Chapter Summaries

Lorgar’s history of seeking a god to worship culminated in his declaring Lin Fan the true god after witnessing him wound the Chaos gods. Lin Fan challenged Lorgar’s devotion by pointing out that Lorgar defied his stated wish not to be called a god, leaving Lorgar pale and shaken.

• Lorgar’s worship of the Emperor led him to write the Emperor’s Litany, and the Emperor ordered Guilliman to raze Perfect City.
• Lorgar attacked Malcador when he tried to stop him, then accused Guilliman of destroying Perfect City out of jealousy before the Emperor restrained and rebuked him.
• Kor Phaeron and Erebus exploited Lorgar’s disillusionment, and Lorgar later sought protection from the Chaos gods and betrayed the Emperor.
• After Lin Fan grievously wounded the Chaos gods, Lorgar declared him the true god and swore he was the most devout believer.
• Lin Fan told Lorgar that insisting he was a god defied his will, and Lorgar saw the Emperor’s phantom and turned deathly pale as he recalled the Emperor’s rebuke.

Lin Fan told the Primarchs he was human and explained that he wanted to use his power to make up for the galaxy’s regrets. The Primarchs learned that he could permanently alter the world through thought, and Magnus asked what Lin Fan had changed with the whiteness they had just seen.

• Lorgar fell silent, and Magnus asked Lin Fan what he was; Isha identified him as the Subjective One, an existence from beyond their world.
• Lin Fan said he was human and explained that he wanted to help the Krieg regiments love life, reform the Imperium, bring peace to the galaxy, and reconcile the Primarchs.
• Magnus pressed Lin Fan with questions, so Leman Russ poured wine into his mouth to make him stop.
• Lin Fan explained that the Subjective One could permanently influence the world with thought, and Diego warned that the Inquisition would try to destroy him.
• Magnus asked what Lin Fan had changed with the whiteness, and Lin Fan said he had imagined a pure white scene without giving it any meaning.

Lin Fan explained his limits as the Subjective One and worried that Tzeentch had already understood the truth of their world and begun a plan. The Primarchs learned that a previous Subjective One had existed, and Magnus asked what he had done.

• Lin Fan described the Black Cells beneath the Imperial Palace and the dangerous beings held there, while Leman Russ and Magnus argued over Magnus's knowledge of the place.
• Lin Fan insisted he was an ordinary human, and Magnus proposed that he might be a higher-dimensional author who had crossed into their world.
• Lin Fan feared Tzeentch had deduced the world's nature and wondered whether his actions had helped advance Tzeentch's plan.
• Isha asked whether Lin Fan could restore the dead, and he admitted he could not bring back lives he had not known had passed away.
• After Lin Fan said a previous Subjective One had been active before he arrived, Leman Russ asked how many beings like him existed, and Magnus asked what the former Subjective One had done.

Lin Fan recalled Magnus's history and how his arrogance turned the Council of Nikaea against him. Magnus ended the chapter by calling his brothers barbarians who feared shadows.

• Magnus studied the Warp after The Emperor found him, despite warnings not to delve too deeply.
• Magnus bargained with Tzeentch for a way to stabilize the Thousand Sons, whose psychic powers and mutations threatened them.
• The Thousand Sons collected books and relied on strange guardian spirits that later revealed themselves as demons during the Horus Heresy.
• At the Council of Nikaea, Yesugei Khan nearly persuaded the assembly to regulate psychic power, but Magnus arrived and disrupted the effort.
• Magnus dismissed his brothers' accusations and insulted them, then used Plato's Allegory of the Cave to call them barbarians afraid of shadows.

Lin Fan recounted how Magnus’s attempt to warn the Emperor about Horus’s rebellion shattered the Imperial Palace’s defenses and doomed the Webway project. As Magnus defended his actions, Lin Fan confronted him with the consequences, including the deaths of Malcador and many Adeptus Custodes.

• The Emperor forbade Magnus and the Legions from pursuing psychic research, so Magnus ordered the Thousand Sons to continue their projects in secret.
• After learning of Horus’s impending rebellion, Magnus used a forbidden ritual and human sacrifices to send a warning to Terra.
• Magnus accepted Tzeentch’s aid to break through the Imperial Palace’s psychic barrier, allowing daemons into the damaged Webway.
• The Emperor seized Magnus’s soul, condemned him for destroying the Webway, and sent him back to Prospero before Magnus could deliver his warning.
• Magnus grew pale as Lin Fan recounted his life, but he insisted that he had meant well.
• Lin Fan made Lorgar admit that he could not defeat Horus, then blamed Magnus for trapping the Emperor on Terra and causing the deaths of Malcador and most of the Adeptus Custodes Ten Thousand.

Lin Fan confronted Magnus with the ways his arrogance and choices had harmed the Imperium and his sons, while Leman Russ listened and grew furious. Magnus remained defiant until Lin Fan revealed that he had sabotaged Ahriman’s attempt to reverse the Rubric spell, leaving Magnus shaken.

• Lin Fan blamed Magnus’s breach of the Webway for Malcador’s death and the Imperium’s administrative decay.
• Lin Fan accused Magnus of ignoring Leman Russ and misusing the Emperor’s and Malcador’s trust, prompting Magnus to recognize his own failings before insisting he had done nothing wrong.
• Magnus declared himself a hero for revealing the Imperium’s decay, and Leman Russ seized him by the throat in anger.
• Lin Fan told Magnus that Ahriman had found a way to undo the Rubric spell, but that Magnus’s death was needed as the catalyst.
• Lin Fan revealed that Magnus had disrupted Ahriman’s ritual and gathered the fragments of his soul, potentially preventing his sons from returning from their ashes.
• Magnus fell silent, his face paling and his psychic body weakening.

Magnus and Lorgar’s despair caused their Warp essences to break loose, and Corax explained how terror could force them back into their bodies. He revealed that despair had opened the way to his own Warp essence and began recounting his past, ending with his view of The Emperor as an ordinary man.

• Magnus fell into despair over his past mistakes, while Leman Russ released him at Lin Fan’s urging and Isha protected his soul.
• Corax asked Lin Fan what the first Subjective One had done, then warned that Magnus and Lorgar’s Warp essences were losing control.
• Corax explained that the Chaos Gods had stolen most of the Primarchs’ Warp essences and used his power to frighten Magnus and Lorgar into rebuilding their bodies.
• Corax lost control himself until Leman Russ threw the black bead at him, after which Corax explained that despair could open the way to one’s Warp essence.
• Corax described his life as the Raven Lord and said The Emperor appeared to him as an ordinary man.

Corax recounted how his loyalty to the Emperor led him to betray Deliverance, and how the Horus Heresy and its aftermath left him disillusioned and fleeing the Imperium. He explained that something inside Lin Fan was balancing his Warp essence, then used a tide of shadows to guide the group toward Cadia.

• The Emperor persuaded Corax to leave Deliverance and serve the Great Crusade, but the workers later rebelled against the Adeptus Mechanicus and accused Corax of abandoning them.
• During the Horus Heresy, Corax’s Legion was devastated, and he used unstable technology to rapidly raise new Space Marines until mutations forced him to stop.
• After the Heresy, Corax suppressed another uprising on Deliverance and killed his mutated sons before leaving the Imperium in despair.
• Corax told Leman Russ and Lin Fan that something in Lin Fan’s stomach balanced his Warp essence, and he refused Leman Russ’s offer to restore his ordinary appearance.
• When Lin Fan asked how they would reach Cadia, Corax spread darkness around the group and told them the tide of shadows would show the way.

After Gork was grievously wounded by Lin Fan’s Subjective One power, Mork mourned him by keeping his head nearby and inventing alone. Across the Milky Way, half the Orks died, their armies collapsed, and Ironhide ordered the survivors to rebuild their equipment as their technology began to advance.

• Mork carried Gork’s remaining head to a shelf, then returned to his workshop and invented a device he wanted to show him.
• Mork brought Gork’s head into the workshop and continued creating while talking to it, unable to get any response.
• Gork’s silence ended his endless fighting with Mork, allowing Mork’s inventiveness to influence the Orks and setting their technology on a path of rapid advancement.
• Gork’s erased body killed half the Ork population, and Imperial forces took advantage of the weakened Ork armies to counterattack and wipe out many of them.
• Ironhide and the Orks in the Gork’s Head Fortress lost much of their strength, and many Orks died as Ironhide called for better equipment.
• Ironhide ordered the surviving Orks to build a conversion furnace and use the dead Orks’ resources to refit the Gork’s Head.

The Silent King led the Necrontyr fleet toward Terra, where fractured laws began disabling its advanced technology. The Deceiver appeared before the fleet and warned that someone else had come to see the Silent King, someone he no longer remembered.

• The Silent King’s fleet passed through Imperial space, and Necrontyr sorcerers repeatedly sent Imperial ships and boarding parties away rather than destroy them.
• As the fleet neared the Solar System, damaged laws caused Necrontyr equipment to malfunction, forcing technicians to repair military devices with crude substitutes made from living metal and C’tan shards.
• The Silent King sensed the Void Dragon nearby and hoped Lin Fan and the old sorcerer would survive until his arrival.
• Inamars Phaeron reported that a scouting team sent into the Solar System had disappeared, and the Silent King ruled out the Void Dragon as the cause.
• The Deceiver appeared before the fleet, mocked the Silent King, and said someone else had come to reminisce with him.

The Deceiver used the Silent King’s hesitation to unleash recreated warships from civilizations long dead, aided by Observer and the Formless Wastes. The Silent King charged into the attackers as the two forces began trading devastating fire.

• The Silent King fired a law-tearing weapon at The Deceiver, who escaped its first strike by rolling the dice and sacrificing ten billion believers to survive.
• The Necrontyr technomancers reversed The Deceiver’s result, allowing the weapon to tear apart half his body before he redirected its force onto his followers.
• The Deceiver released Degraded Ones and, with Observer’s help, filled them with the history and knowledge of dead civilizations to recreate their ancient warships.
• The Degraded Ones opened vortices to the Formless Wastes and unleashed twisted ships that had once fought the Necrontyr, while The Deceiver departed to pursue another scheme.
• The Silent King ordered his fleet to attack the old dead, and the two sides exchanged fire as a Flash-level Living Battleship damaged a tomb ship before Gauss beams shattered thousands of the living battleships.

The Emperor struggled to contain the hidden threats and political decay on Terra while the Dark Mechanicum, led by Carl Bohar, ravaged Mars. As the Emperor waited for Lin Fan to end the war on Cadia and break Terra’s stalemate, Jaghatai Khan’s expeditionary fleet arrived and began winning an effortless naval victory.

• The Emperor’s Custodes hunted The Deceiver’s ritualists on Terra while plague zombies and bureaucratic decay continued to trouble him.
• Lin Fan’s power destroyed plague zombies and infected citizens, grievously wounding Nurgle but erasing the victims’ souls as well.
• Carl Bohar led the Dark Mechanicum’s massive Titan forces against the Adeptus Mechanicus on Mars and destroyed the Evernight Labyrinth.
• The Emperor watched the fighting through the Astronomican and hoped Lin Fan would finish the war on Cadia before Tzeentch made a move.
• Jaghatai Khan’s expeditionary fleet arrived at Cadia, where its overwhelming firepower made the naval battle an easy victory.

Jaghatai Khan’s expeditionary fleet joined forces with the surviving Imperial fleet after Bjorn confirmed his identity and persuaded the Imperials not to attack the xenos allies. With the combined fleet clearing the Degraded Ones, Jaghatai Khan turned his attention to three colossal enemy weapons.

• Jaghatai Khan ordered the Imperial forces to hold position while his fleet moved toward them for mutual support.
• Bjorn identified Jaghatai Khan by his voice and convinced the Imperial leaders to set aside their suspicions of the expeditionary fleet’s unfamiliar ships.
• The Imperial forces nearly attacked the T’au and Aeldari, but Bjorn reminded them to obey the Emperor’s will as expressed by Jaghatai Khan, and they stood down.
• The expeditionary and Imperial fleets joined up, slowed to accommodate the Imperial ships, and began wiping out the Degraded Ones.
• Jaghatai Khan considered how to deal with Gork’s Head, the Blackstone Fortress, and the Mountain Array.

Jaghatai Khan oversaw the fleet’s campaign against Chaos while Fulgrim confronted the Emperor’s Children on Biel-Tan. The chapter ended with Fulgrim facing the painful division among his sons over his betrayal and return.

• Jaghatai Khan ordered nearly four hundred thousand Blackstone Polarity Torpedoes fired at the Vengeful Spirit, destroying it and throwing the Chaos Legions into further disarray.
• Jaghatai Khan ordered the allied fleet to drive out Chaos and destroy its forces as it steadily restricted the Ork and Chaos ships’ operating area.
• Trazyn and his technicians began repairing Cadia’s Blackstone Spire array, while Hope and the Lamenters restrained Azrael and the Dark Angels.
• Jaghatai Khan contacted the other Primarchs, and Perturabo asked him to spare the Iron Warriors so he could confront them himself.
• Fulgrim looked upon the Emperor’s Children kneeling on Biel-Tan and faced the division between sons who followed him and those who felt betrayed.

Fulgrim confronted the corruption of the Emperor's Children and questioned whether his surviving sons would follow him, while Konrad Curze watched from the shadows. Curze then hunted Night Lords scavenging Biel-Tan, leaving them surrounded by a darkness that began tearing them apart.

• Fulgrim reflected on his betrayal and the Emperor's Children's corruption, then killed a captain who cursed him and asked the kneeling survivors if they would follow him.
• The Emperor's Children remained silent as Fulgrim wondered whether he had any right to judge them.
• Konrad Curze watched Fulgrim with scorn and sorrow, then followed the scent of sin through Biel-Tan.
• Curze found Night Lords raiding the abandoned Craftworld for artifacts to sell, as they sought to profit from the failing 13th Black Crusade.
• The Night Lords sensed a terrifying darkness, and one of their number was dragged into it as the others gathered with weapons ready.

Konrad Curze slaughtered a group of Night Lords on Biel-Tan, condemning them for using torture without pursuing justice, then sensed a disturbance connected to his prophecy and moved deeper into the Craftworld. Elsewhere, a mysterious voice offered Khayon a deal in his cell, and he defended his loyalty to The Emperor.

• Curze ambushed and dismembered more than forty Night Lords, then pinned survivors to a wall with hooks.
• Curze questioned a wounded Night Lord about trials and their copy of his book, and the Night Lords praised it as a guide to terror.
• Curze tortured the Night Lords and declared that punishment should pursue justice, before sending them into his Warp essence to face judgment.
• Curze sensed a ripple from deep within Biel-Tan and hurried deeper into the Craftworld because the event matched his prophecy, though its timing was wrong.
• A voice in Khayon's soul offered him a deal, and Khayon asked whether it meant he should devote himself to The Emperor.
• The voice told Khayon that his actions in The Emperor's name had brought The Emperor profound shame.

Carlos showed Khayon the Chaos forces’ desperate situation at Cadia and the Vengeful Spirit’s horrific transformation, where Khayon’s sister was trapped in its living heart. He revealed Lin Fan as a destroyer threatening the universe and claimed Tzeentch needed Khayon to help protect the Milky Way, leaving Khayon to consider whether to accept the deal.

• Carlos offered Khayon a deal and showed him a crystal orb, swearing that its images were true.
• Khayon saw that the Chaos forces were cornered behind the Blackstone Fortress and that their warbands were fighting among themselves.
• Carlos showed Khayon the transformed Vengeful Spirit, where Khayon found his sister suffering within its heart.
• Khayon demanded to know why Carlos had not helped Abaddon, and Carlos blamed a problem caused by Lin Fan.
• Carlos showed Khayon visions of a universe destroyed by Lin Fan and said opposing him would require an enormous price.
• Khayon considered whether Tzeentch might genuinely be trying to protect the Milky Way.

Carlos tried to tempt Khayon into serving Tzeentch by offering him the souls of his loved ones and relief for his sister, but Khayon refused, accepting the consequences of his past and despairing over Izara's suffering. Tzeentch took over Carlos to make his own offer, and Khayon prepared to answer without fear.

• Carlos offered Khayon glory and tried to draw him in by showing him the souls of Gyre, Mekari, Jharek, Nefertari, and Izara.
• Khayon rejected Carlos's offer, saying the dead should bear the consequences of their actions, just as he did.
• Carlos invoked Izara's suffering and asked whether Khayon wanted revenge against Abaddon, but Khayon lamented that his sister should have died long ago rather than suffer because of his obsession.
• Tzeentch spoke through Carlos and asked Khayon what he would choose if offered the same stakes.
• Khayon mocked Tzeentch, saying Carlos had already shown him those things once.

Tzeentch showed Khayon visions of the regrets he could undo and offered him a place in a new reality, but Khayon questioned the bargain and asked how Tzeentch would achieve his plan. Tzeentch answered by asking whether Khayon had heard of the End Times.

• Tzeentch showed Khayon an alternate past in which he stopped Leman Russ from attacking Prospero and prevented Ahriman's Rubric from taking effect.
• Khayon watched visions of himself rescuing Nefertari from Commorragh, helping his sister, and celebrating victory with Abaddon.
• Tzeentch explained that the visions represented Khayon's regrets and offered him a chance to live another life in a new world.
• Khayon suspected Tzeentch's offer was an illusion, but Tzeentch promised a real timeline in which he would become the master of fate.
• Khayon asked how Tzeentch planned to bring about his new world, and Tzeentch asked whether he had heard of the End Times.

Tzeentch revealed that the End Times were only a contingency plan, then left Carlos to take Khayon’s place. On Biel-Tan, Yvraine and Many-Faced fought Vect, who weakened her with Death God’s Power and hinted that gods acted according to instinct.

• Tzeentch told Carlos that the End Times were merely a fallback plan and said Rokasna was now important.
• Carlos filled the empty place in Khayon’s body and answered the inquisitor’s questions while disguised as Khayon.
• Yvraine confronted Vect on Biel-Tan, fearing he would use the Cronesword to damage the craftworld’s spine.
• Yvraine and Many-Faced attacked Vect while his shadowy Incubi fought the Aeldari forces.
• Vect let Many-Faced stab him with the Cronesword and explained that gods could grant blessings through instinct.
• Yvraine weakened as Death God’s Power gathered around Vect, and she began to understand what he meant.