Warhammer 40K: System Error, I Summoned the Arch-Traitor!

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Joy.

Anger.

And a thin thread of sorrow and envy.

These were the Lion's first sensations. Three utterly distinct emotions surging at once, tangling and colliding inside his chest, merging into a searing undercurrent that poured through his veins and into every limb.

He could have turned it all into violence. His hands spread open, then clenched, knuckles popping softly as he tried to bleed off something, anything, of his most primal nature.

He wouldn't. Not another Nemiel. The ghost of that punch still lived in his knuckles, a permanent reminder of what losing control cost him.

What he needed right now was a beast large enough to tear apart with his bare hands. The dull thud of muscle giving way, the brittle snap of bone. Or some death-wish greenskin warlord he could beat into the floor, punch by punch, until the fire churning behind his eyes finally burned itself out.

Guilliman's name had been a stone dropped into still water. Ripples spreading, then settling. This was something else. Horus's name was a submarine volcano. Not a slow, venting eruption, ten thousand years of pressure detonating through the crust all at once, boiling the entire ocean from below.

Russ would have been fine.

Why in the Emperor's name did it have to be Horus?

He was already missing his Fenrisian brother. Russ, with that perpetually insufferable grin, wasn't he ten thousand times better than that bald-headed bastard?

And Guilliman. He brought Horus to the Throneworld? Has that boy gone and turned traitor too?

The Lion's pacing accelerated. His impatience was written plainly across his face. Zabriel noticed and moved to intervene, and the Lion stopped him with a single gesture.

Everyone watched as the Lion breathed. A breath drawn from somewhere deep in his core, chest expanding fully, air drawn in through the nose, settling into the lungs, then released in a long, slow exhale.

Once.

Then again.

The churning sea of emotion pressed flat beneath an iron will, subsiding, or rather, driven deeper, into a place where only he could still hear those undercurrents roaring.

He stopped. He turned his head toward Kullen. The movement was precise and controlled, like a predator coiling into stillness in the last second before it strikes. Those emerald eyes settled on the son standing before him, and the weight of that gaze gave Kullen something he hadn't expected.

Not a Gene-Sire regarding his progeny. A lion in deep forest, watching through layers of leaves, throat of his prey already selected.

"Evidence." The Lion's voice was low.

Kullen did not rush to answer. "Permit me to set your question aside for the moment, my liege. Before I answer, I would ask you to answer mine."

The transgression of it. To every Dark Angel in the room, Kullen had just stepped off a cliff. A son, one fallen warrior among many, daring to set conditions before the Lion, daring to make Lion El'Jonson answer first. Anyone who knew the master of the First Legion knew how badly that could go.

The Lion waved his hand.

The same gesture he'd used on Zabriel moments ago, but softer, less edge, something else folded into it. Patience, maybe. Or something deeper. Something that might have been understanding.

"Ask."

"I wish to know whether you passed the trial — the Emperor's trial." Kullen drew a breath, and the rest came out slowly with the exhale. "And whether you took Lord Yago Sevatarion captive."

For half a second, surprise and confusion crossed the Lion's face. Then it smoothed.

"I obtained the three weapons. Sevatar is my prisoner."

The Lion narrowed his eyes. He could feel it, his son was still holding something back. Information about another Primarch. Konrad's, without question.

"Good. Now answer my question. This evidence you mentioned — where is it?"

Kullen produced a small terminal. Inside it, pre-loaded: a holographic recording of three Primarchs. The old knight activated it and spoke plainly. "In full disclosure, my liege — it is not only Guilliman and Lord Lupercal who have returned. Lord Sanguinius and Lord Konrad have come back as well."

The Lion said nothing. The Fallen Angels around him froze where they stood, faces cycling through expressions worth a lifetime of study. The Lion remained still.

But he was trembling.

Visible. Minute. Irrepressible.

No one knew what he was thinking. No one dared speak.

No one could truly understand what it meant, those names, Sanguinius, Horus, Konrad, Guilliman, spoken together in a single sentence, to a soul who had woken alone into a world ten thousand years removed from everyone he had ever known.

The terminal hummed to life. Blue light particles drifted together in the air, cohering, condensing, resolving into a face that hung suspended before the room.

His brother. Sanguinius.

The air on the bridge felt as though it had been drawn out entirely. The Lion bore down on the undercurrent in his chest.

The Great Angel's voice, warm, unmistakable, filled the hall.

"Brother. It has been a long time. If you are seeing this, it means I have returned."

That smile. The Lion had not seen it often, but he knew it. The victory feast at Ullanor. A quiet moment at the edges of Nikaea. On Macragge. In the handful of times the brothers had actually all been in the same place at once.

Earnest. Exactly as it had always been.

[I know you are confused. Angry. Why are Horus and Konrad here with me? I can only tell you broadly, everything is... Father's will. His power at work.]

The Lion's eyes narrowed. He didn't let himself sink into the warmth of reunion. A hunter doesn't lower his guard for a beautiful view.

He caught it. A detail almost too small to register. Mid-sentence, the Great Angel paused, just a fraction of a second, the kind of pause most people would never notice, the kind only someone who truly knew him could catch. In that sliver of time, Sanguinius's gaze drifted sideways by less than half an inch.

Less than half an inch. A blink-and-miss-it shift.

Someone was feeding him his words. Or at the very least, reminding him to choose them carefully.

Who? Who could possibly be coaching this, the most perfect of them all?

Sanguinius moved on to Guilliman's awakening, then to Horus's journey to Terra. To the audience with the Emperor. To the absolution.

The Lion's breathing went rough.

Absolution. The Warmaster who had launched the Heresy. Who had nearly broken the entire human Imperium. Absolved by Father.

He hadn't finished processing that when the recording lurched.

A hand appeared at the edge of the frame, Sanguinius's hand, making an animated gesture off-screen, beckoning someone forward. The motion carried that easy familiarity that only exists between brothers: come on, you're already here, stop hiding. And then, under persistent encouragement, a large bald face was pulled into the center of the frame.

Horus Lupercal.

The instant he saw him, the Lion shut his eyes.

Pure reflex. The way a hand yanks back from flame before the brain registers heat. The way eyelids snap shut against a blinding light.

He refused to let that face enter his sight. Refused to accept that it could simply appear there, calm, unbothered, standing beside Sanguinius as though nothing had ever happened.

Every son in the room saw it plainly. The unmasked disgust. The fury. Before those emerald eyes closed, the fire in them could have melted steel.

"Long time no see, Lion."

Horus spoke.

The Lion's shoulders went rigid, barely perceptible, but it was there.

That wasn't the voice he remembered. What had Horus sounded like at the end? A roar from the deck of the Vengeful Spirit. A voice warped by Chaos corruption, tangled with warp static, barely human.

This voice was low and even. Carrying a calm that felt almost alien on Horus's tongue.

The Lion opened his eyes. Forced them open. Forced himself to look.

At the brother he hated.

"I imagine you heard everything Sanguinius said. I don't expect your forgiveness — what I did is beyond that. But..." A beat. "It's good to see you."

The Lion studied him. The old arrogance was gone, that world-conquering certainty, that warmth he used to carry like an imitation of the Emperor. The Lion blinked, half-convinced his instincts had failed him.

He was seeing something in Horus that reminded him of Russ. That particular quality, of a man who has seen through everything, who has no illusions left, and who has chosen to fight anyway.

He wasn't sure. He couldn't be sure.

Then Curze walked in, and everything else stopped.

Horus had barely finished speaking.

The Night Haunter had his long hair tied back, pulled neatly behind his head, baring that pale, angular face. He was wearing a loose sleep-robe, soft fabric, the kind you wear when you've just climbed out of a private bunk. A steaming cup in one hand. A book in the other, a bookmark sticking out halfway through the pages.

He was just passing by.

Curze glanced at the recording device and gave a lazy wave, one hand, wrist loose, the motion carrying that particular offhand elegance that shouldn't have worked on someone in a sleep-robe but somehow did.

"Ah. The Lion."

Light. Casual. The tone of a man who just spotted a semi-familiar neighbor at a street corner, not the brother he had once tried to kill.

"I am not happy to see you. I will never forget that damned arrogance you carried in your youth, that look, that absolute certainty that you were the most competent person in any room, that you had already thought through everything everyone else was still working out. Truly revolting."

The corner of his mouth curled slightly upward as he said it, like he was recalling something he'd found funny once.

"My prophecies tell me you've gotten old? I'd advise you to work on that temper. A single offhand remark from me might be enough to stress that aging heart of yours, and if I indirectly cause you bodily harm, that becomes a criminal matter. I don't do that sort of thing."

A brief pause.

"We'll talk properly when we meet. In the meantime, look after my Legion Master for me. Sevatar, obviously."

Then he walked out of frame. Light on his feet, the hem of his robe drifting behind him. He was already humming something, a tune with no clear melody, coming and going in fragments, but carrying in those fragments something old and faint and entirely out of place on him.

Happiness.

The Lion was silent.

➤ Next: From Now On, You Are the Warmaster of the Dark Imperium!

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