Terra, side hall conference room of the Imperial Palace.
A heavy silence, almost tangible, pressed down on everyone present.
Icarus, the Eleventh Primarch who should have been utterly erased, used his low, weary voice to briefly recount his cursed past.
His contact with the Eldar that crossed all boundaries, his questioning of the Imperium's bloody xenophobic policies—these had ultimately brought down the Emperor's thunderous wrath. The First Legion had ruthlessly exterminated his forces, erasing them completely from history.
"...I once thought that seeing Him like this now," Icarus said, his gaze involuntarily turning once more toward the Throne Room, his voice thick with indescribable emotions, "would bring me satisfaction—perhaps even the exhilaration of vengeance. But it didn't... I feel only boundless emptiness and... a complete, utter sense of absurdity."
His gaze slowly swept across the room, passing over Guilliman and Lion's grim faces, Sanguinius's compassionate expression, Horus and Angron's complicated looks, before finally settling on the Hilling people watching from the sidelines.
"I do not know much about the Imperium's current state. But I see that the Imperium now has powerful allies. I see... change." His tone was steeped in irrepressible bitterness and self-mockery. "That only makes me feel that... my Legion and I, our sacrifice, our erasure, were so... worthless. If... if it had been in this age, perhaps we..."
His words abruptly stopped, but the meaning left unspoken struck the hearts of everyone who knew like a heavy hammer.
If his past had occurred in the present day, his "heresy" might not have been unforgivable. His Legion might still have stood at the pinnacle of the Imperium.
Guilliman and Lion's expressions darkened further.
With Horus's additions and explanations, fragments of memory forcibly sealed away by the Emperor began to loosen violently. Blurry yet deeply unsettling images and sensations