Within the Fortress of Hera, several Primarchs made their way through the corridors.
The fortress corridors were broad enough for armoured columns to pass side by side. Though the floors had already been cleaned, shattered pauldrons, blunted Chainswords, and melted Power Fists silently testified to the brutal war this place had endured.
The air carried a mingled smell of rust, machine oil, and disinfectant. Machines ran in the workshops, weapons were counted and distributed in the Armoury, and instruments beeped in the Medical Pods. The entire fortress was like an immense war machine, kept running by its steady, rhythmic pulse.
Guilliman stood before the passage just inside the fortress entrance, his gaze fixed on the enormous gate slowly opening before him.
He wore his blue-and-gold armour, its surface covered in scratches left by recent battles. Those marks had been carefully polished, but deliberately not smoothed away entirely, as though to remind everyone where the scars had come from.
He held no sword and raised no weapon, his arms hanging naturally at his sides. Even so, standing there, he was an insurmountable bastion.
The gate gave a heavy metallic roar as hydraulic mechanisms slowly pushed apart doors dozens of metres thick, revealing an immense opening.
Sunlight poured through the gap, casting a sharp band of light across the floor.
Angron's silhouette appeared within that light.
His upper body was bare, his skin covered in newly scabbed wounds and fresh additions to old scars. Those marks crisscrossed like mountain ranges on a map.
He wore no Power Armour and carried no weapons at all, yet his strides were steady, each footfall seeming to make the ground tremble faintly.
A line of War Hounds Legionaries followed behind him. The Space Marines' armour bore the dust and mud of a long, rapid march, and