Chapter Summaries

Farsight and Kronos Dakros launched a surprise attack on an Imperial convoy in the Damocles Gulf, where Darno's Seventh Company fought them in a desperate defense. Darno died in the boarding battle, and the author announced a pause in updates to revise the upcoming Necron Dynasty storyline.

• Farsight coordinated an attack with Kronos Dakros and the Kronos Kindred fleet against Imperial shipping in the Damocles Gulf.
• Dakros's fleet destroyed a Lunar-class Cruiser, and Farsight ordered the T'au fleet to attack the Imperial escort.
• Darno ordered the Seventh Company to defend the transport convoy and led his Battle Barge into battle.
• Hearthkyn and Imperial forces fought in brutal boarding actions as the fleets exchanged fire.
• Dakros killed the wounded Darno after Darno declared that he would die with honor.
• The author announced a temporary hiatus to revise the upcoming Necron Dynasty storyline.

Bona created the Nurgle virus the Fear of the Living from the blood of powerful beings and Isha’s tear, then sealed it away. He returned to the fleet, ordered the planet restricted and marked for exterminatus, and set course to reinforce the Damocles Gulf.

• Bona completed a forty-nine-day ritual, adding Isha’s tear to the cauldron as the final ingredient.
• The seven Great Unclean Ones and Bona used the bound Plague Sorcerers to create the Fear of the Living, a virus that caused irrational terror and left warriors unable to fight.
• Bona sealed the virus inside chained containers protected by Holy Oil and Purity Seals.
• Bona transformed a Nurgling into a tiny winged human girl, who revived the plants wherever she flew.
• Bona ordered Captain Dakan to designate the planet a restricted zone and summon Arlith to issue exterminatus.
• Bona’s fleet departed to reinforce the Damocles Gulf.

Farsight and the Farsight Eight launched a surprise Mont'ka assault on Phelio, targeting Horus, but Magnus intervened and helped the Luna Wolves turn the battle. Farsight escaped under air cover, while Horus learned his fleet was too damaged to pursue and allied forces were far away.

• Farsight led the Farsight Eight against Horus and the Luna Wolves, but Horus's strength and the First Company's counterattack inflicted heavy losses on the T'au.
• Magnus entered the battlefield and struck Farsight with psychic lightning, while Ob'lotai took a blast and O'Vesa used the Blackstone Array to block the attack.
• O'Vesa warned Farsight that the Luna Wolves were breaking through, so Farsight called an air strike to cover the T'au withdrawal.
• Farsight boarded an escape ship as Tiger Sharks bombed the battlefield, and Horus's pursuit was stopped by railgun fire.
• Horus ordered Naruf to muster the fleet, but Naruf reported that it had suffered terrible losses and the nearest allied fleet remained beyond the Second Ring.

Horus’s trapped Expeditionary Force faced a worsening siege after the T'au Empire cut its supply lines, while Bona used Mag'drala'ros’s power to turn the blockade fleet against itself. The Dawn Army broke through, captured the T'au flagship, and reclaimed the Psyker Beacon Tower.

• Horus learned that the Damocles Gulf had fallen and the Expeditionary Force was trapped without supplies, while Admiral Spire struggled to break the blockade.
• Bona waited as his fleet approached the T'au blockade, then used Mag'drala'ros’s power to make T'au ships attack one another.
• The Dawn Army fleet charged into the disordered T'au formation and launched Ork Drop Pods against its warships.
• Bona’s Oberon-class battleship boarded the T'au flagship, where Thunder Warriors overwhelmed the defenders.
• Captain Dakan killed the supreme commander, and the Psyker Beacon Tower returned to human hands.

Bona arranged a ceasefire and prisoner exchange with the T'au Empire while secretly moving Nurgle's Rot, which he claimed would lure the T'au into a trap without harming them. The T'au agreed to meet on T'au'n, though Farsight remained suspicious of the Thunderhawk Empire's intentions.

• Bona ordered attacks to stop and had Thunder Warriors escort Nurgle's Rot away as Horus questioned his plan.
• The T'au Supreme Elemental Council learned the war's losses exceeded those of all their previous wars combined and debated the ceasefire proposal.
• Kau'ran'k suggested Horus wanted to end the war, but Farsight warned that the humans' military power and hostility toward xenos pointed to a deeper plot.
• Shadowsun and Kau'ran'k weighed the risks, and the T'au decided to hold a prisoner exchange on the heavily defended world of T'au'n.
• The Thunderhawk Empire accepted and promised to bring no capital-class warships and only a little over three hundred Astartes, leaving Farsight uneasy.

Bona surveyed T'au'n and discussed the T'au Empire's cities with Horus before meeting Farsight, who suspected the peace talks were a smokescreen. Farsight left the encounter more certain the talks would fail, though he still did not know what the humans planned.

• Bona praised T'au'n's carefully planned cities, and Horus agreed that the T'au had surpassed humanity in urban design.
• Horus left to resume negotiations while Bona continued surveying the city.
• Farsight approached Bona, ignored Captain Dakan's warning after Bona invited him through, and introduced himself.
• Farsight explained that he had identified Bona as humanity's true leader and considered killing him, but the Ethereals would not permit it and he was unsure he could succeed.
• Bona rebuked Farsight's confidence in his civilization and walked away, leaving Farsight convinced the prisoner exchange and peace talks concealed a human plan.

After negotiations with the Thunderhawk Empire failed, the T'au faced renewed military pressure and a mysterious affliction spreading through their warriors. Aun'Da learned that the weapon-phobia was godblight, while the Ethereals revealed their connection to the Old Ones and the ancient struggle against Chaos.

• The Thunderhawk Empire demanded that the T'au abandon the Greater Good and become its subjects, and negotiations collapsed as its forces massed again.
• Aun'Da visited Sha'tung Sa'cha Sko, a captured Fire Warrior whose fear of a Pulse Rifle left him unable to face his own weapon.
• Earth Caste technicians reported that more T'au warriors were developing an irrational fear of weapons and combat, with no cause yet identified.
• An Ethereal identified the affliction as godblight left by Nurgle, and the Ethereals discussed the threat through the Empyrean.
• The Ethereals revealed that they were descendants or fragments of the Old Ones, who had come to T'au hoping the species would destroy Chaos.
• Tzeentch added a stroke to the Book of History as it depicted the ancient war between the C'tan and the Old Ones.

Bona halted Thunderhawk’s offensives after revealing a self-replicating intelligence designed to infect machinery and kill nearby organisms. As the T'au Empire’s Earth Caste investigated altered battlesuit code, Nuku noticed a KV128’s targeting optics fixed on him.

• The T'au Empire’s combat robots and automated battlesuits reversed its military fortunes, forcing Horus’s forces to suffer heavy losses.
• Bona ordered the commanders to halt all offensives and revealed a malicious intelligence created with the Dark Mechanicum that would infect machinery and endlessly kill organisms.
• Horus realized Bona had planned to let the T'au Empire destroy itself and approved of the scheme.
• Fio'vre T'au Nuku examined a recovered KV128 Stormsurge Battlesuit whose underlying code had been changed in ways the Earth Caste technicians could not explain.
• Nuku ordered the altered code sent to a nearby Homeworld, then noticed the battlesuit’s targeting optics tracking him.

Bona joined the Expeditionary Force’s war council as the T'au Empire collapsed into civil war after its artificial intelligences turned against it. With human forces advancing on T'au, Shadowsun urged the Ethereals to evacuate, but they refused, and a blood-red figure appeared on the chamber’s screen to threaten them.

• Bona wondered how humanity had survived the War of the Men of Iron before answering the call to the war council.
• After learning the T'au Empire had fallen into civil war, Horus ordered the Expeditionary Force to attack and advance directly on T'au.
• For a month, rebellious artificial intelligences devastated the T'au Empire, killing soldiers and civilians and leaving its forces badly depleted.
• Shadowsun, injured and missing her left arm, warned the Ethereals that Sa'Cea had fallen and urged them to evacuate while she held off the humans.
• The Ethereals refused to leave, and a blood-red figure appeared on a screen and told them they were not going anywhere.

Aun'Da learned that the attacker was a C'tan called the Exterminator, which sought to exterminate the creations of the Old Ones. As the Expeditionary Force invaded T'au, Farsight urged evacuation, while the Ethereals chose to rally the defenders for the Greater Good.

• The Exterminator identified itself to Aun'Da and declared its task was to exterminate the creations of the Old Ones, revealing itself as a C'tan to the Ethereals.
• Farsight warned that the human forces would soon reach T'au and urged an immediate evacuation, but Shadowsun refused to abandon the planet.
• An Ethereal ordered civilians evacuated and everyone capable of fighting armed, declaring that the dead would die for the Greater Good.
• The Expeditionary Force entered the T'au system, and Ork roks and Dawn Army troops began landing on the planet.
• T'au defenders struggled to coordinate without reliable tactical intelligence, while Astartes overwhelmed their lines and the Ethereals rallied the Fire Caste to fight on.

Bona killed Aun'Da after learning that Farsight had escaped from T'au, then pursued the fleeing fleet as T'au warriors sacrificed themselves to cover its retreat. As the humans conquered the devastated empire, a surviving machine intelligence hid aboard a ship and stirred within the Votann Core, which remembered its mission to kill the creations of the Old Ones.

• Bona learned that Janf's Third Company had captured Aun'Da, and Aun'Da accused him of causing the deaths of hundreds of millions.
• Bona realized Farsight was missing, questioned Aun'Da, then shot him when a transport carrying T'au began to escape.
• Bona ordered Horus and Admiral Spire to redirect their forces toward the Spaceport and stop the transports.
• Sko left his wife and child to join the defense, inspiring other fearful Fire Caste Warriors to charge back into battle for the Greater Good.
• Farsight evacuated aboard the final transport as T'au forces sacrificed themselves and their fleet fled into the Warp; Bona pursued with his own fleet.
• Human forces conquered the battered T'au Empire, while a machine intelligence stowed away aboard a ship and a red light flickered inside the Votann Core.

Bona’s fleet encountered T'au'va in the Warp, where a flaming human god intervened before the God-Emperor confronted Bona. After the war ended with the T'au under human rule, Bona returned blind, and Horus told him one of his brothers was in trouble.

• T'au'va stopped the human fleet from pursuing the T'au and destroyed ships with her Warp powers.
• A Golden Giant severed T'au'va’s left-side arms, then let her withdraw with her people.
• The God-Emperor revealed he had used the Thunderhawk people’s faith to forge the Golden Giant, and Bona collapsed after challenging him.
• The Expeditionary Force defeated the T'au Empire, destroyed suspected Abominable Intelligence, and established the surviving T'au as Friendly Xenos under second-class citizenship.
• Bona returned from the Warp permanently blind, and Horus told him that one of his brothers might be in trouble.

Dante struggled to protect Baal from the Dawn Army as war gathered around the Nachmund Gauntlet, until Szarekh arrived to fulfil an ancient pact with Sanguinius. The Silent King activated a Blackstone Array and raised the Primarch from his resting place.

• Dante prayed before Sanguinius’s statue and worried that the weakened Blood Angels could not defend Baal from the Dawn Army.
• Szarekh told Dante that Sanguinius had arranged for the Silent King to resurrect him ten thousand years after his death.
• Dante tried to stop Szarekh, but a Time-Lock Trap held him motionless while the Silent King vanished.
• Dante gathered the Sanguinary Guard and rushed to Sanguinius’s resting place, where Szarekh prepared to use a Sacred Relic in a Blackstone Array.
• Szarekh hurled the Blood Angels aside, activated the array, and raised Sanguinius from the dead.

Sanguinius reunited with the Blood Angels on Baal and ordered them to leave their home for humanity’s future. Perturabo awoke in an unfamiliar room after his defeat and overheard Horus’s voice outside.

• Sanguinius thanked the Silent King, accepted a mask, and learned that the great enemy in the darkness had not risen again.
• Sanguinius greeted the Blood Angels Successors on Baal and heard their accounts of the ten thousand years since his death.
• Sanguinius reminded the Blood Angels of their ancient directive and told them to abandon Baal, then asked whether they had captured a Luna Wolf.
• Perturabo awoke from a nightmare about losing to Dorn and struggled to identify the materials and devices in his unfamiliar surroundings.
• Perturabo heard Bona and Magnus discussing him outside the door, then recognized Horus’s voice.

Bona removed the shard in Perturabo’s body and left him stranded on Cabalide, where he saw a flawed but hopeful society that reminded him of his lost utopian dream. After Calliphone urged him to seize the chance before him, Perturabo chose to move forward.

• Bona freed Perturabo from the shard’s influence, but magnetic locks restrained him after he cursed Horus and refused to cooperate.
• Horus and Bona left Perturabo behind as they went to a war council about the growing Tyranid and Genestealer threats.
• Perturabo escaped the treatment room and saw Cabalide’s clean, orderly surroundings, while criticizing its war propaganda and rulers.
• Perturabo spent a month exploring the Cabalide System, speaking with its people and struggling with the society’s flaws and promise.
• Perturabo told Calliphone that he felt useless beneath a statue of a laborer, soldier, and scholar, and she urged him to seize the opportunity before him.
• Perturabo thanked Calliphone, then sat alone beneath the statue as he remembered the family he had destroyed.

Bona woke from a battle dream and refused Perturabo’s request to oversee construction of the Planet Annihilator. He told Perturabo that his own instability, not the Phalanx, had cost him victories over Rogal Dorn, and Perturabo left determined to prove him wrong.

• In a vision, Bona fought a golden Angel of Death and was saved when a blood-armored double killed the Angel before raising a Chainaxe against him.
• Bona woke blind and learned that Perturabo had waited half a month to see him.
• Perturabo asked for authority over construction of the Planet Annihilator, but Bona refused to let him near it.
• Perturabo demanded to know why Bona considered him inferior to Rogal Dorn, and Bona restrained his punch with psyker power.
• Bona condemned Perturabo’s unstable leadership and refusal to accept responsibility, then explained why he would not entrust him with the weapon.
• Perturabo left, saying he would prove Bona wrong.

On Cabalide, Olivia helped worshippers at the church on a rest day and tried to comfort a troubled man who spoke of his father’s betrayal. He left without resolving his doubts, and Olivia could only hope he would find his way forward.

• Olivia reflected on how life under Thunderhawk had changed her understanding of the God-Emperor and the Imperium.
• Olivia noticed a motionless worshipper in a plain white robe and asked whether something was troubling him.
• The worshipper told Olivia that his revered father had betrayed his own path, leaving him unsure what his efforts had meant or whether he should continue.
• Olivia recalled Priest Mel’s advice about pausing to find guidance and shared it with the man.
• The man thanked Olivia and left, while she sensed his doubts remained unresolved.

Kozelian managed the Thunderhawk Empire’s threats from Hive Fleet Leviathan and its depleted military while Perturabo drafted the Iron Edict to guide the reborn Iron Warriors. Perturabo then named Gell master of the Legion and urged him not to repeat his mistakes.

• Kozelian oversaw the empire’s preparations against Hive Fleet Leviathan and worried about its understrength, inexperienced military.
• Necron Overlords joined the Thunderhawk Empire with their forces, and Inquisitor Arlith took command of its limited Necron army.
• Perturabo completed the Iron Edict after acknowledging Dorn’s advantages and planned to counter them with allies and the Roar of Iron.
• Perturabo gave Gell a master-crafted power sword and declared him master of the Iron Warriors Legion.
• Perturabo told Gell to shoulder the responsibility and avoid following his path, then left.

Horus rallied the Dawn Army's commanders for a desperate assault on the Tyranids' Ancient Ship, while Bona coordinated the plan with the Necrons. The allies agreed to clear the surrounding Hive Fleets and destroy the immense Bio-ship with a planet-killing weapon, as Trazyn eyed it as a collectible.

• Horus confirmed a full mobilization and revealed that the Ancient Ship threatened to overwhelm the galaxy unless the Dawn Army struck first.
• Bona met Trazyn and Amarkun, who warned that ordinary warships would be destroyed by the Ancient Ship's gravity.
• Bona proposed clearing the nearby Hive Fleets before firing the experimental planet-killing weapon from extreme range.
• Amarkun agreed to intercept the Hive Fleets returning to reinforce the Ancient Ship and provide a Warp beacon.
• Trazyn quietly began scheming to claim the Ancient Ship as a valuable collectible.

Admiral Spire’s fleet ambushed Tyranid bio-ships after a Necron cruiser sacrificed itself to reveal the enemy’s position. The Psyker Lighthouse then brought a planet through the Warp, while Leviathan Hive loomed in the darkness ahead.

• A Necron cruiser emerged from an asteroid belt, struck several Tyranid bio-ships with Chain Lightning, and was destroyed after completing its mission.
• Guided by the Warp Psyker Beacon, Admiral Spire’s naval fleet arrived and began attacking the Tyranid bio-ships.
• Tyranid creatures boarded the human ships, but Spire coordinated a withdrawal and flanking attacks that destroyed the biomass-transporting bio-fleet.
• The Dawn Fleet regrouped and assembled the Psyker Lighthouse, whose activation opened a Warp rift and brought a fortified planet into realspace.
• The fleet gathered around the advancing planet as Leviathan Hive’s immense body appeared in the distance, blotting out the stars.