[The images on the screen continue to flow, showing the Twelfth Legion—the World Eaters—after Angron's return.]
[This was once a Legion known as the "War Hounds," famous for their brotherhood and ferocity in battle.]
[They yearned for a father, longing to have a Primarch they could serve and emulate like other Legions.]
[But what they received was a father who hated them.]
[On the screen, Angron has just taken command of the Legion. He refuses to acknowledge these warriors as his sons; he despises them, calling them "weak lackeys of the Emperor."]
[To establish his authority, or perhaps out of pure venting, he ordered that infamous "Decimation."]
[Unlike Perturabo's cold calculation, Angron's Decimation was a violent frenzy.]
[He personally took to the field. If the Legion failed to take a target within the allotted time, he would kill one-tenth of them himself.]
[But the most heartbreaking part was not the Carnage.]
[It was the imitation.]
[The screen shifts to the Apothecary laboratories of the Twelfth Legion.]
[The Captains, led by Khârn, watch their father as he is tortured all day by the Butcher's Nails, driven mad by pain.]
[They did not choose to flee, nor did they choose resentment.]
[They conceived an utterly tragic, utterly twisted idea:]
["If we also implant the Nails... if we can also feel our father's pain... perhaps, he will accept us. Perhaps, we can be closer to him."]
[What a humble, what a desperate kind of love.]
[And so, the great massacre began.]
[Not against enemies, but against themselves.]
[Thousands of World Eaters warriors lay on operating tables, letting the Apothecaries hammer imitation "Butcher's Nails" deep into their skulls.]
[It wasn't to become stronger.]
[It was an irreversible lobotomy.]
[It was the active abandonment of reason to embrace madness.]
[When they stood before Angron again with bleeding heads, enduring agonizing pain, they hoped for a fatherly hug, or even just a word of recognition.]
[But on the screen, Angron only glanced at them coldly, let out a grunt that was either mockery or sorrow, and turned away.]
In the reality of the Throne Room.
This scene left everyone feeling suffocated.
Khârn touched the long-healed yet still hideous neural interface on the side of his head. The electronic nerves twitched slightly under the skin, bringing waves of familiar, stinging pain.
He looked at the screen, his gaze hollow.
At that moment, a heavy footstep approached him.
It was Sigismund.
The First Captain of the Imperial Fists, and the universally acknowledged master of dueling among all Astartes.
Usually as cold and hard as granite, he now looked at Khârn with a complex gaze, akin to looking at a terminally ill patient.
"Khârn."
Sigismund's voice was low and solemn, breaking the silence between them. His hand rested on his sword hilt, not for battle, but to steady himself against this cruel truth.
"Tell me."
The Champion of the Imperial Fists pointed to the tragic scenes of self-mutilation on the screen, his eyes meeting Khârn's, which were often bloodshot from the stimulation of the Nails.
"You destroyed your own brains, you gave up the ability to think calmly, you turned yourselves into Beasts who know only rage... just to be closer to him."
"So..."
Sigismund asked the most cruel question of all:
"Did your father finally accept you?"
"Did he treat you as sons? Or... does he still see you as expendable tools?"
The question was like a rusty saw, hacking deep into Khârn's heart.
The hall fell silent.
The surrounding Astartes, including Loken, Tarvitz, and even Abaddon, looked over.
Khârn's lips trembled.
He wanted to lie.
He wanted to say, "Yes, Father loves us."
Khârn's fingers gripped the exposed electronic nerve bundles at the side of his head so hard his knuckles turned white.
He looked up at the figure on the screen, who always had his back to the Legion, forever roaring in fury.
The father to whom they had sacrificed their souls just to please.
He remembered Angron's roars on the battlefield, and the Primarch's gaze—a mixture of disgust, pity, and indifference.
A bitter smile pulled at the corners of Khârn's mouth, one filled with endless heartache and self-mockery.
"No,"
Khârn said hoarsely.
"Never."
"In his eyes, we are merely more convenient tools. Inferior imitations of him."
"He has never... not for a single second, considered us like the brothers and sisters he lost on Nuceria."
"Everything we did only turned us into more efficient butchers, but he still sees us as the lackeys of that slaver."
"Khârn, you are my friend, and a warrior worthy of respect."
Sigismund took a half-step forward, staring into Khârn's eyes, his tone becoming stern and solemn:
"If you truly follow your Primarch and join Horus in rebellion..."
Sigismund looked at Khârn, a flash of pity in his eyes.
"Then your end will be an absolute tragedy."
"Not just because you will lose."
Sigismund shook his head.
"But because, even if you shed your last drop of blood for him, even if you slaughter the entire galaxy as an offering to him..."
"Your father will still not accept you."
"Why?"
Khârn asked subconsciously.
"We betrayed the Empire for him, betrayed everything. Why would he still despise us?"
"Because you did the thing he hates most,"
Sigismund said, emphasizing every word.
"Angron has spent his life hating slavers, hating those who force others to bleed and strip them of their freedom."
"His glory lay in resistance, in dying for freedom."
"And look at him now. Look at you now."
"He hammered the Nails into you. He forced you to become monsters just like him. He uses violence to drive you to slaughter the innocent."
"You have become the very thing he hates most—slavers. Or rather, the slaver's accomplices."
Sigismund pointed to Angron, who was curled in the shadows not far away.
"He never treated you as sons, and never saw himself as a father."
"He has simply turned himself... into a new tyrant of Nuceria."
"He is using this method to take revenge on the World he could not save."
"And you are the Beasts he keeps in the arena for his amusement and venting."
Khârn's pupils contracted sharply.
These words were heart-piercing, yet they were the cruelest truth.
Angron resisted tyranny, only to become the most brutal tyrant. He hated enslavement, yet he personally placed the heaviest shackles upon his own sons.
Sigismund's voice softened slightly.
"Listen, Khârn. Only those who remain loyal, those who refuse to become Beasts and insist on keeping their honor... have any hope of gaining even a moment's recognition from the depths of your father's heart."
"Because that is what he used to be."
"That is what the dead Gladiator King looked like."
"Only by dying like a true warrior, rather than slaughtering like a mad dog, can you remind him of his former glory."
After hearing Sigismund's words, Khârn froze.
The roar of the Butcher's Nails seemed to recede in that moment.
What had they become this for?
For a father who would never love them? For a gladiator who had already become a slaver?
"Heh..."
Khârn smiled bitterly, looking at Sigismund.
"You are still as blunt as ever, Sigismund. Your words hurt more than your sword."
Khârn touched the Nails in his head—shackles he could never remove.
"Yeah... you're right."
"It will be a tragedy."
"A bunch of fools who turned into monsters seeking a father's love, only to be seen by that father as the most disgusting things imaginable."
"We followed him and became demons, yet we lost the chance to be his sons forever."
Khârn turned his head to look at Angron, who was laughing maniacally at the screen nearby.
That tall, red figure, filled with pain.
"But do we... have any other path?"
Khârn whispered in his heart, his voice drowned out by the ensuing noise of the Nails.
The images on the screen gradually faded; the story of Angron and the Twelfth Legion came to a temporary close.
But everyone present could feel that this was merely the calm before the storm.
A line of blood-red subtitles, foretelling destruction, appeared on the screen along with a set of coordinates.
It was the destination where all tragedies converged, the place where all betrayals began.
[The lies have been woven. The poison has been injected into the heart.]
[All loyalty will be tested; all oaths will be broken.]
[Istvaan III.]
[The rebellion, the true beginning.]