Chapter Text
Cold.
Sigmar felt nothing but cold.
He clung for dear life to the world -- HIS world -- that he had done so much to protect. He had failed. Why did he have to fail? In the stories he was told as a boy so, so long ago, the heroes won. Why didn't that happen this time? He had failed to save them. Karl Franz, leader of the Empire that he had made himself. Miao Ying, the Storm Dragon whom he had loved so many centuries ago. Teclis and Tyrion, the Elvish heroes he had only just begun to know. All of them gone. Lost. Forgotten. He could never have his old life back. He felt powerless for the first time in his life. Sure, he was a god, but without a realm and worshippers, what is a god? He had nothing but himself and his hammer, and the dying core of a world that was once his own.
Sigmar thought of what had led him to this point. The hours of his incarnation were eventful -- He defeated Nagash, his old foe, and a Bloodthirster he didn't dare learn the name of. He fought Archaon, the champion of Chaos, not once but TWICE, and yet somehow he lost. Sigmar, the God-Emperor, lost. And Archaon had the audacity to gloat. It took everything he had just to connect one thought to another. The world had been consumed by Chaos, and only its core, made of the purest iron in all the world, remained. Sigmar did something he had never done before.
He cried.
Tears flowed from his eyes, each drop evaporating into the void before his very eyes. What did any of it mean? What was the point of it all? He hadn't lost, had he? He was still alive, and had defeated Chaos' greatest champion, but at what cost? He had lost everything he had ever loved, everywhere he had ever called home, everyone he had ever called a friend, everything that his life had been for. He stopped Archaon, and Grimgor, and Nagash, and Skreech Verminking, but lost everything that made it worth fighting for in the process. Sigmar clutched Ghal-Maraz, the only thing left that he could call his own, and cried until he couldn't cry any more. The tears stopped, but his grief never did. He drifted through the void for what felt like forever, nothing ever changing, until far in the distance, he saw a light.
He collapsed, hope glimmering on the horizon. Maybe things weren't so grim and dark after all.