The Golden Summons

In the surface battlefields of Terra, time has lost its meaning.

The demonic onslaught is not a ebb and flow, but an endless vomiting from the abyss itself.

The rifts in the Warp are like festering wounds, constantly oozing more and more twisted creations.

The initial tactical advantage is being gradually eroded and dissolved in the face of sheer numbers and a continuous stream of profane energy.

The Adeptus Custodes, these perfect warriors forged by the Emperor himself, began to show signs of fatigue unimaginable to mortals.

A Adeptus Custodes guard brandished his spear and pinned a Khorne Bloodletter to the ground.

The movements remained precise, but the force was one-hundredth of a second slower than three Terra standard times.

It was this slight delay that allowed the stinger of another swarm of Nurgle flies to graz the seam of his shoulder armor, the corrosive venom burning the lining and sending a stinging pain through him.

This kind of low-level damage shouldn't have even touched him.

"Left wing, thirteenth formation, rotation."

Trajann's voice came through the internal communication system, still steady, but every word seemed to have been pulled out from the deepest exhaustion.

The command was executed, and the golden array turned like precise gears.

The retreating Adeptus Custodes stood back to back, catching their breath briefly. Their gleaming armor was covered in scratches, scorch marks, and dried demon blood.

For the first time, the breathing beneath the mask became heavy.

Their metabolism is dozens of times faster than that of ordinary people, and their physical strength recovers extremely quickly, but at this moment, it's not just their muscle strength that's being consumed.

It is the continuous burning of the soul in the face of endless blasphemy, the slow erosion of the will in the endless slaughter.

A Adeptus Custodes leaned against a broken pillar, briefly shutting down the external sound collection.

He needed three seconds, just three seconds, to ignore the howls of the demons, the wails of the dying, and the sobs of reality being torn apart.

On the monitor inside his helmet, physiological indicators were warning him—the secretion curves of adrenaline and combat hormones were beginning to fluctuate abnormally.

Exhaustion, a word that should have been completely foreign to them, is becoming a reality.

The most disturbing changes occurred at the edge of the force field maintained by the Sisters of Silence.

That invisible the Veil that oppressed the Warp began to thin and become unstable, like a candle flickering in the wind.

The untouchables stood silently, but their pale faces and slightly trembling bodies said it all.

Maintaining such a large-scale, high-intensity, and long-term anti- Psionic Energy field is also a huge burden for them.

Several Horror of Tzeentch keenly sensed the fluctuations in the force field and began to concentrate their treacherous magical energy, scraping the weak points of the force field repeatedly like a file, trying to carve out an opening.

Trajann witnessed all of this.

He had just struck with the hilt of his halberd, denting the skull of a Slaanesh Seeker who was attempting to ambush the Sisters of Silence' array; the alluring yet deadly demon turned to dust with a shriek.

His movements remained impeccable, but with each exertion, the muscles beneath his Power Armour sent signals of soreness.

His mind, and even the supercomputer capable of processing hundreds of battlefield messages and commanding thousands of extraordinary soldiers simultaneously, felt the strain of overload.

He not only had to command the Adeptus Custodes, but also coordinate the Sisters of Silence ' force field coverage, assess the movements of the main demonic forces, and keep an eye on the Terra civilians— the Emperor's "property"—who were trembling in the remaining bunkers.

Yes, property.

Trajann thought coldly.

These Terra citizens, even the lowest-ranking Hive City scavengers, possess a purity of blood far exceeding that of most governors of the frontier worlds.

They are a living seed bank left on the planet of Goddess Mother from the Dark Age of Technology, and the cornerstone of the legal principles and inheritance of the Imperium of Man.

The loss of them was not only a moral catastrophe, but also an irreparable destruction of the Emperor legacy.

However, reality is cruel.

He could see that in the distance, in areas not fully covered by the force field, civilian shelters were falling silent one after another.

Consumed by plague, twisted by desire, disintegrated by magic, or crushed by pure violence.

Each small rescue force he dispatched was like a pebble thrown into a sea of blood, instantly swallowed up by the tide of demons.

A profound sense of powerlessness, mixed with physical exhaustion, gnawed at the heart of this Captain-General of the Adeptus Custodes for the first time with such clarity.

He swung his halberd, decapitating a Khorne Berserkers, warm, foul blood splattering onto his golden armor. He raised his head, gazing towards the direction of the Palace Mountain, though his vision was obscured by thick smoke and Psionic Energy flashes.

"Oh, the great Emperor..."

Trajann recited in his heart; this was not a prayer, but more like a general reporting to his supreme commander in dire straits:

"The defenses are crumbling, your soldiers are wearing down, your assets are slipping away... We may need... a variable."

He needed a force to break this hopeless stalemate, an entity to reverse the balance. This thought grew clearer and clearer, eventually transforming into a silent yet powerful cry:

"Let the one who can solve everything appear..."

Deep within the palace, in the hall where the Golden Throne resides.

The air had been frozen for millennia, filled with the scents of preservatives, ancient metals, and an indescribable spiritual pressure.

The Emperor's withered body sat atop that magnificent and terrifying machine. Endless pain and the burden of maintaining the human race had long since tormented him into a living corpse with only his will remaining.

However, just as Trajann's thoughts were fluctuating and the defense line was on the verge of collapse, the seemingly eternally silent "mummy" stirred slightly.

It's not a physical movement. It's a kind of "ripple" that exists in a higher dimension, and can only be vaguely perceived by the most powerful Psyker or those closest to the throne.

Around the throne, there were Psionic Energy conduits and energy matrices so complex that they defied mortal comprehension, some of which suddenly became incredibly bright.

It was not physical light, but a golden radiance that directly burned the soul.

The Adeptus Custodes Guards sentries and the Adeptus Mechanicus priests stationed there simultaneously felt a tremor and a buzzing sensation on a spiritual level.

An immense, yet incredibly refined, Psionic Energy will broke free from the immense burden of the throne binding the human Webway, and like the most precise arrow, shot into the raging Warp.

It disregarded distance and the laws of physics, traversing the chaotic boundary between the Realspace and the Warp, disrupted by the Great Rift.

Following a preordained, profound connection with a particular soul, it sped away.

Its target was the colossal ship, the Macragge's Honour, which was sailing steadily towards Terra deep within the Warp.