Recaps

Lorgar and Mortarion defeated Apophis, while Angron helped turn the battle for Xana by destroying a Rangdan war machine. As the Imperium prepared a counteroffensive, Lorgar set out for Terra, but a Warp storm threw the Sacred Fury off course.

• Lorgar led an assault on Apophis’s warship, where he and Mortarion confronted the Rangdan Warmaster and rejected its offer to join the Rangdan Empire.
• Lorgar prayed to the Emperor and broke through the blackstone’s suppression, then destroyed Apophis’s duplicate and burned the real Apophis to ash through a golden mark.
• Lorgar and his companions returned to the Law of Faith, and the Blackstone Fortress broke the Rangdan psychic barrier so the Imperial fleet could advance.
• Angron boarded the Rangdan flagship, then leapt toward Pascal Hive City and destroyed a Rangdan Colossal Construct that was overwhelming the Imperial defenders.
• Lion El'Jonson joined Lorgar, Saladin, Angron, and Mortarion to plan a counteroffensive, while Lorgar privately warned Saladin that his prophecies showed him falling in the war.
• After Xana’s defenders were honored and Doram reunited with Hercules, Lorgar left Hercules and Anastasia with the fleet and asked Angron to watch over Saladin.
• Lorgar and Seras set out for Terra aboard the Sacred Fury, but a Warp storm destabilized its Gellar Force Field and sent the ship far off course.

Lorgar returned to Terra and was sent to confront Saladin, while a hidden force corrupted Saladin and fractured the Second Legion. As loyalists struggled to respond, the assault on Bloodscab began in catastrophic losses.

• Lorgar escaped the Warp, learned that Saladin and much of the Second Legion had turned against the Imperium, and received the Emperor’s Cross to take to the Rangdan front.
• Saladin led the Second Legion’s attack on a Rangdan command station, but visions of human victims unsettled him as he fought through the construct.
• Saolis and Takidin battled three Rangdan Overlords while Saladin disappeared, then found him unconscious beside three dead Rangdan Warmasters.
• After waking, Saladin ordered the Legion to resume its advance and killed more than twenty attendants during a hallucination, alarming Biberus and other commanders.
• Saladin confined Biberus after a confrontation with Abdullah, while a mysterious voice urged Saladin to pledge allegiance to the Rangdan Federation.
• Rockefeller suspected that an unknown force had compromised his communications with Lorgar, and Angron and Curze prepared to confront Saladin as Saolis and Biberus arranged a loyalist escape.
• Craston helped Biberus escape aboard the Remembrance of Ashes, but Saladin sent Dirham and trusted troops after the ship and ordered an assault on Bloodscab with Lion El’Jonson.
• Rangdan fire devastated the landing on Bloodscab, where Isas fought through enemy positions and Doram was ordered to lead survivors against a mortar position in sector B-7.

Saladin's rebellion against the Imperium became an open war as Biberus rallied loyalists and Angron, the First Legion, and reinforcements fought the Second Legion and Rangdan. The arc left Saladin battling Angron and Konrad Curze while denying that he had taken Lorgar.

• Saladin killed Craston before he could finish warning Angron, prompting Angron to declare Saladin a traitor and attack his fleet.
• Dirham freed Biberus, who killed Lauren, released imprisoned Astartes, seized the Remembrance of Ashes, and set course to rescue loyalists on Bloodscab.
• Angron slaughtered a Second Legion boarding force aboard the Conqueror, while Saladin's fleet faced the arrival of a massive loyalist force led by Perturabo.
• The Rangdan and Second Legion ambushed the First Legion, but Lion El'Jonson uncovered the betrayal and deployed forbidden Excindio to destroy the construct's defenses.
• Hannibal withdrew the remaining Rangdan ships after the Excindio destroyed the shield generator, and Lion El'Jonson redirected the First Legion toward the Word Bearers' battlefront.
• Angron boarded Saladin's flagship and fought through its defenders before confronting Saladin, who failed to persuade him to join the rebellion.
• Konrad Curze joined Angron against Saladin, and the two attacked him while demanding that he reveal Lorgar's whereabouts.

Saladin awakened a sand-wielding power and led the Second Legion’s rebellion as Lorgar gathered allies and returned to confront him. The arc ended with Lorgar reaching the Soul of the Yellow Sands, destroying most of Saladin’s forces, and facing the few survivors.

• Saladin’s wounds healed as yellow sand transformed the bridge into a desert, trapping Angron and Curze and raising ancient soldiers around him.
• Zask’s loyalists battled Gokbuli’s rebels for Saar City while Saolis and the Word Bearers escaped the Soul of the Yellow Sands with Ninutal’s help, and Burn died buying them time.
• Hercules crashed into the battle for Saar City, killed Romans and an elite swordsman squad, and forced Gokbuli’s forces to retreat.
• Saladin hurled Angron, Curze, and their surviving troops from his ship in a space-warping sandstorm, while Lorgar returned and asked his sons to stand with him again.
• Lorgar rallied the Word Bearers and War Hounds, reclaimed Vulkan’s Greatsword, and secretly redeployed forces to protect his recruiting worlds.
• The Second Legion besieged Vienna, but Lorgar arrived with a vast Imperial fleet and refused Saladin’s offer to talk, promising to kill him instead.
• Lorgar teleported with Hercules and the Cross onto the Soul of the Yellow Sands, where Saladin and Mago had assembled Second Legion and Rangdan forces against them.
• The Cross dissolved Saladin’s psychic power as Hercules defended it and Lorgar cut through the attackers, destroyed a Fellblade, struck down Mago, and turned nearly every nearby enemy to ash.