"You..."
Cassios's voice lingered in the cold dungeon for a moment, as though he were chewing over the weight of that word.
He raised his head and looked straight into Lorgar's unfathomable eyes. An expression mingling disbelief, mockery, and profound exhaustion slowly surfaced on his face.
"Do you know what you're saying, Primarch?"
He did not raise his voice, but every word seemed steeped in rust.
"You want me, an old relic who should have been lying on history's scrap heap long ago, a 'mistake' you people replaced and disposed of... to join your Legion? To fight... for that Imperium again?"
He spoke those last words softly, with biting sarcasm.
Then, disregarding both his status as a prisoner and the restraints binding him, he leaned back slightly. With some difficulty, but just as deliberately, he slowly lifted his shackled right leg onto his left knee, crossing his legs in a rather awkward yet unmistakably defiant pose.
He sat there, regarding the exalted Primarch outside his cage with an almost insolently amused gaze, as though watching a farce that had nothing to do with him.
"Insolence!"
"On your knees!"
The two Word Bearers standing behind Lorgar barked almost simultaneously. The servo systems of their power armour hummed faintly as they instinctively stepped forward half a pace, hands moving to their weapons.
The Primarch's dignity could not be profaned, least of all by a prisoner of unknown origin.
Yet Lorgar merely raised his hand ever so slightly.
No words, just a simple gesture.
As though arrested by an invisible force, the two Word Bearers immediately fell silent, stepped back, and resumed their positions. Only their gazes, directed through their helmet lenses, fixed on Cassios with an even colder intensity.
Lorgar seemed not to notice Cassios's provocative posture. The serene smile on his