117. Dark Crusade (XXXVIII, Calistarius

"Where is this?" Calistarius asked.

"The cemetery," Konrad Curze Curze said.

His tone was casual, as if the word referred to nothing more than an ordinary cemetery. Calistarius tried to remain calm, clearing his mind and focusing on the problem at hand.

This is really not easy to do. He has at least hundreds of questions to ask right now, but the young Librarian knows that knowing the answers to these questions is of no use to him at the moment.

There's only one thing he truly cares about, and has to care about.

How do I leave?

Curze stopped in his tracks. The tall, slender Night Haunter, radiating a soft glow, turned his head with a half-smile and repeated the key point from Calistarius's words.

"Leave?"

He turned his head and naturally raised his right hand, making a gesture as flamboyant yet elegant as an opera singer. Calistarius followed the hand closely, finding it finally settling on a skillfully clenched fist.

No, not a fist, but a sword.

A burst of flickering flames suddenly erupted from nowhere, forming a flaming sword in his hand. The Night Haunter gripped it tightly, weighed it in his hand, then twirled the sword and deftly aimed the tip at Calistarius.

Under the horrified gaze of the Blood Angels, he turned around and swiftly plunged the sword into his chest.

The Blood Angels practically roared, "You—!"

He abruptly stopped speaking.

No pain

Even as Astartes, being pierced through the chest should have caused him considerable pain. But he felt nothing at the moment, as if the sword still lodged in his chest had never existed, but was merely an illusion.

He looked down at himself in confusion, trying to draw his sword. To his surprise, he pulled it out easily, his chest still feeling nothing. Then, the sword suddenly shattered, returning to nothingness.

He looked up at the Night Haunter, whose expression remained unchanged, his crown still shining brightly, as if nothing had happened.

He bowed slightly, smiled, and then uttered a sentence that made Calistarius his lips.

"Do you see? I'm so sorry, child."

"But I... I still have things to do, sir."

The Night Haunter shook his head slowly but powerfully.

Who doesn't have one?

He seemed to sigh as he spoke, then raised his hands, and a heavy thud suddenly came from the darkness, like a curtain about to fall being slammed heavily onto the wooden floor in the hands of a third-rate, incompetent stage manager.

Calistarius suddenly felt a chill run down his spine. He instinctively looked into the darkness behind the Eighth Legion Primarch, but saw nothing.

"You'd better not peer into the darkness rashly; anything could be lurking in there," Curze kindly warned, but his voice was somber.

The young Librarian took a deep breath and firmly stated his request again. "I must leave, sir. I... I can't remember, but I do have something to do, something very important."

Curze laughed, as if he had known he would say that all along. He turned and strode toward the other end of the cemetery—at least, that was the other end, according to Calistarius.

He felt he had been here for some time, but he still couldn't tell which way he was going. He could only rely on a vague intuition to determine which way he was going.

This situation is very dangerous; if he hadn't received help from Konrad Curze Curze, he would most likely have gotten lost here.

But why is Konrad Curze Curze here?

The Blood Angels frowned again, banishing the question from her mind, and quickly followed the Night Haunter, who made no sound at all.

His long black robe was of unknown material, perhaps silk, or simply pure darkness. The edges and hem, trailing on the ground, bore natural wear and tear, their sharp or rough edges flickering like burning flames.

They didn't know how much time had passed when they arrived at a stone coffin. The inside was empty, and even the coffin lid was nowhere to be seen. The Night Haunter turned around and sat calmly on the rough edge of the coffin, as if he had done so thousands of times before.

Calistarius looked at him, puzzled, unsure of what it meant, but he was good at waiting. He knew Konrad Curze Curze must have something to say.

That is indeed the case.

"Leaving is a special concept, child," Curze gently, looking at him slowly. "At least it's special here, because no one who comes here wants to leave."

"This cemetery belongs only to those who have done everything, or those who have no more attachments."

"Regardless of their status or achievements in life, they are all welcomed here equally. No matter what hardships they endured or how cruelly they were oppressed during their lives, a place will always be reserved for them here."

"No suffering, no bloodshed, no strife, only peaceful slumber and the tranquil evening breeze."

He smiled again, raised his right hand, spread his five fingers, and felt the wind blowing by.

"Therefore, there are no tombstones here, because they no longer need identity or names; they only need to rest in peace, nothing more."

The young Librarian looked at him in disbelief.

"But I—but I... this is impossible, sir, I..."

Curze interrupted his rambling with a smile, then patted the side of the sarcophagus. The touch was gentle, yet dust fell in a flurry. It took Calistarius a moment to realize that it was an invitation—an invitation to sit together.

He took another deep breath, unable to express his bitterness, and sat down on the edge of the stone coffin with no other choice.

For a moment, no one spoke, only silence and the faint sound of the wind remained. Listening to it, the Librarian's restless heart slowly calmed down, and an indescribable power flowed through him, entering his veins with each breath.

The wind still blows, and Calistarius has returned to calm.

A few minutes later, he spoke in a low voice.

Am I already dead?

"Not yet," Curze said without turning his head, his voice still very soft. "Your body is still some time away from death, but its condition is indeed very bad."

"You have suffered damage to multiple organs and excessive blood loss, and your life is in imminent danger. Moreover, due to an error in the psionic ritual, your soul has also left your body. The spirit and the body complement each other and are indispensable; your complete departure has rendered your brain inactive."

"Four Terra ago, your Apothecary declared that you would become a living dead. The three Librarian who presided over the ceremony with you were willing to be punished for it, but they didn't live to see the punishment come; they were forced into a war."

"War?" Calistarius repeated his words, his mind blank.

"Yes, does the war still remember that mysterious psionic signal, child?"

"Did it cause the war?"

Curze finally lowered his head, looked at Calistarius's deep blue eyes, which were almost identical to his father's, and nodded solemnly.

"That psionic energy comes from a monster. It devoured too many living beings, thus obtaining a vast matrix. Combined with its inherently evil nature, its power surpasses the caution of you Librarian."

"You thought it was a signal, but it wasn't. It was a beacon used to unleash power. In the very first second after the ritual began, it tore through the disguise, drove away your soul, seized dominance, and rushed into the Warp."

"And the ritual materials you used were far too precious; a single drop of Sanguinius' blood could evoke indescribable ghosts in the Warp. Eight hours after the ritual began, several portals opened by this power quietly appeared within your fleet."

Calistarius stared at him, his face ashen. After a long while, in his dizzy, near-drowsy state, he grasped at a straw for salvation.

"We have the Primarch."

And they are endless.

The Librarian fell silent. His hands, which had been resting on his knees, began to tremble. From his fingertips to his wrists, every muscle was suffering from spasmodic pain, which quickly spread throughout his body. But he still didn't give up thinking. In this way, he grasped at a new straw.

"Grown ups!"

"Um?"

"You know these things." Calistarius a deep breath, his face inexplicably drenched in sweat. "You... you know all this, does that mean—"

"--I'm dead, child."

Calistarius was stunned.

"I'm dead," Curze whispered, then patted his back. "The dead never dare to touch the world of the living, not even with prophecies. Did you think I knew these things using my talents?"

"No, I see everything in your impending death. I can see the past and cause of death of every soul that comes here, even those parts they don't know."

"Those who still harbor hatred can wait for their chance to take revenge. Those who have no more attachments will return to the cemetery and find peace in their coffins. Therefore, I regret that I could not warn your father in advance to avoid this disaster."

"In fact, if I had done that, you wouldn't be meeting me today, and this conversation wouldn't have happened at all."

Calistarius could no longer utter a word; countless terrifying thoughts roared through his mind, accompanied by a myriad of complex emotions.

Guilt, remorse, anger, grief—he was almost going crazy. How could this happen? He had thoroughly examined the psychic signal, and he had even invited three experienced Chief Librarian to assist with the ritual.

"No matter how much preparation you do, they will always find a loophole."

Calistarius lifted his head and looked at the speaker. He had expected to see the Night Haunter's face, but he was wrong. He saw a gentle beam of moonlight and a scene projected from it.

A ruin engulfed in flames, a person lying there with eyes closed and covered in blood, their fate unknown.

His face felt strangely familiar to Calistarius, and it took him a few seconds to realize whose face it was.

You're going to die.

A hand landed on his shoulder, chillingly cold. Konrad Curze Curze's voice boomed from above him, sending ripples through the moonlight.

"You have five minutes left to live, Calistarius. Five minutes in the material world, a moment or eternity here—it will pass, and you will die."

The hand grabbed him, forcing his gaze away from the moonlight and towards a pale face.

"Do you want to die?" Konrad Curze Curze asked.

The Blood Angels did not answer, as if it had already frozen in place.

"If you don't want it, try to refuse it, Calistarius. Discard your old ideas and try to embrace this new perspective: refuse death. You must do this, or you will die."

Calistarius finally roared.

"How am I supposed to do this?!" he shouted, his anger bordering on grievance.

"Willpower," Curze said.

At that moment, his tone was utterly ruthless. His face was equally so; handsome and cruel, both occupying a place on that pale canvas, inexplicably added a terrifying persuasiveness to what he was about to say.

"My brother Rogal Dorn once had a theory that anyone with enough willpower could do anything. This theory was proven true thirteen years after its inception, and on Terra, we proved its truth with our lives."

"But this comes with a prerequisite: you must be in Warp, or a place so disordered that it can be briefly called Warp."

"And you, Calistarius, as a Librarian, should know a most basic principle: there is no logic in the Warp; it is an ideal world."

He lowered his hand, took two steps back, grabbed the sarcophagus, and slammed it down. Pale ashes flew high into the air, and an empty sarcophagus stood before Calistarius.

"This is the last chance I can give you, child. Refuse death, or refuse to abandon the past. Choose one."

He patted the stone coffin, turned and left. In the blink of an eye, he was gone without a trace.

The moonlight faded, but darkness remained. The young Librarian, whose Chief Librarian was deemed to have great potential, the Blood Angels Calistarius, silently clenched his fists.

Even now, he doesn't understand why things suddenly turned out this way.

He was filled with rage and hatred for the culprits. He dared not think about how many brothers had died because of this, nor dared to presume to know the Primarch's safety. At this moment, only Konrad Curze Curze's voice echoed in his mind.

"Willpower," he said. "Refusing to die."

Calistarius strode into the sarcophagus.

--

Roboute Guilliman smiled, picked up a piece of meat with his knife and fork, and put it in his mouth. He was sitting at the head of a long table, the dim light cast around him by a solid gold chandelier.

A governor's mansion situated on the tracks should have a banquet hall this luxurious, shouldn't it? He looked down at the head on the plate, flicked the bright red lips with his finger, and then smiled again.

"You taste good," he said, "But still not as good as theirs."

Who are they? Are they the mortals, gripped by fear at the end of the banquet hall filled with blood and corpses, or the Astartes, most of them crippled yet still standing before the mortals as their Astartes?

Roboute Guilliman looked up at one of the men who had lost his left hand, then shook his finger.

"My son," he said with a laugh amidst their roars, "Come here."

Half a minute later, he pressed a still-warm corpse onto the table and began to devour it. In a completely unexpected turn of events, a black bird landed on his shoulder and then began to speak human language.

"The plan has succeeded; it's time for you to set off."

Roboute Guilliman ignored it, simply shrugging it off. His face, hands, and clothes were covered in blood, and bits of flesh and bone were stuck between his teeth. Ten minutes later, he sat back down in his chair, satisfied.

"A delicacy," he said. "No wonder he's one of my company commanders."

Then, he looked at the black bird circling overhead, his gaze quite intriguing.