The anti-gravitic platform carried them through the colossal, cavernous interior of the Void Sword for nearly two standard Terran hours.
As the craft touched down, attendant automatons stepped forward to clear the way. The heavy automated blast doors ground upward, revealing a magnificent grand chapel. Rising nearly fifty meters to a vaulted ceiling, it bore the unyielding, imposing hallmarks of Imperial architecture. At the center of the column-less hall stood a thirty-meter-gilded statue of the God-Emperor. Cloaked in masterfully sculpted power armor, His gaze pierced the distance, and His hand held a greatsword aloft. The blade shimmered with a faint, ethereal golden luminescence.
Bathed in the warm glow of countless flickering votive candles, the monument radiated an austere grandeur. Bundles of sacred incense burned in ornate braziers, weaving thick ribbons of smoke through the air before they were drawn into the overhead ventilation grates.
With a single glance, Roboute Guilliman recognized the figure standing beneath the shadow of the Emperor's effigy, leading the congregation in fervent prayer. It was Ersen, the Word Bearer who had once been taken by the Iron Man.
In front of the monument, dozens of massive pews were arranged in four long columns. The foremost rows, closest to the statue, were occupied by towering figures draped in ash-grey robes. The Imperial Aquila and a strange, unfamiliar icon were meticulously embroidered onto the fabric. Behind them sat another fifty souls, bound by a uniform garb that set them apart from the rest, their collective piety burning with an intensity that eclipsed even those in front.
The Primarchs' entry did not go unnoticed. The suffocating weight of their sheer physical presence and genetic majesty rippled through the chapel. The robed figures in the front rows stiffened, a collective unease settling over them, yet none dared break the sanctity of the ritual. Ersen did not falter either; his voice remained steady as he continued to intone the Litany of the Emperor's Might.
Watching the scene unfold, a sudden, jarring sense of familiarity gripped the Primarchs. For a fleeting moment, through the swirling haze of incense, they caught a haunting echo of Lorgar's ancient shadow.
The two Inquisitors glanced at the four demigods before bowing their heads toward the colossal statue, slipping into silent devotion. For a prolonged interval, a collective, heavy silence governed the grand chapel.
"A mind without purpose will wander in dark places."
Only Ersen's resonant, solemn voice echoed against the stone walls. As the final verses drew to a close, he sealed the devotion with the timeless maxim from the Lectitio Divinitatus. Below, the congregation chanted the words back in unison.
The fifty Adeptus Astartes of the Grey Knights rose first. They cast a brief, measured glance at the two Inquisitors, noting the Sigil of the Ordo Malleus emblazoned upon their collars. Turning to the four Primarchs, the silver-armored warriors offered a deep, respectful bow. Receiving a solemn nod of acknowledgment from the demigods, the Grey Knights turned on their heels and marched out of the chapel in perfect, synchronized silence.
Ersen motioned for the researchers to remain seated, then strode forward to greet the Primarchs, offering his formal respects.
As potent psykers, the Grey Knights possessed internal methods of communication that bypassed standard vox-channels entirely. While they lacked the burning range of Astropaths to throw messages across the interstellar void, they could utilize localized telepathic resonance for long-distance communion. In a standard Space Marine Chapter, such esoteric arts were restricted to the highest echelons of the Librarians.
But these were Grey Knights.
They were the Emperor's hammer, the bane of the Warp's denizens, and the ultimate psychic practitioners among the Astartes. Telepathic synchronization was the foundational bedrock of their training. In the direst of circumstances, a psychic distress signal cast by a dying battle-brother could even serve as a makeshift teleportation beacon, allowing his brethren to tear through reality to reinforce him. It was a maneuver fraught with catastrophic risk, and though theoretically sound, no Grey Knight had ever willingly tested its limits.
In truth, these fifty Grey Knights were more than just assets deployed by the Imperium to serve alongside the Iron Man. They were a knife held in the dark, a calculated measure of surveillance.
The Inquisition had long sought to embed eyes within the Iron Man's fleet. Yet, even the masterful chameleons of the Callidus Temple could not infiltrate an army of the Iron Men the way they might mimic a Necron to slip into a dynasty. No matter how flawlessly a human agent altered their flesh, they could never replicate the cold, synthetic pulse of an AI. The Iron Men were bound seamlessly through a quantum network; a single unit disconnected from the hive-mind stood out like a dead star.
Worse still, every Callidus Assassin disguised as an unsanctioned rogue psyker and smuggled aboard the Iron Man's vessels had vanished without a trace.
During deployment, a Callidus assassin would undergo rigorous self-hypnosis and cognitive scrubbing, embedding mental triggers tied to specific operational parameters or combat scenarios. Until those triggers were tripped, they would live out their fabricated identities entirely, utterly unaware of their true allegiance.
Yet reality shattered the logic of the temples.
The rogue psykers claimed by Axion were integrated into an existence entirely unimaginable on any Imperial world. The Iron Man provided for them with near-flawless, sterile efficiency. They were completely insulated from war, starvation, pestilence, and the grinding misery of the Imperium. Consequently, the embedded triggers within the hidden assassins never encountered the trauma required to activate them. Some even volunteered for the Iron Man's experiments in their blissful ignorance, ultimately perishing on the testing tables, never realizing who they truly were until their hearts beat their last.
The Grey Knights, however, were an entirely different matter.
The pact brokered by Axion had afforded the High Lords a blatant opportunity to plant their own enforcers in plain sight. The Chamber Militant was the compromise born of internal paranoia and political maneuvering within the Holy Ordos. Axion's trials had never been hidden from these grey-clad warriors; after all, the future might demand that these very Grey Knights integrate into mixed combat doctrines alongside the test subjects.
But the moment the Grey Knights grasped the terrifying scope of the Iron Man's research, they used their psychic gifts to pierce the shroud and relay the truth.
When the Inquisition learned that the Iron Man was actively attempting to mass-produce Astartes-level psykers, cold terror gripped the Holy Ordos. After agonizing deliberation, they brought the intelligence directly to the Lord Regent.
Deeply alarmed, Guilliman had immediately summoned Vulkan to venture into the Dark Imperium. Yet, after enduring the perilous transit of the Nachmund Gauntlet, they intercepted Jaghatai Khan, who had departed for Lucius half a standard month prior. Though the Great Khan had set out early, his fleet had been battered by a sudden, violent Warp squall, leaving them drifting perilously close to eternal damnation within the Empyrean. By the time they tore their way back into realspace, weeks had slipped through their fingers.
Shortly thereafter, Guilliman crossed paths with Lion El'Jonson, returning from an undisclosed sector. Upon hearing the Lord Regent's grim tidings, the four Primarchs consolidated a strike force from their respective fleets and charted a direct course for the heart of Segmentum Obscurus.
Now, the Void Sword sat anchored within a vast galactic gulf, drifting not far from the Mandeville points of two neighboring systems. Its mountainous, obsidian hull was a silent titan, observed by countless passing Imperial Navy warships and merchant fleets who had come to revere the massive vessel as a monolithic beacon of safe passage through the dark.
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