, wrapped in sickly purple flames. Warp-born fire howled as it surged toward Fulgrim.
The Primarch raised his sword in defense, intercepting the storm. But the force of the blow hurled him back across the chamber, crashing into a vat of foul amniotic fluid.
The tank ruptured. Biogenic solution spilled across the floor, and malformed xenos spawn shrieked briefly before dissolving in the chemical bath.
Smoke hissed. The battlefield trembled.
And Fulgrim, reborn and burning with forgotten fire, began to rise again.
"Do too much evil, and you'll summon ghosts."
Fabius Bile had always dismissed such superstitions. He believed in science, not spirits. Yet now, faced with the impossible, he could not help but feel haunted.
Across from him stood Fulgrim, or rather, something claiming that name. A being too familiar, too perfect—so much so that it tore at Fabius's rationality.
"Look at you," Fabius sneered, voice sharp with resentment. "You're nothing like him. Weak in flesh, feeble in will. You're not him—don't even dream of becoming him!"
He withdrew a shriveled relic—an ancient finger, mummified with age. As the ritual flame consumed it, a psionically charged spear of foul, warp-tainted energy coalesced in his hand.
"Back to the warp with you. I'll end my mistake with my own hands!"
The psychic javelin pulsed, crackling with raw malevolence. Fulgrim, still reeling from the earlier strike, could not move. Lightning had scorched his synapses; even twitching seemed like fantasy.
His eyes, once defiant, now dimmed with resignation—and perhaps, a flicker of peace.
But then— a warrior moved.
A fallen Emperor's Child, his arms grotesquely mutated into writhing purple tentacles, leapt forward and interposed himself between Fulgrim and the oncoming spear.
There was no hesitation. The traitor used his own body to shield his former primarch.
Fulgrim stared in horror as the marine's armor shattered under the blow. His eyes, blazing with defiance, met Fulgrim's—before the energy overwhelmed him. A banshee scream tore the air as the malicious psychic force dissolved him into sludge, corrupting every cell in his body.
That sacrifice broke the paralysis gripping the other Emperor's Children. One by one, they surged toward Fabius, fury overtaking despair. A tide of mutated Astartes rallied around Fulgrim, seeking to buy him precious seconds.
And it worked.
Fulgrim clenched the blood-hued blade in his grasp—a relic gifted by the Infinite Ones, capable of cleaving through the strongest of armor—and surged forward with impossible speed. To the onlookers, he simply vanished and reappeared, his sword driven straight through Fabius Bile's chest.
The twisted apothecary saw the attack coming, but there was no time. Fulgrim's blade struck true—right through his corrupted heart.
Even with the shadow of death descending, Bile's eyes were clouded not with fear, but a turmoil of emotion. Bitterness. Regret. Recognition.
He looked at Fulgrim's face—the same face he once worshipped, then cloned, then rejected.
A paradox. Fulgrim was his progenitor, his creation, his failure, and his redemption—all in one.
Fabius fell to his knees, thick, black ichor oozing from the wound.
"You can't kill me," he rasped. "This… is just a clone."
Fulgrim's blade slid free.
"Then this is the beginning," he replied. "I will undo every mistake you made."
Fabius collapsed, his body slumping like a puppet with its strings cut. Even as life fled him, his eyes remained locked on Fulgrim. His lips moved faintly.
Fulgrim, with his gene-enhanced perception, caught the words.
"You can't change anything. Giving you to the Infinite was the kindest fate I could choose. When I saw you still chasing perfection, I knew you'd repeat the cycle. That… is your original sin. Humanity never learns. Not even the Primarchs."
Those were the last words of this version of Fabius Bile.
Fulgrim stood there, unmoving.
He didn't fully understand the old apothecary's words, but they left a shadow on his heart nonetheless.
He looked around the broken battlefield, at the bodies and debris scattered across the floor. There was no glory here—only ruin.
He had escaped the Museum of Trazyn the Infinite, but even that escape was shrouded in mystery. Had the Endless One released him on purpose?
Fulgrim didn't know. Nor did he know what Trazyn wanted. But after escaping, his first instinct had been clear:
Find and destroy Fabius.
Now that this task was done, what next?
His memories ended ten thousand years ago. Yet buried deep within that ancient mind, something still whispered of loyalty to the Imperium.
Perhaps… perhaps it was time to return.
To return to the Imperium he once betrayed. To stand before a new generation, perhaps even face Dukel, the warlord whose name echoed across the stars.
Fulgrim had heard the rumors—whispers of what the Imperium had become, of Primarchs reborn, of Crusades renewed, of Terra fortified like never before.
Would he be accepted?
He did not know.
But then Fulgrim chuckled softly.
He had nowhere else to go.
So where else could he return… if not to the Imperium?
Fulgrim believed that whatever grudge lingered between him and Dukel from ten millennia past would not be enough for the latter to refuse him now.
On the battlefield, the captain of the Screaming Warband seized the moment of Fulgrim's hesitation and fled, dragging the tattered remnants of his warband behind him.
The remaining mutants were swiftly culled by the Emperor's Children.
Fulgrim stood silently, bloodied blade in hand, gazing at the twisted remnants of his once-noble sons. Sadness welled within those violet eyes.
If the mind is truly shaped by memory and blood, then though this Fulgrim was a clone, his sorrow was genuine—echoing the soul of the Primarch he once was.
Around him, the Emperor's Children ceased their slaughter. Their once-frantic assault dulled, allowing the terrified mutants to flee unchecked. Their eyes turned toward Fulgrim, confusion and conflict written across their visored faces. The lavender gaze of their father—tinged with pain—called to something buried deep within them.
In that brief moment of unity, they felt as if time had turned back.
For the span of a heartbeat, they were no longer fallen angels, but warriors of the Great Crusade. They recalled the glories of yesteryear—expanding the Imperium's borders, fighting in the name of the Emperor and all of mankind's hope.
They feared no hardship, no death.
They drank and brawled with the battle-brothers of the Iron Hands.
They learned the arts of forge and fire from the Salamanders. Bantered endlessly with the Space Wolves. Mocked the sanctimony of the Word Bearers with prideful laughter.
And standing at their forefront was their radiant Primarch, Fulgrim the Phoenician.
Those days, once taken for granted, now seemed as distant as a dream.
They looked upon him with unspoken questions. Why did such sorrow weigh so heavily in his eyes—now, of all times?
Yet that sorrow only deepened. Fulgrim said nothing, and the Emperor's Children slowly drew closer, their awe darkening into something feverish. Morbid joy began to bloom on their faces like the touch of a tainted god.
Meanwhile, aboard an Imperial warship newly rejoined with Warmaster Dukel's fleet, a Warp jump had just concluded.
The vessel's commander, Political Commissar Kane of the Valhallan Field Regiments, stood at attention.
Kane had once fought at Dukel's side—an experience he remembered vividly and with trembling awe.
Though he had wept like a child and been paralyzed with terror at times by the sheer ferocity of Dukel's campaigns, fortune had smiled on him nonetheless. When the lost Primarch returned and took up the mantle of Imperial Warmaster, Kane's brush with that legacy made him a living legend.
To the masses of the Imperium, he was the fearless Commissar who had braved the traps of Chaos and set foot in the domains of the Dark Gods themselves.
Only a handful—including the Primarch—knew the full, shameful truth.
As always after supper, Kane knelt at his quarters' small shrine and offered a prayer to the Golden Throne.
"Praise be to the Throne. Though I am unworthy and insignificant, please grant me your favor. May this war unfold as smoothly as the last."
But as the prayer ended, he felt... something.
A flicker of unease crept over him, as though he were being watched.
Frowning, he retrieved a lifeform scanner from his belt. Nothing. The screen was blank.
That unsettled him.
"Am I just exhausted?" Kane muttered, scratching his head.
It was likely. The campaign to rescue Saint Efilar would be brutal, and trailing behind the Warmaster's flagship Inner Fire kept tensions high. The pressure had been mounting for days.
He shook his head, forcing himself to relax.
What he needed was rest—to clear his thoughts and steel himself for what lay ahead.
Humming a Valhallan folk tune, Kane made his way back to his quarters.
He never noticed the shadow that crept just behind him, silent and unseen.
...
TN:
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