The final strand of golden light snapped into place, anchoring itself to the dome.
For a heartbeat, a suffocating stillness fell over the island. The barrier was complete, a vast, shimmering grid locking the battlefield beneath a cage of artificial dawn against the darkening sky. Up and down the lines, the frantic rhythm of the fighting faltered. Cultivators lowered their blades, staring upward with hollow eyes. The memory of the elder's sudden, violent end was too fresh; nobody wanted to draw the attention of whatever nightmare had just sealed them in.
Then the sky thinned.
A single thread detached from the golden canopy. It was an insignificant thing compared to the massive dome above, drifting down like a stray piece of silk. It accelerated, cutting through the air straight toward Morgan.
"What now?" Morgan hissed.
He didn't wait to find out. A dozen defensive strata erupted around him, walls of jagged ice layered behind spiraling torrents of water, backed by a dense shield of condensed blood energy. The thread ignored them all. It slipped through the elemental barriers as if they were nothing but mist, giving no resistance, and sank directly into his forehead.
Morgan went rigid.
The surrounding cultivators watched him, their breath catching. Three seconds passed. Five. Ten.
Nothing happened.
Far across the ash choked field, Sigil watched through a churning storm of black fire. Morgan remained frozen, his eyes wide and vacant, his consciousness clearly dragged into some deep, unseen abyss.
Then, the tension bled from Morgan's face. The confusion shattered, replaced by a sudden, wild disbelief that quickly twisted into a sharp bark of laughter.
"Hahaha!"
The sound cut raw across the silent battlefield. People exchanged uneasy glances. Even Sigil frowned, the black flames rippling.
Morgan threw his head back, staring into the gold veined sky. The inheritance, the dome, the maddeningly complex preparations of the long dead master, the puzzle pieces finally slammed together in his mind. It wasn't just power; it was a grand design far more terrifying than he had anticipated.
A dangerous, manic grin split his face, his eyes alight with a fervor that made his own men step back.
"That's it," he whispered, the words heavy with a strange, terrifying reverence. "I finally see it."
He leveled his gaze at Sigil, spreading his arms wide as a roar tore from his throat.
"I am a god!"
The sky responded to his roar.
Not beyond the barrier, but inside it, dark, bloated clouds began to congeal beneath the golden ceiling. They expanded with an aggressive, unnatural speed, swallowing the remaining daylight and plunging the battlefield into shadow.
"Is he losing his mind?" someone shouted.
"No," an elder whispered, his face turning the color of ash as he stared at the roiling clouds. "Look at the air..."
Morgan's skin began to pulse with a faint, subcutaneous gold glow. He didn't have total control over the ancient inheritance yet, but he knew enough to manipulate the mechanisms left behind.
The rain started, not as a gentle drizzle, but as heavy, fat drops that immediately drenched the earth.
Then, the screaming started.
"The blood! Look at the ground!"
Across the island, the hours of brutal slaughter had left the soil choked with corpses. Now, that spilled blood was pulling away from the dirt. Crimson tendrils lifted into the air, defying gravity, floating upward like thousands of jagged red threads stretching toward the storm clouds.
The clouds swallowed it all, drinking the remnants of the dead.
A heavy, sickening silence fell over the ranks. Men instinctively backed away from the bodies of their comrades, watching the unnatural harvest with mounting horror.
Morgan took a long, deep breath, savoring the copper tang in the air. He could feel the dome pulse. It was feeding. With every drop of life spilled, the cage grew tighter, stronger.
"Men!" Morgan's voice boomed, cutting through the rising panic. "Hold your ground!"
He locked eyes with Sigil across the expanse.
"The barrier is a trap, but only for the Starborn clan. Help me wipe them out, and we break the seal together."
A nervous murmur rippled through the enemy ranks. Desperation made his lie tempting, though after the elder's death, trust was a luxury no one could afford.
Seeing them waver, Morgan scoffed.
"Would I lock myself in a cage if I didn't hold the key?"
It was enough.
Hope, no matter how fragile, took root.
Far away, the absolute rage that had blinded Sigil since Khate's death finally cooled into something functional. Grief still burned like a physical wound in his chest, but he could no longer let it blind him. Too many Starborn lives depended on his next move. Three was still out there, somewhere on this godforsaken island.
Looking up at the bleeding sky, a grim certainty settled in Sigil's gut. The stakes had shifted. This wasn't a standard clan war anymore; they were dealing with a relic of an era that should have remained buried.
Before Morgan could bask in his newfound worship, Sigil's eyes flashed.
A beam of pure, concussive black light tore across the distance.
Boom.
The Primarchs gathering around Morgan barely had time to register the heat before the impact tore through them. The blast scattered bodies like dry leaves, the survivors scrambling back in a frantic panic.
As the smoke cleared, Sigil stepped forward.
For the first time since the tragedy, the Starborn warriors didn't see a broken, grieving husband. They saw their commander.
"This is the end of the line," Sigil said.
His voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the wind with absolute clarity. He looked at the bleeding, the exhausted, and the few who still held their footing.
"Live or die, we do not bend the knee."
The fear didn't vanish, nor did the exhaustion, but their grip on their hilts tightened.
Sigil raised his sword, pointing the tip directly at Morgan's throat.
" Time for you to know why the Starborns stood for millions of years."
"Charge" He roared.