At last, the hope appeared. In the infinite variations of the battle against Horus, there was one that challenged predestined death. One vision was different. Only one. In it, Sanguinius dodged the death blow. Horus put so much power into it that he overbalanced when he missed. There was a fraction of a second of hesitation as he sought to correct his momentum. Sanguinius seized the chance, and drove the Blade Encarmine up. It found the weakened point in Horus’ gorget. It pierced his armour.

It pierced his throat.

It pierced his skull.

This was the outcome Sanguinius had never even dreamed of, because the entire foundations of his destiny were built upon its denial. In this one vision, the terrible blackness withered, collapsed and broke apart into whirling ash. Here, and only here, there was hope. Here, and only here, the Imperium did not fall. Here, and only here, the Emperor’s dream lived on.

Like the coils of a monstrous serpent, the continuum of dooms gathered around Sanguinius. They came to strangle the single hope. They came to destroy the thing that turned them from certainties into mere possibilities. The visions formed a knot around Sanguinius and the image of light. It tightened. The wrenching anger rose once more, fastening its grip on his being. When the knot closed, the light would be gone, and there would only be the fury.

Sanguinius felt the imperative of decision. He made his choice. He refused the blackness and chose hope. He lunged towards the light. He raised his sword and plunged into the vision. He became the Sanguinius who slew Horus. The sword killed Horus, and it cut through his evil dream. It sliced through the knot. The visions fractured, mirrors broken into shards. They fell away into the void.

Now Sanguinius was falling again, but he was not done with the sword. After driving the Blade Encarmine through Horus’ skull and through the knot of fate, he brought it down. There was so much strength in the blow, it cut through unreality itself.

The blade sank into the flesh of the dream void. It tore the warp fabric open with fire. Light appeared beneath Sanguinius as he fell. He was leaving the realm of visions, but had not yet returned to reality. He was in a nether zone, neither dream nor real, but linked to both states. The light was another knot, another nexus. It looked like the intersection of the manufactorum conduits, only the conduits themselves were absent. It was the flow of warp energy and material mined from the interior of Pyrrhan, the unreal colliding with the solid to form the gate. Searing, impossible creation whirled through the convulsions of the nexus. It was the forge of the new reality of the galaxy. Sanguinius descended, wings outspread, to cleave the knot in two.