Chapter Summaries

Perturabo’s fight with Ferrus Manus stalled until Lin Fan intervened, casually withstanding Ferrus Manus’s Binding Fire and swallowing his attacks. Ferrus Manus poured himself into Lin Fan’s body to find a weakness, where he discovered a clear lake inside Lin Fan’s stomach and sensed something watching him.

• Perturabo used life serum to recover from his injuries as Ferrus Manus destroyed one of the Iron Bone robots.
• Perturabo called for support, and Jaghatai and Rogal Dorn resumed fighting Ferrus Manus.
• Fulgrim woke and asked Lin Fan to stop the battle, then threw Trazyn’s recliner aside as Trazyn teleported away with his footage.
• Lin Fan confronted Ferrus Manus, withstood his hammer and cannon attacks, and swallowed most of the incoming bullets.
• Ferrus Manus poured the Binding Fire into Lin Fan’s body, then explored inside him and found a clear lake in his stomach.
• Ferrus Manus sensed something watching the flame he had sent into Lin Fan.

Lin Fan's strange power devoured Ferrus's cursed flames and shrank him, ending the fight. After learning that his brothers had been freed from Chaos, Ferrus rejected their return and vowed to kill Perturabo and Fulgrim.

• A starfish and a shattered black sphere attacked Ferrus's cursed fire, and the starfish absorbed the flames until Ferrus shrank and lost consciousness.
• Lin Fan snapped off Ferrus's arm with his jaws, and Fulgrim caught the tiny Primarch and anxiously checked on him.
• Ferrus awoke in Fulgrim's hands, lashed him with harmless flames, and was set on the ground as Jaghatai and Perturabo discussed why he had shrunk.
• Dorn told Ferrus that his brothers were real, and Yvraine and the Aeldari seers stopped maintaining the barrier after the Primarchs ceased fighting.
• Ferrus learned that Perturabo and Fulgrim had been freed from Chaos, then condemned them as traitors and vowed to kill them.

Jaghatai watched Ferrus angrily assess the Iron Hands and learn how the Imperium had changed over ten thousand years. The chapter ended with Lin Fan revealing that the Emperor had allied with Slaanesh.

• Jaghatai reflected on how his brothers and the Imperium had changed, then Lin Fan stopped Ferrus's rant and brought him to inspect the Iron Hands.
• Ferrus recognized Stunus as one of his sons and grew furious at the crude mechanical augmentations he saw.
• Ferrus asked why only a little over eight hundred Iron Hands were present, and Stunus explained that the rest were defending Medusa.
• Lin Fan told Ferrus about Guilliman's Codex Astartes and the Imperium's alliances with xenos, prompting Ferrus to demand the whole truth.
• Lin Fan revealed that the Emperor had joined forces with Slaanesh.

Ferrus learned that Slaanesh and The Emperor had allied, then reunited with the Iron Hands and blamed himself for the Legion's failings. He left Stunus and the Iron Hands reassured as they prepared to join the journey to Cadia.

• Ferrus doubted the report that Slaanesh and The Emperor had joined forces until Dorn and Fulgrim confirmed it.
• Ferrus learned that the Primarchs were heading to Cadia because Abaddon had launched the 13th Black Crusade, and that they had summoned him to speak with the Iron Hands.
• Ferrus examined Stunus, then stopped the Lamenters from equipping the Iron Hands so he could fit their armor and prosthetics himself.
• Ferrus told Stunus that he was responsible for the Iron Hands' wrong path, including their clan conflicts on Medusa and their belief that The Flesh Is Weak.

Fulgrim and Perturabo discussed rebuilding their fallen Legions, while Ferrus Manus punished the Iron Hands for betraying their allies before leaving to confront the Emperor. A week later, Stunus felt renewed confidence in the Iron Hands under Ferrus Manus's guidance.

• Fulgrim and Perturabo agreed to take back willing sons and rebuild what their Legions had destroyed.
• Ferrus Manus demanded that Stunus answer for the Iron Hands' betrayals, and Stunus confessed the Chapter's history of wrongdoing.
• Ferrus Manus punched Stunus unconscious, then defeated more than eight hundred Iron Hands to punish them and test their fighting spirit.
• Ferrus Manus returned to the Warp and insisted on seeing the Emperor, who took him to Slaanesh's Palace.
• A week later aboard the Biel-Tan Craftworld, Stunus felt that Ferrus Manus's punishment had renewed the Iron Hands and strengthened his confidence in their future.

Konrad Curze watched people whose fates had changed from his prophecies, then tormented Trazyn whenever he tried to reach Angron. As Biel-Tan neared the Cadia system, the Primarchs and Chapters spent nine days preparing, while the Space Wolves and Raven Guard still mourned their missing fathers.

• Colvin prayed for Corax while Curze watched him unseen and noted that several people had escaped the deaths foretold in his memories.
• Curze returned to Angron, then attacked Trazyn’s dimensional intrusion until the thief fled with part of a metal skull damaged.
• Trazyn ordered technicians to equip him with devices that concealed his presence so he could try to reach Angron again.
• The Aeldari calculated that Biel-Tan would reach the outer region of the Cadia system in nine days, while Rogal Dorn, Perturabo, Jaghatai, and Fulgrim helped prepare the forces and craftworld.
• The Iron Hands acclimated to the expeditionary force, while Kaiser Whitefang and Colvin shared bitter liquor as the Space Wolves and Raven Guard watched other Chapters reunite with their fathers.

War Marshal Liss ordered a dangerous Imperial advance toward Lumbas Mountain as Cadia's communications and Astropath network collapsed. The chapter ended with a wounded Azrael asking whether reinforcements had been found and a Mechanicus sage confirming they had.

• Liss entered the command room and reviewed Cadia's battlefield map as commissars executed a communications sergeant driven mad by dark whispers.
• Liss ordered Benedict's armored regiment toward the Blackstone Tower No. 7 salient, then commanded it to push on to Lumbas Mountain under an alpha-level order.
• Liss assigned six youth command units to the Michel Fortress Group defensive line and ordered several Krieg infantry and artillery regiments to join the attack.
• A wounded Azrael asked a Mechanicus sage whether it had found reinforcements, and the sage said it had.

Benedict and Captain Aurora prepared with the 101st Armoured Regiment for a major assault, while enemy aircraft appeared to scout their positions. Benedict boarded the Doomblade Cadian Hardstone with his crew as the tank shook violently.

• Benedict woke to Captain Aurora's news of new orders and walked with him through the trenches toward the regiment's maintenance area.
• Captain Aurora told Benedict that mobile forces, Krieg corps, and artillery regiments would support the coming offensive.
• Hydra anti-aircraft vehicles fired at enemy aircraft and shot one down over the eastern side of the position.
• Benedict boarded the Doomblade Cadian Hardstone, where Lieutenant Terry praised its clear vox signal and Matt and Demas argued about the tank's heat and Matt's smell.
• The deck beneath Benedict's feet shuddered violently twice.

Benedict led the Doomblade and the armored regiment out from the Imperial defensive line as black barriers divided Cadia into narrow regions. He recalled the War of Faith and the Blackstone Spires’ sudden activation, which had driven the Eye of Terror away and forced his troops to retreat from the spires.

• Holva silenced the crew’s chatter, and Benedict inspected the Doomblade before ordering everyone to move out.
• Lieutenant Terry relayed Benedict’s order as the armored regiment departed the defensive line.
• Benedict observed the black barriers that divided Cadia and reflected on how they hindered the Chaos invasion while isolating fortress-cities.
• Benedict recalled the War of Faith, when Imperial authorities purged suspected weak or disloyal soldiers before the Chaos Legions arrived.
• The Blackstone Spires activated across Cadia and other planets, their green light and strange sound coinciding with the Eye of Terror seeming to recede.
• Benedict obeyed orders to avoid the sky and Blackstone Spires, leading his troops away from the spires.

Benedict and the 101st Armoured Regiment struggled through the darkness unleashed by the Blackstone Spires, losing many soldiers before they found a fortress-city protected by golden holy light. The surviving armies gathered beneath its cathedral while Benedict watched the Battle Sisters shine with an unexplained radiance.

• The Blackstone Spire transformed its green light into a beam of blackness that spread across Cadia, and the Imperium's bombardment failed to stop it.
• Benedict and his regiment marched through the darkness as soldiers fell asleep and never woke; the 101st Armoured Regiment lost a third of its strength.
• Benedict saw golden light resisting the darkness and heard that Battle Sisters were singing hymns, which rallied the surviving forces.
• Benedict's force reached the holy light around a fortress-city and its colossal cathedral, where armies from the sector gathered.
• Benedict saw exhausted Space Marines and radiant Battle Sisters, and privately wondered whether the Sisters were more devoted to the Emperor.

Benedict witnessed Cadia’s surface split apart as the Blackstone Spires’ energy formed lethal barriers, then led his armored regiment into the planetwide battle. Near Blackstone Spire Number Seven, he delayed his advance at the Adeptus Mechanicus’s order while Mechanicus priests prepared an untested design for the battlefield.

• Benedict learned that maps marked the Blackstone Spires and the solid lines where deadly geological activity was expected, while honoring the fallen soldiers named on the maps.
• Earthquakes tore Cadia apart, and the suppressed energy of the Blackstone Spires erupted through the fissures to create lethal barriers across the planet.
• Benedict followed the commissar’s order to move his troops into position as traitors attacked, beginning the final stage of the Battle of Cadia.
• Near Blackstone Spire Number Seven, Benedict rejected Lieutenant Terry’s suggestion to spread out and ordered the armored regiment to maintain formation and advance with artillery support.
• Lieutenant Terry relayed an Adeptus Mechanicus order to slow down for the Krieg Death Korps, and Benedict reluctantly complied.
• A radical Adeptus Mechanicus priest urged his colleagues to trust an untested design and claimed the Machine God was guiding the battlefield and had subdued the Blackstone Spires.

Dimit questioned Archmagos Tius about the unreliable mechanical behemoths being prepared for battle and learned that Tius had copied their design from Ork weapons rather than an STC template. Tius explained the machines’ intended role in the assault, though he admitted the plan might not change the battle’s course.

• Dimit struggled to fit an armor plate onto a mechanical behemoth and challenged Tius over its many faults.
• Tius claimed the design came from an STC template, but Dimit recalled that Tius had used the same excuse before.
• Tius admitted he had reconstructed the design from videos of a new Ork weapon.
• Dimit warned that using Ork machinery could bring severe punishment, but Tius argued that the design could be presented as human technology.
• Tius said the behemoths were meant to carry two million Krieg Death Korps troops into enemy positions, then break apart into defensive firepoints.

Archmagos Tius ordered the mechanical behemoths sent to support the Death Korps of Krieg and urged Dimit to consider how isolated his Dark Angels brothers had made him. Dimit chose to join them with a sealed data-slate, while Tius remained behind with a mysterious hooded figure.

• Archmagos Tius ordered the mechanical behemoths to the Death Korps of Krieg and summoned several resting Space Marine Chapters to support them.
• Tius warned Dimit that his brothers had excluded him from the tunnel-war mission and questioned whether they trusted him, but Dimit insisted on his loyalty to them.
• Tius gave Dimit an encrypted data-slate to deliver to Cawl or Azrael, and Dimit left aboard a departing behemoth.
• A hooded figure carrying a greatsword emerged from the shadows and exchanged an unknown message with Tius before disappearing.
• Dimit examined the behemoth's layered armor, weapon positions, troop capacity, and space for Space Marines.

Dimit inspected the unstable microgravity generators powering the mechanical behemoths as Krieg formations boarded for the assault. When Space Wolves led by Orven Gaoluo arrived, Dimit clashed with the Wolf Lord and failed to prevent their forces from boarding alongside him.

• Sage Tius explained that hundreds of thousands of unstable microgravity generators kept the behemoths moving, even if some failed.
• The Krieg Death Korps boarded the halted behemoths in disciplined formations as Dimit watched.
• Orven Gaoluo and the Space Wolves approached Dimit, and Orven teased him about being a lone kitten.
• Dimit attacked Orven with his servo-rig, but Orven dodged and mocked him as an angry little lion.
• Orven ordered the Space Wolves to board beside Dimit, who could only watch resentfully as they filled the carriages.

Twenty Gorgons led the Imperial assault across the enemy defenses, with Krieg soldiers and Space Marines enduring heavy fire as they advanced. The Gorgons pressed onward, and a Long Fang killed the traitor officer manning a heavy lascannon.

• Olwen rejoiced at joining the Battle of Cadia as the Space Wolves' Great Companies fought the Degraded Ones and traitors.
• Lieutenant Terry spotted twenty Gorgons advancing, and Benedict ordered the armored forces to follow their assault.
• Beastmen, cultists, and renegade guardsmen opened fire, while a lascannon blast burned through one Gorgon's troop compartment and killed Krieg soldiers.
• A Krieg mortar shell devastated a traitor heavy-lascannon emplacement, but its surviving officer restored the weapon and waited to fire.
• The officer hit a passing Gorgon with a lascannon beam that grazed a Long Fang, who then killed him with a bolt.

Benedict’s Imperial forces broke through the first two Chaos defensive lines and advanced into a tank battle at the third. The corrupted AT70 Reapers proved able to rust and shatter Leman Russ tanks, but the Imperial troops fought on.

• The Imperial forces easily captured the first and second defensive lines, while commissars killed soldiers trapped in the mire rather than leave them to die slowly.
• Benedict spotted nearly ten thousand enemy tanks emerging from the third defensive line, and Lieutenant Terry identified the disorganized AT70 Reapers as expendable delays.
• Benedict ordered all eleven guns to fire and led the Guardsmen forward as the 101st Armoured Regiment devastated hundreds of Reapers.
• The surviving AT70 Reapers fired cursed shells that rusted Leman Russ armour until it split, killing their crews in bizarre bursts of crystal.
• The Imperial forces endured the gruesome losses and struck back with renewed fury.

The Imperial forces broke through the third defensive line, with the 101st Armoured Regiment suffering heavy losses as Doomblade tanks crushed enemy fortifications. Dimit assessed the deadly defenses ahead and recognized that the assault would be far harder than the simulations predicted.

• Demas fired a Destroyer mortar shell into a bunker, killing more than five hundred traitors, according to Lieutenant Terry.
• The Doomblade tanks plowed through the trenches as Benedict worried that the 101st Armoured Regiment had already lost more than 150 of its 600 Leman Russ tanks.
• Benedict set aside his concern about the later defensive lines and focused on breaking through the enemy’s five lines.
• Dimit monitored the twenty mechanical behemoths as they continued toward their planned attack on the fifth line.
• Dimit observed that the enemy’s interlocking weapons, Nurgle-created swamps, and viral mines made the defenses deadlier than the simulations had anticipated.
• The Imperial forces struggled against the traitors and the psychological burden of killing former comrades, while the mechanical behemoths drew enemy attention away from the assault.

Dimit and Olwen rode with the battered mechanical behemoths as they pushed toward the enemy’s fourth defensive line. Olwen sensed Degraded Ones ahead, and the lifeless-looking defenders opened fire on the Imperial forces.

• Dimit surveyed the wrecked behemoths and told Olwen they would break through the fifth defensive line if the enemy launched no further attacks.
• Olwen boasted about Leman Russ’s appetite and strength, leaving Dimit to think of the Primarch as a glutton.
• Olwen smelled Degraded Ones ahead and warned Dimit to hold position, watch his back, and take cover.
• Benedict and Lieutenant Terry hesitated to fire at the seemingly empty fourth defensive line, while the Degraded Ones silently prepared their weapons.
• The Degraded Ones opened fire, sending a storm of bullets toward the Imperial forces.

Dimit ordered the mechanical behemoths to bombard the fourth defensive line, then used freezing rockets to prepare the scorched battlefield for an Imperial advance. The surviving Degraded Ones mutated into Dreadnought-like monsters, and a Long Fang discovered that draining the black liquid inside one could weaken it as hundreds of the others began fighting back.

• Dimit ordered the mechanical behemoths to fire Incinerator rockets at the fourth defensive line, setting the battlefield ablaze.
• The behemoths launched blue-ringed ice crystal bombs into the fire cloud, cooling the area and hardening the ground as the Imperial forces charged.
• The barrage killed or disabled most of the Degraded Ones in the trenches, while survivors absorbed black liquid and mutated into larger, tougher forms.
• Hundreds of the mutated Degraded Ones rose in shapes resembling Dreadnoughts, and a Long Fang fired his plasma cannon at one of them.
• The Long Fang pierced the Degraded Dreadnought and caused black liquid to pour from its body, weakening it until it collapsed.
• The remaining Degraded Dreadnoughts began fighting back with their greater size and heavier weapons.

The Imperium forces fought through the fourth defensive line as the Degraded Ones and Degraded Dreadnoughts inflicted heavy damage on their mechanical behemoths. One behemoth lost too many microgravity generators and settled onto the ground, leaving the attack’s progress uncertain.

• A Degraded Dreadnought fired a colorless beam through a Leman Russ tank, killing crew members and cutting through vehicles and people beyond it.
• Benedict led his armored regiment against the Degraded Dreadnoughts, while Olwen ordered the eager Space Marines to wait and focus on breaking through the defensive lines.
• Dimit warned Olwen that the mechanical behemoth had lost 173 microgravity generators, but Olwen urged him to keep driving.
• Krieg soldiers restored an autocannon and coordinated fire from multiple firing ports to bring down a Degraded One, while other Degraded Ones retaliated with varied weapons.
• A mechanical behemoth lost enough microgravity generators to support its weight and descended from fifteen meters until it rested on the ground.