Facing the Primarch

"Hearth Theory..."

Guilliman softly repeated the name.

Behind those three simple words, he could smell that familiar, nauseating stench of corruption from the Warp. The most extreme exploitation and incitement of human emotion; the fanaticism that treated sacrifice and destruction themselves as glory and an end...

How similar it was to the doctrines of those Chaos cults.

And yet...

It was founded upon the most absolute, most pure loyalty to the Emperor.

It was a contradictory, twisted, yet... terrifyingly powerful hybrid.

"...Turning despair into fuel."

"...Guiding hatred into a weapon."

"...Molding the collective into a god."

"...An immensely dangerous, yet immensely effective, contradictory union."

Guilliman's gaze fell upon the Krieg commissar's postscript at the end of the report.

For the first time, he found himself agreeing with those words.

But he needed more such "magma."

His unprecedented Indomitus Crusade, meant to pull the Imperium back from the brink of destruction, needed more madmen like this—men who defied convention and could create miracles.

Yet he also had to ensure that this "magma" would not ultimately burn through the Imperium's crust and trigger a collapse of faith from within, more dreadful than a Chaos invasion.

He needed to... see this "madman" with his own eyes.

He needed to personally assess whether the fire in this "hearth" was a spark that could be controlled.

Or an already raging wildfire, one capable of burning the entire galaxy to ashes.

Guilliman raised his head. His godlike voice, devoid of the slightest emotion, echoed through the empty hall.

"Cawl."

At his call, a figure slowly emerged from the shadows of the hall.

It was a strange creation over three meters tall, half flesh and half machine. Countless mechanical tentacles writhed behind him like a nest of serpents, each tipped with a different precise instrument or tool.

He was the Imperium's greatest—and most unorthodox—Archmagos Dominus: Belisarius Cawl.

"...My lord Primarch." Cawl's voice was an amalgamation of countless different synthesized voices, steeped in mechanical texture. "You summoned me because of that interesting report on a 'fireworks display'? I am most interested in the technology that produced an Exterminatus-level explosion through primitive physics alone. If I could obtain a slice of that little commissar's brain..."

"Not for that, Cawl." Guilliman interrupted his technically fervent, utterly irreverent speech.

"I need you to get him from the Inquisition."

Cawl's "eyes," made up of countless optical lenses, flickered simultaneously.

"Go. Tell the inquisitors that the Imperial Regent wishes to meet this man, Alexander von Lawrence, in person."

"Right now. Immediately."

After receiving the data, delight glimmered within Cawl's beehive-like mechanical compound eyes.

"...As you command, my Lord Regent."

His strange figure melded into the shadows once more and vanished.

The great hall returned to a deathly silence.

Guilliman slowly rose from his throne. He walked to the edge of the hall and looked down through an immense viewport polished from a single diamond at the last capital of mankind below—a city bathed in golden radiance, yet filled with endless decay and the air of twilight.

A trace of weariness flashed through his eyes.

"...I hope..." he murmured.

"...You do not disappoint me, Alexander von Lawrence."

When the Inquisition's black cruiser, the Words of Truth, had just completed a painful, lengthy Warp voyage and appeared in the heavily guarded orbit of Holy Terra, Inquisitor Valerius had not even had time to breathe a sigh of relief at finally bringing this "dangerous suspected heretic" back to Inquisition headquarters.

An imposing Ark Mechanicus, more than ten times the size of his cruiser and painted with the striking red-and-black cog insignia of the Adeptus Mechanicus, appeared before him like a ghost, blocking every route ahead.

Then, a highest-level encrypted communication request—one he had no power whatsoever to refuse—connected directly to his augmented skull implant.

The voice that came through the communicator belonged to the Archmagos Dominus he least wanted to hear: a voice filled with mad curiosity and utterly lacking reverence for anything sacred.

"...Inquisitor Valerius, it has been some time. I hear you captured a very interesting little fellow who knows a bit about 'fireworks'?"

Valerius felt his temples throbbing.

When Alexander set foot on solid ground once again, the sight before him left him utterly stunned.

He stood upon the landing platform of an enormous spaceport that seemed to pierce the heavens. Above him was Terra's sky, forever deprived of starlight by countless orbital defense platforms and space stations. Around him stretched magnificent structures like an unbroken mountain range, filled with Gothic spires and colossal statues.

This was Holy Terra.

The heart of the Imperium of Man.

And he—a lowly office worker from the twenty-first century, a soul that had reincarnated three times in the world of Warhammer 40,000—had finally arrived in this legendary place he had only ever seen in lore books and games.

Two giant figures clad in azure Terminator Armour stood at his left and right. They were veterans of the Ultramarines' elite First Company.

They had not come to escort him as a prisoner.

They had come to... welcome him.

Led by them, Alexander passed through countless formidable defensive lines, each enough to make any rebel army despair, and finally arrived before an immense hall whose grandeur defied all description.

The hall's doors stood hundreds of meters tall, carved with every heroic epic sung since the founding of the Imperium of Man.

With a deep rumble like the sigh of a god, the massive doors slowly opened.

Alexander... slowly raised his head.

He saw him.

Beneath the throne, a towering figure as godlike as any deity was slowly walking toward him.

Roboute Guilliman.

When that living legend, that living demigod, came before him and looked down at him with eyes as deep as the stars—

Alexander felt as though he had become a tiny insect, trembling beneath a giant's feet.