A Cold God, Chapter 34

The colony ships came just as Captain Lokir had said they would. Two weeks to the day. Twenty vessels in all, some sleek and long like knives, others bloated with cargo. They cut low across the clouds in slow procession, casting wide shadows over the snows. The first of them landed at the foot of the southern ridge, kicking up plumes of frost and loose stone that blew across the People’s tents and half-buried fire pits. Engines roared down into silence. Then came the hiss of pressure valves and the sound of ramps unfolding.

Men and women disembarked in lines—engineers, laborers, guards. Hundreds of Servitors lumbered after them, their movements jerky and unnatural, arms replaced with tools, faces blank or stripped away entirely. They carried crates and dragged modular structures behind them. Already, scaffolds were being raised.

The machines they brought hummed with power I didn’t recognize, though something in me remembered them. Cylinders the size of cattle unfolded into prefab housing blocks. Ground smoothers rolled over the permafrost and turned jagged stone into flat, dark earth. Pylons bored into the ice and spat out steam, marking grid points. Every motion they made was measured, ordered, without waste.

I stood on the ridge and watched as the old world cracked open beneath the weight of the new. None of the People moved to stop it. Many had already gone down the slope to help—passing stones, carrying cables, mimicking the Servitors until corrected. They did not ask for permission. They understood what this was.

Consul-Admiral Thannis arrived last, disembarking from the largest of the vessels with a delegation of senior officers in silver-trimmed uniforms. A man of broad shoulders and rigid bearing, he bowed his head once as he approached me, enough to meet protocol but no more than required. We introduced ourselves and we both recognized the needlessness of ceremonies. Instead, we got to work. His words were brief. His orders were clear.

He was Captain Lokir’s superior, but that mattered little. He had power over the colonization efforts; it was his role, after all. But absolute power over the world ultimately belonged to me. I was a Primarch. One of the Emperor’s sons. The blood in me outranked them all even before I’d ever met the Emperor.

I gave no speeches. Issued no grand proclamations. I simply told them to do what they had come to do—to build. I wanted them to tame this world for me as, for all the power I wielded, all the death I could bring, such things were simply beyond my ability. And the People were so far removed from any sort of technology that I wouldn’t even know where to begin if I had to manage them without the aid of the Imperium. And so, I gave Consul-Admiral Thannis a simple order: to raise up my people from the long cold and bring them to a place where children would not die of fever and ice and hunger. I wanted roads, bridges, vehicles, schools, hospitals–everything and anything needed for the People to finally move forward from their stone-age practices, to bring them into the modern age. 

They listened.

Work began with the construction of a robust sewage system. Wide trenches dug through stone and frozen soil, reinforced with plasteel frames and filled with churning pumps to keep them from freezing over. Pipes the color of bone were laid down in bundles. The mostly-finished sewer, by the time enough of it was finished for it to be usable, was occupying enough space for a thousand little villages–maybe even more. Waste treatment cores followed next, humming with inner light; it was meant to convert biological refuse into fertilizers for farming. After that came water systems—cisterns that tunneled deep underground into a massive aquifer that I didn’t even know existed, heaters to keep the flow from freezing, and filtration towers that spat steam high into the air like metal geysers.

Heat generators were placed along the first blocks of housing—square grey buildings with vents that hissed warmth into the snow-choked air. They were solid and resilient, easy to build and maintain. Better than tents. Better than the caves. And the People took to them without hesitation. I watched as they carried their belongings inside, lit fires not out of need but habit, and slept behind walls that would not collapse in the wind. Luckily, the interior of the housing units were fire-proofed. 

The city grew slow, but steady. More buildings came. A landing platform reinforced with metal beams. An open hall for food and gathering. The beginnings of a data-center, walls half-wired and blinking. Roads followed, paved and lined with dim yellow lights that pierced through the dusk. A perimeter was drawn and marked with sensor arrays. Patrols walked it each night, half People, half Imperial soldiers.

All the while, the White Walkers stayed with me as my personal attendants. Not because I needed them, but because they unnerved the Imperials and I wanted to avoid an incident. Twenty-five of them, including Thell, oldest and most powerful of their number, who–in my stead–learned to govern the People.

Consul-Admiral Thannis met with me often, always accompanied by his aides. He kept his words clipped and his reports brief. He told me that once the basics were established, the Mechanicum would begin their surveys. They would chart mineral veins, assess fauna, and trace geothermal pockets. The soil would be mapped. The oceans tested. The skies cataloged. All of it would be logged into the Imperium’s systems and measured against usefulness. He used terms like resource viability and agri-index potential.

I said nothing. I understood, of course, what that meant and I was fine with it. 

After three weeks, with the city’s heart now beating—warmth, water, shelter—I named it Dawn.

A new beginning. The rise of something better than the old.

The old ways were not forgotten. They lived in the blood and bone of those who’d survived the endless cold. But they were no longer enough. I knew it. The People knew it. Survival was not victory. It was stalling.

Now, they would live. They would thrive. 

Children ran between the new buildings, feet slapping stone. Some still wore furs, others coats issued from the supply crates. They stared at cogitators with wide eyes, laughed at the whir of Servitors, and pointed at the sky when new shuttles descended. Old men stood by the fire pits and watched it all, not speaking. Just watching.

Nwada brought me reports every morning. Gir made note of which families had moved into what blocks. Thar walked the perimeter each dusk and returned only when the moons had risen. None of them complained. None questioned.

The world was changing. They had waited long enough.

A month passed. Maybe more.

Then, one morning, the sun vanished.

Not long. Just a moment. A blink. The light dimmed as if someone had passed a hand across the sky. I looked up.

It was a ship. A vessel of gold that stretched from horizon to horizon, slow in descent, immense in scale. Its hull glowed faintly, catching the dawnlight as it descended like a burning coin into the valley air. Clouds scattered in its wake. The ground trembled. The People paused their work and stared upward in silence, their breath rising in faint plumes.

Behind it came a second ship, smaller, pale and white like sun-bleached stone. Its shape was leaner. A warship. Less ornate, but no less purposeful. That one, I knew. I felt it before I saw it. Something stirred within it—twenty threads, each one faintly pulsing with the echo of my winter, my void. My sons. My Astartes. They had come.

But they did not descend.

Not yet.

Instead, a third craft detached from the golden vessel, drifting down slow and controlled on antigrav coils that hummed like deep chimes in the air. It lowered into the valley just beyond the edges of the new city—Dawn, as we had named it. I left at once, striding down the frozen ridge with wind at my back. I did not bring the White Walkers. I was gonna have to do this alone.

That I had now bound my larger and greater Winter Storm Self into the Icewalker meant that wherever this body went, my greater self went with it. That had been a concern of mine long ago, but no longer. A good thing, as well, because my Storm Form was literally killing the planet by slowly sapping away its heat. At least, that’s what the Children of the Forest told me. 

Huh… I wonder where those guys are now.

When I stepped into the valley, the golden craft’s ramp had already lowered. Steam curled from its seams. And from that light, he stepped out.

The Emperor.

He wore a plain cloak, dark and undyed, clasped at the throat with a dull brass pin. His boots left no prints. His body was lithe, graceful. Not tall. Not imposing. He looked regal, but otherwise mundane. A man. Old, even. Lines on his otherwise serene face. His hair was black and long and clean, tied loosely at the back. His hands were ungloved. His sharp eyes were a dull brown. And yet, for all his human features, the power that clung to him was unmistakable. The air around him bent and folded. His presence seemed to bathe the world around him in golden light.

There was no denying his power. And, idly, I had to wonder if–in this form at least–he was more powerful than me. 

I stopped twenty paces from him. He tilted his head.

“You’re not quite what I’d envisioned,” he said. His voice was quiet and his tone was soft. There was a faint smile on his lips. His eyes held a deep curiosity towards me. “But then again, you’re not exactly the son I designed, are you?”

He continued, walking forward, hands clasped behind his back. “No. You… the embodiment of the ending of all things, the darkness at the end of creation… merged with my work. A cosmic absolute and a demigod. One devoured the other. Or perhaps the two simply agreed. Such a fascinating thing.”

I watched him approach. There was no deception in his gait. He moved as one who had never feared anything.

“Does it matter?” I asked.

The Emperor stopped a few paces away. His faint smile grew wider by just a bit.

“Perhaps not,” he said. “You’re far more powerful than what my son could have become, even had he reached the peak of his design. But then… you are still technically my son, are you not? Half of him, at least. You’ve merged, after all–two become one.”

His gaze moved across my form—measuring and judging, weighing what had become of his lost creation. The storm within me did not stir. I wondered if he could see the void.

“Did you come to reclaim me?” I asked. “To avenge the passing of your son?” 

The Emperor exhaled through his nose. “No. That would be foolish. I am a rational being. Besides, there’s nothing to avenge. As we’ve established, my son still exists through you.”

He glanced to the ridge beyond, where the city’s smoke rose in thin, clean lines against the grey sky. He saw the work. The order. The peace. Dawn.

“I came to witness,” he said. “To see what had become of my son.”

“And?”

He turned back to me. “You are more. Less. Other. But you are not a failure and I see no reason to reject you. And you are most certainly still a Primarch. One tool disappears and reappears in a new, far more useful form.”

The Emperor held out a hand to me. “Will you join me? Will you, the cosmic truth of ending, join my Imperium and willingly serve mankind?” 

I reached out and grasped and shook his hand. “I will join you.” 

“Good,” He said. “Now that that’s out of the way. I believe your sons have been dying to finally meet their father. You’re lucky; your siblings have had to acquaint themselves with hundreds of thousands, but you’ll only have to memorize twenty names.”