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Chapter Text

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The Celestial Veil - United Fleet XIII Recon Vessel
Edge of the Sol System
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The void outside shimmered with false serenity, a calm that belied the chaos inside.
Alarm klaxons screamed through the Celestial Veil’s corridors as crewmen scrambled over twisted,
sparking conduits, while Astartes ran from deck to deck in tight, efficient formations, bolters roaring.

Warp scars had blossomed like malignant flowers across multiple decks, and from their gaping rents poured the agents of the Black Host:
heretic cultists, armed and frenzied, their screams swallowed by the hiss of melting conduits and the staccato of bolter fire.
Lesser daemons clawed through reality itself, slipping into existence with slavering teeth and molten eyes.

Captain Jorik Marn stood rigid on the bridge, hands gripping the console as he tracked red blips marking hostile boarding points.
He swore under his breath, barely audible over the klaxon.
“Bridge to Deck 7!” he barked. “Contain that breach! Bolters, suppress the warp tears!”
“Captain,” a vox voice reported, urgent and tight,
“Oatharii detachments are inbound. Black Shield Vow and Cerulean Wrath are en route to reinforce your sectors.”

Marn’s eyes flicked to the hololith. Relief should have followed. Reinforcements.
Two of the finest Nameless squads, battle-hardened and disciplined.
Yet before he could order them into the fray, another report arrived.

“Captain,” the vox continued,
“Knights of Grey Flame request deployment at multiple points. Psychic support advised.”
Marn’s jaw tightened. “Understood.”
He turned sharply to the nearest vox operator. “Transmit authorization—”
The words froze.

“Denied.” The command cut through the comm like a blade.
The bridge doors hissed as Abaddon’s voice, calm and precise, carried over the intercom.
“Knights remain restrained. Their deployment is not authorized.
All combat operations proceed under normal chain of command.
I will not have psychic interventions compounding this chaos—
not with the Imperial Fist investigation ongoing.”

Marn’s hands clenched into fists.
He knew the Knights’ power, their ability to stabilize deck-to-deck incursions, to purge warp entities with precision.
Denying them now felt like turning away a hammer from a nail that demanded it.

“Sir,” Marn said, voice low and deliberate,
“we are losing deck eight. The cultists are converging on the engineering nodes, the daemon influence—”
“Hold those decks as long as possible, Captain,” Abaddon’s voice cut again, unflinching.
“The Oatharii deployed should provide necessary aid.
But we cannot afford cracks of mistrust to form between us and the VIIth at this point.”

The weight of command settled on Marn like a black iron mantle.
Bolter fire and daemon screams echoed through the corridors below, mingling with the shouted orders of Imperial Fists squads,
pressing through boarding points to enforce investigation and purge heresy.
Red-and-gold gauntlets met black-clad cultists;
disciplined volleys cut through frenzied, screaming heretics who thought speed alone would save them.

Marn exhaled, steadying himself. The bridge lights flickered from an unseen burst of warp energy, casting harsh shadows.
Requests for reinforcements flooded in, and he knew the crews and squads would suffer greatly without psychic support.
For years, this had been their way of battle; now, they had no other means more effective.
He clenched his fist and gazed at the hololith.

“Request deployment of the Knights. Directly to Knight Master Vorr.”

The words left Marn bitter, but necessary.
The vox-officer hesitated, uncertain, for the order defied standing command.
But Captain Jorik Marn did not falter.
“Coordinate with the Oatharii,” he pressed, voice like a blade point.
“Contain the breach—or the ship dies.”

Static hissed. Then the vox burned with a calm, iron tone.
“This is Vorr. Your request is validated, Captain.”

The hololith shimmered, and the Knights of the Grey Flame flared into being across the decks—
grim, armored figures cast in firelight and shadow, their presence like the hush before a storm.
Around them, the pardoned psykers of the Librarius throbbed with restrained force,
as if the warp itself trembled at their leashed hunger.
And then the war began.

Not fleet volleys. Not banners unfurled or lines of gleaming ranks.
But corridor to corridor, deck to deck, in pocket wars fought on the margin of courage and precision.
Nameless and Ultramarine alike threw themselves into the grind,
fighting as though each gauntleted fist alone carried the weight of the Celestial Veil.

Smoke. Screams. Firelight licking along torn bulkheads.
Warp-born claws raked from ducts and hatches—demons spilling like vermin into the arteries of the ship.
And the Grey Flame met them. Disciplined. Absolute. Bolters roared, blades bit, wards flared in white fire.
Captain Jorik Marn stood in the heart of it, watching, waiting. Praying he had chosen correctly.
The first breach was sealed. The first blood repaid.
But Marn knew—this was only the prelude to the storm still to come.

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Aboard the Raptor’s Claw – United Fleet Flagship
Command Bridge
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Reports came in like static-laced confessions.
Abaddon sat in the command throne of the Raptor’s Claw,
helm mag-locked to the armrest, his bare features dark in the light of the hololiths.
One of his bridge-serfs stammered, voice trembling through augmetic breathers:
“My lord—confirmation.
The Knights of the Grey Flame have been deployed across the Celestial Veil’s decks.
Knight-Master Vorr himself has validated the order.”

For a moment, silence. The air seemed to contract around the him. Then fury broke through.
“Patch me through to Vorr. Now.”
The vox links bled to life. A flare of runes, then the voice—calm, iron-clad, unshaken.
“This is Vorr.”

“Vorr,” Abaddon growled, his tone honed to a blade’s edge,
“you act against standing command. I ordered the Knights to stand down. You have moved them without sanction.”

On the return channel, no apology—only the weight of certainty.
“My brothers bleed, Abaddon. The warp claws at our hull. This is the hour for the Grey Flame to strike.”
Abaddon’s gauntlet clenched on the throne arm.
“The Seventh will not see it that way. They will see heresy, Vorr.
An excuse to condemn us further. You have given them cause—
and we do not have the luxury of untangling their suspicions, not here, not now.”

But Vorr’s tone did not waver. If anything, it deepened, as if his words came from marrow rather than mouth.
“You mistake us for a Legion of the Imperium. We are not. We are Nameless. Shattered, betrayed.
We clawed our way through the void, wielding what weapons fate has left us—steel, will, and the fire of the immaterium.
It has never been our way to follow rules. And yet—by those very means—we have won battles no others could.
Even Guilliman saw it, and gave us pardon.”

He paused, the faint growl of war audible behind him through the vox.
“We are broken, Abaddon. Worn thin, held together by little more than scars.
The only thing binding us now—the only thing keeping us from falling into rabble—
is the brotherhood we have forged. That is the undeniable truth.”

The command bridge of the Raptor’s Claw stilled.
Officers, mortal and Astartes alike, pretended not to listen, but none could miss the weight of it.
Abaddon sat unmoving, face hard as carved obsidian.
Then, slowly, he nodded.

The fury ebbed from his expression, replaced with something colder, sharper. Understanding.
“You have become quite the wise man, Vorr,” he said at last, his voice almost dry with irony.
“You’ve reminded me of something I had forgotten.” His eyes turned to the hololith—burning red with the wounds of their fleet.
“That this brotherhood—our Nameless, and the United Fleet that has followed us—
means more than the suspicions of a cousin who already watched us with narrowed eyes.”
Vorr’s voice came one last time. Steady. Final.
“Then we are agreed.”

The link cut.
Abaddon leaned back into the throne, gauntlet loosening from the armrest.
Around him, the bridge crew stole wary glances, measuring the silence of their commander.
But Abaddon’s gaze was set forward now, fixed on the storm-torn void.
Faith rekindled. Recognition renewed.
He remembered again what he led—not just a fleet of survivors, but a brotherhood born of betrayal and fire.
And he would see it endure.

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Aboard the Celestial Veil
Deck-to-Deck Combat
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The Celestial Veil shuddered as another warp scar roared through the hull.
Alarm klaxons screamed across every deck, echoing the chaos below.
Crewmen scrambled over twisted conduits, sparking and snapping under the strain, while bolter fire cracked through smoke-filled corridors.
Waves of Black Host cultists poured from the rifts, lesser daemons clawing through the tears in reality with slavering teeth and molten eyes.

Deck Seven trembled first.
The Black Shield Vow, led by Captain Rhemar, dropped into the lower corridors, bolters blazing, chainswords singing.
Their movement was precise, honed by years of fighting warp-tainted foes.
Yet there was no Librarian to aid them, restrained by Abaddon’s strict orders during the Imperial Fist investigation.
The battle was harder than the Oatharii were used to; each daemon strike required more coordination,
every corridor cleared took longer—but they were seasoned,
and their experience against the warp-tainted gave them an edge no other Imperial force could match.

It became evident when they ran into a squad of Imperial Fists pinned in a corner.
The Fists’ black-and-yellow armor gleamed in the flickering light as they fought desperately alongside ship crew,
trapped by waves of cultists and lesser daemons. They were disciplined, but they were unaccustomed to daemonic foes.
Bolters flared and claws struck, yet the daemons pressed relentlessly.
“Stand firm!” Rhemar’s voice rang over the vox. “Black Shield Vow, flank and contain!”

The Oatharii moved with precision, reinforcing the Fists.
Bolters swept the corridors with exacting rhythm, chainswords ripped through daemonic forms,
and their coordination drew sharp, astonished glances from the Imperial Fists.

“By the Emperor…” muttered Sergeant Daryk Valdus, leader of the Fist squad.
“They—these Nameless… they fight like predators, and yet—”
He paused, observing the methodical efficiency of every movement,
“—they seem to have experience fighting these… warp fiends.”

Rhemar noted the subtle gap in psychic shielding, the moments when a daemon strike grazed an Oatharii flank.
They struggled more than usual, yes, but each wave fell under disciplined fire. Still, the air changed.
The warp scars twisted, shivering. A sudden, jagged flare of energy heralded something new.
Black Host Astartes began to emerge, grotesque and fast, stronger than anything the Nameless had faced in recent battles.
The Imperial Fists’ line staggered under the shock. Bolters cracked, chainswords met enhanced strength in clashing strikes.

“By the Emperor, they are… strong!” Sergeant Valdus shouted, throwing himself into the fray.
His squad took casualties—flesh and armour torn by unnatural strength.
Even with Oatharii support, the Fists were unprepared for the brutal efficiency of warp-tainted Astartes.

Rhemar’s jaw clenched as he parried a vicious strike.
The Black Shield Vow felt the absence of psychic support keenly;
every death they prevented was hard-earned, every kill measured and deliberate.
“Sergeant,” Rhemar called over the vox, “hold your line. We will contain the breach!”

Valdus’ voice was taut with tension.
“Captain, your men are enduring, but our losses mount!
You have suffered none—but more traitor Astartes arrive!
We must regroup, analyze, and fortify the next choke point!”

Before Rhemar could respond, a flash of warp energy split the corridor—a blinding strike of light and heat.
Astartes in Blades and Shields materialized, descending with coordinated precision.
The Knights of Grey Flame had entered the fray.

Rhemar froze. Every instinct screamed caution: this was a direct violation of Abaddon’s orders.
But the situation left no choice. He gave a curt nod and fell into formation beside them.
Blades swung in disciplined arcs, psychic wards pulsed with restrained power,
and the Oatharii flanked with renewed vigor.

The Imperial Fists hesitated.
The Knights moved unlike any Astartes they had ever faced—
psyker power integrated seamlessly with combat technique, shields and blades moving as one.
Their effectiveness against warp-tainted foes was immediate, surgical, terrifyingly efficient.

Sergeant Valdus stepped back, observing. Bolter fire, chainswords, and psychic strikes coalesced into a choreographed maelstrom.
Daemons faltered, Black Host Astartes were forced to retreat,
and the corridors that had once seemed lost were cleared with methodical precision.

“Remarkable,” Valdus muttered, voice low, almost reverent.
“They fight… like nothing I’ve ever seen. Coordinated, deadly,
yet… controlled. By the Emperor, what power is this?”

Rhemar allowed himself a grim smile behind his helm.
The battle was far from over, but with the Knights and Oatharii in concert,
even the warp-tainted horrors of the Black Host found themselves measured—
and for the first time, truly challenged.

The corridors of Deck Seven still smoked.
The groans of the Celestial Veil echoed through twisted conduits,
mingling with the distant screech of warp energy receding from sealed scars.
The Black Shield Vow regrouped, bolters still raised, eyes scanning for lingering cultists.
The Knights of Grey Flame moved with measured precision,
their blades and shields still glowing faintly with the residual hum of psychic wards.

Sergeant Daryk Valdus of the Imperial Fists approached cautiously,
his armour scuffed and scorched from the close-quarters fighting.
He raised a gauntleted hand in formal greeting.

“Captain,” Valdus began, voice firm but measured,
“I am Sergeant Daryk Valdus. Your reinforcement was… timely. For that, I extend my thanks.”

Rhemar inclined his helm in acknowledgment.
“Captain Rhemar.
The Black Shield Vow fights as it always has: where the enemy presses, there we will be.
I am glad our paths crossed here, under necessity.”

From the formation, the Knight squad leader, Sir Kaelric Thorne, stepped forward.
Broad-shouldered, shield and blade at the ready, he radiated quiet authority.
“We are the Knights of Grey Flame,” Thorne said, voice calm, measured.
“Our duty is to engage and stabilize. We act where the mission demands.”

Valdus’s gaze shifted across the assembled warriors.
His eyes lingered on the subtle psychic traces in their movements,
the wards still pulsing faintly despite Abaddon’s orders. His tone took on caution.

“Your intervention was… impressive,” Valdus said carefully.
“But I must note that your powers are of the warp.
The Council of Nikaea forbade such acts, and it is my duty to observe closely.
That said… I also acknowledge Primarch Roboute Guilliman’s pardon. That is on record.”

Rhemar stiffened, hand resting on the hilt of his blade.
The Knights mirrored him, posture rigid and defensive.
The insinuation stung—after bleeding through countless battles, after purging traitors and daemons alike,
to have their honour questioned felt personal.

Valdus continued, raising a hand to maintain diplomacy.
“Additionally, orders from Primarch Rogal Dorn and Imperial Regent Malcador the Sigillite require that
any who may have been tainted by ruinous powers, or suspected of having strayed from the path of loyalty,
be thoroughly investigated. My duty is to ensure such… deviations are reported.”

The words hung in the corridor like smoke. The Knights exchanged glances; Rhemar’s voice was low but unyielding.
“Sergeant,” he said, “we have fought where others fell. We have held the line against the traitors’ worst,
The Knights have spilled blood alongside the Oatharii and every Imperial force present.
Our honour is not measured by suspicion, but by action.
That we should be doubted at this moment… is an insult to that history.”

Valdus’s eyes softened slightly, recognizing the weight of those words.
“I do not deny your deeds, Captain Rhemar. And I assure you, this will be reflected in my report.
Every act of valour, every disciplined strike, every life spared—everything I saw here—will be included.
Your record will not suffer by my hand.”

Rhemar allowed a brief nod, though his posture remained tense.
The Knights adjusted their shields and grips on their blades, still bristling with the residue of offense.
Valdus’s assurances were factual, but they did little to erase the sting of implied distrust.

“Then let it be known,” Rhemar said finally, voice steady but firm,
“we fight not for pardons or permission, but for the survival of the Imperium.
That is all that should matter here.”

Valdus inclined his head in acknowledgment.
“Understood, Captain. And yet… my duty remains. Prudence, even in gratitude.”

The corridor fell into a tense silence, smoke curling through flickering lights.
Each warrior—Nameless, Knight, and Fist alike—knew the fragile balance of trust had shifted slightly,
though battle had forged a new, if uneasy, respect between them.

Chapter Text

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Bridge of the Celestial Veil
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Captain Jorik Marn sat rigid behind the bridge consoles,
the hum of the ship’s systems mingling with the distant echoes of bolter fire and collapsing bulkheads from decks below.
The reports came steadily, one after another: breaches contained, cultists purged, lesser daemons banished.
The Knights of Grey Flame had struck with precision, their intervention decisive, their coordination with Nameless squads flawless.

Marn exhaled quietly, a rare crack in his taut composure. Relief washed over him for a brief instant—but it was quickly tempered by unease.
Another set of vox reports arrived.

The Knights had not only cleared their assigned sectors—they had actively coordinated with Imperial Fists squads during the battle.
No incidents, no friendly fire, no breaches in discipline. Yet Marn knew the reality of such interactions.

The Imperial Fists were vigilant, unyielding in duty and suspicion.
Even a flawless operation such as this would be dissected, analysed, and reported.
And Marn knew without doubt: the matter would reach Abaddon, carried by the eyes and ears of the VIIth,
raising questions the Knights could not answer without explanation—
and risking the fragile truce between Nameless and Fists that had held, barely, since their arrival.

He clenched his gauntleted fist, knuckles whitening against the console.
The situation gnawed at him—the waste of valuable time, of effort, of focus.
Every moment spent justifying actions, every unnecessary coordination,
every inquiry into loyalties was time and energy pulled from preparing to face the traitor forces that were still out there, waiting.

Marn’s voice was a low murmur, just for himself:
“Time wasted… resources squandered… all when we should be fortifying, coordinating, preparing.”
The words fell into the hum of the bridge systems, unheard by anyone but the captain.
The decision, he reminded himself, was not his to make.

He could only note caution, silently, and hope that those with authority—
the only ones with the power to act—would recognize the stakes before the next wave struck.
He leaned back slightly, eyes fixed on the hololith of the fleet, letting the silence stretch.
The Celestial Veil had survived, for now—but the real storm was still out there, beyond the hull, waiting.

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Bridge of the Raptor’s Claw
United Fleet Flagship
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The void beyond the viewports shimmered with the cold light of distant stars,
indifferent to the human—and Astartes—drama unfolding within.
First Captain Abaddon, Commander of the Nameless and the United Fleet,
stood motionless at the command dais of the Raptor’s Claw, dark eyes fixed on the hololith as the incoming message solidified.
The voice of Marnus Halbrecht, Senior Captain of the Imperial Fist Outer Sol Defense Fleet,
aboard the Praetorian Resolute, crackled over the secure channel.

“Abaddon,” Halbrecht began, clipped, formal, and cold,
“the Imperial Fists will allow no passage for your fleet into the Sol System.
Not now. Not under these circumstances.”

Abaddon’s gaze did not waver. “Explain yourself, Marnus.”
Reports flickered across the hololith: the Celestial Veil was not alone.
Three additional vessels within the United Fleet had simultaneously reported warp breaches.
Black Host saboteurs had infiltrated through portals, their foul rites empowered by traitor cultists planted deep within the fleet.
Chaos-tainted forces had poured through, and Imperial Fists detachments on all four vessels had suffered casualties.

Halbrecht continued, his tone hardening.
“I have received reports of psyker deployment aboard the Celestial Veil.
That will be investigated thoroughly.
Additionally, I demand the immediate handover of Akaran Sotha for questioning regarding his use of forbidden powers.”

Abaddon’s reply was deliberate, flat, and unwavering.
“No. Sotha is no enemy of the Imperium. We have traveled through the most perilous reaches of the Warp from Calth.
We have fought and bled on Accatran, Orestes, Vellatrix, and beyond.
We have faced traitor forces on multiple worlds, in the name of the Emperor.
Our goal is singular: to meet the traitor fleet before Terra, to stop them.”

“Your record does not matter,” Halbrecht countered, voice tight with authority.
“Compliance is required. Any deviation is suspicion, and suspicion breeds death.”

Abaddon’s eyes darkened, the weight of command settling over him like a mantle of iron.
“I will comply with Dorn’s rules where they do not betray my duty to my brothers.
But I will not turn my back on the Nameless, the Oatharii, or any Astartes who have fought beside me.
We are not your enemy, Marnus. Do you understand that?”

A silence stretched across the channel, thick with unspoken tensions.
Halbrecht’s jaw tightened, the rigid discipline of the Imperial Fists evident even through the comm.
“You would place loyalty to your men above obedience to the Emperor’s appointed defense?”

Abaddon’s voice was quiet now, yet unflinching.
“I place loyalty to my brothers and the survival of the fleet above all else.
We will stand in defense of the Imperium—against traitors, not against each other.”

Static hummed over the channel. Halbrecht’s reply was measured, cold, but unyielding.
“Know this, Abaddon: any further deviation will be recorded.
Your actions, your men, your psykers—everything.
I will report directly to Dorn. There will be consequences.”

Abaddon inclined his head slightly, eyes narrowing.
“Then so be it. But remember, Marnus: the fleet will survive only if all Astartes,
regardless of banners, stand against the true enemy. That is the only way Terra will hold.”

The line went silent.
The cold, indifferent stars outside the viewports remained unchanged,
but aboard the Raptor’s Claw, the storm of unspoken tension lingered
far heavier than the warp winds beyond.

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Bridge of the Praetorian Resolute
Imperial Fists Sol System Outer Defense Fleet
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Senior Captain Marnus Halbrecht stood rigid behind the command dais of the Praetorian Resolute,
fingers brushing the polished console with a measured, almost ritualistic precision.
The reports from the Celestial Veil and the other breached vessels had stirred unease within him—
Abaddon’s defiance weighed heavily on his mind.

He could see it clearly: let the Nameless continue unchecked, and the fleet might endure—but at a cost.
Let them act against Abaddon’s command, and the Nameless might be exposed to their own ruin.

He exhaled slowly, pacing a short path along the bridge.
The idea of burning the united fleet as heretics flitted across his mind—swift, unrelenting—but prudence anchored him.
Guilliman’s wrath would descend like a hammer if the VIIth were found to have destroyed a sanctioned fleet sent to aid the Imperium.
Half the Primarchs were already reported in league with the traitor Horus Lupercal.
The consequences of rash action would be catastrophic.

Halbrecht’s gaze drifted to the hololith, the projection of Sol spinning coldly in the void.
He spoke, more to himself than anyone else:
“Even the righteous must walk carefully… lest they fall with the damned.”

He tapped the console, querying the long-range comm channels.
“Any word from Terra? From our Primarch?”

Static answered. No messages had arrived.
The silence weighed heavily, a reminder that decisions could no longer wait for guidance from above.
For now, Halbrecht would have to walk the line, balancing duty, loyalty, and caution.
Every order, every restraint, every observation had to be measured against the fragile stability of the fleet.
And every moment, the knowledge lingered: the true enemy—
Horus, his traitor forces, was still out there, beyond reach, biding their time.

Halbrecht clenched his jaw, the line between obedience and prudence as narrow and unforgiving as a blade.
“We walk the line carefully.”

The Praetorian Resolute thrummed beneath him, the ship alive with tension and anticipation.
Halbrecht knew the storm had not yet broken, and that the coming hours would test not only the fleet,
but the very principles that bound the Imperium together.

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Aboard the Raptor’s Claw
United Fleet Command
------------------------------

The bridge of the Raptor’s Claw was suffused with a tense,
brittle silence, punctuated only by the muted hum of the ship’s core and the distant echo of alarms from other decks.
Abaddon’s eyes, dark and unyielding, tracked the hololith of the Sol System as it rotated slowly,
the golden grid of Imperial defense lines gleaming in cold precision.
A single report shattered the fragile calm.

“Sotha… has been taken,” the vox operator said, voice tight, careful.

The name struck like a thunderclap. Abaddon’s jaw clenched; the patience he had meticulously cultivated over weeks snapped.
The Chief Librarian of the Nameless, Akaran Sotha, abducted without Abaddon’s knowledge, without sanction,
and against the standing command of the Nameless?

Even Loken, standing beside him with arms crossed, felt the familiar, rare flare of anger ripple across his disciplined exterior.
Abaddon’s voice, low and final, cut across the bridge:
“Senior Captain Marnus Halbrecht. You will release Akaran Sotha immediately.
He is to be returned to the Nameless, without condition or delay.”

There was a pause—one long enough to feel the weight of a sharpened blade.
The reply came cold, measured, and inflexible:
“Noted, Abaddon. That action is not authorized. Sotha remains in Imperial custody.”

The cold certainty of the refusal drew a slow, hard breath from Abaddon.
His hand rested lightly on the edge of the command console, fingers tightening until the metal groaned under his grip.
“It is not a request,” he said, each word carefully honed to steel.

“I am giving you an order as the Fleetmaster of this united host,
by decree of Roboute Guilliman himself.. One you will obey.”

On the hololith, Varro’s gauntleted hands hovered over the interface, a silent calculus running through his mind.
The situation teetered on the edge of war—not with traitors or heretics, but with brothers.
His voice broke the charged silence.

“Captain Halbrecht,” Varro said, firm and unflinching,
“your investigation squads are to be detained immediately.
Every team currently conducting operations on our vessels is under arrest until this matter is resolved.”

The announcement hung in the void like molten iron.
Across comms, the Imperial Fists officers stiffened, their disciplined posture failing for the first time.
The accusation was not subtle, nor could it be ignored.

Halbrecht’s voice, measured but simmering with barely controlled ire, cut through the tense static.
“You would detain the VIIth Legion for enforcing Imperial law within their own space? You threaten open war.”

Abaddon’s eyes, dark and unrelenting, met Halbrecht’s through the hololith’s ghosted projection.
“We are not enemies. We fight the same foe,” he said slowly, deliberately.
“But do not mistake our loyalty for submission.
We will not stand idle while my brothers are stolen from under my command.
Do you understand the gravity of that?”

The bridge crew held their breath.
Even Loken’s expression, usually an inscrutable mask, betrayed a flicker of restrained anger.
The rift was no longer political—it was personal.

Varro’s hands moved with decisive authority,
issuing detention orders to the boarding squads, and the first teams of Imperial Fists were corralled,
bolter barrels trained at the nearest exit corridors.

Halbrecht’s glare sharpened.
“You leave me no choice,” he said, the edge in his tone unmistakable.

Abaddon’s response was a single, ice-cold word:
“Nor I, you will find.”

In the silence that followed, every captain, every officer, every Astartes aboard the Nameless vessels
understood one immutable truth: the fragile peace had shattered.
The Sol System hung in delicate balance, and the swords of suspicion now pointed both ways,
ready to strike.

Chapter Text

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Aboard the Praetorian Resolute
Outer Sol System defense fleet flagship
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The void of the Outer Sol System,
once a lattice of calculated movements and disciplined formations, had dissolved into a theater of fire and ruin.
Sensor blips flashed red across Halbrecht’s hololith, marking the encroaching fleet of the Black Host
as they bore down on the Imperial Fist vanguard.

Even from the bridge, the devastation was evident:
several of his vessels were already crippled, some drifting like shattered husks,
others streaking fire through the void as energy cores vented in dying screams.
A couple more had been completely obliterated, leaving nothing but debris trails and drifting wreckage.

Halbrecht’s gauntleted hand clenched the edge of the command console.

“Maintain formation! Hold the line! Engage at my order!”
he barked, though his voice lacked the conviction he had felt in countless previous battles.

Across the fleet, boarding reports arrived in a flood, each one stabbing at the edges of his command structure:

++Forward batteries offline on the Dauntless Hammer!++
++Deck seven of the Iron Vigil compromised—crew pinned!++
++Bridge of the Valiant’s Pride under assault!++

The messages converged into a storm of urgency.
The Outer Sol Defense Fleet had already absorbed most of the initial devastation; their casualties mounted with every passing moment.
Halbrecht struggled to maintain cohesion, his mind a lattice of tactical calculations,
each one threatened by the immediacy of reports screaming in from every corner.
And then came the worst news.

“Praetorian Resolute… boarding action reported—Decks 3 through 12 compromised!”
The bridge erupted. Officers shouted orders, Vox operators scrambled to relay commands,
but the reports continued to cascade in like fire through dry timber.

“Engineering nodes under assault!”
“Hangar bay five lost, boarding teams engaging—hostile boarding parties overwhelming the crew!”
Halbrecht staggered back from the hololith, his chest rising with ragged breaths.
His hands shook for the first time in decades of service.
The flagship of the Imperial Fist outer defense, the pride of the VIIth, was itself being invaded.

Red alerts flared across the bridge consoles, warning lights casting harsh, staccato shadows across the walls.
Sparks rained down from ruptured conduits, kicked loose by distant explosions.

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Aboard the Praetorian Resolute
Outer Sol System defense fleet flagship
-----------------------------------

Every deck, every corridor, every crew section of the Resolute was now a battlefield.
Black Host infiltrators poured through rifts in reality, cultists with sharpened blades and molten eyes,
followed by lesser daemons clawing through the warp’s thin veil.

Halbrecht’s mind raced, attempting to reconcile fleet coordination with the imminent collapse of his flagship.
The Black Host had chosen the perfect moment: the Imperial Fists fleet was encircling the Nameless,
yet the Nameless themselves remained intact, unscathed, and poised—
an observation that twisted Halbrecht’s gut with unease.

Orders were issued, bolter squads dispatched, boarding counter-assaults deployed—
but every report arriving was worse than the last.
Casualty numbers rose exponentially, morale teetered,
and the sense of absolute control Halbrecht had relied upon for decades slipped away.

Through the haze of panic and the flashing lights of the hololith, Halbrecht’s eyes fell on the Nameless positions.
Across multiple decks, the reports suggested precision and composure—controlled,
efficient strikes against the warp-tainted forces that had already shredded his fleet.

And yet… the Praetorian Resolute itself burned,
its decks under siege, the fight now personal. Halbrecht gritted his teeth, raising his voice over the alarm:
“Deck teams, reinforce boarding lines! Marines, hold your ground! For the Emperor, we will not yield this vessel!”

But deep down, he knew the truth—this fight was spiralling beyond the VIIth’s ability to hold,
and the Nameless, restrained only by the tenuous loyalty of command,
were now the difference between survival and annihilation.

Senior Captain Marnus Halbrecht gritted his teeth as reports of destruction cascaded across his hololith.
His fleet was bleeding—vessels shattered, decks lost, crews pinned.
Every tactic he ordered seemed to be one step behind the Black Host,
whose boarding parties clawed through the outer hulls with relentless precision.

“Hold the line! Reinforce the bridge teams!” he barked, voice hoarse with effort.
Then the unthinkable: the bridge doors shuddered under assault, a violent shudder echoing through the chamber.
Officers and Astartes snapped to defensive positions, bolters raised, chainswords revving,
every man aware that the Praetorian Resolute’s nerve center was about to become a slaughterhouse.

The doors exploded inward, shards of reinforced adamantium scattering across the deck.
Through the smoke and debris, Black Host Astartes poured in—faster, stronger, deadlier than any loyalist he had ever faced.
Their armour shimmered with the unnatural gleam of warp-touched alloy; their movements blurred with inhuman speed.

Halbrecht met them head-on, swinging his relic blade in a whirlwind, bolter fire tearing into the closest invaders.
Yet for every one he felled, another surged forward, striking with brutal efficiency.
Officers fell around him, Astartes crushed beneath the strength and fury of these intruders.
The bridge was chaos incarnate, every corner a pocket of blood and fire.

He fought like a storm incarnate, but even Senior Captain Halbrecht, veteran of countless campaigns,
felt his strength ebb under the relentless assault.
A clawed gauntlet slammed into his chest, hurling him back against a console.
Pain lanced through his side, and for a heartbeat he feared the bridge would fall and the ship along with it.
Then, like a beacon through the storm, a new force struck.

The bulkhead behind the enemy exploded inward with controlled precision.
A squad of disciplined figures surged through—
Garviel Loken and his Oathforged, bolters blazing, chainswords biting into the warp-touched invaders.
Their presence was immediate, precise, and devastating.

The bridge erupted in coordinated violence as the Oathforged cut down the Black Host Astartes with surgical efficiency.
Halbrecht, battered but unbowed, seized the moment to regain his footing, driving forward with renewed fury.
Together with Loken’s strike team, the remaining invaders were carved down,
leaving the bridge scorched, bloodied, but secure.

Hololiths flared with incoming reports:
United Fleet vessels engaging enemy ships in support of the Outer Sol Defense Fleet,
Nameless and Ultramarine squads arriving on Imperial Fist ships, reinforcing weakened sectors,
and intercepting boarding parties. The tide was turning—albeit at a terrible cost.

Halbrecht turned toward Loken, eyes meeting the calm, unwavering gaze of the Oathforged captain.
Words faltered in his throat; gratitude and caution battled for dominance.
Loken’s voice, steady and unwavering, broke the tension.
“We shall settle our differences… once this threat has been repelled,” he said.

Halbrecht nodded, the words heavy with unspoken acknowledgment.
“Thank you,” he managed, voice rough, the weight of command and relief mingling in the single phrase.
The hololiths continued to flicker, the battle far from over, but for the first time, Halbrecht felt a fragile reassurance:
allies were at his side, and the Black Host would not claim the Praetorian Resolute this day.

------------------------------
Aboard the Raptor’s Claw
United Fleet Command
------------------------------

The hololith flickered across the bridge,
a stark lattice of red and gold lights depicting the chaos erupting throughout the Outer Sol System.
Orsus’ flagship, the Veritas Noctem, loomed in the distance, its silhouette almost impossibly massive,
a dark promise against the void. Every sensor reading confirmed it:
the Black Host fleet was vast, disciplined, and entirely unforgiving.

Abaddon’s gaze, cold and unblinking, swept the hololith. His jaw tightened.
Even the combined forces of the United Fleet and the Imperial Fists would struggle against such numbers
unless their attacks were precise, coordinated, and ruthless. A divided strike would mean annihilation.

“Engage in coordinated counterattack,” he said, his voice measured and absolute.
“The VIIth shall hold the line with us, but all actions are under unified command.
Do not fracture our effort. Do not let pride cost the fleet.”

Across the fleet, the order resonated through comms, reaching every capital vessel and detachment.
On the hololith, the positions of enemy formations shifted like a living entity, their advance calculated and relentless.
It was clear—they were in no position to strike at Orsus directly.
Abaddon turned to Vorr.

“Authorize deployment of psykers,” he commanded.
“No restrictions. The Knights of Grey Flame are to engage where most effective.”

Vorr’s response was immediate, practiced, and precise.
“Understood. Deployment protocols executed.”
Across multiple decks, Knights of Grey Flame materialized into battle zones,
their psychic power humming beneath controlled discipline,
ready to purge the warp-tainted scourge with precision unlike any seen by Imperial Fists or fleet alike.

The tide began to shift.
Boarding actions that had threatened to overwhelm vessels stalled under the onslaught of psychic and martial discipline.
Warp-tainted incursions were shredded, and lesser daemons found themselves ensnared in preternatural chains and bolter fire.

Even the Imperial Fists,
hardened by decades of service and bound by duty to investigate potential heresy, were forced to take notice.
Their hololiths tracked the Knights’ calculated strikes: elegant, devastating, and brutally effective.
Every action was coordinated; every psychic assault disciplined, precise, and contained.
The perception of the Nameless forces, long questioned and shadowed by suspicion, began to shift.

Halbrecht’s jaw tightened as he observed the battlefield unfold.
The Nameless were no mere auxiliaries.
Their coordination with the Imperial Fists,
combined with the devastating intervention of the Knights, was rewriting the tactical reality of the conflict.

Abaddon’s voice cut through the comm once more, calm but unyielding:
“Keep your formations steady.
Protect the fleet. And remember, the Black Host seeks not only to kill but to divide.
We will hold together, or we will die together.”

The deployment of the Knights had begun to change the flow of battle, and with it,
the fragile perceptions of loyalty, honor, and competence began to shift across the fleet.
The Imperial Fists, wary yet impressed, now had to reconcile their skepticism of the Nameless
with the undeniable reality of their battlefield effectiveness.

The battle, however, was far from won. Orsus and his vast armada still loomed, patient and lethal.
But for the first time, the United Fleet had the tools, the coordination, and the resolve to contest the tide.

----------------------------------
Aboard the Praetorian Resolute
Lower Decks
----------------------------------

Senior Captain Marnus Halbrecht gritted his teeth as he advanced alongside Garviel Loken and the Oathforged,
determined to witness firsthand the combat prowess of the Nameless units he had so long viewed with suspicion.

What he saw was beyond the bounds of ordinary war.
The Oatharii were no mere veteran Astartes—
they were hunters of the warp-tainted, killers forged in the crucible of daemon-infested battlefields.

A squad of Black Host Astartes, their forms distorted by warp corruption, surged across the deck.
Halbrecht had faced such monstrosities before, fought them tooth and claw, and knew the strength and speed they possessed.
Yet, the Oatharii cut through them with terrifying efficiency—every strike calculated,
every movement deliberate, every fallen enemy dispatched before it could strike again.

The battle shifted to a lower deck, where a wave of lesser daemons,
backed by Black Host Astartes, pressed against the Imperial Fists defending the corridor.
The loyalists were being overwhelmed; bolter fire and chainsword blows doing little against the chaotic fury of their enemies.
The Oatharii joined the fray, their tactics surgical and unerring, yet even they met resistance too great to simply brush aside.

Then, before Halbrecht’s eyes, the impossible happened.
A flash of warp energy erupted within the corridor,
and a group of Astartes appeared as if borne from the very light of the Emperor’s throne.
Power swords and shields blazing, they descended into the fray with a controlled ferocity.
White flames danced along their blades and around their armor, searing through daemons
and warp-touched heretics alike as if purifying reality itself.

Halbrecht’s breath caught. The Knights of Grey Flame, the so-called Knights of the Nameless, had entered the battlefield.
Their presence radiated a sacred, almost holy authority, an unmistakable command of warp power wielded not to corrupt,
but to sanctify.

The Oatharii’s efficiency, combined with the Knights’ terrifying precision, tore the enemy apart.
Daemons screamed, warp-tainted brutes fell,
and the corridors that moments ago seemed lost were now cleared with supernatural speed.

Halbrecht lowered his weapon slightly, awestruck.
His suspicions, his distrust, even his hardened judgment, began to crumble under the weight of what he was witnessing.
These were not renegades, nor heretics,
they were warriors of purpose and discipline, wielding powers that struck at the heart of chaos itself.

For the first time in his long career, Halbrecht felt a stirring of remorse,
a pang of recognition that he had judged allies who had bled for the Imperium as coldly as he now saw them act.
The sanctifying flames of the Knights burned into his mind, leaving an indelible impression.

And in that instant, the perception of the Nameless began to change within him.
Not fully trusted yet, not yet embraced—but the seeds of understanding had been sown.
The battle raged on, but Halbrecht knew one truth now:
these were no ordinary Astartes, and the Nameless were not merely fleet auxiliaries—
they were the bulwark against the warp itself.

The Praetorian Resolute’s bridge trembled with distant impacts, the echo of macro-shell detonations rippling through its adamantine bones.
Vox traffic still crackled with half-shouted reports of fires, hull breaches, and daemon incursions,
but the worst of the chaos had been pushed back.

Across the VIIth fleet, Imperial Fist vessels burned and bled,
yet now they fought with renewed order and direction—thanks to the United Fleet’s timely intervention.

Senior Captain Marnus Halbrecht stood at the tactical hololith,
its projections of the battle ebbing and flowing like a wounded sea.
The golden fleet of the VIIth, so disciplined, had been moments from collapse.
Now, with Nameless warships and Ultramarine detachments fighting shoulder to shoulder beside them—
and with the sudden, devastating reappearance of sanctioned psykers—the tide had turned.

Halbrecht’s gauntleted hands tightened around the edge of the hololith table.
His thoughts were elsewhere, replaying the sight of white flames cutting through warp horrors,
the Knights of the Grey Flame wreathed in holy light, and the Oatharii carving through daemon Astartes with surgical precision.

Garviel Loken approached quietly, his armor scored with fresh rents and his voice a low rumble.
“You’re thinking about what you saw.”

Halbrecht exhaled slowly, the motion almost a shudder.
“I am… conflicted, Loken.” His voice was heavy, each word deliberate.
“What I witnessed on those decks defies the words of Nikaea.
I cannot deny their worth, nor the lives they saved.
Yet my loyalty is to the Imperium—its doctrine, its edicts, the Emperor’s word.
I cannot… authorize such power.”

Loken regarded him for a long moment, his expression unreadable beneath the stark lighting.
Then he gave a single, slow nod.
“I understand. But this is not the hour for that conflict.
The enemy is at our doorsteps, stronger and more numerous than we dared imagine.
Without such power, we will fail.”

He stepped closer, his tone sharpening—not accusatory, but urgent.
“Tell me, Marnus—did you see corruption in their blades? Did you see betrayal in their flames?”

Halbrecht’s jaw tightened.
His mind flashed with the memory: white fire burning through daemon flesh,
the palpable sense of something sacred radiating from the Knights.
His answer came, quiet but certain. “No. I saw… faith. I saw sanctified flame.”

Loken inclined his head slightly.
“Then you saw what Roboute Guilliman himself saw when he pardoned them.
He understood the truth: that these weapons, wielded wisely, are salvation, not damnation.”

For a heartbeat, Halbrecht simply stared at the hololith.
Then he gave the faintest nod—reluctant, but no longer blind.
A seed of understanding had been planted.

Before he could speak, Lieutenant Deymar strode up the bridge steps, helm tucked under his arm,
urgency written in every line of his posture. “Captain!” he barked.
“The enemy is concentrating its boarding parties on Deck Thirty-Seven, Section Gamma.”

Halbrecht turned sharply, his eyes widening as realization struck.
“Section Gamma—” His voice broke into a growl of horror.
“That’s where we’re holding Akaran Sotha, the Chief Librarian of the Nameless!”

Loken’s expression hardened instantly.
The brief, fragile moment of understanding between the two captains was gone, replaced by the cold urgency of war.
Halbrecht’s next words came as both an order and a vow:
“Mobilize every available squad. We hold that deck—or we lose far more than this ship.”

Chapter Text

-----------------------------
Aboard the Praetorian Resolute
Deck Thirty-Seven
-----------------------------

The deck was a butcher’s floor.
Bulkhead lights flickered, casting the corridor in strobing flashes of gold and blood.
Screams—mortal and immortal—echoed down the spine of the ship.
Warp-tainted Black Host Astartes, their black armour wreathed in unnatural fire, hacked through Imperial Fist defenders.
Daemons surged around them in a living tide of claws and shrieking malice, rending through void-hardened plate as if it were paper.

The corridor groaned under the strain of reality itself.
Warp-light bled through the jagged tear in the bulkhead like a malignant wound, its edges writhing with sickly colors that had no name.
From it poured the Black Host—daemonic Astartes in midnight plate,
their helms twisted into horned visages, their bolters belching phantasmal fire.
Behind them, lesser daemons scuttled and slithered, a tide of claws and teeth eager to feast.

The first wave smashed into the Imperial Fists with the force of a meteor.
Bolters roared point-blank, explosive shells tearing limbs from corrupted torsos, but the enemy did not fall like men.
A Black Host warrior took three rounds to the chest, staggered, then rammed his chainaxe through an Astartes’ gorget
before being cut down by a storm of fire.

Sergeant Daryon stood at the breach, his battered yellow armor blackened with blood and soot.
He bellowed over the comm-net, voice hoarse but unyielding.
“Hold the line! Dorn watches us—HOLD!”

The crewmen of the Resolute, pressed into the firing ranks, obeyed with grim resolve.
Their lasguns were pitiful against the foe, but still they fired, their courage buying precious seconds.
Each time a Black Host marine fell, another clawed its way through the warp tear.

Bolter shells detonated with wet cracks. Daemon ichor steamed where it hit the freezing deck.
Daryon smashed the teeth from a charging lesser daemon with the butt of his bolter,
then emptied a clip into its chest until it ceased thrashing.

Beside him, a young Fist named Brevik was split in half by a two-handed daemon blade, his blood painting the ceiling.
Daryon snarled, shoved the corpse aside, and stepped forward to fill the gap.

At the far end of the hall, Akaran Sotha fired his borrowed bolter with disciplined bursts,
every shot punching neat holes through a daemon’s skull.
His staff remained clutched in his left hand, glowing faintly, its power yearning to be unleashed.
Each scream, each death, pressed on him like a vice.
He could end this—one gesture, one word of power, and the corridor would blaze with cleansing light.

But Abaddon’s command echoed in his mind: No psyker activity. Not unless ordered.
Sotha’s jaw clenched. The Commander’s will was law.

Another wave surged.
A Black Host marine tackled Daryon into a bulkhead.
They grappled in a spray of sparks, the traitor’s helm twisted into a mockery of an Astartes’ faceplate.
Daryon’s blade cut deep into the creature’s side, but the traitor kept coming,
its daemonic essence ignoring wounds that would fell a man.

Two crewmen rushed to aid him—
one was crushed under a daemon’s claw before he reached them, the other screamed as warp-fire consumed his flesh.

Sotha shifted forward, bolter roaring, picking off targets to relieve the Sergeant.
He felt the temptation again—the urge to loose the storm slumbering within him.
His knuckles whitened around his staff.

He could feel the warp tear’s hunger, hear whispers threading through the screams: Use me…
The deck trembled under the enemy’s charge. Another breach in the line, another Fist torn apart.
Daryon’s voice broke the chaos for an instant:
“By Dorn—we cannot hold!”

Sotha’s chest tightened.
He saw the terror in the mortal crew’s eyes, the stubborn resolve in Daryon’s even as blood leaked from his cracked pauldron.
He was Chief Librarian of the Nameless, once a Word Bearer, a warrior of a hundred battles.
Yet here, bound by orders, he felt powerless.

The corridor filled with smoke and screaming metal.
Bolter fire flickered like lightning, briefly illuminating scenes of horror:
a daemon-twisted Astartes crushing a marine’s head beneath its boot;
a crewman torn apart mid-shout; another Imperial Fist’s torso disappearing in a gout of warp-fire.

A warped scream—half battle cry, half daemon’s howl—split the air
as another Black Host warrior cleaved through a pair of Imperial Fists like parchment.
Sotha’s heart sank. The line would break.

For a heartbeat, Sotha nearly broke his oath.
His staff pulsed, light crawling along its runes. The enemy pressed closer, the line buckled—
—and then a distant thoom reverberated down the hall.
A shout carried over the din, a voice strong enough to slice through the chaos:

“SOTHA! Hold fast!”

Garviel Loken crashed into the flank of the daemonic horde, his Oatharii at his side like a silver-edged avalanche.
The armoured giants carved a brutal corridor through the Black Host.
Behind them, six Knights of the Grey Flame strode in perfect step, their sanctified blades wreathed in burning runes.
The warp shrieked in protest as their flames met corrupted steel.

Imperial Fist Sergeant Daryon, his armor cracked and bleeding oil, met Loken at the line.
“By Dorn—reinforcements!” he gasped.

Loken gave a sharp nod and pushed through to Sotha. His voice was low but urgent:
“Abaddon rescinds all orders to stand down. His exact words: All restraint is ended.”

For the first time in hours, Sotha’s grim features softened into a smile. He planted his bolter to the deck.
“Stand aside,” he said quietly.

Loken and the Fists stepped back.
Sotha raised his staff high. The air turned electric—the tang of ozone mixing with blood and ichor.
Then he hurled the staff skyward, and lightning answered his call.

A storm of white-blue fury ripped down the corridor.
Bolts the width of tank barrels lanced through daemons and traitor Astartes alike, reducing dozens to ash in an instant.
The deck plates glowed red where the arcs struck.
The warp’s shrieking chorus faltered, replaced by the groans of dying abominations.

The Imperial Fists stared, stunned. One of the Knights of the Grey Flame whispered a prayer under his breath.
Loken grinned beneath his helm, his vox carrying dry amusement.
“Emperor’s truth, Sotha… how long were you holding that in?”

Sotha chuckled, eyes still aglow with residual power. “Long enough.”
The Oatharii, Knights, and Fists tightened their formation, stepping over steaming corpses. Loken’s tone hardened.
“Secure the deck. Then we cleanse the ship.”
And together, beneath the storm’s lingering light, they advanced into the darkened corridors to finish the work.

------------------------------------
Aboard the Praetorian Resolute
VIIth Outer Sol Defense Fleet Flagship
Command Bridge
------------------------------------

The bridge still stank of blood and ozone, its walls scarred by bolter impacts and the lingering stench of warp-taint.
The distant thrum of battle echoed through the deck plates—a reminder that the war was not yet won.
Senior Captain Marnus Halbrecht stood rigid before the hololith, its shifting runes painting his scarred face in cold light.
Report after report crackled across the vox-net: defensive lines holding, daemon incursions pushed back, void shields stabilized.
Then a single transmission flickered in—a familiar voice.

“Deck Thirty-Seven secured. Enemy remnants purged. Chief Librarian Sotha returned unharmed.”
—Garviel Loken, Captain of the Oathforged, Master of the Oatharii.

Halbrecht exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
Relief—pure and overwhelming—washed over him, loosening the iron grip of duty on his shoulders for a moment.
The Nameless had done more than merely support the lines—they had excelled, fighting with precision born of bitter experience.
He looked again at the data scrolling across the hololith, watching the pattern of victories ripple outward like shockwaves.
They’ve studied these fiends, he thought. Bled for that knowledge. Sacrificed for it.
The XIIIth and the Nameless—both had endured horrors to reach this point.
They had not come to the edge of Sol for glory or pride, but for Terra itself. For the Imperium.
Loyalty… proven not with words, but with blood.

Halbrecht’s jaw set.
The decision came quietly, without fanfare, but with the weight of a man who understood the cost of stubborn pride.
He opened the vox link to the United Fleet’s flagship.

The hololith shimmered and resolved into the towering figure of Ezekyle Abaddon, Master of the United Fleet.
The two men—one clad in the golden heraldry of Dorn, the other bearing the mark of the Nameless scorched by countless battles—
locked eyes across the flickering field for a heartbeat of silence.
Halbrecht’s voice was low but steady.

“Sotha is safe. He has been returned to the Nameless.”
Abaddon inclined his head, a rare warmth threading through his gravel-toned reply.
“You have my thanks, Captain.”
Halbrecht’s lips curved into a faint, wry smile.
“You win.”

Abaddon’s eyes narrowed—not in arrogance, but in understanding.
“What is to be done now?” Halbrecht asked.
Abaddon’s response was calm, but a current of restrained fury underlay his words.
“Now… we open the floodgates.”

Minutes later, the hololith flared bright as new designations bloomed across its surface—
dozens of Nameless strike teams and warships moving into full engagement.
Vox channels erupted with confirmations:
the Knights of the Grey Flame redeploying to critical decks, Librarians casting wards across besieged hangars,
Oatharii squads teleporting into breaches to stem daemon tides.

Halbrecht stood transfixed.
It was as if a dam had burst—the Nameless surging forward like a tidal wave of steel and fire.
Everywhere they struck, the Black Host reeled. White flame and bolter fire cut through the warp’s corruption with surgical precision.
In that moment, watching the impossible unfold, Marnus Halbrecht—the loyal son of Dorn—felt awe.
The Nameless had been holding back, reserving their strength until it could matter most.
And now, unleashed, they were a purification upon the battlefield—a revelation of faith in action.

--------------------------------------
Veritas Noctem – Black Host fleet Flag Ship
Command Bridge
--------------------------------------

The bridge was a cathedral of shadow and iron, its cyclopean arches and blackened brass fittings catching stray glimmers of starlight.
Runes burned a dull crimson across the hololithic arrays, outlining the chaos unfolding across the Sol outskirts.
The smell of ozone and machine-oil lingered, mixed with something older—an acrid tang of the warp.

Zakhael Orsus reclined on his command throne like a monarch at court, the bones of vanquished worlds etched into the throne’s arms.
The glow of distant explosions flickered across the scarred planes of his face.
In one hand, he swirled a dark, viscous liquid in a black chalice—wine, or something fouler—letting its scent coil in the air like incense.
“Report,” he said, his voice a low growl of amusement more than command.

Lieutenant Valekh Rax stepped forward, helm clipped to his belt, pale eyes cold and bright as fractured glass.
Behind him, the bridge crew whispered litanies of data and warp-sorcery.

“The deep strike was executed without flaw,” Rax said.
“The VIIth reeled as planned. Their pickets broken. Their capital ships boarded.
The Dark Mechanicum’s gifts opened the gates inside their own hulls—most effective.”

He hesitated for half a breath, the faintest shadow of respect in his tone.
“But the counterstrike from the Nameless was… decisive. Costly for them, yes, but more so for us.
Our sleeper operatives are spent. The foothold crumbles.”

Orsus’s smile was all teeth and no mirth.
He raised the chalice in a mock toast to the stars and drained it, the black liquid leaving a faint crimson smear on his lips.
Rising, he paced to the viewing port—a monolithic expanse of voidglass framing the stars like distant candles.

“Depleted pawns,” he mused, almost fondly. “Spent for the greater game. That is their purpose.”
His gaze lingered on the distant glimmers of battle, as if he could see through the warp to Pluto and Uranus themselves.
He turned, cloak of midnight-grey fanning around him, and his voice carried the weight of inevitability.
“Signal the fleet. Disengage and withdraw to rally points.”
Rax inclined his head, but Orsus was not finished.
“Our work here is done,” he said, savouring the words.
“Pluto falls. Uranus burns. The gates are broken. Father has the path he desired.”

The War Master’s name was not spoken—it didn’t need to be.
Its weight pressed against every bulkhead, every flickering lumen, every beating heart on the bridge.
Orsus looked back out to the stars, a predator’s amusement curling his lips.
“Terra lies naked,” he whispered. “And the wolves are coming home.”

---------------------------------------------
Raptor’s Claw – United Fleet, Nameless Flagship
Strategium
---------------------------------------------

The bridge of the Raptor’s Claw still bore the scars of battle.
Bulkhead plates were scorched and warped where fires had been hastily quenched,
and the acrid scent of discharged bolters clung to the recycled air.
Servitors whispered binaric prayers over cracked auspex arrays as crews labored to reset the hololithic projectors.

Abaddon stood rigid before the central hololith, its ghost-light casting cold edges across his features.
Before him, the image of Senior Captain Marnus Halbrecht flickered—
an austere figure amid the battle-worn bridge of the Praetorian Resolute.

Halbrecht’s face was drawn, the weight of loss evident even through the distortion of the vox-feed.
“We have word from the inner defense line,” he reported.
“The Chthonian Gate and the Elysian Gate have been struck. Pluto and Uranus bleed.
The traitors chose their moment well.”

Abaddon’s jaw tightened. The pieces fell into place with brutal clarity.
“The Black Host strike against us…” His voice was low, dangerous.
“A diversion. They held us here, bled us, so the gates would stand without reinforcements.”

Halbrecht’s expression hardened into anger, though not directed at Abaddon.
“A calculated insult to the Emperor Himself,” he spat. “They’ve cost us dearly.”
He straightened, as if bracing against his own fury. “We go to Uranus. Now.”

Abaddon regarded him, the faintest glint of reproach in his eyes.
“And your interrogations? Are they concluded?”

For a heartbeat Halbrecht said nothing, then exhaled through clenched teeth.
“Do not twist the blade, First Captain,” he said, voice measured but heavy with regret.
“I see the cost of my hesitation. It will be recorded among the VIIth’s failings—by my own hand.”

Abaddon inclined his head slightly, the gesture formal but not without respect.
“Then we march together,” he said. “We will give the War Master no further victories bought with our division.”

Halbrecht gave a curt nod.
“So be it. Make ready your fleet. We set course for Uranus—and the traitors will find us waiting.”
The hololith guttered and faded, leaving Abaddon in the dim strategium,
the echo of Halbrecht’s words lingering like a promise of vengeance.

Chapter Text

-------------------------------------------
Raptor’s Claw – Unite Fleet Nameless Flagship
Librarius Antechamber
-------------------------------------------

The Raptor’s Claw hummed with the quiet after-battle thrum of recharging plasma coils and distant repair crews.
In a secluded chamber near the Librarius sanctum, the door seals whispered open and Akaran Sotha stepped through,
the edge of his dark-blue cloak marked with dust and battle grime.

Two figures rose to meet him. Codicier Oran Drell, lean and sharp-eyed, inclined his head in respect
but could not hide the flicker of concern. Beside him, Menerak Vaul—Codicier, acting Chaplain,
and prophet to some—rested both hands on the pommel of a crozius he did not yet wear openly.

“Sotha,” Vaul said, his voice low and heavy with meaning. “It is good to see you free of their suspicion.”
“And alive,” Drell added, with a brief, grim smile. “Detention does not suit a Chief Librarian.”

Sotha allowed himself a small, weary chuckle. “Detention rarely suits anyone.”
He unbuckled the empty bolter sling at his side and set it on a table, then leaned against the bulkhead, eyes narrowing.
“But I have no quarrel with the Fists. They fear what they do not understand. I would have, once.”
For a heartbeat, none spoke. The hum of the ship filled the void like distant thunder.

Drell broke the silence first.
“There is something else. Since we entered the edge of Sol… the warp feels heavier. Stronger.
I have never felt its presence so close to the skin of reality.”

Vaul nodded slowly, the ghost-light of the chamber catching the scars on his brow.
“A restlessness. As if the veil itself is holding its breath. Not rage—anticipation.”

Sotha’s eyes grew distant, haunted. “You are not alone. I felt it even in captivity.
There are currents moving beneath the surface… something vast and deliberate.”
He paused, his fingers tightening slightly on his staff.
“My primarch once spoke to us of the Four.
The names the Word Bearers whispered even before the galaxy knew them:
the Blood God the God of Decay, the Changer of Ways, and the Dark Prince.
We were exposed to their so-called gifts, but some knew that they were poison,
that devotion to them leads only to ruin. Some of us heard that warning and stayed true… for a time.”

Vaul’s face was shadowed with memory. “We saw the price of even hesitation on Isstvan.
The pull of their lies was everywhere, even among brothers who thought themselves incorruptible.”

Sotha exhaled through his nose, a sound like distant static.
“That corruption is stronger now. These so-called warp gods are watching.
Something—or someone—has earned their full attention.”

The three Astartes exchanged a silent glance.
None needed to speak the name lingering unbidden in their minds.
Sotha broke the stillness with a single, quiet line, more prayer than statement:
“Emperor preserve us… let it not be Horus.”

But the weight in their hearts told them they already knew.

--------------------------------------------
Uranus Orbit – The Shattered Gates
--------------------------------------------

The void around Uranus was a graveyard.
Twisted hulks of proud Imperial vessels drifted among the frozen rings,
their broken keels reflecting the pale light of Sol.
The shattered remnants of the Chthonian and Elysian Gates—
once impregnable bastions guarding the road to Terra—
floated as little more than scorched debris.

Senior-Captain Marnus Halbrecht stood rigid on the Praetorian Resolute’s bridge,
his jaw set but his knuckles white upon the railing.
The devastation clawed at him—these gates had been his responsibility.

Abaddon’s voice came over the vox, steady and controlled.
“Senior-Captain, report.”

Halbrecht’s reply was hoarse.
“If anything survived, they would have withdrew toward the inner defenses.
The traitor fleet has smashed the gates wide open to Terra.
We must make for the cradle of the Imperium without delay.”

Abaddon paused, his golden eyes on the hololith where the ruins of the gates rotated in cold silence.
“If we rush straight for Terra, we risk striking the enemy piecemeal.
The XIIIth Fleet lies on the Martian moons—intact.
If we link with them, we can drive into the traitor rear in a pincer assault.
Dorn will hold Terra’s walls until we return in strength.”

Halbrecht’s lips thinned; for a heartbeat his pride flared, then cooled.
“Very well… though every moment weighs on me. Do not make me regret this, First Captain.”

As the United Fleet adjusted course, the void trembled—warp-fire flared across the hololith.
The Black Host materialized from hidden vectors, their crimson and black prows plunging into the debris field.

“Contacts—multiple! Black Host signatures!” cried a vox-officer.
Before Abaddon could give orders, the VIIth’s vessels surged forward in perfect formation,
interposing themselves between the Nameless-led fleet and the oncoming traitors.
But Abaddon knew that the Imperial Fleet was depleted and nowhere near capable of defending themselves
against the full force of the Black Host fleet. Their spearhead charge into intervention would ultimately lead
to their destruction. Abaddon's gauntlet fist clenched tight as he glared at the hololith.
Halbrecht’s face appeared once more on Abaddon’s display, lit by warning runes and the glow of battle.

“Luck to you, Abaddon,” Halbrecht said, voice low but resolute.
“Help our gene-father. Make this stand mean something.”
Abaddon's jaw tightened hard yet he straightened, offering the warrior’s salute across the void.
“Your sacrifice will not be forgotten.”

As the United Fleet tore open the warp toward Mars, the viewports of the Raptor’s Claw were filled with the distant,
terrible beauty of the VIIth Outer Sol Defense Fleet meeting the Black Host head-on—yellow prows vanishing one by one
into fire and ruin, yet holding the line with unyielding fury.

----------------------------------
Bridge of the Raptor’s Claw
----------------------------------

The Raptor’s Claw glided through the cold dark between worlds, her viewports streaked with the distant fires of dying ships.
Loken stood beside Abaddon at the command dais, the glow of the hololith casting their scarred features in pale light.
Outside, the void was silent—but within, the weight of their duty pressed down like a storm.

“We’ve bled so much already,” Loken said quietly, his voice a low growl of restrained anger.
“And yet the main traitor host hasn’t even shown its true face.
They’re ahead of us now, Abaddon—already at the Emperor’s doorstep.”

Abaddon’s golden gaze stayed on the hololith, tracking the faint pulse of warp routes. His voice was steady, deliberate.
“Patience, brother. The void rewards those who wait for the right moment to strike. Victory comes slim when sought in haste.”

Loken’s fists flexed against the railing. After a long breath, he nodded.
“Aye. My heart is already in battle against our former brothers… against our gene-father.
I would see this ended with my own hands.”

Abaddon turned toward him, the faintest ghost of a smile crossing his lips.
“Strange times, Garviel. It seems the roles have reversed—you, the firebrand hungry for war…
and I, the one urging restraint.”

For a heartbeat, some of the tension eased between them.
Two sons of Horus—once Luna Wolves, now outcasts—stood together in the silence,
knowing that the greatest battles still lay ahead.

--------------------------------------
Bridge of the Praetorian Resolute
VIIth Outer Sol Defense Fleet Flagship
--------------------------------------

The void burned gold and crimson.
Thousands of macro-shell detonations blossomed across the black, blooming like dying suns.
Hulls split and flared; the wreckage of Imperial ships drifted in slow, mournful arcs through the stars.
The Praetorian Resolute, flagship of the VIIth Outer Sol Defense Fleet, stood at the eye of the slaughter,
her shields guttering under the relentless fire of the Black Host.

Senior Captain Marnus Halbrecht stood at the viewing dais,
his armour scarred and blackened by proximity blasts, the sigil of the Imperial Fists dulled beneath soot and blood.
His voice was a blade drawn against despair.

“Maintain formation! Keep the Resolute between the enemy and the United Fleet!
We buy them the time they need to reach Mars—nothing more, nothing less!”

The bridge shook as a lance impact tore across the dorsal armor, hurling serfs from their stations.
Sparks cascaded from the hololithic projectors as fleet icons vanished one by one—lost, boarded, destroyed.
“The Valerian’s Oath has gone dark,” a lieutenant called, voice trembling despite the drilled calm.
“Castrum Aeternum reports heavy boarding—deck integrity failing!”

Halbrecht’s jaw clenched. He knew every name, every vessel. The Seventh did not break formation.
Not in orbit, not in hell.
“Signal the fleet,” he barked. “Hold the wall. For Terra. For Dorn.”
The vox-officer nodded and began relaying, his voice raw as he bellowed the battle cant.
All across the dying flotilla, scattered Imperial Fists took up the cry:
“For the Emperor and the Stone! Only in death does duty end!”

The bridge crew joined in, voices breaking but unyielding.
Their defiance filled the ruin of the ship like the tolling of cathedral bells.
Then came the boarding alarms.

Klaxons shrieked as red runes flared to life across the deck displays.
Multiple breach points—simultaneous. Port hangars. Starboard barracks. Engine access.
The Praetorian Resolute was being swallowed from within.

“Deck Seven reports hostiles breaching bulkhead seals!”
“Deck Eleven—multiple casualties! They’re… they’re cutting through!”
“Deck Three—Lost contact, Captain!”

Halbrecht turned, his eyes flinty beneath his helm.
“Deploy all reserves to the bridge approaches. The Resolute will not be taken while I draw breath.”
Before the words had fully left his lips, the aft blast doors exploded inward.

The shockwave hurled men and transhuman alike across the deck.
From the smoke and molten wreckage they emerged—figures too large, too heavy, their armour twisted mockeries of Terminator plate.
Their eye-lenses glowed with infernal light, their steps leaving scorch marks on ceramite.

The Talonborn had come. The eight man elite squad of the Black Host and executioners of
Zakhael Orsus, the commander of the Black Host and Champion of the Warmaster.
Their leader and Orsus’ second –in-command, Valekh Rax, strode through the breach,
his twin chainblades shrieking to life as they reaped through the first ranks of defenders.
Blood fountained across the command throne.
Imperial Fists sergeants charged in disciplined counter-assault, but their bolters did little.
Rax moved like a predator among prey, cutting them apart in sprays of gold and crimson.
Halbrecht drew his power sword with a crack of discharging energy.
“Stand fast! Seventh Legion, form a line!”

But even as he spoke, the storm broke.
Through the haze of battle smoke, Zakhael Orsus entered.
His armor was vast, Terminator plate deformed and alive, the plating shifting with sickly, unnatural vitality.
The twin claws on his arms shimmered with caged warp-light, each talon humming with restrained ruin.
His presence was a gravitational wound upon the air; even the ship’s lumen strips flickered in his wake.

“Captain,” Orsus said, his voice calm, almost conversational beneath the distortion of vox static.
“Your courage honours your gene-father. But courage is not enough to stop what’s coming.”
Halbrecht leveled his sword.
“Heretic. Whatever you are, I will end you in the name of the Emperor and the Primarch Dorn.”

A slow, humourless smile crossed Orsus’s scarred face.
“Ah, yes. Dorn—the perfect son of a broken god. Let us see what his sons are made of.”
Rax stepped forward, chainblades revving, but Orsus raised one clawed hand.
“Stand down, lieutenant. This one… is mine.”

The bridge erupted again in battle as the Talonborn advanced, their bolters and blades turning the remaining defenders into red mist.
Amidst the storm of blood and fire, Halbrecht and Orsus met—sword against claw, loyalty against damnation.

Halbrecht struck first, his blade cleaving through the air in a disciplined arc.
Sparks flared as Orsus parried, the power field of his claw hissing against the energized blade.
Each impact sent shockwaves through the deck.

Halbrecht moved with relentless precision—every blow driven by faith, by duty, by defiance.
Orsus countered with brutal grace, his claws weaving through the space between heartbeats.
Their duel lit the shattered bridge in flashes of blue and gold.
“Your empire dies screaming, Captain,” Orsus taunted between strikes.
“Then we shall meet it screaming!” Halbrecht roared, driving his sword into Orsus’s shoulder plate.
The blade bit deep—but no blood flowed.
Instead, the wound writhed, the armour reshaping, sealing as if the metal itself were flesh.

Orsus’s grin widened. “Good. You’ll make this interesting.”
He surged forward, his claws crossing in a blur of motion,
the impact shattering Halbrecht’s guard and hurling him back against a cracked console.
The Captain rose, battered but unbowed, his eyes blazing with Imperial fury.
“For Dorn… and the Emperor!”
He lunged.

The bridge was a collapsing world of steel and fire. Gravity stuttered.
Emergency lumens guttered and died.
The screams of dying men were drowned by the thunder of bolter fire and the howling of atmospheric leaks.

Senior Captain Marnus Halbrecht, last commandant of the VIIth Outer Sol Defense Fleet,
advanced through the smoke with his power sword raised high, his armour scarred and cracked,
the yellow of the Imperial Fists darkened to the color of old parchment by soot and blood.

Across the ruin of the command dais stood Zakhael Orsus, Lord of the Black Host.
His Terminator plate was a mass of blackened ceramite and mutation,
his claws exhaling thin trails of warp-light like breath in cold air.

All around them, the bridge burned.
Between them — only purpose.
“Your ships are dead,” Orsus said, voice low, a void-calm that carried over the roar of battle.
“Your brothers scattered to ash. There is no fleet left to save.”
Halbrecht circled him slowly, the edge of his blade humming with restrained fury.
“Perhaps. But there will be one thing left.”
Orsus tilted his head, amused. “And what is that?”

“Duty.”
Halbrecht moved.
His blade came up in a two-handed cut that would have split a dreadnought’s armor.
Orsus parried with a cross of his claws, the air shrieking as the energy fields met. Sparks sprayed like meteors.
The recoil knocked consoles from their mounts.

Halbrecht pressed, each blow a doctrine of Dorn’s discipline — angled cuts, tight footwork, measured aggression.
He drove Orsus back step by step, using precision against the monster’s raw power.

“Every wall falls, Captain,”
Orsus murmured, blocking another strike and twisting, his claws catching Halbrecht’s pauldron,
carving a deep gouge through ceramite and flesh. “Even yours.”

Halbrecht grunted, pain flaring but his eyes remained locked on the foe.
“Walls are built again. Empires endure.”
He slammed his elbow into Orsus’s helm, knocking the Black Host lord back a half-step,
then cut again — a brilliant, upward strike that caught Orsus beneath the chin, shearing half his faceplate.

Beneath, the flesh was wrong — pale, translucent, veins glowing faintly with red warp-light.
And yet, the creature grinned.

“You still think you fight men, little Fist,” Orsus growled. “You fight what your Emperor could not kill.”

The duel devolved into fury.
Orsus’s claws scythed through the air, each strike a hurricane.
Halbrecht met them all, blocking, parrying, turning his own pain into rhythm.
One claw shattered his sword’s pommel guard. Another tore a rent through his chest plate.
Halbrecht bled freely now, but did not falter.

Rax and the Talonborn formed a perimeter, slaughtering what few Imperial defenders remained — but none dared interrupt.
Even they knew what was unfolding was not combat. It was testament.
Halbrecht drove his sword forward once more, a final lunge.
The blade bit into Orsus’s abdomen — deep, true. For a moment, Halbrecht thought he had won.
Then the armor around the wound shifted. It grew, sealing the blade in like a living organism swallowing prey.
Orsus leaned forward until his helm was inches from Halbrecht’s.
“You cannot kill what is already dead.”
He flexed his claws.

The right claw punched through Halbrecht’s chest, bursting from his back in a spray of blood and armor shards.
The energy field screamed against his power core, the light in Halbrecht’s helm flickering.
The bridge was a ruin of sparking conduits and shattered bulkheads, the air thick with ozone and smoke.
Emergency lumens flickered, casting strobing shadows over corpses sprawled across the command deck.
Senior Captain Marnus Halbrecht hung impaled on a massive power claw, his yellow plate split and bleeding.
The claw’s field crackled as Zakhael Orsus held him aloft like a broken standard.
Halbrecht coughed a spray of blood, his breath rattling, but his eyes never wavered.

Around them, Lieutenant Valekh Rax carved through the last of the bridge crew,
the crack of bolt shells and the hiss of severed hydraulics echoing like distant thunder.

“You… will fail,” Halbrecht rasped, voice raw but defiant.
“Your treacherous father… will fall. You and your Black Host… will join him in the abyss.”

Orsus tilted his head, amusement gleaming in his void-black eyes.
A low, mirthless laugh rolled from him. “Blind loyalty, even at the edge of the grave.
You die clinging to a corpse of an Imperium, Captain. Look around you—your proud fleet is wreckage.
Terra will be no different. The Warmaster will cast down your false Emperor, and you will be forgotten dust.”

Halbrecht’s breath came shallow and ragged. His lips curled into the faintest of smiles.
“Abaddon…” he whispered, the name a final, unyielding promise.

He looked Orsus dead in the eyes, blood rising in his throat, and said the words every Imperial Fist is born to die on:
“For Dorn. For the Emperor. Only in death does duty… end.”

Orsus paused — the faintest shadow of recognition crossing his face.
Then, with a guttural snarl, he lifted the dying captain off the ground, the claws still buried in him.

Halbrecht’s sword slipped from his fingers, clattering across the deck.
He hung there, impaled — a final banner of Imperial defiance — before Orsus cast him aside like broken iron.
The Captain’s body hit the command console with a heavy, final sound.
The bridge alarms continued to wail, indifferent to the death of its master.
Behind Orsus, Valekh Rax strode forward, his voice rumbling through the helm vox.
“The resistance is finished, my lord. The last ships burn.”

Orsus stood still for a moment, watching the lifeless form of Marnus Halbrecht slide to the deck.
His eyes — black as the void — narrowed.
“Then burn the rest,” he said quietly. “Let their loyalty be the light that marks the way to Terra.”
Outside, the remnants of the VIIth fleet died screaming, their final transmissions fading into static and ash.
Leaving nothing but a memory of defiance and loyalty.

Chapter Text

-------------------------------------
Bridge of the Raptor’s Claw
-------------------------------------

The void beyond Saturn’s rings was a graveyard of light and silence.
Wreckage drifted in long, glacial arcs, hull fragments tumbling through the dark like the bones of slain giants.
Abaddon stood before the hololithic display, arms folded, his face a study in controlled suspicion.
Loken and Tarvitz flanked him, the three captains framed by guttering lumen strips and the distant shimmer of Saturn’s pale rings.
“XIIIth Fleet should be here,” Loken muttered, gaze narrowing at the empty grid squares on the display.
“Garrisoned on Saturn’s moons, not ghosts.”

Tarvitz’s tone was grim.
“Then where in the Emperor’s name are they?
And why does Mars hum like a forge-god’s hymn when its shields are down and its orbit’s a graveyard?”

Below the hololith, the outline of Mars glimmered—a wounded, red jewel.
Its orbital paths were cluttered with shattered hulls, but the forges beneath its ochre storms were unmistakably alive,
their energy signatures pulsing like a heartbeat. Something was being built. Something vast.
Abaddon keyed a vox channel. “Captain Verus Kael, Sable Hammer—status.”

Kael’s voice came back, clipped and steady through the crackle of interference.
“Standing by, my lord.”

“You’ll take Ghost team down to Mars.
I want eyes on the forges and confirmation of what is happening within the Mechanicum.
Quiet insertion. No contact unless necessary.”

“Acknowledged,” Kael replied.
“The Ghosts will deploy. We’ll bring you answers or we won’t return.”

Abaddon allowed himself the barest nod.
Kael’s Ghost team—Raven Guard-born shadows reforged within the Nameless—had been bled hard since Calth,
their ranks rebuilt from other Legions and the XIIIth. They were the fleet’s unseen knife, honed on loss and necessity.

Loken exhaled through his teeth, a sound somewhere between impatience and anger.
“More delays.”
“Delays win wars when haste loses them,” Abaddon said, eyes still fixed on Mars.
Tarvitz glanced between them, unease flickering across his scarred features.
“If the XIIIth garrison’s gone, something’s gone very wrong. Ultramarines don’t abandon their posts without reason.”
The three stood in silence, watching Mars glimmer in the void, its forges beating like a hidden heart.
Somewhere below, the enemy was working, and the truth was about to cost blood.

---------------------------------
Aboard the Sable Hammer,
Ghost Team Muster Deck
---------------------------------

The gunmetal chamber thrummed with the muted growl of reactor hum and the hiss of pressurized armor seals.
Captain Verus Kael stood before a tactical holo-map of Mars,
its crimson surface etched with points of data and arcs of possible ingress.
Around him, Ghost Team moved with quiet efficiency—black-armored phantoms,
their heraldry dulled, their faces hidden behind helms of matte obsidian.

Kael’s second in command stepped forward, helmet cradled beneath one arm.
The pale scar that slashed across his jaw gleamed under the cold lumen light.
Lieutenant Darius Veylan, once a Raven Guard recon sergeant, now Ghost Team’s steel-edged conscience,
regarded his captain with something between respect and concern.
“Captain,” Veylan said, voice clipped. “You should stay aboard the Sable Hammer. Let me lead the descent.”
Kael’s lips curled into a wry half-smile as he adjusted the strap on his jump pack.
“And miss the view from the red dust? I’m not that old, Darius.”
Veylan’s expression darkened. “You’re not the man who used to make those jokes.”
Kael paused, letting the words hang in the recycled air.
Then, quietly, he replied,
“None of us are. That’s the point.
We’re Nameless now—unbound to what we were, unshackled from who we used to be.”

The Ghosts around them nodded—small, almost imperceptible gestures beneath their black helms.
They understood. Each of them had buried their past beneath layers of ceramite and oath.
Kael turned back to the holo-map, highlighting a cluster of abandoned manufactoria on Mars’ southern hemisphere.
“Telemetry shows signs of recent conflict here—stripped wreckage, fractured energy signatures.
Some kind of civil war among the Mechanicum. The forges are still active, but the defenders are divided.”

Veylan let out a dry snort. “What’s happening to the Legiones Astartes is happening to the Mechanicum.
Traitors in their own ranks, fighting over scraps of the Emperor’s dream.”
“Perhaps,” Kael said, his voice unreadable. “Or perhaps something worse.”
He shut down the holo-map and clipped his bolter maglock to his hip.
“Either way, we need answers before the forges birth something that will doom Terra.”

The Ghosts sealed their helms in unison, the sound sharp in the silence.
Kael stepped toward the drop bay doors as warning runes flared red across the deck.
“Ghosts,” he said over the squad vox, voice low but iron-hard.
“We make planetfall. Stealth insertion. In and out, unseen. Let the red world tremble—we are its shadows.”

The boarding lights flicked green. One by one, the Ghosts moved to the launch cradles.
The Sable Hammer shuddered as the pods cycled.
Verus Kael took his place at the front, and as the deck beneath him split open to the void,
he allowed himself one last fleeting smile.
Then the pods ignited, streaking silently toward Mars’ broken heart.

-------------------------------------
Mars, Mechanicum Southern Hemisphere
Red Dust Storms
-------------------------------------

The pods spat the Ghosts into the thin, swirling atmosphere of Mars, and the landing was almost silent
—the ceramite-clad forms pressing into the red sands as though they were phantoms themselves.
Kael’s team dispersed into prearranged positions, the grinding of the planetary duststorm masking their movements.

Immediately, the unsettling truth began to settle over them. Lieutenant Veylan’s fingers danced over the vox panel.
“Captain… I’m picking up fragmented signals. One of the squads… they tried to report something before—”
His words cut off as the vox panel fizzled, then died.
Kael’s jaw tightened beneath his helm. “Report.”
Veylan shook his head. “Silent. Nothing from the Squad Liraeus. Squad Varn is—”
He hesitated, uncertainty creeping into his voice. “Vox had gone completely silent.”

A dry wind whipped the red dust into their visors, and Kael’s mind snapped to action.
There would be no waiting, no hesitation. The mission was intelligence, reconnaissance—failure was not an option.

“Listen closely,” Kael’s voice cut across the squad vox, low and firm.
“We move forward. Stick to protocols, maintain stealth.
The other teams will be alive unless the enemy knows they’re here.
We find them. We rendezvous. And we find out what went wrong.”

The Ghosts shifted into motion, boots sinking into Martian soil, shadows blending with the ochre haze.
Every ridge, every ruined manufactorum became a potential ambush point.
Kael’s eyes scanned constantly, taking in the fractured signs of recent battle—burned-out servo-skulls,
twisted framework of vehicles, scorch marks that cut paths through the soil like veins of fire.

They pressed on, silent as death itself, every hand on bolter or blade, every sense alert.
Kael knew that the enemy could be anywhere, watching, waiting, biding their time for the strike.
And yet, despite the unease and the radio silence of his other squads, he could not allow hesitation to creep in.
The Ghosts of the Nameless moved as one, a deadly shadow stalking across the red sands,
toward a rendezvous that might be their only hope—or their final trial.

----------------------------------------------------
Southern Hemisphere
Martian Dust Wastes, Ridge Above Manufactorum K-17
----------------------------------------------------

Red grit hissed across the armor of Kael’s Ghost team as they belly-crawled to the ridge’s edge.
The manufactorum below sat half-buried in the sands—a sprawling, rust-choked labyrinth of cranes,
pipework, and forge-stacks that bled dull light into the smog.

At first glance, it seemed a corpse of the Mechanicum’s glory, abandoned and silent.
But the forge-stacks whispered differently: dull orange light pulsed within them, rhythmic, purposeful.
Production.

Kael raised a hand, the team halting behind him. He swept his auspex over the basin.
The readings were anemic but undeniable: thermal blooms, servo-activity, and power output consistent with active forges.
“Too quiet,” murmured Sergeant Corven through a tight vox-whisper. Even his voice carried a hint of unease.

Kael nodded once.
“No picket lines. No patrols. Not even a sentry servitor. This… isn’t right.”
Before he could issue orders, a sudden detonation split the thin Martian air.
A column of fire speared into the sky from the manufactorum’s east flank, turning red dust into a boiling cloud of ochre and flame.
The Ghosts flattened against the ridge as shockwaves rolled over them, the ground trembling under the violence.
“Contacts!” Veylan’s voice was sharp. He pointed.

Figures moved out of the storm and haze—skittering silhouettes of Thallax automata,
their spindly limbs clicking as they darted forward like predators.
Behind them came towering Castellax battle-automata, their cyclopean eyes burning crimson,
followed by robed Magi whose mechadendrites writhed like nests of snakes.
They fired into the manufactorum’s defenders—other Mechanicum forces entrenched behind ferrocrete barricades,
their own automata and skitarii returning fire in disciplined volleys.

Kael watched a Castellax shoulder through a barricade, its mauler cannon roaring, reducing defenders to streaks of mist.
Counter-fire from a Krios tank punched through the automaton’s thorax,
blowing its chest into shards of steel and leaking coolant that steamed on the cold sands.

“Civil war,” Kael muttered, the words low, almost to himself.
“The Mechanicum has traitors here.”

Another explosion gutted a manufactorum tower. For a heartbeat, the flames painted the red dust in gold.
Vox-screams flickered on open channels, Martian binary litanies devolving into garbled static.

“Do we intervene?” Veylan asked, tense. “They’re tearing each other apart. We might tip the balance.”
Kael’s visor display reflected the firestorm below as he scanned the carnage:
skitarii tearing through each other with cold precision, cybernetic hounds loosed from their leash,
and Magi dueling with weaponized logic-bombs that shredded cogitator systems mid-stride.
It was the Mechanicum’s heresy laid bare—a mirror of what had broken the Legions themselves.

“No,” Kael said at last, his voice a blade of command. “We don’t even know who’s loyal.”
Another salvo of missiles streaked across the basin, and a forge crane collapsed like a falling titan,
crushing defenders and attackers alike in a shower of sparks.
Kael’s Ghosts watched in grim silence, the distant clash echoing across the sands like the grinding of old gods.

“Mark it all,” Kael ordered, activating his helm recorder.
“Every troop movement. Every sigil. We find the truth first—then we decide who dies.”
He turned his gaze skyward, to where the wreckage of Mars’ orbit still drifted like bones.
The manufactorum wasn’t just a battlefield; it was a symptom of something deeper.
If Mars was eating itself alive, then whatever awaited them in the forges would be worse than the Black Host.
Kael’s fingers tightened on the grip of his bolter.
“Stay low. Stay quiet. And remember—we are ghosts. Not martyrs.”

Ash plumed in the thin, poisonous air as Kael’s Ghosts crept closer to the killing ground.
The ridge behind them faded to a jagged shadow.
Ahead, the manufactorum sprawled like a wounded beast, its chimneys coughing pale flame into a sky smeared copper-red.

The two armies were tearing each other apart at knife-range.
Macro-drills and tracked skitarii tanks had churned the Martian dust into a slurry of oil and blood.
Energy blasts cut jagged rents through the gloom, carving brief, stark lightscapes across the ruins.
Every shot echoed strangely, the planet’s thin atmosphere distorting sound until the booming discharges sounded distant and hollow,
like the war was happening underwater.

Kael crouched low behind a half-collapsed servo-hauler, his helm lenses narrowing against the glare of a sudden plasma discharge.
The attackers—ragged cohorts of skitarii with crimson machine-cult sigils—advanced under the cover of a phalanx of Kastelan robots.
Their vox-casters screamed “Treason! Flesh-fools! Purge the false masters!” with every step.
The defenders within the manufactorum returned fire from spire-top emplacements, turreted laser arrays pulsing like heartbeat flares.
Lieutenant Veylan, his armor ghost-grey and rimmed with Martian dust, hissed over the squad channel.
“Those are no loyalist protocols, Kael. The defenders do not even bear the sigils of Olympus Mons.
They hide their heraldry like cowards. They’re the traitors here.”

Kael did not look back.
His gaze tracked a ruptured conduit spilling pressurized gas across the battlefield, shrouding a skitarii phalanx in a swirling white fog.
Shapes moved within it—too large, too fluid to be automata.
Somewhere beneath the gunfire came the grinding whine of servo-motors running too hot.

“You sound like the War Council already,” Kael said quietly. His voice was flat but edged with warning.
“Every side calls the other heretic, Darius. You’ve seen what lies and sigils mean these days.”

Another explosion split the horizon, a gout of incandescent debris blooming from one of the manufactorum’s side-bastions.
The shockwave buffeted them even at this distance, rattling loose dust from the rocks overhead.
The Ghosts flattened themselves against the ridge as a formation of Thallax automata leapt the breach,
lightning arcs stabbing from their coils.
They crashed into the defenders’ servo-harvesters, scything limbs tearing metal and flesh apart with equal contempt.
A Raven Guard veteran named Aryn voxed softly, awe leaking into his tone.
“Never seen Mechanicum fight Mechanicum like this. It’s…wrong.”
“It’s Mars,” Kael replied.
He watched as one of the Kastelan robots took a dozen lascannon hits before collapsing, its final fall crushing a fleeing tech-thrall.
The defenders’ return fire was precise, disciplined—too disciplined for rebels.
But the attackers’ chants were the Canticles of the Omnissiah, uncorrupted, unchanged.

The war had turned even certainty into a weapon.
Kael made his decision. “We move. Close and quiet. Through that breach.”
He pointed toward a collapsed supply gantry where shadows pooled like ink.
“We get inside the manufactorum, find out who’s who.
Don’t draw fire unless you must. Let the war mask our footsteps.”

Veylan grunted but said no more.
The Ghosts slipped from their cover and began the descent, gray ceramite blurring into the red dusk.
Below, the world’s greatest forge world devoured itself,
and the thin Martian air carried the echoes of the Omnissiah’s name—spoken both as prayer and as curse.

The manufactorum’s bowels were a labyrinth of metal bones and murmuring ghosts.
Conduits like iron arteries ran overhead, exhaling heat and ozone.
Servo-skulls hovered in forgotten alcoves, their optics dim but still twitching toward movement.
Kael signaled the Ghosts forward, every step measured, every breath shallow behind their rebreathers.

The air tasted wrong—like copper overlaid with the tang of rot.
It wasn’t just the Martian atmosphere. Warp-taint clung to this place like a sickness.
Kael felt it under his skin, a cold tickle along the spine, the instinct every Raven Guard learned to trust.
But instinct wasn’t proof, and proof was what he lived by.

He split the team silently: two pairs to sweep the flanks, one to cover their rear, himself and Veylan taking point.
As they ghosted through the manufactorum’s heart, they passed endless production lines—
servitors hunched over conveyor belts,
their flesh sloughed and re-purposed, pistons and augmetics replacing bone and muscle.
Arms whirred, sparks hissed, and fresh-machined plates the size of fortress walls rolled into storage vaults.

Veylan’s voice was low over the vox.
“God-Emperor preserve us… Kael, these aren’t munitions for skitarii.”

Kael’s eyes followed the shapes—a massive adamantium knee joint, inscribed with the sigils of Legio Mortis;
a head-cowl shaped unmistakably for a Warlord-class Titan. The scale was undeniable.
“They’re feeding Titans to the Warmaster,” Kael said, voice flat, final.

A hand signal, and the Ghosts converged on a high gantry overlooking the Control Sanctum.
Through the half-shattered plasteel window below, three figures hovered over a flickering hololithic display:
a Magos Fabricator draped in red-and-black robes, mechadendrites flicking like metal vipers;
a hunched adept hungrily recording notes; and a human overseer in flak and chain,
his face deadened by augmetic implants.
Their voices carried through the broken glass.
“—attack of those fools who still cling to the Emperor’s false light,” the overseer was saying.
“Production has been delayed by twelve cycles.”

“Unacceptable,” rasped the Magos Fabricator.
His vox-filtered voice was a metallic rasp, grating like gears stripped of teeth.
“The Warmaster expects Legio Mortis’ war engines armed and delivered.
Delay is treachery. We will not fail him.”

Kael listened, unmoving. The words were enough. Proof. The kind that could damn a world.
He tapped the rune on his vambrace. Three short clicks. The Ghosts understood. Kill-order.
They slipped from shadow like hunting knives.
A Raven Guard sergeant on the left swept down first, dropping soundless between struts to land behind the overseer.
His combat blade whispered across the man’s throat—one breath, and the overseer folded wordlessly to the floor.
Veylan vaulted the railing, his camo-cloak shimmering as he struck the adept.
The blow to the skull was silent, surgical; the adept crumpled with a faint, wet crack.

Kael himself descended last, silent as a falling feather,
talons of his lightning claws withdrawn to leave only the monomolecular edge of a single blade.
The Magos sensed him at the final heartbeat—servo-arms flaring out, a shriek of binary bursting from his vox-grille—
but Kael was already behind him. A cut severed the Magos’ primary power-feed. Sparks spat.
Another strike drove up through armored plating into the cranial node.
The Magos convulsed, mechadendrites flailing, then collapsed with a hiss of venting hydraulics.

The entire execution took four heartbeats.
No alarms sounded. The manufactorum’s great machines continued their endless, soulless labor.
Kael stood over the Fabricator’s broken frame.
The Magos’ face—half metal, half withered flesh—stared sightlessly at the ceiling.
The Raven Guard captain crouched and plugged a spike of data-cabling into a port at the corpse’s collar.
Code-scrawls in binaric screamed across his helm display, half-corrupted, half-encrypted.
He forced the machine-spirit to yield, fingers flicking through data-strings, breaking firewalls, rewriting queries.
“Come on,” he hissed. “Give me something.”

The Magos’ memory-coffers were butchered, scrambled by death protocols.
But fragments emerged: schematics of Titans, ritual sigils of summoning, delivery schedules.
And one line of priority code, its sigils glowing like embers:
“Kelbor-Hal… daemonic bindings assured. The Warmaster will have god-machines fit for gods.”
Kael froze. Even as a Raven Guard—no stranger to horror—he felt a cold pit in his chest.
“Daemons in Titans,” he murmured. “Even Mars burns its soul.”

He yanked the spike free, severing the feed. “Sabotage every line you can,” he voxed to the Ghosts.
“Power couplings, coolant reservoirs, anything. Then plant charges. We leave nothing for them.”
“Abaddon needs to know this,” Veylan said.
“He will,” Kael replied. “The galaxy’s ending, and he deserves the truth of it.”

The Ghosts moved quickly now, planting meltacharges among the titan components and coolant systems.
Somewhere in the depths of the manufactorum, a klaxon began to wail—distant, uncertain—like the first cry of a dying god.
Kael’s team faded back into the Martian dark, leaving the Warmaster’s would-be Titans to die screaming in molten slag.
The red planet shuddered as if in anger, but the Ghosts were already gone,
their silent transmission carrying the traitor Mechanicum’s heresy into Abaddon’s hands.

The manufactorum began to scream.
Sirens keened, long and low, like wounded titans.
Emergency lumen-strips flickered and died, plunging corridors into crimson gloom.
Somewhere deep below, a plasma core vented in agony, and the deck plates thrummed beneath the Ghosts’ boots.
Kael signaled the withdrawal with a clenched fist. No words. The Ghosts knew.
They flowed back through the shadowed arteries of the manufactorum, their camo-cloaks alive with shifting patterns.
Behind them, meltacharges ticked down toward ignition.

The first detonation shook the world.
A blossom of fire roared up through a cooling tower, venting into the Martian night.
A second and third followed, cracking support struts, shredding a production line of titan knee-joints.
Sparks rained like comet trails.

“Contacts,” Veylan whispered over the vox. His voice was taut, all nerves.
“Skitarii patrols—multiple squads, flanking pattern.”

Kael’s reply was a soft click of acknowledgement. They had prepared for this.
On ingress they had seeded traps—remote mines, wire snares, plasma charges hidden in conduits.
The first patrol found them. Red-eyed skitarii broke from the smoke, bionics clicking like insect legs.
Kael waited until they were committed, then flicked a rune on his vambrace.

The corridor erupted. A plasma charge blossomed into a sun-hot sphere, vaporizing half the squad.
The rest stumbled into a crossfire of disciplined bolter bursts from the Ghosts,
their silhouettes vanishing back into smoke before the skitarii’s augmetic optics could adjust.

Another detonation thumped in the distance—one of the manufactorum’s titan bays collapsing inward,
a hollow boom like a god-machine’s death knell.

The Ghosts moved like wraiths,
luring the next patrol down a maintenance gantry toward a kill-zone where monofilament wire and krak charges awaited.
The trap snapped shut with brutal finality. Shards of augmetic limbs rained into the dark.
Then came a new sound—bolter fire, heavy and deliberate, not the staccato rhythm of skitarii carbines.
Kael risked a glance through a shattered viewport.
Beyond the outer gantries, loyalist Mechanicum cohorts and their skitarii were advancing through the smog,
banners of the Emperor raised high.
Macro-transports crawled across the horizon, disgorging tanks and battle-servitors.
Their litanies of loyalty to the Omnissiah rose above the din:
“For Mars! For the Omnissiah!”

Lascannon beams carved through the manufactorum’s outer walls.
The defenders—the traitor Mechanicum—reeled under the sudden push.
Plasma flares lit the smoke as the loyalists breached the outer bastions, beginning to reclaim the Titan works.
Kael signaled Veylan. “Those that are still loyal have their moment. We’re gone.”

The Ghosts ghosted through an auxiliary vent, the roar of battle echoing behind them.
They left the loyalists to their vengeance, their own sabotage amplifying the chaos.
In the shadows of Mars’s broken manufactoria, the Nameless were already miles away—
phantoms sliding back toward their extraction point beneath the storm-shrouded skies.

Kael sent the encrypted burst to Abaddon—Kelbor-Hal’s treachery laid bare.
The message blinked confirmation, then self-scrubbed.
Kael looked back once at the distant fires clawing at the red horizon.
“Another wound for Mars,” Veylan muttered.

Kael’s reply was quiet, almost sorrowful. “Another truth for Abaddon.
And another reason the galaxy will never be whole again.”
They vanished into the Martian night as the manufactorum died, the Ghosts’ work complete.

----------------------------------------------------
Mars, the Cinder Valleys
beneath the Southern Hemisphere Manufactorum Complex
+04.23.11 after planetary insertion
----------------------------------------------------

The dust storm had turned the Martian night into a roiling ocean of ochre and static.
Kael and his remaining Ghosts moved low through the fractured terrain,
broken silhouettes darting between half-buried mag-rails and the ruins of collapsed conveyors.
Lightning flickered within the dust, casting skeletal shadows across the red expanse.
Veylan’s voice rasped through the vox.
“Still no trace of Squad Liraeus or Squad Varn. Their transponders are gone.”

Kael halted, raising a clenched fist. The Ghosts froze, bolters tracking the empty dark.
He glanced at his wrist auspex—just static, no returns.
“We keep moving. Scan for heat and movement. If they’re alive, they’ll be heading for the valley basin.”

As they crested the ridge overlooking the basin, the red fog briefly parted—and Kael saw it.
The carcasses of Skitarii littered the plain below, torn apart by energy weapons not of loyal design.
In the far distance, the black silhouettes of spider-like automata moved with jerking precision,
their limbs clicking like bones.
Their central visors glowed a sickly green, and long servo-tendrils dragged the dead toward vast furnace pits
that belched smoke into the storm.
“Traitor Mechanicum,” Veylan whispered. “Emperor preserve us…”
Kael’s expression hardened beneath his helm. “Indeed.”

The Ghosts advanced into the basin, silent as the dust itself.
But as they neared the furnace line, the machines stirred—their visors flaring bright.
Bolter fire erupted, sparking against ceramite and iron hide.
The Ghosts moved like spectres, fanning out, cutting down the first wave of corrupted Skitarii that charged from the haze.
Their movements were surgical, but the enemy was endless—constructs crawling from fissures,
dragging themselves forward on limbs fused with metal and flesh.
Veylan’s auspex spiked. “Multiple signatures—closing fast!”
“Fall back!” Kael ordered. “We’re not equipped for this!”

They fought a retreat through the storm, firing bursts into the red murk.
A construct lunged from the side, half its skull replaced with augmetic wiring—Kael met it with his blade,
cutting through its throat in a hiss of sparks.

“Captain, we’re being boxed in!” Veylan called. “They’re herding us toward the mag-tracks!”
Kael’s reply was cold, resolute. “Then we kill whatever’s in our way.”
The Ghosts pivoted into a defensive crescent.
Servitors fused with daemon-things emerged from the smoke, dragging infernal plasma cutters that screamed as they powered up.
The ground trembled with the thrum of corrupted engines.
Kael drew his combat blade and ignited the power field, its edge burning cobalt in the red night.
“For the Nameless,” he growled.

The Ghosts met the charge head-on.
The clash was brutal, personal—gunfire mixed with the shriek of metal-on-metal, the taste of ozone and blood heavy in the air.
A tendril lashed out, impaling one of the Ghosts and dragging him screaming into the dark.
Veylan detonated a plasma grenade, vaporizing the creature’s upper half—but the shockwave threw him sprawling.
Kael reached him, hauling him to his feet. “We move! We—”
Then, through the maelstrom, came a crack of disciplined bolter fire from the ridge above.
Blue muzzle-flashes cut through the red storm.

Kael looked up—and saw them.
Ghosts, battered and blackened, but alive. Squad Varn.
Their sergeant voxed through the static: “Captain! Thought we’d lost you to the red sands!”
Kael’s lips tightened into a grim smile. “Not yet. Form up and cover our retreat!”
The ridge erupted in fire as the lost squad laid into the advancing constructs, their shots precise and devastating.
Kael’s team pushed forward, linking with them under a storm of covering fire.
The reunited Ghosts fell back through a canyon of shattered pylons, explosions behind them lighting the dust like lightning flashes.
“Where’s Liraeus?” Kael asked between bursts of fire.
Varn’s silence was all the answer he needed.

They reached the extraction valley as the last of the corrupted constructs withdrew, shrieking back into the dark.
The Ghosts’ armor was scarred, their breath ragged—but they were alive.
Kael stood last, gazing back toward the manufactorum’s burning horizon.
“Mars is lost,” Veylan muttered.
Kael’s reply came as a whisper, carried on the wind. “No. Just damned.”
He raised his vox and opened a narrow-band channel to the Sable Hammer.

“Mission complete. Extraction now. We’ve seen what the Mechanicum has become… and it’s worse than we feared.”
The thunder of gunships echoed across the valley as the Ghosts disappeared into the storm once more—
returning to orbit with truth that would break even the hardiest hearts of the United Fleet.

Chapter Text

--------------------------------------------
Aboard the Raptor’s Claw – United Fleet Flagship
Command Bridge
Saturn’s Moons
--------------------------------------------

Saturn’s shadow bled across the stars.
The Raptor’s Claw cut a dark silhouette against the pallid glow of the ringed world, its armour pitted from weeks of running battles.
The void beyond Mars was no longer silent—its horizons burned with the flares of war.
Kael’s data-burst whispered through Abaddon’s display in fractured binaric,
the sigil of the Sable Hammer pulsing once before self-scrubbing.

The hololith shimmered, lines of green code resolving into grim confirmation: Kelbor-Hal had seized Mars.
The Fabricator-General was feeding Horus titans, engines bound to the Warp itself.
Abaddon’s jaw flexed. He read the report again, as though repetition might soften its weight.
It did not.

The ship shuddered, a tremor from distant macro-cannon fire. Warning runes strobed red along the hololith’s edges.
“Contact reports multiplying,” a vox-aide called from the pits below the bridge.
“Rear elements of the traitor fleet have sighted us.
Three squadrons closing—Gloriana-class signatures among their screens.”

“Gloriana-class,” Tarvitz echoed, quiet and grim. His gauntleted fingers tapped the railing.
“But not the Vengeful Spirit.”
Abaddon glanced to him, then to Loken. “You’re certain?”

“Not a whisper of her,” Loken said.
His voice was level, but the lines at the corners of his eyes deepened.
“If she’s not here, she’s already at Terra.”

Another impact juddered the Raptor’s Claw.
Alarm chimes mingled with the heartbeat throb of the ship’s reactors as helmsmen hauled her into a new vector.
The hololithic display widened: crimson icons of the Warmaster’s fleet, vast as a starfield, were bleeding across the projection.
Varro’s XIIIth detachment surged forward in a disciplined wedge, blue sigils flaring as they took the brunt of the traitor countercharge.
Macro-batteries roared. Cruiser hulls blossomed into brief, beautiful suns as they died.
“They hold the line for us,” Tarvitz murmured, almost reverent.

Abaddon’s knuckles whitened on the command rail.
“And we will not let them hold it in vain.”
Below, the pits of the bridge buzzed with frantic energy—range calls, shield reports, burst transmissions to outlying escorts.
The United Fleet’s ships maneuvered in ragged cohesion,
Nameless and Ultramarine hulls aligning into a secondary wall behind Varro’s embattled spearhead.

Loken watched the tactical feed, his lips pressed thin.
“We wanted to find the XIIIth garrison.”
“We found Horus’s blade instead,” Abaddon replied.
His voice was steady, but the faintest ghost of bitterness rode the words.
Tarvitz’s eyes flicked toward him. “Then we cut them deeper.”

Abaddon looked once more at the place where the Vengeful Spirit was not.
The empty void there felt heavier than the entire traitor fleet.
“Signal Varro,” he ordered at last.
“Tell him we advance. The Nameless will anchor the center.
And remind every captain: the Warmaster may be at Terra, but his sons bleed here first.”

The hololith flared brighter as maneuver orders cascaded through the fleet.
Outside the viewport, Saturn’s pale rings wheeled silently—a cold witness to the clash now igniting among its moons.
The United Fleet plunged forward, a knife of defiance against the Warmaster’s vanguard,
the Emperor’s last hope racing to catch a war already at Terra’s gates.

The void itself seemed to scream as Macro-batteries flared like suns, tracer rounds cutting scarlet lines across Saturn’s shadow.
The Warmaster’s vanguard pressed in,
a swarm of jagged icons on the hololith—cruisers and battle-barges vomiting fire into Varro’s XIIIth line. Hulls buckled.
Atmosphere vented into black. Vox channels choked with casualty codes.

“Boarding alarms across the front,” a comms-serf cried on Raptor’s Claw’s bridge.
“Multiple Varro hulls breached!”

Through the carnage, the Nameless struck back.
A rip of light—teleport flares—answered each fresh boarding signal.
Deep inside a traitor strike cruiser, Mathar Vorr’s Knights of the Grey Flame materialised in a thunder-clap of ozone and Warp residue.
Their artificed plate shimmered with protective runes, blades already wreathed in ghost-fire.
The first traitor Astartes to charge them were sheared apart in a heartbeat—warp-kindled swords cutting through corrupted ceramite
as if it were parchment. The Knights moved with brutal precision:
a single squad decapitating a gun deck before its crew could cycle their turrets, another crippling the plasma conduits of a battleship’s heart.
Vorr himself led the vanguard, a towering figure wreathed in silver-white flame, his greatsword crackling with caged lightning.
His strike tore through a daemon-bound Dreadnought, bisecting its host body with a howl of ruptured reality.

“Push them!” Vorr’s voice carried across the vox, a growl of zeal and iron.
“Cut their hearts from their hulls!”

Ultramarine reinforcements followed through the breach points, blue-armoured phalanxes stacking behind the Knights.
They fought by the book: shield walls in the corridors, bolter fire disciplined and cold.
But even they paused at the spectacle of the Grey Flame.

Warp-lit Astartes carving through traitor steel and daemon flesh alike—every strike measured, every blow precise.
On another deck, more traitor astartes boarding spear recoiled as a psychic maelstrom detonated among them.
Chief Librarian Akaran Sotha’s cadre had joined the fray.

Lances of azure lightning spider-webbed along a bulkhead, vaporising a full rank of traitor marines.
Another librarian’s psychic barrier folded a hail of bolter fire back onto its senders, shredding the ambushers in a storm of their own shells.
The traitors had expected brute force; instead they met burning minds and warp-warded steel.

Abaddon watched the hololithic boarders’ icons flicker and vanish.
“Vorr’s blades are carving them apart,” he said, low and grim.
Loken’s lips twitched—the ghost of a smile.
“The traitors thought the Nameless were shadows. They’ve just learned shadows can burn.”

In the chaos of the Warmaster’s vanguard, traitor captains diverted ships to contain the breaches.
Each redirection fractured their advance, buying the United Fleet precious moments.
The XIIIth’s battered line re-formed, guns finding fresh targets.
A battered Ultramarine strike cruiser lit its drives one final time and rammed a heretic barge, breaking the enemy formation.

Everywhere, the void boiled with duels—torpedoes trading trajectories, escorts knifing through wreckage, wrecks spinning like dead moons.
But in those spaces where Vorr’s Knights walked, where Sotha’s librarians flared like living suns, the traitor fleet bled.
For a heartbeat in the endless war between Saturn and Mars, hope flickered in the darkness.
But the void boiled with murder and devastation was but a flicker away.

The sudden wrench of translation was like a scream across the stars, reality flayed and mended too fast for mortal minds to comprehend.
The Black Host came howling out of the immaterium in a storm of gravitic shock and splintered ether.
Hull-alarms keened across the Nameless fleet as auspex returns blurred, ships tumbling into emergency collision courses.
Two vessels never had the chance to correct.
The XIII cruiser Valor’s Reach overlapped into the phase-wake of a Black Host strike frigate, their matter attempting to occupy the same space.
For an instant, both craft became obscene things, hulls phasing through hulls, vox-nets alive with the shrieks of men dying in ways that defied physics.
Then, with a final rupture, they ceased to exist—gone in a bloom of implosive fire, sucked apart into ragged atoms.

“Emperor’s blood…” Captain Gaelos Syne of the Azure Spear muttered on the vox-net, his voice ground down to a whisper.
The battle shifted at once. Formations broke, neat lines of fire dissolved.
Where there had been cohesion, there was now only chaos.
The Black Host pressed their sudden advantage like carrion birds, their guns roaring, lances cutting swathes through loyalist screens.

On the Veritas Noctem, Zakhael Orsus’s laughter carried across open channels, distorted and terrible.
“Abaddon!” his voice boomed, half-metallic, half-daemon.
“We finish what you dared begin. Come, son of Horus. Let us test which of us is worthy to bear the old father’s shadow.”

Abaddon stood in the strategium of the Raptor’s Claw, helm mag-locked to his hip, face drawn and dark.
The taunt crackled through the air around him, but he did not so much as glance at the vox-officer.
His gaze fixed instead on the tactical hololith, where the Imperial symbols of their fleet guttered and blinked as ships died one by one.
“We’re losing too much,” Loken said flatly. He did not look at Abaddon when he spoke.
He looked at the hololith, and his voice carried the weight of simple fact.
“If we stay, if we indulge him, it will bleed us white. And Terra will be the poorer for it.”

Abaddon clenched a gauntleted hand into a fist.
His knuckles grated against ceramite as he ground the gesture home.
For a heartbeat, he looked every inch the First Captain of old, the one who had stood beside the Warmaster on Ullanor.
But the Warmaster was long gone, and the mantle of betrayal with him.
He turned. “Open a channel to Commander Varro. Now.”

The hololith stuttered and resolved, the scarred features of Cassian Varro limned in flickering green. B
ehind him, the bridge of the Veritas Bellum shook under another punishing impact.
Sparks rained down as crew scurried to douse fires.

“Abaddon,” Varro greeted, voice tight, ironed flat to conceal the strain.
“If you’re here to tell me what I already know, save your breath.
We are locked. Flanked. If we push forward, we’ll break against them like a tide against rock.”

Abaddon leaned closer, his voice heavy, implacable.
“We cannot bleed out here, Varro. Not at the gates. Terra is the goal.
Terra is the heart. If we die here, we hand Horus the system without contest.”

Varro’s mouth twisted into a hard line. He nodded once.
“And if we try to punch through, our losses will gut us.
The Black Host are dug in on the flanks.
They’re not here for conquest. They’re here to grind us to dust.”

Abaddon’s jaw locked. For a moment, he said nothing.
The chamber hummed with static, the distant reverberations of macro-cannon fire a basso rhythm behind his silence.
Then, slowly, deliberately, he opened his hand.
“We have no choice,” he said. His voice was a rasp, thick with anger barely caged.
“Find me another way, Varro, or we march into hell itself to clear the path.”

On the hololith, Varro inclined his head, a soldier’s acknowledgment of the impossible order.
The channel died.
Abaddon turned back to Loken. His eyes were dark, unblinking.
“This isn’t our war, not here. We save what we can. We reach Terra.”
Loken inclined his head, slow and grim. “Then Emperor help us all.”

Beyond the armoured glass of the command deck,
the void burned and churned like a wound that would not close.
Abaddon stood at the edge of the strategium’s dais, every muscle locked as though bracing for the hammer-fall.
The Raptor’s Claw shook under the pounding fury of lance and macro-fire, its shields flickering at the edges.
He had almost formed the words—almost given the order that would drive them headlong into a wall of certain death—
when the vox-chorus flared again.

“Lord Abaddon!” the auspex officer cried, half-strangled by disbelief.
“New contacts. A mass-translation… Emperor’s mercy, it’s huge. They’ve come in astern.”

The blood drained from the chamber.
The hololith bloomed with fresh sigils, row upon row of them, vast enough to shift the balance of the warzone in an instant.
Every soul in the room felt it—that terror in the gut when you realise the trap has been sprung.
“Encirclement,” growled one of the Justaerin. “They’ve come to close the jaws.”

Abaddon’s jaw tightened.
For one long moment, he saw the future unravel in his mind’s eye—death, annihilation,
the ruin of everything they had clawed together in exile.
“Identify them,” he snapped, voice flayed raw. “Now!”

Runes cascaded across the hololith, Imperial ciphers resolving, one after another,
green against the blood-red backdrop of the battle. Loyalist. Not traitor. Loyalist.
The breath hissed out of the vox officer. “XIII Legion,” he said. “Ultramarines. A full fleet.”

For the first time in hours, the chamber seemed to inhale. Relief, sharp and brutal as a knife.
A channel opened. The hololith shimmered and resolved into the image of a towering warrior clad in cobalt and gold.
His presence radiated command as surely as any Primarch’s echo could.
His voice, when it came, was clear and cold as a blade drawn from the forge.

“This is Chapter Master Valerius Kain of the Two Hundred and Twenty-Seventh,” he said.
“We are the Terra garrison fleet, dispatched by Lord Roboute Guilliman.
I have been informed of the United Fleet’s presence and status.
Tell me, First Captain… what role do you require of us?”

The weight of the moment hung like a sword above them.
Abaddon’s face was unreadable, eyes hooded, but when he spoke,
it was with the authority of a man reforged by necessity.

“Your Primarch commands that you aid us,” he said.
“We break through to Terra. You will hold the line, draw the traitors’ teeth, and give us the opening.”
Kain inclined his head, an old warrior’s nod, stripped of pretence. “Then it shall be done.”

He turned, giving orders with crisp finality.
“All vessels, engage the enemy. Form the wall. Strike hard. Strike now.”
The void shifted again. Blue and gold burned into the black, ranks of Ultramarine warships surging into the maelstrom.
Their guns lit the dark, their flanks locked tight, their formations perfect.
They fell upon the Black Host and the renegades with the fury of Guilliman’s discipline made manifest.

On the Raptor’s Claw, Abaddon did not wait. His voice carried like a thunderclap.
“All United Fleet assets engaged in boarding actions, disengage immediately.
Return to your vessels. This fight is no longer ours to linger in. We break through, now.”

“Yes, commander,” Varro’s voice answered across the fleetwide vox, already ragged with fire and fury.
The Nameless and XIII ships surged forward, battered, burning, but unbroken.
Behind them, the Ultramarines locked with the foe, bleeding, dying, but holding.
A corridor opened in the storm. The way to Terra.

Abaddon stared into the hololith, the fire of it limning his scarred face.
His voice, when it came, was low enough that only Loken heard.
“Not today, Orsus. Terra first. Always Terra.”
And with that, the United Fleet drove on, into the jaws of fire, toward the throneworld.

--------------------------------------
Veritas Noctem - The Black Host Flafship
command bridge
Near the moon of Saturn
--------------------------------------

The command bridge of the Veritas Noctem was a cathedral to corruption.
The walls sweated with machine-oil and something wetter, darker, that should never have come from steel.
The vaulted ceiling groaned with the echo of daemonic hymnals bled into the vox-spectrum,
making every lumen pulse with a sickly heartbeat.

Zakhael Orsus sat enthroned at the heart of it, armour black as the void outside, gilded with veins that throbbed faintly,
as though his plate had grown hungry. His smile was a terrible thing, full of blood and delight,
as the hololith painted the battlefield before him.

The ship bucked with another salvo, fire raking its flank, but the Veritas Noctem did not falter.
Where another vessel would have screamed in structural agony, hers sang low, a vibration that set teeth on edge.
Wounds knitted as fast as they were dealt. A ship alive, or something worse.

In Orsus’s hand, a chalice sloshed thick red fluid across its lip. It was not wine. The scent of it curdled the air.
Each time the vessel shuddered, the surface rippled, and each time he steadied it with a lover’s care.
He drank deeply, leaving a streak of crimson down his chin.

At his side, Lieutenant Valekh Rax leaned in, helm tucked beneath one arm.
His pale features were marred with the calm severity of a warrior who measured everything in terms of advantage and loss.
His voice carried across the storm-haunted chamber.

“My lord. The field shifts again. The XIII have come in force.
Their garrison fleet has driven deep into our lines. The United Fleet has the opening it needs.”

Orsus did not turn. His gaze lingered on the hololith, eyes glittering with a rapture that had nothing of sanity left in it.
His tongue ran slow across his teeth, tasting the iron tang left by the chalice.
“Good,” he murmured, like a benediction.
“Let them run. Let them bleed. They think themselves cunning.
They think themselves spared. But they cannot see the shape of it.”

Rax’s brow furrowed. “The field, my lord?”
“The field,” Orsus said, raising his chalice in salute to the hololith as the blue-and-white phalanxes of the XIII carved their wall,
“is Terra. This… this is only the first note of the song. A prelude. The Warmaster’s glory is yet to be sung.”

The Veritas Noctem rocked again, its guns vomiting ruin into the void, its hull answering with that dreadful resonance.
Orsus drank once more, lips stained, and cast the chalice aside, where it spun and bled across the deck.
His voice was a roar now, carried through every thrumming cable and every vox-node of his flagship.

“Pursue them! Harry them to the cradle of their false Emperor.
The stage is set, and we will be there when the curtain falls!”

And the Black Host surged forward, hunting the retreating United Fleet toward Terra, like wolves scenting blood on the wind.

The United Fleet drove itself like a blade through a wall of flesh.
Vessels bled fire from their hulls, spilling crew and atmosphere into the abyss.
The void between Saturn and Terra became a graveyard, every wreck a tombstone.

The Shieldbearer was first to show the desperation written on them all.
Its prow thrusters flared to white as it rammed into the side of a traitor cruiser, splitting plating and spines in a thunderous impact.
The two ships locked, grinding into each other, their hulls tearing like meat.
The Shieldbearer’s spine bent, void-shields collapsing in a howl, but the cruiser went dark—its reactors choked out by the collision.
The support vessel tore itself free, its prow ruined, its decks open to the void, but still crawling forward, engines screaming like something in agony.

Everywhere, it was the same. Batteries fired point-blank, tearing out whole decks with each volley.
Boarding torpedoes punched through battered flanks, disgorging Astartes into sudden firestorms.
Macro-cannon rounds and lance beams met in exchanges that lasted seconds, but cost thousands of lives.

The Sable Lion reeled, bleeding from a dozen wounds. The Azure Spear burned in her midships.
Even the Veritas Bellum, Varro’s flagship, was blackened and cracked across her flanks,
her shields gone and her decks lit red by emergency lumens.

The fleet bled as it moved, leaving a trail of wrecks in its wake.
Abaddon stood at the heart of the Raptor’s Claw, jaw tight, eyes fixed to the hololithic display as it updated in real time with the United Fleet’s losses.
The green icons winked out one by one, each gone forever. He tasted failure in the back of his throat.
They had come so far. Survived Isstvan, the Ruinstorm, the long years of wandering exile, the betrayals, the losses, the doubt.
All of it had brought them here, to the doorstep of the Throneworld. And now it slipped from his fingers.

“Unacceptable,” he whispered, the word torn from between his clenched teeth,
as if the very air resisted it. His gauntlets flexed on the command rail.
Loken watched him, silent, understanding. Tarvitz turned away, jaw set, unwilling to see hope crack.
And then—

The hololith shifted. New contacts. Many.
Their rune signatures flared bright, cutting into the traitor fleet’s rear.
A storm of energy readings spiked as the new force translated hard from the warp.
“Identify!” Abaddon barked. For a heartbeat, no one breathed, fearing encirclement, the final noose.
Then the truth came.

The hololith bloomed with fresh runes: friendly. Loyalist.
The vox flared to life, and the face of Shadrak Meduson burned onto the display.
His scarred features and iron-hard eyes brought a silence to the bridge before it cracked into stunned exhalations.
“Quite the party you’ve started, Abaddon,”
Meduson said, voice edged with the gallows humour of a man who had made a career out of surviving the impossible.
“Would’ve been rude of us not to show.”

Abaddon smiled, a sharp, wolfish thing, and Loken let out a low chuckle that was half relief, half disbelief.
“The shattered brothers return,” Meduson continued, his tone turning grave.
“We’ve come to reap what is owed.”
“Then reap well,” Abaddon said, inclining his head.

Meduson’s grin was as dangerous as it was tired. “Oh, and before I forget—you’re not alone.
This is only the vanguard. Guilliman and the rest of Ultramar are behind us.
They’ll be at Terra’s gates before long.”

The bridge fell into silence, broken only by the groaning of the ship as it fired another salvo.
Abaddon nodded slowly, reverently almost. “Then we have not bled for nothing. My thanks, brother.”

The vox cut.
On the hololith, the effect was immediate.
Meduson’s fleet—strange, patchwork things forged from shattered legions and stranger victories—
cut into the traitors like knives in the dark. They fought with brutal efficiency, honed by years of ambushes and raids.
They were not a fleet of parade-ground glory, but killers, hardened and merciless.
Their arrival tore confusion into the traitor lines, the enemy faltering as new fires erupted in their rear.

“Now!” Varro’s voice thundered across the command channels. “All ships, push through!”
The United Fleet surged, engines screaming, weapons blazing.
The corridor opened, bloody and narrow, but open all the same.
The Nameless, the XIII, the shattered brothers—all drove forward.
Terra loomed ahead. The Throneworld at last.

--------------------------------------------------------
Aboard the Veritas Bellum – United Fleet Flagship of the XIII
Command Bridge
--------------------------------------------------------

The strategium of the Veritas Bellum was lit only by the pale glow of the hololith.
The chamber stank faintly of ozone and scorched cabling, the wounds of the battle still leaking smoke into her arteries.
Cassian Varro stood rigid before the tactical projection.
The fleet map shimmered, its runes pulsing—so many of them red, so many winking out forever.

“Acceptable losses,” he muttered aloud.
But the words rang bitter. His hands curled into fists, gauntlets grinding against one another.
His teeth clenched until his jaw ached. Acceptable losses. The phrase was duty, not truth. The truth was rage.

Terra hung before him on the far edge of the projection, the Throneworld, the heart of everything.
The road was open now, though littered with the corpses of his fleet.
His gaze shifted across the hololith, drawn to a familiar rune pulsing steady among the wreckage—the Raptor’s Claw.
He allowed himself the faintest exhalation, almost a sigh, and whispered,
“We are finally here, brother. Together.”

Memories pressed in. The day they had departed Calth, his ships battered, his men bloodied but loyal.
He had been ordered to ally with the Nameless. He had obeyed, but suspicion had burned in him from the first moment.
He had seen them as knives—sharp, dangerous, but nothing more than tools to wield in his hand, in Guilliman’s service.

Yet time had proven him wrong.
They had bled together, fought together. His Ultramarines and their mongrel brotherhood, interwoven now into a single weave.
He had seen his own men stand shoulder to shoulder with the Knights of the Grey Flame and the Oatharii,
had seen his officers fight with the librarians of the Nameless, had watched them grow into something…inseparable.

They were Nameless too, now. And so was he, though he could scarcely admit it aloud.
He smiled despite himself. A rare, thin thing. If not for my father, I would be one of them already.
Loyalty anchored him—his father, his gene-sire, his primarch. Guilliman’s will was iron in his veins.
That truth would never shift. But in the silent space between his thoughts, he allowed himself the knowledge:
he had found another brotherhood, another bond. And he cherished it.

The vox-sigil chimed.
Abaddon’s voice, steady and commanding, filled the chamber.
“Cassian. Word from our newly arrived allies. Your primarch approaches.
Guilliman is close—his fleet draws near Sol. He will be at Terra’s side soon.”

Varro’s throat tightened. For a heartbeat, he could not find his words.
Then, with iron in his voice: “Then we will stand ready for him.”

The hololith flickered, showing the battered United Fleet pulling into formation, scarred but unbroken.
Terra waited ahead, the final bastion. Behind them, the storm still raged.
Varro straightened, his expression hardening into the mask of command once more.
“Signal the fleet. We hold formation. We are not yet done. Terra awaits.”

Chapter Text

---------------------------------
Terra Imperial Palace - strategium
---------------------------------

The strategium was a fortress of light and shadow.
Hololithic projectors cast burning geometries across the chamber,
blue-white fire maps of the Palace and the besieged walls, each update burning fresh calamities into the air.
Rogal Dorn stood immovable in the storm of reports, his fists clasped behind his back, his jaw set like carved granite.

Saturnine. Always Saturnine.
The breaches had multiplied like wounds torn in flesh.
Perturabo’s engines, fed by orbital bombardments that had scarred even the Eternity Wall, pressed remorselessly against his defenses.
Titans stalked through fire-clouds, artillery fell in sheets.
The Lion’s Gate Spaceport had become a black wound disgorging endless traitor divisions.
The enemy’s tide was inexorable, the pressure calculated, a brother’s brilliance turned to ruin.

He had no time to waste on despair.
Reports came in clipped High Gothic, carried by remembrancers, senior praetorians, astropaths struggling with smoke-seared lungs.
Among them, one sliver of news that cut clean through the mire.

A fleet. Small, battered, but breaking through. Identified as the XIII and the Nameless. United remnants. Survivors.
They had forced the choke of the outer void, driven a knife through the traitor fleets, and were now clawing their way across the system.
The projections Dorn studied painted the truth without mercy—it would take them weeks yet.
Weeks of void war, weeks of burning through blockade and minefield.

But if they reached Terra, if they landed men and steel within the Palace, they could be thrown against the ruptures at Saturnine.
A plug. A brace in the wall before it all gave way.
He stared long into the fire geometry. Crimson rune-markers spread like infection across the Saturnine Gate.
His brothers closed in, their Legions encircling his walls like a tightening fist.
Dorn allowed himself no indulgence, no warmth.
But within the armoured citadel of his mind, he made one acknowledgment.
It is hope.

He turned, the shadows of the great chamber clinging to him. His voice, when he spoke, was like stone dragged across stone.
“The Imperium shall not fall today,” he said, his eyes on the swelling tide of red enemy runes. “It shall not fall while I draw breath.”
His father had given him no clear answer, only silence and burden. The ultimatum of the end was still withheld from him.
Dorn clenched his gauntleted fists. He could endure. He could hope. And he would hold.

Rogal Dorn moved like a shadow of iron across the strategium, his presence alone shaping the flow of battle.
Hololithic projections swirled around him, each one a burning lattice of enemy forces pressing against Saturnine Gate and the Eternity Wall.
He did not flinch at the red markers, did not allow himself the luxury of shock. Shock was for those who could afford it; he had no such claim.

“Redeploy the 7th Auxilia regiments to Outpost Theta-Nine,” he commanded, voice low and unwavering, carrying across the chamber like a hammer strike.
“Seal breaches with mobile servitor batteries. Direct the 12th to reinforce the eastern bastion. Do not hold men back. Do not pause.”
Screens lit with the casualties, numbers climbing like a tide, yet Dorn’s mind cut through the despair.
Each fallen soldier, each shattered regiment, was a piece in the greater calculation.
He would not mourn them now—mourning was a luxury the Imperium could ill afford.

Reports continued to stream in: forward staging areas across Terra were burning.
Fortresses that had stood since the Great Crusade were reduced to ruins; barracks and training grounds were nothing more than smoking rubble.
Thousands of Solar Auxilia fell in their hundreds, thousands, while the remaining Astartes pressed forward like living walls against the tide.
Even orbital blockades strained under the relentless pressure of traitor fleets.
The Imperial Fists’ naval might held—for now—but the signs were unmistakable: it could not hold forever.

Dorn’s eyes, sharp beneath his brow, scanned the projections. He considered each move, each countermeasure, every permutation of defense.
And still, he stood. Unwavering. Stoic.

The gate might bend; the Palace might quake; the Imperium itself seemed to teeter on the edge of ruin—but not while he drew breath.
“Send the 33rd Legion Auxiliary to reinforce the satellite fortifications,” he continued, his fingers tracing across the projection.
“And mark for extraction any non-combatants within the breach radius. No soul is to be left exposed unnecessarily.”
He allowed himself a brief moment to study the battlefield:
enemy Astartes pushing forward, Titans towering over ruined bastions, orbital strikes ripping through columns of defenders.
And yet, for every push, there was counterstrike. For every breach, a wall held.

Grim, unyielding, precise. Dorn’s mind was a blade, and he wielded it in the midst of chaos.
Even as the world burned, even as Terra’s defenders fell, he would endure.
And so he stood.

--------------------------------------------
United Fleet – Outer Edge of Luna facing Terra
--------------------------------------------

The United Fleet clawed its way through the chaos of the front, its ships scarred, bleeding atmosphere, still firing.
Abaddon stood rigid upon the bridge of the Raptor’s Claw, watching the hololithic display of Terra’s orbit shift and break in real time.
The Imperial Fists’ ironclad fleet held like a wall of stone, forcing the traitor armada into funnels of annihilation,
but even Dorn’s sons could not seal the heavens completely.

Enemy warships still slipped through, and every breach tore another wound into the loyalist cause.
A burst of static cut through the vox-net. Kael’s voice, cold and sharp as steel, reported from the Sable Hammer.
“The Lion’s Gate Spaceport is lost. Horus’ banners fly from its spires.
Titans and engines of war are falling from its decks into Terra like fire raining from the skies.
It is a fortress turned dagger, and it is stabbing straight into the heart of the Palace.”

Abaddon’s jaw set as he studied the projections.
He saw Dorn’s fleet dying in place, saw the endless tide of traitors pressing forward.
He saw the orbital bastions fall, one by one, under bombardment.
And then his gaze fell upon the Lion’s Gate—once a bulwark of Imperial might, now a vast maw feeding the enemy’s war effort.
“That,” he said, voice low but absolute, “is where we break in.”

Loken’s head turned sharply. His scarred face was drawn tight, his voice edged with incredulity.
“You mean to strike the Lion’s Gate Spaceport? It’s already in enemy hands, Abaddon.
It was fortified to withstand us even when it was loyal.
Now it is garrisoned, armed, and entrenched. That way lies slaughter.”

Falkus Kibre gave a short, dark chuckle.
“For once, I agree with Loken. Charging the traitors’ most prized stronghold is suicide.
There are other gaps in the fleet, other routes to bleed through.”

Abaddon’s stare burned into the hololith, unblinking.
“And every one of those gaps leads through walls of fire and the attrition of Dorn’s blockade.
We will bleed no matter what. Better to strike at the artery than scrape at the veins.”
He pointed at the red-lit sprawl of the Lion’s Gate projection.

“That spaceport is both dagger and shield.
If we seize it, we cut the traitors from their reinforcements and gain a landing site into Terra itself.
No other path offers such gain for our loss.”

Silence spread, broken only by the thrum of the void shields shuddering under distant fire.
Loken looked to Kibre, then back at Abaddon. There was no give in his expression, no hesitation.
“This is the only option,” Abaddon finished.
“We gamble everything here—or we die in orbit, watching Terra burn beneath us.”

He opened a direct channel.
Cassian Varro’s face flickered into view, the captain aboard the Veritas Bellum framed by shadows of his hololithic displays.
“You mean to assault the Lion’s Gate?” Varro asked without preamble.
His voice was sharp, but his eyes told the truth—he already knew the answer.

Abaddon inclined his head.
“You see the field as I do, Varro. Any other path ends in slow death.
At least this one grants us the chance to drive the blade back into Horus’ heart.”

Varro was silent for a long moment.
He looked down, his lips pressing tight as his gauntlets flexed against the console.
Finally, he gave the smallest nod. “It is madness,” he said,
“but perhaps it is the only kind that will serve us now. My men will stand with you.”

Abaddon allowed himself a brief exhale, as if releasing the weight of inevitability.
“Then it is settled. Muster every ship, every gun, every warrior. The Lion’s Gate will bleed.
And we will bleed with it—but we will not stop until we carve our way to Terra.”

On the Sable Hammer, Kael was already moving.
His reconnaissance reports streamed in—patterns of enemy Skitarii, the vectors of defense batteries,
the shield nodes powering the fortress.
His Ghosts slipped into the dark like knives, laying traps in the arteries of the traitor machine.
The Nameless, the XIII, the shattered remnants of brotherhood—they gathered now for the gambit.

-------------------------------------------
Aboard the Sable Hammer — Intelligence Deck
-------------------------------------------

The intelligence deck smelled of hot metal and ozone,
the air thick with printed schematics and the dull hum of servitors carving through data-cores.
Captain Verus Kael crouched over a hololith, eyes hard as flint as enemy schematics scrolled beneath his gauntlet.
Around him, Ghost-team analysts worked in pin-drop silence, pulling intercepted vox-chatter,
Mechanicum layout plans and dark-net fragments into a single lattice of possibilities.

“Shield node placement here, here and here,” murmured one adjutant, sweeping a finger across the model.
“Primary generator coupling runs on that axis.
If we punch through the eastern approach we’ll face overlapping defensive arcs and two auto-turret rings.”

“Aye.” Kael’s voice was level, precise.
“The walkways are rigged with servitor nets and servo-bellows.
The docking clamps are reinforced with layered servosteel—standard.
But the shield aperture timing has a micro-gap between cycle and re-focus.
It’s narrow, but it exists.”

Lieutenant Darius Veylan flung a datapad up, where it bloomed into the air in spectral holo.
“We have one blind approach: a high-velocity kinetic entry timed to the aperture micro-gap.
We’d need to sacrifice a hull to create a breach large enough for boarding sleds to follow through.
The point is—”

“—it’ll tear like a blade through the port’s belly if we hit it just right,” Kael finished.
He met Veylan’s eyes and there was no flippancy there, only the cold arithmetic of men who accept the cost.
"We have options,” he added, “none good. Some possible. All lethal.”

He keyed the encrypted uplink.
The assessment packed into a tight packet and was gone—ghost-data into the Raptor’s Claw.
The Ghosts folded back into their shadowwork, observant and unmurmuring, as Kael prepared to run the vectors for a descent.
The red planet waited, and the Lion’s Gate spaceport loomed like a crown of spikes in the distance.

-------------------------------------------
Aboard the Raptor’s Claw — Strategium
-------------------------------------------

Abaddon received the packet in the hush of the strategium.
The hololith resolved Kael’s maps at scale, each danger and narrow window exposed like a wound.
Around him Loken and Tarvitz watched the options unspool: every approach, every costed casualty estimate.
Abaddon’s expression was stone. He let the numbers run through him, the cold calculus of risk and reward.
When he spoke it was not to murmur doubts—there were none to be had.
“We ram the gate,” he said.

The word struck the room like a blade. For a beat, the strategium held its collective breath.
Abaddon outlined the gambit with the economy of a general who had lived on the knife-edge his whole life.
A sacrificial kinetic strike — a chosen vessel, armoured and stripped,
driven like a spear at the Gate’s weakest structural mount at the instant the shield micro-gap opened.
Boarding sleds and teleportation anchors riding in its wake.

Oatharii teams led by Captain Rhemar to shove onto the docking ring and secure the clamps.
Mathar Vorr’s Knights of the Grey Flame to flow in behind them, vanish-and-strike, sanctify the choke point and hold it against counter-attack.
Librarians to bring psychic wards to stabilise the teleport anchors and purge the warp-taint in the docking halls.
Once the citadel’s belly was pried open, the United Fleet would pour through and drive down to the spaceport’s lower echelons,
securing the ramp that led to Terra itself.

“It’s audacious,” Loken said, voice tight. He did not try to hide the edge in it.
“It is suicide in neat, military packaging.”
“Suicide?” Abaddon’s mouth twisted into something like a smile.
“Or salvation. Either way, it’s decisive.” He swept his gaze across the captains gathered.
“We hesitate and we die in orbit while Terra burns. We hit the heart and we give ourselves a chance.”

Tarvitz rubbed a scarred thumb along the edge of the table.
“Timing will be everything. One pulse off and the ram will be a funeral pyre, not a door.”
Kael’s uplink blinked in again—confirmation of approach vectors, wind and plasma modelling, shield-phase calculus.
He’d already worked the probabilities for impact, cut the tape on the odds and sent them up.

Loken’s reply was not immediate.
He looked to the hololith, to the tiny white icon of the chosen sacrificial hull, then back to Abaddon.
He saw the thin line of resolve in the First Captain. The lines of command snapped taut.

“Then we go,” Loken said at last.

“Abandon restraint. All psykers to me and Vorr.
Knights ready. Oatharii on the leading sleds.
Varro—your fleet will focus the diversion.”

Varro’s voice came back steady, a hard edge of duty.
“We will take their centres of fire and make a hole. I will burn ships for you.”
Abaddon inclined his head.
“So be it. Prepare the sacrificial vessel.
Prepare the boarding anchor teams.
Synchronise timing with Kael’s micro-gap window and our fleet’s firing arcs.
All channels on red. We do this once.”

The captains dispersed like shadows being drawn back into the hull.
Loken’s hand closed about Abaddon’s forearm in a brief, brotherly grip—no words, only the gravity of what was at hand.
Outside the Raptor’s Claw, the United Fleet turned, engines roaring, a scarred blade taking a single, terrible aim at the Lion’s Gate.
The gamble was laid. The spaceport’s lights winked like an unblinking eye.
Time narrowed to one precise moment.

-----------------------------------------------
Iron Revenant: The Knights Muster
-19:00:00 Before assault on Lion’s Gate Spaceport
-----------------------------------------------

The Iron Revenant hummed with a different kind of quiet —
not the brittle silence of an empty deck but the taut, concentrated stillness of men expecting to be torn apart at dawn.
Vorr’s Knights stood shoulder to shoulder in the great armory, their plate scoured and burnished,
rune-etchings glinting beneath the bloom of hololamps.
Shields leaned like a forest of black glass. Swords hung like promises.

At the center, Menerak Vaul moved among them — not as scholar this day, but as Chaplain.
His robes had taken on the hard edges of office; his voice had the rasp of someone who had cut a life between prayer and war.
Where once he counselled with lexicons and logic, now he intoned marching litanies, ancient words of iron and creed.
His hands moved over bolters and ceramite with the same reverence he had once reserved for codex scrolls.
“Remember what you are,” he intoned, the vox-cord of his crozius-said like thunder through the chamber.
“Not mere wielders of flame, but the shield that will keep the warp’s teeth from our brothers’ throats.
Let the flame be not anger, but faith. Let it purge, not consume.”

The Knights bowed in a slow, machine-accurate cadence.
Each man closed his helm, the clicks a metronome counting down to the strike.
In the sanctified hush the Chaplain moved like a slow tide, touching pauldrons,
murmuring short benedictions that smelled faintly of oil and salt.

Outside, power conduits hissed and the teleport anchors hummed to life.
Vorr checked his sword’s edge, felt the familiar pull of battle settle into his muscles,
and let the Chaplain’s words harden his will.
The Grey Flame would walk into darkness and not be drawn by it.
They would burn a way for the Nameless, and they would not falter.

-----------------------------------------------
Sable Hammer: Ghosts at the Edge
-18:20:00 Before assault on Lion’s Gate Spaceport
-----------------------------------------------

Down in the Sable Hammer’s belly, the Ghosts were a different kind of quiet — surgical silence,
the kind bred from a thousand unseen missions.
Kael moved through them like a shadow, issuing clipped orders, each syllable a scalpel.

“Vox-scram set,” he said. “Charge placements where I marked.
Boarding sleds loaded. Stealth field all green.
We move at micro-gap minus one thousand.
Timing is everything.”

Lieutenant Darius Veylan checked the sleds personally,
fingers nimble as a surgeon’s, pads and seals kissed with grease and runic oil.
Each sled was stripped for speed and filled with flame-charges, monofilament bundles and anchors for the teleport-plates;
each housed a skeleton crew ready to die and buy a doorway for thousands.

Ghosts spread like smoke into the hangars, laying remote micro-mines in maintenance conduits,
greasing linkage points on the outer clamp-works so that once the sacrificial hull struck they would collapse
just so—an engineered collapse that would widen a breach and funnel defenders into kill-ways.
They hung magnet-latches on external pylons, pre-charged to clip open the station’s outer skin post-impact.
They seeded the approach corridors with silent traps: wire-snare runs beneath false grating, collapse charges hidden in servo-pillars,
and a few ugly gifts—thermobaric packs—hung where a pursuing squad might blindly run.

Kael’s face, visible in the dim, was carved with concentration. He tasted the gamble like iron on his tongue.
“We do it clean,” he hissed to Veylan.
“We do it fast. If the first sled makes it—if the Grey Flame punches a hole—then the fleet pours in.
If we fail, we burn as we have burned before.”

Veylan’s reply was a bare, flat sound.
“Then we succeed.” He clipped a final mag into his bolter and sealed his helm.
The Ghosts ghosted away, each one a blade in the dark, every movement
designed to force the enemy into a choreography of their destruction.

-----------------------------------------------
Raptor’s Claw: Brotherhood of Oath
-18:30:00 Before assault on Lion’s Gate Spaceport
-----------------------------------------------

The Raptor’s Claw thrummed with the pulse of its engines, the low hum of the void-ship resonating through every bulkhead.
Within the command chamber, the light from the hololithic tables cast long, pale reflections across the faces of the assembled Oatharii.
Garviel Loken stood at the head of the table, arms crossed, his gaze moving across the captains arrayed before him.
Each face was taut with anticipation, the tension in the room almost a physical weight.

“The Lion’s Gate Spaceport,” Loken began, voice low but carrying an edge of steel, “is no longer a simple staging area.
It is a fortress, a labyrinth, and a war altar. Every inch is a deathtrap.
Kael’s Ghosts have given us the skeleton of its defenses, but we need flesh, we need flexibility.
And we need to anticipate the enemy’s mind.”

Captain Saul Tarvitz leaned forward, eyes bright behind his helm.
“We have schematics from intercepted Mechanicum chatter.
The upper docks are reinforced with void-torsion grids, automated servitor batteries, and daemon-bound constructs.
Any frontal push will be a blood price none of us are willing to pay.”

“Agreed,” Codicier Naevor Kalthis interjected, his tone measured but firm.
“But we also know their logistics lines.
There are sections of the orbital bays that are lightly held, servicing supply and troop rotations.
If we can strike there, we might create a wedge into the main structure.”

Loken nodded, letting the thought settle.
Then he turned to the younger captains, those drawn from former Ultramarine companies.
“Your Legion experience, your tactical minds—now is the time for it.
Walk me through the theoretical engagement if we push from upper docks versus orbital girders.
Consider casualties, boarding vectors, and enemy reinforcement cycles.”

The captains began to sketch movements across the hololith,
lines of white and red tracing probable boarding paths and choke points.
They debated relentlessly: a rapid strike might overwhelm one section, but leave another exposed.
A staggered push would allow enemy countermeasures to adapt.
Each suggestion was picked apart and reconstructed, every possible permutation weighed.

Then the sergeants of the five Oatharii squads stepped forward,
their practical experience from countless boarding actions sharpening the discussion.
“The Ghosts’ intel suggests a weak sector near the third docking array,” Sergeant-Tactical Vorkun Draal reported.
“We could rig boarding sleds to breach simultaneously while suppressing fire comes from the upper decks.
But the number of daemon-bound constructs there will require heavy countermeasures.”

From the back, Librarian Naevor Kalthis of the Oathforged raised his voice,
the echo of psionic authority threading through the chamber.
“And we cannot discount the influence of the Warp. These walls are steeped in its power.
Even a perfect strike can collapse if the enemy bends reality.
Our faith, our discipline, and our willpower are as vital as any bolter round.”

The room went quiet for a heartbeat, the weight of Kalthis’ words sinking in.
Loken’s eyes swept across the table, over captains, sergeants, and psykers alike.
They were a strange amalgam—former Ultramarines, Nameless warriors,
Oatharii—all tempered by years of war, each bearing scars both visible and hidden.

“Then we do this strategically,” Loken said finally, a measured certainty in his tone.
“Kael’s Ghosts will provide the eyes and the traps. Vorr’s Knights will spear the boarding from the upper decks.
The rest of the Oatharii will hit in coordinated waves, covering one another, leaving nothing unguarded.
Every variable accounted for. Every contingency rehearsed. The Lion’s Gate will not fall by accident.”

A murmur of assent ran through the chamber, the sound low and determined.
The council continued, flowing into technical specifics:
boarding sled calibrations, ambush points, psionic support sectors, sabotage deployment, and evacuation contingencies.
Loken listened, contributed where necessary, but mostly he observed.
This was the calm before the storm.
And when the storm came, every decision made in this chamber would be tested in fire, blood,
and the unforgiving void.

-----------------------------------------------
Raptor’s Claw - Deck 16 training chamber
-16:00:00 Before assault on Lion’s Gate Spaceport
-----------------------------------------------

The training chamber aboard the Raptor’s Claw was suffused
with a low, humming light that flickered across the burnished surfaces of the deck.
The air reeked of ozone, melta residue, and the faint tang of blood—
remnants of drills that had already pushed each captain to the edge of endurance.
Here, in this claustrophobic, reinforced hold, the three captains of the Oatharii moved as one.

Garviel Loken led the exercise, his cerulean pauldrons glinting beneath the harsh overhead light.
He moved first, sliding low and fluidly across the deck,
raising his combat blade in a sweeping arc designed to simulate a boarding choke point.
Tarvitz mirrored the motion two paces behind, his own stance slightly offset to anticipate
the counterstrike that Loken had imagined.
Dryst, bearing the scars of Krell across his armor and a jagged burn along his face,
moved as a third vector—an anchor between the two, his melta pistol angled to cover potential flank openings
while simultaneously tracking the positions of both Loken and Tarvitz.

The drill was intricate.
Loken pivoted, cutting along a trajectory that would force an opponent toward Tarvitz, who timed a simulated stab,
creating a lethal triangle of attack and reaction.
Dryst, exploiting the moment, executed a precise, short dash along the deck’s embedded traction lines,
sweeping his melta to “neutralize” a target on the far flank.
Every movement was measured, every action deliberate;
the three captains tested, reinforced, and refined each vector until it became an instinctual choreography.

Between strikes and resets, they spoke little, but the quiet was heavy with understanding.
Loken’s voice finally cut across the chamber: “Coordination is only as strong as trust.
If one falters… we all fall.” Tarvitz gave a sharp nod, adjusting his grip on his blade.
“Then we do not falter.” Dryst’s gravelly reply carried a hint of grim humor.
“We’ve survived Krell. A few traitor Astartes won’t scare me.”

Yet beneath the bravado, all three were aware.
Every drill, every synchronized sweep of the blade or precise repositioning of a foot,
was a rehearsal for something far more dangerous:
the Spaceport, the bottom of Terra, the Death Guard waiting below.
Loken’s eyes lingered on the two other captains, noting the subtle ways they anticipated each other—
the micro-adjustments in stance, the tilt of the head signaling a feint, the flicker of a melta beam aimed to cover a blind spot.
Over the months, these cues had become second nature, part of the unspoken lexicon of the Oatharii.

The Oatharii doctrine had evolved out of necessity.
Each squad retained the lineage of its original legion—Ultramarines, Nameless, White Scars—
but the triad of Loken, Tarvitz, and Dryst had become the living embodiment of permanent unification.
Their combined tactics were now standard across all five kill-teams:
Vector Overlay Tactics where each captain acts as a dynamic pivot point,
their movements designed to funnel enemies into pre-set kill zones while simultaneously covering one another.
Synaptic Signal Mesh, that use subtle visual cues, weapon angles,
and even breathing patterns act as a silent communication network, reducing the need for vox transmissions in warp-interfered zones.
Attritional Synchronization drills were structured to condition each captain to absorb hits, shield one another,
and create temporary safe corridors in boarding or close-quarter combat scenarios.

Dryst, despite the jagged scars on his armor and the burn across his face,
had begun wearing a ceremonial sigil strip across his chestplate:
a blackened claw overlaying a white crescent—part tribute to the Nameless,
part a constant reminder of the lessons Krell had nearly taught him in death.
Tarvitz’s gauntlets bore tiny etched notations marking the sequence of synchronized strikes,
a mnemonic system he had devised with Vaul’s input.
Loken’s shoulder pauldron displayed the combined heraldry of the five Oatharii squads,
its layered markings a visual confirmation that these were no longer separate forces—these were three captains,
permanently unified, acting as one body across the battlefield.

They moved through the drills, each repetition faster, cleaner, deadlier.
One particularly grueling sequence had Dryst pivoting through Loken’s sweeping strike
while simultaneously laying down suppressive fire to cover Tarvitz’s advance. A misstep meant simulated death.
By the end, all three were slick with sweat and the metallic tang of spilled training rounds,
but there was a sense of cohesion that even the Nameless’ brutal boarding drills had never achieved.

As they paused, each wiping at the grime streaking their helmets, Loken’s gaze swept between his brothers.
“I know we won’t get another chance like this,” he said quietly.
“After this, it’s the Spaceport. After that… who knows what remains.” Tarvitz grunted, a rare show of solemnity.
“Then we make it count. Every maneuver, every strike. As one.” Dryst’s scarred grin broke through the tension.
“We’re already one. Doesn’t matter what the rest of the galaxy thinks.”

And in that chamber, beneath the low hum of the Raptor’s Claw’s engines and the shadows of hundreds of star-systems beyond,
the three captains cemented a bond that was more than brotherhood—it was a fusion of skill, instinct, and loyalty.
The Oatharii would enter the Lion’s Gate Spaceport not as five disparate kill-teams or a collection of individual legions,
but as a single, unstoppable spearhead, honed to precision by blood and fire.

Chapter Text

------------------------------------------------
Raptor’s Claw command bridge
-12:00:00 Before assault on Lion’s Gate Spaceport
------------------------------------------------

On the command bridge of the Raptor’s Claw, Abaddon stood rigidly before the flickering tactical hololith,
its projection of the Lion’s Gate Spaceport casting ghostly shadows across his grim features.
Beside him, Cassian Varro traced the skeletal schematics with a steady finger, counting corridors, defensive batteries,
and the choke points that would dictate the battle to come.

Every detail on the hololith told the same story: blood would flow here. Everywhere.
There was no path through the Spaceport that would not exact a toll from their brothers.
Abaddon did not flinch. This was the fate they had chosen, the crucible they had trained for.

He remembered the earliest days of the Nameless, when they first drenched their gauntlets in black—
symbols of a unity forged from betrayal and survival.

A pack of broken warriors, scattered across the remnants of Isstvan III, who swore vengeance against fathers and brothers turned traitor.
Every step since then had been measured against that oath, every strike and every loss weighed in the ledger of vengeance.

When Varro and his XIII Legion had joined them, Abaddon had considered it a temporary alliance—a necessary convenience to reach Terra.
He had thought the bonds would fray once the crusade brought them to the Throneworld.
Yet here they stood, stronger, more resolute than he had ever imagined.

The XIII and Nameless, Oatharii and Justaerins, intertwined as one brotherhood, ready to bleed and, if need be, die together.
A faint, almost imperceptible smile tugged at Abaddon’s lips. “I never thought we would stand here like this,”
he admitted, voice low, almost to himself. “Not when we first left Isstvan III.”

Varro glanced at him, studying the shadowed lines of his expression.
“Do you doubt?” he asked carefully, as if the words themselves were a challenge.
Abaddon turned fully, eyes locking with his comrade. There was no hesitation, no flicker of uncertainty.
“Never,” he said, voice firm, carrying the weight of decades and battles.
“I have never doubted our cause, and I will never doubt our brothers.”

Varro’s shoulders relaxed, a smile spreading across his face. “Yes… our brothers,” he echoed.
They returned their focus to the hololith, tracing the approach vectors and boarding points.
Every plan, every maneuver, was a meditation on the violence to come.
Abaddon outlined the order of assault, the allocation of forces, the calculated sacrifices necessary to carve a path into the traitor stronghold.
Varro countered with adjustments drawn from the XIII’s disciplined doctrines, optimizing choke points and kill zones with an almost surgical precision.
Between the two of them, a silent understanding passed: whatever the cost, whatever the blood spilled, Terra would not fall.
And in this moment, standing shoulder to shoulder over the projected schematics,
the Nameless and the XIII were no longer merely allies—they were a single, unbreakable spear,
poised to strike at the heart of the Lion’s Gate Spaceport.

------------------------------------------------
United Fleet – Outer Edge of Luna
-01:00:00 Before assault on Lion’s Gate Spaceport
------------------------------------------------

The command deck of the Raptor’s Claw fell silent,
the usual hum of engines and distant artillery replaced by the weight of anticipation.
Abaddon stepped forward, the figure of a black-clad sentinel standing against the cold light of the hololith.
All around him, the United Fleet had gathered: the Nameless in their gauntlets of shadow,
the XIIIth Legion in their disciplined regalia, and the ships arrayed like a phalanx of iron and fire.

Abaddon’s gaze swept across the assembled brothers.
Every captain, every sergeant, every warrior aboard those vessels carried scars of betrayal, loss, and survival.
He could see it in their eyes—the memories of brothers lost on Isstvan,
of the bloody wake of the Ruinstorm, of the countless campaigns against traitors that had forged them into this moment.

His voice rose, firm and unwavering, cutting through the tension like a blade.
“Brothers of the Nameless! Brothers of the XIIIth! Today we stand on the edge of vengeance.
Today we strike back against those who have spilled the blood of our fathers,
who have defiled the Imperium,
who have betrayed the Emperor and all that is sacred!”

The words reverberated across the command deck, spilling into the fleet, bouncing from hololith to hololith,
filling the void between stars with purpose and fury.

“For the brothers who fell in silence!
For the sons who died under the weight of heresy!
For every life crushed by the Warmaster’s lies!”
Abaddon’s voice thundered, unwavering, filled with fire and shadow alike.

The warriors of the Nameless rose as one, gauntlets clashing against their armor, voices raised.
The XIIIth followed, their disciplined tones amplifying, uniting with the Nameless in a chorus of righteous fury.

“FOR THE BROTHERHOOD!”
“FOR THE TRUTH!”
“FOR THE EMPEROR!”

The chant swept across the fleet, echoing from the bridges of battle barges,
through the hulls of cruisers, across the void to the nearest skirmishing vessels.
From the Raptor’s Claw to the farthest edge of the fleet, warriors lifted their fists, bolters, and power swords,
repeating the words, each repetition hotter, sharper, more alive.

Abaddon raised his fist high, black gauntlet catching the pale light of distant stars.
“Today! Today we take vengeance! Today we cleanse the Lion’s Gate Spaceport!
Today we carve a path to Terra with fire and steel! Stand with me, brothers!
STAND WITH ME!”

And in that moment, across the United Fleet, the Nameless and the XIIIth became one—a storm of resolve,
a tidal wave of hatred and honor, ready to strike at the traitors who had defiled the Imperium.
The prelude was over. The day of vengeance had come.

------------------------------------------------
Lion’s Gate Spaceport – Terra orbit
upper docking station outer defense lines
------------------------------------------------

The Lion’s Gate Spaceport loomed ahead, a monstrous tangle of orbital docks, armoured gantries,
and hulking superstructures, swarming with traitor vessels unloading their hordes of war engines,
tanks, and Daemon-infused troops destined for Terra.
The airless void itself seemed to shudder beneath the weight of impending carnage.

Then, without warning, a singular figure of steel tore through the encircling fleet.
The Starward Vigil, its hull pocked with scars from battles past, came screaming out of the warp like a blade of vengeance.
Each collision with traitor ships sent fire and twisted wreckage into the void, ripping hulls open as if paper.
Docking bays erupted in fire, and gun turrets on enemy vessels turned futilely to track a target that seemed possessed of unstoppable will.

Aboard the Starward Vigil, Captain Rell Varn stood at the command throne, skeletal crew moving with eerie, precise efficiency.
Their eyes, though lifeless, mirrored the grim satisfaction of retribution.
“For the Emperor,” Varn whispered, voice steady even as the ship shuddered from every impact.
Each rending of the enemy fleet was a hymn of defiance.

But the price was immediate.
The Starward Vigil groaned under the fury of its own path—torpedoes detonating against the hull,
bolters tearing through outer plating, shields flaring and failing. Smoke and sparks filled the corridors.
Yet still it pressed on, an immovable spearhead.

Behind it, the rest of the United Fleet surged forward, capitalizing on the gap the Starward Vigil had carved.
Battleships collided with enemy vessels as they translated out of warp, creating a maelstrom of chaos and destruction.

Sotha’s librarius calculated the most impossible of trajectories,
short-distance warp jumps threading the fleet straight into the doorstep of the Spaceport.
The odds were impossibly stacked against them, yet the fleet obeyed with flawless precision,
following the trail of fire and wreckage blazed by Varn’s vessel.

Finally, the battered Starward Vigil crossed the final void, smashing into the reinforced docking bay of the Lion’s Gate Spaceport.
Its frame tore through doors, gantries, and bulkheads, metal shrieking against metal, sparks and smoke cascading outward.
The ship shuddered violently, hull tearing apart, engines flaring in their death throes—but it held.
A spearhead of vengeance had pierced the heart of the traitor stronghold, and through the breach, the United Fleet would follow.
The battle had begun.

Abaddon stood on the command deck of the Raptor’s Claw, eyes locked on the hololith as the Starward Vigil tore into the Spaceport’s docking bay.
Sparks and debris cascaded from the collision, and Abaddon’s gauntleted fists clenched so tight it seemed to groan in its joints.
He whispered under his breath, a vow more than a prayer:
“Die well, brothers. You shall be honoured for your sacrifice.”

A flare of unyielding vengeance ignited in his gaze—this was the moment all their suffering, all their endurance, had led to.
The United Fleet surged forward, translating through the gap carved by Varn’s ship.
Boarding torpedoes and sleds screamed toward the Spaceport like swarms of predatory insects,
the first wave of the assault hurtling toward the traitor-held bastion.

But the enemy responded faster than expected.
The Iron Warriors and World Eater vessels, sensing the imminent breach, converged on the United Fleet, closing like the jaws of a colossal predator.
Fire erupted in the void as bolters, lances, and macro-cannons tore at the advancing loyalists.
Ships collided and exploded in brief, searing flashes—chaos incarnate.

Then, salvation came in the form of precise, disciplined intervention.
From the void beyond Saturn, the Two Hundred and Twenty-Seventh Ultramarine Fleet, long garrisoned on Terra,
arrived under the command of Chapter Master Valerius Kain.
The traitor vessels, now flanked, found themselves caught in a maelstrom.
Kain’s fleet hit the enemy’s blind spots, hammering them from angles the United Fleet could not cover alone.

Abaddon’s vox chimed sharply.
“Raptor’s Claw to Valerius Kain. Your assistance is received with gratitude.
The Emperor’s will is made manifest.”

“Understood, Lord Abaddon,” Kain replied, his tone as cold and unwavering as the blade of a power sword.
“We engage the enemy, in the name of our Primarch.”

The United Fleet and the Ultramarines moved as one, interlocking their assault like the crushing teeth of a mechanized vice.
Boarding torpedoes streaked across the void, slamming into hulls and detonating against reinforced doors.
The Nameless, led by Loken, leapt first onto the Spaceport, followed closely by Vorr’s Knights of the Grey Flame.
Ultramarine strike squads reinforced their landing, hammering into the traitor defenders with a precise, brutal rhythm honed over centuries of war.

Iron Warriors and World Eaters scrambled to respond, but now they faced a combined fury they had not anticipated.
The Nameless carved through corridors and docking bays, the Ultramarines securing vital hold points and cutting off enemy reinforcements.
The battlefield inside the Spaceport became a living storm of bolter fire, charging blades, and the screams of the dying—
a symphony of vengeance.

Abaddon watched from the hololith as the tide slowly, inexorably turned. The breach was held.
The Spaceport, once a symbol of traitor dominance, now trembled under the united wrath of loyalist steel and determination.

------------------------------------------------
The Lion’s Gate Spaceport – Docking Spire Seven
474014.M31, The Battle for the Lions’ Gate Spaceport
------------------------------------------------

The Starward Vigil struck the Spaceport like the blade of a god.
The impact split the airless void with a thunderous ripple of fire and metal; hull plating screamed as it tore apart,
spilling atmosphere, flame, and bodies into the black.
Yet by miracle—or by will—the ancient cruiser held,
its prow embedded deep into the Spaceport’s side,
a jagged spear of Ultramarine blue burning against the crimson glow of the traitor bastion.

From its bleeding decks poured warriors of the XIIIth—bloodied, broken, yet unbowed.
They emerged through ruptured hatches and burning corridors, bolters snarling as they charged headlong into the enemy ranks.
Their war cry echoed through the comm-net and across the shattered decks:
“For the Truth! For the Emperor!”

The surviving crew of the Vigil joined them, weapons clutched in trembling hands, knowing well their fate was sealed.
Their deaths would be their legacy.

Then came the Oatharii.
Stormbirds roared overhead, disgorging armored angels into the inferno.
Boarding torpedoes slammed into the bastion walls,
their hatches exploding outward as squads of Nameless Astartes surged forth like the hammer of retribution.
The void-fire of the Starward Vigil illuminated them as they landed amidst the enemy lines,
their black and blue armor reflecting the flames like burnished obsidian.

Captain Rhemar of the Black Shield Vow led the first charge, his twin blades spinning arcs of silver fire through the corrupted ranks of World Eaters.
The fallen sons of Angron met him with chainaxes howling,
yet his movements were a storm of precision—every cut severing limbs, every motion an oath fulfilled.
His vox roared with his men’s chant: “Hold nothing back! For the Emperor sees us!”

To his left, Captain Saul Tarvitz led the Phoenix Gauntlet, their assault jetpacks igniting in brilliant streaks.
They descended upon the Death Guard entrenched around the docking fortifications, smashing into the diseased line like meteors.
Their purity seals burned in the warp-tainted air as they unleashed volleys of flame and plasma, cleansing the corruption in white fire.

On the far flank, Captain Calen Dryst and his Cerulean Wrath advanced with methodical precision.
Dryst, his armor scarred from his near-death encounter with Krell,
now bore the sigil of the Nameless wreathed in silver flame—his scars exposed as marks of devotion.
He hurled a melta charge into a daemon-possessed Contemptor Dreadnought,
watching it scream into molten ruin before leading his men deeper into the fray.

Captain Tiberius Volan of the Aegis Blade pressed toward the Spaceport’s internal conduits,
cutting through traitor reinforcements with shield wall precision.
Each step of his advance was measured, every movement guarded.
Behind his vanguard marched disciplined Ultramarines—his former brothers—
locking shields as they formed a blue phalanx that weathered the storm of bolter and daemon-fire.

And at the center, Captain Garviel Loken led Oathforged, his power sword Mournfang, cleaving through heretic and horror alike.
His armor was blackened and pitted, his face set in silent fury as he struck down a bloated Death Guard champion with a blow
that cracked the floor beneath them.

Behind him, Librarian-turned-Chaplain Menerak Vaul stood beside Knight Master Mathar Vorr,
their forces of the Knights of the Grey Flame pushing into the breach.
Vorr’s voice was a clarion thunder across the vox:
“Knights! The Emperor’s eyes are upon us! Advance and burn them from His house!”

Hundreds of black and grey-armored Knights surged forward,
their gauntlets wreathed in crackling energy fields, power halberds cutting through traitor ranks.
Their formation, drilled to perfection after Orestes Prime, moved like a flowing tide of death.

At their heart, Menerak Vaul raised his crozius—a weapon reforged from his old psychic staff—
and unleashed a surge of incandescent power.
The air itself twisted, the warp shrieking as tongues of silver fire erupted from his outstretched hand, engulfing daemon-possessed Astartes.
His voice carried through the madness, a litany of faith that defied the immaterium:
“We are the will made flesh! We are His vengeance unending!”

Daemons screamed as they burned away, their twisted bodies melting into vapor beneath Vaul’s psychic fury.
Then, through the war-torn corridors of the Spaceport, the Nameless and Ultramarines spread like wildfire.
The Oatharii squads split into their planned vectors, each captain leading their men through corridors, docking gantries,
and broken manufactoria to secure multiple entry points into the heart of the station.
The Knights mirrored them, splitting into phalanxes of five, their role to intercept the counterattack and hold the choke points.

The traitor legions came in waves—World Eaters drenched in gore, Death Guard oozing pestilent filth,
and even Iron Warriors whose faces were hidden behind steel and madness.
Among them walked daemons—warped things born of the warp breach that had once consumed Mars.
Flesh twisted into blades, wings of bone beat the air, and screams of the damned echoed through the ruptured docking halls.

The Nameless met them without hesitation.
Oatharii squads coordinated their strikes in the way only brothers could.
When one line faltered, another interlocked.
Librarians channeled psychic storms to break daemon formations;
Ultramarine Devastator teams laid down suppressing fire from elevated gantries,
while Nameless Assault Marines cut through the gaps with blade and fury.

Then came the hammer blow.
The Solar Auxilia, under banners of blue and black, descended in drop barges onto the outer docks.
The ground thundered as their armored columns deployed—
Dracosan transports rolling forward beside squadrons of Voss-pattern attack fighters screaming overhead.
Vox-networks blazed with orders as regiments from Accatran, Dwell, and Vellatrix Prime unleashed a torrent of disciplined fire.
Those from Vellatrix fought like men possessed. Their home had been consumed by the Warp, their kin twisted into horrors by Chaos.
Now they fought for nothing but vengeance.

“For the Emperor!” they cried, voices cracking with hate and glory. “For Vellatrix! For the Nameless!”
Their massed volleys cut through the heretics, the concussive roar of las and plasma cannons shaking the Spaceport to its core.
The Ultramarines advanced under their covering fire, while Nameless warriors leapt through the breach to seize the inner corridors.
Above them all, the symbol of the Nameless shone on banners—
A crescent moon pierced by a white sword.
And beneath that broken moon, the Emperor’s forgotten sons rose in unity—bleeding, burning, but unyielding.
The first breach of the Lion’s Gate Spaceport was theirs.

Behind them the Starward Vigil burned like a falling sun.
Her wrecked hull had rammed deep into the Lion’s Gate Spaceport, tearing open the adamantium flank of that colossal bastion.
The ship was dying — bleeding plasma and fire — but its death gave birth to a breach, a wound through which vengeance poured.
Through that burning gash came the Nameless and the sons of Ultramar, roaring hymns of retribution into the choking void.
The clang of drop-ramps was lost beneath the storm of bolter fire, the screech of war engines, and the shriek of dying men.

The corridors of the Spaceport became a charnel maze of smoke, steel, and blood.
And within that labyrinth, five Oatharii companies — the sword-tip of the United Fleet —
divided to strike five paths toward a single goal: the Core Descent Array.
That was the heart of the Spaceport, the artery to Terra’s surface.
If they took it, the way to the Palace would open.
If they failed, what remains of the loyalist legions on the surface would face the Warmaster’s legions alone..

Captain Loken and his Oathforged advanced through the choking corridors, his boots sinking in ash.
His voice, measured and calm, cut through the chaos like a bell.
“Steady! Hold the line! No fury without control.”

His armour was scarred and blackened, yet his movements were precise — a swordsman’s dance, every stroke exact.
The Oathforged moved with him, disciplined, unflinching.
They were sons of the Luna Wolves once, reforged in truth and sorrow.
They had seen Calth, Isstvan, and the black days beyond.
Now they fought not for absolution, but for purpose.

A burst of bolter fire tore into their ranks.
Death Guard in corroded plate emerged from the mist, pustulent and grotesque.
The air filled with the stench of disease and burning flesh.

Loken charged. Mournfang rose and fell, the blade cutting through armour and corruption alike.
He fought in silence until his blade bit into a Blightlord’s helm, splitting skull and rot.
He wrenched it free and lifted it high.
“For the truth!” he roared. “For the Emperor!”
The cry echoed through the vox-net, carried like a flame.

The next corridors blazed with orange light.
The Phoenix Gauntlet led by Captain Saul Tarvitz fought amid fire and ruin.
Tarvitz was everywhere — helmless, blood-soaked, his eyes fierce as a dying star.
His blade flashed in the smoke, each stroke a statement of defiance.
Flamers screamed, cleansing the Word Bearers from their sanctified halls.
Their corrupted scripture burned with them, black glyphs curling away into ash.
“Burn it clean!” Tarvitz shouted. “Burn the lies away!”

Librarian Oran Drell strode beside him, psychic flames wreathing his hands.
His mind tore through the warp-slicked fog, igniting daemons mid-scream, their essence unraveling into blue fire.
A possessed Chaplain lunged from the smoke, his crozius aflame with warp-light.
Tarvitz met him head-on.
Their blades clashed — truth against corruption —
until Tarvitz drove his sword through the traitor’s chest and whispered through gritted teeth:
“I believed once. Never again.”
The Word Bearer fell.
The Phoenix Gauntlet moved onward, fire reflecting on their armour like sunlight through a storm.

The lower decks were drowned in dust and shadow. There, the Cerulean Wrath advanced in iron order.
Captain Calen Dryst led from the center, his voice steady over the vox-net, his company a living phalanx of Ultramar discipline.
“Shields up. Advance by measure. Every breath counts.”
Their formation moved as one — storm shields locking, bolters firing in perfect cadence.
Iron Warriors met them in the tunnels, entrenched behind barricades of ceramite and wire.
Dryst’s counterstroke was mechanical in precision. Meltaguns flared. Bolter rounds detonated.
The Iron Warriors were methodical — but the Wrath were absolute.

A daemon-engine, stitched from corpses and tanks, roared down the passage.
Its claws scythed through loyalists, tearing men in half. Dryst raised his combi-bolter and fired point-blank into its throat.
The weapon overheated and cracked, but the engine fell burning, black ichor flooding the floor.
“We are Ultramar,” he said quietly. “We endure.”
The Wrath pressed forward through the fire.

Midway through the Spaceport’s spine, Captain Volan’s forces held the approach to the central column —
a fortress corridor of interlocking kill-zones.
World Eaters came in droves.
They hit like storms, blood-crazed, their chainaxes screaming prayers to a dead god.
The Aegis Blade held. Their shields locked. Their bolters spoke.
Librarian Naevor Kalthis stood at the fore, light pouring from his eyes as he raised a psychic bastion.
Bolter shells detonated harmlessly against the warp-field, shattering like hail on stone.
But the pressure built. Kalthis bled from the nose, the mouth. The barrier cracked.
“Now!” Volan roared.

The Aegis surged forward in perfect synchrony, blades and shields breaking the assault.
Volan’s sword split a Centurion’s head from his shoulders in one stroke.
The blood ran down his armour in sheets, and still he fought.
“Push them back! Every step, a victory for Terra!”

When the last traitor fell, Volan turned his face upward.
The ceiling thundered with the battle above — but their path to the core was open.

In the under-decks, the light was dying.
Captain Rhemar’s force moved through the dark like ghosts — black armour, silent steps.
They had fought without heraldry for too long. Now their vengeance was their name.
They met the enemy through dark and smoke, They met daemons in the walls.
Knives whispered. Bolters coughed. No battle-cry, only the slow rhythm of killing.
When the air turned to screaming, supported by Lexicanum Halix Draal, Menerak Vaul walked among them — his eyes like twin suns.
The former Word Bearer lifted his crozius, the air around him rippling with psychic force.
Words of burning faith tore from his mouth, raw and pure, the true name of the Emperor bursting from his soul.
The daemons recoiled, their flesh unmaking.

Vaul’s staff struck ground, sending a pulse of light through the corridors, igniting warp-taint and shadow alike.
“For the Emperor, and none other!”
Rhemar smiled grimly, and the Black Shield Vow vanished into the firelight ahead.

The Core Descent Array loomed vast and terrible.
It was a cathedral of war — great gantries and spires rising through flame, gun emplacements howling, void shields flaring in the dark.
The traitors had gathered there in force — Iron Warriors by the hundreds, World Eaters by the thousands,
and daemons swirling above them in storms of fire.

And then, through five breaches, came the Oatharii. The Nameless. The sons of vengeance.
They met at the base of the descent towers — bloodied, battered, burning — but unbroken. Loken lifted Mournfang high.
Tarvitz’s sword blazed like a star. Dryst’s shield wall locked into place. Volan’s voice thundered through the vox.
Rhemar’s warriors emerged from shadow.

Mathar Vorr and the Knights of the Grey Flame charged through the center,
his thunder hammer Solemn Wrath breaking the ground itself as he struck.
Vaul rose above them, psychic power blazing from his outstretched hands.
“Oatharii, on me!” Loken roared.

The five warbands converged. The chamber erupted.
Bolter fire, plasma, psychic storm, and flame — all merged into a single tide of holy destruction.
Daemons shrieked as they were torn apart, Iron Warriors fought to the last, and the ground itself fractured under the assault.
When the daemon-engine at the core rose to crush them, Vorr leapt upon it and drove his hammer into its heart.
The blow detonated like a sunburst.
Light flooded the array.
For a long moment, there was only silence — then Loken’s voice over the vox, low but resolute:
“The core is ours. Begin descent.”

Below, the towers of the Spaceport opened — vast shafts reaching toward the burning world beneath.
Terra waited. The Palace awaited. And the sons of the Emperor answered.

The descent towers loomed above them, blackened monoliths of steel and fire, each a gauntlet of death.
The base of the structures was a furnace of conflict.
The five Oatharii warbands poured into the open, screaming their battle cries,
bolter fire cracking like thunder, chainswords singing as they tore through the warp-tainted defenders.

Captain Loken led from the front, Mournfang swinging in wide arcs, cutting through the Iron Warriors and World Eaters alike.
Each strike was measured, a precise dance in the chaos.
One of the Iron Warriors’ First Captains met him, steel against steel, warp-tinged strength meeting the unbroken fury of a Nameless Astartes.
Sparks flew as Mournfang clashed against the enemy power sword, the screech of metal on metal ringing over the roar of gunfire.
Loken ducked under a glancing blow and drove his elbow through the warrior’s helm,
spinning him to the ground as he finished the movement with a brutal head strike.
Blood spattered the ash-strewn floor, painting the blackened armour of the Nameless like war heraldry.

To his right, the Phoenix Gauntlet surged, led by Tarvitz, whose sword was a flare of firelight cutting through the smoke.
He met a group of warp-possessed World Eaters head-on.
They screamed in fury, axes swinging in a chaotic blur.

Tarvitz pulled away just as the traitor’s axe blade scraped at his chest plate, parried, and countered,
striking one of the daemonic warriors through the chest, igniting the warp corruption with a psychic flare from Oran Drell.
The psychic fire burned through sinew and metal alike, reducing the daemon to nothing but ash and a scream that echoed across the tower’s base.

Dryst’s Cerulean Wrath carved their path methodically, shields locking, bolters hammering in perfect cadence.
An Iron Warriors squad emerged, armed with plasma weapons and chainaxes dripping with ichor.
Dryst’s counter was surgical.

He dispatched one with a meltagun at point-blank range, the plasma turning its armour to molten slag.
Another came for his side; he parried with a storm shield and drove his combat knife through its throat, twisting to leave no quarter.
Around him, the Wrath moved like a living wall of Ultramar precision, obliterating all resistance.

Volan’s Aegis Blade faced the storm of World Eaters head-on.
Their chainaxes tore through the loyalists’ lines, and yet the Nameless shields held.
Naevor Kalthis’ psychic barrier shimmered with an intense blue light, protecting the squad from blows that would have sundered even a fortress.
When a daemon-possessed Juggernaut leapt into their midst, Kalthis unleashed a surge of warp energy, hurling it against the corridor walls like ragdoll flesh.
Volan drove forward, his blade severing both man and daemon alike, the air filled with screams of the dying, both mortal and warp-born.

Rhemar’s Black Shield Vow moved through shadow, cutting silently but deadly.
The traitors thought to flank them with warp-wrought assassins, but Vaul’s psychic might shredded the attackers’ minds before they could strike.
Each swing of his crozius sent shards of raw psychic energy into the enemy ranks, unraveling warp-flesh and daemon alike.
Rhemar moved in tandem, blades flashing, the corpses piling at their feet in a grim testament to lethal coordination honed over countless battles.

Reinforcements poured in.
Solar Auxilia regiments, Ultramarine cohorts, and more Nameless warriors surged through the five breaches cut by the Oatharii.
Bolters roared, missile launchers erupted, and flamers spattered traitor armour with molten death.
The battlefield became a maelstrom of fire, blood, and psychic fury.

Amid the chaos, Loken faced another daemonic World Eater, its armour twisted by warp energy, its eyes burning like coals.
The warrior struck first, chainaxe spinning in a frenzy.
Loken sidestepped, caught the weapon mid-swing, and slammed it into the enemy’s chest with a resonating clang.
The blow staggered the daemon, and with a roar, Loken drove Mournfang through its throat.
The headless body convulsed once before collapsing, the heat of warp energy sizzling off the lifeless form.

Tarvitz, meanwhile, found himself surrounded by a trio of lesser daemons, their forms shifting and tearing reality with their presence.
He slashed, blocked, and leapt between them, each movement a controlled chaos.
Oran Drell’s psychic fire flared behind him, incinerating two at once, leaving only one that fell screaming to the deck under Tarvitz’s blade.
Every corridor, every stairwell was a crucible.

Ultrafire and blackened smoke choked the air.
The Nameless and Ultramarines were bloodied, their armour etched with dents and scars, yet unbroken.
Every step forward was bought with the lifeblood of the traitors, every victory a testament to the unyielding will of Terra’s defenders.
As the five Oatharii companies pressed closer to the Core Descent Array, their paths converged.
Loken, Tarvitz, Dryst, Volan, and Rhemar met at the base of the towering structure — battered, exhausted, yet unbowed.
Their combined forces formed a vanguard unlike any other, a tidal wave of black and blue, gold and crimson.
Bolter fire flashed, meltaguns spat molten death, and psychic flames crackled through the corridors.
Daemons shrieked, traitors screamed, and the floors ran slick with blood.

Mathar Vorr and the Knights of the Grey Flame charged through the center,
their heavy armour cutting down enemies like a battering ram of iron and flame.
Vaul’s psychic might tore the warp from the air, ripping daemons apart in showers of ichor and ash.
The air itself seemed to roar with the fury of the converging loyalists.
Loken’s voice rose above it all, a clarion call:
“For the Truth! For the Emperor!”

And the five warbands surged together.
Every corridor became a furnace of war, every line of defence melted beneath the hammer of vengeance.
The Core Descent Array shone above them, the prize that would open the way to Terra itself.
The battle was far from over, but the vanguard had reached the heart.
And in this crucible of fire and blood, the Nameless and Ultramarines proved why they were the spearpoint of vengeance,
unbroken and relentless.

Chapter Text

------------------------------------------
Aboard the Raptor’s Claw – command bridge
Lion’s Gate Spaceport outer docking ports
------------------------------------------

From the bridge of the Raptor’s Claw, Abaddon watched as the war above Terra became a sunless apocalypse.
Ships — thousands of them — were locked in a lethal orbit around the Lion’s Gate Spaceport.
The black hulls of the traitor fleets had converged like carrion drawn to the scent of dying light.
The void was full of fire. Fragments of vessels drifted through the black, trailing flame like comets.
Vox-feeds screamed. Reactor cores went nova.
Even through the bridge’s reinforced plasteel, the light hurt the eyes.

The Starward Vigil was gone — impaled into the side of the Spaceport.
The Aquila’s Wrath burned in atmosphere, her guns still firing as she fell.
The Celestial Veil flickered in and out of existence, its systems buckling under heavy lance bombardments.
The United Fleet was bleeding itself dry to hold the line.

“Lord Abaddon,” said the helmsman, his voice ragged with static.
“Traitor vessels closing on all vectors. Two of the Warmaster’s vanguard squadrons are moving to encircle us.”
Abaddon’s gauntlets tightened against the edge of the command throne.
The hololiths around him flickered — spheres of light depicting the chaos of the engagement.
Blue icons of the United Fleet blinked and vanished by the second, swallowed by red runes that represented Horus’s armadas.
He could see the enemy closing. The Eye of Horus burned bright upon the hulls of their ships.
The fleets of the Death Guard, the Iron Warriors, and the World Eaters filled the void with the crimson of blood and warp-fire.

“Status of the boarding forces?” Abaddon demanded.
“Commander Varro’s strike teams report heavy resistance within the Spaceport,”
answered a vox-adept, his hands shaking as he adjusted the dials.
“The Oatharii and Knights of the Grey Flame have breached the Core Array’s perimeter.
Loyalist forces are converging for the final push.”

The bridge dimmed for a moment as power rerouted to the macrocannon decks.
Outside, the Raptor’s Claw’s guns spoke again — a thunderous broadside that split a traitor cruiser in half.

Abaddon’s expression was stone. “Patch me through to Varro.”
The vox flared, and through a haze of static and the sound of bolter fire came Commander Cassian Varro’s voice
— raw, strained, but alive.

“Core Array— nearly ours,” Varro coughed. “Loken and the Oatharii are at the breach.
Resistance is collapsing, but— Emperor’s blood— they’ve summoned daemons in the upper halls.
We need reinforcements or we’ll lose the gate again.”

Abaddon closed his eyes for a heartbeat. The ship’s rumble vibrated through his armour.
“Hold fast, Captain. You have my word — we will not abandon you.”

He cut the link, staring down at the hololithic projection of Terra.
The planet was veiled in storm and fire, her orbital ring half-shattered.
The Imperial Fists and White Scars were still holding the blockade lines below, but their numbers were dwindling fast.
The traitors were massing for a final push into atmosphere — the same push the United Fleet now teetered before.

A decision weighed on him — the kind that could break a war or save it.
He turned to his command crew. “Signal to all ships. Priority command.”
The bridge fell silent. Even the machine-spirits seemed to hesitate.
“If we remain here,” Abaddon said, voice measured, calm like the stillness before a storm,
“we die in orbit. If we abandon the fleet, the traitors will break through to Terra’s surface.
Either choice will cost us everything.”

He looked up at the burning planet — the birthplace of humanity, the cradle of the Imperium.
He could almost hear the voices of the dying below, the echo of the Palace walls under siege.
“Open a channel to Chapter Master Valerius Kain,” Abaddon ordered.

The hololith shimmered, and Kain’s armoured visage appeared —
his face hard as carved stone, the light of burning vessels reflected in his eyes.

“Lord Abaddon,” Kain said, bowing his head slightly.
“The Two Hundred and Twenty-Seventh stands ready. The traitors press the blockade.
We’ve already lost three cruisers holding the southern vector.”

“I know,” Abaddon replied. “I will not ask you to hold the line alone.
I am taking the Raptor’s Claw and a squadron of frigates directly into atmospheric descent.
We will use the breach our boarding forces create to reach the surface and reinforce the Palace.
You will take command of the United Fleet.
Reinforce the blockade with the Imperial Fists and the White Scars.
Hold until every last brother below has descended.”

There was a pause. The holo flickered with static.
Then Kain’s expression softened — respect shadowed by fatal understanding.
“You’ll be flying into the storm, Abaddon. The orbital defences—”

“Are dead,” Abaddon cut him off.
“The traitors silenced most of them during their first assault.
What’s left won’t stop us.
It’s the blockade that matters now — the line between Terra and annihilation.
You must hold it, Kain. For the Emperor. For the truth.”

Kain’s nod was slow, solemn. “Then the Veritas Bellum and all vessels of the XIIIth shall hold.
The line will not break while one Ultramarine still draws breath. The Emperor be with you, Abaddon.”

The link severed.
“Next,” Abaddon said quietly, “connect me to Captain Kael of the Sable Hammer.”

The vox crackled.
A moment later, Verus Kael’s voice came through — hoarse, deep, edged with static and restrained defiance.
“Abaddon. We’re barely holding the outer ring. The Hammer’s shields are failing.”

“They’ll fail faster soon,” Abaddon replied.
“You’re to withdraw from the main line and take command of the Nameless fleet.
Join the blockade with Kain’s fleet. The Sable Hammer is to serve as the Nameless flagship in my stead.”

Kael hesitated. “…And you?”
“I’ll lead the Raptor’s Claw and her escorts into Terra’s atmosphere,” Abaddon said. “Straight through the storm.”

“That’s suicide.”

Abaddon almost smiled — a grim, fleeting expression.
“Perhaps. But someone must reach the surface and reinforce the Palace.
The Oatharii and Varro are making the path. We’ll follow it.”

Silence filled the link for a moment, then Kael’s tone changed —
not defiance now, but something closer to grim reverence.
“Then go, Abaddon. Go make it count. I’ll see you again on the other side of hell.”
The line died.

Abaddon stood before the hololith once more.
The planet burned below him, the void screaming with the agony of dying ships.
The Raptor’s Claw shook as another impact rocked its hull. Fire bled across the viewports.
He turned to his helmsman.

“Signal to the fleet: the Raptor’s Claw will descend.
All ships assigned to the atmospheric spearhead, form on me.”
He looked back to the burning planet.
“For the Emperor,” Abaddon whispered. “For the truth.”

Then, with a final gesture, he gave the order that would etch itself into the annals of the final war:
“Take us down.”

The Raptor’s Claw banked hard, her prow angling toward Terra’s clouded skies.
Engines howled as the void burned white around her.
Behind, the United Fleet turned its guns outward, forming a wall of fire alongside the battered fleets of Dorn and Jaghatai.
The traitor armadas descended like wolves, but the loyalists held.
And through the storm — through flame, ruin, and the wreckage of a dying age —
the Raptor’s Claw dove, carrying the vengeance of the Nameless straight into the heart of Terra.

-------------------------------------
The Lion’s Gate Spaceport
The Core Descent Array
-------------------------------------

The air was thick with ash and blood.
The ground quaked with the agony of a dying world.
The Core Descent Array loomed at the centre of the ruined Spaceport,
a cathedral of steel spires and wounded machine-flesh,
its turbine halls roaring as though some god trapped within screamed for release.
Its vast turbine-columns and lift-chambers bleeding smoke and lightning.
The decks trembled with the clash of giants. The fighting had reached its fever pitch.

The Nameless and the XIIIth Legion had forced their way through the choking corridors and collapsed docking gantries,
and now the enemy stood arrayed before them in their thousands.
They came howling from the shattered descent conduits—World Eaters drenched in gore howling from shattered catwalks,
their war-plate painted in blood and madness, Death Guard lumbered from the smoke in ranks,
their armour weeping pus and ruin swollen with corruption, daemons flickered into being,
howling avatars of hate that clawed reality as they descended, coalescing from shadow and warp.
The air itself screamed.

The Oatharii met them head-on.
Five spears of burning faith plunged into the heart of the traitor host.
Each fought in their own manner—each a reflection of their captain, of the bloodline that had shaped them.
The first to meet them was Captain Rhemar and his Black Shield Vow.
They advanced through the void-lit smoke like a wall of blue-grey iron, shields raised, bolters barking in perfect cadence.
For the Truth! they roared. For the Emperor!

Rhemar moved like a thunderbolt, his cracked helm revealing the blood-slick ruin of his face,
but his eyes burned bright as twin suns.
Around him, the Oatharii of the Black Shield Vow advanced like an avalanche—shields interlocked, bolters roaring.
Their Librarian, Halix Draal, walked among them with his force staff wreathed in cobalt flame, every sweep of it burning runes into the air.

A World Eater Centurion came for him, a mountain of red and brass, his chainaxe whirring a shrill scream of rage.
They clashed with the noise of ruptured metal.
Rhemar took a glancing blow to the pauldron that nearly tore his arm loose,
but he countered with a downward cut that split the Centurion’s skull from crown to throat.
Blood fountained in slow arcs under the flickering light.

Beside him, Librarian Halix Draal unleashed his power,
psychic lightning running along his staff, burning the daemons that crawled from the wounds in the deck.
Warp entities howled as their forms dissolved, the air stinking of ozone and hot metal.
The Black Shield Vow pressed onward, shoulder to shoulder, through blood and fire.

To the western flank,
Captain Saul Tarvitz and Oran Drell of the Phoenix Gauntlet fought among the remains of the Array’s crane district,
where twisted girders hung like the ribs of a dead god.
Tarvitz was everywhere at once. His sword flashed arcs of golden light, each strike a memory of Isstvan reborn in vengeance.
The Death Guard came on slow and unstoppable, their bolters firing filth and bone.
Drell answered them with fire and lightning, his voice echoing across the ruin in the Emperor’s tongue,
every syllable flensing the flesh of the warp-tainted as his psychic might turned the air molten.
Lightning speared into ranks of Death Guard, tearing apart bloated torsos and rupturing corrupted plate.
The traitors came on, unfeeling, maggots spilling from rents in their armour, bolters belching filth.
Tarvitz led his men straight into the heart of their formation, a storm of blue and gold against pallid rot.

A Death Guard champion barred Tarvitz’s way—a creature swollen and obscene, a scythe clutched in its withered hands.
They met in silence, blades cutting through mist and blood. Tarvitz’s sword sheared the scythe in half;
his second stroke took the traitor’s head.
“Keep moving!” Tarvitz shouted, his voice raw through the vox.
“We break through, or we burn here!”

At the centre of the hall, Captain Calen Dryst and his Cerulean Wrath fought through the cargo conduits.
Their assault was methodical, relentless—armoured phalanxes advancing under withering fire.
Codicier Hestian Ral walked at their heart, his psychic aura forming a dome of shimmering light that deflected shells and shrapnel.

The Warpspawn met them there.
Former Astartes, now twisted mockeries of flesh and iron, clawed and shrieked as they fell upon the Wrath.
One daemon-engine, a Contemptor-shaped abomination fused to screaming warp-flesh, lunged at Dryst.
He met it with his power sword, each stroke removing a limb,
each blow carving deeper into its sarcophagus until the beast detonated in a bloom of black fire.
“Forward,” Dryst voxed, his tone utterly calm.
“We hold until the others reach the core. The Emperor watches.”
And they did—every step forward paid for in brothers and blood.

The eastern flank belonged to Captain Tiberius Volan and the Aegis Blade.
They fought within the Array’s reactor tunnels, where coolant gas hissed like dying serpents and the temperature could blister armour.
Naevor Kalthis strode at Volan’s side, his psychic power rolling out in seismic waves,
crushing the twisted forms of the Emperor’s Children who opposed them.
The traitors came singing, blades that screamed with stolen souls, faces riven with madness and ecstasy.

Volan’s sword cut through the music.
He met a champion clad in rose-gold plate whose weapon sang discordant death.
Their duel was fast and brutal, each blow cracking the air.
The traitor laughed until Volan’s blade split his throat mid-note, his laughter bubbling into silence.

And through the heart of it all came Garviel Loken.
He and his Oathforged stormed the central dais, white armour blackened by soot and blood.
Mathar Vorr led the Knights of the Grey Flame beside him,
their halberds and powerswords flashing in synchronized rhythm, each stroke an act of faith.

Menerak Vaul was a firestorm.
His psychic will seared the air, burning away daemons with words of power that predated even the Imperium.
Warp-things screamed as their forms unraveled under his voice.

The Knights held the flanks, the Oathforged the centre, as they pressed toward the Array.
A greater daemon burst from the floor in a shriek of reality tearing apart, its body the colour of slaughtered meat,
wings of smoke unfurling as it raised a talon toward them.

Vorr struck first, his great powersword cleaving through the beast’s forearm.
Loken drove his sword, Mournfang, into its chest,
and Vaul sealed it with flame that burned white-hot until the daemon howled and burst into dust.

The floor shook. The enemy line broke.
The Core Descent Array was theirs.
But victory had come at a cost that could not be counted in numbers.
Smoke coiled through the vaults of the descent towers.
Fire light flickered across the broken faces of the dead — traitor and loyalist alike — their blood mingling on the adamantium floor.
The air was thick with the stink of promethium and ozone, and the low growl of machinery dying in its bed of molten steel.

Captain Garviel Loken stood amid the ruin, helm mag-locked to his hip,
his breath steaming inside the shattered cathedral of war.
Around him, the remnants of the five Oatharii companies reformed from the chaos,
their banners torn, their armour blackened, but still standing.

Varro strode through the smoke toward him, his blue plate scarred and dripping with blood not his own.
Behind him came Mathar Vorr, thunder hammer slung across his shoulder, flanked by the Knights of the Grey Flame —
their crimson armour dented, their lenses burning like coals.

For a time, none of them spoke.
The silence was not peace — it was exhaustion pretending to be victory.

Loken broke it first.
“What is our current status.”
Varro exhaled, his tone clipped and hard. “The Descent Array is secure.
The last of the Iron Warriors are broken, though they’ve mined the western shafts.
We’ll need Sotha’s librarians to unseal the wards before descent.”
“Casualties?” Vorr asked, his voice low, gravel and thunder.
“Too many,” Varro said. “Dryst’s line took the worst of it.
Near half the Cerulean Wrath won’t rise again. Volan’s shield line is holding the northern breach.
The ghost teams sent by Kael has vanished into the ducts pursuing the last of the enemy.
Tarvitz is wounded, but alive.”

Loken nodded once, as though confirming something already known.
“Then we hold it. The descent towers are the key. We lose them, we lose Terra.”
The clang of boots echoed through the chamber.

A column of Solar Auxilia entered —
their crimson and brass armor catching the firelight, their banners still slick with oil and blood.
They came in disciplined ranks despite the slaughter, their visors gleaming like a mirror to the Astartes’ ruin.

At their head marched Lord-Marshal Erynd Kordain —
a broad man in a burnished cuirass, the weight of decades etched into his face.
His left arm was augmetic, fashioned in brass and iron,
the hand clutching a ceremonial staff that had once commanded regiments across a hundred worlds.

Beside him strode Lord-Marshal Illyra Serax, her armor marked with the yellow chevrons of the Deltan Armoured Corps.
She moved like a tank given human form — eyes sharp, movements economical,
voice carrying over the carnage with absolute control.

Flanking them came Lord-Marshal Verin Daskor, his void-sealed carapace still frostbitten from atmospheric re-entry, helm under one arm.
His face was pale and austere, his every movement betraying a soldier who had spent his life in the emptiness between stars.

They saluted as one.
“Lord Astartes,” Kordain said, his voice gravel wrapped in iron.
“Our cohorts stand ready. The enemy’s line beyond the array is broken, but the path below remains contested.
Vox-scans show traitor activity in every descent shaft — heavy concentrations at the mid-transit levels.”

Loken gestured toward the descending towers that glowed red in the gloom.
“Then we must go down. The Palace is cut off. Every hour we delay, the enemy tightens the noose.”

Varro turned sharply. “Divide our forces and we risk isolation.
These towers were built for mass descent, but not under fire.
If one shaft collapses or one array fails, we lose thousands.”

“Agreed,” Vorr said. His voice rumbled through his helm’s vox-grille.
“We go together. Every legionary, every Auxilia man, one hammer. One strike.”

Loken regarded the two in silence.
The fires of the spaceport danced in his eyes — reflection of the war to come.
“And if that hammer shatters before it strikes? The mid-level manufactoria are labyrinths.
Cities built into metal. If we go as one, the enemy will surround and bleed us by attrition.”

Serax stepped forward, the brass crest of her helm catching the light.
“Then let us form a wall within the storm.
My armor divisions can anchor the descent — Solar armour in the core shafts,
Astartes companies descending on the flanks.
Each tier we reach, we purge and refortify before moving again.
That way, if one tower falls, the others endure.”

Kordain grunted approval.
“She’s right. The Auxilia can hold ground — it’s what we were bred for. Give us the towers.
You Astartes bleed through the descent paths, take the manufactoria, clear the way.
We’ll follow through and secure the shafts.”

Daskor inclined his head.
“My drop cohorts will handle atmospheric entry.
Once we reach the mid-levels, we can cut through to the Palace air corridors.
The descent will be slow… but it will hold.”

Varro frowned, looking to Loken. “You would trust mortals to hold the core descent?”
“They are not mortals,” Loken said softly. “They are the Emperor’s chosen, same as we are.”
His gaze moved across the gathered captains, the Librarians, the bloodied banners.
“We divide not in weakness, but in purpose. The Emperor did not build his legions to fight with one hand alone.”

Silence again. Then Vorr’s gauntlet closed around the haft of his hammer. “So be it.”
Loken looked to Serax, to Kordain, to Daskor.
“You have your orders. Prepare your descent formations.
We’ll coordinate our advance through the vox-net.
The moment the signal comes, we move.”

As the Lord-Marshals bowed and withdrew to their commands, a vox-link flared to life in Loken’s ear.
The voice was cold and resolute — Abaddon.
“Loken. The fleet burns. The traitor lines are closing.
I’m leading the Raptor’s Claw and a wing of frigates into the atmosphere.
We’ll punch through while the blockade still holds.”

Loken’s jaw tightened. “That’s suicide.”
“It’s necessity,” Abaddon said.
“Kain will take command of the fleet. Kael and the Sable Hammer will join the blockade.
You have one task — reach the surface. Hold until we arrive.”

Loken exhaled slowly, eyes closing against the thunder outside.
“Then I’ll see you on the ground, First Captain.”
“On the ground,” Abaddon replied — and the link cut to static.

For a long moment, Loken stood in silence, the fires of the spaceport reflecting off his scarred plate.
Then he turned to his captains, voice rising above the ruin.
“Form the descent lines. Five paths. Five legions of vengeance.
Terra waits — and the Emperor watches.”

And with that,
the Nameless and the sons of Ultramar began their march toward the light of the open shafts —
toward the burning world below.

Chapter Text

--------------------------------------
Lion’s Gate Spaceport
The Mesophex Level — “Starspear”
--------------------------------------

Columns of light and fire fell through the breach of the Core Array, cascading downward through miles of steel and storm.
Drop capsules streaked the dark like burning meteors,
their hulls shedding flame as they pierced the thickening atmosphere of the Lion’s Gate’s lower levels.
Below them stretched the Mesophex — the Starspear Level — a suspended continent of industry and ruin.
Manufactoria towers rose like black spears into the haze, their lights flickering through the smoke of war.

Vast conveyor bridges connected citadels of iron and glass,
the remnants of a city that had once ferried munitions from orbit to the world below. Now it was a fortress — and a graveyard.
The traitors had dug deep here.
Iron Warriors manned the causeways,
World Eaters and corrupted auxilia entrenched in the hab-spires,
daemon engines prowling the streets like predators in a steel jungle.

Then the sky tore open.
A storm of Stormbirds and Thunderhawks plunged through the clouds, vox-augurs screaming their descent.
The first to arrive were the Vigilant Talons of the Nameless fleet, joined by Crimson Spear squadrons from the Ultramarines’ 227th.
Plasma fire cut through the murk as their cannons unleashed volleys into the enemy’s defensive lines.

Beneath that storm of light, Captain Cassian Varro’s vanguard descended from one of the transit tunnels.
It was his gambit — a strike before the descent shafts opened,
to take the enemy by surprise and carve a landing zone for the arriving legions.
Their drop doors blew open mid-descent.

Rhemar’s Black Shield Vow exited with bolters blazing — a blur of dark armour and muzzle flashes, crashing through ferrocrete and smoke.
They struck like ghosts from another age, bolters barking, blades whispering.
At their head, Rhemar waded into the fray,
his chainblade roaring through the chest of an Iron Warrior sergeant before the traitor could raise his hammer.
Blood misted the air.

Behind them, engines thundered as the 19th Deltan Armoured Cohort, under Lord-Marshal Illyra Serax,
smashed through the enemy’s flank immediately as they made their descent.
Leman-pattern tanks and Dracosan transports roared through the breaches, lascannons shrieking.
Serax stood from her command tank’s cupola, one hand gripping the vox-mast, her other pointing ahead like a blade.
“Press them!” she barked over the vox-net. “Burn through their bastions before they form a wall!”

Her tanks obeyed. Promethium torrents poured across the traitor lines,
the firelight reflecting on the blackened visors of the Black Shield Vow.
Rhemar voxed her briefly — a static-filled growl of thanks — before turning his helm back to the melee.

Then came the light of gold and red.
Captain Saul Tarvitz and the Phoenix Gauntlet descended in a blaze of flame.
The Stormbird, Virtue’s End, laid heavy cover fire, tearing through a manufactorum dome, disgorging warriors into the chaos.
Word Bearers met them in ritual lines, chanting in the language of the warp — but Tarvitz’s voice thundered louder.
“Truth against lies! Fire against faithless!”

The Gauntlet charged, flamers roaring.
Daemons erupted from the walls, only to be consumed in psychic flame as Librarian Oran Drell unleashed his will.
The air itself turned to glass under the psychic heat.

To the right flank, Garviel Loken’s Oathforged broke from the descent shafts in perfect order.
Their line advanced through the ruins like a moving wall, bolters flaring in synchronized bursts.
Loken strode at their head, sword raised, his movements efficient and unrelenting.

Beside him, Lord-Marshal Erynd Kordain advanced with the 22nd Solar Cohort, banners of Orestes Prime streaming behind him.
His vox barked orders in a voice of granite, his men forming disciplined firelines behind portable bulwarks.
“Step! Fire! Step! Fire!”

Each advance was measured, precise, devastating.
Loken admired their precision even as his sword bit into another traitor’s throat.
“We make war the way it should be made,” Kordain growled beside him.
“Then make it fast,” Loken replied. “The others will be waiting at the mid-spire junction.”

At that moment, the manufactoria shook. From the far flank, a new wave of blue light flared — the mark of Ultramar.
The Cerulean Wrath and Aegis Blade had breached the opposite causeway.
Captain Calen Dryst led from the front, his shield wall advancing in perfect rhythm, bolters barking in mechanical cadence.
Next to him, Captain Tiberius Volan and his Aegis veterans stormed the enemy’s bastions, blades flashing under the arc-light.
Varro himself descended among them, his voice cutting through the vox like a clarion.
“Hold the line! Push through!”
His words galvanized the warriors.

Lord-Marshal Verin Daskor brought his 14th Selenic Cohort down behind them,
his drop-assault troopers firing from jump packs and grav platforms.
They landed among the traitors like meteorites, shotguns roaring, blades spinning.
Daskor moved through them like a phantom, his void-helm gleaming, his vox calm and deadly.
“Cut them off from the bridges. Collapse the second tier. Leave them nowhere to fall but hell.”

The traitor lines fractured. World Eaters charged in packs, blood-maddened, chainaxes screaming.
Iron Warriors brought up siege tanks to counter.
But it was too late — the loyalists were already inside their lines, cutting, burning, pushing them back step by step.
The Mesophex became a slaughter ground.

Smoke veiled the towers.
Vox-nets filled with screams, orders, litanies.
Every corridor became a duel, every manufactorum floor a warzone.
Rhemar fought beside Serax’s armour lines, his gauntlet shattering a berserker’s helm.
Tarvitz met a possessed Word Bearer in single combat upon a bridge of molten iron,
both warriors bleeding light and shadow as their swords crossed.

Loken faced a warpsworn Centurion whose body had fused with daemonic metal;
his blade, Mournfang, split the creature’s spine in a burst of black fire.

And through it all, the five warbands advanced — separate in banner, united in purpose.
It wasn’t long before they had the plaza surrounding the core descent array secured as the last traitor was put down.
As quickly as their preemptive strike, the Solar Auxilia and the main forces of Ultramarines and Nameless
quickly busied themselves to fortify their secured position to withstand the enemy from trying to retake the plaza.

The descent had been swift and merciless.
Drop-pods cracked open the heavens like meteors, slamming into the metal plains of the Mesophex.
Fire and vox-static rolled through the air as the five Oatharii teams established a beachhead across the Core Descent Array.
The plaza was a maze of scorched ferrocrete and sundered machinery. In the wake of their strike,
loyalist banners flickered in the smoke—temporary, defiant beacons in the heart of the underhive.
Astartes moved through the ruin with grim precision, the air thick with the scent of ozone and oil.

“Secure the perimeters. Establish crossfire zones. No blind corners.”
Captain Garviel Loken’s voice was measured steel across the vox.
“Oatharii, spread and advance on the Control Spire. Shock doctrine.
Minimal delay. We take the objective—nothing more.
The longer we tarry, the more the main host bleeds.”

“Acknowledged.”
Captain Tiberius Volan responed, his tone clipped, efficient. Others chimed in—Rhemar, Tarvitz, Dryst—each voice an oath renewed.
The command net pulsed with affirmation before silence reclaimed it, save for the hiss of distant flame and the growl of heavy bolters.

The Oatharii began their advance.
Fifteen Nameless. Fifteen Ultramarines. Now thirty brothers.
Five teams, five vectors converging on the same goal—the Mesophex Control Spire.
It loomed in the distance like a needle through the clouds,
its upper decks shrouded in lightning and the static churn of corrupted vox frequencies.
Every calculation, every theoretical they’d run, had prepared them for this. They knew the routes.
They had studied the schematics. They had anticipated resistance.

But war never followed the script.
Captain Calen Dryst and the Cerulean Wrath struck through the manufactoria arteries—
a labyrinth of chimneys, smelters, and shattered conduits belching vapor and fire.
They advanced in tight formation, bolters roaring, ceramite boots clanging on steel.

The air was a furnace. The traitors were waiting. World Eaters and Iron Warriors.
A tide of red and iron. Screaming, unrelenting, frothing with hate.
“Forward!” Dryst’s voice cut through the din like a blade. “No halts! Keep the pace!”

Codicier Hestian Ral’s lightning flared—white arcs that tore through daemon-fouled air and split the ranks of the enemy.
Warp-light crackled from his gauntlets, shattering through corrupted plate and charring flesh to ash.
“In the name of the Emperor, purge them!”

Bolters thundered. Chainswords wailed.
The Cerulean Wrath were a moving storm, carving through the manufactoria halls with surgical aggression.
Every second counted. Every life spent was a calculation weighed against the objective.

A melta charge detonated in a cross-corridor, vaporizing two Astartes in an instant— armor melting into slag.
The shockwave hurled others against the walls. Another brother fell as a bolter shell punched through his helm,
his skull bursting in a wet, incandescent spray.

“Hold the line!” Dryst barked. “Reform and advance!”
A World Eater charged from the shadows, bellowing, “Blood for the Blood God!”
The chainaxe split a brother in two, but the killer’s triumph was short-lived—Dryst’s plasma pistol barked once,
and the traitor’s head became a sunburst of molten bone.

They pushed on. Every meter was bought in blood.
A Cerulean Wrath brother tackled an Iron Warrior into a wall,
driving his chainsword into the traitor’s gut and firing a bolt round into his face.
Above, an Iron Warrior heavy gunner was silenced by a stream of volkite fire,
his body disintegrating into vapor and molten plate.

Dryst himself was a whirlwind.
He surged into the enemy barricade—blade flashing, pistol burning, voice cold with purpose.
A single stroke took the head from an Iron Warrior. A plasma bolt vaporized a World Eater’s chest.
His sword impaled another through the heart before ripping him in half with a burst of blue energy.

Even as the losses mounted, the Cerulean Wrath did not falter.
Their brothers fell, but their formation never broke. For every loyalist slain, three traitors burned.
Ral voxed, breath ragged through the psychic strain.
“We’re close. The signal grows stronger—Array control is above us.
We can breach from the primary stairwell.”

Dryst nodded once, his armor streaked with blood not his own.
“Then we end this. No more delays.”

Through the thunder of bolters and the screams of the dying, the Cerulean Wrath advanced,
their path lit by the fury of loyal sons reclaiming the Emperor’s gate.

Elsewhere, the Black Shield Vow found themselves moving up through an alternate path leading up to the Control Spire.
As smoke rolled through its arteries, choked with fire and ruin, Rhemar’s voice growled through the vox
as his squad advanced through one of the descent array’s secondary conduits — a tunnel half-collapsed from orbital bombardment.
The air shimmered with heat and pulverized dust.

“Stay low. Watch the left line,” he ordered, the words clipped, hard.
“Heavy emplacement ahead.”
His auspex pinged.

Four signatures, elevated — a defensive crescent. Then the roar of heavy bolters split the silence.
A torrent of mass-reactive rounds tore through the corridor, each explosion lighting the smoke like thunderfire.

Two of his brothers went down instantly —
one, a Nameless veteran from Accatran, his chestplate shattering under repeated impact;
the other, an Ultramarine sergeant, crushed against a bulkhead as the detonations caved in the wall behind him.

“Kill-zone!” Sergeant Varas shouted over the vox, diving for cover behind a collapsed support strut.
“Flank route’s blocked,” another voice cut in — sterner, colder.
“We’ve lost two already, Captain. Vigilator on overwatch — marksman-grade.”

Rhemar crouched behind a broken stanchion,
mag-locking his melta pistol to his thigh as he scanned the upper gantry through his helm’s cracked lens.
He saw it — a glint, faint but certain, above the ruin:
a traitor Legion Vigilator, his armor blackened and scarred, once an Iron Warrior perhaps, now little more than a shape in the haze.
The sniper had already claimed two lives and was repositioning.

Pinned.

Heavy bolter fire raked the corridor again, the sound like gods hammering anvils.
The vox crackled — a deeper voice this time, resonant with metallic timbre.
One of Vorr’s Knights of the Grey Flame, their hulking silhouettes advancing behind the Astartes line.
“Captain Rhemar,” the Knight rumbled. His voice sounded as if it came through a cathedral’s bell.
“I can draw the Vigilator’s fire.”

Rhemar turned. The knight’s armor was ancient Tactical Dreadnought plate — grey, dented, sacredly ugly.
A relic of forgotten campaigns, powered by reactors that growled like caged beasts.
“You’ll last two rounds at most,” Rhemar said, tone grimly pragmatic.
“If he sights a weak point, one.”

The Knight inclined his helm. “Then one will have to do.”
Before Rhemar could answer, the Knight stepped into the open.
Bolter fire hammered his armor instantly, sparking off the reinforced ceramite.
He took the first hit square to the breastplate and kept walking, the second glancing across his helm.

Rhemar and his men struggled to pin point the vigilator's position. But for some reason was unable to
do so. Something about the area was helping the traitor elude detection. Rhemar repositioned himself
and it exposed him as a target for the Vigilator that would surely take the bait of taking out a captain.
The Vigilator took the bait, quickly repositioning himself to target Rhemar. But by hurriedly doing so he
exposed his position to the Knight, who saw the Vigilator targeting the captain and immediately raised
his powersword bellowing "For the Truth!" as his sword glowed in white light it caught the attention of
the Vigilator who quickly swerved around to target the Knight.

The Vigilator’s third shot cracked through the air — a perfect arc. It struck the Knight square in the gorget seam.
The impact tore a chunk from his throat plate, but the ancient armor held.
That was all the time Rhemar needed.

“Now!”
The Black Shield Vow surged from cover.
The Nameless and Ultramarines moved together like a single creature. They wore a black shield on their chest that
bound them as one brotherhood under the banner of the Black Shield Vow of the Oatharii.

The Ultramarines laid suppressive fire — bolt volleys triangulated by vox-metric discipline
while the Nameless charged through the gaps, closing the distance in a blur of speed and smoke.

Rhemar vaulted the wreckage, melta pistol in hand.
The beam fired, a lance of molten light that sheared through a heavy bolter nest and the crew behind it in one blast.
He hit the gantry wall running, his chainsword igniting in his grip —
a black arc of churning teeth that screamed as it met flesh and metal.

The Vigilator fired again.
The round tore through Rhemar’s pauldron, spinning him, but he caught himself against the railing and returned fire with his melta.
The Vigilator vanished in a burst of heat and vaporized metal.
“Clear the nest!” he shouted.

The Vow stormed the remaining bunkers. Ultramarines advanced with precision volleys, each covering the other’s angle.
The Nameless countered with feral efficiency — chainblades and combat knives tearing through the surviving defenders.
When it was done, the corridor fell silent save for the hiss of cooling barrels and the slow crackle of fire.

Rhemar stood over the fallen Knight of the Grey Flame.
The ancient warrior’s helm was split, smoke venting from the rent across his chest. The Knight looked up weakly.
Rhemar knelt, pressing a gauntleted hand against the Knight’s arm.
“You bought us the moment brother. We broke them.”

The Knight’s helm dipped once — a nod of acknowledgment — before fading with the last pulse of his armour’s power field..
Rhemar rose. “We’ve cleared Section Theta,” he voxed to the Oatharii net.
“Proceeding toward the Control Spire’s eastern base. Casualties sustained but squad intact.”
He gestured forward.

The Black Shield Vow advanced — blue and black, light and shadow — their unity forged in blood, their resolve unbroken.
Every step they took through the firestorm was another oath renewed, another line held in a war that refused to end.

The manufactoria levels beneath the Mesophex Control Spire were burning,
lit by rivers of molten slag and the staccato glare of distant explosions.
The Phoenix Gauntlet advanced across broken gantries and twisted bridges, their armour blackened by soot and light.
They were mostly made of the Nameless, consisting many veterans of the Emperor’s Children,
survivors of Isstvan’s betrayal who had refused to die with their Legion’s honour.

Captain Saul Tarvitz led them, helm unsealed, his face streaked with ash and sweat.
His eyes were clear and merciless. “Keep your spacing,” he ordered.
“We’ll take the rafters—no step wasted.”

To Tarvitz, war was not chaos. It was rhythm. Each strike, each breath, had purpose.
To fight without control was to lose oneself, and he had seen enough brothers lose themselves to rage and madness.
The Gauntlet followed his lead with silent precision.
Their bolters hung from mag-clamps; the air shimmered with the low hum of energized blades.
Every warrior carried steel that had history—a sword, a gladius, a chainblade etched with oaths.

They passed through what had once been an assembly hall: columns of molten brass, gantries overhanging vast crucibles.
Vox shrieks and corrupted hymns bled from the walls. Servitor-voices wailed prayers in binary to dark gods.

Librarian Oran Drell halted briefly, head tilted. “Sound distortion,” he murmured.
“An aural sigil-field. They’re binding the noise to the warp. It’s meant to disorient us.”

Tarvitz’s reply was steady, almost serene.
“Then we will show them that discipline outlasts madness.”

He signaled.
The squad split into mirrored formations, advancing across separate bridges toward the echoing heart of the manufactorum.
They had not gone thirty meters before the trap was sprung.
Rust-red figures moved among the rafters—Word Bearers, their armor carved with scripture, their mouths chanting in unison.
They were tending a choir-engine built from corpses and vox relays, a living amplifier of warp resonance.

Then the walls screamed.
Every lumen-globe burst at once, replaced by cascading columns of fire.
Tarvitz’s helm displays flared with static.
For a moment, he saw ghosts—Isstvan’s burning fields, his brothers dying again in sound and light.
The choir was rewriting the battlefield through memory and fear.

Drell’s voice thundered over the vox, a counter-hymn woven with psychic command:
“Hold your thoughts. Anchor to your oath, not to your senses!”

The Gauntlet obeyed. Even half-blind and deafened, their movements remained fluid.
They didn’t break formation—they adapted.

Two Nameless drew their blades in perfect sync, cutting a path through the hallucinatory veil toward the rafters.
Tarvitz sprinted ahead, leaping onto a hanging chain, his boots clanging against rusted iron.
A Word Bearer sighted him through the haze and fired—too slow.
Tarvitz turned in midair, his power sword cutting the bolt in half before it struck.
He landed in front of the traitor and struck once, cleanly, through helm and skull.

Another enemy came at him from the flank.
Tarvitz pivoted, parried, and thrust through the weak seam at the gorget.
Each motion was minimal, precise, as if he were conducting a ritual.

Below, the rest of the Phoenix Gauntlet followed the choreography.
They didn’t fight—they danced.
Chainblades roared like caged beasts, but every swing had meaning; every kill was made beautiful through mastery.

Drell moved among them like a calm center in the storm.
His psychic fire flowed outward in ribbons, burning away the warp distortion, peeling back the veil of hallucination.
One by one, the choir-engines exploded in brief bursts of warp light as his psychic touch unraveled their bindings.
“Sound field collapsing,” Drell voxed. “Push the rafters.”

Tarvitz’s response came without hesitation: “On me.”
The Gauntlet surged forward.
The remaining Word Bearers met them head-on—zealotry against precision.
It wasn’t a battle; it was an execution.

Tarvitz cut through the first line in three blows. Each stroke flowed into the next, his sword a streak of pale light.
His men mirrored him—swordmasters trained to end duels before they began.
The floor was soon littered with broken scripture and cooling ceramite.

As the last traitor fell, the hall fell silent. Only the molten hiss of the slag rivers remained.
Drell stepped beside him, his expression distant, listening. “The song’s gone,” he said quietly.
Tarvitz wiped his blade, the motion slow, deliberate. “Then we move before silence becomes warning.”

He turned to his warriors, their armor gleaming with reflected firelight.
“The Spire is ahead. Remember who we are—not sons of pride, not victims of betrayal.
We are the hand that answers treachery with grace.”

He activated his vox to the Oatharii command net.
“Phoenix Gauntlet has cleared the lower manufactory.
Choir complex neutralized. Advancing to Spire ingress.”

From somewhere above, he heard the dull thunder of detonations—perhaps Dryst’s advance, or Rhemar’s breakthrough.
Tarvitz sheathed his sword, eyes lifting to the lightning-wreathed towers ahead.
“Every step closer to the Spire is another step toward what we should have been,” he murmured.
Then he drew his blade again, the fire reflecting along its edge like sunrise over glass.

“Gauntlet,” he said. “Forward.”
And thirty blades rose as one, their mirrored edges catching the stormlight.
They advanced, silent and measured—
art made war, and war made penance.

Chapter Text

There was no thunder where the Aegis Blade moved.
Only the wind.
Only the slow hiss of cooling metal, and the faint scrape of ceramite over steel.
The shadows beneath the Mesophex Control Spire were alive with silent motion—thirty figures moving as one mind divided among thirty bodies.
Their armour was the color of ash and oil, dulled to nothing, marked only by faint runes of kill-tallies and oath seals. No heraldry. No light.
They were the ghosts of forgotten legions, the sins of the Imperium given purpose again.

Captain Tiberius Volan crouched on the rim of a broken transit gantry, high above the dim-lit concourse.
The Control Spire loomed in the distance—a mountain of black iron wreathed in lightning and vox interference,
its silhouette bleeding into the storm above.

He watched through his helm’s photolenses as traitor patrols moved below—Iron Warriors in siege harness,
setting up defensive kill-zones with heavy bolter nests on overlapping arcs.
“Contacts: five heavy emplacements, one sniper roost,” whispered Lexicanum Naevor Kalthis,
his voice a static breath over the vox. He was somewhere ahead, unseen.
“Vigilator confirmed—IIIrd Legion pattern marks.”

Volan’s reply was soft.
“Eliminate the nests. Two-man teams. No detonation, no sound. The Vigilator is mine.”
One by one, acknowledgement sigils blinked green across his visor.
Then, the killing began.

To an observer, it would have looked as if the shadows themselves were feeding.
An Iron Warrior at a gun mount turned to adjust his sighting range—then slumped silently forward,
his throat cut by a monomolecular blade.
Another heavy bolter emplacement flickered with static as its operator’s auspex suddenly went blind;
a figure materialized from nowhere, drove a combat blade into the gunner’s spine, and disappeared again.

The Aegis Blade moved like a virus through the ruins—
each warrior in his own radius of death, sweeping outward and inwards again in a precise web.
No wasted shots. No open channels.

Volan descended from the gantry without sound, the impact of his boots cushioned by the ash.
His melta pistol hung idle;
his hand rested on the hilt of his gladius, more habit than necessity.
He advanced through the half-light, eyes tracking the last red icon on his display—the Vigilator.

The traitor lay prone atop a shattered statue,
his longrifle poised toward the converging loyalist corridors where Rhemar’s men had been pinned earlier.
The Night Lord marks on his armor had been scratched over with the symbols of Horus’s warbands.
Volan’s mind registered it in silence. Another who traded fear for worship.

He climbed the broken statue without a sound, moving like a shadow flowing upward.
The Vigilator adjusted his scope—then froze. Volan’s reflection was in his lens.
The Ultramarine struck once.

A clean thrust to the neck joint. The traitor convulsed silently, and Volan eased him down onto the plinth like a sleeping child.
“All sectors clear,” came a whisper from Brother Arven, one of the former Raven Guard.
“Nests neutralized. No alarms triggered.”

Volan crouched, taking in the burning horizon.
The sound of distant fighting echoed faintly from other quadrants—the thunder of Dryst’s advance,
the screams of the Phoenix Gauntlet’s duelists.
But here—only silence. The silence of execution, of a war already won before the enemy even knew it had begun.
“Status,” Volan murmured.
Reports whispered in, one by one:
“Node Gamma secure.”
“South concourse swept.”
“Sniper roost neutralized.”
“Web pattern complete.”

The vox formed a chorus of quiet efficiency—no heroics, no celebration, just cold progress.
Volan nodded, unseen. “Excellent. You have cleared the path. Begin phase two—converge on the Spire.
We advance under full shroud protocol. Maintain dark until breach.”

He rose to his full height, sheathing his blade.
Around him, the remaining members of the Aegis Blade emerged from the ruins—some bearing cloaks of chameleoline,
others with their armour still rippling from adaptive camouflage fields.
They were not brothers of glory. They were the blade before the thunder.

“Remember,” Volan’s voice came low, measured, a whisper in their comms,
“our duty is silence. Our purpose is shadow. Let the others bring fire and storm—we bring the end unseen.”
The warriors vanished again, melting back into the storm-dark architecture.

Volan lingered one moment longer, looking up at the tower that crowned the Mesophex—the spire like a black nail driven into Terra’s skin.
His mind ran through the patterns of the battle, every route, every contingency, already seeing the collapse before it began.

“Naevor,” he voxed quietly.
“Prepare the interference shunt.
If the enemy draws reinforcements through that uplink,
I want their eyes blind and their ears deaf.”

“Understood, Captain. The machine-spirits will forget them before they arrive.”
Volan’s mouth tightened into something like a smile. “Good.”
He turned, melting into the haze.
And as the distant sound of bolter fire echoed across the ruins,
the Aegis Blade moved unseen beneath it all—
a web of steel closing quietly around the heart of the enemy.

The march of the Oathforged was unlike the silent prowl of the Aegis Blade or the swift rush of the Phoenix Gauntlet.
Their advance was deliberate—iron discipline embodied in ceramite and purpose.
The void-lit corridors trembled under their tread,
yet even the sound of their armour was measured, almost rhythmic, as though every step was a vow renewed.

Captain Garviel Loken led from the forefront, his armor scorched from earlier engagements,
the white of Luna Wolves long since buried under the matte black of the Nameless.
His eyes, cold but lucid, flicked over the holo-projection hovering from his gauntlet.
Reports from Volan and Tarvitz scrolled like flowing data-script—
coordinates of secured sectors, cleared nests, destroyed barricades.

Behind him moved his Second, Lieutenant Joram Khest, the crimson mark on his pauldron vivid even in the low lumen.
A former Ultramarine, now fully Nameless, Khest’s voice was the calm cadence of precision.
“Enemy emplacements on your two o’clock, Captain. Three heavy stubbers, one autocannon nest.
We can cut through the secondary gantry; I’ll take Second Spear through and plant charges under their position.”

Loken glanced up the corridor—a jagged, torn artery of the Control Spire’s outer shell.
The air shimmered with residual heat from plasma fire.
“Do it, Khest. We’ll pin their attention from the frontal ridge. Keep comms silent until you’re ready.”

Khest nodded once and faded into the shadows, gesturing to his squad.
Their vox discipline was flawless; even the soft clicks of maglocks were barely audible as they split away.

Lexicanum Naevor Kalthis strode beside Loken, psychic hood flickering faintly with blue arcs as he swept his mind outward.
“They are many,” Naevor murmured, his tone almost meditative.
“But they are afraid. The echoes of their fear ring louder than their bolters.”
“Then let that fear serve us,” Loken said simply. “Drive it before us.”

Without fanfare, the Oathforged advanced. Plasma fire bit through the gloom,
but their return volleys were pure precision—twin lines of disciplined fire cutting through the enemy’s barricade.

Where the Phoenix Gauntlet had surged like fire and the Aegis Blade had stalked like ghosts,
the Oathforged moved as a wall of will—unyielding, unstoppable.
Moments later, a low tremor rolled through the corridor.

Khest’s demolition run succeeded—an entire enemy redoubt collapsed inward with a roaring implosion of debris and fire.
The vox crackled once.
“This is Khest. Emplacement neutralized captain. Route open.”
“Good work, Lieutenant,” Loken replied, voice steady but faintly warm. “Reform on my mark. The Spire awaits.”

As the smoke cleared, the Oathforged pushed through the breach.
Loken’s voice came across the battlenet, reaching every captain still in motion:
“This is Loken. The Oathforged have cleared the northwestern approach.
The road to the Control Spire stands open. Let us end this.”
Naevor Kalthis glanced at him, his tone low, thoughtful.
“Your faith in them never falters, does it?”
“Faith?” Loken’s reply came with the faintest trace of a grim smile.
“No. Only memory. I’ve seen what happens when men forget who they are fighting for.”
The Oathforged pressed on, black armor shining faintly in the burning light of the Spire’s rising silhouette.
Their banners bore no sigil—only the bare crescent of the Nameless, gleaming like a scar in the dark.

--------------------------------------
The Mesophex Level — “Starspear”
Core Descent Array Plaza
--------------------------------------

The Core Descent Plaza had become a fortress built from ruin.
Tanks lay half-buried in debris, their wrecked hulls reforged into bastions.
Makeshift barricades of adamantium plating, broken cranes, and ferrocrete slabs ringed the great descent gates.
Behind them, the last loyal defenders of the Lion’s Gate Spaceport stood ready—
rows upon rows of Solar Auxilia, Imperial Army, and Astartes shoulder to shoulder,
blue and black ceramite gleaming beneath the blood-red sky.

At the command bastion, Commander Cassian Varro surveyed the defense line through a cracked lens-plate.
The air was thick with static and ozone, vox-chatter blaring fragments of orders and death screams.
Artillery cannons and macro-batteries thundered from the rear lines,
hurling fire into the horizon where the traitors gathered in the dark like a rising tide.

“Hold your fire until they break the ridge!” Varro barked.
“Target markers red-three through seven—fire for effect!”
A second later, the world erupted.

Basilisk guns and Medusa siege mortars unleashed their fury, shaking the plaza with the wrath of a dying world.
Entire companies of traitor auxilia vanished in gouts of flame and shrapnel, yet still the advance did not falter.

Then the air split.
The sky before them ripped open, a wound in reality itself.
A swirling void tore across the broken ridge, bleeding light that burned the eyes.
From it poured the daemonic host—twisted silhouettes and shrieking forms,
followed by the thunderous advance of Traitor Astartes, their corrupted armour glinting in the flare of hellfire.
The first volley of loyalist lasfire lit up the darkness in blinding strobes, but the enemy pressed on, unfeeling, unstoppable.

“They’ve opened a warp gate!” cried Marshal Illyra Serax, her voice cutting through the din.
“Target the emergence zone! Do not let them consolidate!”

Her armoured fist slammed down on the command rail.
The cohorts obeyed—thousands of lasguns flared in disciplined volleys.
The plaza became a storm of light and sound.

Mortar fire answered, crashing into the forward defenses.
The makeshift fortifications crumbled, bodies hurled into the air,
screams drowned in the deafening roar of artillery and ruptured earth.

Varro’s voice growled through the command vox.
“All units—hold the first barricade! Bring the Hydra batteries online! Suppressive fire—now!”
Turrets spun up, autocannons roaring as tracer fire streaked across the plaza.
Still the traitors came, climbing over the mounds of the dead. Inch by inch, the line wavered.

Among the defenders, Solar Auxilia cohorts reloaded and fired from behind the shattered armor of Leman Russ tanks.
Sergeant-primus Marn Cadris, voice raw and lungs choked with smoke, rallied his men atop a burning Chimera:
“They bleed! Keep firing! Emperor’s wrath, burn them down!”
But the tide was endless.

Soon Varro saw the inevitable—the first barricade shuddering under the weight of assault.
e keyed a private channel.
“Vorr. They’re breaking through.”
“Understood,” came the calm reply, metallic and resolute. “The Knights are moving.”

From the smoke behind the line, they emerged—Mathar Vorr’s Knights, the Iron Revenant’s elite.
Towering, silent, unbroken, they strode past the mortal soldiers without a word.
They took position before the buckling barricade, shields locking into a seamless wall of ceramite.
Power fields shimmered to life, casting a rippling blue glow across their ranks.
“Form the wall,” Vorr commanded.
“No step backward.”
The impact came like thunder.

Traitor Astartes crashed into the Knights, chainblades screeching against storm shields.
The plaza flashed with every strike—sparks and ichor spraying in all directions.
Between the locked shields, Auxilia marksmen fired their lasrifles in disciplined bursts, cutting down enemy infantry that slipped too close.
One by one, the Knights’ blades fell, each strike a killing stroke.
They fought not as men, but as a fortress—unyielding, indomitable.
Then came the shockwave.

A massive explosion rolled across the horizon, throwing dust and flame high into the heavens.
Heads turned—every eye drawn to the rising column of smoke and fire. The Control Spire burned.
Varro’s vox crackled to life.
“Loken to Command. The Oatharii have taken the Spire. Repeat—objective secured. We are en route.”
Varro exhaled sharply, a momentary spark of relief amid the chaos.
“Acknowledged, Loken. You’ve done it. All units—prepare to activate the Core Descent Array!”
He turned to the Mechanicus cohort nearby—hooded figures bathed in cogitator light.
“Magos! Begin the sequence!”
“Compliance,” droned Archmagos Ven Kharix, his mechadendrites already interfacing with the ancient machinery.
“Power conduits rerouting. Descent protocols initializing.”

As the loyalists fought and died in the outer rings, the heart of the plaza came alive.
Great engines deep beneath the platform rumbled awake, lights flaring one by one as the Core Descent Array began to stir.
But the traitors, sensing their desperation, came harder.

Another barrage of mortars slammed into the forward lines, hurling fire and ruin.
The first barricade cracked. One of Vorr’s Knights fell, his shield split, his body torn apart by a plasma bolt.
Varro’s voice roared across every channel:
“HOLD THE LINE! No retreat until the Oatharii return! No traitor takes this ground while we still draw breath!”
The plaza became a vision of hell—fire, blood, and the deafening hymn of war.
And through it all, the loyalists stood defiant—Astartes and mortal alike, shoulder to shoulder beneath the storm,
holding against the tide while the machine-god’s engines rumbled awake beneath their feet.

But the front was collapsing.
The makeshift barricades—plasteel, wrecked armor, tank husks—were now tombs and craters.
Lasfire lines flickered out one by one.

The traitors had bled through, roaring through the smoke and haze, their corrupted armor glistening in the hell-light.
Mortals broke and scattered; Astartes fought in tightening knots of resistance.
But Cassian Varro did not flinch.

The commander stood amid the storm, calm and deliberate,
his mind racing through calculations faster than his aides could speak.
“Sector two is failing—”
“Then let it fail,” Varro interrupted.
“Sir?”
“Open the breach. Let them come.”
The officers hesitated—but the order stood.
Varro turned to his vox-caster.
“Vorr. Secondary line, grid Epsilon through Theta. Prepare the trap.”
The reply was immediate, cold, and resolute.
“Confirmed. The Iron Revenant moves.”

Moments later, the weakened sections of the barricade fell inward.
The traitors surged through the openings, a tide of screaming madmen and corrupted Astartes.
Their victory cries rose high—until they realized they were not breaking through. They were inside.
The Knights of the Grey Flame moved like closing jaws.

A second line of ceramite walls rose from the inner defenses—
shields interlocking, their formation tightening into a half-circle around the breach.
The traitors, now boxed within the plaza’s inner ring, crashed into the immovable wall.
The Knights held. Power fields flashed and snarled with energy as blades met chainswords and axes.

“NOW!” Varro roared.
Auxilia units along the upper gantries and tank platforms opened fire all at once.
The kill-zone lit up in a hurricane of death—
autocannon fire, lasbeams, and plasma bursts reducing the trapped traitors to burning wreckage.
Bodies fell by the dozens, smoke rising in curtains of ash.

It was a slaughter.
Efficient. Controlled.
Tactical perfection—an echo of Varro’s campaigns on Accatran, where he’d used the same method to annihilate a warband of Orks.

But these were no greenskins.
Even dying, the traitors adapted. They broke off the assault not in panic but in purpose.
Moments later, the air filled with shrieking counter-fire.
Heavy bolters and plasma cannons from the outer ridge opened up, tearing through the Auxilia emplacements.
The makeshift walls disintegrated.
The kill-zone turned into a graveyard of loyalists.

Varro cursed under his breath, ducking behind a shattered command console as shrapnel rained down.
He switched vox channels.
“Marshal Serax, pull your armor to the rear.
Vorr, collapse the second line.
We’ll have to push forward.”

He hesitated. The decision weighed on him—break defense and risk collapse, or hold and die behind a burning wall.
Then—like a god’s answer—the vox flared alive.
“Loken to all channels. The Oatharii have returned. Enemy artillery positions are neutralized.”
And in the distance, beyond the haze and ruin—explosions bloomed across the traitor rear lines.
Pillars of smoke and flame tore through their emplacements as the Oatharii descended upon them like the Emperor’s own retribution.
“By the Throne…” Varro whispered. Then louder, across all bands:
“All units! Advance! Support the Oatharii! Vorr—take your Knights and break their spine!”
Without hesitation, Mathar Vorr gave the order.
“Grey Flame—forward!”

The ground shook.
The Knights of the Grey Flame charged through the smoldering ruins, their shields locked and blades ignited.
Traitor Astartes barely had time to raise their weapons before the first ranks were smashed aside by a wall of ceramite and fire.
Power swords carved glowing arcs through corrupted flesh and armor; bolt pistols barked at point-blank range, every shot a kill.

Behind them came the Ultramarines, their blue ranks rallying to the advance.
Inspired by the unstoppable surge of the Knights, they charged with bolters roaring and banners raised high.
The entire line moved as one—a tide of blue and grey that crashed into the enemy with the fury of reborn hope.
Varro stood atop the command platform, smoke curling around him as he watched the impossible unfold:

The Knights’ phalanx cutting through the traitor front like a spear through rotted flesh,
and the disciplined mass of Ultramarines fanning out behind them to widen the breach.
“By Guilliman’s hand…” one of his aides murmured.
“By the Emperor’s will.” Varro replied, his voice low but firm.

The battle turned. The tide began to shift.
The sound of bolter fire rolled like thunder through the plaza, joined by the howling roar of the Oatharii striking from the enemy’s rear.
From that moment on, the Core Descent Array was no longer a defense—it became a purge.
And at its heart, Commander Cassian Varro stood unbowed, looking over the turning of the tide in battle.

Chapter Text

-------------------------------------
The Mesophex Level — “Starspear”
The Core Descent Array Plaza
-------------------------------------

The warfront dissolved into frenzy.
What had begun as an organized counteroffensive now burned into total chaos.
The air was a storm of gunfire and screams;
bolter shells tore through flesh and ceramite alike,
the thunder of tank batteries lost beneath the shriek of chainblades and mortal agony.
It was as if every living thing had lost its reason.

The World Eaters howled like rabid beasts, their axes rising and falling in endless rhythm.
Iron Warriors fired blindly, consumed by rage instead of calculation.
Even the Solar Auxilia, the most disciplined mortal soldiers in the Imperium, had joined the slaughter—
charging and stabbing and screaming as if drunk on blood.

The entire plaza churned into madness.
In the middle of it all, Garviel Loken stood motionless, his armour splattered with blood not his own.
His breath came ragged through the vox grille as he looked around—
the swirling melee, the red haze, the blind hatred infecting both sides.
For a heartbeat, he saw no lines, no legions. Just the raw animal of war.

Then it struck him—he felt it.
Something heavy and unseen pressing against his mind, whispering hunger and hate.
The world around him pulsed faintly, colours deepening, edges warping.
He blinked—and for a moment, every warrior before him seemed distorted, faces stretched in silent howls.
He staggered back, shaking his head, fighting the creeping static in his thoughts.

Something was wrong.
He turned—and through the chaos, he saw a wall of grey ceramite holding the line.
The Knights of the Grey Flame had not fallen to frenzy.
They stood in their phalanx, shields locked, only striking when struck.
Their blades shone faintly, ghost-light shimmering across their edges like the glow of dying embers.

Loken ran toward them, vaulting over corpses and debris.
A berserker lunged at him—
Loken’s power sword flashed once, taking the traitor’s head clean off before he even realized he’d been killed.
At the edge of the Knight formation, Mathar Vorr turned to meet him, blade raised.
His stance was wary—defensive, ready. His voice boomed through the din.
“Loken! Come to your senses! The madness has you!”

Loken stopped short, sword held low, his voice firm.
“No—something’s wrong, Vorr! Can’t you feel it? This isn’t rage—it’s control.”

The Knight-Captain hesitated, then lowered his blade.
The faint glow across his armour pulsed brighter as if in acknowledgment.
“You’re awake then,” Vorr said, relief flickering behind the helm’s lenses.
“You’re right. The field is tainted. The warp bleeds through here.
My Knights—most of them resist it. But even they are straining.”

Loken’s gaze swept across the battlefield.
The fighting raged on, unstoppable—Nameless striking Ultramarines, Auxilia turning their guns on one another.
It was spreading.
“Can it be broken?” Loken demanded.
“There has to be a source—something anchoring it.”

Vorr shook his head grimly.
“We’ve tried to push it back. The light of the Grey Flame blunts its reach, but not enough.”
A new voice spoke, calm and resonant amid the storm.
Menerak Vaul stepped forward, the prophet-psyker of the Knights. His eyes burned faintly with pale fire.
“This is no mere corruption of emotion,” he said, his voice carrying the weight of conviction.
“This is direct interference. A ritual bleeding into realspace.
The warp does not seep without will—it is being drawn, strengthened.
A conduit, or a focus, must be sustaining it.”

Loken turned sharply.
“Then we find it and destroy it.”
Vaul nodded slowly.
“A portal. A relic. Something bound in the blood of the slain.
The veil is thin here—the enemy may have built their shrine beneath our feet.”
Vorr’s gauntlet tightened around his sword hilt. He raised his head toward his Knights.
“Grey Flame! Spread out! Encircle the field. Anything radiating corruption—burn it, shatter it, break it!”

The Knights answered in silent unity.
One by one, they disengaged from the melee, their luminous blades igniting as they advanced into the chaos,
pushing through the tide of berserkers and daemons.
Wherever they passed, the air shimmered faintly, the warp’s grip weakening.

Loken turned back to Vorr.
“We don’t have long. If this madness spreads, the entire descent operation will collapse.”
Vorr gave a single nod.
“Then we hunt the source. Together.”
And with that, they plunged back into the carnage—
Loken and Vorr side by side, carving their way through the haze of blood and madness,
searching for the unseen heart of corruption that had ensnared the battlefield.

The battle above had descended into madness.
Even from the lower tiers, the thunder of bolters and the shrieking of men lost to frenzy
reverberated through the steel and stone like the pulse of a dying heart.

Captain Mathar Vorr moved with purpose through the shattered avenues, his knights forming a luminous crescent behind him.
Garviel Loken and Menerak Vaul followed close, their steps quick, wary.
The Librarian’s eyes burned faintly with restrained psychic light —
his mind brushing against the currents of the immaterium that lapped hungrily at reality’s edges.

“The air bleeds,” Vaul muttered, his tone reverent and strained.
“Something feeds the veil here. A wound in the world that will not close.”

They found it soon enough — a shrine.
A jagged altar of bone and steel, pulsing faintly with red light,
surrounded by the corpses of those who had offered their own lifeblood to the god of slaughter.

Vaul stretched out his hand, chanting words that were not from the Lectitio Divinitatus but something older — older and almost forgotten.
Fire consumed the altar, the runes cracked, and for a fleeting moment, the oppressive presence in the air faltered.
But it did not end.

The warp’s grip still clung like a vice, and Vaul’s expression hardened.
“It is not a shrine,” he said quietly. “It is a pattern. The whole plaza—” he gestured outward,
“—is one vast sigil. The blood flow above feeds it.”

Vorr’s knights split into detachments,
destroying every discovered altar and killing their deranged guardians with measured precision.
Yet the madness continued to spread across the battlefield above.

Then, a voice crackled through the vox: “We’ve found a passage. It descends.”
Seraphis Kaellen led them to the entrance —
a half-buried stairwell spiraling downward into darkness, lined with chains and dried blood.
Without hesitation, Vorr signaled the advance.

They descended for what felt like hours.
The air thickened; the light from their armor dimmed.
Even the glow of their eye-lenses seemed swallowed by the dark.
A pressure built in their skulls — a whispering that wasn’t quite sound but memory twisted into mockery.
Loken stumbled. His vision blurred; the edges of the corridor rippled like heat haze.
Doubt crept into his chest — not the fear of death, but of futility.
Then a hand clasped his pauldron.
Vorr’s voice was calm, steady — a bastion amid the storm.
“Stay strong, brother. The Emperor protects.”

Loken’s breath steadied. He nodded, his faith rekindled by the sheer force of Vorr’s conviction.
At last, they reached the end. A vast chamber, its walls carved with layered glyphs that pulsed like veins.
At its heart stood a colossal stone effigy — a figure that might once have been angelic before its wings were torn and horned.

Vaul halted mid-step.
His hand rose instinctively, summoning a translucent barrier of psychic light just as the shadows themselves lunged.
Dozens of clawed shapes slammed against his shield, howling wordlessly, their forms half-real, half-remembered.

The chamber filled with motion — swords unsheathed, power fields crackled.
Loken drew Mournfang, the blade singing to life, its white-blue edge casting a harsh glow that split the dark.
Then came the laugh — low, guttural, resonant. It crawled along the walls like oil over fire.

From behind the effigy stepped a figure that dwarfed them all.
The air was molten, oppressive — the very atmosphere seething with warp-stink and blood-metal fumes.
At the center of the dimly lit vault, the Daemon of Khorne uncoiled from shadow —
a towering monstrosity, wings unfurling like flayed banners of flesh and fire.
Its bellow was a scream of raw hatred that split vox-links and made stone tremble.
The scent of scorched blood and ozone filled the lungs of every Astartes present.

Red skin, thick as iron plates, glistened with heat.
The daemon’s battle-axe was a slab of ruin, forged from murder itself.
When it swung, the air hissed like boiling oil.
And against it — the Knights of the Grey Flame stood their ground.
blade that was less a weapon than an executioner’s verdict — a cleaver that hummed with killing purpose.

Vaul’s psychic barrier cracked under the pressure of its gaze alone.
“A prince of blood…” he whispered, voice trembling with both awe and dread.
Vorr raised his sword, stepping forward until his glowing silhouette stood between his knights and the daemon.
“Then let the Emperor’s will be done,” he said, calm as stone.
The daemon’s grin split wider.
“Blood for the Blood God.”
The chamber erupted into war.

Seraphis Kaellen raised his shield, its purity seals burning in the infernal wind.
"Brothers," he said calmly, though the storm of warp roared all around,
"Faith does not bend."
He struck his chestplate once — an echoing thud that his brothers mirrored.
The line of ten Knights formed up beside him, the glow from their relic armours turning white-hot in the crimson dark.
"FOR THE EMPEROR!"
Their voices collided like thunder.
They charged.

The Daemon met them with motion too fast for its size —
the axe came down, and Brother Rhaem was torn in two, ceramite and bone spraying into the dark.

Kaellen ducked beneath the next swing, his power sword biting into the creature’s thigh, searing flesh that sizzled but did not bleed.
The monster howled, snapping its wings outward, sending two Knights flying into pillars that shattered on impact.
Above the melee, lightning burst — bright arcs of white lashing from Menerak Vaul’s outstretched hands.
His eyes burned with cold fire as he chanted in the dark tongue of the Librarius.
"Begone, creature of rage! By the flame of Truth and Thought — burn!"

The bolts struck the Daemon’s chest, crawling across its hide in sizzling veins of light.
It stumbled for a moment, its protective wards hissing against the psychic assault.

That was when Loken raised his vox.
"All Oathforged — suppressive fire! Center mass!"
The chamber erupted in bolter thunder..

Explosive rounds detonated against invisible barriers, bursting into showers of sparks and fragments of warp-light.
The Daemon’s shield flared like an ember-red dome, but each impact dimmed it a fraction.
Seraphis Kaellen saw the pattern — the distraction he needed.
“Push! Now!” he roared, his voice a growl through gritted teeth.
He darted behind the Daemon, moving faster than something in Terminator armour had any right to.
His blade flared blue as he rammed it deep into the creature’s hind leg joint, cutting through muscle and warp sinew.
The Daemon screamed, one knee collapsing beneath its own bulk, cracking the stone floor beneath it.

From the dais above, Menerak Vaul felt the opening.
His staff hummed as he gathered psychic energy until the air around him rippled like molten glass.
He thrust both palms forward.
"Witness the Emperor’s light!"
A column of azure lightning speared down, searing into the Daemon’s back.
It shrieked — the sound like tearing metal mixed with a thousand voices.
The warp flickered; the fire dimmed.

Loken used that heartbeat of weakness.
He tore a melta-charge from his belt, thumbed the activator, and hurled it straight into the creature’s snarling face.
“COVER!”
The explosion was blinding — a burst of white heat that swallowed everything.
Flesh and warp-fire vaporized in the blast.
When the smoke cleared, the creature still stood, half its face a molten ruin,
one eye socket dripping flame, its bellow now warped into a hiss of pure hate.

At the edge of the ruin stood Mathar Vorr. He had not moved throughout the battle.
His blade — the Iron Revenant — was held before him in a prayer stance.
His lips moved in silent cant, his body surrounded by a faint, growing light.

Now — he raised his head.
The glow around him intensified until even the Daemon paused, sensing something shift.
His voice, calm and steady, broke through the crackling noise of the battlefield:
“The Emperor protects.”
White light blazed from his eyes.

Every Knight, every Astartes, turned to look — momentarily transfixed.
Vorr took one step, then another, each faster than the last — until he was no longer walking, but blurring forward in a trail of light.
He struck.
His sword of faith named after the very vessel that harboured their devotion,
Iron Revenant sliced through the Daemon’s chest — from clavicle to gut — parting flesh, bone, and warp essence alike.
The cut was perfect, clean, absolute. For an instant, the creature stood frozen, split by a divine glow.
Then it screamed — a final roar that tore the air apart — before imploding into ash and fire, its remains sucked back into the void.

Silence fell.
Only the hum of dying warp-energies filled the cavern.
The stone walls trembled as the shrine’s corruption began to dissolve.
Knights knelt, panting, weapons still raised.
Loken stepped forward, resting his sword point on the ground.
“Emperor’s mercy,” he murmured, staring at Vorr’s blade. “What… was that?”
Vorr turned to him, his armour still faintly glowing, the light dimming slowly.
“Faith,” he said simply. “Nothing more.”

Chapter Text

-------------------------------------
Lion’s Gate Spaceport Transit City
Grand Plaza of the Ninth Spire
-------------------------------------

For a moment, the world went still.
The noise of the battlefield — the howling, the clash of ceramite and blade, the roar of bolters — all fell into a heavy, breathless silence.
It was as if the world itself had exhaled.

Across the Grand Plaza of the Ninth Spire, thousands of warriors stood amid the smoke and ruin —
frozen mid-strike, locked in a trance of bloodlust and confusion.

And then came clarity.
Astartes blinked as if awakening from drowning, bolters still raised, chainswords dripping gore.
The loyalists saw what they had done — brothers carved apart, Auxilia crushed underfoot, even Knights of the Grey Flame fallen beneath friendly blades.
Horror rippled through the ranks like cold lightning.

Captain Rhelan Vornek of the XIII Legion tore his blade free from an Iron Warrior’s throat —
only now realizing that his strike had been meant for another Ultramarine.
His breathing came ragged through his helm, vox crackling with disbelief.
“By Guilliman… what madness was this?”

No answer came — only the distant hum of engines, the shifting echo of battle like a fading dream.
But then, realization hit them all at once.

The curse had lifted.
The veil of the warp had broken, and sanity returned to the loyalists.
Every warrior turned toward the enemy — the true enemy — as the World Eaters and Iron Warriors reeled, their warp-fed fury faltering.
The red haze bled from their eyes. Their swings slowed. They looked… human again.
And in that heartbeat of weakness, the loyalists struck.

“Press them!” came the bellow through the vox — the voice of Knight-Captain Taron Valis,
his armor of the Grey Flame gleaming with the faint blue sheen of his order’s sanctified wards.
His halberd rose high, and behind him the Knights of the Grey Flame advanced in lockstep,
silver-edged blades cutting the air with righteous purpose.

To their flanks, Kill-Team Phoenix Gauntlet surged forth,
their Black and gold armour scarred and blackened, their bolters roaring with disciplined vengeance.
“Advance by echelon!” roared Saul Tarvitz, his voice thunderous.
“Drive them from the plaza!”

To the west, Captain Calen Dryst’s Cerulean Wrath provided covering fire from the shattered arcades,
plasma fire and heavy bolters turning retreating traitors into mist.
And above them, the 19th Deltan Auxilia’s artillery filled the skies with light.
Massive shells screamed overhead, vapor trails burning bright as they detonated amidst the retreating Word Bearers and Iron Warriors.
Through the din, Lord-Marshal Illyra Serax’s command voice boomed like a divine decree across the vox-net:
“No quarter! The traitors break! Advance and purge them!”

The 22nd Solar Cohort, flame-troopers and grenadiers of the Deltan Guard, broke formation in a surge of zeal.
Their chants of “Terra Imperator!” and “For the Throne Eternal!” echoed through the plaza as they charged,
lasguns spitting lines of light and plasma fire.

The marble streets shuddered beneath their tread as they drove into the collapsing foe.

The traitor lines broke.
World Eaters turned to flee. Iron Warriors fell back into the smoke, leaving their dead and wounded behind.
The Word Bearers were last to retreat, their crimson armor slick with gore as they vanished toward the great spires beyond.
The loyalists pressed their advantage, blades and bolters alike cutting down the fleeing heretics.
Smoke and fire blanketed the plaza. It seemed—for one fragile moment—that victory was theirs.
Until the sky screamed.

A crack split the heavens. The ground trembled. Static hissed through every vox-link.
At the heart of the enemy’s retreat, a figure stepped through the ruin — a lone Word Bearer,
his armour a cathedral of blasphemy, covered in dark runes that shimmered with molten light.
His eyes were twin stars of crimson fire.
He raised one hand, and the air around him began to fold.
Bolter shells detonated harmlessly against a shimmer of force that rippled across his armor.
Artillery fire fell upon him like rain upon glass, the shells bursting in midair with thunderous, futile fury.

He began to chant.
The words were not meant for mortal ears — they crawled through the skull, burned through the nerves.
Even the vox refused to transmit them cleanly; they came through as distortion, as screams beneath static.

The ground beneath his feet split open.
Warp-flame poured forth like molten tar. Loyalists caught too close were incinerated instantly, their armor melting like wax.
And still the Apostle chanted, voice rising to an ecstatic crescendo.
“Blood given! Blood repaid! From the skull-throne’s shadow—rise!”

The rift exploded.
A titanic claw tore free — then another. A wing, black and crimson, like flayed flesh stretched over iron.
The air thickened with heat and the scent of copper.

Then it came forth.
A Daemon of Khorne, greater than a Contemptor Dreadnought, its horned head crowned in fire, eyes burning with hate eternal.
In its hands was an axe large enough to fell tanks — a weapon made from bone and nightmare, the sound of screams echoing with each movement.
Its roar shook the city to its foundations.
It swung once — and the world ended.

A single Knight of the Grey Flame was bisected, his warded armour splitting like paper.
Astartes were hurled aside like dolls. Solar Auxilia dissolved in flame as warp-fire erupted from the creature’s mouth.
The Word Bearer Apostle fell to his knees, arms spread, bathed in the daemon’s infernal glow.
“Behold! The Butcher’s Breath given form!” he cried, his voice manic with devotion.

The loyalists wavered. Some stepped back. Even hardened Astartes felt the pull of primal dread.
Artillery rounds from the Deltan guns struck the daemon’s shimmering shield, doing nothing but scorch the ground.
Bolters, plasma fire, and lascannons—none pierced the barrier.

The daemon advanced. Each step cracked the marble.
“The Emperor protects,” muttered Captain Tarvitz, drawing his sword as the creature’s shadow fell across the plaza.
“But we must earn His gaze.”

With a rallying cry, the loyalists reformed, opening fire in volleys.
The plaza descended once again into carnage—
a second war born upon the ashes of the first.

The Plaza had become a cauldron of carnage.
The broken ground was slick with blood and oil, charred from orbital fire and torn by tank treads and claws alike.
Once a grand architectural junction linking the upper transit hubs to the Core Descent Array,
it now resembled a vision of Old Night — a place where angels and monsters tore reality apart.

The Great Daemon towered over the chaos, its massive form blotting out the ember sky.
Its hide burned crimson with fire leaking through the seams of its muscles; each exhalation came out as a gout of flame.
Its axe, a weapon forged from the will of Khorne itself, cleaved through power armour as if it were parchment.
Every strike killed a dozen men. The plaza shook with each impact, chunks of ferrocrete splitting beneath its hooves.

Around it, the Word Bearer Dark Apostle, the summoner of the beast, chanted in dark delight.
Warpfire poured from his fingertips in waves, bathing loyalists in ruinous flame.
His vox-like laughter echoed through the air — a mockery of human sound, resonating with the pitch of daemonic joy.
Every word he uttered in his profane tongue flayed the air itself.

Captain Calen Dryst of the Cerulean Wrath knelt among the ruin, his chest heaving as he leaned against the blood-slicked teeth of his chainsword.
His once-polished silver trim was burnt and blackened; the crimson of his left gauntlet was coated now with his own blood.
His breathing was shallow but steady.

Around him, his squad — those still standing — had formed a defensive barrier while an Apothecary pressed an injector into his side.
“The Emperor endures…” Dryst muttered through clenched teeth. “So shall we.”
A voice answered him from the smoke.
“You’re taking your time, Calen.”

Through the haze emerged Captain Tiberius Volan of the Aegis Blade,
his armour battered, his helm split open, half his face marked by shrapnel burns.
Despite his wounds, his tone carried that razor’s edge of dark humour that his men found grounding.
“You look worse than I do,” Dryst rasped, flexing his hand as the stim flooded his veins.
“Then the enemy must be terrified,” Volan replied, forcing a grim smile.

The two Oatharii captains stood shoulder to shoulder again — the shadows and the strategists, one forged in theory, the other in stealth.
Around them, their remaining men reformed into a thin defensive ring, firing at the advancing traitor waves that poured from the broken perimeter.
The daemon strode forward through the flames, roaring a challenge that shook their bones.

The Word Bearer spread his arms wide behind the creature, his voice booming across the plaza,
“Witness devotion! Witness eternity through blood!”
The loyalists were being driven back — pushed toward the shattered gates of the inner plaza.
Even the combined fire of Astartes, Solar Auxilia, and artillery from the upper causeways could not stem the tide.
Their ranks were collapsing by inches.

Then came the vox burst.
A single voice cutting through the static, calm and clear — one they all knew.

“For the Truth.”
The voice of Garviel Loken.
A heartbeat later, his command code pulsed through every loyalist helm.
The Oatharii fall-back protocol — Operation Spearhead.

Moments later, the skies split apart.
Stormbirds screamed down from the uppoer oribital level, their assault cannons roaring, missiles streaking through the dust clouds.
Airstrikes hammered the advancing traitor lines, reducing hundreds to ash and molten ruin.
The shockwave blew men off their feet — both loyalist and traitor — as the air was filled with screaming metal.

Then came the thunder of footsteps — titanic, metallic, inexorable.
Through the haze strode Rylanor the Unyielding, the Venerable Dreadnought of the Emperor’s Children,
his once-gilded sarcophagus now blackened by fire. His vox-speakers boomed like an angry god.
“I have endured the fall of my Legion. I have endured the lies of the Warmaster. I will not endure you, daemon.”

He crashed through the defensive line like a walking fortress,
his power fists crackling with energy as he charged the Great Daemon head-on.
The impact was thunderous — the daemon reeled backward as Rylanor’s blow connected, its massive axe carving sparks from the dreadnought’s chest.
In return, Rylanor seized a corrupted terminator from the ground and used him as a hammer, beating the daemon’s head with relentless fury.

The Oatharii Companies had arrived.
Hundreds strong — their numbers now equal to a full fighting company —
the five banners of the Oatharii descended from the Stormbirds, landing amidst fire and ruin.

The Cerulean Wrath, their silver and red glinting through smoke, regrouped around Dryst.
Fresh reinforcements joined him — warriors saluting their battered captain before forming up for another charge.
The Aegis Blade, shadows incarnate, reappeared from the wreckage like living ghosts,
reporting to Volan with silent nods before melting into the chaos again.

The Black Shield Vow advanced behind Rylanor, bolters roaring as they formed a living wall of ceramite and faith.
The Phoenix Gauntlet followed in golden flashes of blades and fury, their war cry rising like a choir —
elegant, terrible, beautiful.

And above them all, the vox repeated that same order:
“For the Truth. For the Emperor. For the Nameless.”
As the plaza trembled under the clash of titans, the loyalists surged forward, their faith rekindled.
Against the nightmarish crimson titan and the heretic who had summoned it,
the Nameless made their stand once more — a wall of unbroken oaths amid the fires of damnation.

The battle reached its crescendo.
The once-proud plaza of the Ninth Spire was now a maelstrom of fire, shattered stone, and torn bodies.
The Great Daemon roared in anguish as Rylanor the Unyielding pressed his attack,
every thunderous blow from his adamantine fists cracking the creature’s skull and driving it back step by step.
The ground quaked with each impact, and the echoes of his booming machine-voice rolled like thunder across the plaza.
“By the Throne, fall, beast!”

With one arm, Rylanor tore through the daemon’s flank; with the other, he slammed his power fist down,
pinning the creature beneath him.
A geyser of warp ichor erupted as the venerable dreadnought’s plasma cannon hissed,
then blazed — a roaring sunburst of blue-white light burning through the daemon’s chest.
The monster screamed, its voice shaking the air as reality itself seemed to protest its unmaking.

The Word Bearer Dark Apostle, sensing his summoned horror faltering, raised his staff and strode forward,
his armor cracked but his zeal undiminished.
He chanted a litany of the Primordial Truth, calling for his patron’s strength —
but his invocation was cut short by a sudden psychic maelstrom.

Codicier Menerak Vaul had arrived.
The air around him rippled with silver fire, the psychic light of his soul blazing through the murk.
His eyes shone like twin stars as he extended both hands,
threads of psychic lightning lancing from his fingertips to strike the Dark Apostle’s rune-inscribed armor.
The Word Bearer staggered, screaming as the light of the warp — turned against him — burned through his corrupted soul.

“You call upon the warp,” Vaul intoned, voice like steel through a storm.
“Then drown in its judgment.”

Beside him advanced Knight-Master Mathar Vorr, his black and iron armor scarred from endless battle.
In his grip he bore the blade that bore his title — The Iron Revenant. As he drew it forth, the weapon ignited, a white-grey flame racing down its edge.
The fire did not burn like mortal heat, but instead shone with a purifying luminance —
the sacred flame of the Grey Knights’ prototype orders, a light born from will and sanctity.
That light cut through the warp’s corruption.

Vorr raised his weapon high, and across the chaos-strewn battlefield, the Knights of the Grey Flame felt its call.
Scattered squads turned their helms toward that beacon and began to chant their oaths,
their voices merging into a single resonant hymn that carried through the vox and over the din of war:
“From grey fire we are forged; from truth’s flame we endure.”

With each verse, a pale radiance ignited around their armour — a shimmering aura that repelled daemons and seared the heretic.
The traitors faltered, some clutching their heads as if burned by the light itself.
Then, through the burning haze of the plaza, came the advance of the Oatharii Company — Oathforged.
Their Stormbirds had landed in disciplined formation, disgorging ranks of loyalists in white and blue, led by Captain Garviel Loken himself.
The sight of the Luna Wolf reborn stirred renewed strength in the hearts of men.

“Oathforged!” Loken roared over the vox.
“Form on me! Flank the Phoenix Gauntlet and drive the heretics from the center!”
The Oathforged answered with a unified bellow — “For the Truth!” — and surged into the melee.
Among them, Brother Seraphis Kaellen raced ahead, his twin blades glinting as he cut a path through the remnants of the traitor line.
The rest of his brothers followed, bolters barking, their advance coordinated and merciless.
To their right, the Phoenix Gauntlet pressed forward,
golden blades of the Emperor’s Children loyalists clashing in grim harmony beside their Ultramarine brethren.

Loken, standing atop a shattered pillar, raised his bolt pistol and looked across the carnage.
Through the smoke, he saw the titanic form of Rylanor still hammering down upon the dying daemon,
his plasma cannon cycling and firing point-blank into the beast’s skull until it finally exploded in a cloud of warp-fire and smoke.

The plaza fell silent for a breath —
the daemon’s death scream fading into nothing, leaving only the ringing of spent bolter casings on stone.

The Word Bearer Apostle, broken and staggering, turned to flee —
but before he could utter a final curse, a single bolter shot tore through his helm.
His head burst apart in a mist of blood and black ichor.

Vaul lowered his smoking bolt pistol, the psychic light fading from his eyes.
“The gods are silent now,” he murmured.
The Ninth Spire Grand Plaza was theirs.

All around, the battered remnants of the Nameless and their Ultramarine allies stood amid the ruin.
They had fought for hours — and at last, the tide had turned. The enemy was broken, the warp energies receding.
The weary warriors turned their eyes toward the great descent gates leading deeper into the spire.
Beyond lay the Core Array, the path toward the true heart of the Lion’s Gate.
And for the first time in what felt like an age, the loyalists could see victory on the horizon — faint, distant, but real.

-------------------------------------
Descent Junction Primaris,
Core Array Access — Ninth Spire
War council
-------------------------------------

The silence after victory was never true silence.
It was the hush between storms — the kind that trembled beneath the bones,
filled with the hum of cooling engines, the whispers of the wounded, the faint crackle of burning wreckage.

The Mesophex Level was won.
But the victory smelled of blood and ash.
Smoke coiled in the rafters of the ruined plaza — the Core Descent Array looming like a broken sun above them,
its thousand lumen-spires flickering across the steel causeways.
The floor was littered with the dead.
Astartes and mortal alike, their bodies laid reverently in ranks while the living rearmed.

The Nameless and the XIII Legion worked side by side in the aftermath, their armour black and blue glimmering beneath the cold industrial light.
Among them, the banners of the Solar Auxilia were raised anew —
black sigils of the Deltan, Selenic, and Solar Cohorts, their plasteel standards bent but unbroken.

At the center of it all, beneath the cracked marble of the plaza’s dais, stood the commanders —
gathered around a hololithic projection of the Ninth Spire.
The image of the tower’s inner structure rotated slowly, levels descending like strata of a world turned inside-out.

Captain Garviel Loken stood in the light of the hololith, his helm clipped to his belt, face drawn and marked by fatigue.
His white right pauldron — the Luna Wolf sigil now struck through with a blade — was scorched and blackened.
Yet his eyes burned with purpose.

Beside him loomed Venerable Rylanor the Unyielding, the ancient dreadnought’s sarcophagus glinting like the tomb of a hero.
To Loken’s left stood Commander Cassian Varro, the Ultramarine’s calm precision offset by the quiet grief in his eyes.

Around them formed the circle of the Oatharii Captains and the Lord-Marshals of the Solar Auxilia.
The air was thick with the scent of promethium and ozone.

Lord-Marshal Illyra Serax of the 19th Deltan Cohort was the first to speak.
Her face was pale beneath the scarlet plume of her helm, voice iron-edged and commanding.

“We’ve bled for every metre of this level. I will not leave it undefended.
The traitors will return the moment our backs are turned — and every life we’ve paid will be for nothing.”

Her gauntleted hand slammed against the edge of the hololith table, the flickering light casting her in blue fire.
Lord-Marshal Erynd Kordain of the 22nd Solar Cohort nodded sharply, his voice a low growl.

“Agreed. We’ve fortified the transit points.
We can hold the upper levels with half our tanks and the men we’ve left fit to fight.
Let the Astartes push on — that’s their war. Ours is here.”

A murmur of assent rippled through the human officers.
Then Lord-Marshal Verin Daskor of the 14th Selenic Cohort,
a man whose silvered hair framed a face marked by years of void warfare, stepped forward.

“If we abandon this ground, we hand the traitors our flanks.
The Selenic fought in orbit to bring us down here. We’ll not see that sacrifice undone.”

The hololith flickered as he spoke, reflecting the deep red scars of battle traced across the Stratophex schematic.
His voice carried weight — the voice of experience, of a man who had watched too many wars turn on the arrogance of momentum.
Loken listened, eyes flicking between them.

He had seen this before — the anger that came after survival.
The fear that victory might be lost not to the enemy, but to folly.

Then Calen Dryst of the Cerulean Wrath stepped forward, his wounds still fresh,
the scar across his cheek leaking faintly where his apothecary’s seal had cracked.
“You speak truth, Marshals. But this tower doesn’t obey the laws of siege or defense.
Every level we descend brings us closer to the surface — and closer to the warp bleeding into realspace.
There’s no holding ground here. Only pushing forward, before the corruption regathers.”

Tiberius Volan of the Aegis Blade added, his tone low, calm, and precise as the shadows in his armour.
“Our strength is in unity. The moment we split, we will die — one level at a time.”

Cassian Varro leaned over the hololith, gesturing to the schematic.
“The Stratophex is worse than this one — open air, exposed causeways, a hundred ingress points.
The Word Bearers will have artillery and daemons waiting.
If we leave a defense here, they’ll be cut off, stranded between warp storms and collapsing infrastructure.
We can’t reinforce upward.”

The Marshals bristled, but none could counter the logic.
Then the dreadnought spoke.
Rylanor’s voice filled the plaza — deep, metallic, carrying the gravitas of centuries.
“You are soldiers of the Emperor. You know the truth of this war.
This is not a campaign of conquest — it is a cleansing.
The warp festers beneath our boots. If you stay, you will die holding ground already damned.
March, and perhaps you live to see the dawn.”

The words struck through the silence like thunder. Even the Auxilia fell still.
Lord-Marshal Serax lowered her head for a long moment, gauntlets tightening over the edge of the table.
Her jaw clenched, but when she raised her gaze again, her eyes burned with renewed conviction.
“Very well,” she said, voice steady.
“We march together. The Deltan will serve as your armoured fist, Captain Loken.
If we are to burn the corruption from this tower, then let us burn bright.”

Kordain followed with a curt nod.
“The 22nd will keep pace. My men have more fuel than fear.”
And Daskor, after a long breath, murmured,
“The 14th Selenic will not be left behind. We’ve walked through storms before.”

Loken inclined his head, something close to pride in his expression.
“Then we are agreed.”

The hololith shifted, showing the Stratophex Level —
a broken city suspended in the open air, its bridges hanging in ruin, lightning crawling across the clouds.
“We descend into the Sky City,” Loken continued. “The spearhead will be fast and hard.
Phoenix Gauntlet, Aegis Blade, Rylanor, and half the XIII will lead the first assault.
Commander Varro — your men will stand with me.”

Varro stepped forward, nodding.
“It will be an honour, Captain. The Ultramarines do not shy from the vanguard.”
“The main force will follow under Knight-Master Vorr and Codicier Vaul,” Loken said.
“Black Shield Vow, Cerulean Wrath, Oathforged, and the 19th Deltan Armored will form the second line.
The Knights of the Grey Flame will divide evenly between both.”

Vorr’s voice rumbled through the vox, calm and resolute.
“Then the light shall walk beside you, brother.
We will see this tower purified — stone by stone, soul by soul.”

The hololith dimmed. Orders rippled through the vox-nets.
Engines roared to life as the massive descent platforms began to move, their grav-lifts whining as clamps disengaged.

Lord-Marshal Serax turned once more to look across the plaza —
the wounded, the dead, the weary soldiers cleaning their weapons beside makeshift shrines.
Her voice was low, meant for none but herself, though Loken caught the words.

“We came to Terra to die for Him. Let it be here, if it must… but not standing still.”
Loken said nothing.

He simply nodded once — and turned to face the descent shaft.
Below them, lightning danced across the endless void of the Stratophex Level, the sky-city of ruin and wrath.
“Oatharii,” his voice rang across the vox, clear and commanding.

“Form ranks. We descend.”
The engines flared.
The light above dimmed.
And the warriors of the Nameless dropped once more — into the storm.

Chapter Text

------------------------------------
Lion’s Gate Spaceport
The Stratophex Level — “Sky City”
------------------------------------

The descent had become a slaughter.
Hours of fighting through the Transit Cities had stripped the united host of its sheen.
Armour once cerulean and white was now blackened, dust-caked, and streaked with ash.
The air stank of oil, promethium, and blood. The wounded filled carrier decks and grav-lifts that no longer rose.
The dead were buried in the rubble of the world-eating machine that was the Lion’s Gate.

Still they fought downward — ever downward — into the heart of the war engine.
The Stratophex Level was no city.
It was a continent suspended in the air, a sprawl of manufactoria and habitation towers linked by tram-bridges
and mag-trains that drifted above an abyss of smoke and light.

The ancients had called it the “Sky City,” though now it was little more than a graveyard in the clouds.
The loyalists descended into it like ghosts.
Their banners were tattered, their vox-nets fractured, and every level below was a killing field.

Then the guns found them.
Heavy bolters and macro-mortars lined the tram-bridges. Autocannon batteries screamed from the towers.
Even daemon engines were chained into the ferrocrete arteries, their flesh-metal throats vomiting fire.
Lascannon beams slashed the descent paths, vaporizing Stormbirds mid-drop.

The united host — Nameless, Ultramarines, and Solar Auxilia alike — plunged into that storm and somehow endured.
Their strength was no longer measured in banners but in will.
Two thousand warriors, drawn from across the Imperium’s fractured legions and worlds,
fought their way down the Sky City — a campaign that spanned miles of burning towers and collapsing transit lines.
Armour columns of the 19th Deltan Cohort clashed against daemon-engines in the upper stratas.

The 14th Selenic Cohort fought running aerial battles amid the tram-spires.
And the five Oatharii companies bled across the arteries — each formation acting in its nature and creed

The Black Shield Vow anchoring breaches and holding choke points
while the Phoenix Gauntlet cutting through hab-blocks and duelling champions of the foe.
Cerulean Wrath dismantling enemy redoubts with surgical fury.
As the Aegis Blade moving unseen, assassinating officers and silencing vox-relays.
Oathforged, under Loken himself, driving the center advance — the bannerless heart of the loyalist thrust.

But in war, even unity fractures.
As the fighting descended deeper into the Stratophex, the storm of fire and interference broke their formations.
Vox relays died. Grav-bridges collapsed. Entire companies vanished into the smog — some stranded, others simply lost.

By the time the sunless haze began to clear,
Loken’s host — the Oathforged, two Ultramarine companies under Cassian Varro,
and the remnants of Lord-Marshal Erynd Kordain’s 22nd Solar Cohort — found themselves alone.

Cut off.

They had fought their way into a manufactoria complex — Macro-Forge 17-Theta —
a labyrinth of burnt-out assembly lines and titan cradles, now turned fortress.
The rest of the army was silent on the vox. The Oatharii channels returned only static.
There was no word from Lord-Marshals Serax or Daskor. Vorr and his Knights were gone.
They were surrounded.

-------------------------------------
Macro-Forge 17-Theta,
Stratophex Level East Complex
-------------------------------------

The command council gathered beneath the skeletal bulk of an unfinished Warlord-class engine.
Shadows cut long over the scarred deck. The air vibrated with the thud of artillery outside.
Garviel Loken stood at the hololithic table, his gauntlets resting against the edge, his face unreadable beneath the flicker of tactical light.

Cassian Varro paced the far side, helm mag-locked to his belt, his new Cataphractii armour still half-scorched from descent.
Erynd Kordain loomed near the doorway, his coat tattered, the weight of command written in the lines of his face.
“We can’t stay boxed in,” Varro said, voice taut with exhaustion.
“The longer we sit, the tighter they draw the net. We move.
Sector by sector if we must — find the others, link up, retake the core array.”

Kordain shook his head.
“And abandon this strongpoint? You’d throw what’s left of us into the teeth of the guns.
Every artery between here and the core is crawling with traitors. If we move blind, we die blind.”

Varro turned sharply. “We’ll die here faster, Marshal.”
Kordain’s reply was iron. “If we fall here, we fall holding ground.
Every hour we hold keeps the traitors from consolidating.
This manufactoria still stands, still feeds the guns of Terra.
The Emperor’s Palace needs time. We buy it here.”

Varro’s expression hardened.
“Buy it? You sound as though we have coin left to spend. Our lives are the last currency.”

The words hung like blades.
Around them, the remaining captains of the Oathforged watched in silence —
bolter-scorched, blood-marked, yet unbowed.

Loken raised a hand. “Enough.”

Both men fell silent.
He looked from one to the other.
“You’re both right. We hold — but we hold to link up.
We will not abandon this position, but neither will we wait to die in it.
We send out teams — fast, silent, Astartes and Auxilia both — to find the others,
re-establish contact, and bring them here. We make this manufactoria a beacon.”

Kordain nodded slowly.
“A rallying point.”

Varro exhaled, tension easing from his shoulders.
“Agreed. I’ll take the first strike teams out myself.”

Loken met his gaze.
“You’ll take my Oathforged sergeants with you. Move fast.
No heroics. Bring them back.”

“Understood,” Varro said.
The old hololith hummed to life again, its display flickering across the ruined walls —
a map of the Stratophex divided by static.
Every blinking light was a friendly signal. There were far too few.

Loken’s voice lowered, steady and resolute.
“We find them. We pull this army back together. And then — we finish what we began.”

Outside, the forges burned brighter as the loyalists rearmed once more.
The vox-bands filled with the crackle of orders and the growl of engines. The storm was building again.
The Sky City still roared with the voices of gods at war.

The night came down upon the Mesophex like a dying god’s sigh —
black smoke coiling through the ruinous heights,
the iron stars of orbital bombardment casting distant flickers of red across the forge-city’s spine.
From the vault-top spires, thunder echoed, and from below, the shriek of macro-forges torn open like the ribs of giants.

The loyalists had known this strike would come.
Garviel Loken had ordered every gun, every barricade, every length of plasteel plating to be repurposed for defense.
The manufactoria of 17-Theta had become a fortress in miniature —
its furnace halls turned to choke-points, its crane gantries remade into firing galleries.

The Oathforged, veterans of a hundred shadowed wars, now fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the 22nd Solar Cohort,
their ranks illuminated in the orange glare of forgeburn.
Lord-Marshal Erynd Kordain himself oversaw the fortifications with grim precision,
directing the placement of autocannon emplacements and the fusing of defensive lines.
The thunder of hammers upon plate mingled with the murmured canticles of mortal faith.

Beside them, the XIII Legion — remnants of Captain Varro’s command — had taken up the forward line.
Blue and black armour gleamed dully in the red haze, their heraldry muted beneath soot and oath-marks.
The defenders had no illusions of survival, only of buying time.

The enemy came like a tide of ruin — twisted mortals in rust-red rebreathers, engines of war braying unholy hymns.
Macro-Forge 17-Theta shuddered beneath the impact of traitor artillery, the sky breaking into cinders and flame.

Yet amid the fury, a smaller shadow moved unseen.
Commander Cassian Varro had not remained.

Hours before the assault, under Loken’s direct counsel,
he had led a small team from the Oathforged into the labyrinthine depths of the Star City level,
slipping away under the cover of manufactoria vent-smoke.

His Terminator armour, even dulled and hooded, was a beacon of blue among the darkness —
a relic of Ultramar that should have shone like a torch.
But here, on the Mesophex, all light felt suspect.

With him went two Oathforged sergeants — veterans scarred by faith and blade — and four more brothers, silent as wraiths.
Their orders were simple: find a path to the loyalist lines below, call for reinforcement, or strike whatever corruption had seeded this level.

Behind them, the forge-complex roared with battle.
Varro turned once, watching the sky boil above the manufactoria’s towers.
Even from this distance, he could see the flickering silhouettes of Astartes and Auxilia fighting upon the parapets,
small figures amid the storm. He bowed his head briefly — a silent vow, not of mourning, but of promise.

“Hold fast, brothers,” he murmured through the vox. “The Emperor bears witness.”
Then he turned away, and the city swallowed them whole.

The Star City level should have been alive — a mid-tier habitation zone, once thrumming with billions. Instead, it lay hollow and silent.
The grand transit-ways stretched empty, their lumen-strips flickering with corpse-light.
Manufactorum banners hung shredded across windless voids.
Only the distant hum of machinery and the drip of fluid from broken conduits marked the passage of time.
“This place is dead,” one of the Oathforged muttered.

Varro moved ahead, bolter raised, his voice low.
“Not dead. Listening.”

They came upon an autocannon nest perched above a collapsed transit line —
manned by traitor sentries too complacent to expect angels in the dark.
Varro gave a short nod. The Oathforged moved like hunters from old myth.
Bolter-muzzles flashed once, twice, and the nest went silent.
The sentries died without a cry, their bodies tumbling into the dust.
Minimal sound. Minimal witness.

They advanced, deeper into the hollow city.
Moments later, a new sound reached them — human voices, the cadence of discipline.
A platoon of traitor Solar Auxilia patrolling a supply corridor, their banners marked with the sigil of the Warmaster.
The loyalists took cover in the shadows of a broken archway.
Varro’s gauntlet tightened around his sword hilt.
“We take them,” he hissed, instinct burning through the restraint of command.

But one of the Oathforged sergeants — his voice a low growl of experience —
placed a hand on the Ultramarine’s vambrace.
“Not our fight, commander. Not yet. We’re too few.”

For a moment, rage flared across Varro’s features, his blue eyes reflecting the glow of distant fires.
Then he breathed out slowly, mastering the ancient instincts that had carried him through the Great Crusade.
“You’re right, brother. The mission comes first.”

The sergeant inclined his head but hesitated before moving on.
“There’s something in this place,” he murmured, scanning the shadows.
“The air tastes wrong. It whispers for blood — just as it did above, in the upper levels. Feels like... a shrine.”

Varro looked at him sharply.
“A shrine?”
“Aye. The same pull. The same madness trying to dig its claws into our reason.
The men up there nearly tore each other apart before we found its heart.
There’s another one here. I can feel it.”

The Ultramarine nodded grimly, turning toward the dark horizon of the Star City spires.
“Then we have two choices — flee this level, or find the source and burn it clean.”

He unsheathed his blade, its edge flickering faintly with psychic light — a weapon born not of superstition, but of iron purpose.
“We are not ghosts,” he said softly. “We are the living proof that the Emperor still watches. Find this shrine. End it.”
And the shadows closed in as they moved.

To Varro’s luck—or perhaps fate—it did not take long.
The trail of madness led them through the broken arteries of the Star City’s western quarter,
beneath shattered tram-lines and collapsed grav-bridges.
The further they went, the more the air thickened with a copper tang —
the scent of blood, oil, and something older, primal. It clung to the soul as much as to the armour.
And then they saw it.

A plaza opened before them like a wound, its marble soaked in black-red ichor.
At its heart loomed a structure of bone and steel fused into impossible forms — a blood shrine, pulsing faintly with heartbeat light.
Its glow ran through the cracks of the ferrocrete, veins of warp made manifest.
Varro’s vox crackled with faint chanting. Not traitor hymnals — Imperial canticles.

The Knights of the Grey Flame were already there.
They descended through the fire and smoke like figures from some holy vision.
Their grey armour gleamed under the warplight, their silver pauldrons reflecting ghostly white arcs of their flaming blades.
Each sword burned with sacred radiance, cutting daemons to vapor with every stroke.
Their helm lenses blazed bluish-white, not from technology but from the same light that crowned their weapons —
a fire of faith and fury intertwined.

Each Knight bore a Scriptum Purgatus chained to his cuirass, the little black books catching glints of light as they moved.
As they fought, some shouted verses from their pages, their voices weaving together into a single, resonant litany that made the warp itself shudder.

At their center strode Mathar Vorr, his warplate marked by centuries of battle before when he was still a warrior of the XIVth legion,
scars that even the newly applied grey could not cover.
Even now it’s surface streaked with ash and flame scoring, marking new scars of glory to his prowess.
His sword blazed like a comet, cutting through traitor ranks as though slicing through the fabric of unreality itself.

Above, the Black Shield Vow fought from the gantries, their obsidian armour and white-trimmed pauldrons flashing muzzle fire into the darkness.
Their emblem — a crossed shield and blade — gleamed faintly as each shot rang like the toll of judgement.
Varro and his detachment froze at the sight — reverence mingled with grim purpose.
“By the Throne…” one of the Oathforged whispered.

Varro tried the vox, but the interference was near total — the warp’s scream eating every frequency.
“We’ll have to go in,” he said.

They crossed the broken concourse, slipping through the smoke and wreckage.
The first to notice them was Vorr himself, his helm lenses flaring with recognition as Varro’s team emerged from the haze.

“Cassian Varro!” Vorr’s voice thundered over the din.
“The Emperor must favour you — you always find the eye of the storm!”

Varro strode forward, helm lifting to reveal his scarred face, streaked with ash.
“I could say the same, Knight-Master. We came seeking the source of this corruption. I see you’ve already found it.”

Vorr’s blade tore through a traitor’s chest as he gestured toward the shrine.
“Found it, aye. My Inquisitional detachment felt the warp bleeding through reality itself. This place—” he snarled,
parrying a daemonic claw and severing the limb in a burst of white fire—
“feeds the madness across the level. Another blood shrine. Like the one above, but older. Deeper.”

Varro nodded grimly.
“That explains the rage. The men could feel it gnawing at them.”

Vorr’s gaze flicked westward.
“We’ve had brief contact with Phoenix Gauntlet, but the signal died soon after.
They may be pinned or worse. Go. Find them. Bring them to us. We’ll finish this here.”

Varro nodded and pointed towards where the manufactoria is located.
“Loken and the others are held up west of here at Macro-Forge 17-Theta,
link up with them after you rid this place of the filth,”

Then Varro clasped his forearm, the gesture firm and wordless.
“Then may the Grey Flame burn bright, brother.”

Vorr’s helm sealed once more, lenses igniting with white fire.
“And may your courage be your shield.”

As Varro’s squad slipped back into the shadows,
Vorr turned to his Knights, his voice echoing like the toll of cathedral bells.
“Knights of the Grey Flame! By the Emperor’s Word — burn the unclean! Let faith be the fire that cleanses this city!”

The answering roar was not of men but of conviction itself.
Their blades erupted in unison — a thousand tongues of white flame cutting through the dark.
And the shrine screamed.

Chapter Text

-----------------------------------------------
Lion's Gate Starport - Stratophex Level "Sky City"
West Manufactoria sector - Macro-Forge 17-Theta
-----------------------------------------------

Night fell heavy over Macro-Forge 17-Theta, its titanic stacks belching soot and steam that mingled with smoke and the stink of blood.
The traitor hosts came on again and again, breaking against the makeshift bastions the loyalists had raised within the manufactoria’s iron canyons.

Garviel Loken stood upon a raised gantry above the defensive lines, watching the storm break upon them.
His Oathforged held firm beside the veterans of the 22nd Solar Cohort,
while a company of Ultramarines fought shoulder to shoulder with them—no longer sons of a single Legion,
but warriors bound by necessity and defiance.

Every wall, every conveyor-line, and every furnace trench had been turned into a bulwark.
Melted plasteel and chain-link wire formed ramparts where once machines had birthed weapons for the Imperium.
It was crude, but it held—barely.

Loken watched as a detachment of Solar Auxilia manned an elevated balcony, their lasrifles forming crimson curtains of fire.
Their discipline did not break. When one fell, another stepped forward.
He turned to the commander beside him, Lord-Marshal Erynd Kordain, whose polished cuirass was scorched and blackened by battle.

“You and your men would have made fine Astartes, Marshal.” Loken remarked
Kordain (grinning beneath the grime): “And you, my lord, would have made a fine mortal commander.”
The brief exchange drew a laugh—dry and short—but it carried among the Auxilia ranks.
A small flame against the dark.

Moments later, a lieutenant of the Ultramarines—the one Varro had left in command—approached,
his face grim beneath the blue of his helm.
“Outer defense is collapsing, my lord.
We’ve fallen back to secondary and tertiary sectors.
The enemy has breached the forge perimeter.”

Loken gave a slow nod.
“Then we buy more time. Hold the machine halls. Fall back by squads, not by fear.”

He turned away, his eyes sweeping across the burning forge.
For a heartbeat, the clang of bolters and the thunder of artillery faded from his mind. He was back on Isstvan III,
surrounded by ruins and ash, his once-brothers howling for his death.
He remembered Tarik Torgaddon’s voice—half a laugh, half a curse—as they faced certain death. He smiled faintly at the memory.

Lord-Marshal Kordain noticed and mistook the expression for serene confidence.
“Astartes courage,” he muttered with awe. “Even the end cannot move him.”

Loken did not correct him.
How could he explain that it was not courage, but memory—that he had already died once, and what remained was only resolve?

The traitor assault intensified.
The manufactoria shuddered as macro-hammers and plasma fire tore through walls.
Loyalists fought room to room, down slag corridors and across gantries thick with smoke and blood.
The ground shook with every detonation. Yet the Oathforged did not yield. They could not.

Hours passed. The tertiary line was all that remained.
Loken walked out into the open battlement, the night air cool against his scarred face.
He rested his gauntleted hand upon his sword—Mournfang—its blackened teeth humming faintly with caged power.

The blade had been a gift from Abaddon,
forged from the studies of Codicier Oran Drell and others upon the First Captain’s ancient relic, Veltrax.
It was not as mighty as the original, but its edge sang with purpose—a weapon of brothers who had once fought side by side.

“If this is where I fall,” Loken murmured, “then let it be a wall they break upon.”
Then—through the din—a distant sound rose. At first it was mistaken for thunder.
Then came the screaming whirr of engines, rising from beyond the traitor lines.
Loken squinted into the gloom as dawn’s first pallor broke the horizon.

Explosions bloomed across the enemy’s rear. White streaks lanced through the smog.
The earth split with roaring impacts and trails of burning contrails.
Amid the chaos, he heard it—laughter, fierce and joyous, cutting through the screams of the dying.
He knew that sound.

“Jetbikes…” he whispered, lips curling into a rare grin. “By the Throne, they made it.”
Through the shroud of smoke and flame, the newcomers struck like a storm of light—white-armoured shapes,
their exhausts burning with spectral fire, cutting through the traitor ranks like angels descending.

For the first time in hours, hope returned to the forge.
Loken raised Mournfang, the blade catching the dawn.
“Brothers!” he bellowed, his voice carrying across the iron halls.
“The Emperor sends us allies—now strike, and make this dawn ours!”

And with that, Macro-Forge 17-Theta roared to life once more—not with the sound of forges,
but the rebirth of faith and vengeance made steel.
The manufactoria roared beneath a sky of burning steel.

From every tower and broken gantry,
the traitors came—screaming, clawing, slamming against the walls the loyalists had forged from scrap and prayer.
The second defense line had fallen; now the last bastion held in the shadow of the forge’s core.

Loken stood upon the ramparts, his armour blackened by soot and blood.
Around him, the Oathforged and the veterans of the 22nd Solar Cohort fought as one—
mortal and Astartes brothers side by side. Bolter fire spat like thunder.
The air was thick with the reek of promethium and hot brass.

The ground shook again.
Explosions rippled through the lower manufactoria levels—
closer now, rhythmic, almost patterned. Not bombardment. Movement.

Then came a sound that split the dawn: a rising, thunderous hum—engines, screaming at impossible speed.
For a moment, no one moved.
Then streaks of white fire tore through the smoke beyond the outer wall.
Figures darted between the ruins, contrails burning like comets.

The first wave hit the traitor line like a blade through cloth.
The explosions that followed painted the horizon white.
“Astartes in white armour,” Kordain breathed, pointing out into the haze. “Loyalists, surely—”

Loken cut him off, eyes fixed on the whirling chaos below. “I see them.”
He didn’t need to say more. Every warrior who looked upon that storm knew what they were seeing.
The speed, the laughter that carried over the thunder of engines—it was a legend made manifest.
Hope took root again.

Loken raised Mournfang high, its edge catching the nascent sunlight.
“Signal all fronts! Tertiary line—advance! Push into the ruins! Our brothers are upon us!”

The order went out like fire across oil.
The Oathforged surged forward, their black and white armour flashing as they charged through the breach.
The Ultramarines followed, their disciplined volleys cutting lanes through the traitor ranks.
Behind them, the Solar Auxilia poured lasfire in precise patterns, hammering the flanks as they advanced.

The manufactoria became a storm of blue, black, and red light.
The traitors broke, some screaming, others berserk in the throes of madness.
Their howls carried a note Loken recognised too well—
the same mindless rage that had consumed men on the upper levels, where the blood shrines had wept their corruption.
But then—just as his instincts flared—the air itself seemed to shudder.
The oppressive pressure that had sat upon every heart, every thought, lifted.
The psychic weight vanished, like a fog burned away by sun.
The enemy’s frenzy faltered.

“Now!” Loken roared. “Drive them back!”
He leapt from the parapet, crashing down into the melee below.
Mournfang sang, white fire coursing along its edge as he cut a path through corrupted plate.
Around him, the loyalists surged like a rising tide.

And then—they were there.
Out of the dawn they came: warriors on roaring jetbikes,
white and crimson and gold flashing beneath layers of ash and blood.
Their blades caught the light in scything arcs as they struck, and the laughter that accompanied their charge was wild, unbroken, free.

Their rumbles became a hurricane of engines.
From the east, cutting through the pall like blades of light, the Stormriders came.
White armour flared through the haze—burnished by firelight, streaked with black ash and blood.

Their jetbikes screamed across the manufactoria at breakneck speed, contrails burning like comets.
They flew low—mere metres above the deck—between shattered foundry towers and slag bridges, riding the shockwaves of their own wake.
The traitors turned too late.

“Jaghatai guide us!” one rider roared through the vox, his laughter cutting like thunder.
His bike tilted hard into a banking dive, engines howling, and the twin-linked bolters beneath the prow spat streams of explosive fire.
The first volley tore through a line of Iron Warrior Havocs, their torsos shredded before they hit the ground.
Another rider vaulted off a half-collapsed magrail, slicing the head from a screaming Word Bearer with a power glaive wreathed in lightning.

They did not fight as other Astartes did.
The Scars did not advance in lines or ranks—they danced.
Every turn and burn of the throttle was a strike, every drift a kill.
They flowed through the manufactoria’s ruins like the wind made flesh.

Through the thunder of their approach came new voices—low, crackling through the vox.
“Target sectors—zero-seven to one-three. Sweep and burn.”
“Ride with the storm, brothers. Do not let the earth bind you.”

The ground convulsed as a melta charge detonated, sending a pillar of molten metal skyward.
One rider launched through it, his bike momentarily engulfed in fire, before bursting free—a blazing comet.
His lance, etched with storm sigils, impaled a traitor sergeant mid-charge

One of the riders slowed, helm turning toward Loken as they met amid the chaos.
“You fight well, brother,” the rider called, voice modulated but fierce with pride.
“Nameless, yet loyal—this day honours you.”
Loken inclined his head. “And you, rider. Your coming was well-timed.”

Another warrior dismounted nearby, offering a quick salute as bolter fire screamed overhead.
“We’ve heard of you—of the black-armoured sons who bear no banner. Terra knows of your defiance.”
The words struck Loken harder than any blade.
For the first time in years, he felt seen—not as an exile, not as a ghost of Isstvan, but as a brother of the Imperium once more.
“I am Garviel Loken,” he said simply.

The rider’s helm tilted in surprise—recognition sparking even through the vox distortion—
but there was no time for words. The enemy line was breaking.

Before Loken could speak further, new signals crackled through the din—Astartes vox frequencies cutting through the jamming static.
Out from the smog to the east came a fresh tide of obsidian armour trimmed in matte black.

Aegis Blade, led by Captain Tiberius Volan, swept in with precision, bolters roaring.
The silent company of the Oatharii struck like living shadows, collapsing the enemy’s flank.
Captain Tiberius Volan led from the fore, his armour dark as midnight, his eyes fixed on the advancing enemy.
“Shadow-line, now!” he barked. His warriors answered in silence, their vox-signatures muted.
Bolters roared in perfect, measured bursts—every round a kill.

They moved like phantoms, each strike timed with the Scars’ aerial sweep.
When the jetbikes strafed low, the Aegis Blade advanced beneath the storm, cutting down any foe left standing.
The manufactoria’s vast killing ground became a web of precision and chaos—skyborne fury above, silent murder below.
A White Scar and a Nameless crossed paths amid the carnage—one mounted, one afoot.
The rider spun his bike in a sharp drift, the grav-fins shrieking as he swung low to decapitate a traitor terminator.
Volan followed through with a burst of bolter fire, shattering the dying warrior’s helm. For a heartbeat, they locked gazes.
“Swiftly done,” the Scar said, his grin audible even through the vox distortion.

Volan gave a curt nod. “As the storm teaches.”
Above them, the riders wheeled in tight formation.
The White Scars formed a crescent arc, their engines synchronised to the heartbeat of the storm.
“Break them!” came the call.
Lightning split the smoke.

They struck again, faster, harder—
jetbikes streaking down from the upper gantries, firing into the rear of the traitor formation.
The Aegis Blade surged to meet them, sealing the trap.

Caught between the black phantoms and the stormriders, the traitor lines broke utterly.
Word Bearers tried to rally, chanting dark litanies—but their prayers were drowned out by the shriek of engines and the roar of bolters.
One by one, they fell, burned, shattered, or crushed beneath the fury of the loyalists’ charge.

Within minutes, the battlefield transformed.
The air, once thick with the stink of warp-taint and oil, now carried only smoke and the echo of roaring engines fading into the dawn.
Volan raised his blade, the runes along its edge flickering blue in the dying light. “The field is ours,” he voxed, his tone low, resolute.
From above, a single White Scar circled low, trailing smoke. His laughter echoed across the manufactoria.
“Then let us find the next,” he said. “The storm never rests.”

The battle turned in an instant.

By the time the smoke began to clear, the traitors were fleeing, broken and burning.
The manufactoria was theirs again.

Loken stood amid the wreckage, the dawn painting his armour in gold and grey ash.
Around him, mortal and Astartes alike raised their weapons in exhausted triumph.
The riders of the white storm circled above once more, their laughter fading into the wind.

The storm of war had at last quieted.
The air still shimmered with ozone and blood-smoke;
the manufactoria’s vaulting halls—once the beating heart of an orbital industry—now stood silent save for the echoes of distant flames.
Servitors shuffled through the ruin, extinguishing fires, dragging wreckage clear.
The banners of the Solar Auxilia, blackened and torn, hung alongside the broken helms of Ultramarines and Nameless alike.

Within the half-collapsed command atrium of Macro-Forge 17-Theta, a council formed.
A single lumen haloed a scorched strategium table where Garviel Loken, armour dulled by ash,
stood beside Captain Tiberius Volan of the Aegis Blade and Lord-Marshal Erynd Kordain of the 22nd Solar Cohort.
Across from them stood three warriors in white—the sons of Chogoris.

Their arrival had been the fulcrum of victory; now they were the messengers of grim truth.
The White Scars introduced themselves in clipped Low Gothic, their accents carrying the rolling cadence of the steppe.
Brother-Sergeant Temur Khanjin, of the 5th Brotherhood, veteran outrider and hunt-captain.
Stormseer Zhayal Orqon, of the 2nd Brotherhood, his armor inscribed with lightning glyphs and storm prayers.
Brother-Scout Arghun Tal, of the 7th Brotherhood, youngest of the three, his power sabre still dripping oil and blood.

Their white armor was scarred and dust-streaked,
crimson glyphs dulled, the sigil of the Khan painted across each pauldron like a slash of defiance.

Temur inclined his head toward Loken.
“You fight as sons of the Emperor still, it seems,” he said, voice low and wind-roughened.
“And by your banners, I know your kindred—the sons of Guilliman and those who call themselves Nameless.
You are far from your father’s light.”

Loken’s expression hardened, then softened with weariness.
“We have been far too long in the dark, brother. But we are here now. Tell us—how fares Terra?”
The three Scars exchanged looks, and it was Stormseer Zhayal who answered.

“The Khan rides still,” he said, his tone heavy.
“The Lion’s Gate Spaceport bleeds, and our brothers bleed with it.
The skies burn with daemon-light.
The sons of Dorn hold the walls that remain,
while the Angel—Sanguinius—fights where the darkness presses deepest.
The traitors are within the outer walls.
The Palace itself stands behind its last bastions, and each gate falls closer to ruin.”

For a long moment, silence claimed the chamber.
The words weighed like iron. Even the hum of the damaged plasma conduits seemed to fade.

Erynd Kordain was the first to speak.
“The Palace…” he murmured, almost to himself. “Then there is still time.”

“There is,” Loken said, straightening.
The light caught the edge of his broken armor, gleaming like a promise.
“And that is all we need.” He looked to the Stormseer.
“You have my gratitude, brother. You’ve brought more than tidings—you’ve brought purpose.”

Temur Khanjin’s mouth quirked in the ghost of a smile.
“Then purpose we shall share.
The Khan would have us ride where the enemy’s heart beats strongest.
If Terra still calls, we will answer beside you.”

Captain Volan stepped forward, helm mag-locked to his hip, his face gaunt but resolute.
“Then hear our plan. We are to re-form the scattered Oatharii.
Cerulean Wrath and Black Shield Vow have re-established vox contact.
The Knights of the Grey Flame and the Solar cohorts of Serax and Daskor stand ready.
But we have not heard from Commander Varro nor the Phoenix Gauntlet—
they vanished after the last transmission in the west sector.
Nor from Rylanor, the venerable one.”

Loken’s jaw clenched.
“Then we find them on the way.
Every brother reclaimed is another step closer to Terra.”

He turned toward Kordain.
“Marshal, see that the regiments rearm and re-fuel.
We depart as soon as the descent arrays are operational.
Send word to every surviving company, every cohort, every ship still answering the call.”

Kordain saluted sharply, his eyes alight with renewed conviction.
“By your word, Captain. The 22nd and 19th Cohorts will move at once.
The Emperor yet watches.”

“And the Emperor yet waits,” Loken replied.
He looked one last time at the White Scars, their eyes bright with the zeal of the storm, and extended a hand—
grey ceramite meeting white. “Ride with us, brothers. Let us make our way to Terra together.”

Temur clasped his wrist firmly.
“Then let us ride, Garviel Loken of the Nameless. The storm has waited too long.”
Beyond the shattered manufactoria walls, the first engines of the drop-ships began to wail—
an iron storm preparing to descend upon the dying world below.

Chapter Text

---------------------------------------------
Lion's Gate Starport - Stratophex Level "Sky City"
West Manufactoria sector - Macro-Forge 17-Theta
---------------------------------------------

The corridors of Macro-Forge 17-Theta thundered once more—
not with the sound of battle, but with the steady rhythm of armour and faith.

Re-armed and re-supplied, the gathered hosts of the Nameless, Ultramarines, and Solar Auxilia
moved in disciplined formations through the shattered arteries of the manufactoria city.
Servitors hauled weapon crates and ammunition cells.

Techmarines reignited once-dormant reactor conduits to power the descent arrays that would soon carry them down to Holy Terra itself.
The air reeked of promethium and prayer oil, of iron and ozone—the scent of war renewed.

At the head of the column strode Garviel Loken, his greyed armour repaired in haste,
the white crescent of the Nameless freshly anointed across his pauldron.
Beside him walked Captain Tiberius Volan, Lord-Marshal Erynd Kordain, and their newfound allies—
the White Scars whose arrival had altered the course of the battle.

Through the cracked arches of the transit halls, light flickered—shimmering in the haze of cooling steel.
From that glare emerged more warriors.

Mathar Vorr and the Knights of the Grey Flame came forth in formation,
their grey armor burnished with soot and blood, silver pauldrons gleaming with the sigil of a blade engulfed in white fire.
The holy luminance of their weapons still shimmered faintly even sheathed.
Each Knight bore a small, gold-engraved leather tome chained to their waist or breastplate—
a sacred script, its pages fluttering in the heavy air as if alive with whispered benediction.

And beside them advanced the Black Shield Vow, their black-and-white armour dulled by battle,
the cross-shaped emblem of shield and sword upon their breastplates marred by the ash of slain heretics.
At their head strode Captain Rhemar, the left side of his helm scarred and one lens dark—an eye lost in their last strike upon the Blood Shrine.

Loken stopped to greet them, clasping forearms with Vorr.
“I take it that you were the hammer to our shield, brother.
I saw the pressure break—the air itself seemed to breathe again.”

Vorr nodded, his voice deep and worn.
“Aye. When we purged the shrine, the blood veil shattered.
Whatever power drove the traitors’ frenzy was tethered to that place.
Its heart burned white in the Emperor’s name before we cast it down.”

His gaze hardened slightly, and he continued. “Before we withdrew, we found Varro.
He led his strike force westward, toward the last trace of Saul Tarvitz and the Phoenix Gauntlet.
I sent him that way, believing their strength united might turn the tide there.
But we have heard nothing since.”

The name of Tarvitz hung heavy in the air, a relic of loyalty and tragedy.
Loken’s expression dimmed but he nodded.
“Then we must hold faith they yet fight.
If there’s breath left in either of them, they’ll make their way to us.”

As they moved on, the quiet hum of a side conversation drew Loken’s attention.
Chaplain-Codicier Menerak Vaul, his robes scorched and his crozius at rest, walked beside Stormseer Zhayal Orqon of the White Scars.
Their voices were low, almost reverent.

Zhayal spoke as if confiding a secret carried too long.
“The winds of Chogoris have changed, brother.
The Khan himself fought beneath the Lion’s Gate
when the Sigillite and Rogal Dorn decreed the Edict of Nikaea no longer holds.
They have seen the truth—the warp cannot be fought with silence.”

Vaul’s eyes glowed faintly beneath his hood.
“Then the burden is lifted,” he murmured.
“We have wielded the soul’s flame in shadows for too long.
Now we may fight as we were made to fight.”

“The Emperor wills it,” Zhayal said softly,
and they clasped forearms in silent affirmation—priest and stormseer,
two paths of faith converging at last.

The march carried on.
Hours later, the vastness of the Core Descent Array Plaza opened before them—
an immense cratered platform surrounded by spires of rusted steel and ceramite.
The circular platform glowed faintly blue with the power of ancient gravitic systems reawakening,
its diameter large enough to berth entire landing battalions.

There, already assembled in ordered ranks, awaited the banners of the Cerulean Wrath and two great Auxilia hosts,
Lord-Marshal Verin Daskor of the 14th Selenic Cohort, Lord-Marshal Illyra Serax of the 19th Deltan Auxilia.

Their forces had arrived before them and secured the plaza,
aided by detachments of the White Scars who had swept ahead to clear the route.

The sight was one of unity unseen since the Great Crusade—
a patchwork of legions and cohorts, bound by defiance rather than decree.

Brother-Sergeant Temur Khanjin looked out across the gathered hosts and exhaled a low whistle through his teeth.
“By the spirits of the storm… such a host would shake the very gates of the Palace.
The Lord of the Seventh will not turn you away. This is a force worthy of Terra.”
Loken gave a faint, weary smile at that. “Let us hope Dorn sees it so.”

But behind that smile, his thoughts were shadowed.
Varro and Saul Tarvitz—two names echoing in the dark, two threads yet unpulled.
The Emperor’s light might soon shine upon Terra again, but for Loken,
the war would not feel whole until all his brothers stood beside him once more.

He turned his gaze toward the descent platforms as their engines began to thunder to life.
“Start the preparations” Loken ordered.
“Signal all commands: muster for descent. The Emperor’s realm still stands—and we will not let it fall.”

------------------------------------------
Lion's Gate Spaceport - Core descent array
Transit to Terra surface
------------------------------------------

Despite his mounting concern and the aching wait for the missing, Garviel Loken knew he could delay no longer.
Varro, Tarvitz, Rylanor — brothers whose fates now hung in the silence of the void.
With a heavy heart, Loken opened the final vox channel.

“To any who yet hear me — this is Garviel Loken, aboard the descent arrays of 17-Theta.
We make for Terra. Follow our signal to the surface. The war is not yet lost.”
Static answered him. Then nothing.

He exhaled slowly, turning to those gathered —
Astartes, Auxilia, psykers, and mortal commanders who had crossed a galaxy in defiance of death.
“We descend,” he said simply.

And with that, the order was given.
The vast grav-lifts of Macro-Forge 17-Theta screamed to life, shaking the world around them.
Hundreds of descent cradles began to lower, each one bearing squads of the Nameless, Ultramarines, Solar Auxilia, and the newly joined White Scars.
The cavernous array rumbled like a living beast as titanic gears and maglev coils engaged,
guiding the platforms downward through kilometers of armored strata —
from the ruined manufactoria to the wounded surface of Holy Terra itself.

The descent was slow and monumental,
like falling through time as the grav-platforms struck the ground with a jarring impact,
and the gates of the under-sky opened to a nightmare.

The Nameless, the Ultramarines and their White Scar allies set foot upon the war-torn plains at the base of the Lion’s Gate Spaceport.
Before them, the colossal Sky Bridge rose like a broken fang into the storm clouds,
connecting the surface bastions to the daemon-corrupted citadel above.
The very air reeked of ozone, ash, and rot; every breath was a struggle against the Death Guard’s toxins.

It was a cauldron of ruin. Towers once used for cargo-lifts lay torn open like carcasses, their steel guts spilling smoke and fire.
The air itself was poison — a green-brown haze of chem-burn and corpse gas thick enough to eat the paint from armor.
Even through their helms, the Nameless could taste rust and blood.
And through that haze roared the White Scars.

They fought not as men but as thunder made flesh. Jetbikes screamed between shattered hab-blocks, leaving trails of plasma and promethium fire.
Bolter shells flayed apart the fog, tearing through the ranks of the Death Guard, whose advance was as implacable as it was monstrous.
Plague-burst mortars rained down, each shell bursting into clouds of acidic slurry that melted both metal and flesh.

A rider in bone-white armor vaulted from his dying bike and landed in the midst of a knot of traitors,
cutting three down before his feet touched the ground.
Another, his machine trailing flame, rammed directly into a blight tank,
detonating it in a roar that sent limbs and armor plates spinning into the sky.

Loken and his warriors watched in grim awe.
The White Scars’ speed and fury were almost divine — every movement a rebuke to the sluggish, rust-eaten Death Guard.
Lord-Marshal Erynd Kordain pointed through the miasma.
“There! They’re breaking the line near that transit spire—”

Before he could finish, a warp tainted daemonic Drone surged overhead, spraying corrosion and maggot-flesh in a wide arc.
Three Auxilia squads dissolved in seconds. The stench was indescribable.

“Forward!” Loken roared, voice cutting through the vox static.
“For the Emperor—cleanse this filth!”

The Nameless and their Ultramarine brothers stormed into the melee.
Mournfang blazed white as it bit into corrupted ceramite; every swing of the blade left a smear of burning light in the air.
The ground underfoot was slick with ichor and the oil of broken tanks.

Garviel Loken led from the front, his armor scarred and his blade Mournfang humming with power.
Around him advanced the three Oatharii companies — Oathforged, Iron Revenant, and Vengeant Blades —
the unity of the Nameless and Ultramarines forged in the crucible of Isstvan, Calth, and a dozen lost worlds.

From the flank, the Knights of the Grey Flame advanced in tight ranks, shields locked, their blades wreathed in white fire.
They struck into the Death Guard like a wall of faith itself, and wherever their weapons touched, the rot shriveled and died.

A Knight was seized by a hulking Death Guard Terminator and crushed —
but even as his spine snapped, the Knight drove his burning sword through his killer’s throat, both collapsing in fire.
A plasma detonation hurled Loken sideways. He rose, armor screaming, just as a Deathshroud Champion loomed over him.
The traitor’s scythe swung — and met Mournfang mid-arc.
For an instant, white light met sickly green, and the air tore between them.
Loken drove forward, pressing with both hands, and the power sword sheared through the haft and into the Champion’s chest.
The traitor fell, his armor splitting like rotted bark.

A wall of fire rolled across the horizon as Imperial tanks advanced — a tide of steel and courage.
They were of no regiment Loken knew, though their banners bore the sigil of Terra herself.
Vox-chatter from the White Scars confirmed it: the First Terran Armoured,
a hastily assembled host of tox-sealed crews drawn from the last loyal regiments on the cradle of mankind.
They had been the Khan’s spearpoint in the assault to reclaim the Lion’s Gate, and now they burned for it —
thousands of tanks reduced to wreckage, their crews fighting even as death took them.

Loken watched as a Terran Baneblade detonated under a gout of plague-fire, its turret flung skyward like a child’s toy.
“They die on their feet,” he murmured.
Stormseer Zhayal Orqon of the White Scars inclined his head.
“It is how the Khan taught us all to die.”

All around him, the battlefield became madness.
And still, the White Scars fought on. Through smoke and toxin, they cut paths of white fire.
They did not slow, did not retreat, did not yield an inch of sacred soil.
Before Loken could answer, the world shuddered.

The air became a vacuum — a sudden silence before the storm — then split apart in a blast of aetheric fury.
Light flared across the darkened sky, white and gold laced with red, as if a star had been born and died in the same breath.
The shockwave rippled through every warrior, cracking lenses and shaking ceramite.

through his mind — anguish, defiance, and the pain of a god made flesh.
The White Scars fell to one knee, their hands to their helms as the psychic echo tore through them.
Sergeant Temur Khanjin’s eyes went wide; blood streamed down his face from burst vessels, yet his voice was clear.

“He is hurt,” he whispered hoarsely. “The Khan— he bleeds.”
Zhayal Orqon’s staff flared with blue-white energy as he steadied himself.
“No... not only hurt.” His tone turned to grief, then fury. “He fell.”

For a heartbeat, all movement ceased. Then came the roar.
Every White Scar in sight tore off his helm and, with ritual precision,
dragged the edge of a blade across his cheek — reopening old scars, offering blood to the storm.
The cry that followed was one of primal vengeance, a word that carried across the battlefield and into the souls of all who heard it.

“DAMARG!”

The response was instant. The ground itself seemed to quake beneath their charge.
The White Scars surged forward — a tide of ivory, gold, and blood — engines screaming, blades drawn, firing and cutting in the same breath.

Beside them, the Nameless and Ultramarines followed suit.
Captain Mathar Vorr and his Knights of the Grey Flame broke into a run, their grey and silver armor flaring with white fire.
Vorr’s blade, The Iron Revenant, ignited like a fallen star as he cleaved a Death Guard Astartes in half,
the sacred flame devouring the corrupted flesh before it even struck the ground.

Brother Seraphis Kaellen led his shield line beside him, striking with the force of faith itself.
The psychic chorus of the Oatharii Librarians rose in answer,
their combined will burning away daemons in radiant bursts of blue-white fire.

Loken steadied himself, watching the wrath of the sons of Chogoris unleashed.
He felt it too — that same righteous fury, that same call to vengeance.
He raised Mournfang, the blade’s edge alive with argent flame.

“For the Truth!” he bellowed.
“For the Emperor!”

The Oathforged roared as one, their cry merging with the thunder of the White Scars’ charge.
Together they fell upon the Death Guard and the traitor hordes, carving through rot and iron and daemonflesh alike.

Above, the sky burned brighter still — a final flare of golden light that marked the banishment of the Death Lord.
They did not know yet what had happened on that daemon-altered stage, only that something vast and terrible had ended.
But they fought with the certainty of it — that their Primarch’s sacrifice had not been in vain.

-------------------------------
The Base of the Lion’s Gate
Edge of the Sky Bridge
-------------------------------

The shockwave struck like the hand of a god.
It rippled across the ruins, across the choking haze of toxins and fire, and every warrior of the Vth Legion felt it.
The psychic concussion carried anguish, pride, and the agony of something divine brought low.
For the White Scars, it was the voice of their father—silenced, torn away—and something inside them broke.
Their howls rose as one.

Helmets were torn from heads, white topknots slicked with gore and ash.
The Scars carved old ritual marks back into their flesh, reopening the scars of oaths made long ago on Chogoris.
“Damarg!” they cried—Vengeance!—and their war cry became a single, world-shaking roar.

The Death Guard awaited them in layered lines of broken ferrocrete and wrecked armor,
their bolters coughing phlegm and toxin-soaked shells.

The ground between the two forces had become a morass of melted steel, pooled acids, and the half-liquid remains of the fallen.
But the Scars no longer cared for ground, for cover, or for the calculus of survival.
They ran as if they would burn the very air with their fury.

Lightning-fast bikes roared through the ruins, their engines screaming like tortured beasts.
They collided with Plague Marines in sprays of ichor and shrapnel.
Blades of white-hot lightning slashed through rusted plate; the air stank of burning rot and sanctified blood.

Above the din came a deeper thunder—the arrival of the Nameless air reinforcements that took the aerial descent route separate to the main force.
Gunships of black and silver descended through sheets of smoke, their ramps crashing down pouring out Nameless and Ultramarines straight into the carnage.

Loken had already led the first wave with the White Scars, his armour streaked grey with the soot of a hundred wars.
The Nameless advanced in deliberate, unwavering lines:
shields raised, bolters barking with grim rhythm, the sigil of the crescent and sword glinting through the smoke.

They saw the White Scars and felt the wrongness immediately.
The Vth Legion fought like possessed things, striking without order or voice, consumed by grief.
Yet still the Nameless joined them, for the foe was the same.

Death Guard Terminators lumbered through the haze, hurling chem grenades that burst into clouds of corrosion and despair.
Entire squads of Solar Auxilia dissolved where they stood, their armour sloughing from their flesh.
The three regiments attached to the Nameless fought on regardless,
mounting their heavy lascannons atop the carcasses of their tanks, firing into the looming daemon shapes that stalked the smoke.

The First Terran Armoured rolled to meet them, what remained of a once-mighty host.
Their Baneblades and Stormhammers fired point-blank into the traitor lines, shattering squads of Plague Marines into charred ruin,
but the Death Guard advanced still, wading through flame and shrapnel.

Loken’s voice cut through the vox, a rare thing amid the static:
“For the Emperor—advance!”

And they did.
The Knights of the Grey Flame fought among them, their grey ceramite streaked with ash and blood.
Each bore a chained book of scripture at his waist, its gold lettering spattered with grime.
Their swords burned with pure white fire—faith made manifest—and wherever they struck, daemonflesh ignited like dry paper.
Their eyes glowed the same holy blue as their blades, twin suns in the fog of war.

One Knight fell to a blight grenade, his armour dissolving in a hiss of smoke; another stepped forward to take his place, wordless, unbowed.
They formed a wall of faith and ceramite around the Auxilia lines,
their flaming swords cutting down plague-ridden monstrosities that clawed their way from ruptured hulls.

The White Scars, meanwhile, had become a storm unto themselves.
They cleaved through the Death Guard’s heart, their war cries devolving into snarls.
Their once-pristine armour was blackened with soot and filth, their white sigils smeared red.
They tore the traitors apart with chainblades and sabres, heedless of wounds.

It was no longer a battle—it was a massacre on both sides.
Bolter rounds detonated inside bodies already shredded by shrapnel.
Chem-flamers turned air into burning clouds of poison.
Marines drowned in acid pits that had once been ferrocrete.
The wounded screamed until they had no lungs left to do so.
The smell of rot and ozone choked even Astartes respirators.

By the time the Nameless reached the foot of the Sky Bridge, the dead lay in ridges higher than the tracks of tanks.
The bridge itself loomed above them, its pylons wreathed in fire, its spans crawling with the silhouettes of dueling Astartes.
And through it all, the echo of that psychic shockwave lingered—a keening, wordless lament.

Loken paused for a moment amidst the chaos,
watching a White Scar cleave a Death Guard in half with a roaring cry, then fall to a bolter round that took his head.
Around him the Nameless pressed onward, their shields raised against a rain of shells.

He felt it too—the grief, the fury, the unbearable sense of loss that had set the sons of Chogoris aflame.
He did not yet know that their primarch lay dying, but his heart told him the truth.
Something holy had been broken this day.

The Sky Bridge loomed ahead like the spine of a dead god.
Its titanic supports rose through smog and flame, the bridge itself lost in the firestorm above.
It was once a marvel of Imperial engineering — a conduit that bound the earth to the heavens — now twisted and defiled by war.
Warp-light flickered along its length, bleeding in and out of reality like a wound that refused to close.

The Nameless, White Scars, and surviving Auxilia surged toward it as one, cutting down the last of the traitors at the base.
The ground trembled beneath the constant hammer of tank fire. Bolter shells burst in the air like thunderheads.
Astartes and men died side by side, their corpses trampled beneath the endless tide of the living.

Then came a new sound — a rising howl of engines, sharp and pure through the chaos.
Jetbikes streaked through the smoke, their contrails like burning comets.

Two more cohorts descended from the storm above — reinforcements.
The first wave bore the markings of the White Scars’ Fifth Brotherhood, their armour scorched but still brilliant white under the soot.
They came screaming down from the high bridge approach, engines roaring vengeance.
The second cohort descended on wings of crimson — Blood Angels, their armour glinting gold and red,
like avenging seraphs cast into hell.

Together, they fell upon the Death Guard flank.
The ground shook as they struck, a perfect symphony of movement and murder.
Jetbikes carved through plague-infested tanks, slicing them open with melta charges and grav-lances.
Blood Angels fell from the sky in disciplined spearhead formations, their descent framed by the roaring fire of jump packs.
They struck with the fury of angels betrayed — blades of gold cutting through the blackened ceramite of the Death Guard,
each blow a hymn of wrath and lament.

The Nameless held the centre line, their shields locking with brutal precision.
Behind them, the Solar Auxilia unleashed their full arsenal —
lascannons, demolisher shells, and macro-fusils turning the ruins into rivers of molten rock.
Knights of the Grey Flame marched at the forefront, their swords still burning with that unnatural, faith-born fire.

For the first time in weeks, the traitors faltered.
The Death Guard began to retreat, slow and unwilling, as though the rot that sustained them had begun to devour itself.
Their comms fractured, their daemons screamed — and then came the sound that broke even them.

It was not heard through the air, but through the soul.
A screech tore across the Warp, a howl that split the veil of reality.
Every psyker on the field felt it, and every mortal knew it in their bones.
It was the death-cry of a Primarch.
The sky above them split open.

A column of impossible light tore downward from the heavens — not flame, nor lightning, but raw, aetheric detonation.
It was like the birth and death of a star all at once, an explosion so bright it seared the eyes of those who looked directly at it.
The air screamed, and then came the silence — heavy, absolute — followed by a shockwave that flattened the ruins for leagues around.
When the light faded, they saw it — the daemonic veil that had enshrouded the higher platforms of the Spaceport was gone.
The pocket dimension where the Primarchs had fought — hidden even from Imperial augurs — had collapsed.
Reality had reclaimed it. The bridge’s upper decks were visible again, twisted but real.

For a long moment, no one moved.
Then the Death Guard began to die. As if the shock wave of the warp had began to unravel their very existence.
Their armour split and ran like wax. Their flesh boiled and sloughed away, their corrupted spirits unmoored from the material world.
The daemons howled as the fabric of the Warp recoiled, consuming them in an implosion of sickly light.
Those that did not vanish screamed and tore at their own bodies as if trying to escape the flesh they had once defiled.

The loyalists surged forward, no longer with rage but grim purpose.
The Nameless and Ultramarines fired methodically, the Scars and Angels cutting through what remained.
The base of the Lion’s Gate Spaceport became a charnel field — a place of ending.

And then, at last, it was over.
The smoke hung low over the wreckage.
The sound of war faded into the crackle of fire and the moan of tortured steel.
White Scars stood among the dead, their armour blackened and their faces streaked with blood and soot.
They raised their voices in victory, but it was a hollow sound — raw, wounded, almost human.
Some screamed in triumph. Others wept. Some fell to their knees, pounding the earth with their fists in silent rage.

The Nameless and Ultramarines stood apart, watching in silence.
Their victory was absolute, but their kin were broken — not by the enemy, but by the cost.
Loken walked among them, his boots crunching through ash and bone.
His helm was off, the air thick with the stench of death.

He saw brothers kneeling in prayer, others staring blankly into the flames.
Then he found him — Brother-Sergeant Temur Khanjin, of the Fifth Brotherhood.

Temur’s armour was carved with fresh scars, blood still dripping from the cuts he had made himself.
His eyes were distant, hollow yet burning. He did not even turn when Loken approached.

“They have taken him,” Temur said, voice breaking — though whether in grief or faith, Loken could not tell.
“But he is not gone. Not yet. We must find our Khan.”

Without another word, Temur turned and walked toward his remaining riders, their jetbikes already revving amidst the carnage.
One by one, they mounted up and sped away toward the bridge approaches,
vanishing into the rising smoke as others of their legion began to regroup and secure the grounds.

Moments later, the vox crackled — distorted, choked with static. Then came a voice, heavy with sorrow and command alike:
“I am Shiban Khan of the Fifth Legion…”

The transmission echoed through out the battle field, carried across every channel.
Loken stood amidst the ruin, looking toward the bridge and the burning heavens beyond.
The sky still bled from the wound torn through it, light flickering like a dying sun.

“Finally, we have come to Terra. Abaddon, where are you brother….”

Chapter Text

-------------------------------
The Base of the Lion’s Gate
Edge of the Sky Bridge
-------------------------------

The battle had ended, though none who stood amid the ruin could truly call it victory.
The base of the Lion’s Gate Spaceport burned in sullen silence,
its once-majestic ferrocrete causeways shattered, its plating slick with blood and ash.

The fires still burned across the shattered expanse of the Spaceport’s base.
The air was acrid, filled with the stench of promethium fires and the scorched flesh of the dead.
Around them, the White Scars moved to secure the upper bridge approaches,
their jetbikes roaring up the long incline toward the Stratophex levels.
Vox reports told of scattered resistance — the remnants of Death Guard stragglers still entrenched among the broken loading towers.

The Nameless stood in ranks beside the surviving Ultramarines and the Solar Auxilia cohorts.
The banners of the 22nd Solar Cohort, the 14th Selenic, and the 19th Deltan Auxilia fluttered weakly in the heat of the fires.
No one spoke. The victory had been absolute, but it felt hollow — the air still heavy with grief that was not their own.

Loken stood near the remains of a shattered macro-lift, his helm cradled beneath his arm, Mournfang’s blade darkened with blood.
He gazed upward, where the massive silhouette of the Spaceport loomed, its upper decks lost to cloud and smoke.
Then a figure approached through the haze — red armour gleaming despite the ruin.

The newcomer’s helm was mag-locked at his belt, revealing a noble, pale face.
His features were sharp, his eyes the deep crimson of the Blood Angels, and his bearing radiated calm command.
He moved like a vision from an earlier age — his armour unmarred by grime, etched with gold and winged sigils, his eyes like rubies beneath a pale brow.
He bore himself with solemn grace, helm mag-locked at his hip, and stopped a short distance from Loken, offering a formal bow of his head.

“Captain Garviel Loken of the Nameless,” he said, his voice rich and steady despite the ruin around them.
“On behalf of the IX Legion, I bid you welcome to Terra.” he said, his voice quiet but resonant,
touched by the same strange grace that all his kind bore. “It is an honour to finally meet the Ghost of Isstvan.”

Loken blinked, caught off-guard. “You know of us?”
The Blood Angel smiled faintly. “The Imperium does, Captain.
The stories of the Nameless have reached even the Palace walls.
Word of your survival — and of your deeds — travelled long before your fleet reached our skies.
The survivors of Isstvan carried your legend with them, as they did the grief of that world.”

He paused, the faintest trace of sorrow shadowing his face.
“They spoke of your defiance, of the oath you kept when all others broke.
Of the sons who refused to die without honour.”

Around Loken, his warriors had fallen silent.
Even the scarred and soot-streaked Auxilia nearby seemed to lean closer, drawn by the rare moment of peace in the storm.
The Captain inclined his head again.
“When we heard of the atrocities at Isstvan V, there were many who thought no one could rise again from such a slaughter.
Yet here you stand, fighting for what the Emperor intended us to be. That truth is not forgotten.
This day you fought beside the Scars and our own, and we saw your faith with our own eyes.
You have earned your place among the Emperor’s sons once more.”

Loken’s throat felt dry. The words struck deeper than he cared to show.
For years — from the ruins of Isstvan, through the shadow of Calth, and across the haunted stars —
the Nameless had carried only their shame and their stubborn loyalty.
To hear another Legion call them brothers again...

He bowed his head slightly. “You honour us, captain.” Loken said, his voice quiet but steady.
“If we have redeemed even a fragment of what was lost, then perhaps this war has not been for nothing.”

The Blood Angel smiled —
a small, knowing curve of the lips that almost reminded Loken of the gentleness of their Primarch’s likeness,
carved in the frescoes of Luna long ago.

The Blood Angel’s expression softened.
“Redemption, Captain, is not a gift — it is earned through endurance. And you have endured.”
Then his tone grew solemn.
“Our Lord Sanguinius has asked that you and your warriors be brought before him.
Rogal Dorn will also be in attendance.
They wish to speak with you directly —
about what you’ve done, and about your commander, Ezekyle Abaddon”

Loken’s head snapped up. “Abaddon?”
The Captain nodded.
“Reports from the orbital vox relays indicate that the Raptor’s Claw attempted a direct descent through the upper atmosphere —
a maneuver more akin to suicide than strategy. No confirmation has come since.
Lord Dorn and Sanguinius wish to understand why.”

Loken’s jaw tightened.
“Then he made the descent…” He looked away, the weight of it settling on him like stone.
“I will not go without him. He leads us, and it is his right to speak before the Primarchs.”

The Blood Angel met his gaze firmly.
“They know that, Captain. But they ask you to come first —
not as his subordinate, but as his brother.
They believe you may have insight into his purpose... or his sacrifice.”

For a long moment, Loken said nothing.
The fires crackled around them, throwing fractured light over the grey ceramite of the Nameless.
Finally, he nodded once. “Then I will come. But I will speak as one of the Nameless — and no other.”

The Captain smiled faintly, the expression touched by respect. “That is all they ask.”
He turned then, gesturing for his retinue to follow. “Make ready, Captain Loken. The Palace awaits.”

Loken watched as the Blood Angels moved off toward the ascending transport ramps.
Around him, the Nameless gathered — Vorr and his knights, Draal, Vaul, Volan, and the weary Auxilia marshals.
The silence between them spoke of fatigue, but also of purpose renewed.

“See to the wounded,” Loken said quietly. “We move for the Eternity Gate at dusk.”
He turned his gaze once more toward the horizon — where the broken spires of the Palace caught the last dying light of the sun.
“Hold fast, brother,” he murmured, as if the words might reach the burning sky above.
“Hold fast, Abaddon. We are coming.”

They came to Terra not as saviours, nor as conquerors, but as revenants.
The Nameless marched through the heart of the dying cradle of mankind —
the world that had birthed the Great Crusade, now hollowed by its own children’s rebellion.

The causeways leading to the Eternity Gate were broken things, paved in ruin.
Colossal statues that had once immortalized the Emperor’s triumphs now lay in fragments,
their faces scorched away by orbital fire.
The sky was a bruise, smeared by the exhaust of burning ships and the red glare of the void war above.

Even within the Palace’s shadow there was no stillness.
The earth itself seemed to groan under the weight of centuries of faith turned to ash.
At the head of the column strode Garviel Loken, his armour scorched black,
the white crescent-sword sigil of the Nameless cracked by battle.

At his right walked Knight Master Mathar Vorr of the Knights of the Grey Flame,
his battered plate carved with runes of penitence, the two-handed warsword Iron Revenant resting across his shoulder.
His helm was off, revealing a scarred face caked with soot and blood, eyes like burning coals beneath a halo of grey ash.

To his left came Captain Calen Dryst of the Cerulean Wrath,
silent and cold as a glacier, his once-azure armour dulled by the grime of unending war.
Captain Tiberius Volan, commander of the Aegis Blade, as he bore the scars of the Lion’s Gate slaughter.

And beside them, keeping pace like a phantom, was Captain Rhemar of the Black Shield Vow,
his blackened armour stripped of heraldry save for the crescent blade of the Nameless,
his warplate mottled with burn marks and impact scars.

Behind them followed the remnants of the three Solar Auxilia regiments — the 22nd, the 14th Selenic, and the 19th Deltan —
their banners torn, their ranks diminished to a fraction of their former strength.
The Ultramarines of Varro’s fleet marched beside them, helms bowed, ceramite dulled by ash.
The last unified host of the Imperium’s scattered sons.

They crossed the Aurelian Causeway, passing under the skeletal remains of war-statues that once celebrated the Triumphs of Unity.
Now they stood beheaded, their forms shattered by bombardment, faces lost to fire.
Along the road, the loyalist remnants gathered to watch.

Regiments of the Imperial Army —
grey-faced men and women in scorched greatcoats, eyes hollow from months of siege — lowered their weapons in salute.
Cohorts of Imperial Fists stood in silence upon the bastion walls,
their yellow armour stained with soot, their shields marked by countless impacts.
From the heights, Blood Angels watched as the Nameless passed,
their crimson armour luminous even in the smoke, their faces grave and unreadable.

Word had travelled fast through the surviving vox networks: Reinforcements had come.
Not the legions they prayed for — no Titans of Mars, nor of the other legions yet to come — but something stranger.

The Nameless.
The outcasts who had fought the long war in shadow.
And as they marched, silence followed them. No cheers, no chants, no anthems.
Only the slow, measured cadence of boots upon scorched stone,
the sound of warriors who had endured too long to believe in triumph.

They entered through the Outer Palace Gate, where once golden eagles had stood watch over marble arches.
Now only blackened ruins and the corpses of angels made of steel remained.

Loken halted briefly upon the approach to the Eternity Gate itself.
The sight struck him harder than any battle.
The Gate was beyond words —
a monument of impossible scale, its towering adamantine doors lined with reliefs depicting the Emperor’s victories of old.
But the beauty of it was marred by the brutal hand of war.
The once-bright gold was scored by bombardment, the wings of the Emperor’s sigil shattered and blackened.
At its base, thousands of loyal dead lay in careful rows, their bodies wrapped in the banners they had died beneath.

Vorr removed his helm and bowed his head. Even the Iron Revenant was silent.
Calen Dryst whispered, “So this is the heart of it.”
Loken only said, “The heart still beats.”

They were met at the threshold by a detachment of Blood Angels Sanguinary Guards and Imperial Fists praetorians,
their armour polished despite the grime of siege.
One of them stepped forward — a Centurion bearing the mark of the IX Legion, his voice formal and steady.

“Captain Garviel Loken of the Nameless.
You and your captains are summoned by our Lords —
Primarch Sanguinius of the IX and Primarch Rogal Dorn of the VII.
They await you within the Hall of Eternity.”

Loken inclined his head.
“My brothers will remain to stand guard.”
“As is proper,” the Centurion replied. He turned and gestured toward the towering Gate.
“Enter, sons of Luna and Ultramar. The Lords of the Imperium will receive you.”

As the Eternity Gate slowly opened, the world seemed to hush.
The light within was not golden as in the legends, but a cold, silvery pall —
the glow of fires reflected upon marble and steel.

Loken felt something shift in his chest, a weight both dreadful and holy.
The sight of the Palace — the Emperor’s dream made manifest —
desecrated and yet enduring, struck deeper than any wound.

-----------------------------------------
Terra Imperial Palace
Halls of Eternity
-----------------------------------------

Inside, beneath the vaulted archways of the Hall of Light, two beings awaited them.
Golden wings folded at his back, Sanguinius shone even in that dimness, his beauty marred by battle yet not diminished.
Beside him stood the implacable stone of Terra itself — Rogal Dorn, his armor like a bastion wrought of sun-burnished bronze and blooded gold.
For a moment, none spoke. The weight of history — and guilt — hung thick between them.
Then Dorn’s mouth quirked slightly.
“Garviel Loken,” he said, his voice a low rumble. “Last we spoke, you were surrounded by wolves.”
Loken inclined his head, his voice tight. “And now, my lord, I am surrounded by ghosts.”

A faint smile flickered across Sanguinius’s perfect features.
Dorn’s was more measured, but his eyes gleamed faintly with something that might have been approval — or sorrow.
“You stand here,” Dorn said, taking a step forward,
“the son of a father who damned himself.
You should know, Loken, that neither of us forgets what your Legion once was.
Or what it tried to be.”

“I failed him,” Loken said, his voice heavy.
“My words never reached him.
My brothers fell to pride and madness,
and I could not stop them.”

Dorn turned slightly, glancing over his shoulder at the towering form of Sigismund,
First Captain of the Imperial Fists, who stood in silent vigilance.
“Do you recall, Sigismund,” Dorn said, his tone almost dry,
“the young captain we met aboard the Vengeful Spirit?
The idealist who spoke of peace at the end of war?”

Sigismund’s eyes glinted.
“I remember him well, lord. Still idealistic, I hope?”
Loken bowed his head. “No, brother. Not anymore. Only faithful.”

Dorn’s expression softened.
“Then you’ve learned what the rest of us were forced to long ago.
There is no peace — only duty.”

He paused.
“You did not fail, Loken. You survived. You endured.
You carried the truth of Horus’s sin to us — through madness, ruin, and half the damned warp.
That alone earns you the Emperor’s recognition.
Abaddon’s too, if I may believe the reports of your joint endeavour.”

Loken’s head rose sharply at that. “You’ve heard of Abaddon?”

It was Sanguinius who answered. His voice was music shadowed by sorrow.
“We have, Garviel. And there is something you must know.”

He stepped forward, the light catching on his golden wings.
“Moments ago, our augur relays detected the Raptor’s Claw — and several escort frigates — breaking through orbit.
They were fired upon by traitor batteries. Some were annihilated in the descent.
But… we believe the Raptor’s Claw made it through the storm.”

Loken’s eyes widened, hope and dread wrestling across his scarred features. “Where?”

Sanguinius’s expression dimmed.
“Beyond the Helios Gate. Deep behind the traitor lines.
We have lost eyes on them since. We believe they crashed.
Whether any survived… we cannot say.”

Silence fell.

Then Loken bowed deeply.
“Thank you, my lord.
That knowledge alone honours me.
But I must ask — why summon me to stand before you?
This matter is small compared to the war tearing this world apart.”

Dorn’s gaze sharpened.
“It is not small. You were called here because the war’s tide changes.
Zakhael Orsus — the new First Captain of Horus’s Black Host — has begun his advance.
His forces breach our lines with unnatural ferocity.
Even my sons have been forced to yield ground.”

Sanguinius’s wings flexed slightly, the light shifting across the chamber.
“We have read the records of your campaigns, Loken — of how the Nameless stood against the Black Host and lived.
Few can claim such a victory. That is why we ask this of you.
We wish the Nameless to engage them again. To halt their advance.”

At that, Dorn’s gaze moved to Vorr and his entourage.
“Malcador and I have sanctioned the use of Librarians once more.
Even the Grey Flame Knights, Captain Vorr.
I have heard… interesting things about your order.”

Vorr inclined his head deeply.
“My lord, we serve as the Emperor wills — and no other.”

Loken straightened.
“Then we accept.
The Nameless will move to intercept Zakhael Orsus and the Black Host.
But we will go alone.
The Solar Auxilia and Ultramarines will remain here, to strengthen your walls.
This task is ours.”

Dorn studied him, then nodded.
“So be it. The wall will hold, and your legend will test itself beyond it.”

Sanguinius smiled faintly, that ineffable warmth cutting through the gloom.
“Then go, Garviel Loken.
And may the light of the Emperor guide your path —
even through darkness that knows your name.”

As Loken and his captains turned to depart, Dorn called out again.

“Loken.”
They halted.
Dorn gestured to Sigismund,
who stepped forward bearing a great standard draped in cloth of midnight and white.
With a flourish, he unveiled it.

The crescent moon and sword gleamed upon it — the mark of the Nameless.
Murmurs rippled through the gathered Captains.
Dorn’s voice carried like thunder.

“By the authority of the Emperor and his Regent,
the Nameless are henceforth recognized as an independent Legion of the Imperium.
You answer to none save Malcador the Sigillite and the Throne itself.”

He paused, his eyes locking with Loken’s.
“Take this banner, and let Terra see that even the lost can be redeemed.”

Loken dropped to one knee as he accepted the Standard.
“We are humbled, lord. And we will not fail you.”

When they rose, the hall echoed not with cheers,
but with something deeper — the sound of faith reforged in ruin.

And as they marched from the Hall of Light, beneath the gaze of angels and fortresses,
the Nameless carried their new standard high.
Even among the ruins of the Palace, it gleamed like the memory of hope.

------------------------------------------------
Terra - Mountain range Beyond the Helios Gate
Unknown Location
------------------------------------------------

The bridge was dying.
Flame and smoke filled the command deck like a living storm, shrouding the once-proud heart of the Raptor’s Claw in ruin.
The air was thick with the stench of scorched metal and blood.
Consoles flickered in spasms of red light as one final surge of power rippled through them before they died forever.
Bodies—mortal crew and Astartes alike—lay strewn across the deck.

Through the haze, a figure stirred.
Armored gauntlets, blackened by fire, pushed against the deck plating.
The warrior rose, unsteady, one hand gripping the hilt of a great blade.
The runes upon its surface pulsed faintly, as if alive.

Abaddon Ezekyle stood among the dead, his armor fractured and bleeding smoke,
his face half-lit by the dying lights of the bridge.
He inhaled, felt the pain in his ribs, and exhaled something that might have been a laugh.
“Alive,” he muttered, tasting blood. “Alive… and not done yet.”

From behind the collapsed tactical dais, another figure rose.
Massive, armored in burnished black trimmed with gold—Hellas Sycar,
Master of the Justaerin, his helm scarred and his pauldrons slick with soot.

“First Captain,” Sycar said, voice rough but steady, “you still breathe.”
“Breathe?” Abaddon rasped, straightening. “Aye. And ready for vengeance.”
Sycar nodded once. The word vengeance was a promise neither needed to explain.

Abaddon strode to the cracked command throne and activated the shipwide vox with a sweep of his gauntlet.
“To all survivors of the Raptor’s Claw,” he growled, voice carrying through static and flame.
“This vessel is lost. Evacuate. Rendezvous at landing bay. Fight your way free. You are Nameless—act like it.”
He turned away as the deck shuddered violently.

The two warriors moved through corridors that burned like arteries of a dying beast.
Bulkheads split open, venting fire and corpse-gas into the air.
Along the way, they gathered others—mortally wounded Astartes, ship-serfs clinging to duty,
and scattered Nameless who had refused to flee their commander’s side.

When at last they reached the hangar, the devastation was absolute.
Rows of Thunderhawks lay broken or aflame, their hulls blackened husks.
Amid the wreckage, two Stormbirds still flickered with power, engines cycling weakly.
Abaddon wasted no words.
“Get them airborne,” he barked. “Everyone else, aboard—now.”

Then, from the smoke, came another shape—black armor trimmed in silver, helm tucked beneath one arm.
Falkus Kibre, once Master of the Justaerin, now the appointed Master of Novitiates,
led a knot of warriors behind him—fresh-faced Astartes in Nameless heraldry and the other surviving Justaerin.
“You’re late,” Abaddon said.
“We were training the next generation to survive,” Kibre replied, his voice dry.

Abaddon’s eyes narrowed behind the mask of soot.
He eyed the newly inducted Astartes.
They were fresh and made Astartes under the Nameless, they knew of no other legions before it.
They were the first Nameless origin Astartes.
“What gene-stock are they from?”

Kibre’s answer was a grim smile.
“Whatever we salvaged from our fallen brothers. They are us—many and none.”
That seemed to please Abaddon. He gave a curt nod.
“Then they’ll do. Board the ships. We make for the Helios Gate.”

The Stormbird clawed for altitude, its hull howling against the gale.
Beneath, the wreck of the Raptor’s Claw burned like a dying god, its spine split against the obsidian ridges.
The ground around it was littered with ruin—shattered fuselages,
broken Thunderhawks, the bones of a fleet that had tried to die in orbit and failed.

Abaddon stood within the hold, one gauntleted hand braced against the shaking bulkhead.
Red light bled through the cabin as the Stormbird rose into the choked heavens.
He keyed the vox-link, voice low, steady as iron.

“All survivors—this is Abaddon. Regroup at Helios Gate. Repeat—Helios Gate.”
Static replied. Then came broken voices—ragged, defiant, some screaming, some praying. Survivors.
The sound struck him harder than he expected.

The Stormbird climbed higher still, cutting through layers of smoke and ruin.
Then, for the first time since their crash, the world opened before him.

He saw Terra.
The sight froze him where he stood.
From horizon to horizon, the cradle of mankind burned.
The continents were wreathed in storm and fire.
Cities that had once been monuments to the Emperor’s dream now smouldered like dying embers.
Spires lay broken, their golden facades blackened by orbital strikes.
The oceans boiled.
The sky was a vault of ash.
Titans moved through the murk like ancient gods resurrected,
their guns tearing whole city blocks apart with every step.

Above it all, the void bled fire as fleet after fleet unleashed the fury of the heavens.
It was not a siege. It was annihilation.

Abaddon felt it then—a coldness beneath his rage, something older than hatred. He had seen destruction before:
Isstvan, the burning of the Pit, the ruin of worlds. But this… this was the death of the dream itself.

He lowered his gaze to the flickering vox-panel. Names scrolled past—casualty lists, lost identifiers.
Every line was a brother’s death. Every signal a light going out.
He spoke before he could stop himself. The words were quiet. Almost reverent.

“Father… what have you done?”

It was not anger that filled his voice, but disbelief.
There was grief there, and something rarer still—understanding.
For all his pride, for all the iron conviction that had carried him through rebellion and ruin,
he understood now that there was no road back from this. No penance. No future.

The Stormbird broke through another bank of smoke.
Lightning split the cloud deck, painting the ruins below in stark relief.
The mountains of the Himalazia lay ahead—wreathed in burning air,
the walls of the Imperial Palace rising like black monoliths in the distance.

Abaddon’s reflection caught his eye in the viewport—
a warrior in scorched plate, pale and grim, his eyes alight not with hate but something deeper.
He understood at last what his path demanded.
He would find his father—the one who had damned them all—and either kill him or be slain in turn.

There would be no victory. Only an ending.
The Stormbird banked toward Helios Gate, its engines shrieking against the wind.
Below, the world of men burned, and above it, the sons of gods hunted one another through the ashes of forever.

Chapter Text

The Stormbird shuddered as flak bursts erupted around it.
The gunner fired back, tracer streams lighting the clouds.
Abaddon looked away from the window, forcing the moment down into the steel of his soul.
He would name it later.

He would not yet understand that what he felt was sorrow.
But he despised it all the same.
“Helm steady,” he said, tone regaining its iron. “We are Nameless. We endure.”

The Stormbird plunged through the smoke toward the ruins of Terra’s heart.
The Stormbird cut through the burning clouds, its engines howling against the dying sky.
The horizon burned red and gold as another storm front of fire rolled across the surface of Terra.

Abaddon stood near the cockpit threshold,
one gauntlet braced against the bulkhead as the craft pitched hard to avoid a streak of anti-air fire.
Through the viewport, the Helios Gate loomed ahead—an ancient fortress bastion now half-swallowed by the war below.

Then, behind them, the heavens turned white.
A blinding flash erupted across the mountains where the Raptor’s Claw had fallen.
For a single frozen instant, all sound vanished—then the shockwave hit, rolling through the air like the roar of an angry god.
Every warrior aboard the Stormbird turned.

The broken hulk of the Raptor’s Claw consumed by a chain of detonations,
its munitions stores igniting in one final act of defiance.
The blast ripped through the enemy lines, engulfing an advancing Titan and a ring of artillery bastions in a storm of fire.

When the light finally faded, the ship’s outer frame still stood—its proud silhouette defiant against the blaze—
yet within, everything had been reduced to molten ruin.
The Raptor’s Claw remained upright, a hollow carcass of steel and flame, utterly lifeless.
Its final breath had shaken the earth itself, the tremor echoing across the field.
For a heartbeat, even the guns of the enemy fell silent.

Abaddon’s visor dimmed against the glare, then cleared.
He watched the flames subside into a column of smoke that reached for the clouds like a dying monument.
“She fought to the end,” murmured Hellas Sycar beside him, his voice low and reverent.

Abaddon didn’t answer at first. He simply stood there, his gaze fixed upon the distant pyre.
The Raptor’s Claw had carried them from the ashes of Isstvan, through exile and damnation, to the very heart of the Emperor’s realm.
She had bled for them, shielded them, delivered them here.
Now she was gone.

At last he spoke—quietly, almost to himself.
“Your duty is done, old beast,” he said. “You brought us home.”
The words were a whisper swallowed by the rumble of the engines.

The blast’s shockwave had done what luck could not—
it shredded the air defenses, granting their Stormbird and dozens of others the chance to break through.
Abaddon watched their icons flicker across the auspex—survivors scattering like embers carried on the wind, converging toward the Helios Gate.

He turned back to the cockpit.
“Helm steady,” he ordered. “Push through the gap. The Gate lies ahead.”
As the Stormbird descended into the thick clouds of smoke and light,
Abaddon looked one last time toward the dying light of the Raptor’s Claw.
It burned still—faint, defiant, eternal.

The Stormbirds fell short of their destination.
Enemy fire tore through the clouds like fangs of light, striking the lead craft—the one bearing Abaddon and his survivors.
Warning runes flared across the cockpit, alarms screamed, and the world turned into fire.

The pilot— nameless, faceless, resolute—fought the dying machine with both hands on the controls.
His final act of service was to guide it down, angling its descent away from the mountainside.
The Stormbird slammed into the earth, its wings shearing apart in showers of sparks and flame.
Metal screamed. Then silence.

Abaddon staggered from the wreckage, his armour scarred and smoking.
The air stank of fuel and death. Behind him, the gunship’s fuselage burned with the last of its machine-spirit.
Nearby, another Stormbird caught a direct hit and burst apart mid-air—its fiery corpse tumbling into the rocks below.
He looked up through the storm to see streaks of tracer fire raking the heavens.
The Helios Wall loomed in the distance, its massive bastions crawling with traitor guns.
A vast anti-air battery spat molten fury into the sky, cutting down loyalist craft like birds through a furnace.

“Down!” Abaddon voxed across the link, his voice a thunderous growl.
“All Stormbirds—land immediately! Do not approach the gate! Set down wherever you can!”

Acknowledgements crackled through the static.
A few made it down safely; others did not.
Abaddon watched a Thunderhawk take a shell to its flank, spiralling into the earth as Astartes leapt from its bay in desperate last stands.
He clenched his jaw. “Rally to me,” he ordered.
Hellas Sycar, his black plate scorched but unbroken, gathered the surviving Justaerin around their lord.
Falkus Kibre and the Nameless Astartes formed the rearguard, grim and silent.
Together, they advanced through the ruins toward the Helios Gate, bolters roaring.

The first traitors they met were shadows of what had once been brothers.
The corrupted Sons of Horus emerged from the ash—mutated forms and rotted ceramite, their heraldry twisted into mockery.
Abaddon’s disgust flared white-hot.
He raised Veltrax, and the blade burned with pale light, its runes igniting like stars.

“FOR THE TRUTH!” the Nameless roared.
“FOR THE EMPEROR!”

They charged as one.
The impact was cataclysmic. The Justaerin smashed into the corrupted warriors like a hammer through glass.
Bolter rounds tore limbs apart; blades cracked ceramite and bone alike.
Abaddon fought at the point of the spear, cutting through traitors in arcs of light,
his blade cleaving flesh and steel as though separating the false from the real.

Falkus Kibre watched his former commander with grim satisfaction.
Abaddon burned with purpose again—not as a son of Horus, but as something more.
Kibre primed his chainsword and followed him into the storm.

The battlefield became a furnace of bolter fire, smoke, and blood.
The survivors of the Raptor’s Claw joined the slaughter without hesitation.
Crewmen and newly forged Nameless alike fought shoulder to shoulder,
proving their worth in the only language that mattered—battle.
And then, amid the chaos, came a flare of golden tracers and the roar of heavy bolters.
“Imperial Fists!” someone shouted.

A cohort in yellow armour emerged through the smoke, forming a shield wall as they advanced.
Their sergeant approached, helm dented, eyes wary.
“Identify yourselves!” he barked.

Abaddon stepped forward. His voice carried through the din like thunder.
“I am Abaddon of the Nameless.”

The Imperial Fist’s eyes widened. Recognition—and relief—crossed his face.
“Then the Emperor has not forsaken us. Lord Dorn ordered us to find and aid you.
The Nameless are to be escorted to the Palace.
Your legion comes from the west, Captain—towards the Helios Gate.”

“Legion?” Abaddon repeated, caught off guard.
The sergeant nodded.
“Aye. The Nameless Legion. The order came from Lord Dorn himself.
You are recognised as brothers—independent, but Imperial still.”

A rare smile touched Abaddon’s scarred lips.
“Then we are not ghosts after all.”
He turned to his warriors, lifting Veltrax high.
“Form up! We make for the Gate. My brother awaits us.”

With the Imperial Fists joining their line, the Nameless advanced once more—
toward the Helios Gate, and toward the long-awaited reunion of sons cast adrift in a dying age.

The march to the Helios Gate became a slow grind through hell.
The land itself was drowned in ruin—mountains of corpses piled high, a landscape made of the dead.
Thousands of bodies, both mortal and transhuman, lay broken and unrecognisable beneath the choking haze of smoke and ash.
Each crater belched flame. Each ruin whispered the memory of some forgotten assault.

Abaddon pressed forward through the carnage, his armour slick with the black dust of pulverised ceramite.
The Imperial Fists marched beside them—silent, implacable yellow amidst the grey and red world.

Above, the sky burned with plasma fire.
War engines moved in the distance, godlike silhouettes striding through curtains of flame.
Titans clashed in silence across the horizon, their muzzle flashes like suns dying in sequence.
Armoured columns ploughed through the wreckage—Predators, Malcador patterns, and the broken husks of Baneblades.

And still the Nameless moved on.
Every kilometre brought new survivors.
At first a handful—scattered Astartes in broken armour, still carrying the sigils of the Nameless or Ultramarines.
Then whole squads, grim-faced and battered, emerging from the haze.
They had survived the crash of the Raptor’s Claw and her escort ships,
dragging themselves from the burning wrecks to rejoin their commander.

The Imperial Fists were taken aback at the sight.
That any force could survive such an orbital descent under fire bordered on the miraculous.
Their sergeant turned to Abaddon with quiet awe.
“You fought your way through orbit,” he said. “By the Throne… that is not survival. That is defiance made flesh.”
Abaddon did not respond, but the faintest curl of pride touched his mouth.

Then came the sound of battle ahead—a new roar, close and desperate.
Vox chatter cut through the static.
“Imperial Fists unit pinned—coordinates ahead! Enemy bombardment and armour closing!”

Abaddon raised his blade, its white glow cutting through the smoke.
“Forward!”

The Nameless surged ahead, the Imperial Fists at their side.
Bolters flared. The sound was a storm made solid, a chain of thunder rolling through the ruins.
They reached the embattled Fists—a small company holding behind a line of shattered barricades,
their yellow armour blackened and cratered. The air was a furnace of plasma bolts and shrapnel.
“Hold!” Abaddon’s voice cut through the chaos. “Reinforcements—advance!”

The Nameless slammed into the enemy flank like a blade into flesh.
Justaerin and Nameless Astartes fought as one, their momentum impossible to halt.
Traitor Astartes fell in droves. The ground turned slick beneath them as the loyalists roared in fury.

Seeing the new arrivals, the beleaguered Imperial Fists rose with renewed strength.
Their captain bellowed the cry of the VIIth, and they charged from their shattered line, hammers and shields blazing.

The enemy wavered.
Then, with the thunderous growl of engines, a formation of loyalist tanks broke through the smog—
Solar Auxilia Leman Russ and a pair of Malcadors, guns blazing.
Their shells tore the traitor ranks apart, blocking the enemy’s advance entirely.

For the first time in hours, the gunfire began to fade.
The survivors stood amid the ruin, their breathing heavy, their armour running with blood and ash.
The rescued Imperial Fists approached Abaddon, saluting in silence.
Their sergeant removed his helm—his face caked with soot, his eyes burning with gratitude.
“Thank you for the aid brother,” he said.

Abaddon inclined his head, accepting the words without pride.
Around him, the Nameless regrouped, helping the wounded and reloading weapons.
Above, the Helios Gate burned on the horizon—a citadel of light beyond the wasteland of corpses.
The rescued Imperial Fists returned to their post, reforging their defences with the discipline of their gene-father’s sons.
As the last tanks moved into position, Abaddon turned his gaze toward the Gate.
“Enough delay,” he said quietly. “We move.”
And with that, the Nameless and their allies pressed onward—toward the walls of the Palace,
toward their kin, and toward the destiny the Emperor had yet to reveal.

------------------------------------
Helios Gate, Western Bastion
------------------------------------

A thunderous bombardment shattered the dusk over the Helios Gate.
From the smoke-wreathed parapets,
the traitors’ nests were torn apart by punishing fire from orbital batteries and advancing armor columns.
Then—like a storm breaking—a surge of black-armoured Astartes charged from the smoke.
A crescent and sword gleamed white against their sable breastplates: the mark of the Nameless.
And among them, the Black Shield Vow.

Captain Rhemar led the assault at the forefront, his blade a blur of ceramite-shearing arcs.
The company advanced with brutal precision, every movement coordinated, every strike final.
Traitor Astartes of the Death Guard and Sons of Horus were dragged from their bunkers and cut down in the red haze of close-quarters combat.

The Imperial Fists supporting them—yellow against black—watched as the Nameless fought like executioners born of the void.
No wasted motion. No roar of glory. Only the cold rhythm of purpose.
Even the Fists, masters of siegecraft and defense, found themselves nodding in silent respect at the methodical,
merciless purge unfolding before their eyes.

Elsewhere amid the ruins, Garviel Loken stood atop a shattered fortification.
His boot ground down upon the chestplate of a fallen traitor Astartes, the eight-pointed star cracked beneath his heel.
Smoke drifted around him, glowing orange with the reflection of fire.
He turned his gaze toward the smoldering skyline—the Helios Gate towers loomed beyond, half-wreathed in ash.
“Report,” he voxed, voice cold through the static.

Rhemar’s response came first, his tone clipped and steady:
“Black Shield Vow—objective secured. Enemy nests purged.”
Moments later, Captain Calen Dryst and Captain Tiberius Volan checked in.

“Cerulean Wrath reports completion. Minimal resistance.”
“Aegis Blade confirms sector clean. No enemy survivors.”

Then came Mathar Vorr—his voice heavy, almost ritualistic.
“The Knights of the Grey Flame stand victorious.
The Word Bearers’ shrine is ash. Their daemons are gone.”

The vox-line hissed with silence for a moment.
Even the Imperial Fists nearby paused at those words—daemons purged, entire covens extinguished.
It was no small feat, even for the Nameless.

Loken gave a single nod, unseen by those on the line.
Around him, Imperial Fists moved swiftly to fortify the captured bastion,
their disciplined rhythm merging with that of the Nameless warriors spreading through the ruin.
Above them, the Standard of the Nameless—the crescent moon pierced by a white sword—snapped and cracked in the burning wind.
Where the standard flew, silence followed.
Where the Nameless walked, the Emperor’s light returned to the Gate.

For the next several hours, the Nameless waged war through the shattered districts beneath the Helios Gate.
Firelight bled across the broken manufactoria and scorched walls,
as the three Oatharii companies—Black Shield Vow, Cerulean Wrath, and Aegis Blade—
moved in grim coordination alongside Vorr’s Knights of the Grey Flame.
Their mission was clear: seek and destroy every Word Bearer shrine still festering within the Gate’s perimeter.

Each assault was swift and merciless.
The Nameless fought through corridors thick with ash and chanting echoes.
They found icons carved into metal, blooded runes smeared across bulkheads, and the broken bodies of the civilians used as offerings.
Every ritual site they uncovered burned beneath flamer fire and melta charge, reduced to blackened slag and smoking ruin.

Yet the deeper they pressed, the clearer the pattern became.
At the seventh shrine, Vaul knelt before a half-completed summoning circle—its edges pulsing faintly with warp-light.
His gauntlets trembled as he traced the sigils, each one a mirror of the glyphs burned into his own nightmares.
Vorr stood behind him, sword drawn, the edge of The Iron Revenant still dripping with daemon ichor.
“Vaul,” Vorr’s voice was low. “What do you see?”

The Codecier and Chaplin rose slowly, helm lenses glowing with psychic strain.
“It’s not summoning daemons,” he said.
“It’s opening a gate. A breach large enough to draw through… an army.”

He turned to Loken, who stood over the burning altar.
“It’s the same pattern Orsus used—the same that tore through our ships.
He’s trying to bring them here. Through the Gate.”

Loken’s expression hardened.
The air around him seemed to still, the wind carrying distant screams and thunder.
“A warp bridge,” he murmured. “Straight into the Palace walls.”

Vaul nodded grimly. “A shock assault. An entire legion, perhaps more.”
Silence followed—broken only by the crackle of burning sigils.

Loken’s gauntlet tightened around his bolter.
“Then we end it,” he said. “No matter what it takes.”

He voxed the orders immediately—his voice cutting through the static like a blade.
“All Oatharii units, converge on the remaining coordinates.
Purge every shrine. Every altar. Every rune. Leave nothing standing.”

The hunt resumed, fiercer than before.
The Nameless moved like a single organism, striking from shadow to shadow, purging the Gate one level at a time.
Each explosion lit the night in silent defiance of the dark gods that sought entry.

Yet as the hours bled away, a weight pressed on Loken’s mind—a formless dread whispering at the edge of thought.
He could not name it, nor trace its source, but he felt the shadow of Orsus in every flicker of warp-flame.
And beneath it all, a question he refused to voice:

What if they were already too late?

Chapter Text

-----------------------------
Helios Gate, Western Bastion
----------------------------

The storm had not abated in hours.
It was as if the planet itself groaned beneath the weight of its wounds.
Every few seconds, the sky lit with another detonation, and the roar of artillery rolled across the wastes in endless succession.
The air was thick with the stink of promethium, scorched ozone, and the copper tang of blood.

The Nameless were everywhere.
Across the ruin-scape around the Helios Gate, the three Oatharii companies—
Black Shield Vow, Cerulean Wrath, and Aegis Blade—moved like phantoms through ash and ruin.
Each company pursued the same objective:
locate and destroy the Word Bearer ritual shrines seeded like tumors across the battlements and inner bastions.

Where they walked, nothing unholy endured.
The Knights of the Grey Flame under Mathar Vorr had joined the hunt as zeal incarnate.
The Knight Master himself led from the front, his armour blackened from daemon blood,
his blade The Iron Revenant burning with pale, unnatural light as it severed limbs, flesh, and sorcery alike.

Beside him strode Codicier Menerak Vaul, the order’s acting Chaplain—
his crozius wreathed in psychic fire, his voice an iron hymn that rolled through the vox as both prayer and weapon.
His words steadied hearts and burned through heretical whispers.

Every strike, every act of cleansing, felt righteous. And yet… something was wrong.
The Imperial Fists laboured alongside them, masters of stone and bastion.
Their fortifications rose from the ruins with methodical grace even under fire.
But the traitors’ bombardments never ceased.

Even the stoic sons of Dorn strained beneath the constant thunder.
Loken stood on a high parapet of the Helios Wall, watching the chaos unfold.
Through the war-torn haze, he saw Solar Auxilia regiments rolling forward in perfect, suicidal precision.
Massive armoured columns thundered into the fray—Leman Russ squadrons, Malcadors, Baneblades—
painting the horizon in streaks of white plasma and gold tracers.

The order had come from Rogal Dorn himself: reinforce the Gate, hold at all costs, and repay blood with fire.
The counteroffensive hit with godlike fury.
Enemy emplacements vanished beneath retaliatory bombardments.
The ground became a mirror of hell—fire eating fire, steel biting steel.
The Loyalists held… but only just.

For every metre of ground reclaimed, dozens fell.
The Nameless fought on—discipline and wrath bound as one.
Their bolters barked, their blades flashed, their war-cries echoed through flame and ruin.
.“For the Truth!”
“For the Emperor!”

Even amidst victory, Loken’s gut refused to calm.
Something about the pattern of the battles… the ease with which the shrines fell.
The Word Bearers were never careless. Not Kor Phaeron’s kin. Not in matters of ritual and faith.
He looked at the maps projected in his helm, and a chill coursed down his spine.
“All Oatharii forces,” Loken voxed. “Cease the hunt. Fall back to my position. Immediate priority order.”
The replies came, surprised but unquestioning.

Mathar Vorr’s gravelled voice broke through the vox.
“What’s your read, brother?”
Loken’s eyes were fixed on the burning horizon.
“A hunch,” he said quietly. “And I hope to the Throne I’m wrong.”

The climb to the upper bastion was slow, the metal slick with blood and ash.
Above, the air howled with pressure waves from the distant bombardments.
The Helios Gate loomed below them, its structure vast enough to shadow entire districts.
From this height, the devastation stretched endlessly—the corpse of Terra’s surface lit in hellfire.

Loken reached the top and froze.
Something glistened across the plains—a shimmer in the ruin’s geometry.
He magnified his lenses and his stomach clenched.
“Vaul. Vorr. Get up here.”
Within minutes, the two joined him.

Mathar Vorr’s armour was a cathedral of scars, black and silver etched in soot.
Menerak Vaul climbed slower, his psychic hood glowing faintly, his eyes like shards of pale fire within the shadows of his helm.
Loken pointed into the distance.
“Tell me you see it.”

At first, there was nothing but blood and cratered soil.
Then, slowly, their minds adjusted.
The rivers of blood below were not random—they curved, flowed, converged, forming a lattice of immense and deliberate design.
A sigil. A planetary-scale icon wrought in blood, stone, and death.

Vaul’s psychic sight flared open. What he beheld was beyond mortal blasphemy.
The mark was alive—its geometry breathing, shifting, pulling reality taut like a wound ready to tear.
He staggered, almost falling to one knee.
“No… oh, Throne preserve us,” Vaul whispered, his voice cracking through vox distortion.
“It’s a mark of calling. A blood gate. They’ve been bleeding the field for hours to feed it…”

Loken’s heart went cold.
“To open a warp breach,” he said. “Big enough for an army.”
Vorr’s gauntlet tightened on his sword.
“Orsus,” he growled. “It’s him.”

As if summoned by the name, the plain erupted.
The ground convulsed.

From miles away, they saw it—the soil buckling, stone shattering as a maelstrom of warp-light burst through.
It tore the world open, a wound in existence.

The sky bent inward. The sound was not thunder but the scream of reality itself.
A titanic ring of violet fire expanded outward, sucking the air into its void.
The wind turned into a hurricane, carrying with it whispers and laughter and the cries of the damned.
From within the gate, shapes emerged.

Silhouettes of power-armoured giants—armor blackened, eyes burning like furnaces, banners dripping shadow.
The Black Host had come through.
Loken’s voice burst across all vox-channels, raw and thunderous:
“All Loyalist forces, form on me! Prepare for contact! The Black Host is breaching the line!”

The wall shook with their rallying cry.
Below, the Nameless surged into formation.
The Imperial Fists adjusted artillery bearings and redirected fire toward the breach.
Solar Auxilia tanks reversed engines and swung turrets to meet the new threat.

The rift widened further. From its core, hundreds, then thousands of Astartes poured forth—
corrupted sons of the Imperium, reborn in nightmare flesh. Warp-fire bled from their weapons.
Their battle cries were distortions, voices of things no longer human.

At their head, a single figure stepped through—towering, radiant in void-black plate wreathed in ghostlight.
His helm bore the twin crests of the serpent, and his hands crackled with chains of sorcery.

Zakhael Orsus.
First Captain of the Warmaster and Master of the Black Host.
The enemy that had chased them across stars.
His voice rolled across the battlefield, deep and resonant as the Warp itself:
“You sought the Truth, Abaddon. Now behold it.”
The words echoed through every soul that could still hear.
And then the Helios Gate erupted into war once more.

----------------------------------------------
Terra – Approaches to the Helios Gate,
Outer Battleground
----------------------------------------------

The light rose over the ruins like the unfurling edge of a blade.
It began as a shimmering arc—thin, pale, almost delicate—before blossoming into a violent flare that rolled across the battlefield.
Even through smoke and ash and the perpetual haze of burning promethium, Abaddon recognized it instantly.

Warp-light.
Structured. Controlled.
A gate being carved open with purpose.

The survivors slowed their advance across the debris field,
boots crunching over broken ferrocrete and the charred bones of some forgotten cohort that had died defending Terra weeks ago.
The air reeked of dust, decay, and the sharp metallic tang of ozone.
The distant thunder of Titans strode beneath everything—a constant, ground-shaking reminder that the world itself was dying by degrees.

Hellas Sycar came to stand beside Abaddon.
His armour was battered, scorched, and cracked in places where the crash landing had nearly torn him apart,
but the Master of the Justaerin carried himself with the same grim composure he always had.
He studied the distant phenomenon with the same clinical calm he brought to battlefield assessments.

“Warp conduit,” he said simply.

Abaddon did not look at him, did not need to.
He could feel the truth in the air—an oily pressure, the faint thrum of aetheric tension building.

“Orsus,” Abaddon said.
Not with bitterness.
Not with surprise.
Simply naming the inevitable.

Behind them, the Imperial Fists escort maintained their formation with statue-like precision.
They watched the distant flare with the measured calm of an old legion that had seen too much and expected worse.
One of their sergeants stepped forward, helm angled slightly.
“So it is true,” he said. “The First Captain of the Arch-Traitor has turned his hand to this.”

There was no fear in his voice. Not even disdain. Just the stone-hard acceptance that defined the VII.
Abaddon finally turned his head, just enough to regard him.

“That is Orsus’s method,” he replied.
“Strike from behind the lines.
Open the gate where no sane commander expects it.
Bring the war in through the wound.”

The sergeant nodded once.
“Then we reach the Helios Gate before the wound widens.”

No oaths.
No theatrics.
Just duty.

Abaddon set off again,
Veltrax in hand, its white light muted beneath the storm clouds but steady—as disciplined as the hand that held it.
The ground trembled beneath their march.
Shell impacts hammered somewhere ahead, lighting the sky in bursts of sickly green.
The air carried the low groan of dying engines and the distant, rhythmic thump of artillery—
an endless, pounding heartbeat of the war for Terra.

The ruins ahead shifted—dark bulks moving through the fog, their outlines swollen, armour pitted and wet with corruption.
The stench reached the loyalists a heartbeat before the enemy shapes fully resolved:
sour rot, blistered metal, the metallic tang of ruptured organs fermenting inside sealed plate.

Death Guard.
They emerged without urgency, as if the battle’s pace belonged to them alone.
Their gait was ponderous, patient, obscene.
Bolters—misshapen, fused to swollen gauntlets—spat ropes of hissing, caustic filth that steamed where it landed,
eating through stone, ceramite, and the flesh of the dead alike.

One round struck a fallen Imperial Army trooper nearby.
His corpse dissolved, turning to bubbling slurry within seconds.
The Death Guard marched on through it, boots squelching in the filth.

Kibre’s voice crackled across the vox, steady as bedrock.
“Enemy strength: substantial. Two companies, at least. Likely more in the haze.”

Abaddon raised Veltrax.
The blade answered—white fire rippling along the runes, as if eager.
“Break them,” he said.
No roar. No theatrics.
Just the order.

The Justaerin advanced, pace unified, thunderous, a single killing organism made of black ceramite and earned scars.
They moved like executioners, not berserkers—each step a promise that no traitor here would leave the soil of Terra alive.

Sycar hit the line first.
His chainfist sank into a Death Guard’s collarplate and dragged downward, splitting the warrior top to hipbone.
The traitor’s guts—black, swollen, slithering with worm-like growths—spilled onto the ground in a steaming cascade.
Sycar kicked the twitching halves aside as if clearing debris.

More of the plague-marines lumbered forward, muttering wet, gurgling war cries that sounded like drowning men.
Behind Sycar came the newest sons of the Nameless—Astartes who had never borne the heraldry of any Old Legion.
Their armour was unadorned black, their eyes cold.

They fired in perfect rhythm: controlled bursts, bolts slamming into joints, mouth-grilles, eyepieces.
Each shot chosen, each shot lethal.
They had no nostalgia, no shared past with their foes—only doctrine, honed beneath Loken and Abaddon’s command.

They killed like they had been born for it.
Abaddon entered the melee with the same inevitability as a collapsing star.
Veltrax swept out once, twice—clean arcs of white light slicing through corrupted plate as though it were parchment.
A Death Guard swung a plague axe at him, the weapon whining with bound corruption.
Abaddon stepped under it, severed the warrior’s arm at the elbow, then drove the blade into the helm’s visor.
White fire flared behind the cracked lenses as the traitor spasmed and fell.

A bloated marine lunged with surprising speed, pustules bursting as it moved.
Abaddon rotated his wrist and opened the traitor from throat to pelvis in a single, unhurried stroke.
The warrior collapsed, spilling a cascade of rotting organs that steamed where they touched the ground.
Abaddon did not look back to see if it was dead.

Efficiency.
Purpose.

A demonstration of what the First Captain should have been for the Sixteenth.
The newly forged Nameless fell in around him, their discipline mirroring his own.
They had learned from watching him, from the way he carved war like a craftsman shapes stone.

To the right, the Imperial Fists advanced in a firing wedge—stoic, measured, their yellow armour dulled by ash.
They took ground by precision alone, every bolt a nail driven exactly where it needed to go.
No shouting. No flourish. Their fire discipline was so absolute that they created a metronomic cadence:

THUD-thud-THUD
THUD-thud-THUD

A Death Guard charging their line dissolved under that storm, its armour bursting like overripe fruit.
Another plague marine attempted to wade through the bolts, shrugging off wounds that would have felled any sane warrior.
A Justaerin met him, hammering a power fist into the traitor’s faceplate,
it had such force that the skull beneath collapsed inward in a spray of dark matter.

The fight became a grinder.
Bolter fire.
The wet crack of rupturing bodies.
The hiss of corrosive rounds chewing through stone.
The dull groan of corrupted armour giving under Terminator fists.
The howls—wet, gurgling, endless—of the diseased damned.

Abaddon moved at the center of it all, not shouting,
not driven by fury, but by the cold, sharpened conviction of a warrior who had survived the Long War before the Long War ever began.
Veltrax rose.
Veltrax fell.

Each strike a surgical execution, each motion a lesson in what the Sixteenth Legion should have stood for.
The Death Guard broke—not in panic, for panic was alien to them—but in the slow, inevitable way rot gives way when met with flame.
“Forward,”
Abaddon voxed, stepping over a twitching corpse that bubbled as it died.
“Do not stop.”

The Nameless surged.
The Justaerin crashed onward like a falling fortress.
And the Imperial Fists stepped beside them, firing as if chiseling death from stone.

Together, they pushed the traitors back through the fog, through the rot,
through the dead that coated the earth like a second skin—toward the Helios Gate.
But the journey was cut shorter than Abaddon had anticipated.

Hours had been ground away into blood and smoke.
Abaddon and his battered column had fought step by murderous step toward the Helios Gate,
each metre purchased with the bodies of traitors and loyalists alike.
The air tasted of chemical fire and old death. The soil had long since ceased to be soil;
it was black mulch, rendered from crushed ceramite and liquefied flesh.

They had prevailed, but only just.
Now—within sight of the Gate’s towering adamantium ramparts—they slowed again, pinned by a fresh tide of corruption.
World Eaters in brass-rimmed plate bounded over the ruins like hunting beasts, their vox-grilles screaming incoherent syllables of hatred.
Death Guard lumbered behind them, swollen with rot, their bolters vomiting strands of eating filth.
Between them capered daemons—hook-limbed, shrieking, flickering in and out of existence like unstable shadows.
The pressure on the line grew heavier with every second.

A Nameless sergeant vanished under a chain of daemon-fire, his armour melting around him like wax.
An Imperial Fist was torn in half by a World Eater’s chainaxe and still tried to crawl forward,
dragging himself by one arm until the second blow ended him.
The air trembled with warp-howls and the thunder of bolter detonations.

Abaddon fought like a lion in a tightening cage.
Veltrax cut blazing arcs through the dark, its white fire burning daemons back into screaming unreality
and carving through corrupted ceramite as if it were made of parchment.
Every stroke was precise, controlled—but even he could feel the press of numbers weighing down.

One of the newly trained Nameless brothers was hurled across the rubble, armour buckling.
Another staggered under a corrosive round that ate through his pauldron and into the meat beneath.
Still the line held—but only because they refused to allow anything else.
Abaddon killed another World Eater—split from collar to hip—and stepped over the collapsing corpse.

The Gate was right there.
A few hundred metres beyond the broken boulevard.
Beyond those walls… Loken. Vorr. Rhemar. Vaul. The others.

Orsus.

Abaddon’s jaw tightened in quiet fury.
The feeling was cold, metallic—never rage, but something worse.
He was close, and yet the enemy had slammed a wall of bodies between him and his brothers.
A daemon lunged at him—a spined, snarling shape—and he met it with a downward cut.
Veltrax shattered it into ribbons of screeching light.
Still they came.
Still they pressed.

But as the grim reality caved upon them, a bolt of lightning punched down through the smog like a spear from the heavens.
It tore through a cluster of daemons, flash-vaporising them in an eruption of blue-white brilliance.
The ground shook as a second lance of warp-energy hammered the World Eaters’ vanguard,
leaving a crater of smoking armour and vaporised bone.

The traitor line reeled.
For the first time in hours, Abaddon felt the pressure ease.
He pivoted—fast, instinctively—just as another storm of warp-lightning crashed into the traitors.
The energy rolled outward like a breaking wave, hurling plague-marines from their feet.

A figure strode through the smoke.
Tall. Hooded. Armour scorched with psychic light, the edges glowing faint blue.
The runic stave in his hand was a beacon of controlled fury.

Behind him came the Librarius of the Nameless—
blue-white lightning dancing across their gauntlets, eyes glowing with unleashed sanction.

Akaran Sotha.
Chief Librarian of the Nameless.
Former Word Bearer.
The man who had once knelt before Lorgar, and now stood defiant against all corruption.
He raised his hand, palm open, and reality screamed.

A telekinetic shockwave blasted a wedge open in the traitor ranks, shattering bones,
crushing armour, flinging daemons into nothingness.

Sotha turned his head just enough to see Abaddon.
A grin—wolfish and exhausted—flashed across his face.

“You look terrible,” he called over the thunder, his voice cutting through the vox static with maddening calm.
“I leave you for a few hours and you manage to start a whole new war.”

Abaddon allowed a rare, sharp exhale. Dry. Hard. Almost amused.
“You took your time,” he replied, swinging Veltrax through another Death Guard helm.
“I was beginning to consider dying of boredom.”

Sotha snorted.
“If you die, it won’t be boredom.”
The two warriors met in the wreckage,
back-to-back for a moment as the surge of daemons crashed again, only to be disintegrated by psychic fire.

Then the Nameless Librarians joined them—warp-energy cracking the air, the taste of ozone flooding the battlefield.
Sotha raised his stave and bellowed across the vox:
“Nameless! Advance!”

The ground shook as the Astartes of the Nameless surged forward with renewed fury.
The Imperial Fists tightened their firing line and marched beside them, yellow plate gleaming in the blue glare of psychic lightning.
Together, they smashed into the traitor vanguard like a hammer of light.

World Eaters were torn apart by telekinetic force.
Death Guard were burned clean by white psychic flame.
Daemons shrieked, unraveling under the surge of sanctioned power.
And for the first time since making planetfall, Abaddon felt the momentum shift—not through rage,
but through cold, deliberate purpose.

They had their opening, and Abaddon took it.

Chapter Text

-----------------------------------------
Terra – West Approach to the Helios Gate
-----------------------------------------

The Nameless advanced as a single, storm-born tide—black armour, crescent-and-blade sigils gleaming in the sickly half-light of a dying sky.
Psychic lightning flared overhead, cutting clean swathes through the daemon tide.
Warp-spawn collapsed into steaming residue beneath the wrath of Akaran Sotha and the surviving Librarians,
their sanctioned fury carving order from madness.

Abaddon carved a path toward Sotha, Veltrax a burning arc of white severance.
“Sotha,” he voxed as a Death Guard helm split under his blade.
“You vanished before embarkation. I had half the deck searching for you.”

A blast of warp-force erupted from Sotha’s outstretched hand, pulverizing a daemon into vapor.
“We were trapped,” he answered, voice steady even as lightning crackled along his armour’s edges.
“A bulkhead collapsed when the mid-deck ruptured. Cut my Librarius off from the forward sections.”

He stepped over a thrashing corpse, tone dry.
“A regrettable design flaw.”
Abaddon snorted.
“Casualties?”
“Severe,” Sotha replied.
“Nearly half the Librarius killed when the deck fell into the munitions chambers.
Those who survived regrouped and forced our way clear.
We escaped in a Thunderhawk that was… already aflame, when we boarded it.”

A daemon surged; Sotha crushed it with a telekinetic blow that cratered the ground.
“But we made it to ground. We walked the last kilometres through half a dozen war zones.
Lost more along the way.
By the time we found you, I was almost willing to believe the rumors that you’d already died.”

Abaddon cut down a brute mutated by plague rot, shaking gore from Veltrax.
“I don’t die that easily.”
“No,” Sotha murmured with faint amusement. “We have all noticed.”

The Librarians behind him unleashed a second wave of psychic fire, incinerating another knot of daemons.
The air tasted of ozone and burning warp-flesh.
The combined assault of blade, bolter and sanctioned fury began to break the enemy lines, pushing the traitors back in shuddering disarray.

Sotha glanced to the horizon—toward the fractured skyline of the Imperial Palace, its silhouette cracked by fire and ruin.
“Terra…” he said quietly.
“It’s worse than I imagined. The Imperium bleeds from every wound.
I wonder, truly, if it will ever recover.”

Abaddon did not pause. He speared a World Eater through the neck, tore Veltrax free, and spoke without drama.
“It will recover the same way warriors advance,” he said.
“One step. Then the next. Then the next, until the enemy is gone.”
Sotha gave a small, grim nod.
“A comforting lie.”
“A necessary truth,” Abaddon corrected.

As the Helios West Gate loomed over them like a towering shadow Abaddon did not hesitate.

“Forward!” he snarled through the vox, already moving, already cutting,
already driving toward the distant silhouette of the Helios Gate like a blade seeking the wound it must close.

The Nameless surged after him.
The Imperial Fists shifted formation with the brutal economy of a legion born for sieges—
tightening their lines, advancing in lockstep, bolters firing in unwavering cadence.

Akaran Sotha strode among them like a storm given form.
Psychic light bled from the cracks in his armour, illuminating the battlefield in cold, unnatural pulses.
Every gesture of his stave tore foes apart—crushing corrupted bodies,
banishing daemons in screams of evaporating ectoplasm, ripping new lanes through the churning mass of traitors.

The enemy line—so thick moments ago it felt like a solid wall of flesh—began to buckle.
And then it broke.

World Eaters fled shrieking into the fog, their fury scattered into confusion.
Death Guard simply collapsed, their bloated forms spasming under the psychic onslaught.
Daemons flickered out of existence, shriveling into motes of hateful smoke.

For the first time since making planetfall, the path to the Helios Gate stood open.

“Move!” Abaddon barked, sprinting over rubble, vaulted wreckage, and corpses so thick the dead formed their own topography.

The survivors followed.
Justaerin thundered behind him like a reformed phalanx of old.
The newly forged Nameless advanced with relentless precision, firing in disciplined bursts.
The Imperial Fists kept pace, methodical and immovable, their yellow armour smeared black with soot and ichor.

Sotha fell in beside Abaddon as they ran, matching his pace with infuriating ease.

“You do realize,” the Librarian said, voice calm even as he crushed a daemon with a flick of his hand,
“that you could have waited thirty more seconds for me to arrive before diving into a World Eater charge.”

Abaddon did not slow.
“Thirty seconds,” he replied, “was thirty seconds too long.”

Sotha chuckled darkly.
“Still dramatic, I see.”

Ahead, the last stretch of terrain opened—
a massive killing field scarred by bombardment, the walls of the Helios Gate rising like a mountain of adamantium beyond it.

On the battlements above, the Imperial Fists were already shifting artillery to support their approach,
yellow-armoured silhouettes moving with crisp purpose.
Bright lance-fire stabbed down into retreating traitors, blowing apart pockets of resistance.

Abaddon saw movement on the ramparts—
and recognized the silhouette of an Imperial Fists Captain raising a fist in salute.

They had seen him.
They had recognized the Nameless.

A strange weight settled in his chest.
Foreign. Unwelcome.

He pushed it aside.
They were not free yet.

A new wave of traitor fire erupted from the ruins on their left—heavy bolters, autocannons,
and at least one corrupted quad-lascannon stitching the ground with deadly beams.

The Nameless took cover in the cratered earth.
Imperial Fists returned fire with disciplined fury.

Sotha stepped into the open, unconcerned.
“Cover your ears,” he warned.
He drove his stave into the ground.

A shockwave of psychic force rippled outward in a perfect circle—shattering bunkers,
crushing emplacements, and flipping entire gun-nests like children’s toys.
The quad-lascannon exploded in a flash of witchfire.
The heavy bolters fell silent as their crews were pulped inside their armor.

When the dust settled, Abaddon rose from behind the rubble and resumed his advance.
“Useful trick,” he said without looking back.

“I have others,” Sotha replied.
“But I don’t want to embarrass you in front of the Seventh.”
Abaddon ignored him and picked up speed.

The last daemons on the approach dissolved into smoke as the Nameless swept forward.
The traitor lines wavered, then broke. Imperial Fists poured fire over the retreating foe, tightening the cordon with stoic precision.
And then—they arrived.

The Western Entrance of the Helios Gate towered before them.
A colossal adamantium bastion carved with Imperial iconography and scarred by months of hell.
Its battlements crawled with Imperial Fists and Army gun crews fighting to suppress the traitor strongholds further along the wall.
Smoke curled from shattered parapets. The ground was a carpet of broken armour, rusted blood, and pulverised bone.

Abaddon halted at the foot of the colossal gate.
The light of the warp-rift—Orsus’s abomination—still flickered in the sky beyond, staining the clouds purple and black.
His gauntlet tightened around Veltrax.
“Form ranks,” he commanded, voice cold and flat. “We meet the Black Host here.”
The Justaerin formed around him—armoured shadows, silent and resolute.
The Nameless newly-forged Astartes moved into disciplined lines.
Sotha and his Librarians took position at the rear, staves raised, wards glowing.
Imperial Fists locked shields around the flanks, unyielding and immovable.
Above them, the Gate thundered with distant bombardment—an omen of the battle yet to come.
Abaddon looked into the shimmering horizon where the warp tore the world apart.

As Abaddon closed the last stretch to the Helios Gate, Imperial Fists were already descending from the battlements to meet him.
Their yellow plate was blackened by soot and daemon-rot, but their posture was carved from granite.
One, a sergeant bearing a cracked helm and a shield scored with claw marks, approached immediately.

“Abaddon of the Nameless?” he asked.
Abaddon inclined his head once.
The sergeant’s stance shifted—respect given where it had been earned.
“We have been awaiting your arrival,” the sergeant said.
“Captain Garviel Loken prepared us for your approach.”

At that, something in Abaddon’s expression hardened. “Where is he?”
The sergeant hesitated—only for a beat, but long enough.
“The Nameless engaged the Black Hosts two hours ago.
On the plain before the northern spur of the Helios Gate.”

“And the battle?”

“Hard fighting. Heavy losses. Your Oatharii fought like angels of wrath.
The Knights of the Grey Flame…” The sergeant shook his head.
“I have never witnessed their like. But the Black Host is vast, captain.
Their daemons are numberless.”

The sergeant’s jaw clenched beneath his vox-grille.
“Hard fighting. Heavy losses. Your Oatharii companies fought like sons of Titans. The Knights of the Grey Flame…”
He paused.
“...did things we cannot put into words. But the Black Host is vast. Their daemons are legion.”
A shadow crossed Abaddon’s expression—dark, silent, dangerous.

Abaddon did not respond. He did not need to. His silence was its own storm.
“When was this last reported?” he asked.
“Half an hour ago. Vox-channels are deteriorating. Warp interference.”
Abaddon turned immediately.
“Sycar. Kibre. Sotha—on me.”

The Justaerin, the new Nameless, and the Librarius closed in behind him.
The Imperial Fists moved to guide them through the shattered inner walls.
They marched at once.

The Imperial Fists guided them through shattered inner gates and along a buckled causeway.
The stench reached them first—heavy, wet, thick with blood and daemon-rot.
Then the sound: screaming metal, ruptured flesh, the maddened howls of warp-things.
The air trembled with bolter detonations and chainaxes grinding through armour.

Then the plain opened before them, and Abaddon saw hell.
Blood flowed across the ground like a sluggish river.
The corpses of hundreds—human, Astartes, daemon—were piled in grotesque mounds.
Warp-fire danced across the battlefield, giving everything a nightmare sheen.

The Black Host swept across it in force.
Hundreds of them—Astartes twisted into daemon-symbiotes, armour warped into horned and clawed forms,
eyes burning with balefire. Between them capered daemons, shrieking in ecstatic frenzy.

Amid this horror, the Nameless stood their ground.
The Oatharii companies fought in scattered formations, each standard visible only when the smoke parted—
a flash of white, blue, or black amidst the carnage.

The Knights of the Grey Flame were a storm unto themselves, their grey armour lit by the white fire of their blades.
Mathar Vorr tore through daemons in incandescent arcs of destruction, the Iron Revenant glowing like a brand.
Menerak Vaul fought beside him, psychic lightning and Chaplain-liturgies fusing into a burning shield around their brothers.

Imperial Fists supported them with methodical killing fire from defensive positions.
They were outnumbered, outflanked, and pressed on all sides, but they did not break.
And in the centre—
—beneath the newly granted Standard of the Nameless—
stood Garviel Loken.

Loken was drenched in blood, armour cracked, helm dented,
shouting orders as he carved a path through the warp-spawned monstrosities.
His voice carried even through the chaos.

Abaddon saw him.
Loken saw Abaddon.
And a fierce smile cut through all the ruin.
Abaddon did not hesitate.

“Nameless!” he roared. “CHARGE!”
He led the assault personally.

Veltrax burned white as he plunged into the Black Host, the Justaerin at his heels,
the Nameless surging behind him, the Imperial Fists advancing in a stone-hard wedge.
They smashed into the traitors like a falling wall of iron.

Veltrax erupted in white fire as he tore forward at the head of the assault.
The Nameless roared behind him, the Imperial Fists matching their pace in a stone-hard phalanx.
The two forces slammed into the Black Host with the force of a collapsing star.
Abaddon cut a path through daemon and traitor alike—Veltrax singing, killing, severing warp-spawn with each blinding arc.
Heads flew.
Armour split.
Warp-flesh burned away in white cracks of light.
He broke through into the inner circle beneath the Nameless banner just as Loken vaulted from behind a shattered bulwark to meet him.
“Late as ever,” Loken called, breath ragged, faceplate cracked.
Abaddon snorted, carving down a horned monstrosity in one stroke.
“You started without me.”
A beat.
“I’m not forgiving that.”
They shared a rare grin.
For a heartbeat, they were the warriors they had once been—sons of Horus, brothers-in-arms, defiant together against the dark.
Loken nodded toward the towering standard, flapping in the sulphur wind.
“The Imperium has not forgotten us, brother.” he said quietly.
Abaddon placed a bloodied gauntlet on his brother’s shoulder.
“Then we make sure we remind them why.”

They turned— And the world shook.
A scream tore across the battlefield— not a voice,
but a rupture, amplified through the warp, violent and cold as a razor storm.

Black Host Astartes froze mid-charge.
Daemons arched their backs in silent ecstasy.
Even the Nameless felt the psychic weight of it press against their skulls.

Loken and Abaddon looked toward the far ridge.
And there—stepping through the warp-rift he had torn open—
his armour a blackened cathedral of corruption,
his eyes pits of burning amethyst,
his blade a solidified shard of void-fire—

Zakhael Orsus,
First Captain of the Arch-Traitor,
Master of the Black Host,
the butcher of the Samus Project,
the bane of the Nameless—
smiled.

A grin full of malice and promise.
He lifted his weapon—
a black blade that bled warp-energy like steam from a forge.
And he screamed:

“ABADDON.”

A challenge.
A summons.
A death sentence.
Abaddon and Loken stepped forward together.
The battlefield held its breath.
The War Within the War
was about to begin.

Chapter Text

----------------------------------
Terra - Helios Gate Western Bastion
-----------------------------------

Abaddon and Loken ploughed into the front lines like a pair of falling stars—one white with honed fury,
the other blue-lit with grim resolve. Every swing of Veltrax tore daemons apart in shrieking ribbons of warp-flesh;
every stroke of Loken’s Mournfang sent corrupted Sons of Horus pinwheeling back into the blood-mud.
Their arrival rippled through the battlefield like a shockwave.

To their rear, Akaran Sotha and the surviving Librarians surged forward beneath a corona of lightning.
The Chief Librarian’s stave cracked with aetheric discharge,
his eyes burning bright as he hurled psychic force into the densest knots of Black Host warriors.
Hellas Sycar led the Justaerin beside him, the black-armoured Terminators carving a brutal lane with chainfists and power mauls,
fighting with the controlled savagery they had been bred for.

On the right flank, Falkus Kibre and his brothers swept forward in a disciplined rake, obliterating anything that tried to curl around Abaddon’s line.
The Imperial Fists on the left flank formed an unbreakable wall, their fire patterns immaculate—
every bolt a killing nail, every volley a seamless answer to traitor charges.
In minutes, they had matched Abaddon and Loken’s pace precisely, the whole formation moving forward like a single iron phalanx.

As they advanced, scattered Nameless saw the standard—
the great silver crescent and sword of the Nameless snapping behind the central wedge—and rallied to it.
Dozens at first. Then hundreds.

Astartes who had been scattered across the battlefield, isolated pockets fighting for their lives, now converged as one.
Lines tightened. Shields locked. The chorus of bolters unified into a single thunderous rhythm.

A block became a wave.
And the wave became a storm.

From the far side of the carnage came the Knights of the Grey Flame.
Mathar Vorr cleaved through daemon hosts with incandescent fury,
his blade—the Iron Revenant—leaving arcs of silver-white across the dark.
Menerak Vaul fought beside him, crackling with psychic force, Chapter-liturgies interwoven with sanctioned lightning.
When the two reached the center of the formation, Abaddon paused just long enough to acknowledge them.

“Glad you decided to rejoin us,” Vorr said, helm turning toward him.
“Though I must comment—your manner of landing a frigate on to Terra from orbit
was impressive and catastrophically foolish. Perhaps inspiring. Still foolish.”

Abaddon allowed himself the smallest curl of amusement. “I will… make note of that.”
Vaul snorted. “After this war, brother, we may need a set of rules for battle. Something written. Clear. Sensible.”
Loken gave a sharp exhale that might have been a laugh. “A manual for war? Emperor preserve us.”

The moment passed—iron breaking against iron, bolter fire cracking like thunder.
But in those heartbeats, they stood together again. All of them. The Nameless as they were meant to be.

Strength surged through the ranks.
Purpose.
Unity.

The thing the Black Host could never imitate.
And then the horizon curdled as pressure rolled across the battlefield—cold, oily, thick with warp-taint.
The air shimmered. Screams of the dying twisted upward into something unnatural.
Zakhael Orsus walked out of the carnage as though he had been waiting behind a curtain.

He tore through three Nameless Astartes in the span of a heartbeat.
A fourth—an Imperial Fist—was impaled on his black sword,
the blade exhaling coils of violet fire as it devoured the loyalist’s life force.
Orsus threw the corpse aside and smiled.

A wide, cruel, familiar smile.
“Well met, Ezekyle,” he called, voice carrying unnaturally far.
“Forgive me for starting without you. I thought it only courteous to…
warm the field with the blood of our brothers.”

Abaddon did not answer. He stared at Orsus the way one might stare at a corpse that refused to lie down.
Orsus continued, grin widening.
“This world ends today. The Imperium with it.
Our father will take his rightful throne, and mankind will kneel to truth at last.”

The Imperial Fists erupted in fury.
Ultramarines screamed denouncements, voices ragged with righteous hate.
Even the Nameless growled in their throats at the defilement.

Abaddon stepped forward, voice low with contempt.
“Your foresight is a lie whispered by the same filth that twisted our father. You call it prophecy.
I call it delusion. And your failure is that you never knew the difference.”

For the first time, Orsus’s smile twitched. Rage crept in—warping the lines of his face, pulling at the skin.
Bone pushed beneath flesh. Warp-tumours bulged like budding blisters.
He clenched his jaw, pulled a syringe from a hip-case, and drove it into his neck.
The deformities receded, the flesh moulding back into the shape of an Astartes… or something pretending to be one.

Abaddon and Loken exchanged a look.
So. Vaul had been right.
The serum. The deformity.
The instability.

Orsus’s posture changed. He lifted his black blade, its surface alive with crawling runes.
Behind him stepped the Talonborn—fifteen towering monsters in the armour of Astartes,
led by Lieutenant Valekh Rax, their forms shifting between man and daemon, eyes burning with predatory hunger.
To their right came the Ascendant Sons.

And at their head—Krell.
Once Khantos.

Now a nightmare wearing ceramite, his form swollen and twisted,
horns erupting from his helm, claws nearly scraping the earth as he stalked forward with a guttural growl
aimed directly at Vorr.

The battlefield inhaled.
Two forces.
No retreat.
No fallback.
Only the inevitable collision.
The Nameless readied themselves.
The Black Host bristled with killing intent.
And in the centre—
Abaddon and Orsus stared at one another across a killing field soaked in the blood of their brothers.
The final confrontation had come.

The two armies met, and restraint died.
The collision was unlike anything the Nameless—or even the Imperial Fists—had yet witnessed.
It was as if both sides had been holding back until this exact moment, conserving something vile and monstrous in their cores.
When they finally struck, the battlefield convulsed like a living creature beneath the blow.

What erupted was not a battle.
It was a private war inside the war for Terra.
The three companies of Oatharii hurled themselves forward with suicidal ferocity, ignoring casualties that would have broken lesser forces.
Cerulean Wrath, Black Shield Vow, and Aegis Blade crashed against the Black Host like stormfronts,
their ranks thinning even as they carved channels through the traitor vanguard. Bolter fire vanished beneath the din of blades and claws.
Armour shattered. Flesh tore. The air darkened with smoke and turned slick with blood.

And through it all, the Knights of the Grey Flame burned.
Vorr and Vaul charged at the head of their order, their faith blazing so intensely that some Imperial Fists—veterans of a thousand sieges
—found their hardened minds shaken at the sight.

The Knights fought without fear of death, without hesitation, without the faintest concern for survival.
Their blades burned with white fire, each swing leaving streaks of sacred luminance in the thick air.

But the daemonic Astartes of the Black Host met them in kind.
These were not men. They were malformed things wrapped in the memory of ceramite.
They did not advance—they poured.
A tide of screaming, corrupted beasts that moved with impossible speed and brute strength,
carving a ragged wound into the black wave of Nameless and the grey bulwark of Knights.

And in their shadow came the Ascendant Sons.
They were horrors given martial shape—Astartes who had transcended into something worse than death.
Their bodies bulged with warp-grown muscle, armour fused into skin, jaws distending beyond all human geometry.
They tore through Knights like frenzied predators ripping apart livestock.
The way their talons and fangs gouged ceramite made even hardened Nameless veterans flinch.

Their master came behind them, bellowing his rage.
Krell—once Khantos—towered above his warped brethren, a daemon-thing forced into the shape of a warrior.
His armour was cracked open by his own transformation, horns jutting through gilded plate, claws drooling warp fire.
He screamed Vorr’s name like a curse as he rampaged, leaving flayed corpses of Knights in his wake.

But he was stopped.
Vorr stepped into his path, Iron Revenant raised, meeting the monstrous chain-axe with a crack of force that shook the rubble at their feet.
The two champions locked weapons, teeth grinding, armour screeching.

Around them—the Knights and Ascendant Sons butchered each other in hideous, unbroken violence.
A Knight fell, bisected.
An Ascendant Son collapsed beneath a glowing blade.
Blood sheeted across the earth.
No one yielded.

Krell snarled into Vorr’s faceplate, strings of warp-spittle hissing on ceramite.
Vorr’s reply was not a shout but a low, pained lament.
“Khantos…” Vorr growled, voice thick. “A warrior of honour, reduced to this abomination.”
Krell only roared.

Vorr prayed—truly prayed—and his faith ignited.
His blade erupted in radiant white fire, searing enough to make the Ascendant Sons recoil.
Krell’s scream cut the air like tearing steel, but he fought harder, driven by madness.

Their weapons broke apart in a shower of sparks. Vorr spun, gathering his weight behind the arc, and struck.
The Iron Revenant carved deep into Krell’s torso, cleaving through armour, flesh, and whatever daemon-thing beat in his chest.
But it was not enough.
Krell was not a creature that died cleanly.

He lashed out, claws raking across Vorr’s chestplate, slicing through ceramite and tearing into flesh.
Vorr staggered, blood misting from the wound, and he dropped to one knee, planting his sword in the earth to keep from collapsing entirely.
Krell lunged for the kill—only to be blasted sideways.

Vaul’s lightning hammered into the abomination, blue-white arcs dancing across his warped skeleton.
The attack staggered Krell, burned him, tore pieces from him—but still he came.
Vorr prayed again, wordless, desperate, absolute.

And the Emperor answered.
Light—pure, holy, impossible—flared around him, knitting flesh, closing torn organs, sealing bleeding wounds.
Not fully. But enough. Enough to stand. Enough to fight.
The Knights around him gasped. Even the Ascendant Sons faltered.

Krell roared, charging with ground-shaking force, ploughing through another burst of Vaul’s lightning.
He crashed into Vorr in a cyclone of claws and teeth.
Vorr met him, blade raised.

Their clash sent a shockwave of dust across the battlefield.
Vorr was driven down again—this time on both knees—Krell’s full monstrous weight forcing him toward the ground.
For the first time, Krell’s voice emerged through the howl, guttural and warped.
“You will break,” he hissed.

Vorr bared bloody teeth.
“The Emperor protects.”
The Iron Revenant blazed—blinding, immaculate—and Vorr twisted, parrying with a strength born of faith alone.
The movement opened Krell’s guard for a heartbeat.

One heartbeat was enough.
Vorr surged upward, driving the blade through Krell’s twisted chest, piercing the heart that beat with stolen warp-life.
Krell shrieked—an animal, dying roar—but still he struck back, claws raking across Vorr’s helm.
His left arm came up in a reflexive block.

The claws sheared through it.
Vorr’s arm flew free, trailing blood.
Another claw slashed across his helm, tearing open the right side of his face and blinding his eye.
Vaul screamed a litany and unleashed a final crackling surge of psychic fire.
Krell convulsed—spine arching, limbs flailing—before collapsing in a steaming, broken heap.
The daemon within him fled howling into the ether.

The Ascendant Sons howled as their leader died—then faltered, their warp-infused strength waning with him.
Vaul and two Knights rushed to their master, finding him slumped but alive, blood pouring from his torn helm.
One arm gone. One eye ruined. Vaul screamed for an apothecary as he approached Vorr with haste.
Still alive.
Still defiant.

Vorr rasped between his bloodied breath, “Push them back… reach Abaddon… he will need us.”
The Knights obeyed immediately, rallying with renewed fury, purging the remaining Ascendant Sons with sanctified blades.
As an apothecary arrived to care for Vorr’s wounds Vaul rose, turning toward the horizon.

Beyond the waves of brutal fighting—
past the collapsing cohorts of traitor Astartes—
past Knights and Nameless clashing in a storm of blood—
two immense shockwaves rippled the air.
The duel at the heart of the battlefield had begun.

The clash between
Abaddon—the loyal First Captain of the Nameless—
and
Orsus—the corrupted First Captain of the Arch-Traitor—
echoed like thunder through the ruins of Terra.

Chapter Text

The battlefield warped around them.

The battlefield was a ruin even by Terra’s dying standards.
Ash storms rolled low across the plain, rippling like heat-mirages over craters filled with steaming gore.
Burning tanks—loyalist and traitor alike—lay half-submerged in mounds of shattered ferrocrete.

The sky shook with the distant footfalls of Titans fighting somewhere beyond the Helios Gate,
their silhouettes flickering between lightning flashes generated by the warp-rift overhead.

The ground itself spasmed, cracking open in places as warp-pressure bled outward from the still-boiling portal Orsus had torn into reality.
Purple and black lightning arced from the wound in the sky, grounding into the battlefield and turning whole patches of earth to molten glass.
It was into this collapsing hellscape that Abaddon and Zakhael Orsus finally met.
The surrounding battle froze in the minds of all who saw the two First Captains converge—
not because they stopped fighting, but because everything suddenly felt secondary.
Even the daemons seemed to recoil as the two came together.

Abaddon advanced with deliberate, predatory strides—armour cracked, scorched, and bleeding oil, Veltrax alive in his grip.
Orsus walked out of the warp-glow like a figure cut from nightmare and hatred, his aura bending the air,
his malformed flesh pulsing beneath blackened armour.

They collided in the center of a blasted courtyard littered with the corpses of both legions.
When their blades met, the sound cracked across the ruins like a cathedral bell shattering under a thunderbolt.
Veltrax burned with white fire—the cold, star-bright light of severance, slicing through warp-smoke.
Orsus’s blade screamed with oily darkness, runes squirming along its length like maggots in a corpse.

The air trembled.
The ground fractured beneath their feet.
Two opposing principles—conviction and corruption—met like tectonic plates.
The daemons nearest them burst, liquefying into puddles of bubbling black ichor.
Imperial Fists staggered on the ramparts above, helmets ringing from the psychic shock.
Nameless Astartes braced themselves against the sudden gale-force blast that tore through the lines.

Then the real exchange began.
Abaddon struck with meteoric force—an unstoppable chain of hammering blows that would have sundered a tank.
Orsus met each strike with horrifying ease, turning them aside with bursts of warp-power that showered the field with violet sparks.
They moved like two storms colliding, each swing strong enough to warp the air.
Blows detonated like artillery, shockwaves rippling through the melee surrounding them.
A squad of Black Host Astartes were hurled off their feet merely by the backlash.

Abaddon pressed forward, step by brutal step, boots crunching through broken armour, scattered bones,
and pools of blood that steamed on contact with Veltrax’s aura.
“You end here,” he growled through clenched teeth, voice amplified by fury and vox distortion.
“For Terra. For the Emperor. For the truth.”

Orsus laughed.
A broken, joyous sound that carried over the firestorm like a rusted blade dragged across marble.
“Truth?” he spat, parrying a blow that would have cleaved a Rhino in half.
He slammed his weight into Abaddon, gauntlets grinding as the blades locked.
“Look around you, Ezekyle.”

He forced Abaddon back a pace, boots ploughing trenches through the ash.
“Where is your Emperor? Where is this Imperium you cling to?”
Warp-blisters pulsed across Orsus’s cheek as he leaned close, voice dropping into a serpent’s whisper.
“You are forsaken. We all were forsaken. Horus saw the lie—and rose to correct it.”

Abaddon’s expression didn’t change.
His eyes burned like coals.
“And you,” Orsus hissed, “you were too weak to follow the father who made you. Too blind to see his ascension.”
He spat blood—black and smoking—directly into Abaddon’s helm grille.
“Tell me, Ezekyle… how long until you understand you are the lie?”

Abaddon’s roar tore through the battlefield like a cracking furnace vent.
It wasn’t rage.
It wasn’t grief.
It was something older—
the raw, immovable certainty of a warrior who had already survived betrayal, Isstvan, Calth, the Ruinstorm, and the long road to Terra itself.
He ripped free from the lock, sparks erupting as the blades screeched apart.

Abaddon stepped into Orsus’s guard and swung Veltrax in a killing arc that distorted the air, aiming to cut the traitor in half.
Orsus caught the strike on his warp-forged blade.
Black flame erupted along the contact point.
“Oh yes,” he crooned.
“The truth is inevitable.”

He shoved Abaddon back with a pulse of warp-force that cracked the ground.
“But it is you who will choke on it.”
They crashed together again—
blinding light and darkness exploding outward,
warp dust swirling,
the air splitting with pressure so intense it made even the Titans falter in their stride.

Around them the battle surged.
Nameless Astartes clashed with daemon-spawned Talonborn.
Knights of the Grey Flame carved burning paths through the corrupted ranks.
Oatharii companies fought tooth and nail to reach their commanders.
The Imperial Fists tightened the firing lines, bolters snapping rhythmic death.
But nothing—
nothing—could draw the eye away from the twin storms slaughtering each other at the heart of the battlefield.

Not far away as the ground shook beneath their boots as if Terra itself recoiled from what was approaching.
The clash between Abaddon and Orsus thundered across the battlefield like two collapsing stars,
but around that epicenter another war—equally brutal, equally personal—was unfolding.

The Oathforged hit the Talonborn hard enough to split the earth.
The collision was an avalanche of bodies and blades.
Chainblades revved into shrieking crescendos.
Bolter pistols fired in smothered, point-blank bursts that tore limbs from torsos.

Warp-mutated Astartes—not even properly humanoid anymore—charged with jaws distended and bone spikes ripping through ceramite.
Hellas Sycar led the Justaerin like an onrushing fortress wall.
Every swing of his chainfist turned a Talonborn into ruptured meat.
The black-armoured Terminators crashed through the warped ranks with the unstoppable force of collapsing architecture.
But even they slowed as the true abominations marched into view.

They were the Next Iteration.
Valekh Rax’s “new breed.”
The perfected horror.
The refined atrocity.

They strode forward in disciplined, unnatural leaps—no frenzy, no roaring, just murderous intent.
Their armour bulged in places, plates stretched over musculature that no gene-line of man was ever meant to support.
Veins of black ichor pulsed under their skin like parasitic roots crawling through a corpse.
Their eyes were wrong— cold, sunken, watching the world as predators watch a cage.
These were the second generation of the soul-grafted.
The controlled version of Krell’s unstable madness.
And they moved with the coherency of an elite kill-team drilled to perfection.
One of them tore a Nameless Astartes in half, clean through the ribcage.

Another pinned a Justaerin to the ground with one claw,
then forced a parasite-tendril down his throat until the Terminator stopped struggling.

The air filled with screams—
not of rage,
but of violation.

Then came Rax. Swift and deadly he pushed through his creations like a priest moving through worshippers.
His armour was a patchwork of bone, corrupted ceramite, and writhing tendrils that flexed and shivered like living chains.
His chainblade purred with a wet, hungry rhythm—more animal than machine.
His helm grille curled into something resembling a grin.
“You see them, Loken?” he shouted over the carnage.
“This is what Krell could never be. The perfected line. No madness. No decay. No collapse. Only power.”

He pointed the chainblade at Loken like a preacher demanding confession.
“This is what the future looks like.”
Loken answered by stepping forward, Mournfang raised, his stance grounded like a statue carved from war itself.
Their blades met in an explosion of sparks and warp-fire.

Rax pressed in hard, serrated daemon-metal screeching against Loken’s relic blade.
The force of the impact cracked the stones beneath their feet.
“Khantos screamed for days,” Rax hissed, twisting his blade to force Loken’s guard open.
“Oh, he begged us to end him after the first round.
But he was strong—so very strong. We broke him.
We built him again. We broke him again.”

He leaned close enough that Loken could see the warp-fire in his eyes.
“He died for nothing. His soul fed the Host. His body served our purpose.
That is the only worth your brother ever had.”

Rax pulled back for a killing strike, chainblade rising—
—and then stopped.

Because Loken was staring at him.
Not with rage.
Not with grief.
Not with shock.
With judgment.
Cold.
Measured.
Absolute.
A look that said:
You have already lost.

For the first time, Rax’s grin faltered.
“Nothing…?” he muttered, uncertain.

Loken’s voice was quiet—quieter than the battlefield deserved.
Yet every Astartes near them heard it, even over the chainblades, the bolters, the screams.
“You will pay,” he said, “for desecrating the sacrifice of a brother.”

He moved.

Like a thunderbolt through fog.
Mournfang came down in a diagonal arc that tore sparks from Rax’s blade and nearly ripped the daemon-weapon from his grasp.
Rax stumbled—actually stumbled—before regaining his footing and meeting the next blow with both hands braced.

The collision rang like a hammer striking a bell.
The Talonborn surged to protect their master.
The Oathforged surged to protect theirs.
Nameless and mutated Astartes hurled themselves into the widening storm of bodies.

A Talonborn lunged at Loken from the flank—
and was instantly gunned down by three Oathforged firing point-blank into its skull.
Another soul-grafted monstrosity charged Sycar—
and Sycar grabbed it by the throat and snapped its neck with a single twist.

The battlefield splintered into dozens of personal duels.
Blood erupted like geysers.
Warp-lightning crackled across the ground.

The sky thundered with the Primarch-level duel happening only two hundred meters away.
And through all of it, Loken and Rax carved toward each other again, each strike sending shockwaves through the melee.
Rax’s grin returned, twitching, deranged.
“You think this matters?!” he shouted, parrying another of Loken’s hammering blows.
“You think your loyalty gives you strength? All it’s ever given you is pain!”
“And yet,” Loken said, driving Rax back another step, “I am still standing.”
Rax snarled.
“You won’t be for long.”

They collided again.
Mournfang flashed white.
Rax’s daemon blade hissed black.
The ground cracked between them.
Above the battlefield, the warp jittered—
Above the battlefield, the warp jittered—
—Abaddon and Orsus had struck each other with such force that even the veil thinned.

The battlefield convulsed around them—
bolter fire hammering at the air, daemons shrieking, soul-grafted monstrosities roaring with their misshapen lungs—
yet all of it dimmed when Loken and Valekh Rax met again in the center of the whirlwind.

Their blades collided for the final time.
MOURNFANG struck true.

The impact shuddered through the air like a seismic shock,
the kind that unsettled even the Justaerin veterans locked in combat nearby.

Rax staggered, his body convulsing as the blade punched through ceramite, breaking bone and sinking deep.
A spray of blackened blood gushed out across Loken’s greaves, sizzling where it touched the ground.

For a long moment, Rax just stared at his wound.
Then he grinned—wide, blood leaking down his teeth.
He coughed, wet and sharp, yet somehow laughing through it.
“That…” Rax rasped, “…that was beautiful, Loken.”

Loken raised Mournfang for the killing stroke,
expression devoid of triumph—only duty, weight, and the echo of brotherhood betrayed.
“This ends now,” he said.
But the blade did not fall.

Rax’s hand—bare, unarmoured, tearing through rent gauntlet plating—
shot up and grabbed Mournfang’s edge.
Gripped it.
Held it.
Loken’s eyes widened.

He pushed, driving all his weight into the stroke—but the blade didn’t budge.
It was like trying to move a statue carved from the bones of gods.
“Disbelief?” Rax whispered, smiling wider.
“Good. Hold onto that.”

His fingers began to warp—bones distending, skin splitting in rivulets of dark blood.
The flesh ballooned into thick, sinewed coils.
Black talons erupted from the fingertips, curling around Loken’s blade like the claws of a mythic beast.
The mutation surged upward, eating its way through Rax’s arm, shoulder, and half his torso.

His helm split apart as wicked fangs pushed through the grille.
His voice deepened, warping into a rumbling growl.
“Khantos… was the beginning,” the daemon-Rax rumbled.
“I am the perfection.”
He lunged.

Loken tore backward, ripping Mournfang from Rax’s grip—but not fast enough.
The mutated claw came down in a sweeping arc—longer than any Astartes reach, faster than any human reflex.
It slammed across Loken’s chest.
Ceramite screamed as it tore.

A long, jagged gouge carved through the breastplate, sparks spraying into the air.
The claw did not break flesh—but it came terrifyingly close.
The Oathforged surged toward their captain, firing as they ran.
Bolter rounds hammered Rax’s torso, each shot detonating against daemon-fused muscle.
But he only roared with mirth, shrugging them off like rain.

One Oathforged reached Loken first—and was instantly crushed.
Rax grabbed the Astartes by the skull, squeezed, and dropped the twitching body like refuse.
Another lunged and was cut in half by the daemon-arm’s backhand.

Rax laughed—deep, booming, triumphant.
“You inspire loyalty,” he taunted. “Good. I will enjoy remaking you in Krell’s image.”
Loken regained his footing, sliding across the gore-slick earth to retrieve Mournfang.
He turned, swung—aimed for the throat.
The blade connected and barely carved an inch.
Rax’s skin had become tougher than Terminator armour.
The wound leaked blood, but only a trickle—barely a scratch.

Rax snarled.
He swung the chainaxe.
Loken brought Mournfang up and the impact hurled him like a ragdoll.
He smashed into the ground twenty paces away, armour cracking along the ribs.

Stars burst across his vision.
His breath came in ragged gasps.
His limbs trembled—not from fear, but from internal damage and shock.
Still—he got up.
Slowly.
Painfully.
Mournfang as his cane, his anchor.

Rax paced toward him, massive now—towering, hunched, a beast fused with a man’s mind.
“You live,” Rax crooned. “Good. Resilience is important in a specimen.”
Loken spat blood and steadied his breathing.
“You will not have me,” he said.
“Not alive. Not dead. Not ever.”

Rax chuckled, the sound like a furnace cracking under pressure.
“We shall see.”

Warp energy began to coil around him, thick as storm clouds.
Lightning rippled across his corrupted limbs.
His axe glowed with runes that writhed like living serpents.
Two Oathforged charged and disintegrated as the warp field burst outward,
their armour and flesh atomized in a flare of impossible light.

Rax stepped forward, voice booming:
“This will kill you. And everything you ever were.”

He lunged.
The warp-charged axe slammed into Mournfang.
The collision detonated like a thunderclap.

Loken screamed—not in fear, but in raw, searing pain as the warp energy crawled over him.
It clung to him like burning oil, ripping through his armour, seeping into every wound.
Blood streamed from his eyes, ears, and teeth.
He dropped to one knee.
The end felt inevitable.
Rax pressed harder.
“Break,” he snarled. “BREAK!”

And then—
A surge of sapphire light cut through the air.

Lexicanum Naevor Kalthis burst into the melee like a comet,
lightning coiled around his gauntlets, robes shredded, armour cracked—but alive.
He extended his hand.
“RAX!”

The psychic bolt slammed into the warp storm around Rax.
Their energies smashed together like colliding stars.
The explosion whited out sight and sound.

Loken collapsed forward.
Rax reeled, ripping his axe free to face this new threat.
Kalthis stood alone, staff crackling, eyes glowing like twin suns.
“You defile the souls of warriors,” Kalthis said.
“I will purge you—for the Emperor, for Khantos, for every life you corrupted.”

Rax’s grin returned.
“You?” he laughed.
“You are NOTHING.”

He swung the chainaxe.
Kalthis braced—and knew.
His fate was sealed.
He whispered, almost softly:
“My duty… ends.”
And detonated.

The psychic explosion tore outward in a screaming sphere of blue-white annihilation.
Dozens of Black Host Astartes vaporized instantly.
Talonborn and second-generation Ascendant Sons were hurled away in burning pieces.
Even Oathforged were caught in the edge and torn asunder.
Silence—brief, horrified—fell.
Dust settled.

Rax stood in the center, barely upright.
His armour hung in tatters.
His body was cooked, mangled, half-melted—but alive.
He laughed, blood bubbling from his throat.
“So weak,” he croaked.
“So very weak—”
His grin froze.

A blade tip burst through his chest—
glowing white, holy, unbreakable.
MOURNFANG.
Rax turned his head slowly—
and saw Loken behind him, helm off, face bleeding, eyes burning with pure resolve.
“This,” Loken whispered, “is for him.”
He wrenched Mournfang free and pulled it in a smooth arc as the blade carved through Rax’s neck.
Black blood fountained as Rax’s head flew free, spinning into the carnage.
The body slumped forward, finally still.

Loken fell to one knee beside the corpse, leaning heavily on his sword.
“Rest well, brother,” he murmured, voice cracking.
The Oathforged saw the kill.
They roared—
not with triumph,
but with vengeance fulfilled—
and charged anew into the broken Black Host ranks, carving a path through the shaken traitors.

But not all watched in awe.
Not far away—
Abaddon
and
Orsus
had seen everything.

Abaddon’s lips curled into a small, vicious smile.
“Your lieutenant has fallen,” he said.
“Your corruption dies with him.”
Orsus’s face twisted with fury.
“No,” he hissed.
“He was but the beginning.”

And the battlefield braced itself for the next catastrophe. It blazed. The air between them was molten.
Veltrax burned in Abaddon’s grip, shedding white radiance that cut through the smoke like a blade of its own.
The light reflected along the broken ferrocrete, glinting off pools of blood and shattered armour, forcing Orsus to recoil with a snarl.
The brightness irritated him—worse, it enraged him.

A tremor of disgust rippled through his warped features.
Then—with a single flex of muscle—he extended his left arm.
A massive archaic Lightning Claw, each talon etched with crawling runes, snapped open like the jaws of a hunting beast.
Beneath it, a custom-fitted combi-bolter locked into place with an ominous click.

Orsus struck—
the talons carving down with the force of a collapsing tower.
Abaddon pivoted, armour scraping as he twisted his torso aside.
The claws clipped his pauldron and tore through the edge of his gorget—but Veltrax’s counterstroke flashed upward, carving a bright line across Orsus’s torso.
The traitor staggered back a half-step.

Around them, the battle roared.
Hellas Sycar and his Justaerin charged into the Talonborn line like a storm front.
Sycar’s chainfist crushed through a hulking mutant Astartes,
but another Talonborn impaled one of the Justaerin before Sycar could intercept, the corpse thudding to the ground with a heavy clang.
Abaddon took another swing—fast, brutal, clean.

Orsus twisted, avoiding the killing blow, but not before Veltrax scraped across his chest once more,
sending sparks cascading off warped ceramite.

Abaddon didn’t pause.
He spun with a veteran’s economy, sweeping Orsus’s legs—
miss—
and rose into a high, whirling strike that should’ve opened the traitor from shoulder to hip.

But Orsus dropped under it, lightning claw raised like a shield.
Metal screamed as the talons caught Veltrax, the two weapons locked for a heartbeat.
Then Orsus retaliated.

The lightning claw slashed sideways—
blocked—

and his black sword followed with a downward arc that would’ve separated Abaddon’s head.
Abaddon caught it on Veltrax’s guard, sparks erupting.

But Orsus pulled the trigger.
The combi-bolter bucked—
a blast of mass-reactive fire detonated inches from Abaddon’s face.
The shell scraped across his cheek, ripped open flesh, and burst somewhere behind him.

Blood ran down his jaw.
They broke apart, circling, breathing hard.
“You fight well,” Orsus said, voice rough with manic satisfaction.
Abaddon wiped his cheek with the back of his gauntlet.
“You disappoint me,” he said coldly.
“That our father chose you to replace me… shows he was running out of options.”
The words hit Orsus like a spear.
His face twitched.
His jaw clenched.
His stance shifted—not in readiness, but in injury.
It was a wound deeper than anything Veltrax could inflict.

A lifetime of jealousy, resentment, and unspoken fear flickered behind Orsus’s eyes.
He trembled with hatred.
“I am not a replacement,” he hissed.
“I am the upgrade. The improvement. The rightful heir to the Sixteenth’s legacy.”

Abaddon smirked—deliberately.
“I see only a cheap imitation.”
That tore the last shreds of restraint from Orsus.

He screamed—a raw, animal roar—
and his face warped, bones pushing under skin, muscles swelling, veins bulging with warp-thickened blood.
Exactly what Abaddon was waiting for.

Orsus grabbed for the injector at his belt—the serum that prevented his full collapse into mutation.
And Abaddon moved.

Veltrax cut through the air like a falling star. The blade shattered the syringe with a bright, ripping crack.
Chem-gel and broken glass splattered across Orsus’s arm.
Orsus froze, staring at the ruins of the injector. Abaddon stepped back, raising his sword in mock salute.
“No more crutches. Show me what you really are.”

A second scream tore from Orsus’s throat. His body convulsed—twisting, bulking, contorting.
His armour fused into his skin, melded plates bubbling into living sinew.
The lightning claw lengthened into talons. His stance became animalistic. Saliva dripped from new fangs.
He charged with speed that blurred.
Claws slashed.

Abaddon evaded—
—but the second strike came faster, heavier.
The talons tore through his terminator breastplate.
Metal buckled.
Blood sprayed.

Abaddon staggered—but did not fall.
He countered with a diagonal slash across Orsus’s ribs, opening a deep groove in the living armour.
Orsus reeled, but still upright—still burning with anger.
He reached for another vial—this one glowing green—and drank it in one swallow.
The scream that followed rattled the air as his form snapped back into a semi-coherent Astartes shape.
Still monstrous.
Still fused with armour.
But controlled enough to fight with precision.

Abaddon spat blood and steadied Veltrax. The blade glowed white-hot.
The traitor’s black sword flickered with warp-fire.

They clashed again. Bolter fire. Volkite beams. Talons ripping into ceramite.
Veltrax carving through warp-metal. Shockwaves rippled under their feet, cracking stone.

And behind them—
Sotha finally arrived.
The Chief Librarian stormed through the battlefield with his stave raised, psychic lightning exploding from his gauntlets,
vaporising three Ascendant Sons in a single pulse. His arrival was answered instantly by the arrival of Dark Apostles,
Word Bearer cult-champions chanting warp-rites as they descended on the Nameless.

Sotha’s lip curled in contempt.
“My brothers,” he said with venom.
“How low you’ve crawled. Heretics. Traitors. Failures.”
His Librarians formed around him, their psychic auras flaring with cold precision.
The Word Bearers hissed blasphemies.
And Sotha attacked.

But further ahead—
The duel between Abaddon and Orsus dragged on.
Minutes bled into hours.
Abaddon’s armour was torn in a dozen places. Blood dripped steadily. His breathing grew heavier, slower.
His vision blurred occasionally—but not enough to dull his will.
Orsus laughed between blows.
“You’re slowing, Ezekyle.”

He ducked a swing and countered with a brutal punch that cracked Abaddon’s pauldron.
“You can’t win. Look around.”

Abaddon did.
For the first time in the entire battle—he saw it.
The Nameless were collapsing. Oatharii corpses lay broken across the field.
The Knights of the Grey Flame fought in thinning ranks.
Even the Imperial Fists were showing fractures in their lines. And behind the traitor vanguard—
the warp conduit still pulsed, vomiting more Black Host warriors onto the field.

Orsus leaned close, voice dripping with poison.
“Surrender,” he whispered.
“Come with me. Come home. Our father waits. The Sixteenth is incomplete without its true sons.”
Abaddon’s jaw clenched.
“I have no father,” he said.
“Not anymore.”
Orsus shrugged.
“So be it.”

He charged—ascending again toward the killing blow.
Around them, the Nameless were dying.
The wall trembled. The warp flared.

And for the first time—

Abaddon realised this truly might be their last stand.

Chapter Text

The battlefield of the Helios Gate had become a grave.
Nameless. Imperial Fists. Daemons. Black Host abominations.
All lay mingled in a carpet of shattered ceramite and torn flesh so thick that every step sank ankle-deep into ruin.
The air reeked of ozone, blood, and burning warp-matter.
The ground shook from distant Titan duels.
The sky glowed sickly violet around the ragged wound of the warp conduit, still vomiting traitor forces into reality.
The Nameless were dying by inches.

Mathar Vorr, half a man after Krell’s claws had torn his arm and eye from him, still fought like a wrathful god.
One arm gone.
One eye ruined.
Armour split. Blood dripping freely.
But the Knight-Master of the Grey Flame refused to fall.
He led the battered remnants of his Knights in a push that looked impossible—
charging into daemon packs and soul-grafted monstrosities with only his blade, Iron Revenant, held steady in his remaining hand.
Beside him, Menerak Vaul fought like a prophet in fury—psychic lightning rippling from his gauntlets in white-hot lashes,
incinerating daemon limbs and forcing back Ascendant Sons long enough for the Knights to strike.

Still—they were drowning.
Every metre gained cost another Knight.
Every charge ended with more bodies left behind.

The Black Shield Vow had formed a ring around their wounded captain.
Captain Rhemar, armour half-shattered, ribcage exposed beneath cracked ceramite, still stood upright through force of will alone.
His warriors clustered protectively, firing in ruthless, surgical bursts while he leaned on his broken sword as if it were part of him.

The Cerulean Wrath fared no better.
Captain Calen Dryst had a fist-sized crater in his chest plate, crudely sealed by combat foam and prayer.
Blood still seeped down his abdomen in dark, steady rivulets.
He watched two more of his warriors dragged down screaming by warp-spawned horrors and forced himself not to falter.
“Stand ground!” he barked, voice hoarse.
“Stand or die on your knees!”
Beside him, Codicier Hestian Ral stood motionless—robes burned away, flesh scorched, eyes bleeding—
but his psychic aura still shimmered like the heat-haze of a furnace.

Every breath he took seemed to hurt, but he refused to fall.
The Aegis Blade had been broken.
Captain Tiberius Volan was gone—dragged down by half a dozen Ascendant Sons.
Only the suicidal defiance of Codicier Etrann Vorsk,
who unleashed a psychic detonation that vaporised himself along with the monsters, had saved Volan’s life.
Volan now lay unconscious in the Imperial Fists’ bunker line, being strapped down with sealant clamps by medicae servitors.
The Oathforged held the center, forming a protective wall around Garviel Loken,
who was being treated in the shadow of the Nameless standard.
His armour was torn open.
Half his ribs were cracked.

The wounds from Rax’s claws still oozed blood despite three apothecaries fighting to stabilise him.
Every few seconds, Loken coughed blood onto the ground—
yet whenever one of his Oathforged began to panic, he reached up, gripped their vambrace, and whispered:
“Hold.”

Further back, Akaran Sotha and his Librarius fought the Word Bearers in a duel that lit the battlefield with storms of psychic discharge.
Warp-fire and sanctioned lightning collided mid-air, forming incandescent flares that turned shadows into jagged distortions.
Sotha spat a curse as another Dark Apostle forced a psychic backlash through his wards.
“Traitors,” he hissed.
“Every one of you will burn.”
His Librarians closed around him.
Warp-lightning boiled.
Daemons screamed.
The air cracked with every gesture.
But they were being pushed back.

Even Sotha felt it—the weight of a legion’s worth of corruption pressing against a handful of sanctioned psykers.

At the forefront, Abaddon fought alone against the monster his brother had become.
Blood pooled around his boots.
His breath came in ragged pulls.
His vision blurred at the edges.
One by one, the Nameless were falling.
Their shields were cracking.
Their lines were splintering.

And still—still—the warp conduit vomited more traitors across the battlefield.
Horras Host elites.
Soul-grafted aberrants.
Ranks of daemon-bound infantry.

Abaddon tasted copper and smoke.
This was the truth:
They were not going to reach their gene-father.
Not like this.
Not alive.
He had failed.
He clenched his jaw, the taste of blood bitter between his teeth.
If they were to fall—

they would fall so violently that the Warmaster would feel the wound echo across the stars.
He glared at Orsus—
now standing tall again, his mutations stabilized by the vile warp-nutrients pulsing through his veins.

Orsus flexed his claw and rolled his neck.
“You are finished,” he said, voice thick with certainty.
“Your defiance was always meaningless.”
Abaddon lifted Veltrax.
The blade glowed brighter—responding not to fury, but to resolve.
“I will make sure Horus feels your failure,” Abaddon said softly.

Orsus snarled.
“I’ll bring him your heart myself.”
They collided again—
a thunderclap of white and black light that shattered the ground beneath them.

Ruin shook the heavens.
A sound like the rending of steel and the roar of a breaking storm tore across the battlefield.

Both warriors froze—
instinct overriding hatred.
Abaddon looked up first.

Thunderhawks burst through the clouds—dozens of them—flying low, engines screaming, guns blazing.
Their cannons stitched fiery lines across the Black Host ranks,
exploding daemon engines, tearing apart formations, blasting soul-grafted monstrosities into blood mist.

Orsus stiffened.
“Reinforcements?”
His voice faltered.
Abaddon’s eyes widened—not in surprise, but recognition.
Dropships opened.

Astartes descended in black and gold armour, pauldrons trimmed in purple and cobalt—
the colours of the loyalist remnants of the Emperor’s Children.
At their head—

Saul Tarvitz.
Alive.
Armoured.
Burning with purpose.

He hit the ground with the force of an orbital strike, Phoenix Gauntlet warriors landing around him like meteors.
Tarvitz raised his blade and bellowed:
“FOR TERRA!”

The battlefield shook.
And then, something even heavier fell from the skies.
A thunderous crash. A quake that rippled underfoot. The ground split. Smoke billowed.
A colossal silhouette emerged.

Rylanor the Unyielding.
Ancient. Venerated.
The last true heart of the III Legion.
His sarcophagus glowed like a furnace as he stepped forward, seismic footsteps flattening traitor formations.
“TRAITORS—”
his vox amplified voice boomed like a god’s wrath.
“—YOU SHALL FIND NO FORGIVENESS HERE.”

Before Orsus could react, Rylanor charged— a sprinting behemoth of ceramite and hate—
and slammed into him with enough force to send the traitor captain flying.
At that exact moment—another scream tore across the battlefield:
Jetbikes.
A white blur. Engines shrieking. Storm clouds parting.

The White Scars descended in a slicing wedge of speed and lightning.
They tore through daemon packs and Black Host infantry like a scalpel through rot, carving open an entire flank in seconds.
Loyalist reinforcements had arrived—and the battlefield shook with new life.

The Nameless rallied.
The Imperial Fists straightened.

The tide reversed and the Black Host wavered for the first time.
And Abaddon— bloodied, exhausted, armour cracked— smiled.

No greetings were exchanged.
No words of reunion were spoken.
Rylanor rammed Orsus again, roaring with ancient fury.

Tarvitz led his warriors straight into the collapsing Black Host lines, cutting a path toward the Oatharii.
The White Scars surged past Abaddon in a lightning storm of blades and engines.
The enemy broke.
The tide shifted.
And the war—for a heartbeat—belonged to the Imperium once again.

Thunderhawks screamed overhead, their afterburns leaving contrails of smoke across a sky torn by warp-light.
The ground beneath the Helios Gate shook with every blast,
every bolter detonation, every dying roar of a daemon dragged howling back into the warp.

Amidst the chaos, Rylanor the Unyielding clashed with Zakhael Orsus.
The venerable Dreadnought—once a hero of the III Legion, now a god of steel and vengeance—
met the abomination born of the Warmaster’s experiments in a duel that bent the air around them.

Each blow was a seismic event. Each impact sent tremors through the ruins, collapsing already-broken fortifications.
Abaddon watched for a heartbeat—the two titans hammering each other in the haze of smoke and flame—
and then turned sharply to Saul Tarvitz, who had landed with his Phoenix Gauntlet not thirty metres away.

There was no time for greetings. No time for reunion.
“Find Loken,” Abaddon commanded, voice cold and absolute.
“Find him and hold the line.”

Tarvitz met his gaze through his helm lenses, gave a single nod, and turned to his warriors.
“Phoenix Gauntlet, with me!” he shouted.

They moved—black and gold Astartes forming a spearhead as they charged across the broken earth
toward the distant, half-toppled standard of the Oathforged.
Bolters barked. Jump packs ignited.
Their path cut through the chaos, driven by the single purpose Abaddon had given them.

Abaddon turned back just in time to see Rylanor rip a slab of ferrocrete from the ground and hurl it like a boulder.
Orsus met it with a roar—his lightning claw, the Talons of Horus, flashing with runes that flared red as they drank from the warp.
The slab shattered midair, pulverised into dust.
The recoil cracked the ground.

Rylanor responded in kind.
His Kheres Assault Cannon, reattached and gleaming with fresh ammunition feed lines, came alive with the grinding growl of rotating barrels.
He unleashed a torrent of mass-reactive shells into Orsus.
Each impact flared with muzzle-fire.
Each detonation sent ripples of kinetic force smashing into the Black Host’s corrupted champion.

Orsus staggered, armour flaying under the storm of fire—but he didn’t fall.
Rylanor stepped forward through his own gunsmoke, left arm raised, heavy flamer roaring.
A sheet of burning promethium turned the ground to glass.
Daemon constructs ignited, screaming as their forms unravelled into warp mist.

Astartes of the Black Host rushed at him—Orsus’ own—but Rylanor crushed one underfoot and seized another in his massive power fist,
using the screaming traitor as a bludgeon to batter a third into ruin before throwing what remained at Orsus.

The corpse struck Orsus hard enough to stagger him back a step.
The traitor captain cleaved the body in half with one contemptuous swing and turned just in time to meet Abaddon.

Abaddon came from the side like a thunderbolt.
Veltrax carved through the haze in a brilliant horizontal arc aimed squarely at Orsus’ torso.
The impact was blinding—blade meeting claw, sparks flying, steel shrieking.
Orsus met the blow with his talons, the parry throwing embers across both their armour.

Abaddon pivoted on the block, turning the failed strike into momentum—spinning, using the torque to reverse the attack.
Veltrax screamed as it came around again, but Orsus met it once more with his claw.
Too close for a third swing, Abaddon drew his volkite pistol and fired point-blank.
The shot burned a glowing wound through Orsus’ pauldron, stripping layers of flesh and armour.
The stench of scorched ceramite and vaporised blood filled the air.

Orsus howled and stumbled back, energy rippling through the broken ferrocrete beneath him.
He raised his claw, deflecting a second volley from Rylanor, and leapt backwards through smoke and ruin to gain distance.
For the first time since his rebirth, Orsus looked uncertain.

He glared between the two—Abaddon with Veltrax glowing like a shard of the sun, and Rylanor, his smoking barrels still whining down.
The rune-lights on Orsus’s armour flickered and pulsed, erratic, unsteady, as though his very essence struggled to decide what it was.
His breaths came in ragged, uneven pulls through his helm grille.
His control was slipping.

He took a single, deliberate breath—like a drowning man forcing himself to stand—and steadied his stance.
The warpfire that had begun to coil along his armour dimmed slightly. He fixed his gaze on Abaddon. For a heartbeat, he was calm again.

And then he saw it.
That faint curl of the lip. That slight, knowing smile.
Mockery.

It was the spark that lit the powder.
The whispers—ever-present, patient, vile—grew louder.
They slithered through his mind, honeyed and cruel. He mocks you.
He was always the better one.
The true heir. You were made in his shadow.

Orsus ground his teeth, trying to drown them out, but the voices grew bolder.
They were inside him, clawing, insinuating. You are nothing but a replacement.
A shadow in borrowed flesh. When you fall, the Warmaster will not mourn.
He will call upon his true son—the First Captain, the Favoured.
The words cut deeper than any blade.

He looked at Abaddon again and saw—perhaps imagined—the certainty in the younger warrior’s eyes,
the righteous fire that mirrored what Orsus had once felt before the corruption, before the bargain.
And for an instant, for the briefest flicker, he hated him—not as an enemy, but as a reflection of everything he had lost.

Abaddon, unaware of the tightening spiral within Orsus, took a step forward, Veltrax burning bright.
“You were never worthy of him,” Abaddon snarled. “You will fail him again. Just as you failed yourself.”
The words struck like bolts.

Something inside Orsus cracked.
The world around him blurred—the air rippled, sound dulled.
His mind, desperate to protect itself, fled into the vision.
He saw the future the whispers promised.
Horus triumphant. Terra aflame.

And there—beside the Warmaster’s throne—stood Abaddon, resplendent in black and gold, the Talons of Horus on his hands.

That is mine.
The thought became a snarl. The snarl became a roar.
“No,” he rasped. His voice broke into a scream that shook the very air.

“No! THAT IS MINE!”

And the walls within him shattered.
The daemonic essence—carefully rationed, barely leashed—burst free.
It devoured restraint, drank deep from his anguish, and exulted. His soul was meat to it, a feast of rage and envy.
He had always walked the edge, trading pieces of himself for fleeting power, thinking himself its master.
But now, pressed to the brink, there was no balance, no control.
He could feel it calling.
Not the kind of power one wields—
—the kind that owns you.

Warp-light erupted from the rents in his armour.
His helm split open as claws of light tore through his flesh, reshaping, reforging.
His scream became inhuman. The ground trembled as the air split open with daemonic laughter.

When it cleared, Orsus no longer stood among men.
The thing that faced Abaddon was a creature of the abyss—its eyes burning like coals, its flesh pulsing with the heartbeat of the warp itself.
His wounds were gone. His voice, when it came, was a distortion of mockery and triumph entwined.
“The fun ends here, Abaddon,” it hissed, lips no longer quite its own.
“You will die—and our father will welcome me home.”

Chapter Text

Abaddon narrowed his eyes, Veltrax burning white in his grasp.
Before him, Orsus stood transfigured—a grotesque silhouette of what had once been an Astartes.
Flesh and metal had fused into something obscene, veins of warp-light pulsing beneath armour that rippled like molten iron.
Wings of smoke and shadow unfurled and folded again, half-formed, as though reality itself was reluctant to hold him.
A daemon prince now walked the world.

Rylanor moved first.
The venerable dreadnought’s vox-emitters roared a wordless bellow—an ancient, grinding sound of fury that vibrated the air like thunder.
His footfalls cratered the earth as he thundered forward, every step a defiance of the heresy he had watched consume the galaxy.
“This abomination will not stand!” Rylanor’s voice was a grinding roar through static and age.
The Kheres autocannon spun up with a shriek, and streams of incandescent shells tore through the air.

Abaddon was already moving, matching the dreadnought’s pace, Veltrax held in a two-handed guard.
Together, man and machine—sons of different ages—charged to meet the corrupted first captain.

Orsus did not flinch.
He met them head-on, laughing—a deep, warping sound that distorted the air.
The first blow struck Rylanor like a hammer of gods.
The daemon’s taloned fist, glowing with runes of burning malice, smashed into the dreadnought’s torso.
Metal shrieked and groaned; Rylanor staggered a step back, the ground splitting beneath his weight.

Orsus’s other hand shot out, catching Veltrax mid-swing.
The sacred blade burned his flesh, steam rising where sanctified metal met cursed matter, but the daemon only smiled.
“I feel it!” Orsus howled, voice echoing in tones that were not his own. “The power! The truth! You are nothing to me now!”

Abaddon’s lip curled. “You’ve already failed, Orsus. The moment you surrendered yourself.”
He spat the words like venom, stepping closer, the glow of Veltrax intensifying.
“Keep your damned throne beside the Warmaster. It will burn with him.”

Orsus’s laughter became a snarl.
“Fool. You think you can defy destiny? You think you can defy me?”
He lunged—faster than thought, his talons a blur.
Abaddon’s pistol snapped up, the volkite discharge flaring red.
The beam struck true, slamming into Orsus’s chestplate, fusing armour and flesh in molten agony.

The daemon screamed—half in pain, half in pleasure—staggering as the plate glowed red-hot.
Abaddon moved with ruthless precision, plunging Veltrax deep into the smouldering wound.
The sanctified blade blazed like the dawn, and Orsus howled,
his entire frame convulsing as holy fire met daemonic corruption.
He raised his talons to strike—but Rylanor was there.

The dreadnought’s great fist swung through the haze, wreathed in flame.
It connected with Orsus’s shoulder in a detonation of impact.
The daemon was lifted bodily from his feet and flung across the field,
carving a trench through the broken earth before crashing down in a roar of displaced air and dust.

Rylanor advanced, servos whirring, smoke venting from his cracked carapace.
“Stay down, monster,” he growled, leveling his cannon.

Orsus rose slowly, armour cracked and flesh hissing where it met the open air.
He tilted his head as if listening to some unseen voice, then smiled—a terrible, knowing smile.
“My turn.”

He vanished in a blur.
In an instant he was before Abaddon—faster than any Astartes could track.
The impact was cataclysmic.

The Talons of Horus punched through terminator plate, piercing ceramite and flesh alike.
Abaddon gasped, blood spraying his visor as he was lifted from the ground.

Rylanor bellowed in fury, moving to intercept.
The claws dug deeper. Abaddon’s vision blurred, his strength fading. His hand slackened.
Veltrax slipped from his grip, clattering against the rubble with a sound that echoed like a death knell.

Orsus leaned close, the heat of the warp radiating from his form.
“Do you see, brother? I am the true heir. The Warmaster’s chosen. Not you.”
But the daemon’s triumph lasted a heartbeat too long.

Rylanor’s massive hand closed around Orsus’s torso.
The power fist locked tight, servos whining as the dreadnought wrenched the daemon free, flinging him aside like a ragdoll.
Abaddon crashed to one knee, coughing blood, but his will refused to break.
He forced himself upright, reaching for Veltrax even as pain wracked his body.

Behind him, Rylanor’s fury was unleashed. He smashed Orsus down with thunderous blows, each impact shaking the ground.
The power fist descended again and again, smashing armour, bone, and daemonic essence alike.
A gout of flame followed—a roaring inferno from the dreadnought’s heavy flamer that engulfed Orsus entirely.

The Kheres cannon spun up once more, shell casings spilling like rain.
The barrage hammered into the daemon prince, driving him deeper into the ground, shredding through smoke and flesh alike.

And yet—
Through the inferno, something moved.

Orsus rose.
The fire clung to him but did not consume. His form warped further, his talons lengthening,
his eyes burning brighter with every heartbeat.
With a scream of defiance and hatred, he lunged again, driving his claws deep into Rylanor’s frontal armour.

The dreadnought staggered, hydraulics shrieking as the talons tore through layered ceramite,
plunging toward the sarcophagus at his core.
“Ancient!” Abaddon shouted, forcing himself to his feet.

But Rylanor did not yield. Even as Orsus tore into him,
he seized the daemon’s arm and locked it in place, servos grinding under impossible strain.
His voice came through the vox in bursts of static and fury.
“If I burn,” he growled, “then you burn with me.”
The battlefield shuddered with their struggle—steel, daemonflesh, and fury entwined.
And Abaddon, bleeding and broken, raised Veltrax once more.

Orsus’s claws pierced through the dreadnought’s frontal armour with a shriek of tortured metal.
The talons struck the atomantic shielding within, sparks cascading as the field flared bright against the daemonic intrusion.
The venerable machine groaned beneath the pressure, servos whining as the daemon prince bore down with inhuman strength.
“Fall, ancient!” Orsus bellowed, his voice a blend of rage and warped triumph. “Your time is done!”
But the end did not come.

A blur of black and gold crashed into the fray—Abaddon, bloodied but unbowed, charging at full speed.
Veltrax burned in his hand like a star torn from heaven.
He struck with all the fury left in him, the blade cleaving down in a blazing arc.
The daemon’s talons caught it mid-swing, the impact detonating in a shockwave that tore the dust from the air.

Rylanor was freed—barely.
The dreadnought’s limbs screeched as his damaged systems fought for stability.
Smoke poured from his cracked torso; his autocannon spat sparks instead of shells.

Abaddon’s voice came low through the vox. “Ancient, stand down. I’ll take it from here.”
Rylanor’s reply was immediate—and defiant.
“No, First Captain. I have lived long enough. I know when my time has come.”

The venerable warrior took one heavy step forward, his broken machine-body groaning under the strain.
“Let this be my final duty.”

Abaddon hesitated, the words heavy in his throat.
Then, with solemn respect, he nodded once. “Then make it count, brother.”

The two turned to face the daemon prince. Orsus was rising again, his form fractured but far from finished.
Smoke curled from wounds that should have felled him, his grin still wide and hateful.
Abaddon’s gaze flicked to his own arm—trembling, his lifeblood leaking through cracks in his armour.
Two strikes, perhaps three, he thought grimly. That was all his failing body could give.

Rylanor’s sensors clicked faintly, and though he had no human eyes,
Abaddon felt the dreadnought’s perception fix on him—as if the ancient had read his thought.

Without another word, Rylanor surged forward.
His autocannon roared once, then sputtered, sparks flying wildly as it seemed to jam.
Orsus sneered, stepping aside from the line of fire.
The dreadnought pressed on, heavy flamer belching a torrent of fire that the daemon dodged, moving faster than thought.

The corrupted first captain raised his talons, preparing to meet the dreadnought’s charge.
And that was when the trap was sprung.
The autocannon roared back to life.
It had never jammed—only paused.

The ancient’s ruse complete, Rylanor unleashed the weapon at point-blank range.
The storm of explosive shells tore into Orsus’s torso, flaying away armour and flesh.
The daemon staggered, his laughter replaced by a guttural roar.

Abaddon saw his moment.
He surged forward behind the dreadnought, Veltrax blazing white with sanctified fury.
Rylanor struck first—his power fist, wreathed in fire, hammered into Orsus’s face, snapping his head back.
Abaddon followed, driving Veltrax deep into the daemon’s chest.
The blade cut through corrupted muscle and warp-stuff, severing the essence that bound the creature’s form to reality.

But Orsus, even dying, was not finished.
“I shall not fail!” he roared as he raised his hand to reveal the corrupted blade that was lost during his transformation.
He had unknowingly recovered it for the final blow.

Now, with his last surge of strength,
he drove his own twisted blade forward, stabbing it straight into Rylanor’s torso—through plate, through wire, through memory.
The weapon buried itself in the dreadnought’s sarcophagus, piercing the ancient core where the warrior’s remains were entombed.
Lights flickered and the ancient bellowed.

“I am Rylanor of the Nameless, Ancient of Rites, Venerable of the Palatine Host,
and proud servant of the Emperor of Mankind, Beloved by my brothers!
I shall not tolerate you vile traitor!”

Rylanor moved forward, catching Orsus in his burning grip, locking him in place.
The two titans froze in their final struggle—daemon and machine locked in death.

Abaddon shouted, his voice breaking through vox and storm alike. “RYLANOR!”

He swung again. Veltrax flared like a sun.
The blade took Orsus across the throat, the light consuming shadow, and in one perfect, unbroken motion—
the head came free.

The daemon’s body convulsed, the warp-light within him shattering.
His form collapsed inward, torn apart by the very power he had claimed.
Orsus fell—body crumbling into ash and black fire—leaving nothing but a hollow echo of his scream.

Rylanor remained standing for a heartbeat longer. Then, slowly, he sank to one knee.
His frame was fractured beyond repair, armour blackened and sparking.
Abaddon ran to him, resting a gauntleted hand upon the cracked sarcophagus.
The dreadnought’s vox crackled weakly. “Was… it done?”

Abaddon’s voice was low, steady. “It’s done, brother. The traitor is purged.”
Rylanor was silent for a moment. Then came a faint, static-laden chuckle.
“Good… “ and then for a moment there was silence.
“I am cold, Ezekyle. So cold. And I think… I’ve forgotten this sensation…”

Abaddon bowed his head, his voice heavy with memory.
“Remember the day you stood with us, ancient one.
The day you joined the Nameless—not as a relic of vengeance, but as a brother reborn.”
The dreadnought’s reply came softer now, fading between bursts of static.

“Yes… brothers. My new Legion. My final battle… not for revenge, but for them. For all of them.
Perhaps the Emperor… never meant for me to be here. But perhaps… it was His will after all.”

Abaddon’s voice cracked, quiet but resolute.
“Then rest, Rylanor. You will be remembered as one of the Emperor’s true sons.
You fought for truth. For the Emperor. For the Nameless.”

Rylanor’s final words were almost a whisper.
“Then I am content.”

The light within his chest flickered—once, twice—and went dark.
The venerable dreadnought, last of his kind, fell still.
The storm of battle continued to rage around them, but for Abaddon, the world had fallen silent.
He knelt beside his fallen brother and did not move.
For a long time, he simply stayed there, in respect to a hero of the Imperium.

Chapter Text

The death of Orsus rippled through the battlefield like a shockwave.
Even the traitors felt it—a psychic tremor that cut through the howling warp-storm—
but it did not slow them. It only seemed to drive them further into madness.

Through the ruin-choked avenues and shattered bastions of the Helios Gate,
Captain Saul Tarvitz and the warriors of Phoenix Gauntlet arrived in a blaze of bolter fire and burning exhaust.
Beside him strode Codicier Oran Drell, his force staff wreathed in psychic flame, eyes glowing with the fury of the empyrean.
They came not as saviors, but as the last hope for brothers on the brink.

The Oathforged, surrounded and pinned beneath the ruins of the transit causeway, fought like trapped gods.
Their captain, Garviel Loken, knelt at the heart of the beleaguered formation, unable to rise,
his armor torn and blackened from his duel with Rax.
Even wounded, he still commanded the line—his voice hoarse,
his hand gripping the Nameless standard that yet stood upright among the corpses.

When Tarvitz reached him, relief passed through the line like breath through dying lungs.
“Saul,” Loken rasped, his eye widening. “Where were you?”
“Pinned on the Stratophex levels,” Tarvitz replied, his tone grim.
“Varro found us. White Scars held the route open long enough for us to break free.
The Lion’s Gate Command gave us what they could—re-armament, reinforcements, and Thunderhawks to reach you.”

Loken nodded weakly. “And Varro?”
“He’s coming,” Tarvitz answered with a faint grin.
“And… he’s bringing company. You’ll see soon enough.”

Before Loken could speak again, the air shuddered.
A low, predatory hum built into a pressure wave that rolled through the gatefront like thunder.

The Black Hosts screamed as one.
Their ranks convulsed, twisting in unholy fervor as warp energy surged through their veins.
The traitor horde—once disorganized and broken—now moved as if guided by some unseen will.
The air was thick with the stench of ozone and burning flesh as daemonic warbands surged forward,
howling the name of Horus in distorted tongues.

Loken tore the Nameless banner free and raised it high.
“Form the line!” he roared. “We stand, or we die!”

Phoenix Gauntlet and the remnants of the Oathforged met the charge head-on.
Bolters roared, chainswords screamed, and the street became a killing ground of steel and blood.
Drell unleashed arcs of psychic lightning that tore daemons apart mid-leap.
Tarvitz led his warriors through the breach, blades gleaming like mirrored suns.

Above, the skies burned.
Thunderhawks strafed the enemy lines, while White Scar jetbikes swooped in and out of the melee like silver ghosts,
their engines keening with lethal precision.
The Imperial Fists, long entrenched behind the Helios Wall, opened fire from their emplacements,
turning the horizon into a furnace of exploding traitors.

On the left flank, Captain Mathar Vorr, Knight-Master of the Grey Flame, advanced at the head of his surviving warriors.
His left arm ended in a stump—his flesh having been severed during his battle with Krell.
His right eye was gone, but his conviction burned brighter than ever.
In his one good hand he wielded the Iron Revenant, his namesake blade, cutting down the corrupted with the relentless fury of faith.

“Forward!” Vorr bellowed, voice breaking through the din like a thunderclap.
“For the Emperor! For the Nameless!”

The Knights of the Grey Flame drove into the left flank,
their charge linking with Rhemar’s Black Shield Vow and what remained of Calen Dryst’s Cerulean Wrath.
Dryst himself collapsed to one knee, his chest plate split open, blood leaking between the ceramite seams.
Apothecaries dragged him back under fire, even as Tarvitz and Loken fought to close the breach.

Two of the five Oatharii captains were now down.
Tiberius Volan of the Aegis Blade had already been evacuated, saved only by Codicier Etrann Vorsk,
who unleashed a psychic detonation so vast it consumed both himself and the daemons that had surrounded them.
Now, the remnants of the Aegis Blade and Cerulean Wrath fought under Loken’s direct command.
He stood, battered but unbroken, the Nameless banner in his hand, his face lit by the flames of a burning world.
Something was wrong. He could feel it.

They had slain Rax, Krell—the entire command of the Black Host broken—and yet the traitors did not waver.
Their strength grew. Their fury deepened.
It was as though the deaths of their leaders only fed the greater shadow that ruled them.

Vorr’s knights pressed forward, but even they were being forced back step by step.
Drell was bleeding from the eyes, his psychic might burning dangerously close to exhaustion.
Tarvitz’s armor was cracked and slick with gore. The Oatharii were near collapse.

Loken planted the banner into the earth.
He could not fall here. He would not.
“For the Emperor!” he cried, voice hoarse but unyielding.
“For the Nameless! Hold the line!”

And the battered sons of the Imperium,
the last oathsworn of the dead legions, roared in answer as the storm broke upon them once more.

The battlefield had become a furnace.
Loken and Tarvitz fought shoulder to shoulder, their blades burning with exhaustion and fury.
Around them the Oatharii line buckled, the ruins of the Helios Gate awash with fire and blood.
The warp portal still raged at the center, a wound in reality vomiting endless traitor reinforcements.
The dead lay piled so high that bolter shells sparked against armour and bone alike.
The air stank of ozone and rot.

The White Scars were nearly spent—many of their jetbikes lay shattered,
their riders now fighting on foot amidst the wreckage, roaring war-cries into the storm.
Across the line, the Imperial Fists’ guns burned red-hot, and the Nameless banners were blackened by smoke.
The Loyalists were dying by inches.

And still the traitors came.
At the forefront, Abaddon fought like a living storm.
His armour was scarred, his breath ragged, but his blade Veltrax still sang with killing light.
Around him, Hellas Sycar led the surviving Justaerin, their once-midnight plate now dulled to soot and ash.
Together, they carved a killing ground through the enemy’s heart.

Yet even Abaddon—whose will had not bent since Isstvan—felt something shift.
It began as a whisper beneath the roar of the guns.
A sensation, like a pressure behind the eyes, an invisible pull dragging at his soul.
He turned, half-expecting another surge from the warp portal—but the feeling drew him elsewhere.

His gaze found the corpse of Zakhael Orsus.
The Daemon Prince’s body still lay where it had fallen, slumped amid shattered stone and broken ceramite, headless and unmoving.
Yet the air around it shimmered faintly, like heat over glass. Something was wrong.

Abaddon frowned, taking a slow step toward the body. Then—laughter.
It was faint, but unmistakable: cold, echoing, and hateful. The laughter of Orsus.
Abaddon’s grip tightened on Veltrax. “No…” he breathed.

The daemon-forged blade began to hum, its runes flaring with unnatural brightness.
It had only ever done so in the presence of souls unbound.
He turned fully now, and his eyes widened.

The corpse moved.
A twitch. Then another. Limbs convulsed, armour screeching as the massive frame shuddered upright.
Flesh tore and reknit; black ichor leaked from the ragged stump of its neck.
The battlefield seemed to pause—both sides watching in mute horror—
as the headless monster reached out, seized a nearby Black Host Astartes, and ripped off his head.

Then, impossibly, Orsus’s body pressed the severed head into its own neck stump.
Flesh writhed. Bone cracked. Veins slithered like snakes.

Within seconds, the new head fused in place—
and the face that emerged was a grotesque parody of Orsus’s own, twisted and half-formed,
a daemonic grin splitting from ear to ear.
Abaddon’s heart turned to ice.
He did not think. He charged.
“Sycar! With me!” he roared.

The Justaerin thundered forward, Sycar and his brothers firing storm bolters as they ran.
Abaddon swung Veltrax in a killing arc, the blade screaming as it met the daemon’s claw.
Sparks and warp-fire erupted as the two forces collided, hurling shockwaves through the air.

The corpse laughed. It laughed, deep and guttural, eyes burning crimson as it spoke through a throat not its own.
“You thought death could bind me, brother?” it hissed. “You thought faith could cage eternity?”

Abaddon staggered back, teeth bared.
“You should have stayed dead.”

Orsus’s new mouth split wider, flesh tearing at the corners.
“Eternal,” it crooned, “is what I was made to be.”

It turned its gaze toward the shattered form of Rylanor, whose Dreadnought shell still smoldered near the ruins.
“And that… pathetic thing… thought it could end me?”

Rage surged through Abaddon.
He lunged again, Veltrax glowing like a captured sun.
The daemon met the blow with its claws, the impact cracking stone and tearing the air apart.
“Now you’ll learn, First Captain,” Orsus snarled, forcing Abaddon back with sheer strength.
“It will be me who stands beside the Warmaster when the Imperium burns.
You will kneel—just as you always should have.”

“Never,” Abaddon spat.

The duel exploded into motion—blades flashing, claws screeching, warp-fire and lightning crashing against ceramite.
Hellas Sycar moved to flank, his power fist flaring as he swung for Orsus’s spine.
The daemon whirled, deflecting with inhuman speed;
the returning strike carved through one Justaerin entirely, splitting him from shoulder to hip.

Sycar blocked the follow-up with his power fist, sparks and blood spraying from the impact.
“You’ll find no victory here, monster!” he roared.

Abaddon used the moment to circle, his armour’s servos screaming as he brought Veltrax down in a two-handed blow.
Orsus parried—but even the daemon seemed to strain under the assault.
He laughed again, a choking, gurgling sound. “You can’t kill what’s already claimed.”
Then the power surged through him once more, a storm of raw warp-energy that scorched the earth and hurled Sycar backward.
Abaddon set his stance, Veltrax burning like a star in his hand.

Across the field, the Loyalist lines shuddered, Loken and Tarvitz still locked in their own desperate battle,
unaware of the horror rising behind them.
Abaddon narrowed his eyes, feeling the daemon’s power swelling again, impossibly vast, impossibly hungry.
“Then I’ll unmake you,” he growled, voice like iron. “Soul and all.”

The reborn Orsus smiled, lips tearing further, exposing rows of blackened fangs.
“Then come, brother,” it whispered. “Let’s finish what we began.”

And they clashed again—blade against claw, light against shadow—as the last battle of Helios Gate roared into legend.
Each clash of their blades sent concussive echoes across the broken plain, shaking the very bones of Terra.
The ground buckled beneath them, cratered and slick with ash.
Warp-light burned above, a fractured halo of madness, and every breath was heavy with the stink of ozone and daemon rot.

Abaddon moved like a mountain in motion—unstoppable, but slow now, each step laden with invisible weight.
His armour, dented and scarred, groaned as if it too suffered under the unseen pressure.
The air itself seemed to press down upon him, an oppressive gravity, as though the planet rejected both warrior and war.
Every swing of Veltrax came slower than the last.

But his will—his will remained unbroken. That alone kept him standing.
Across from him, Zakhael Orsus smiled. The daemon-grafted champion, wreathed in balefire, moved with cruel precision.
His blade sang with unnatural hunger, each motion trailing fire that stank of the warp.
He circled the Son of Horus like a predator playing with its prey, his words like poisoned honey.

“You feel it, don’t you, First Captain?” Orsus hissed.
“The weight of your failure. The burden of truth you cannot carry.”

Abaddon said nothing. He met every strike with defiance, every taunt with silence.
His eyes burned with something purer than rage—conviction.
But Orsus pressed on, voice thick with mockery and promise.
“You were forged to serve, not to rule. Join me. Cast aside your false Emperor. I can make you whole again.”

Veltrax shrieked against Orsus’s daemon blade, sparks of warp-light scattering like molten embers.
Their blows blurred into a storm of fury. Yet slowly, inexorably, Abaddon began to yield ground.
His breaths came ragged. His strength waned. Still, he refused to fall.
But words are a weapon too—and Orsus knew how to wield them.
Each poisoned syllable chipped away at Abaddon’s focus, gnawing at his fury, his faith, his control.
And then it happened. A heartbeat’s lapse. One misjudged step.
Abaddon overreached.

Orsus moved like a striking serpent. His daemon blade snapped up, parrying Veltrax aside with contemptuous strength.
The counter came faster than thought—steel met ceramite with a shriek that tore the air apart.
The blow struck across Abaddon’s chestplate,
carving deep into the black armour and finding the old scar left by the Talons of Horus in their first encounter.

Pain exploded through him, white and blinding. He staggered, one knee hitting the churned mud.
The wound burned—not merely of flesh, but of soul.
Orsus advanced, laughing, his voice rising above the din.
“There! The mighty Abaddon brought low again! How many times must you die before you learn your place?!”
He raised his blade for the killing blow.

But the moment of triumph never came.
A thunderous crash split the air as Hellas Sycar struck from the flank—
his power fist connecting with Orsus in a burst of incandescent force.
The impact folded the daemon-thing sideways, armour buckling, black ichor spraying into the air.

At the same instant, a plasma shot from Falkus Kibre’s pistol caught Orsus across the torso,
the molten bolt burning through his shoulder guard and out the other side.
Abaddon gasped, half-kneeling, Veltrax buried in the ground for support.
Sycar and Kibre formed a living wall before him, their armour drenched in soot and blood.
“You will not touch him again,” Sycar growled through his helm vox, his voice a thunderclap.

Orsus dragged himself upright, fury and disbelief mingling in his warped features.
His laughter returned, broken and guttural, echoing through the ruin around them.
With a snarl, he lifted his blade and bellowed a single command.
“ASCENDANT SONS—KILL THEM ALL!”

But fate denied him again.
The sky tore open.
Light—pure and terrible—flooded the battlefield as the heavens rained fire.
Orbital bombardments screamed down from the void, striking the Black Host lines around the warp conduit.
The world convulsed under the fury of it.

In seconds, the host was engulfed—Orsus’s army reduced to silhouettes wreathed in annihilation.
Orsus turned, roaring his defiance into the heavens.
Then came the drop pods.

Hundreds of them, screaming through the ash-filled sky, trailing contrails of fire.
They slammed into the battlefield with earth-shattering force, hatches bursting open as Ultramarines poured forth, bolters roaring.
From the eastern ridges came the deep-throated roar of Thunderhawks and Stormbirds, their wings cutting through smoke and ruin.
And at the forefront of it all, a blue-armoured figure dropped from a descending Stormbird—Captain Cassian Varro of the XIIIth.
His voice boomed across the field as he led the charge, the Oathforged kill-team at his side.
“FOR THE EMPEROR! FOR TERRA!”
The reinforcements of the XIII Legion had come at last.
And for the first time in that endless night, Abaddon smiled.

Chapter Text

The orbital bombardment of the XIIIth Fleet struck like the wrath of a dying god.
Lances of azure fire lacerated the clouds, shattering the skies above the warp conduit.
The ground convulsed beneath the bombardment’s fury;
shockwaves rolled out in rippling waves, tearing apart the scarred plain.
The warp gate—already unstable—screamed like a wounded beast as reality itself began to unravel.

Where the bombardments hit, the landscape folded in on itself.
The air burned white, then red.
A chain-reaction tore through the conduit’s structure, collapsing the rift in violent, cascading implosions.
And in that storm of apocalypse, the Ultramarines descended.

Captain Cassian Varro led the charge, a wall of cobalt fury surging forward through the firestorm.
The banners of Ultramar were blackened by soot but still gleamed bright under the ruinous light.
Bolter fire roared in disciplined volleys as the blue tide broke against the corrupted ranks of the Black Host.
Heretics burned. Daemons were ripped apart by mass-reactive shells and psychic flame.
The fury of Ultramar had come to Terra.

Amidst it all, Zakhael Orsus stood, his expression unreadable in the warp-glow that framed his features.
His daemon blade hissed, restless, but his stance had shifted—measured, uncertain.
He turned his gaze toward the maelstrom above, where the warp conduit began to collapse inward.

For the first time since the duel began, the daemon prince faltered.
Abaddon saw it, even through the haze of pain.
He forced himself upright, each breath a knife in his lungs, his armour cracked and bleeding smoke.
Veltrax trembled in his grasp, its edge stained with black ichor.
He wanted to finish it—to end Orsus, here and now—but his strength was gone.

Still, he took a single step forward.
“You run again, coward?” Abaddon rasped, his voice raw.

Orsus’s laughter was faint—almost human.
“No, First Captain. I endure.
This quarrel will end when I will it... and when you are ready to face what you truly are.”

He turned, gesturing sharply to the remnants of his Ascendant Sons.
Warp-light swelled around him as the collapsing conduit howled.
The traitors obeyed without hesitation, gathering close as the ground cracked beneath them.

With a final, venomous glare at Abaddon, Orsus and his followers stepped into the screaming warp-fire—and were gone.
The conduit imploded seconds later, folding in upon itself until only silence remained.

The battle that followed was slaughter.
The remnants of the Black Host were cut down without mercy.
Ultramarines and Nameless fought side by side, bolters thundering in perfect synchrony.
White Scars roared across the flanks on battered jetbikes, their blades flashing like lightning,
while the Imperial Fists advanced through the smoke in golden phalanxes.
Within an hour, nothing of the enemy remained.
Victory—after so much loss—had finally come.

Varro found Abaddon amid the wreckage, the ground still trembling beneath the distant bombardments.
Apothecaries and Techmarines moved among the dead, their blue and white armour streaked with ash.

When Varro reached the First Captain, he knelt beside him, helm removed, eyes bright with relief and exhaustion.
“I came as swiftly as I could,” he said, voice thick. “Forgive my lateness, brother.”

Abaddon managed a tired smile.
“You came precisely when I needed you, Cassian. There is nothing to forgive.”

Varro exhaled, then gestured to the apothecaries.
They hurried forward, scanning Abaddon’s vitals, spraying coagulants and pain suppressants across the torn plates of his armour.

“How stands the war?” Abaddon asked.
Varro’s expression changed.
“The tide turns. Lord Guilliman has arrived—with the fleets of Ultramar at his command.
And he has brought with him the First Legion.
The Lion himself leads the assault in orbit, purging what remains of the traitor fleets.
Lord Guilliman has landed upon Terra. His presence alone has rallied the defenders.”

For the first time in a long while, something unguarded passed across Abaddon’s scarred features—relief, fleeting but real.
Then Varro’s tone shifted.
“There is more.
The Vengeful Spirit has been struck—her void shields are gone.
The Emperor has boarded the Warmaster’s ship, with Dorn at his side.”

Abaddon froze.
Varro continued quietly.
“Lord Guilliman has chosen to follow. He goes to end this war himself.”

Abaddon rose, the apothecaries protesting.
His breath came ragged, his limbs trembled—but his resolve was iron.
“Then so shall I.”

Varro stepped forward, alarmed. “You can barely stand! The medicae must—”

“No.” Abaddon’s voice was low but firm.
“This is why we formed the Nameless. To reach him—to end this. My place is with my father.”

Varro hesitated, then nodded, bowing his head.
“Then may the Emperor watch over you, brother.”

Moments later, Garviel Loken arrived, his armour scarred but unbowed.
He had overheard enough to understand.
“If you go,” Loken said, “then I go with you.”

Abaddon looked up from where the Thunderhawk waited, engines whining.
Beside him stood Hellas Sycar, still crackling with residual power,
and Falkus Kibre, his terminator plate blackened from plasma discharge.
He nodded once. “Then we go together.”

Loken turned to the others.
“Captain Tarvitz—secure this ground. Gather the Nameless and reinforce Varro’s line.”
Tarvitz saluted, his armour splashed with the blood of the fallen. “It will be done.”
From the edge of the landing zone came a new voice—measured, resonant, calm.
“And I shall go as well,” said Akaran Sotha, Chief Librarian of the Nameless,
his crimson eyes gleaming beneath his hood.

Loken frowned. “This is a personal matter, old friend.”
Sotha met Abaddon’s gaze.
“And yet your burden is ours. The Nameless were forged for this—to stand at the end, together.”
Abaddon regarded him for a long moment, then inclined his head.
“So be it.”

The distant rumble of artillery echoed across the ruined district as the group stepped back from the waiting Thunderhawk.
The ramp remained open, engines whining at idle, but none of them boarded yet.
There was one more decision to make—perhaps the most crucial of all.

Varro approached, helm under his arm, his usually measured expression tight with urgency.
“My lord,” he began,
“we need to discuss how you intend to reach the Vengeful Spirit.
Even with her shields collapsed, direct approach by gunship is—”

“Impossible,” Abaddon finished.
“The Warmaster’s fleet still holds the orbital lanes.
We would be ash before leaving atmosphere.”

Varro nodded grimly.
“Exactly. The Primarchs and the Emperor have not boarded by craft.
They used teleportation—likely from the Phalanx’s tertiary grid or a field-reinforced point on Terra.
That was their plan.”

Abaddon’s jaw tightened.
“Then that is our path as well.”

Loken folded his arms, brow furrowed as he looked skyward through the thinning smoke.
“The Vengeful Spirit’s shields failing… it wasn’t bombardment.
There are no siege signatures, no hull ruptures. No Imperial fire touched her.”

His expression darkened.
“That means it wasn’t an attack.
And it wasn’t sabotage from within.
That ship does not suffer internal error.”

Abaddon nodded once, sharply.
“Horus would never allow a weakness in his flagship.
Not unless it was deliberate.”

A silence settled over them—uneasy, heavy.
Tarvitz stepped forward, wiping blood from his blade.
“Whatever the reason, the window is open.
With the void shields down, a teleport lock is finally possible.”

Sotha inclined his head in agreement.
“The warp distortion around that vessel is immense… but weakened.
Something inside the ship has disrupted its own protections.
Likely the Emperor’s presence.
With a strong enough teleportarium, we can anchor coordinates directly onto the bridge decks.”

Varro exhaled, shoulders easing slightly.
“And that is the issue.
We need a ship with a teleportarium strong enough to punch through the Vengeful Spirit’s residual wards
and the warp bleed around Luna.”

Abaddon turned to him.
“You have a suggestion.”

Varro allowed himself the faintest, grim smile.
“I do. There is one vessel in the loyalist fleet with a teleportarium powerful enough—and still intact.”
Abaddon raised an eyebrow. “Name it.”
“The Imperial Justice,” Varro replied.
“Captain Valen Corus kept her systems pristine even through the orbital counteroffensive.
Her primary grid can cut through anything short of a Gloriana’s full shields.”

Loken nodded in approval.
“If any ship can get us aboard, it’s that one.”
Abaddon turned toward the Thunderhawk, resolve settling over him like a mantle.
“Make the arrangements, Varro. Inform Corus to ready his teleportarium. We depart immediately.”

Varro bowed his head.
“At once, my lord.”
Moments later, the Thunderhawk engines rose to a roar.
Abaddon boarded first, followed by Loken, Sycar, Kibre, Sotha, and the last of the Justaerin.
The ramp sealed shut with a metallic clang, drowning out the battlefield behind them.
The gunship lifted, dust spiraling beneath its thrusters as it rose into the wounded sky.

------------------------------------
Aboard the Thunderhawk
Approaching Terra Orbit
------------------------------------

Aboard the Thunderhawk, there was silence.
No one spoke. There was no need.
The thunder of the engines filled the void between them, a constant growl that blurred thought into something heavy and distant.
Abaddon sat motionless, his gauntleted hands resting on the haft of Veltrax, the blade laid across his knees.
His eyes were fixed on the floor plating, though his thoughts were far beyond the gunship’s hull.

For the first time since Isstvan, he was going to look upon his gene-father’s face.
He had imagined this moment countless times—on the battlefields of Calth, on the black sands of Isstvan V,
and in the years that followed when the galaxy bled and burned.

Yet now that it loomed before him, the emotion that settled in his chest was not anger, nor sorrow, nor pride.
It was something colder. Something uncertain.
Abaddon knew one truth with absolute clarity: Horus Lupercal had crossed the line of no return.
Whatever spark of greatness had once guided the Warmaster had long since guttered out.
There would be no forgiveness. No redemption. No saving what he had become.
They were not going to reclaim their father.
They were going to witness his end.

It was a duty neither sought but both understood—the final vigil of the last loyal sons of the Sixteenth.
Across from him, Garviel Loken sat in the half-light, helm cradled between his hands.
His gaze was unfocused, his lips moving faintly as if mouthing a prayer he could not finish.
His eyes met Abaddon’s for the briefest instant—haunted, questioning—and then dropped once more to the deck.

The two had fought through too much to need words.
Abaddon could see the strain in Loken’s face, the years of guilt and endurance carved deep into his features.
This war, this heresy, was ending at last. Whatever the outcome, they would see its end—either as witnesses or as casualties.
For a long while, the only sound was the low, rhythmic hum of the Thunderhawk cutting through the storm-filled sky.
Outside, Terra burned.

The Thunderhawk rode the storm in silence.
Firelight flickered through the viewport slits—burning ships, falling debris, and the ruin of Terra’s upper atmosphere.
The gunship cut through it all, a solitary black spear against a dying sky.

No one spoke. There was nothing left to say.
The quiet inside the Thunderhawk was not peace.
It was the kind of silence that came after too many losses, too many screams, too much blood.

A silence held together only by discipline and the iron will of Astartes who had long ago
learned to bury their grief beneath the next necessary action.
It vibrated through the deck plates, the hull, the hearts of everyone aboard.

Abaddon sat in the forward seat, motionless, his fingers resting on Veltrax’s hilt.
The daemon-forged weapon glimmered faintly, runes pulsing like a heartbeat.
His gaze was fixed somewhere beyond the hull, past the smoke and fire and the iron bones of the Vengeful Spirit that loomed ahead.
For all his certainty, for all his fury, something inside him remained unsettled.
Beneath the resolve, beneath the armour, a storm still churned—a question he had never dared ask.

It was then that Akaran Sotha moved to stand beside him.
The former Word Bearer’s crimson robes brushed the deck, his armour marked with the crescent-and-sword sigil of the Nameless.
His presence was quiet but heavy, a calm tide pushing back the storm.
“You wrestle with ghosts, Abaddon,” Sotha said softly.
His voice carried the weight of scripture, but none of its arrogance.
“I can hear them in your silence.”

Abaddon did not look up. “Ghosts are all that remain of us, Sotha.”
“Then you have yet to understand,” Sotha replied.
“Ghosts do not haunt the living—they remind them of what they were.
You have not come here for vengeance alone.
You came to remember who you were before all this.”

The words drew the others’ attention.
Loken lifted his head from where he sat, helm in hand, the pale light catching his scarred face.
Kibre and Sycar paused their final checks, listening in grim stillness.
Even the Justaerin, those few who remained, turned slightly—
old warriors, silent, drawn by the tone rather than the meaning.

Sotha’s eyes glowed faintly with psychic luminescence as he continued.
“You have carried your father’s shame upon your shoulders for too long, Abaddon.
But that shame was never yours to bear. Horus chose his path. You chose yours.
What awaits you now is not judgment, but testament.”

For a long moment, no one breathed.
The words hung heavy in the hold, seeping into the minds of all present.
Even Loken, whose faith in anything beyond the Emperor had long since fractured,
felt something stir—a stillness, a fragile clarity amid the roar of war.

Abaddon’s eyes closed. His gauntlet tightened around Veltrax’s grip.
“If this is testament,” he said at last, “then let it be written in blood.”

Sotha inclined his head.
“All faiths end in sacrifice, my lord. But not all sacrifices are in vain.”

Then the intercom crackled.
“Commander Abaddon,” the pilot called out, his voice strained through static.
“We are receiving a priority hail—from the Imperial Justice.”

Abaddon opened his eyes.
“Put it through.”

A moment of distortion passed, then a familiar voice thundered through the hold—
steady, resonant, unmistakably Ultramarine.
“First Captain Abaddon, this is Valen Corus.
The Imperial Justice welcomes you home.”

Loken exhaled slowly. Kibre straightened in his harness.
Even the weary Justaerin lifted their heads at the sound of a friendly titan calling them brother.
Outside the forward viewport, the storm-churned haze of Terra’s upper atmosphere thinned—
and the void opened before them.

The sight was staggering.
Warships of the XIII Legion, hundreds of hulls strong brought by Roboute Guilliman, cut radiant arcs of blue fire across the broken battlespace.
To starboard, the Ist Legion’s black-and-bone phalanxes carved through traitor cruisers with brutal, surgical precision.
Lance strikes as bright as dying suns ripped apart the Warmaster’s outer lines.

The void burned with dueling suns, ruptured reactors, blossoming plasma.
And threading through it all, Abaddon saw the unmistakable gold-and-stone silhouettes of the VII Legion,
the Imperial Fists, hammering breaches open so the others could advance in ordered fury.

But behind that forward inferno—held back, locked into disciplined formation—waited the ships that Abaddon knew intimately.
The vessels of the Nameless’ combined fleet.
And among them, like a bastion of cerulean wrath, hung the Imperial Justice—scarred, proud, engines burning hot.
Abaddon felt something shift inside his chest.
Purpose.

The pilot angled their Thunderhawk toward the massive battle barge, its prow sigils shining through drifting debris.
The vox chimed again—Corus himself this time, closer, clearer.
“Docking bay three is cleared. Your arrival has been anticipated.

Be warned—warp turbulence around Terra’s upper orbit is intensifying.
Make your descent crisp.”
Abaddon allowed a faint, razor-thin smile.
“We’ve flown through worse.”

Loken snorted softly but didn’t disagree.
The Thunderhawk pierced the last veil of drifting wreckage and swept along the flank of the great vessel.
The Imperial Justice’s hull stretched endlessly beside them—
banners of Ultramar and fresh kill-marks lining her adamantine hide.
Kibre clicked his tongue.
“Guilliman must have ordered the rear secured.”

“Or the Lion,” Sycar muttered, his lightning-wreathed gauntlet tapping against his thigh.
“He would think it penance to carve a path for the rest of us.”
“Let them have their reasons,” Abaddon said quietly.
“What matters is that this ship is ours.”

The Thunderhawk’s undercarriage clanged hard onto the deck of Docking Bay Three.
Servitors quickly sealed the magnetic clamps as the landing gear locked in place.
The ramp hissed open.

Warm, pressurized air washed over them—
clean compared to the battlefields below, tinged with engine oil, sanctified ozone, and the scent of discipline.

Abaddon rose first, Veltrax humming faintly at his side.
Loken followed, and Sycar and Kibre fell into step like shadows.
Sotha moved with silent grace, the last of the Justaerin marching behind him—scarred, battered, but unbroken.

For the first time in what felt like years, Abaddon felt the spark of vitality catch in the hearts of his brothers.
Not joy. Not relief.
Readiness.

A dozen Ultramarine honour guards saluted sharply as the group descended, their ceramite gleaming under lumen-strips.
Valen Corus awaited them at the base of the ramp, helm in the crook of his arm.
“Abaddon,” Corus greeted, stepping forward.

“There is no time to waste. Guilliman has already teleported as soon as he heard of the Emperor has boarded the Warmaster’s ship.”
Abaddon met his gaze.
“Then ready your teleportarium, Captain. We will follow their path.”
Corus nodded gravely.
“The grid is yours.”
He paused.
“The XIIIth stands with you.”

Abaddon inhaled once—deeply, steadily—and stepped forward, reinvigorated by the clarity of a destiny finally within reach.
Together, the Nameless strode deeper into the heart of the Imperial Justice—
toward the teleportarium that would cast them into the jaws of fate.

Chapter Text

---------------------------------
Aboard the Imperial Justice
Teleportarium
---------------------------------

The teleportarium loomed like a cathedral built for violence.
High-vaulted ceilings disappeared into shadows that trembled with static discharge.
Every metal surface buzzed with a low, omnipresent hum—
the sound of engines straining under the demands of a jump that should not, by any rational measure, be attempted.

Rows of incense braziers guttered in their sconces, casting ribbons of smoke across the chamber.
Each wisp curled unnaturally, as though dragged toward some unseen point in the air—
a sign of the warp bleed pressing against the ship’s Geller field.

And in the center of the storm stood Abaddon, his fingers locked around the hilt of Veltrax.
The sword did not glow so much as burn.
Silver brilliance roiled beneath its surface like molten metal under glass,
bright enough that the seams of Abaddon’s gauntlets were outlined in reflected light.
Even sheathed, Veltrax’s presence seemed to warp the air around it, making the world vibrate like a plucked string.

Across from him, Loken rested Mournfang’s great weight against the deck.
The blade’s iron-grey surface pulsed with steady cobalt throbs, like the heartbeat of something ancient and unwilling to die.
Every pulse sent a faint ring through the chamber—low, resonant, almost felt in the chest rather than heard.

Their gazes briefly met.
Both blades reacted at once.

A ripple passed through the air—silent but powerful—like two tuning forks striking the same note.
Veltrax’s silver glare surged brighter; Mournfang’s cobalt lines widened, rippling like water struck by a stone.

Abaddon exhaled sharply.
“They are… speaking to each other.”
Loken’s jaw tightened as he lifted Mournfang with both hands.
“Then they know where their anger belongs,” he said.

A third presence entered—a force as steady and controlled as a sealed vault.
Akaran Sotha approached them, psychic wards glowing faintly along his armor.
His robes, bound tightly against his plating, shifted with invisible currents from the ritual circles behind him.
The librarians and astropathic choir worked in coordinated, agonized precision,
their voices rising and falling in discordant unison.

Sotha’s face was pale. A thin sheen of sweat traced the line of his brow.
Even he—one of the most iron-willed psykers still living—was feeling it.
“Listen carefully,” Sotha said. His voice was low, deliberate, the cadence of a man hiding the strain gnawing at his thoughts.
“Teleporting into the Warmaster’s flagship is not simply a matter of distance.
The warp has flooded its corridors. Time… shifts. Space fractures.
You will feel things that are not yours. Memories that do not belong to you.”

A scream echoed from the astropathic circle—short, sharp, then swallowed as the choir resumed their chanting.
Blood began to drip from one of their chins to the floor in a steady beat.

Sotha didn’t turn.
“Hold onto what roots you. Your oaths. Your brothers. Your purpose.”
He looked to Abaddon and Loken specifically.
“And your blades. Anchors such as these are the only reason you will survive the crossing.”

Behind them, a different kind of presence gathered—one built not on psychic discipline but on the absolute certainty of violence.
Hellas Sycar approached, helm locked. His posture rigid, every part of him coiled like a drawn spear.
Falkus Kibre stomped forward beside him, flexing his gauntlets until the armored plating groaned.
Kibre checked his power axe, then the mag-lock on his bolter, then the seals on his helm—each movement sharp, impatient.

The twelve surviving Justaerin assembled behind them.
Their armor, patched and scoured, bore the scars of battles stacked atop battles, but their stances were unshaken.
Red visors burned in the dim haze of incense smoke. Power fists hummed. Chainfists clicked.
Combi-bolters locked into firing position.

These were not soldiers.
These were executioners.
And they were ready.
One stepped forward, hand resting on Abaddon’s arm.

Azelas Baraxa.
A warrior whose loyalty had never once wavered—even when so many others had faltered or fractured.
Baraxa had followed Abaddon to Isstvan III, had defended his decisions when the Legion’s unity was ash in the air,
and had followed him to Terra without ever being asked.
“Lord,” Baraxa said quietly, helm tilted in concern,
“your strength?”

Abaddon nodded once.
“Returned.”

The earlier psychic pressure—the one that had nearly forced him to his knees—had faded the moment Veltrax’s flare subsided.
He still felt faint echoes of it, but with Baraxa beside him, with the Justaerin at his back, the weight felt… manageable.
The ground beneath their feet trembled.

The teleportarium pylons lit along their edges—first pale, then violently bright.
Runes carved deep into the chamber walls ignited in sequence, forming rings of light that crackled with raw, lethal power.
A voice rang out across the chamber.
“Make ready!”

The Astropathic Choir’s captains lifted their staves;
arcs of empyric lightning leapt between them, forming a lattice of shimmering light above the pad.

Captain Valen Corus stepped forward from the observation deck, helm removed.
His expression was solemn but proud.

He looked over all of them:
the First Captain, the surviving Justaerin, Loken and his blade, Sotha bracing against psychic currents that could flay lesser minds.
“This is where I leave you,” Corus said.
“The Emperor guide you. End this.”
His eyes found Abaddon’s.
“Bring your sons home.”

Abaddon inclined his head, slowly.
Sotha raised his staff.
“ON THE PAD!”

The Justaerin moved as one.
Sycar and Kibre flanked Abaddon.
Loken stepped to Abaddon’s right, Mournfang steady.
Baraxa took his place directly behind him.
The moment the last boot crossed the boundary of the teleport circle—

The world detonated.
A tearing sound ripped through the chamber—like metal screaming, like a star rending open.
Warp-pressure slammed into them, crushing and burning in the same instant.
Vision fractured into impossible shapes. Voices whispered from inside their skulls—
some pleading, some screaming, some sounding eerily familiar.

Veltrax erupted in silver fire.
Mournfang thundered with cobalt fury.
Their resonance steadied the world around them—just enough.
The AI-locked teleport engines fired.

FLASH.

The Imperial Justice vanished.
And the strike team was hurled into the screaming lungs of the Vengeful Spirit.

--------------------------------------
Mid-transit
The Vengeful Spirit – Primary Transit Deck
--------------------------------------

Reality folded, then inverted, and the deck of the Imperial Justice vanished beneath Abaddon’s boots.
The transition tore at him like a living thing—weightlessness, pressure, silence, and distant screaming all striking at once.
His breath froze in his lungs, his armour groaned under invisible strain,
and every nerve in his body thrummed with the raw presence of the warp.

Veltrax erupted in his gauntlet like a star being born.
Silver-white fire spilled from the blade in ragged brilliance, forming a wavering,
uneven shell of light as the world around him melted into formless colour.
He was falling without distance, suspended without motion, held in a place where direction meant nothing.

Then the visions came.
Luna’s drill cages rose around him, their echoing halls filled with the thunder of bolter training.
Rows upon rows of Sons of Horus stood immaculate in their sea-green plate, the pride of the Sixteenth Legion.
He saw himself among them—young, fierce, unscarred by betrayal or grief.
Horus walked between the ranks, laughing with his captains, placing a hand on a younger Ezekyle’s shoulder.

“My first captain,” the vision whispered, warm and familiar,
“you were always meant for more. More than obedience.
More than mere service. The galaxy was meant for us.”

Abaddon clenched his jaw. The words, the tone, the warmth—they were precise enough to hurt.
“No,” he said, though the warp devoured the sound before it reached his own ears.
Veltrax flickered, its glow stuttering under the weight of false memory.
The warp pressed harder, like a hand pushing his head beneath black water.

The vision twisted.

Terra burned beneath him—cracked continent plates, oceans reduced to steam, the Palace a mountain of skulls.
Legions knelt at his feet, shadows swallowing their ceramite.
A crown of black iron rested upon his brow. Horus lay dead below him, his body broken and aflame.
And in the vision, Abaddon stood triumphant, the birthright of the Warmaster’s name falling neatly into his grasp.

“You deserve this,” the whispers cooed. “Take what he failed to seize. Take what was always meant for you.”
His mind bent under the pressure.
Every memory he had of Horus—the real Horus—warped like wet parchment under a flame.
Veltrax flared desperately, silver pulse fighting back the shape of a future he had never wanted.

Then a voice cut through the storm.
“Ezekyle!”

Something seized his pauldron, wrenching him sideways through the flow of unreality.
The visions shattered like brittle glass. Veltrax blazed white, the brilliance tearing the last threads of illusion apart.

Light devoured everything.

And the world slammed back into existence.
Abaddon crashed onto the ceramite deck with force enough to crack the floor plating.
He gasped, air flooding painfully into his lungs, vision swimming with distortion and phantom colour.
His ears rang with a metallic shriek that wasn’t sound but something deeper, something that scraped along the inside of his skull.
A hand still gripped his shoulder.
He turned, slowly, as if the air itself resisted movement.

Sotha knelt beside him, one knee braced on the deck, blood dripping freely from his mouth.
His crimson eyes burned with strain, warp-light flickering faintly around his helm.
He wiped the blood away with the back of his gauntlet, then spoke in a voice roughened to gravel.
“Do not listen to the whispers.”
Another drop of blood fell.
“They offer you fragments of truth… wrapped in chains.”

Abaddon met his gaze.
The clarity returned like a blade sliding home into its sheath.
“My thanks,” he said.

Sotha nodded once, pushing himself to his feet—slow, unsteady, but resolute.
Warp frost clung to the edges of his armour, fading as the real world reasserted itself around them.

The world sharpened.
They were inside the Vengeful Spirit—deep within one of the primary transit decks,
a massive corridor of steel ribs and hanging sigils, the air thick with smoke and the stench of burnt promethium.
Guttering lumen-strips flickered overhead, casting broken light across the carnage erupting around them.

The Justaerin were already formed in a tight defensive circle, armour scorched and pauldrons cracked,
each warrior firing or striking with the practiced ferocity of veterans born for this moment.
Hellas Sycar’s blade crackled in sweeping arcs of white-blue lightning.
Falkus Kibre’s power axe rose and fell in brutal, methodical strokes, each blow carving a traitor marine into ruin.

Bolter fire shattered the smoke. Grenades detonated in concussive bursts.
The sound of ceramite ripping under power-weapon arcs echoed like tearing iron.

“ABADDON!”
Loken’s voice cut through everything.
He fired his bolter pistol past Abaddon’s head, the round punching through a traitor’s helm and spattering the deck with gore.
Loken moved with grim efficiency, stepping into the line beside the Justaerin as though he had never left their ranks.
He spared only a quick look.
“Welcome back.”

Abaddon rose to his full height, breath steadying, mind clear.
The first thing he saw were the colours of those opposing them.

Sea-green.
His Legion.
Once brothers.
Now twisted.

But worse were the distortions—jawlines subtly warped, eyes sunken with unnatural glow, spines bulging beneath the armour.
It was not the full grotesquerie of the Black Host. It was something subtler, earlier, incomplete.
Corruption that had seeped into them for years.
Corruption that had become part of their flesh.
Corruption that could no longer be undone.

Veltrax ignited in his gauntlet—its silver light pure, defiant, uncorrupted.
Abaddon surged forward.

The Justaerin opened their formation instinctively, Kibre’s barked command echoing as Sycar cut down another twisted legionary.
Abaddon’s charge shook the deck as he smashed into the corrupted Sons of Horus.
Veltrax swept outward in a gleaming arc.
The first traitor fell in perfect halves, bisected from crown to pelvis.
The second collapsed without a head.
The third crumpled under a thrust that pierced straight through his corrupted hearts.
The corridor filled with the sound of steel, screaming, and the pure, ringing song of Veltrax’s runes.

Abaddon roared—not with rage.
Not with grief.
But with the cold, certain clarity of a man walking the only path he could ever choose.
This was the beginning.
This was the Severance of Night.
This was the testament Sotha had spoken of.

For a heartbeat after transition, there was only smoke—thick, clinging, greasy—with sparks drifting through it like burning snowflakes.
Consoles spat static and coolant hissed from cracked vents. No one spoke.
The Justaerin unbuckled with the same quiet precision they had practiced for two centuries, and rose as one.

Abaddon moved first, shoving aside a half-melted bulkhead panel with Veltrax still humming in his gauntlet.
He did not hesitate. He did not even blink.
They had dropped into a long, vaulted deck—once a transit artery of the Vengeful Spirit, now defaced into a cathedral of corrosion.
Steel ribs arched overhead like the bent bones of a titanic carcass. Daemonic patina crawled like oil-slick moss across the walls.
The lights flickered with that unmistakable warp-sickness: too slow, too fast, a heartbeat out of sync with reality.
Somewhere deep in the corridor, something keened—long, low, alive.
They had come home to the corpse of their Legion.

Movement scattered the smoke.
Traitor crew and twisted Astartes converged at speed, sprinting with the brutish, jerking gait of things half-claimed by the warp.
They were not the disciplined warriors the XVIth had once forged;
their armour was swollen with ridges and bone-knots, helms fused into snarling visages, eyes like burst cysts.
Their voices tried to form battle-canticles, but broke into animal screeches.

Abaddon’s order split the moment like an axe.
“WITH ME!”

The surviving Justaerin—twelve left from twenty-seven—fell in at his sides, battered but unbroken.
Loken raised Mournfang in a high guard that caught the flickering lights along its sigil-etched length.
Sycar drew his power-sword, the cerulean edge growling to life with arcs of raw energy.
Kibre was already laughing—a cold, vicious sound he had not made since the earliest days of the Great Crusade,
when he’d believed in conquest as a certainty.

Akaran Sotha came last, robes torn and clinging to rune-scarred armor that glowed faintly beneath the psychic pressure of the ship.
He moved like a man walking against an invisible gale.

The first wave hit.
A horned helm exploded as Abaddon’s blade cut through it, taking the head clean.
He pivoted—an instinct older than his name—
caught a mutated chain-axe on the haft of Veltrax, twisted, and drove his elbow into another traitor’s throat.

“Lupercal…” the dying thing gurgled.
The word curdled as it left warped lips.

Loken met another twisted warrior and parried a serrated blade,
but his gaze snagged—only for a fraction of a second—on the green-grey armour plate bearing a warped Eye of Horus.
Recognition slammed into him. Horror followed, intertwined with memory so old it felt like bone.

Kibre intercepted the hesitation.
His chainfist tore the abomination apart with a brutal, efficient strike that splattered the deck with steaming, black ichor.
“Stop looking at their armour,” Kibre snarled over the vox. “They’re not our brothers.”
Loken didn’t answer. His jaw creaked under the pressure of his teeth.

Behind them, Sotha raised his staff.
The warp-light began not with illumination, but with pressure—teeth aching, then bones, then the space behind the eyes.
His presence surged outward, runes across his armor burning like scripture set alight.
The air warped around him, bending away as if recoiling from a predator.

Then the blast came.

A column of colorless, blinding light roared down the corridor. Deck plates groaned, then buckled.
Daemonic glyphs writhed and fled back into the metal like parasites driven from a host.
The air filled with the stink of charred corruption. Nearest to Sotha, warped Sons contorted—
scales retreating, bone collapsing, mutations shrinking as though dragged backward through time.
Their bodies shriveled to husks, then to brittle ash that blew apart in a gust.
Sotha lowered his staff slowly. His breath rasped through his grille.

“Stay close,” he said. Cold, even. But fatigue gnawed at the edges of every syllable.
“This ship wishes to unmake you. Give it no opening.”

He was not exaggerating.
The Vengeful Spirit shifted and breathed around them. Corridors twisted when unobserved.
Walls sweated black ichor that dripped upward.
The ceiling dipped low enough that Draal’s helm scraped it, then vaulted into impossible height with the next step.
Auspex returns jittered between contradictory coordinates. Vox-lines dissolved into screams, laughter, whispers.

Akaran Sotha carried it all on his mind.
Held the warp at bay with an effort so immense that even Astartes could feel its edges cutting against reality.

Abaddon felt it too.
The ship pressed at him—testing, seeking cracks. Not with promises. With mockery.
Come home, little wolf…
Your father awaits…

The voice was everywhere. Ahead. Behind. Inside the vox. Inside the skull.
It sounded like Horus—and like something that had never been flesh.
Sycar reacted first. The Master of the Justaerin slammed his sword’s haft into the deck, cracking corrupted metal.
“Silence,” he growled. “You are not him.”
The whisper laughed—a dry, papery ripple that skittered along the bulkheads.

Abaddon’s visor glowed a deeper red.
“Forward,” he said. The tone was stone grinding against stone.
“Ignore it. Kill anything that stands.”

They moved in a staggered wedge. Bolters spat white-hot shells.
Veltrax dripped with ichor that sizzled when it hit the deck.
Sycar’s blade burned with cerulean lightning, crackling each time the atmosphere phase-shifted into something that should not exist.

Sotha walked behind them all: no weapon drawn, only his mind supporting the psychic bulwark keeping them alive.
Warp-light crawled along the edges of his armor. His hood flickered with arcs of silver and cobalt under the strain.
Each time the ship pressed inward, he pushed back harder—his will flattening daemonic pressure that could crush mortal minds into slurry.
He whispered something in Old Cthonic—an invocation, a ward, a promise he had carved into reality on the ash plains of Accatran.

The warp recoiled like something struck.
The corridor snapped into Euclidean shape for a single, blessed breath.
Long enough to see them.
Figures massing in the darkness.
Armored forms by the dozens—no, hundreds—shapes hunched and malformed, dragging claws across ceramite.
Eye-lenses glowed in the dark like dying stars.

Sons of Horus.
Or what remained of them.
Their howls echoed with the memory of a Legion that no longer existed.
Abaddon lifted Veltrax.
The runes along its edge pulsed like a heartbeat.
Loken tightened his grip on Mournfang, the blade humming in resonance—
two weapons forged far apart, but vibrating with the same grim recognition of the ship around them.

Sotha raised his staff.
Sycar’s cerulean blade blazed brighter.
The horde surged.
And the last loyal sons of the XVIth braced to meet the dead of their own making.

Chapter Text

--------------------------------------------------
Aboard the Vengeful Spirit - Warmaster Horus's Flagship
Interior Corridors
--------------------------------------------------

The Hall of Echoes had once been a sanctuary—
one of the few aboard the Vengeful Spirit where Luna Wolves had gathered not for war, but for breath between campaigns.
Here they had sparred in friendly rivalry, sharpened their blades, traded stories in the lull before compliance strikes.
A hall of brothers. A hall of beginnings.

Now it resembled the interior of a slaughterhouse designed by deranged gods.
The chamber had stretched unnaturally down its length, warped into a grotesque parody of memory.
Its vaulted ceiling bowed inward and outward in slow, unnatural pulses,
as though the ship itself breathed—too deep, too long, too aware.
Shadows slicked across the walls like oil sliding on glass, vanishing the moment the eye sought to catch them.
The atmosphere carried a density that tasted like old smoke and ash—heavy enough that it felt alive.

The smell was a layered assault: copper-sour blood—fresh and dried—mixed with the electric ozone of overstrained conduits
and something darker, something fungal and sweet, like rot blooming inside a sealed vault.
The walls were lined with bodies, mortal and Astartes alike, strung from hooks hammered into metal and flesh with equal indifference.
Some corpses still twitched occasionally, reacting to warp-currents rather than life.

Even the Justaerin faltered, the hardiest sons of the XVIth flinching at the sight.
They made it barely ten paces inside before the first wave hit.

Warp-scarred Sons of Horus hurled themselves out of the gloom with howls that vibrated with layered echoes,
as though dozens of voices attempted to speak through each ruined throat.
Their armor fused with flesh, joints stretched or collapsed, limbs bent like the broken legs of insects.
Faces were split by mutation, mandibles or tendrils replacing mouths.
Their eyes were pits of fevered, starless black.

Abaddon met them like a thunderhead detonating.
Veltrax swept out in a single, lethal arc that cracked the air and sheared the front rank apart.
The sound bounced from wall to wall, echoing strangely—warped by the chamber’s shifting geometry.

Sycar followed with a flash of white-blue violence, driving his power-sword through a creature’s ribcage.
Lightning rippled outward from the strike, vaporizing the mutated warrior in a hiss of ionized air and scorched ichor.

Kibre confronted three at once, and the hall seemed to shrink around him as he fought.
He moved with the savage precision of an ancient duelist.
His chainfist tore the first traitor open from shoulder to hip in a single, contemptuous swing.
The second he seized by the helm, crushing ceramite and skull in his gauntlet as though it were wet clay.
The third he smashed into a column, spine snapping audibly before he ripped its throat out with his other hand.
No roar. No curse. Silence—absolute and terrible—accompanied every blow.

Loken never saw his attacker until it was upon him.
A legionary whose jaw had split into a tri-fold maw crashed into him from the flank, bearing him to the floor.
Talons scraped against his gorget in a spray of sparks, the beast’s breath a rank fog of warp-filth.
It shrieked the XVIth’s battle-cry—distorted, multiplied, wrong.
He rammed Mournfang upward beneath its chin. Bone cracked. Fluid sprayed.
He twisted until he felt the blade grind against vertebrae, then shoved the corpse aside.
His breath shook—not from exertion.
From recognition.
The scrap of armor still visible beneath the warping mutations bore company markings he knew.
Men he had once marched beside. Men he had once congratulated after victories.
He rose in silence.
The shadows shifted.
A second wave crawled across the floor and walls in jerking, insectile spasms.
Some tore themselves free from the hooked bodies above, ripping loose with wet snaps of torn tissue.
Others peeled forward as though detaching from the hall’s very memory.

Sotha’s voice fell over them: steady, commanding, ironclad.
“Stay with me. Do not heed what you hear. Do not answer the voices.”
His psychic presence expanded, forming a thin but vital barrier—
just enough to mute the worst of the warp-hunger gnawing at their minds.
The air around him rippled, the light bending subtly around his staff like gravity warping space.

Then the mutants struck.
Abaddon and Sycar surged forward, carving a path with lethal, unified precision.
Kibre’s chainfist screamed as it bit through armor and flesh alike, each impact sending a tremor through the decking.
Loken and the remaining Justaerin formed a rear bulwark, blades rising and falling in disciplined, unflinching rhythm.
Bolter fire pulsed like a heartbeat. Chainteeth shrieked. Warped howls drowned reason.

Every kill felt like slicing into old wounds.
Then the warp-song rose.

Soft at first, like a faint hum vibrating through the deck—then swelling into a chorus of shrieks and remembered voices.
Echoes of Ullanor. Horus laughing with his sons. Victories that now tasted like poison.
The walls themselves began to scream, metal vibrating like tortured throat-flesh.

One of the Justaerin collapsed to one knee. Blood streamed from the audio vents of his helm.
Sotha slammed his staff against the deck.
A wave of psychic gold erupted outward, shattering the warp-song into splinters of silence.
Faces that had begun pushing through the walls recoiled, melting back into oily distortion.

But the cost hit him. Hard.
His knees shook. His breaths rasped, pained and ragged.
A single line of blood traced from beneath his helm.
A charging traitor lunged at him.