"Still, honestly speaking, you ended up falling to Chaos after all, Mortarion."
[.]
Mortarion felt his heart stop for an instant, his blood cease to flow. Countless clamorous voices shrieked in his mind, trying to say that it was not so—but after innumerable explanations, Mortarion knew with absolute clarity that everything Hades had said was true.
The Primarch was still unable to speak, like a dying fish. Having just endured the baptism of the Null Field, it was utterly unrealistic for him to move under such circumstances.
"Though saying this may hurt you, I think I might indeed have imagined a scene like this before... It is rather frustrating. I had thought... I had thought I was correcting my mistakes as much as possible."
Hades's voice continued to mutter to itself. As he had said, Mortarion felt an indescribable fury, resentment, and regret. He wanted to shout out his anger. Had he wanted this? Had he eagerly chosen to accept the power Chaos offered the moment he saw it? Had he not considered other paths? But this world was simply that rotten. If you could not become part of its rot, then all that awaited you was death. This damned galaxy rejected any being that was not blood and war.
Hades's death was the finest proof of that. Petty hope was strangled, while the rotten survived.
Mortarion wanted to curse aloud. He wanted to smash his scythe into the ground and say, whoever wanted to do it could do it—he was done. If being a Primarch meant such a fate, then it would have been better never to possess a will in the first place.
Though he had imagined Hades reproaching him hundreds and thousands of times, when he truly heard those words, the Primarch felt his soul