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+ Epilogue + I was there. I was always there. I was there that day, when Horus slew the Emperor... The words cling to my being even as the world Ends around me, the Death promised so long ago. It is the only thing I hear. Here at my Death, at the End of my duties the realization burns like a pyre light in the darkness of the Sea of Souls. My eyes bore witness to many things. Stories and secrets, forbidden rites, and arcana. For I was there. I was there that day, at the Whisper Heads, on 63-19. I was there when the laws of our universe were undone. When brother first fought brother by the whims of the Warp. I fought on both sides... I was there... I remember the first time a questioned you, the first time I felt doubt in my heart. My Father who knew all, but would not tell. I imagine that is how you must have felt towards your own Father? Even before it all. Even as you walked beside him. As I walked beside you. My soul is a tiny thing. A little ember in the swirling universe, yet I can feel their eyes upon me. The last loyal Son of Horus, the last Luna Wolf. Two opposite truths alive and reborn in the same soul. I who learned to kill for the living and dead from my Father who I love. Who I helped kill. The Loyal Traitor. An Ouroboros, the aspect missing in the Old Four's Tarot. I was there the first time you Died... And I now wonder if that Death would have been a mercy. For in the End, in your true Death. You regretted all. The Father I loved conquered the Father they made you become. The one I helped End. I was there... I was there when Istvaan burned from your Heresy. I was there when the Mournival killed itself. I was there, beside Abaddon when Little Horus killed Tarik. I was there... Their wants and desires swirl and coalesce. It pours into me, grafting me with a new name... I was there for all of it... Seven long years of war, the prelude to the Long War. Trillions lives lost, Trillions new Neverborn to fight it. The End of a Dream, the beginning of a Nightmare. The Age of Darkness to birth the Far Future. The Death of the Imperium, for there will only be War. I was there, in Remembrance. I was there in their struggles. I was there when Mersadie Oliton drew her last. Thinking of that pict of the Monster... and the one of Me. I was there when Euphrati Keeler lost and found her Faith, the Blade for the ages to come. I was there for every lecture of Kyril Sindermann. Who thought me the truth of the Warp. I was the man beside them, in the beginning. I was there, a Vengeful Spirit aboard the flagship, as the galaxy burned. I was there, the only name I could hear. I was there beside me. I was all around me. Always. I was... I was there this day, when the Emperor slew Horus.

I was there… After 63 books and 17 years, the story of the Horus Heresy will finally come to its close with The End and the Death. It's been a long, sometimes bumpy, but more often than not epic road from Horus Rising to here. While reading certain moments of the recently released The End and the Death Volume 1 I was honestly feeling quite moved by the fact that we have now actually reached the finishing line of this journey that started all the way back in 2006. For a series with such an impossibly high page-count as the HH and with such an enormous mountain of stories published under its banner, the question of "What's the best reading order?" has basically become its own genre among fans by now. In response to this, there are plenty of "Just the hits"-rundowns, "Avoid at all costs"-blacklists, trackers for specific Legions and Primarchs, or the awesome achievement of Black Librarium’s series spanning web of connections...They're all out there and all have their worth, in my opinion. And honestly? It's just fun to create these kinds of things. It's fun to think about a series that one has spent so much time with, it's fun to dissect it, to edit it, to try to make sense of it. That's one of the reasons I've always loved playing around with reading orders, or why I'm always delighted to talk about this when a friend asks me where to go next in the series. With regards to a reading order and the question of the perfect way to publish the Horus Heresy I was always fond of omnibuses. Black Library at one point got serious with bundling the HH into sensible story-packages and started releasing the HH in omnibus format: Crusade's End, The Razing of Prospero and The Last Phoenix. Those three books all collected two or three novels of the burgeoning series alongside a chosen handful of the scattered novellas and short-stories into a story package that guided a reader right along a chosen thread of the Heresy-web. I loved them! But alas, it was not meant to last: Black Library stopped producing further omnibuses and eventually even stopped selling the existing ones. Still, the idea of omnibuses for the HH had stuck with me, and I kept throwing together reading orders for my custom "omnibuses" for fun. In 2021, I decided to get serious with this and started a personal, series-spanning project: +++ The Horus Heresy Omnibus Project: https://www.heresyomnibus.com +++ What I present there is a reading order that assembles every Horus Heresy novel, novella and short story into a network of twenty-one (theoretical) omnibuses. The result is a fully-grown website that's supposed to help navigate and hopefully entice people to engage with this humongous, mad, epic literary series that has accompanied me and so many other fans for such a long time and will hopefully entertain new readers for years to come. Along the way I started collaborating with the incredibly talented pixel artist Eric Alloway, who had started painting pixel versions of Horus Heresy characters on his Twitter account . We both liked what the other one was doing and decided to join forces. As a result, the website is now littered with pixel versions of all the major Horus Heresy characters, which should make browsing the page fun for veterans and newcomers alike. A friend of mine with experience in software engineering completes our three-man team and takes care of the IT-side of things, of which I understand next to nothing. The website has been way over a year in the making and I hope that both existing fans that eagerly await the final Volume of The End and the Death to hit the shelves as well as newcomers who are just starting to get interested in The Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40,000 find the site useful or at least fun to browse. It would mean a lot to us if fans of these books would engage with and enjoy what we’ve built here, so if you like what you see, please spread the word! We’re also happy to receive constructive feedback to further improve the site. The site will also be the place where I will publish reviews, blog posts, interviews and my long-form analysis of Warhammer books through the lens of different schools of psychology, so if you're interested in this it might be worth a visit and return from time to time. Currently available are Stories told by Monsters, an analysis of Josh Reynolds’s Fabius Bile- and Lukas the Trickster- novels through the lens of Narrative Therapy, and The Dark Coil in contact with Gestalt therapy, an analysis of Peter Fehervari's Dark Coil series through the lens of Gestalt Therapy. Down the line I have a project in the works about a certain Angel and his murderous vigilante brother, so if you're interested in that, stay tuned. For orientation, I recommend starting out with the first omnibus or taking a look at the FAQ. We've also opened threads about the project on Twitter and Reddit, so if you are active there, come and say hi!

Discussion thread for the first instalment of the two-part finale of the Siege of Terra series. The Garro novella will be released in January. Release date estimate (Amazon) - 28/2/23 The walls have fallen, the gates are breached, and the defenders are slain. It is the end and the death. After seven brutal years of civil war, the Warmaster stands on the verge of victory. Horus Lupercal, once beloved son, has come to murder his father. The Emperor, a shining beacon of hope to many, an unscrupulous tyrant to others, must die. The lives of uncountable numbers have been extinguished and even primarchs, once thought immortal, have been laid low. The Emperor's dream lies in tatters, but there remains a sliver of hope. Now, at the final hour of the final day, the Emperor rises. With him come his Angel, his Praetorian, and his Captain, all determined to enact terrible vengeance. Yet the hope is slim, for the Warmaster sees all and knows all, and the ultimate victory of Chaos is at hand. There is no way out.

With the official announcement yesterday of the title for book 7, what are your thoughts about what we can expect in the book? The front cover is a bit of a give away of course for at least one major encounter, but with the new FW Ka'bandha model due to be released I wonder if we'll see a model tie-in with the book? FW and BL used to do Primarch character models/Primarch LE novels collaborations IIRC. It will be interesting to see whether ADB's writing style has changed since his last full length novel Spears of the Emperor back in ... 2019? It's no secret that a lot has happened in his personal life since then, so it will be interesting to see whether this has impacted on his style or tone. ADB if you read this, please know that the community is rooting for you and we are all wishing you every success with this book and your health. But goddamn this must be an incredibly difficult novel to have to write, with all the open storylines and lore constraints to contend with, plus having the duty to setup the final Siege novel (and if this book is hyped, what will the hype levels for that one be?!) Is this the most anticipated BL book since Penitent? ADB's return + one of the most infamous encounters in the lore's entire history at the Eternity Gate + nearing the very end of the Siege ... the hype (and expectations) for this one are huge! Shall we guess at a release date? I'm going for April 9th! It can't come soon enough!!