"Great Loyalist?"
"Ha ha ha ha ha..."
Compared to the pain in his body, the crushing defeat in his spirit made Abaddon wish he were dead.
He was Horus's successor, the second-generation Chaos Warmaster acknowledged by the Chaos Gods, the great despoiler who struck terror into humanity.
He could accept failure after failure. So long as he preserved his strength and held firm in his heart, he could always rise again next time.
But he could never accept that everything he had fought for had merely served as a wedding dress for the Imperium.
He had fought desperately for so long and paid such a terrible price in casualties, only to free the Emperor who had been trapped upon the Golden Throne.
He understood everything now. If he had not killed the Emperor, none of this would have happened. The Imperium would still have been trapped in its rotten mire, slowly decaying as time passed.
Abaddon might call him the False Emperor and the Corpse Emperor at every turn, but that was only because he knew the Lord of Humanity was trapped asleep on the Golden Throne and could do nothing to him.
Abaddon had once fanatically believed in and worshipped the Emperor as well. The Lord of Humanity's influence over the Astartes was no less than that of the primarchs.
But now, as he watched the Emperor approach step by step, Abaddon's heart plunged into a bottomless abyss. An icy chill gnawed at his flesh and froze everything within him.
Though he could not see the Emperor's face clearly, the fear rising from his very marrow could not be faked. This was undoubtedly the supreme leader who had led humanity across the galaxy and made mankind great again.
He had returned.
The Emperor who had stepped down from the