Nur calmly faced his death.
He stood in the control room soaked in blood and machine oil, watching mechanical tentacles crackling with purple arcs close in from every direction.
He neither retreated nor dodged, nor did he raise the Bolter in his hands another inch.
He simply stood there, like a piece of metal already hammered to its limit. He knew he would break in the next second, but he would never bend.
He heard the tentacles tearing through the air, heard Charlie unleash one final roar beside him.
He felt his vision begin to blur as a ripping agony erupted from a point in his chest, like ten thousand searing steel needles piercing his torso at once.
His armor was torn open, his flesh pulverized. He heard his bones give a series of small cracks under the pressure, muffled and distant.
Yet amid that agony, Nur's gaze was remarkably calm.
His eyes passed through Talosis's twisted face, through the pipes laden with profane power across the control room's ceiling, through the collapsing reality before him, and looked somewhere farther away. He saw a vision of the Emperor and his Primarch standing side by side.
Two lights emerged from the endless darkness. They stood there, their faces indistinct yet imposing as mountains, casting their gazes upon this burning star system, and upon him.
Nur opened his mouth. Bloody froth welled from his throat, staining those few words into a faint, broken whisper:
"Father, Emperor..."
"Have my sins... been atoned for...?"
He heard no answer.
He felt his body fall heavily to the floor. The dull impact echoed through the space sinking slowly into silence, like the toll of some ancient bell in the darkness.
His eyes remained open, looking toward where the vision had faded, the faintest curve lingering at