The Emperor's voice, that majestic proclamation laden with boundless authority and the judgment of fate, did not stir the expected waves when its final syllable fell. Instead, it brought an absolute silence that was almost suffocating.
Time seemed to freeze within the hall. The air ceased to move, and even the faint hum of Spirit Veins deep within the distant Imperial Palace seemed suddenly to recede.
Even Leman Russ, sprawled over the table and snoring like thunder, breathed so quietly that he could scarcely be heard, as though this decisive moment had cowed even his subconscious.
Around the long table, every Primarch—whether as steady as Dorn, as wild as Angron, who had been swinging his fists moments before, as inscrutable as Magnus, or as coldly observant as Curze—seemed to have turned into a statue.
Their gazes, startled, knowing, conflicted, or unreadable, converged on the figure whose name had been called. Yet they seemed to look through him, contemplating the transfer of power on a galactic scale that this decision represented, and the irrevocable fixing of the path ahead.
At the center of the storm, Horus Lupercal stood utterly motionless.
The Emperor's words—"master of the XVI Legion," "Luna Wolves," "Centaurus," "most beloved son," "Warmaster"—struck his ears and soul in turn like the tolling of heavy bells.
Yet their meaning, their weight, and the indisputable conclusion they formed seemed trapped behind a thick pane of glass, unable to penetrate the barrier of a mind left almost blank by overwhelming shock.
He even blinked, his thick lashes trembling slightly in the cold air, as though trying to dispel some illusion.
His eyes were filled with bewildered disbelief. *Had he misheard? Was this an illusion brought on by the mental exhaustion of more than a month of bloody fighting beneath Ullanor? Or was this