"I'm here, Mortarion."
Lorgar Aurelian's steady voice rang out, breaking through the background hum of data streams and mechanical murmurs in the command chamber.
His dark gray figure stood at the entrance, his golden eyes piercing the mingled blue and pallid light within as he quietly regarded the figure at the edge of the platform, as still as a cast-iron statue.
His gaze was calm, yet carried a weight that needed no explanation.
Mortarion did not respond immediately. He merely looked back at Lorgar with his deep-set eyes, black as quenched carbon cores.
The air seemed to thicken beneath the two Primarchs' silent exchange. Even the faint sensor lights of the surrounding Deathshroud guards seemed to focus on that invisible field of tension.
Just then, a figure stepped out of the shadows behind Mortarion's flank.
He wore the same blue-gray and dull silver Power Armour as the Death Guard, but its design was more streamlined, its joints visibly reinforced. A distinctive emblem marking him as the First Company Captain was etched into his pauldron.
He wore no helmet, revealing an angular face made pale and cold by harsh conditions.
It was Calas Typhon, Company Captain of the Death Guard's First Great Company, and one of Mortarion's most trusted deputies and vanguard commanders.
He stopped at an angle to Lorgar, neither too close nor too far away, positioned precisely to guard his Primarch's flank while providing a potential counterbalance.
His gaze settled on Lorgar. It held more than simple vigilance; there was a deeper, almost instinctive scrutiny and resistance.
His thin lips pressed into a straight line, his jaw tightening.
"Lord of the Word Bearers..." Typhon began, his voice dry, attempting to inject a measure of proper ceremony into the stagnant atmosphere, the formality expected between the Legion's senior officers.
But