Nearly ten years had passed since the incident on Davin, and now the loyalists had purged the rebels and rebuilt the Imperium.
Over those ten years, Lox had followed the three great leaders of the Second Imperium across countless battlefields. The bloodshed and sacrifice had left him almost unable to tell what was real and what was false.
Yet somewhere deep down, his instincts had always told him that everything before him was fake—a fantasy crafted by some existence, infinitely close to reality.
Fortunately, Konrad was still by his side. It was through his constant conversations with the Night Haunter imprisoned within Veronica that Lox had managed to hold on to himself.
Lox could not tell whether Curze had foreseen that Sanguinius would fall into this illusion of an endless death cycle, which was why he had brought Lox along at the critical moment and entered it with Sanguinius.
Or whether that bastard truly had simply wanted, as he claimed, to see more amusement, and had dragged Lox into danger with him for that reason.
But just as that false master of mankind had said, the starting point had been bad, but the outcome had been good.
Sanguinius felt extreme pain. Over these ten years, he had nearly come to regard all of it as reality.
He remembered the light he had encountered on Davin, the light that called itself the benevolence of the Warp.
He had actually nearly believed it. That light had claimed that as long as he accepted its power, Sanguinius could avoid his fated death without changing the destinies of the Imperium and the Emperor.
No one wanted to die, and Sanguinius was no exception. He merely believed that some things were more important than his life.
If his death could buy the Emperor even a