Rylanor found himself plunged into intense inner conflict after realizing that the Fulgrim before him—or rather, all these primarchs—were not the beings he remembered.
He simply could not fathom where these "primarchs" had come from.
Could it be that the Emperor had restarted the primarch project and created a second batch of genetic primarchs?
But Rylanor swiftly rejected that absurd notion.
The Emperor had erased the primarchs of the Second and Eleventh Legions over certain matters. Though Rylanor did not know exactly what had happened, it must have been some earth-shattering event that crossed the Emperor's bottom line.
The members of those two Legions had also undergone memory cleansing before being dispersed and reassigned among the other Legions. Worth mentioning was that the Imperial Fists and Ultramarines had received the greatest number of warriors from the lost Legions.
If the Emperor possessed the ability to create primarchs anew, why had he not made replacements after erasing those two primarchs?
Though he could not understand their origins, Rylanor at least recognized the inclinations of these primarchs.
Even those rebel primarchs led by Horus bore none of the foul stench of traitors. On the contrary, they greatly resembled the magnificent war leaders from Rylanor's memories.
The ancient sage could not help falling into a daze. He even wondered if he had already died, and in the final moments before death had seen what he wished to see most—the rebellion had never happened, and all the primarchs still stood united at the Emperor's side, fighting for humanity's great revival.
Within the Dreadnought sarcophagus, phantom pain and genuine exhaustion radiated from his mutilated body, submerged in sustaining fluid, pulling him back from his brief stupor.
No, it was not a dream. The pain was too real, and the solitude of his century-long vigil was