Chapter 574: Blood Crow: Victory!

They were never angels.

They were ghouls, mutants, the bloodiest, cruelest blade forged by the Emperor.

He dragged them from the deepest caverns of Pluto, exposing their twisted limbs to thin sunlight.

Terrified, they bowed, knelt, and begged before the Golden King, not understanding why he attacked them.

They were merely the most insignificant inhabitants of the unremarkable planet Pluto, mutated beyond recognition from their ancestors to survive its dwarf-planet environment, just as Pluto itself had been downgraded from planet to dwarf-planet in an age humanity had long forgotten.

But the Golden King came, unleashing bloodthirsty monsters clad in crimson armor, burrowing into their tunnels, invading, slaughtering, capturing them.

They used every skill they had to resist the Golden King, but to no avail—he killed all their leaders, dragging them one by one from their burrows.

They knelt before the Golden King, whose perfect, sacred body burned their flesh with searing pain, like the sun barely visible from Pluto.

The Golden King did not kill them; had he wished to, he needed only to obliterate the dwarf planet with his fleet.

The Golden King implanted gene-seed into their bodies, reshaping their blood, flesh, bone, and genes.

They were remade: their former mutations vanished, their weak minds utterly reforged—they grew tall, strong, limbed like normal men, with golden hair and handsome faces.

Yet, they remained mutants, vile monsters, even more deformed and terrifying than before.

In the instant their transformation was complete, they felt the bloodlust surge.

They were clad in the same crimson power armor as those bloodthirsty monsters, given the same names, their minds shaped to mirror those monsters'.

They were remade into the very bloodthirsty monsters that had slaughtered them.

They were the Ninth Legion, vile ghouls who devoured the corpses of their comrades and drank the blood of their enemies.

They were raised from mutants and forged by the Emperor into crimson, vile blades, bearing the cruelest, bloodiest face of the Great Crusade.

Until he returned.

Beautiful one, beautiful angel, beautiful Son of Gold.

His smile calmed their hearts, his sorrow soothed their fate, his gentle words quelled their bloodlust.

He said they were his children, that he would save them, that he would remake them.

They were not mutants, not ghouls—they were pure angels.

He brought art, poetry, painting, forging, sculpture—using these beautiful things to reshape their souls, helping them suppress the crimson hunger within.

It seemed to work. Slowly, they crawled out of the ghoul's abyss; their reputation changed, and in the eyes of the Empire's countless masses, they became angels, tasting honor they had never known.

But had they truly become angels from ghouls?

In those deep, silent nights, the crimson hunger tormented them, driving them to restless, sleepless agony.

On the bloodiest battlefields, the rage of those around them awakened them, their reason thinned to near nothing.

In lonely corners, staring at the blood pooling from comrades' or enemies' corpses, their throats tightened.

Each time, they were terrified—more terrified than ever before.

They feared becoming their former selves again, the twisted ghoul, defiling the honor now upon them.

More than that, they feared betraying their father's hope, betraying the Son of Gold's mercy, betraying that beautiful one.

Father, Son of Gold, beautiful one—

You were wrong. No matter how much you pity us now,

our flesh remains ghoul, our blood remains mutant blood, our fate remains blood.

Those pains, that resentment, that struggle—all erupted into naked fury the moment death came.

Fury against enemies, against comrades, against themselves, against the Golden King.

Emperor, why did you forge us into such ugly, bloodthirsty creatures, yet give us a gene-father so beautiful?

Was it to control us? To humiliate us?

Or did you ever intend to make our father a ghoul too?

Did the chaotic currents of the Warp disrupt your plan, saving our father, and by chance make him an angel?

This thought was the fiercest of all their rage—nearly naked hatred.

Burning, burning, burning—until chosen by the Blood God, remade into the Red Angel.

The Red Angel is the fury of all Sanguinius's children, the form the Emperor had originally planned for Sanguinius.

A bloodthirsty monster more ravenous, more furious, more mad than any other.

Golden King, we hate you.

Son of Gold, we we we

Abaddon and Fulgrim stepped back simultaneously, distancing themselves from the Red Angel.

All the fury of Sanguinius, accumulated in the Warp over ten thousand years, erupted at once—igniting the Red Angel in crimson flame, consuming and devouring all around.

Blood boiled and evaporated; marble structures dissolved in an instant, turning to ash carried away by the wind.

The fire roared, and faintly, millions of ghouls howled, lunging at Abaddon and Fulgrim.