Chapter Summaries

Slaanesh showed Lin Fan the horrors of his domain and tried to force him to share in its pleasures, but Lin Fan rejected him and escaped being devoured. As Lin Fan prepared to leave with the Cronesword, Slaanesh asked if changing would make Lin Fan love him, and Lin Fan said others would cherish him if he became gentle.

• Slaanesh showed Lin Fan the Wailing Lens and the violent scenes and sacrifices his followers offered him.
• Lin Fan rejected Slaanesh’s invitation to indulge in the horrors, and Slaanesh transformed into his gigantic original form and wrapped around him.
• Slaanesh devoured Lin Fan, but Lin Fan tore his way out and repeatedly escaped Slaanesh’s grasp.
• Slaanesh’s anguish caused his palace to collapse and robbed his daemons and followers of pleasure.
• Lin Fan took the Cronesword and prepared to call The Emperor, but Slaanesh tearfully asked whether changing would make Lin Fan love him.
• Lin Fan told Slaanesh that if he became gentle, people would cherish him instead of avoiding him out of fear.

Lin Fan learned why Slaanesh craved his affection and offered him comfort, then considered whether love and companionship could help change the Chaos Gods. Slaanesh sealed himself away to contain his ecstatic reaction, while Lin Fan’s thoughts turned to the dangers posed by the gods’ accumulated emotions and how to approach Tzeentch.

• Slaanesh told Lin Fan that he liked him because Lin Fan could touch him safely and offered a chance to experience love, unlike the other gods.
• Lin Fan embraced Slaanesh after promising to give him affection if he acted more normally, and Slaanesh fled the room overwhelmed by joy.
• Lin Fan wondered whether love and companionship could redirect Slaanesh and his followers, and considered the unmet needs and dangers associated with the other Chaos Gods.
• Lin Fan worried that Slaanesh’s accumulated emotions could still harm the universe and pondered how to handle Tzeentch, then imagined pairing Slaanesh with The Emperor.
• Slaanesh built a sealing array, drew classroom scenes and likenesses of himself and Lin Fan with red pens, and contained his ecstatic cries as he celebrated mathematics.

Lin Fan asked Slaanesh about Tzeentch, and Slaanesh recalled a Warp meeting where the gods discussed punishing someone who had broken a contract. Tzeentch revealed their plan to retaliate through Horus, leaving the gods poised to invest in him as their proxy.

• Lin Fan learned from Slaanesh that Tzeentch had once gathered the gods for a meeting about punishing a contract-breaker and earning income for the Warp.
• Slaanesh recalled disrupting the meeting, provoking Khorne, and being chopped into pieces before transforming back.
• Nurgle told Slaanesh that the gods had smashed Tzeentch's divine staff at their first meeting, and brushed aside Slaanesh's demand to get Isha back.
• Tzeentch explained that the contract-breaker had refused to hand over half the primarchs, so the gods would retaliate and profit from a more active market.
• Tzeentch proposed that each god invest 25 percent in a proxy and revealed an image of Horus.

The Chaos Gods fought over Sanguinius, but Horus killed him before they could claim him, so they abandoned Horus and divided the remaining primarchs. Lin Fan then questioned Slaanesh about Sanguinius, Fulgrim, and whether the Aeldari gods could be freed, while Slaanesh hinted that an arriving presence would soon show Lin Fan how they could meet every day.

• The four Chaos Gods battled over Sanguinius until Tzeentch sensed that Horus had killed him and withdrew from the fight.
• The gods blamed Horus for destroying the prize they wanted, and The Emperor banished him while they turned to dividing up the other primarchs.
• Lin Fan asked Slaanesh where Sanguinius had gone, and Slaanesh said he had sensed no trace of Sanguinius's soul entering the Warp.
• Slaanesh told Lin Fan that Fulgrim had fled beyond his senses after becoming distressed by a clone of Ferrus Manus made by Fabius Bile.
• Slaanesh explained that killing him would not destroy a Chaos God, but would kill his Aeldari aspect and the Aeldari gods he had absorbed.
• Slaanesh sensed someone arriving and told Lin Fan that he would soon learn how to see Slaanesh every day.

Lin Fan was struck by Khorne’s greatsword and vanished into a rift in the Warp, prompting Slaanesh to attack Khorne in fury. As their battle shook the Warp and threatened Cadia, the Emperor’s golden light appeared and spoke to the defenders.

• Slaanesh refused Lin Fan’s request to let Khorne strike him, but spat him toward Khorne after Lin Fan insisted he would survive.
• Khorne swung his greatsword at Lin Fan, whose body was carried away through a rift after tearing through the golden hand reaching to catch him.
• Slaanesh, unable to sense Lin Fan, attacked Khorne, and their clash devastated the daemons and realms around them.
• The garrison on Cadia mobilized as the light of Khorne and Slaanesh spread across the planet, preparing for a Chaos assault.
• Golden light emerged from the Eye of Terror, covered the gods’ radiance, and spoke, “I am here,” as the Cadian forces hailed the Emperor.

The Emperor joined Slaanesh's battle against Khorne, then drew on the Imperium's faith to become the God-Emperor and mortally wound Khorne at the cost of a grave wound himself. He demanded that Slaanesh hand over Jaghatai and an Aeldari, and Slaanesh reluctantly faced the Emperor's threat.

• The Emperor arrived as Khorne fought Slaanesh, and Khorne grew stronger as the battle awakened his strategic nature.
• The Emperor ordered Slaanesh to hold Khorne back, but Slaanesh rejected his help and lost an arm to Khorne.
• The Emperor gathered the Imperium's faith as people across its worlds prayed, chanted, and marched in his name.
• The Emperor became the God-Emperor and clashed with Khorne, piercing him with his sword as Khorne's Schöningen Spear pierced his chest.
• The Emperor demanded that Slaanesh hand over Jaghatai and an Aeldari, and Slaanesh abandoned his plans to resist after seeing the Emperor's warning glance.

The Emperor recovered Khan and Yilafren from Slaanesh, who promised to search for Lin Fan while restraining his followers. The Emperor sent Khan and Yilafren to find Fulgrim, then remained behind to heal and maintain the Astronomican as he prepared for a future clash with a hidden opponent.

• Slaanesh returned Khan and Yilafren to The Emperor and asked him to find Lin Fan, whose trail was obscured by Khorne's influence.
• Slaanesh agreed to restrain his followers while searching for Lin Fan, then left to seek revenge on the wounded Khorne.
• The Emperor warned Khan that Chaos Gods could not be trusted and rejected his offer to govern the Imperium, telling him that a hidden opponent was still watching.
• The Emperor sent Khan and Yilafren through a Warp portal to find Fulgrim and bring him to the Emperor.
• The Emperor stayed behind to recover from Khorne's strike and maintain the Astronomican, whose light gradually stabilized.

An Imperial Guard force discovered an unprotected humanoid anomaly on a toxic battlefield and failed to harm it with explosives or concentrated fire. The figure awakened and advanced toward the soldiers, leaving them unable to stop it.

• A watch officer noticed the ragged anomaly and ordered a soldier to attack it with a monomolecular shovel and explosives, but both failed to damage it.
• The officer reported the anomaly, and thousands of soldiers built a fortified defensive position around the crater while tanks took aim.
• After the anomaly awakened, the soldiers watched it stumble out of the crater and approach their lines.
• The officers ordered every weapon to fire, but lasers, solid-shot weapons, and plasma could not injure or stop the approaching figure.

A seemingly indestructible man walked through a military position, shrugging off the soldiers’ weapons and tanks. After eating a huge supply of corpse-starch, he fell asleep in the bunker, while Colonel Hans contacted Imperial authorities for help identifying him.

• The soldiers’ guns and bayonets failed to hurt the approaching man, and their attempts to hold him back broke apart.
• A tank crew rammed the man, but he forced his way through the vehicle and emerged from its rear armor.
• The man broke into the bunker, asked for food, and ate corpse-starch bars meant for 750 people before falling asleep.
• Colonel Hans contacted his superiors, and an Ecclesiarchy archbishop and an Inquisition communications officer ordered him to destroy the suspected daemonic creation.

Colonel Hans reported that his forces had spent their ammunition against an unharmed, sleeping fiend, prompting the Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition to investigate. The bishop ordered Crusaders to attack the creature, but their blades shattered without waking it.

• Colonel Hans reported the forces deployed, ammunition expended, and losses suffered, confirming that the target remained unharmed and that his soldiers had suffered no deaths.
• The Ecclesiarchy and Inquisition sent groups to the position, where the hooded Inquisitor examined the evidence and concluded the creature was neither a daemon nor apparently psychic.
• Colonel Hans led the visitors to the bunker, where the fiend slept with a bloodstained Aquila icon around its neck.
• The bishop ordered Crusaders to chop the sleeping fiend to pieces, but their blades shattered against it without waking it.

Laster and Inquisitor Omar investigated the sleeping figure and discovered that the bloodstained icon and black disc held immense, conflicting powers. After Omar and Bishop Marian recognized the figure as the child foretold by Saint Lakuras, the bunker’s forces turned from hostility to reverence.

• Laster’s psychic vision showed that the disc around the sleeping figure’s neck swallowed psychic power and saved him from being overwhelmed by the figure’s blood mist.
• Laster warned Inquisitor Omar not to provoke the figure, while Omar noted that it carried no obvious taint of blasphemy.
• Omar touched the bloodstained icon and saw visions of the Golden Throne and a scarlet evil god before the black hole swallowed the illusions.
• Bishop Marian accused Omar of heresy and ordered the Battle Sisters and Crusaders to aim their weapons at him and his subordinates.
• Laster shared his psychic vision with Marian and the troops, and Omar recited Saint Lakuras’s prophecy with Marian.
• Marian recognized the sleeping figure as the foretold chosen one and celebrated, while Omar asked what they must do next.

Bishop Marian brought the prophesied Saint to the Landis Shrine World, where the bishops awakened him and hailed him as the Emperor’s savior. The confused man identified himself as Astra Militarum and ordered the bishops to send him to the Krieg 141st Regiment.

• Bishop Marian declared the sleeper the Child of Prophecy, while Inquisitor Omar doubted the claim but expected the Saint to return.
• Bishop Marian left with the sleeper as Colonel Hans’s unit prepared to march to the Scrap Plains as atonement.
• Two days later, Landis Shrine World’s bishops examined the sleeper and accepted him as Saint Lakuras’s prophesied redeemer.
• After waking, the man struggled between the bishops’ claims that he was a Saint and a woman’s voice telling him he was Soap and Astra Militarum.
• The man ordered the bishops to send him to the Krieg 141st Regiment and told them to join the penitential legion rather than interfere.

Little Yi tried to guide the witless Lin Fan back toward his former military life by taking him to the Krieg 141st Regiment. Colonel Hans assigned him to a grenadier unit bound for the central fortress complex of the Scrap Plains, after receiving orders to send him to the most difficult battlefield.

• Little Yi had Lin Fan repeat her words to the bishops and persuaded them to let him join the Krieg 141st Regiment.
• The church split into Saint-Adherent and Saint-Following factions, which began fighting after the Saint departed for the battlefield.
• Little Yi noticed that the Krieg soldiers remained eerily silent after the fighting stopped as Lin Fan reported to the regiment.
• Colonel Hans assigned Lin Fan to a grenadier unit tasked with breaking through the central fortress complex of the Scrap Plains.
• Colonel Hans reread an order on Lin Fan's documents that said to send him to the most difficult battlefield.

Grenadier 19 and a squad of Krieg veterans advanced through the trench network toward the Scrap Plains bunker complex, where they were assigned to help break the enemy defenses. As the commissar briefed the troops on the staged artillery assault, the Kriegers restrained their urge to charge out and die for the Emperor.

• Grenadier 19 rode with veteran grenadiers and a standard Krieg soldier toward the front, wondering why the unfamiliar soldier had been assigned to their unit.
• The squad left its Centaur Carrier at the third defensive line and moved through shell-battered tunnels toward the frontline.
• Grenadier 19 reflected on the wind and the danger of a damaged protective suit before catching up with the squad.
• The soldiers reached the trenches and saw the traitors' fortified bunker complex and its minefields across the Scrap Plains.
• The commissar ordered the troops to wait for the fourth creeping barrage before advancing, warning the eager Kriegers not to rush over the trench parapet.

Grenadier 19 watched the Krieg forces begin their assault on the Chaos-tainted bunker complex, where living fortifications and flesh shells devastated the first wave. The survivors breached the first defensive line and pressed toward the second as Colonel Hans and other commanders prepared the next barrage, while the commander of the 199th Regiment reflected on the Krieg soldiers’ pursuit of death.

• After a half-hour bombardment, Grenadier 19 stayed behind as the first echelon charged across the cratered battlefield.
• Chaos-tainted bunkers opened fire with flesh shells and heavy stubbers, destroying most of the Leman Russ tanks and turning them into monstrous weapons.
• Krieg soldiers and combat engineers fought into the trenches, breached the first line of defenses, and attacked the second line.
• The surviving troops destroyed the remaining mutated tanks while Colonel Hans and other Krieg commanders analyzed enemy positions and planned another artillery barrage.
• The commander of the 199th Regiment recalled the Krieg forces’ extreme casualty rates and concluded that they sought death, even killing a commissar who tried to stop a suicidal attack.

Grenadier 19 and the second echelon advanced behind a precisely coordinated artillery barrage, destroying rebel defenses and pushing into the next bunker line. After a smoke grenade enabled a rebel ambush, Grenadier 19 defeated the attackers and continued clearing the remaining enemies.

• The third artillery barrage precisely destroyed the enemy fire points and roaming infected Leman Russ tanks.
• Grenadier 19 and the second echelon charged behind the fourth barrage as engineers rebuilt trenches and established a forward command post.
• Grenadier 19 and the grenadiers threw fragmentation grenades into the enemy trenches, then used hellgun fire to suppress surviving rebels.
• A rebel squad leader threw a smoke grenade and attacked Grenadier 19 with a chainaxe while his men rushed in with bayonets.
• Grenadier 19 blocked the chainaxe, disarmed and injured the attackers, smashed the squad leader with his shovel, and resumed clearing rebel remnants.

Grenadier 19 and the Krieg soldiers advanced through the third bunker complex with little resistance, while Number 0 displayed an uncanny ability to read and evade battlefield threats. After his lasgun overheated, Number 0 joined the squad and entered a tunnel first, leaving Grenadier 19 suspicious of his origins.

• Krieg soldiers cleared the third bunker complex, and Grenadier 19 called nearby troops to gather at a discovered tunnel entrance.
• Grenadier 19 saw Number 0 arrive without a firearm and ordered him to enter the tunnel first while warning the other grenadiers to watch him.
• Number 0 recalled how a vision of bloody mist and attack trajectories had helped him evade enemies and slaughter grotesque monsters with an entrenching tool after his lasgun burned out.
• Number 0 followed Grenadier 19's order into the dark tunnel as the gathered grenadiers watched him.

Number 0 led Little Yi and the Krieg grenadiers through a tunnel while the suspicious soldiers prepared to turn on him. He saved Grenadier 19 from firing, then charged into a rebel ambush and deflected a storm of bullets as the battle escalated.

• Little Yi reflected on the Imperium's fanatical soldiers and continued analyzing the Webway while following Number 0.
• Grenadier 19 raised his weapon against Number 0, but Number 0 pinned him down and warned the grenadiers about an incoming rocket and a concealed heavy stubber.
• Number 0 charged the hidden rebels and used an entrenching shovel to deflect their gunfire, sending bullets back into several attackers.
• A rebel aimed an anti-tank rocket launcher at Number 0, who threw his shovel into its barrel and caused the rocket to explode at close range.

Zero led the grenadiers deeper into the tunnels after killing surviving rebels, while Commissar Charalad watched the costly assault outside and recalled advice from a retired commissar. Charalad struggled to decide whether his duty required him to halt the next attack.

• Zero killed the wounded rebels, warned the grenadiers about a tripwire mine, and showed them how he made an Aquila emblem with blood.
• Grenadier 19 ordered the squad to continue advancing and eliminate the traitors.
• Commissar Charalad observed that enemy platforms and turrets were inflicting severe losses on the Krieg assault corps.
• Charalad considered blowing his whistle to stop the attack but worried about the consequences of intervening too late.
• Charalad remembered asking a retired commissar why he felt useless among Krieg soldiers who needed no one to make them fight.

Charalad listened as the old commissar explained how he had come to protect Krieg soldiers from needless death after seeing the young faces beneath their masks. The old commissar urged Charalad to keep them from going too far, but left him to work out how to persuade them himself.

• Charalad learned from the old commissar that Krieg soldiers could execute commissars who ordered them to retreat, though the old commissar had once talked a regiment out of suicidal charges.
• The old commissar recalled seeing the young faces of dead Krieg soldiers while helping clear a battlefield.
• The old commissar described how Krieg soldiers on Mawvis III had hesitated to touch flowers and carried flowers or fruit in their pockets.
• The old commissar told Charalad that Krieg soldiers were children who deserved to be saved, then urged him to keep them from dying for nothing.
• The old commissar sent Charalad away without explaining how to talk the soldiers down, and Charalad left pondering their conversation.