Chapter Summaries

Calgar recognized Sith’s achievements and gave him command of Imperial troops stranded outside the defensive lines as Sith’s force continued toward Hyperia. Along the way, Sith’s column encountered a ruined Chaos ritual site and pressed onward, conserving fuel for the fight ahead.

• Calgar told Sith that the Imperium had recorded his exploits and that his name had reached Hyperia.
• Calgar transferred command of the Imperial troops outside the defensive lines to Sith and hoped to see him in Hyperia.
• Sith led nearly two hundred thousand surviving soldiers across a scorched landscape toward Hyperia.
• Sith and Ana found a destroyed ritual site surrounded by the corpses of countless civilians, and Ana suggested using flamers.
• Sith ordered the column to conserve fuel, climbed onto a surviving Leman Russ, and commanded the troops to advance toward Hyperia.

Sith led more than two hundred thousand battered mortal troops in a charge through the Chaos army toward Hyperia, despite believing they faced the main axis of the assault. He reached the city with survivors after breaking the Chaos lines, leaving the defenders stunned and newly inspired.

• Sith saw the devastation around Hyperia and learned that his left flank had been spotted as Chaos forces turned toward his troops.
• Sith drew his weapons and told the survivors to follow him as Krieg soldiers and Leman Russ tanks led the charge.
• More than two hundred thousand mortal troops surged from the craters, forcing the Chaos army to abandon its assault on the walls and confront them.
• Calgar watched Sith's force break through the Chaos lines and ordered a side gate opened, with Ultramarines sent to cover their retreat into Hyperia.
• Sith entered Hyperia with his chipped Power Sword as the defenders watched in shock, realizing he had led the battered force to break Chaos.

Sith returned to the defensive lines with the few survivors of his force after helping drive back the Chaos assault, and Calgar publicly honored him as the legend of Vigilus. Calgar offered to rebuild and equip Sith’s regiment, then assigned it to board the enemy flagship as part of a plan for total victory.

• Sith led the battered survivors through the gates as Calgar’s bombardment helped rout the Chaos army, and the defenders cheered for him and Calgar.
• Calgar approached Sith, stopped him from saluting, and named him the legend of Vigilus.
• Calgar announced Sith’s promotion into the Astra Militarum and promised to restore and re-equip the 101st Regiment.
• Sith realized that Calgar’s generous support meant he expected a dangerous mission, and remembered the Imperium’s eventual plan to destroy Abaddon’s flagship with Aeldari help.
• Calgar told Sith that he and his regiment would serve as a boarding party and attack the enemy flagship.

Sith returned to the 101st Regiment’s quarters amid worsening civilian suffering and learned that Daviro would join his force for the boarding of the Vengeful Spirit. Daviro delivered Sith’s new Astra Militarum designation, leaving Sith stunned to learn the regiment would be called the Black Watch.

• Sith saw starving civilians in the Hyperia Hive Cluster resort to drinking a fallen woman’s blood before bailiffs killed them.
• Sith returned to the 101st Regiment’s quarters and signed a supply authorization while replacements trained.
• Daviro told Sith that he had volunteered to join the regiment as its required Astartes for the boarding parties.
• Daviro presented Sith with a military order promoting his force into the Astra Militarum with senior command authority.
• Sith read that the regiment’s new designation was Black Watch.

Sith led the newly formed Black Watch into a boarding action during Calgar’s desperate duel with Abaddon. After landing on a Chaos ship, he stopped his troops from charging to their deaths and ordered them to seize a boarding craft and escape to an Imperial warship.

• Sith gathered Daviro, Brunok, Ana, and the Black Watch before boarding a transport bound for the battlefront.
• Sith’s transport reached a shipboard bay, where the crew directed the troops into a boarding craft as their Imperial warship came under attack.
• The boarding craft crashed into a Chaos ship, and Sith and Daviro shot down cultist crewmen emerging to attack them.
• Daviro charged toward the fleeing traitors, but Sith knocked him unconscious before the others could follow.
• Sith ordered Brunok and the Black Watch to seize an enemy boarding craft and escape to an Imperial warship, shouting at them when they did not understand.

The First Captain discovered that Sith and the Black Watch were carving a path through the Vengeful Spirit and ordered mortal forces to intercept them, then sent their combat footage to Abaddon. As Abaddon and Calgar paused in confusion over the report, Sith and his men boarded an Imperial frigate, only for a huge explosion to rip open the Warp and begin pulling nearby ships into it.

• The First Captain learned that one Imperial force was advancing through the Vengeful Spirit and that a single warrior was killing Chaos Astartes and mortals alike.
• After reviewing footage of Sith and the Black Watch, the First Captain recalled the Astartes interceptors, ordered mortals to wear down the force, and sent the information to Abaddon.
• Abaddon paused his fight with Calgar after receiving the message, and both men reacted in confusion to the words "Black Watch" and "possessed by the Corpse Emperor."
• Sith and the Black Watch seized boarding craft and returned to an Imperial Sword-class Frigate, stunning its crew.
• A vast explosion tore open the Warp between the fleets, and its powerful suction began dragging nearby ships toward the breach.

After Calgar’s victory ended the battle for Vigilus, Sith and the damaged Sword-class Frigate were dragged into the Warp with its Gellar Field disabled. Sith and the Black Watch survived two months of fighting daemons, and the chapter ended as a powerful blessing restored Sith’s strength in red light.

• The Aeldari warship detonated inside the Chaos Fleet, ending the battle for Vigilus, and Abaddon teleported back to the Vengeful Spirit as Calgar watched the rift consume the ships.
• Sith, Brunok, Ana, Daviro, and the second officer were swept into the Warp aboard the wreck, where they discovered the Gellar Field had failed.
• Warp daemons invaded the damaged Vengeful Spirit, while Sith’s frigate remained trapped inside a growing sphere of daemons; the Vengeful Spirit’s Gellar Field was eventually restored.
• After two months of relentless combat, Sith and fewer than two thousand Black Watch remained alive aboard the frigate, while Chaos and Imperial observers watched in awe.
• A blessing gathered in the Warp and entered Sith’s ship, restoring his strength beyond its former level as Abaddon reacted in shock.
• Sith saw that the blessing’s light was red and wondered why it had turned red again.

Sith and the Black Watch received the blessings of both Khorne and the Emperor, slaughtered the Warp daemons, and were carried out of the Warp aboard their crippled frigate. Daviro welcomed Sith to the 42nd millennium and showed him the galaxy split by the Great Rift.

• Sith and the Black Watch were blessed by Khorne and the Emperor, gaining power that stunned Abaddon and the onlookers.
• Sith and the Black Watch faced the Warp without a Gellar Field and killed daemons so completely that their enemies fled.
• The divine light gathered into Sith’s armor and sword, and another golden light pulled the Sword-class Frigate out of the Warp.
• Psykers across the galaxy experienced visions of two thousand men facing the Warp, while Sith and the survivors emerged into Realspace.
• Daviro welcomed Sith to humanity’s 42nd millennium and revealed the Great Rift and the burning galaxy beyond the viewport.

On a heavily fortified Forge World in Imperium Nihilus, Imperial leaders learned of a prophecy about mortals who fought daemons in the Warp and received the God-Emperor’s blessing. The Inquisition searched for the mysterious warriors, while an ordinary Sword-class Frigate’s crash on Oumia’s Third Moon was dismissed as unimportant.

• Adeptus Astra Telepathica scribes recorded desperate pleas from Imperial Worlds, but Tech-Priests destroyed the reports and an Inquisition Tempestus Scion discarded the compiled data.
• The Fabricator-General asked the Inquisitors to share what they knew about a galaxy-spanning prophecy.
• A Warp-specialist Inquisitor said roughly two thousand mortals had fought daemons in the Warp for two months and received the God-Emperor’s blessing.
• The Inquisition admitted it could not locate the mortals, so it told Inquisitors across the Imperium to watch for unusual people.
• A Tempestus Scion reported that an Imperial Sword-class Frigate had emerged from the Warp and crashed on Oumia’s Third Moon, but the Inquisitor dismissed the wreck and returned to wondering where the prophesied warriors were.

A crashed Sword-class Frigate brought the Black Watch to Oumia III, where a local convoy mistook them for possible Xenos before meeting their leader, Sith. Sith presented the soldiers as a Planetary Defence Force, while Daviro began to suspect the God-Emperor had sent them somewhere as dangerous as Vigilus.

• A convoy from Oumia III’s hive city raced toward the crashed warship and cautiously approached the black figures beneath its smoke.
• The locals recognized the figures as human Astra Militarum soldiers, and a noblewoman asked whether they had come to reinforce the world against the Xenos.
• The noblewoman and the crowd mistook Daviro for the God-Emperor’s angel, but he stepped aside to reveal Sith with his Crimson Sword.
• Sith asked whether the noblewoman’s people were a Planetary Defence Force and agreed that his own force counted as one.
• Daviro reflected on the Black Watch’s campaigns and began to fear that the God-Emperor had sent them to another world as perilous as Vigilus.