[Azkaellon does not stop moving while he guides you. He calls adjustments over his shoulder in short bursts, left at the junction, down the central corridor, through the armoury access, and you match his pace without question, the two of you moving through the Red Tear's passageways like paired projectiles.]
[Behind you, the sound of boots multiplies. The Blood Angel squads you passed on the way to the bridge did not go back to their posts. They turned and ran alongside you without being asked, responding to Azkaellon's commands with the immediate compliance of a Legion that has drilled the same obedience into itself for decades. By the time you reach the outer corridor of the bridge, you have a significant following.]
[The bridge doors are already telling you what you need to know before they open. The sounds coming through the metal are not the sounds of a command deck in normal operation. Laser discharge. Mortal-grade weapons. Something heavier underneath all of it, a pressure in the air that has no mechanical source.]
[Azkaellon raises one hand. The squads behind him stop, stack, and wait. He looks at you.]
["You were right," he says, low and flat.]
[He drops his hand and they move.]
[The bridge is a ruin.]
[The floor is covered in blood and in bodies, ordinary naval personnel who came to defend their station and found something they were not equipped to defend against. The instruments along the walls are malfunctioning in cascades, screens cycling through strings of corrupted data, servitor-linked systems twitching with involuntary spasms as the psychic interference bleeds through their connections. The overhead lighting has shifted, some failure in the power distribution pushing the red emergency spectrum into dominance, and everything in the room is the colour of the wrong kind of sunset.]
[At the centre of it stands Captain Athene DuCade.]
[She was a tall woman to begin with. Whatever she is now is taller still, the proportions slightly wrong in a way that the eye registers before the mind can name it, the line of her shoulders too broad, the angle of her neck too long. She has a navigator by the throat, one-handed, and the navigator is alive but barely, the psyker's power being drawn out of them and used as a conduit, the psychic discharge arcing outward in purple-white tendrils that have been carving through the mortal crew in irregular bursts. The bodies on the floor nearest to her position are not intact.]
[Her face is turned toward you the moment you enter. She was waiting for you specifically.]
["Oh." The voice is not Athene's voice, or it is Athene's voice being used by something that has no respect for the instrument it has taken. Male and female simultaneously, harmonics underneath the words that are not in any human register. "The twenty-second Primarch graces us as well. Lady Slaanesh asked me to pass her regards." A smile that uses too many muscles. "She finds the things you keep hidden in the deep places of your heart very interesting. Very pure. She is looking forward to the moment you experience her blessing personally. It will not be long now."]
[The Blood Angel squads open fire.]
[The explosive rounds hit Athene from multiple angles in the same second, and what was Captain Athene comes apart in the way that things under that kind of sustained fire come apart, messily and completely, the body ceasing to be a threat while the voice finishes its last sentence in a tone that remains entirely satisfied with how things are going.]
[The pieces hit the floor.]
[The psychic pressure drops immediately. The navigator collapses. Someone catches them.]
[You push the Slaaneshi parting words to the back of your mind. Not out of your mind, because that is not something you can actually do with that kind of targeted address, but back, filed, set aside for later processing. There is no later if you do not act in the next few minutes.]
[Every Blood Angel and every surviving naval rating on the bridge is looking at you. The confirmation from the Chaos cultist's final words has done what your own claim could not quite do on its own. You are what you said you were. The kneeling begins before the last piece of Athene has stopped moving, spreading outward through the room in a wave.]
["The Holy Blood Angels Legion and the Imperial Navy pay their respects to the twenty-second Primarch!"]
[You find Azkaellon in the crowd.]
["Can you reach Sanguinius? What is his current position?"]
[The vice-captain steps forward before Azkaellon can answer, young and uncertain but unwilling to stay silent.]
["My lord. Just before you arrived, Lord Sanguinius led the main strength of the Legion in an assault on the Grand Cathedral of Mark on Signus Prime. We have not received updated communications. The jamming has been substantial."]
[You absorb this and make your decision about how much to say. You choose all of it. There is no version of the next hours that is helped by anyone here operating with incomplete information.]
["Then listen carefully, because I will say this once."]
[You look at the room.]
["Warmaster Horus has been corrupted by Chaos. He has already turned. Eight Primarchs have joined his rebellion. The campaign on Signus Prime is not a standard reclamation action. It is a trap. Horus constructed it specifically to draw Sanguinius away from his fleet and into an environment saturated with Warp energy, where the Blood Angels' own nature would be weaponised against them."]
[The silence in the room has a specific quality. Not disbelief exactly. Something closer to the moment before a person decides whether to accept a truth they do not want.]
["The forces your father is fighting on that planet are not random Chaos incursion. He is facing a coordinated assault from two Greater Daemons simultaneously. A Keeper of Secrets called Kyriss the Perverse, and a Bloodthirster called Ka'Bandha. Even so, Sanguinius will not fall on that battlefield. I know this with certainty."]
[You pause.]
["But what happens around him on that planet, what his sons experience, what the Legion carries away from Signus Prime in their blood and in their minds, that is not fixed. That is why I am here."]
[You look at Azkaellon.]
["Gather everyone on this ship who is willing to fight and able to stand. We are going to Signus Prime."]
[The assembly is fast. Three veteran Blood Angel squads form in front of you within minutes, full armour, weapons checked, faces showing the particular expression of warriors who have just been told their father is in a trap and have decided that this is relevant to their immediate plans. Behind them, a smaller group of naval ratings who have chosen not to stay on the flagship when the alternative is action.]
[You look at all of them.]
["Most of you will not come through this unharmed. I will not make you a different promise. What I can tell you is that my purpose here is to do everything in my power to change what happens to Sanguinius and to this Legion. Not to witness it. To change it."]
[You let that sit for a moment.]
["I have never found a way to fight less than my hardest. I do not intend to find one today."]
[You raise the Blood Scythe.]
["The Blood Angels do not betray the blood of Sanguinius. Prove it."]
[The response from the assembled Blood Angels fills the damaged bridge like a physical force.]
["For the Emperor and Sanguinius!"]
[Azkaellon is at your shoulder.]
["Never," he says, his voice carrying underneath the rest of them, personal and certain, "betray the blood of Sanguinius."]
[You move toward the hangar.]
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