Barbarus.
The gray sky hung low, like a heavy lid over the land.
Mountain peaks pierced the dense fog, their cloud-high spires and cliffs stretching into the distance like fangs beneath the gloomy daylight.
Wind swept through the valleys, carrying fine dust and a sulfurous tang across the vast plains.
The Death Guard Legion had assembled here, a full hundred and seventy thousand Space Marines covering the entire plain like a silent gray ocean.
Yet they were undertaking no combat operations. They were stationed here on the orders of their Primarch, Mortarion.
Weapons had been stored away, armor sealed up, and war supplies piled high in the fortress warehouses, untouched.
Apart from their daily training and patrols, they spent their days wandering aimlessly between their encampments.
They did not yet know that, in other star clusters, war had already set the entire galaxy ablaze.
The Horus Heresy had torn a gaping wound in the heart of the Imperium, and the blood of loyalists and rebels burned across countless worlds.
Yet to the heavy shroud of mist over Barbarus, all of this seemed to belong to another world.
Mortarion still lay beside a haystack every day, basking in the sun.
The haystack stood on a slope outside the fortress, surrounded by a harvested wheat field.
A sackcloth hood concealed most of Mortarion's face, leaving only part of its outline visible.
His breathing was long and steady, and whenever sunlight fell through the gaps in the clouds onto his body, he narrowed his eyes slightly.
His gray-white skin looked especially dry in the light, like ancient wood weathered for a hundred years.
His fingers absently twirled a stalk of wheat, while a few shriveled ears lay scattered beside him.
Vorx was still harvesting wheat with a scythe.
He bent at the waist,