The Vengeful Spirit, Lupercal Court.
This court lay at the heart of the Vengeful Spirit. Horus had built it specifically for himself as a venue for meetings of the utmost secrecy.
The court was spacious and magnificent, its vaulted ceiling rising dozens of metres overhead. Huge tapestries hung on the walls, depicting the victories won throughout the Great Crusade by the Legion now known as the Sons of Horus. In the flickering light, the scenes seemed to come alive, telling tales of glory and conquest.
Polished marble paved the floor, smooth as a mirror, reflecting the starlight overhead and the tapestries on the walls. Walking across it felt like walking among the stars.
Horus stood in the centre of the court, tall and imposing, clad in a meticulously embellished suit of dark Power Armour. Golden Aquilas and the Legion Insignia of the Sons of Horus were emblazoned on its plates.
With his hands clasped behind his back, he watched the machine operating before him. It was a holographic projector supplied by the Iron Hands Legion, capable of connecting to multiple remote communications terminals at once. Several Adeptus Mechanicus Sages busied themselves around it, adjusting parameters and frequencies to ensure the connection remained stable and secure.
This was a private meeting, a secret gathering that could not appear in the Imperium's official records.
And to Horus, the identity of every participant remained unknown.
He did not know who would accept the invitation and who would refuse, who would come and who would not.
But he knew that everyone who joined this meeting would have only one purpose: to resist the Emperor's rule and establish a new Imperium, one governed jointly by the Primarchs, free of Terra's bureaucratic shackles—a realm that truly belonged to the Space Marines.
As Horus pondered this, the