Chapter Summaries

Guilliman left the bridge with Yvraine and Thousand Faces to confront Carlos, despite Yvraine warning that Carlos’s trap made calamity unavoidable. He reached Carlos and discovered Thousand Sons were part of the ambush as the battle erupted.

• Guilliman ordered Celestine and Greyfax to remain on the bridge while Cawl repaired the Dimension Engine and reported the battle.
• Guilliman took Yvraine, Thousand Faces, and his Ultramarines guard toward Carlos’s location.
• Yvraine explained that Carlos’s scheme had placed Guilliman in a trap from which he could not escape calamity.
• Guilliman refused to turn back, determined to destroy Carlos and free the souls the daemon had captured.
• Guilliman found Carlos waiting with Red Corsairs, mutants, and Thousand Sons, and his forces charged into battle.

Guilliman carved through the Red Corsairs until Carlos used a ritual to bind him with psychic chains and force his allies to surrender. Huron ordered Carlos to take Guilliman and his followers to New Badab, then claimed Macragge’s Honour for himself.

• Guilliman advanced through the Red Corsairs, killing their warriors while Celestine and Greyfax helped defend the other battlefields.
• Huron confronted Carlos over the mounting sacrifices, and Carlos prepared a Warp spell to exploit Guilliman’s vulnerability to psychic power.
• After Guilliman killed ninety-nine people and reached Carlos, eight Tzeentch Greater Demons joined Carlos to bind him with psychic chains.
• Carlos threatened to kill Guilliman unless everyone laid down their weapons, and the Ultramarines, Yvraine, Thousand Faces, Celestine, Greyfax, and their allies surrendered.
• Carlos told Huron it would torment Guilliman rather than kill him, and Huron ordered Carlos to take the captives to New Badab and leave Macragge’s Honour to him.

Guilliman and his companions remained imprisoned in the Blackstone Fortress when Marius, the Emperor’s Champion of the Black Templars, was thrown into their cell. As the prisoners argued over the Emperor’s divinity and watched the Red Corsairs approach the Macragge's Honour, Guilliman turned his attention to finding a way out.

• Guilliman, Yvraine, Celestine, Greyfax, Cawl, and the Ultramarines were held in Carlos's sorcerous prison at the bottom of the Blackstone Fortress.
• The prison flames opened, and a Black Templar named Marius was thrown inside; he introduced himself as the Emperor's Champion.
• Marius told the prisoners that a Warp Storm had carried his ship into Huron's lair, where a two-headed bird-man had captured him.
• Celestine called Marius's arrival the God-Emperor's guidance, while Guilliman and Greyfax insisted that the Emperor was not a god.
• The prisoners saw Red Corsairs surrounding the Macragge's Honour and transporting personnel toward it; Cawl said its machine spirit would not betray Guilliman.
• Guilliman put aside his speculation about the Adeptus Mechanicus and began searching for a way to escape.

Huron confronted Guilliman in the prison and affirmed that he would remain the Lord of the Maelstrom despite his Primarch’s condemnation. Half an hour later, Lord Cypher and Sylandri arrived with Harlequins, clearing the way to the prisoners.

• Huron heard that Macragge's Honour’s machine spirit resisted the Dark Mechanicum, then went to see Guilliman in prison.
• Huron and Guilliman discussed Huron’s betrayal and the Badab War, and Huron declared that either he or Guilliman would kill the other.
• Huron left after exchanging insults with Guilliman, while Celestine, Greyfax, Thousand Faces, and the others remained trapped.
• Lord Cypher appeared near the prison, and Harlequins led by Sylandri killed the Red Corsairs guarding it.
• Sylandri told Yvraine that the Harlequins had entered Vahr's Talisman through the Webway.

Cypher freed Guilliman after securing a promise to take him to the Emperor, but Guilliman diverted the escape party to recover Macragge's Honour as the Tyran Navy attacked the Red Corsairs. Qin Mo unleashed the Nightbringer fragment's scream against the Blackstone Fortress, leaving Guilliman's group to witness the resulting carnage and struggle under its psychic agony.

• Cypher freed Guilliman after Guilliman agreed to take him to the Imperial Palace to meet the Emperor.
• Sylandri led Guilliman and his companions through the Red Corsairs' prison, where they retrieved their weapons before spotting the Tyran Navy fleet emerging from a Warp Rift.
• Guilliman redirected the group toward Macragge's Honour, while the Tyran Navy attacked the Red Corsairs and Qin Mo ordered the fleet to help them.
• Qin Mo had the Tyran Navy breach the Red Corsairs' communications and play the Nightbringer fragment's scream, which drove the Blackstone Fortress's occupants to madness and suicide.
• Sylandri identified the Star God fragment as the source of the scream, while Yvraine, Sylandri, and Thousand Faces struggled under its psychic effects as Guilliman helped them onward.

Cawl, Guilliman, and their companions discovered that the Nightbringer shard’s scream had killed everyone else inside the Blackstone Fortress. As Macragge’s Honour came to retrieve them, they watched the Red Corsairs and Tyran fleets fight a massive void battle.

• Cawl found no biological signals in the Blackstone Fortress apart from Guilliman’s group, and Sylandri explained that the Nightbringer shard’s scream had killed the defenders.
• Sylandri led Guilliman’s group toward the fortress exit, but they found the hangars ablaze and could not reach a transport craft.
• Cawl ordered Macragge’s Honour to come retrieve them using its automated systems, and Guilliman accepted the explanation without pressing further.
• Guilliman’s group watched the Red Corsairs fleet, supported by the Blackstone Fortress, battle the Tyran Navy and its Celestial Engine.
• Yvraine and Sylandri said they disliked large-scale fleet battles, while Guilliman watched Macragge’s Honour approach.

Macragge's Honour survived the push toward the Blackstone Fortress, and Guilliman reunited with Qin Mo, who explained how Carlos had foreseen his location. After dismissing Sylandri's unfinished prophecy, Guilliman escaped the Maelstrom for Terra while the battle continued behind him.

• A Talon battleship shoved Macragge's Honour toward the Blackstone Fortress, where Warp energy and the Celestial Engine's weapons strained the fortress's defenses.
• Guilliman observed that the Red Corsairs fleet seemed poorly coordinated because it had likely shut down communications.
• Qin Mo appeared on the bridge, and he told Guilliman that Carlos's prophetic powers explained how the daemon had found him.
• Qin Mo ordered Guilliman to repair the Dimension Engine, leave the Maelstrom, and head for Terra while his fleet remained behind.
• Qin Mo cut off Sylandri before she finished delivering a riddle from the Laughing God.
• Macragge's Honour jumped through a Warp Rift and vanished, while the fleets continued fighting and Huron remained too occupied to pursue Guilliman.

Carlos resisted Magnus and Tzeentch’s demands to return, choosing to hide in the Maelstrom until he trusted them. As the fleet battle worsened, Huron and his deputy questioned why the Tyran Navy remained after Guilliman had escaped.

• Carlos opened a passage to the Crystal Demon Realm, but Tzeentch’s urgent whispers made him reconsider and close it.
• Magnus urged Carlos to return and help with a new plan, but Carlos checked the Book of Fate and remained wary of both Magnus and Tzeentch.
• Carlos opened a portal to an uninhabited part of the Maelstrom and decided to hide there until he judged it safe to return.
• Huron watched the Red Corsairs lose the fleet battle as Macragge’s Honour fled with Guilliman and the people in the Blackstone Fortress died by suicide.
• Huron’s deputy urged him to decide quickly, while Huron questioned why the Tyran Navy remained in the Maelstrom after rescuing Guilliman.

Huron suspected the Tyran Navy had come to retrieve the Glory Road’s bridge and ordered it launched toward their fleet. Qin Mo salvaged it and withdrew the fleet from the Maelstrom, where Adam recovered from the Dark Gods’ whispers and began a psychological assessment.

• Huron reconsidered whether the Tyran Navy had come for the Glory Road’s bridge after recalling that its master control core could not be breached and that a book aboard it described the Navy’s beginnings.
• Huron ordered the bridge fitted with thrusters and sent toward the Tyran Navy while his ships prepared their engines for an emergency departure.
• Adam resisted the whispers long enough to order the Lord of Tyran to salvage the bridge, and Qin Mo ordered the fleet to leave the Maelstrom.
• The Tyran Navy escaped to a point a hundred light-years away, where Adam vomited as the whispers faded and a Logistics Machine gave him a psychological survey.

After the Tyran Navy returned from the Maelstrom, Qin Mo sent three Warp-mutated crewmen to Talon Terra for treatment. Adam watched as doctors began replacing Sain’s ruined body with prosthetics, while Sain remained conscious and unable to speak.

• Qin Mo told Adam that two crewmen had developed physical mutations and that Sain’s condition was even worse, so he ordered all three sent to Talon Terra.
• Three days later, the Tyran Navy returned to the Tyran System, and the three mutated men were taken to the medical satellite.
• Soulless One doctors examined Sain and found that his body and the compartment fused to him had become a mass of flesh, though his brain still showed activity.
• The doctors separated Sain from the compartment and began replacing his missing organs and spine with prosthetics while Adam watched from outside the operating room.
• The doctors uncovered Sain’s eye, a glass sphere hanging from a fleshy tendril, and told him he would have to endure the operation without anesthesia.

After Sain’s body was replaced with prosthetics, he told Adam about seeing the souls of the dead in the Warp. Sain doubted that the Emperor protected all human souls after death, and Adam suggested that the Lord of Tyran might protect them, but Sain disagreed.

• Doctors completed Sain’s operation, replacing his body with prosthetics and Bionic Skin, and cleared him to leave the hospital.
• Adam pushed Sain in a wheelchair and escorted him out, joking that he should get a Little Cannon installed before reuniting with his wife.
• On the transport craft, Sain told Adam that he had seen his former Regimental Commander Albert and other dead people in the Warp, who had saved him from a Warp creature.
• Sain asked whether Tyranids returned to the Golden Throne after death, explaining that he had seen the dead souls wandering through the Warp instead.
• Adam suggested that the Lord of Tyran might protect the dead, but Sain said the Lord could not, since the Warp contained only a sphere resembling an Orbital Dock protecting Albert and the others.

Sain returned from the Warp and underwent evaluations while awaiting a decision about whether he could remain a captain. Yao En and Anreda agreed to investigate him further, while Qin Mo ordered that he be observed before returning to duty.

• Adam recorded Sain's detailed account of entering the Warp and submitted it for analysis.
• Yao En told Sain his psychological report showed nothing wrong, but said he would need to wait for Qin Mo's decision; Sain refused retirement and said he would serve as a captain or teach at a naval academy.
• Yao En gave Sain a commendation for his and his crew's contributions, and Sain left the transport after joking with Adam about installing a Little Cannon.
• Qin Mo told Yao En to keep Sain under observation and not let him resume command or leave the Tyran Sector yet.
• Yao En and Anreda agreed to create a psychological test regimen and obtain a mind-reading machine to investigate Sain for possible Warp corruption.
• Anreda recalled that Grey and he had chosen to remain with a suspected Psyker in the lower hive rather than flee, then asked Yao En to accompany him to the Celestial Engine.

Yao En visited the Blade of the Omnissiah Legion’s hangar and learned that his daughter Diana had become the pilot of the powerful Mars Witch Titan. He objected to her going to war, but Diana insisted she understood the risks and wanted to fight.

• Anreda showed Yao En the Blade of the Omnissiah Legion’s Titans and explained that the Legion had received the Mars Witch, a powerful War Machine built for a gifted Soulless One pilot.
• Yao En praised the pilot’s achievement, then discovered that the pilot was his daughter, Diana.
• Anreda explained that Diana had secretly entered the Underhive Fortress as a child and revealed research showing her Soulless One talent was far stronger than Yao En’s.
• Yao En learned that Diana had named the Titan Mars Witch and scolded her for treating a war machine as a toy.
• Diana told Yao En that she understood the danger but wanted to pilot the Titan and fight, inspired by Lady Donna.

Yao En consented to Diana joining the Titan Legion despite fearing for her safety, and Diana began five years of demanding theoretical training. The chapter left her learning the legion’s rules and Ommn’s authority as Legion Lord.

• Yao En hesitated before signing his consent for Diana to pilot a Titan, then urged her to learn its functions and escape procedures.
• Diana thanked Yao En and contacted Ommn, who told her the legion deployed about once every ten years and that she needed practical combat training.
• Diana began her five-year theoretical training with prayers, rituals, and lessons in Adeptus Mechanicus etiquette and hierarchy.
• Ommn was brought before Diana and the other newcomers to teach them, explaining his long life, his role as Legion Lord, and their duty to obey his orders.

Diana spent a month learning Titan rituals under Ommn, while Qin Mo and Yao En visited the Legion's garrison. Qin Mo freed Ommn from his tank briefly and explained that Diana's status as a Soulless One made ritual training unnecessary, so Ommn planned to shift her to combat training.

• Diana learned the duties of a princeps and moderati and trained in Titan rituals under Ommn.
• Qin Mo and Yao En watched Diana's lesson before Ommn was brought to them in his tank.
• Qin Mo lifted Ommn out of the tank and protected his frail body from airborne dangers.
• Ommn said he wanted only occasional time outside the tank, and Qin Mo suggested uploading his consciousness into Agripinaa's Radiance.
• Qin Mo told Ommn that Diana's Suppressor protected her from supernatural phenomena and Warp energy, making rituals unnecessary for her.
• Ommn agreed to end Diana's ritual lessons and begin her combat training with formation drills.

Qin Mo transformed Ommn into a highly mechanized servant of the Omnissiah, leaving him eager to one day become part of Titan Agripinaa's Radiance. The next day, Diana watched Duchess Donna and her Knight Crimson Rose rescue a colony from an Ork attack.

• Ommn asked Qin Mo to recognize him as he had Magos Vik, and Qin Mo rebuilt his body into a metal cube with enhanced analytical abilities.
• Ommn celebrated his rebirth, and Qin Mo promised that one day he would become Titan Agripinaa's Radiance.
• Diana traveled with two Warhound-class Titans to learn how to walk in battle and saw a Knight Family ship arrive above the colony world.
• Duchess Donna dropped into the colony in Crimson Rose and attacked the Orks, killing their chieftain and driving the tribe into retreat.
• Donna crushed the Ork banner and accepted the colonists' gratitude beside Crimson Rose's Gatling Cannon.

Diana reunited with Donna after the knight helped defend a colony from Orks, then learned that a giant python had wiped out an Agri-mech expedition. Donna and Diana agreed to bring their forces together to deal with the twenty-two-meter snake.

• Diana arrived at the colony and found Donna refusing payment while accepting wine from the grateful locals.
• The colony administrator showed Donna and Diana footage of two Agri-mechs fleeing through the forest before a giant python attacked them.
• The administrator said the python was twenty-two meters long, and Donna suspected it might be a Warp creature.
• Donna decided to mobilize her Knight Family, while Diana proposed that the Titan Legion crews in the area handle the python during their training.
• Donna, Diana, and the administrator agreed to the plan.

Diana and the Mars Witch crew completed their Titan link and deployed with two Warhound-class Titans for practical training in the forest. As the group advanced, Diana used the Forger C'tan's power to disperse the fog, but the lightning strike also blasted a twenty-kilometer crater into the forest.

• Diana and the two operators synchronized with the Mars Witch, activating its reactor and weapons before it left the transport ship's hangar.
• Kalon refused Diana's request to assist the colony, but let her choose the training site based on her earlier reconnaissance.
• Diana marked the deepest part of the forest, and the three Titans teleported there and formed up to advance.
• Kalon ordered Diana to clear the fog, and she focused the sphere behind the command deck to release its energy.
• A bolt of lightning dispersed the fog and clouds while destroying trees, rocks, and soil across a twenty-kilometer radius.

Diana used the Mars Witch’s sphere medium to let three Titans walk across the crater through solidified air, but their training ended when a Metal Serpent attacked. The Living Metal machine crushed Kalon’s Thunderbolt and destroyed it with green lightning.

• Diana used the sphere medium to form solid air beneath the Titans, allowing them to cross the crater.
• The Titans advanced through the forest, where a million Orks gathered before a Serpent Statue and the tribal shaman waved the Serpent God Banner.
• Diana detected a twenty-two-meter Metal Serpent, which the Orks worshipped as a god before it attacked the Titans.
• Kalon charged the Metal Serpent and struck it with Plasma blasts, but its Living Metal body fused back together.
• The Metal Serpent coiled around Kalon’s Thunderbolt, crushed it, and destroyed it with green lightning as Diana cried out.

After the Thunderbolt and a Warhound Titan were destroyed, Diana faced a force of Necron Canoptek constructs led by Overlord Koren. She fired the Mars Witch’s Phase Fluctuation Cannon, but Koren diverted the beam through portals and emerged unharmed.

• The giant serpent disintegrated the Thunderbolt, and the Warhound Titan moved to attack it while Diana piloted the Mars Witch into position.
• Green lightning destroyed half the Warhound Titan, and Diana discovered that giant serpents had surrounded the Mars Witch.
• A hundred-meter serpent appeared carrying Overlord Koren and his guard, who identified themselves as Necrons and demanded that Diana show respect.
• Diana ordered her operators to report the Necrons to the transport ship, while Koren offered to let her leave if she answered his questions.
• Diana fired the Mars Witch’s Phase Fluctuation Cannon at Koren, but he redirected the beam through spatial portals and remained unharmed.