190: Chapter 190 Stitching the Eyes of Fear

"Joint invasion by the Four Chaos Gods detected! Greater Daemon level targets and above: Karbha, Kugath, Kairos, and Lady Slaanesh, the Daemonette of Sound confirmed! Chaos Primarch level targets: Fulgrim, Magnus, Mortarion, and Angron confirmed! Total enemy scale cannot be estimated!!"

providence's alarm had taken on a rare sharpness, a stress response of the logic core when faced with an almost unsolvable amount of data.

"The Four Gods joining forces, and four Primarchs appearing together," Alpha-01 stared at the rapidly expanding, variegated and profane colors on the holographic star map, taking a deep breath. "What merit does the Human Federation have to be held in such high regard by Them?"

He pressed the fleet-wide communication:

"To all ships, I have only one thing to say."

"We are humans. They are traitors, heretics, the Emperor's outcasts, and the mortal enemies of the Human Federation."

"This battle is not for conquest, nor for glory, but only to prove one thing: ten thousand years of human evolution has long since surpassed these husks wallowing in old glory."

"All fleet units, prepare for engagement. For Order."

The defensive battle for the "Nullifier-7" node was the most tragic and magnificent space epic in the history of the Human Federation.

Khorne's frenzy was the first to hit the shore. Karbha's giant axe split two adjudicator-class battleships like rotten wood, and every volley from the Skull Throne Fortress's massive cannons tore burning flesh-like gaps in the Human Federation fleet's lines. Alpha-01 personally led the annihilation to intercept the Bloodthirster Prince; the main cannon of the eternal-class titan ship collided with the Daemon Prince's blood-stained battle-axe at point-blank range, the shockwave shattering the keels of three nearby friendly frigates.

Nurgle's corruption was everywhere. The Terminus Plague sown by Mortarion's own hand could infect even the void itself; the temporal alloy armor of three Nullifier nodes began to proliferate, decay, and disintegrate uncontrollably.

Wherever Kugath's Rotting Palanquin passed, even the dark-gold light of the Order Field was stained an unholy moldy green. Engineering ships braved the risk of infection to weave through the front lines, spraying sanctified nano-repair fluid at every source of corruption.

Tzeentch's schemes wove an invisible noose. Wherever Magnus's single eye looked, the tactical data links of the Human Federation fleet began to show inconceivable logical fallacies. Kairos's Head of the Past constantly recalled the next moves of the Human Federation fleet, while the Head of the Future prophesied the landing point of every shell, then through Tzeentch's sorcery, funneled the information from these two heads simultaneously and contradictorily into the command core of the adjudicator.

Had the adjudicator not integrated the conceptual processing capabilities of the Taotie Prototype and the laws-parsing authority of the star god fragments, sufficient to maintain logical consistency amidst the impact of paradoxes, the entire battlefield command system would have already collapsed.

Slaanesh's pleasure was a weapon more terrifying than death. Fulgrim did not directly participate in the battle; his mere presence was enough to make the most steadfast crew members begin to question the meaning of their lives. Lady Slaanesh, the Daemonette of Sound's voice finally found its target; she sang a requiem only forty-three seconds long to a communication node of the Firmament Network, and then, nine thousand two hundred and seventeen out of the three hundred thousand technicians at that node stopped their heartbeats while smiling.

And Angron—he just crushed everything in his path.

No tactics, no dialogue, not even any emotion that could be interpreted as hostility, because pure rage requires no emotion; rage itself was his essence. Three adjudicator-class ships were like children's toys before him, one dominator-class had its reactor core pierced by him, and two Nullifier nodes were punched straight through by him.

"Nullifier-7 node in critical danger! Outer defenses lost, main structure is under direct attack!"

"annihilation damage rate at 41%! Main cannon overheating, Karbha is reforming!"

"The seventh, ninth, and eleventh defensive lines have collapsed, requesting reinforcements, requesting reinforcements..."

The channel fell into silence amidst that clear sword ring that seemed to come from ancient times.

A golden light tore through the crimson canopy of the Eye of Terror from behind the Chaos Fleet.

That was not psychic power, not the Warp; it was something older than Chaos, heavier than betrayal, and more resolute than the order of the Human Federation.

That was the Emperor's power, but not the Emperor himself descending.

At the core of that light was a sword.

A sword burning with golden flames, its blade inscribed with ancient oaths long forgotten, a sword that had ended the lives of Primarchs ten thousand years ago.

emperors sword.

Holding it was a figure clad in damaged armor, one-armed, one-eyed, his face eroded by ten thousand years of wind and frost like ancient rock. Behind him was that legion that had long since ceased to exist, the Dark Angels, but not entirely. They were the living, the dead, eternal prisoners caught between the two, bound by both sin and loyalty.

Lion El'Jonson.

Primarch of the First Legion. The Lion who had slept for ten thousand years.

Beside him was a Primarch silent as a shadow, holding a great scythe and clad in raven-winged armor—Corax, the Scourge of Word Bearers, the eternal nightmare of traitors.

Further back was that off-white legion, long cursed yet rekindled with battle intent by the touch of the Emperor's hand—the Death Guard, but not Mortarion's Death Guard. Their armor was still white, and the Glimmer of reason still remained in their eyes.

Standing at their forefront was a giant with a face as calm as iron, holding a Purifying Torch, like a walking judgment.

The Regent of the Empire, commander of the Indomitable Crusade, in this most critical moment of the Eye of Terror, returned to the battlefield with his brothers who had once lined up under the banner of the Ultramarines—brothers who had awakened and returned.

Not to support the Human Federation, not to reconcile with heretics.

It was to bring an end.

"Long live the Emperor." Guilliman pointed his sword at the four Chaos Primarchs. "Traitors, your doom has arrived."

The Firmament Network of the Eye of Terror was still pulsing.

The wreckage of the Human Federation fleet and the ashes of incinerated daemons drifted together in the void, indistinguishable as to which was metal and which was flesh. The power reactor of Alpha-01's annihilation was more than half shut down, and the bow's main cannon was melted into a mass of twisted scrap metal, yet it still stood before Nullifier-7 like a dying beast.

Karbha's giant axe and emperors sword collided at a distance of three hundred meters, the shockwave sweeping across three light-days. The Lion and Corax double-teamed Mortarion, The Lion Sword and the Nightfall Scythe carving cracks of loyalty into the Lord of Death's rusted scythe. Magnus's single eye reflected Guilliman's charging figure, unyielding and unretreating; the schemes of the Path of Change were simplified in this moment by the resolve of the Emperor's son into the simplest fact: either I die, or you perish.

And Han Zhe, in the deepest part of Keystone-1, stared at the burning sector on the star map and signed the order that had long been prepared.

"Nullifier Network, all nodes, overload activation."

"Protocol: Firmament Closure, continue execution."

"Any existence blocking the path between the suture line and the target, whether god, daemon, Primarch, or ally."

"Purge them all."

Thirty-seven thousand eight hundred and seventy-two Nullifier nodes, at the moment that order was given, simultaneously erupted with brilliance exceeding their design limits.

Eye of Terror, closure.

The equatorial belt of the Eye of Terror, that profane blood that had flowed for ten thousand years, was forcibly stitched together before the iron will of the Human Federation.

The rift between the Warp and reality closed inch by inch. The projections of the Four Chaos Gods began to distort and disintegrate. The daemon legions that failed to retreat into the Warp wailed and evaporated in the void where the rules of reality were being restored.

Fulgrim's perfect face distorted for the first time. Magnus's single eye dimmed for a moment. Mortarion's plague clouds thinned under the wash of order. Angron's fist of fury failed to shatter its target for the first time; it was held fast by a wall of reality constructed from the resonance of thirty-seven thousand eight hundred and seventy-two Nullifier nodes.

The moment the Firmament Closure was completed, the Eye of Terror—this ten-thousand-year-old scar that had devoured the hope and life of the galaxy—was half-stitched.

The other half, on the other side of the galaxy, still flowed with the toxic blood of Chaos.

But at this moment, in the center of that star sector burning with dark-gold, crimson, rot-green, eerie blue, and the Emperor's gold, all eyes, all gun ports, and all sword points pointed to a common, cold fact:

The Human Federation had just achieved a great feat that the Empire had never accomplished in ten thousand years.

They had stitched the Eye of Terror.

The fires of war had not yet been extinguished. The Four Chaos Gods would not let this go, the traitor Primarchs would not admit defeat, and the grievances between the Empire and the Human Federation could not be erased by a single instance of fighting side by side.

More than half of the Firmament Network's nodes were destroyed by overload, the fleet had lost thirty percent, and beneath that stitched rift, countless daemons still clawed frantically at the boundaries of reality from the other side of the Warp.

Han Zhe closed the battlefield hologram and turned to look out the window at the dark-gold sea of stars belonging to the Human Federation, which was being wrapped layer by layer by the Void Barrier.

"The war is far from over," he whispered. "But from today on, no one can say we are merely challenging the old order."

"Order the reserve fleet to set out and wipe out the remaining enemies," Han Zhe commanded.

"Received."