Morgan never got hit.
Thousands of fighters, pushed by Sigil, rushed forward. Their attacks lit up the battle, breaking the strange quiet that had fallen over the island. Morgan watched them come, looking completely calm.
Behind him, his remaining soldiers paused for a second. Then Morgan's voice cut through the noise. It wasn't loud, but it had a strange power.
"Move."
That command jolted them into action. Morgan's army charged, and the two sides crashed into each other under dark red clouds.
As the fighting started again, Morgan slowly lifted his hand. A thick, red mist seeped into the air, moving silently through the chaos. It settled over Sigil's Starborn soldiers, and the effect was instant.
Groans spread through their front lines. Weakened fighters felt their limbs turn heavy and their energy slow down. Some stumbled and were cut down right there.
From across the field, Sigil's face tightened.
"Morgan!"
A spear of solid black fire appeared in front of Sigil, twisting the air around it. With a quick thrust, the spear vanished, then instantly reappeared right in front of Morgan's face.
Morgan didn't even flinch. He just raised one finger.
Golden light gathered into his own spear. It wasn't ice, blood, or water, but somehow it seemed to have all those deadly things in it.
The two spears hit, and the air shattered. The blast ripped across the ground, throwing nearby fighters around like dead leaves.
Sigil squinted through the dust. A sudden, cold fear settled in his chest. Something was terribly wrong.
Morgan was much stronger now, not just a little, but an impossible amount. The dome was supposed to weaken everyone equally, but Morgan was clearly getting power from it.
"This is the end, Sigil," Morgan said, stepping forward as if walking on air. "You've lost."
Sigil responded with a flurry of attacks, calling forth dozens of black streaks that tore through the sky.
Morgan just casually waved a hand.
Golden chains formed out of thin air and wrapped around the incoming attacks. Instead of exploding, the black spears instantly dimmed. Their energy was violently sucked away until they crumbled into empty shells.
The chains were eating the magic.
Below them, the ground began to shake. The dead bodies scattered across the island twitched. Fresh rivers of blood burst from the corpses, flowing upward into the clouds like a gruesome reverse rain. The dome brightened in response.
A second golden thread shot out from it, going straight into Morgan's forehead.
This time, Morgan didn't fight it. He absorbed the rush of information, though a flicker of human emotion crossed his face for a rare moment—a quick, gut feeling of hesitation and disgust.
Whatever secrets this inheritance was revealing, they were awful.
But the reluctance vanished as fast as it came, replaced by a cold, empty determination.
"I suppose there is no other choice," Morgan mumbled, closing his eyes.
Sensing the change, Sigil didn't wait. He dove toward his Starborn army, his hands quickly forming signs to create a huge curtain of black light over his people.
The crushing pressure on his warriors lifted, giving them a brief moment of relief.
"Too late."
Morgan's voice echoed, cold enough to drop the temperature across the island.
Golden mist poured from the pulsing dome, covering the battlefield in seconds. Sigil's protective curtain did nothing. The mist drifted through armor, barriers, and even people's bodies.
Morgan raised his head to the swirling red clouds. His voice rolled across the land like thunder.
"A Sovereign's words are law."
Even the strongest Primarchs froze, their blood turning cold. The dome pulsed along with the sky.
Morgan's smile widened, completely devoid of any humanity.
"All cultivators beneath the Primarch Realm... offer your lives."
The island shook.
From the golden mist, tens of thousands of sharp, red chains shot out like divine executioners, plunging into the ranks below.
Then, the screaming began.
"Morgan, you're going too far!" Sigil roared, and the battlefield shook, but the chains kept coming from the red clouds. They ripped through the air, stabbing into everyone who wasn't a Primarch, and when they hit, life just drained away.
Everyone on the plains panicked. A young fighter desperately clawed at the glowing red chain in his chest. "No! No! Get this off me!" His fingers passed right through the metal, but the chain just sucked harder. His skin shriveled up fast, like paper in a fire, and in seconds, he was a dry, empty husk. The chain, done with him, snapped back into the air, looking for more.
Nearby, an allied soldier dropped to his knees, his voice cracking. "Morgan! You promised us!" The chain wrapped around his throat flared bright. His body twitched as his life force rushed up the links. "Morgan, save us!"
Morgan didn't even look. The man's desperate cries gurgled into a wet rattle, then he was just another dead body.
Across the lines, everything fell apart. The armies weren't fighting anymore; they were just animals in a slaughterhouse. Some swung their weapons at the ghostly metal, others threw useless spells at the sky, and many just ran blindly. A few dropped their swords and begged the sky for mercy. None of it made a difference. The chains just kept taking lives.
"Morgan betrayed us!" someone screamed, his eyes red with sudden, sharp hate. An enemy commander rushed forward, raising his big sword at the sky. "You bastard!"
He only made it three steps. The chain on his back glowed bright red, sucking his life even faster. His charge stopped, his muscles withered in mid-stride, and he froze, falling forward as a corpse before his sword hit the ground.
The survivors felt a chill. The horrible truth finally sank in: no one below the Primarch Realm could fight this. Not anymore.
High above, Morgan watched the horror with no emotion. The curses, the hate, the screams of his own men, none of it bothered him. He kept looking down as the golden dome behind him pulsed with every death, growing stronger with every scream, using the fallen as fuel. The old inheritance had laid out a path to power, and Morgan was just following it.
From the western ridge, Orion looked grim. Even from far away, he could feel the life force being torn from the earth. The scale of it felt unreal; hours ago, this was just a war between clans. Now, it was a mass sacrifice.
"What the hell have you become?" Orion muttered.
Violet lightning sparked around his shoulders. In a flash, he was gone, streaking across the battlefield like a jagged bolt of light. He appeared instantly next to a group of Starborn warriors in agony, his blade flashing in a bright arc that broke their chains. The freed warriors collapsed, gasping for air, and a brief spark of hope spread through the squads nearby.
But it only lasted a second. The broken chains dissolved into mist and instantly reformed, the golden-red strands snapping back onto the helpless men with cruel accuracy.
Orion's eyes narrowed as he jumped back. Even his lightning couldn't stop the magic for good. "Damn it."
Below him, a fresh wave of agonizing screams filled the air. The battlefield had become an altar.
Then, Sigil moved.
The black ground beneath his feet exploded as he shot towards Morgan, breaking the sound barrier. The pain of his losses, the burning anger, and the crushing helplessness all combined into one goal: kill the man in the sky.
Hundreds of huge black spears appeared behind him, their combined weight twisting the space around them. With a violent thrust of his arm, Sigil sent the black weapons raining down.
Morgan didn't even flinch. "A Sovereign's words are law."
The island trembled at his words. The falling black spears suddenly stopped, as if they had hit a thick, invisible ocean. Their momentum died instantly; their dark energy flickered. Golden chains shot out from nowhere, wrapping around the trapped spears to suck away their power. One by one, Sigil's spears shattered into harmless dust.
Sigil's chest heaved, and his face darkened. Morgan was getting stronger too fast. The dome wasn't just giving him power anymore; it was doing what he told it to. The difference between them was now terrifying.
Morgan slowly floated down from the sky, his robes fluttering against the red clouds. For a few silent moments, a heavy quiet fell over the plains, and even the dying fighters looked up.
Morgan looked down at the bleeding earth, his gaze sweeping over Sigil then past him to the center of the bodies. His eyes locked onto a young boy standing frozen among the dead.
Three.
Sigil immediately saw where Morgan was looking, and a cold dread shot through him.
Morgan smiled, a slow, deliberate curve of his lips. "So that's him."
The words were barely a whisper, but they echoed clearly in Sigil's ears. Morgan's eyes stayed on the boy, his grin growing with an unsettling excitement. "Interesting."
The moment he said that, Sigil's blood ran cold. For the first time since the Second Protocol began, Morgan didn't look like a distant god doing a ritual. He looked truly, hungrily interested, and his eyes were fixed entirely on Three.