42. Belated Judgment (XV)

Clutching his helmet, Zabriel slowly sat down. The early morning breeze carried a message to him that most people wouldn't notice. From it, he learned that the forest was reviving.

It would be quite strange to use this description to depict a forest at dawn elsewhere, as nocturnal animals and plants that do not distinguish between day and night do not live according to human time concepts.

But that's how the Caliban are; once night falls, even the best Hunter will choose to retreat to their hiding places and wait for dawn.

Zabriel found a small measure of peace in imagining dew glistening on leaves. He lowered his head, placed his helmet on the Rock he was using as a makeshift chair, and began to gaze into the distance.

He had now reached the top of a cliff. The dense green forest stretching out beneath his feet resembled a gently undulating ocean. The trees and their leaves stole all the light, crowding every inch of space, leaving only a few areas where the sun could still shine directly.

The Dark Angels stared at this completely unfamiliar world, feeling a sense of dread.

Yes, he knew this was Caliban, but...

He unconsciously glanced down at his right palm, where an Aquila emblem was being inspected by him.

The main body of it is made of a mixed metal, which is not a particularly good material. The edges have faded in many places, making the eagle wings look almost like they are stained with blood.

Zabriel stared at it for a long time before looking away. After a brief battle with Seraphax, the found eagle emblem projected another golden door, drawing him inside.

He was somewhat worried about this. The task the old knight had given him came flooding back to him word by word. The Dark Angels frowned, pondering what was hidden in those words that still seemed like riddles.

He quickly realized that he would inevitably travel through time again soon, and inevitably felt worried about it.

Zabriel hated Seraphax, but he had to admit that the fallen traitor was right about one thing: he shouldn't have wielded that power, nor should he have traversed time so freely.

What consequences will this have? Will his future, his present, be altered because of his actions?

For a moment, the Dark Angels inevitably felt a slight wavering, very slight, but genuinely real. Some impulsive thoughts surged into his mind along with this wavering, and many voices began to whisper to him.

Zabriel was completely unaware of the danger, listening to their stories in a daze until all was silent and a gust of wind rushed into his eardrums. Only then did the Dark Angels realize with horror that those voices sounded exactly like those of Seraphax.

They say: You can change everything.

Zabriel instinctively clenched his fists. A gust of wind swept past his head, accompanied by a roar that felt instinctively familiar. Without hesitation, his body acted before his brain could react.

He stepped back to the rock, grabbed his helmet, put it on, and leaped back into the dense greenery. The sky, cleaved by trees on the cliff face, came into view, and dozens of powerful gunboats glided nimbly through them.

Behind the helmet, Zabriel's eyes widened instantly, and he could clearly see the golden eagle insignia and lightning bolts on the gunships.

He immediately shut down all the tactical systems built into the Power Armour via neural connection, leaving only the most basic auxiliary functions. Zabriel was unwilling to take even the slightest risk; he dared not gamble on what would happen if he were discovered.

Then darkness suddenly fell, the sun was obscured, and an indescribable gale, a thousand times stronger than the previous gust, descended from overhead. Flames, light, and a kind of mesmerizing brilliance.

A floating city descended from above him, floated away, and disappeared into the distance.

Zabriel stopped breathing.

For the second time in his life, he saw the Emperor's Dream.

The Emperor has arrived; he has come to attend the meeting and to meet with his son, Lion Aljonsson.

This means that Zabriel's current timeline has been pushed back several decades, and it also means that the assassination the old knight recounted to him is about to occur simultaneously.

Before disappearing, Luther told him that he had taken care of everything. Zabriel was highly skeptical of this claim; the distorted timeline had likely rendered Luther's efforts futile. Moreover, he wasn't the only one caught in this chaotic timeline.

Although Seraphax posed absolutely no threat to the Emperor, Zabriel dared not gamble, nor could he stand idly by while an assassination attempt against the Emperor was launched.

Before becoming Dark Angels, he was the Angel of Death, directly under the Emperor.

Zabriel took a deep breath and made a decision.

--

People are celebrating.

Endless wine, plate after plate of food served, and songs drifting from who-knows-where. Flames soared into the sky, illuminating half the night as if it were daytime. The Aldurukh Fortress Monastery, enveloped in this light, seemed to float in the heavens, but the dense crowd pulled it back to reality, a sense of ecstasy spreading through it.

The Caliban already knew what the Emperor had done; the preachers from Terra had already completed their work in those days. Glorious Terra, Great the Emperor. Although they had not experienced it themselves, the Caliban felt a sense of pride.

Many of them equated the Emperor with a local Caliban deity they once worshipped, believing him to be a god walking among men who could free them from suffering and grant them eternal happiness.

This incessant banquet was one of the harbingers. Peddlers and laborers sat around the tables laughing heartily, no longer cautiously and secretly fantasizing about the future as before, but openly expressing their imaginations, completely disregarding the expressions of the knights sitting at another table not far away.

For ordinary people, they now have a new protector.

Some people were very unhappy about this, Zabriel saw it all clearly in the darkness.

He had been hiding in the forest four kilometers away from the Fortress the Order for a whole day, and the engineering machinery hadn't yet made a move on him. They had cleared enough space to prepare for tomorrow.

The Emperor has arrived, and in just over ten hours he will officially meet the Caliban. At this critical juncture, continuing to keep these machines working is clearly not a wise move.

Zabriel remained motionless, observing the entire fortress monastery through his eyepiece, his breathing unusually soft. Although he had already scouted the area and found no trace of any guard troops, he suspected this was only temporary.

Not long ago, he saw some blurry Shadow flashing across the northern cliffs under the cover of night.

The Dark Angels smiled bitterly to himself, realizing that what he was doing now was more like that of an assassin.

Three hours later, the lively atmosphere of the banquet gradually dissipated a little.

Most of the people who had been reveling all day had chosen to leave, and there were many tents available for them to rest in in the open space not far away. Many knights had also left, returning to the monastery in twos and threes, where they would most likely choose to meditate tonight.

Zabriel cast his gaze into the distance and saw a massive, indistinct shape, undulating and majestic like a mountain range. He knew that was the Emperor's Dream. The Emperor himself was aboard it, with his guards, awaiting tomorrow.

Zabriel didn't know the exact number of the guards, but it certainly wasn't small. However, that wasn't his concern; he only needed to enter the Aldurukh Monastery, where the assassins were undoubtedly located.

Zabriel remembered the faces he had seen when he looked towards the walls of Aldurukh while talking to Luther. These people hadn't attended the banquet, which was probably normal, since it was the last day and they naturally wanted to make the most of the time to check that everything was in order.

Zabriel stood up and silently ran out of the forest toward the monastery. For a Terra veteran, the distance of four kilometers was only a matter of minutes, even if he used stealth technology the whole time.

He easily bypassed the obvious and hidden spies and walked openly into the already not-so-crowded crowd.

His MK2 armor, weathered by time but meticulously repaired and maintained just before it was about to be scrapped, didn't seem out of place in this era at all. Even his cloak didn't attract much attention—after all, it was the early part of the thirtieth millennium, and carving and decorating armor was a common practice for the Astartes.

The Caliban along the way looked at him in awe and spontaneously made way for him. No one tried to speak to him, as if he were a living statue or something similar.

This reminded Zabriel of some of the things he had heard when he first arrived in Caliban with the Legion.

Many not-so-young Caliban believe that the Astartes are not of the same race as them. In the local newspapers, these individuals engage in passionate debates with their opponents, their viewpoints quite distinct.

Of course, this idea didn't last long. Once the Lion El'Jonson led them to truly integrate into Caliban and recruited children of the right age, this prejudice was quickly eliminated.

"--Sir, sir?"

Zabriel looked down and saw a boy, about half a teenager. He was wearing the robes of an apprentice of the Order, had a shaved head, and his expression was a mix of unease and determination. Notably, he had his hands behind his back.

"What is it?" Zabriel asked knowingly. With his height advantage, he could easily see what the child was hiding.

The boy reached out from behind him, holding a heavy wooden wine glass that swayed in his hand, the liquid inside seeping down the sides. Zabriel didn't reach out to take it; instead, he turned to look in the other direction.

A long table was set up not far away, and men dressed in knight's robes sat around it. A man with black hair and a black beard raised his wine glass to him with a broad smile.

Zabriel recognized the man, but felt only annoyance—he was helpless, for the man was Luther.

This damn timeline.

The Dark Angels cursed under his breath, then removed his helmet and took the specially made wine glass for people of their build from the boy's hand with his right hand. He turned and raised the glass to Luther.

Out of politeness, he asked the boy in a low voice before drinking, "What's your name, child?"

The boy, quite excited, puffed out his chest. "My name is Corswain, sir!"

"."

Zabriel tilted his head back without a word and downed the beer in his glass in one gulp. It was a local craft beer, nothing special.

He nodded to the boy, handed the wine glass back to him, then nodded to Luther again, put on his helmet, and walked into the Aldurukh Fortress Monastery without any apparent incident.

This place is no longer just the knights' encampment; the vanguard of the First Legion is also stationed here. They are few in number, as the main force is still fighting in various parts of the galaxy and has not yet arrived.

Zabriel was fairly familiar with this history; he himself was busy fighting a group of troublesome Xenos in the Oort Cloud at the time. He only learned of the Primarch's return a year after the war ended.

Thinking of this, Zabriel's feelings became somewhat complicated. These things had provided him with valuable strength during those years of exile, and although they had brought pain, they always reminded him of his oath to the Emperor and to humanity.

But now, he has truly returned to the past, and is on the same planet as the Emperor and the Primarch. What would happen if he revealed even a little of what he had experienced to them?

Zabriel struggled to restrain himself, admonishing and warning himself against doing something so foolish and insane. However, for some reason, his self-control suddenly failed him, and the idea that "everything can be changed" returned.

During the day, it sounded like nothing more than a whisper, but now it was as deafening as someone shouting at the top of their lungs in your ear.

Zabriel silently stopped and stood in the hall on the first floor of the Aldurukh Monastery, as if his feet had taken root.

"You can change everything," the voice said. "Think about it, Zabriel, how much can you do for the Emperor and humanity with your memories? Even if it means giving your life, as long as the Horus Heresy doesn't happen."

A series of footsteps came from in front of him. Zabriel glanced up and his pupils suddenly shrank to the size of pinpoints.

The person walking towards him was someone he knew very well.

This man had blond hair that reached his shoulders. His skin was so fair that it didn't look like that of a warrior. His eyes were like green gems, appearing very deep in the light. He wore a simple white robe, with the First Legion's insignia on his chest.

An Astartes followed behind him, speaking to him. Zabriel recognized him immediately— Midris, the first Legion member to land on Caliban's surface, and the first to communicate with the Primarch.

"In short, my lord, tomorrow will tell," Midris said respectfully.

Lion Aljonsen nodded to him, then his gaze suddenly shifted to Zabriel.

"Who are you?" he asked calmly.