Chapter Summaries

Yilafren carried Lin Fan and Khan into a Dysjunction storm to escape the pursuing Kabal, while Alundenaer and Aosabaier agreed to pursue their own suspicions about Lin Fan and Khan. The fugitives vanished into the storm, leaving their survival uncertain.

• Lin Fan and Khan argued with Yilafren as her jetbike struggled to carry them away from the Kabal pursuers.
• Yilafren revealed that a Dysjunction storm lay ahead, and Lin Fan explained the danger of the rare Webway disaster.
• Yilafren grabbed Lin Fan's hand and drove the bike into the storm, where they disappeared from view.
• Alundenaer stopped the pursuit and spoke with Aosabaier, trading insults while their forces faced off.
• Alundenaer told Aosabaier that Khan had been modified by a master Haemonculi, and they agreed to act for Lord Vect.

Lin Fan and Khan survived the disaster under the protection of the Emperor’s icon, and Khan confronted his father after seeing the Emperor’s fractured memories and learning the Imperium’s fate. The Emperor revealed that he had prepared homes for each of his sons beneath the Palace.

• Lin Fan used the holy icon to shield the Raider bike from the storm, while the Emperor’s phantom appeared and overwhelmed Yilafren with Warp force.
• Khan heard the Emperor’s chaotic voices and memories until Lin Fan woke him, after which Khan addressed the Emperor as his father.
• The Emperor told Lin Fan that Armageddon was temporarily safe and that a Warp storm had scattered the Damocles Gulf fire barrier, allowing T'au expansion to resume.
• Lin Fan explained the Imperium’s decline to Khan, who angrily accused the Emperor of secrecy and treating his sons as tools.
• Lin Fan revealed that the Emperor had prepared homes for his sons beneath the Palace, and the Emperor confirmed that each had a place.

The Emperor explained that each Primarch had been meant to serve a purpose in guiding humanity toward safety and salvation, and Khan learned that Chaos had manipulated memories and helped drive Angron into madness. Lin Fan questioned how much of his knowledge of the future could still be trusted and asked whether the Emperor on the Golden Throne was truly the Emperor.

• The Emperor described the roles he had planned for the Primarchs and said he had hoped to live as a mortal once humanity became safe from the Warp.
• Khan realized that outside interference might have altered his and the other Primarchs’ memories, then asked what had happened to Angron.
• The Emperor said Khorne and Tzeentch had driven Angron mad before his arrival, and Khan understood that the Emperor had made himself Angron’s hated enemy to spare him from guilt and despair.
• Khan asked about the two missing Primarchs, but the Emperor grieved and told him not to ask.
• Lin Fan reconsidered the contradictions in Warhammer lore and worried that the changes he had caused made his knowledge of the future unreliable.
• Lin Fan interrupted Khan and the Emperor to ask whether the figure upon the Golden Throne was truly the Emperor.

The Emperor revealed to Lin Fan that his humanity remained trapped beneath the God-Emperor’s overwhelming divinity and asked him to prepare to free him. After the Emperor sent Lin Fan and Jaghatai back to Commorragh, Jaghatai reconsidered his father’s immense burdens and mourned how long he had misunderstood him.

• The Emperor told Lin Fan that only Lin Fan could hear his human voice, shield others from his divine power, and guide the Imperium back onto the right path.
• The Emperor asked Lin Fan to prepare to come before the Throne and set him free, then sent Lin Fan and Jaghatai back to Commorragh as he faced the approaching threat.
• The God-Emperor appeared with a flaming sword and the Legion of the Damned, ready to confront the enemy in the Dysjunction.
• Yilafren woke on her motorcycle and found Lin Fan crying and Jaghatai trapped in his armor and the shattered webbing.
• Jaghatai remembered the Emperor’s words and reflected on the burdens and casualties his father had endured, realizing that he had misunderstood him for a long time.

Lin Fan and Khan drank with Yilafren in a bar in Commorragh, where she explained the Cosmic Fragment and its use as a power source. As Lin Fan considered how to repair Little Yi, Yilafren recovered from her soul affliction and grew increasingly enamored with him.

• Yilafren brought Lin Fan to a bar on the lowest level of Commorragh, where Khan drank alone in disguise.
• Lin Fan asked Yilafren about the Cosmic Fragment, and she explained that it was a shattered hyperdimensional sphere containing a copied galaxy cluster.
• Yilafren said she used the fragment to boost her motorcycle's engine with few side effects.
• Lin Fan wondered how to repair Little Yi, while Yilafren noticed that drinking soul-wine had eased her craving for pain and souls.
• Yilafren recalled seeing a godlike phantom and privately mused about training Lin Fan in reverse.

Lin Fan and Yilafren visited Old Ironhead, an Ork Big Mek, in Commorragh's lower districts. After Yilafren explained how they had become friends and described the local trade in soul juice, Old Ironhead asked what they wanted him to make.

• Yilafren brought Lin Fan and Khan to Old Ironhead's factory shack, and Khan promised to follow Lin Fan's command unless the Ork showed hostility.
• Lin Fan saw a photograph of Yilafren and Old Ironhead and learned they had once fought before becoming friends and racing together.
• Yilafren explained that Old Ironhead had turned himself into a machine and used Ork soul juice to restore his strength.
• Yilafren told Lin Fan that Greenskin juice was cheap in Commorragh, while human souls were valuable and Craftworld souls were the rarest.
• Old Ironhead finished his drink, regained his strength, and asked Lin Fan and Yilafren what they wanted him to make.

Lin Fan and Yilafren watched Old Ironhead repair Little Yi’s nano belt, and the repaired device revived Little Yi using a fragment of the universe. Little Yi revealed that its database and Webway data survived, but its nano swarm had dwindled to less than a quarter of its former size.

• Yilafren showed Lin Fan the textbooks Old Ironhead had studied, and Khan became absorbed in a book about mechanics.
• Old Ironhead finished repairing the nano belt, and Lin Fan fed Little Yi the fragment of the universe.
• Little Yi regained consciousness, reported its reduced nano swarm, and said its Webway database remained intact.
• Old Ironhead demanded payment in green soda, then attacked Lin Fan when he had none.
• Khan stopped Old Ironhead’s hammer and punched him, leaving the Big Mek kneeling and complaining.

Lin Fan and his companions searched the ruins of Commorragh for the Human Resistance, hoping to find allies against the cabal. They found a group of human mutants, and Lin Fan promised to take them home.

• Yilafren suggested finding the Human Resistance, and the group traveled deeper into the ruins while Old Ironhead left to gather Orks for a possible alliance.
• Khan sensed watchers in the darkness, chased them down, and returned with several people beaten unconscious.
• Lin Fan revealed that he and Khan were human, and the mutant they questioned recognized them as humans.
• Lin Fan told the mutant he had come to take them home.

Lin Fan and Khan followed Three-Eyes to the quarters of the Lorn Astra Militarum survivors, where they learned the people had been trapped in Commorragh as a human pasture and brutally mutated by the Haemonculi. Three-Eyes discovered that Khan was an Angel of Death, while Khan remained suspicious of the survivors’ condition.

• Lin Fan learned from Three-Eyes that the runaways had escaped slave ships, Haemonculi laboratories, factories, and gardens, and that Three-Eyes was a soldier from Lorn.
• Three-Eyes said only one or two thousand of the Lorn soldiers could still fight, and explained that the Drukhari periodically harvested the pasture’s inhabitants.
• Lin Fan and Khan reached the survivors’ quarters and saw heavily modified people; Khan questioned why their mutations showed no sign of the Warp.
• Three-Eyes insisted that the survivors were Loyal and called Khan an intelligent Ogryn, prompting Lin Fan to reveal that Khan was an Angel of Death.
• Three-Eyes realized Khan was a Space Marine but explained that the paintings and books on Lorn had given him a different impression of the Angels of Death.

Lin Fan and Khan entered a settlement filled with the fused, mutated people of Lorn and met Sister Rys, who explained how xenos alterations had transformed them. Rys had stayed with them and offered comfort through prayer, and she began telling the visitors their story.

• Three-Eyes brought Lin Fan and Khan to a wall of fused flesh, whose inhabitants questioned their identities and resisted letting them pass.
• Three-Eyes explained that Lin Fan was the Emperor’s son and a Primarch, and the wall eventually allowed the visitors to enter because Sister Rys wished to see them.
• Lin Fan and Khan found Sister Rys praying among the people of Lorn, and Khan asked why she was unharmed while everyone else had mutated.
• Rys explained that the people of Lorn had fused and mutated after xenos altered their bodies, and that she believed their care had protected her.
• Rys said she had comforted the people by assuring them the Emperor would not abandon them for their appearance, then offered to tell Lin Fan and Khan their story.

Canoness Lucia and the Order of the Martyrs defended their cathedral on Lorn as the Drukhari overran the shrine world and tormented its people. As wounded Sisters urged another charge, Lucia began addressing their failures and the fate of the planet’s billions.

• Canoness Lucia led the Battle Sisters in holding the cathedral against a Drukhari assault, while the wider defenses of Lorn collapsed.
• After repeated ambushes and failed attempts to rescue civilians, Lucia ordered the Sisters to conserve their ammunition and remain inside the cathedral.
• Lucia and a wounded Battle Sister watched Drukhari mock and torture their victims outside the city ruins.
• Wounded Sisters demanded that Lucia lead them out to fight, and she addressed the assembled Sisters about their failure to protect Lorn’s people.

Canoness Lucia rallied the sisters to defend Martyrs' Cathedral and led them in a hymn, which drew the attention of the Drukhari watching from afar. The Drukhari sent thousands of grotesque Wracks toward the cathedral to exhaust its defenders before moving in to capture the sisters.

• Canoness Lucia persuaded the sisters to stay in the cathedral and use its defenses rather than charge into a likely trap.
• Lucia asked Sister Rys, the choir's last surviving child, to lead the sisters in song while she played the organ.
• The hymn reached the Drukhari, and Haemonculus Amalaga arranged with Archon Osadel to capture the singers, especially the sister at the organ.
• Amalaga turned one hundred thousand human slaves into thousands of amalgamated Wracks and sent them toward Martyrs' Cathedral as Drukhari raiders followed behind.

Sister Superior Lucia and her guards defended the cathedral from the Drukhari, using explosive traps to turn the fight into a fiery melee. Aosabaier entered and revealed that bullets passed through his smoke-like body as Lucia charged him.

• Lucia and her guards cut down the Tortured Ones, then faced Drukhari ambushers emerging from the corpses.
• Lucia activated explosives throughout the cathedral, engulfing both Sisters and Kabalite warriors in flames.
• Aosabaier approached the cathedral and cut down its front wall with the Djinn Blade.
• Aosabaier used the Despair Amplifier to chill the flames and walked through a volley of bullets, which passed through his smoky form.
• Lucia charged Aosabaier with her guards, determined to stop him.

Aosabaier and Amalaga defeated the Sisters of Battle and captured the survivors before an Imperium fleet could arrive. Rys woke in a Drukhari prison with other Sisters, gathered the survivors, and realized they were trapped in the Blood Mercy Human Factory from another comic, Requiem: Vampire Knight.

• Aosabaier used shrieker grenades to disable the Sisters, poisoned Sister Superior Lucia, and helped extinguish the planet's last organized resistance.
• Amalaga examined Lucia and praised the humans as potential servants, while Aosabaier warned that an Imperium reinforcement fleet would arrive in about half a month.
• The Kabalites bound the surviving Sisters and carried them away in human-skin sacks.
• Rys woke in darkness, discovered her poetry book was missing, and found an unconscious Sister beside her.
• Rys sang a hymn to awaken the Sister, searched among the dead and unconscious, and gathered the surviving Sisters.
• Rys and the other Sisters recognized their prison as a Blood Mercy Human Factory in Requiem: Vampire Knight.

Aosabaier joined Amalaga for a meal and discovered that the dish was the roasted Canoness Lucia, whose suffering Amalaga had turned into an experiment in despair. Amalaga showed Aosabaier a fabricated memory of Lucia living in peace, leaving the Archon horrified by the Haemonculus’s methods.

• Aosabaier asked Amalaga why the captives had been left armed, and Amalaga explained that the dimensional prison would contain them and that he preferred fresh flesh.
• Amalaga served Aosabaier roasted Canoness Lucia, whose head was clamped in a device that kept her asleep as she was cooked.
• Aosabaier tasted the meat, found it revolting, and spat it out; Amalaga explained that its bitterness was only preparation for greater suffering.
• Amalaga activated Lucia’s head device and showed Aosabaier an altered memory of her living peacefully among children and townspeople.
• Amalaga explained that he had failed to erase Lucia’s memories of the Corpse Emperor and instead tailored her dreams to create deeper despair, prompting Aosabaier to regard him as a monstrous abomination.

Lucia’s fabricated memories of a joyful life were shattered, and Amalaga and Aosabaier tortured and exploited her despair in Commorragh. Meanwhile, Ruis and the surviving Sisters armed themselves and encountered Aurora from the Department of Relics.

• Amalaga explained that he had rewritten Lucia’s memories into a happy story in which she became a celebrated saint and helped restore the Golden Age.
• Amalaga woke Lucia and removed the toxins and paralysis, then revealed that her memories were false and that she remained a captive.
• Lucia remembered her defeat and capture, realized the Emperor had not saved her, and broke down in despair.
• Aosabaier tasted Lucia’s tears while Amalaga resumed torturing her and planned to keep her producing tears through repeated memory-shattering.
• Ruis and the recovering Sisters gathered weapons and moved through the cage, searching for an exit and other survivors.
• The Sisters heard someone emerge from a corpse pile and recognized her as Aurora from the Department of Relics.

The Sisters found Aurora alive with sacred relics and fought a deadly Wrack, losing one of their own. Rys stopped the Sisters from killing the disfigured survivors, arguing that they were victims captured from Lorne rather than mutants or heretics.

• Aurora reunited with the Sisters and revealed the Sacred Golden Orb and a complete collection of hymns in her chest.
• The Sisters encountered a heavily modified Wrack and opened fire as fleeing survivors dropped to the ground.
• The Wrack seized a Sister with its whip, and she sacrificed herself to stab its helmet and help the others bring it down.
• The disfigured survivors thanked the Sisters, but the Sisters mistook them for mutants and raised their guns.
• Rys intervened and explained that the survivors were people from Lorne who had been captured and abused by xenos.

Sister Rys led the altered captives toward the factory to rescue the people being processed, but Hesahol and his Wracks overwhelmed the sisters. As Rys and Aurora faced defeat, Aurora transformed into a powerful armored figure who told Rys he was not afraid either.

• Sister Rys persuaded the sisters to spare the altered captives, and Three-Eyes explained that people were being processed in a factory nearby.
• The sisters and Three-Eyes agreed to fight their way to the factory and rescue the remaining captives.
• Hesahol noticed the approaching group and ordered his Wracks to attack them.
• The Wracks crushed the sisters' assault, while Hesahol sent two bone-shield Wracks after Three-Eyes and the other captives.
• As Rys fell wounded beside Aurora, Aurora transformed into an armored figure and told Rys he was not afraid.

Aurora rescued Rys and the factory’s survivors, then entrusted Rys with a Holy Hand Grenade and a complete collection of hymns so she could open a way out. Rys led the survivors through the breach to a place called the ranch, where she urged them to survive and avenge the dead.

• Aurora slaughtered the tormentors, killed Hesahol, and told Rys to call him Aurora.
• Aurora showed Rys how to use the Holy Hand Grenade, gave her the hymns, and vanished after telling her to blast open a route to escape.
• Rys gathered the rescued survivors and led them toward the place Aurora had indicated.
• Rys recited the grenade’s prayer, counted to three, and threw it at the wall, destroying the dimensional barrier and its locking spikes.
• Rys and the factory’s survivors passed through the golden breach and arrived at the ranch.
• Rys called on the survivors to endure and avenge the dead, while they knelt and prayed to her.

Lin Fan and Khan suspected Alpharius or Omegon had arranged Rys’s arrival and learned that the people of Lorn could move as a flesh conglomerate. As Rys prepared to seek revenge, Old Ironhead and Old Ironleg waited with their Orks, eager to fight the Drukhari.

• Lin Fan and Khan concluded that Alpharius might be behind Rys and Lorn’s situation, while Khan wondered whether Omegon was involved.
• Rys showed Lin Fan the Complete Collection of Hymns, which remained blank, and explained that Aurora had said it would reveal itself when she was in greatest danger.
• Rys commanded the people fused into the flesh conglomerate to rise, and thousands of hands lifted her as Lin Fan and Khan watched.
• Lin Fan asked whether Rys wanted revenge, and she said that she and the faces in the flesh conglomerate wanted it more than anything.
• Old Ironhead and Old Ironleg kept the Orks waiting for Yilafren, while the Boyz complained about waiting and their greenskin juice.