They came not as soldiers but as rupture—flesh wrought in hatred, engines belching warpfire and brass-slick blood, thundering down the bridge in an iron tide. The final gate had split. The underbridge was going silent from Doom Slayer's purging. The daemons now had nowhere to go but up.
The air thickened into red smoke. The sky bled. Reality screamed.
A thousand horned silhouettes surged across the bridge surface, gnashing and howling. Bloodletters ran as an endless pack, swords raised in a silent, mindless hunger. Skull Cannons rolled beside them like ancient siege beasts resurrected by hate. Slaughterbrutes and Forgefiends clawed the cracked ferrocrete with engine-limbs. Warped mauler-bikes hovered and screeched. The bridge shook with their arrival.
At their center came Valkor the Clysm, his rage made manifest—blood-wet axe roaring with daemon flame, dreadnought body leaking steam, armor dented and seething from his previous tanking of attacks. He didn't lead the charge. He was the charge. The moment his boots struck the ferrocrete, the warp howled with approval.
Behind him, his the Clysm Warband followed—Berzerkers with chainblades twitching like leashed beasts, Beastmen hacking at the air as if slaughter alone could make them real, Helbrutes thudding forward like drumbeats in a death march.
The sole thunderwolf in the battlefield, being held back by the astartes suddenly broke free, then snarled and charged at one of the Hellbrutes but was quickly quashed and died before he could even let out a whimper.
The Imperials, already retreating under Sefirot's calculated command, could only fall back further. The first retreating line had collapsed. The tanks had reversed. The last charges had been spent.
Now came the bloody storm.
Vox-Tower Omega, Mobile Command Frequency 97.5.
Sefirot's voice—always calm, always exact—slithered through the panicking vox-net like a machine ghost wearing a human face.
"Steel Legion Delta and Gamma fall back to perimeter delta. Wolves, hold breach-line epsilon. Bait maneuver commencing. Do not retrieve Haldrek. Repeat: Do not retrieve Haldrek. His death is strategically optimal."
"Affirmative," came a dozen broken voices. Some understood. Most didn't.
Inside the last functioning command Chimera, Commissar Haldrek screamed into the vox.
"WHO EVER YOU ARE—emperor damn you—we still have tank crews inside the killzone! If you think I'll let them die for your calculations, I will—"
"Silence, Commissar," Sefirot replied without malice. "You are no longer in command."
Inside Haldrek's Chimera, the lights flickered. Daemon energy licked the hull. The rear ramp was sealed. Guardsmen corpses surrounded the tank like discarded warnings. In the gunner seat, the heavy bolter remained jammed.
Haldrek sat alone now. Eyes wide. Chest heaving. The machine spirit was static-blind. Vox crackled with his own voice, mimicked and twisted: "Do not try to save me! Let die in glory! FOR THE EMPEROR!"
Vox-Speakers on his tank loudly said: "I AM THE COMMANDER OF THIS LEGION! DAEMON! FACE ME AND SEE IF YOU CAN TAKE MY HEAD!"
Commissar tried screaming.
"NO-NO-NO! Wait!... H-hold! Hold the line! Hold the line! Hold—"
His own screams looped back into his ears. The vox played only himself. He drew his bolt pistol and fired into the vox-caster. It kept talking. His hand shook. He tried to issue one last order. His mouth moved, but nothing came. Then the hull groaned.
Daemons had arrived. Through the narrow Chimera viewslit, Haldrek saw Valkor himself, wading through the blood mist and fire, axe dragging against the deck, carving a molten trench. Daemons poured past him. Some leapt on the Chimera. They tore at the hull like starving wolves on a steel corpse.
Something broke inside Haldrek. He dropped the pistol. He knelt beside the command terminal and whispered the Litany of Duty. But the God Emperor did not answer.
His final scream was drowned by the detonation as Skull Cannons reduced the Chimera to a blossoming flame. A kilometer away, the recent conscripts to the Steel Legion had used the bait well.
Sefirot's neural net had charted the daemons' rage-paths like a mathematician maps plague vectors. He had calculated that Haldrek's bombastic voice would draw Valkor's warband like a lodestone draws iron.
They bit hard. Exactly as predicted.
While the daemons fed, Sefirot rerouted surviving elements of the Basilisk line into new flanking coordinates. He ordered a det-pack sequence under the central bridge strut—but not to collapse it. No, his plan was subtler.
Explosive Vibration Pattern Theta-3. A destabilization wave designed to disrupt warp-tainted locomotion—causing daemonic entities to stagger, lose corporeal cohesion for precisely 11 seconds. A rhythm, not a demolition.
The first wave of det-packs went off beneath the advancing daemon engines. The vibrations surged like a false heartbeat.
It worked. Several Bloodletters staggered. One Forgefiend screamed as its legs gave out. A Slaughterbrute's stride faltered mid-lunge, and a Basilisk shell ended it instantly.
The Space Wolves, regrouping at the final defense ridge, saw the opening.
"NOW!" Gorrulf howled.
Their countercharge wasn't a full assault—it was a surgical kill-blitz, hitting only weakened targets in the faltering moments granted by Sefirot's plan. Varrik's runic spells lashed across the field, burning daemons in glyph-fire. Hardrad leapt from a broken tank, his lightning claws carving a Helbrute's throat as it rebooted.
But it would never be enough.
Valkor reached the end of the bait zone. He turned toward the Wolves, engine smoke billowing from his armor, his axe steaming with melted bone. His Berzerkers, now soaked in blood and flame, sprinted behind him like living artillery.
Sefirot issued one last sequence.
"Last shelling volley. Maximum arc. Precision cluster. Scorched Earth Pattern Delta."
Steel Legion artillery, from beyond the far ridge, opened fire. Over two dozen Basilisks had repositioned. Their target: the bridge itself. Not to destroy it.
But to create a minefield of flame and debris so thick the daemons would have to slow.
Sefirot's voice hissed again:
"They will follow. But they will do so burning."
And so they did.
Daemons flooded forward through hellfire and shrapnel, never stopping. Valkor roared. His daemons howled. The bridge became a pyre.
The Imperials retreated further. The Wolves held the line one moment longer. The next, they fell back again—step by step, bleeding every inch of ground. The battle wasn't over. It was only becoming apocalyptic.
The Doom Slayer erupted from the firestorm at the edge of the bridge—a silhouette carved from war, outlined in burning sky. Blood rained sideways from the warp rift overhead, and beneath it, the shattered Lord of Skulls crackled with residual warp-light. Still the largest portal hung open above its corpse, vomiting daemons like bile.
Doom Slayer landed like a meteor. His armor groaned—grinded. Latches split with a hiss of red steam. Steel flexed like muscle.
[ Praetor Suit upgrade: Doomblade ]
The Doomblade drilled out from his armor's forearm with a bone-shearing shriek, its teeth catching the light. A modification to the Praetor suit, the arm-mounted Doomblade is designed to increase the Slayer's short-range torture power. With an unusual ability to phase through quantum and arcane states, it could cut through armor, flesh, soul and bone, allowing the Slayer to break through enemy defenses and attack where conventional weaponry is ineffective.
[ Praetor Suit upgrade: Equipment Launcher]
The Praetor's left shoulder fractured open, metal blooming like a weaponized flower—click—the Equipment Launcher locked into place, barrels primed. Designed as a universal munitions platform, the Equipment Launcher is capable of alternating its armament configuration with the press of a switch, activated by a reflex senor located on the interior of the Praetor Suit.
Slayer's landing impact had cratered the adamantium decking, flinging bone, ceramite, and corpses in a five-meter radius. Bloodletters stumbled. Khornate Berzerkers froze mid-retreat. Priests snarled curses in warp-choked tongues. Skull Cannons pivoted on squealing daemon-wheels. The bridge became still—only the shrieking wind and the thud of his boots as he began to sprint.
[ Overdrive ]
A blur of green ripped through everything like a bullet. Daemons, Engines and Heretics alike were turned to exploding gore as Slayer just ran through them.He moved like velocity incarnate. Each step killed. Each breath was murder. A Bloodletter screamed and lunged—wrong move. Slayer caught its arm mid-strike, severed it at the elbow with the Doomblade, buried the blade into its howling face, then hurled the corpse through two more. The Doomblade hissed, drinking warp-flesh.
From the ruin of a nearby Leman Russ, he wall-ran up the side, leapt from the molten tread, springboarded from a twisted pipe, flipped mid-air. He caught a Berzerker by the throat in mid-leap—ribs cracking under his grip—spun them both down in a vicious spiral as they came down head first crashing all upside down and planted the chaos marine into the deck hard enough to crater steel and shatter spine. The helmet and skull exploded like a dropped pumpkin.
Slayer called this move an Inzuna Drop.
[ Onslaught ]
Slayer was moving again as he activated the flame belch inside the equipment launchcer and vaporized the stunned Khornate line with white firey burst matching that of the temperature of the Sun's core. The equipment launcher hissed once again—a frag grenade thunked out mid-motion. Detonation. A chunk of the bridge vanished with six daemons. Shrieks echoes.
All the while Slayer kept firing with the [Onslaught] powered Heavy Bolter.
Few bloodletters leapt from the breach. He wall-ran along the burned husk of a crushed Leman Russ, flipped off a bent barrel, grabbed one Bloodletter mid-air, twisted, and Izuna Dropped it into the screaming deck. The crunch thundered like a falling bunker. He landed kneeling, punched a frag grenade from his equipment launcher into the portal's core.
BOOM.
The rupture howled, bled light, then imploded. A gate down. Another warp gate flared open in a shattered Chimera's ribcage. Bloodletters screamed out of it.
Slayer launched forward—jammed a krak grenade into a daemon's mouth as it lunged, shoved it backward into the gate, and drop-kicked it through. The resulting explosion was contained warp implosion, sucking shrieking warp-flesh inward—the gate collapsed like an eye being stabbed.
He didn't stop.
A squad of Berzerkers tried to flank him. Two came from either side, one head-on.
He slid under the first axe swing, caught the second Berzerker's leg and ripped him off the ground—smashed spine-first into the third's chest, snapping both their bones. He vaulted the pile, grabbed another's chainsword arm mid-swing, snapped it in reverse, and embedded the Doomblade through throat, spine, and pelvis in one sweep.
Click—Meta Bomb.
Khornate priests mid-chant exploded it hot red gore. Slayer tore through the rest in a single spinning kill-surge, limbs spiraling away, blood mist frosting in the air.
He kicked another portal close.
A new rift spawned atop a collapsed Baneblade. Slayer leapt up the turret, dashed across the molten barrel, vaulted a burning wreck mid-flight and dropped a pair of frag grenades mid-air into the gate's throat as daemons poured from it.
He landed like thunder. The gate behind him erupted—bloodfire licked the air as daemons burst mid-transition, half-formed, half-destroyed, the rift collapsing in a spiral of screaming warplight.
The runes of the powerups on him faded...
Skull Cannon. Ahybrid of flesh and daemon engine, bedecked in icons of Khorne. The bodybased around a large, curved, frame, which from one angle looks like a huge open mouth rolling forwards upon barbed, cylindrical wheels; yet from others is very much a machine. Metal tubes, wires and pistons as well as horns, skulls, spikes and open maw motifs. A large armoured cannon positioned on the top of the main body, to which two Bloodletters were chained.
It fired.
[ Overdrive ]
Slayer sprinted straight into the shot, shoulder-charged through the blast, vaulted the Skull Cannon, drove the Doomblade deep into its daemon-core—tore sideways, cracking the shell. The beast screamed. He climbed it mid-thrash, jammed a stolen melta bomb into its open core, and leapt away backwards.
The daemon engine detonated in half-molten ruin. Gory armor plates rained like shrapnel.
Another gate. Another chance. He tore another down portal down.
Slayer ran full speed toward a small portal manifesting between the legs of a shattered Sentinel.
He tore a plasma coil from a gutted tank. Sprinted. Plunged the glowing, volatile coil straight into the gate as a Juggernaut lunged through—it exploded mid-bark, splattering onto the walls as the rift collapsed screaming inward.
From the far side of the bridge, Brass Scorpions and defiled Hellbrutes began to lumber forward.
One unleashed its Reaper Autocannon—a stream of wailing warp-shells shrieked across the bridge. Slayer dodged between columns, flanking wide as a Blood Priest emerged, armored in daemonic bone, wielding a twin Hellblade staff.
Slayer closed the gap in seconds—he threw a krak grenade low. The priest laughed—then screamed as the blast blew his right leg off, exposing spinal tubing. Slayer vaulted off the priest's shattered body, used him as a springboard, and plunged his doomblade into the Hellbrute, ripping its flesh-metal plating open with both hands and forcing its own weapon to misfire into the charging Scorpion behind it.
Both machines exploded, screaming in machine-daemon agony. Another portal opened above the wreckage.
Slayer leapt through the fire, snatched a skull-faced totem off a fallen priest, and hurled it into the portal's core. Then—melta burst to detonate it mid-air.
The portal collapsed violently, raining down boiling blood.
Behind him: dozens of Berzerkers and priests now rallied, trying to swarm.
Slayer moved through them.
Aerial spin-kick—elbow break—Doomblade backflip slash.
He ducked under a chainaxe, disarmed the wielder, split his jaw in half, kicked the corpse into another, and drove his blade through both in a fluid impalement.
A Khornate priest raised a Hellblade, glowing with bound souls. Slayer ripped a melted autocannon of tank from the bridge debris, hurled it like a spear, nailed the priest to a wrecked Chimera hull. Then sprinted forward—vaulted onto the wreck, ripped the weapon back out, and smashed it down on the priest's convulsing head until bone was paste. He shoved a krak grenade down the heretics's open neck and dropkicked him into a side gate as more daemons spilled out.
BOOM.
Warplight exploded outward. The portal screamed as it collapsed in a tide of boiling blood.
Bloodletters swarmed from a breach above a fallen Baneblade. Slayer vaulted onto its wreckage, ran up the slope of its hull as daemons climbed out of the gate. Mid-run, he slammed an frag grenade into the edge of the launcher—fired straight into their cluster.
BOOM! Exploding mid-roar.
[ Onslaught ]
He leapt—spinning double-kick into the nearest one—shattering it into gore, landed behind them, and swept the Doomblade through the pack,decapitating five in a single arc. Another frag dropped—into the portal's maw.
His armor hissed. Equipment launcher cycled.
Melta Bombs.
The first melta bomb struck the lead juggernaut between the shoulders—a perfect hit. A half-second of silence followed, then a flash of hellfire as the warhead ignited. The creature's upper frame melted inward, imploding like slag under a sunbeam. Its rider was thrown skyward, flesh boiling off his bones mid-flight before he hit the ground in steaming chunks.
The second melta bomb landed beneath the next pair, detonating beneath their brass bellies. The blast flash-vaporized the mounts' undercarriages, turning daemonic sinew and forged plate into a spray of molten ruin. The Bloodletters were shredded by their own collapsing steeds, torn apart by ricocheting horn and hoof.
The third at another Skull Cannon at mid-range. He fired—the bomb punched through its carapace, detonated inside, and vaporized the upper half of the daemon engine in one enormous scream of pressure and heat.
He tore down another warp portal.
Bloodletters on flaming juggernauts came next—charging like a living battering ram.
Slayer ran directly at them.
At the last second, he slid under the hooves, jammed frag charges under their bellies, and vaulted into the air on juggernaut gore-spray. He came down on the last beast from above, drove his Doomblade through its neck, and flipped off before it crashed and exploded, turning its rider to smoking bone.
The third portal was high in the air, guarded by a ring of Bloodletters.
Slayer took out a Heavy bolter—[Onslaught]—and unloaded point-blank. One priest's upper torso disintegrated. He ran up a wrecked Land Raider, jumped, fired a double krak payload, and landed directly into the summoning circle, scattering limbs.
He kicked one priest into the portal before it could finish speaking. The gateway swallowed his body like acid, then writhed and collapsed under its own instability. One of the priests had no head. Slayer made sure.
Doom Slayer kept slaughtering more and more as he made towards the end of the bridge....
A massive rift tore into the air near a downed Baneblade.
Slayer vaulted a Chimera wreck, rolled mid-air, hit the deck and slid under a burning pipe, caught a charging Bloodletter by the face, crushed it into the ground, and jumped straight into the rift.
Inside: screaming priests mid-summon, standing in ritual circle. Slayer tore them apart barehanded, smashed skulls with elbows, reversed their summoning scripts using blood and bone. Tore a Khornate banner in half, shoved the sharpened tip through the gate core, and watched it shatter like glass, sending feedback shockwaves through nearby daemons. The he jumped through the rift leaving behind a plasma charge—a fist-sized capsule thrumming with pale blue light.
The plasma charge pulsed, stasis field flickering, outer shell already sweating heat. The charge detonated. There was no sound. Not at first. Only the instant blinding flare—light without heat, light without color. Then came the pressure. The shockwave tore outward in a perfect sphere, vaporizing a full score of cultists before they could take another step. Flesh became smoke. Bone turned to ash. The chanting died as the front line collapsed in silence, erased mid-word.
The deck glowed red. Blood hissed off armor. The bridge began to deform.
Still, above him—the final portal floating upon the metal corpse remained open. A gaping maw of rage, vomiting Juggernauts, daemons, and daemon engines by the dozen. Its base nested in the corpse of the Lord of Skulls, a throne of blood chains and screaming hellflame.
Slayer took a breath. The Doomblade hissed. Equipment launcher ready.
Then—he stopped.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM. The bridge shook from the metal foot falls.
Contemptor Dreadnought. Chaos Lord. Ancient monster of Khorne. Axe the size of a Hellbrute. Twin-linked bolter already steaming from constant fire. He emerged from the fog and flame like a forgotten Iron god. He slammed his Axe of Blind Fury against his breastplate. The sound of Greater Daemon inside shook skulls. Lesser Daemons ceased. Berzerkers stopped. They parted. Because Doom Slayer stood alone, and Valkor blocked his path.
"The Blood Priests told us you'll be here. Our Lord of War wants you—yet you reject Him. If you wouldn't be of Blood and Gore in life, then Blood and Gore in death," He said. "I don't care for His plans for you, Slayer. I only care for Freedom. I only fight here because I fight for Freedom of all. Do not stand in my way. If you would not fight for Khorne then also do not fight for this Slaving Imperium."
The Slayer didn't flinch or replied in any way.
"Unconvinced? But you don't quip about it like many bumbling fools of the Ultramarines would. I was once of the Imperium too. They named me at birth—not to my will, but theirs. They told me what to be. What not to be. What to kill. What to love. I fought for scraps and called it duty. A hound wagging for a master. That is not loyalty. That is slavery. That's life for most in this oppressive Imperium."
Slayer did nothing so Valkor continued.
"I was once a Slave fighter, risking life and limb against anyone the Tyrant Corpse Emperor pointed his fingers at. Me and many brothers of the War Hounds. It wasn't until the Great Rebellion I saw absurdity of it all. It takes a long time to realize how much of a slave you are, and even longer to see that it doesn't have to be that way. Only when you burn down everything in fires of war can you be truly free. Only when you nothing to hold onto. That dread you feel is dizziness of Freedom. So now I have made my mission to bring this freedom to them."
Valor stepped forward nearing Slayer but then a foreign voice—voice of Sefirot said within his Vox. "The Slayer wants you know that he has only been letting you speak what he calls bullshit because it gave the Imperials a chance of make it away from the battle. You will have to die now."
The sky boiled. Warp-split and curdled red, it vomited blood rain in sheets that hissed against ceramite. The world trembled as Valkor the Clysm, Chaos Contemptor, roared as the Butcher's Nails ticked inside his skull—hulking, sacred, towering with molten breath. His Axe of Blind Fury wept bloodfire smoke, not just flame but shaped rage—daemonic faces screaming silently in the red vapor, clawing at the sky.
And the Doom Slayer charged into it.
He had no words to spare. Just movement—weapon slung, eyes locked. He advanced with Heavy Bolter braced to the hip, powerpack whining. His Equipment Launcher rotated a hot krak grenade into place.
Valkor roared, "COME THEN, SLAVER!"
Dreadnought body moved with the power of the Talisman of Burning Blood and opened with Crimson Reaping. Axe of Blind Fury crashed down, the ground cratered, shockwaves splitting armor plating from the bridge. Slayer slid under the blow—firing mid-dodge, bolter rounds hammering Valkor's torso—before circling left.
The Dreadnought rotated—Chain-Fist Cleave Retaliation—but Slayer vaulted over the spinning chop, Doomblade flicking out mid-air to rip a strip of adamantium plating from Valkor's shoulder. He landed behind and frag grenade exploded in his wake—shrapnel biting into chaos runes.
Valkor spun, one piston-shoulder crashing sideways with the Brutal Side Crush. Slayer ducked low, feet sliding out from under, body turning—Equipment launcher came up mid-roll, three plasma charges slammed into Valkor's torso, shuddering him back a pace.
The bridge cracked. The bones of the world shrieked.
Then Valkor's dreadnought body leapt—Ascendant Guillotine—axe overhead, both metal claws locked around the haft. The shockwave from impact was instant and massive, sending a canyon-line of burning blood cracks outward.
Slayer was gone from where he stood. Overdrive triggered.
World slowed. Air thickened into syrup. Valkor's motion dragged like iron through oil—sluggish, slow.
Slayer unloaded. Heavy Bolter roared, then dropped. Equipment Launcher up, two precise grenades to the knees. Doomblade cut as he advanced, slicing knee actuators, vaulting forward.
He landed on Valkor's back. Twin-linked bolters roared point blank in retaliation—Barrage of Kraken Anti-Armor Bolts. Slayer spun off mid-spray, leaving nothing but heat distortion where he'd been. A melta grenade dropped like a curse behind him.
It detonated like hell's own fist. Valkor's metal spine glowed red.
Valkor's vox box let out a Bloodrage Howl. The warp howled back. His armor cracked, blood runes lit like lava. And he came forward like a planet on fire.
"YOU FIGHT AGAINST FREEDOM! YOU ARE AN ENEMY OF GOD!"
Slayer activated Onslaught. Motion blurred, speed cracked the air. Heavy Bolter again, but faster—no pauses, no recoil—rounds tore into Valkor, but he charged anyway—Dreadnought Charge. Axe dragging. Ground gouged open like a wound.
They collided.
Slayer was airborne—not flung, but launched, vaulting off Valkor's shoulder as he turned, missile out, fired point-blank into the helm. The blast left daemonic smoke screaming up from cracked optics. Valkor grabbed blindly, his massive dreadnought claw clawing at Slayer.
But he caught only air and flame. Slayer landed behind, drove the Argent Chainaxe into the exposed spinal ridge. Halfway in before it stuck.
Bloodfire gushed from the wound. Smoke coiled into daemonic faces, screaming, biting, laughing. The axe howled with them.
[ Berserk ]
Berserk activated. Slayer roared with a red glow.
Not human. Not rage. Violence incarnate. Moving like a God of Brutality—limb-severing, spine-breaking, sheer hateful execution. Argent Chainaxe came down again and again, through servos, pistons, plating. Limbs hacked off in pieces. Twin-linked bolter fired in wild arcs, but Slayer ripped it from the socket mid-spray and used it like a mace.
The Heavy Drop came wild—Valkor staggered backward, slamming again and again, burning energy trails through the air. Slayer ducked each one, melta grenade into the armpit gap, detonated, climbed the Dreadnought's falling form.
And then: the kill.
The Slayer ripped the faceplate clean off. Drove the Argent Chainaxe down the chest—all the way in, into Hellfire reactor core, into the Contemptor's seat of power.
At that moment Sefirot voice said inside the Dreadnought Vox: "Slayer wants you to know that freedom enforced is just another way of tyranny, only by the Will of taking charge for oneself can one truly be free. You who gave your soul and self up to this Blood God. You were never free."
Flames erupted from Valkor's eyes and mouth as the souls contained within its reactors consumed him.
Doom Slayer simply stepped back.
Valkor fell. And then the Axe of Blind Fury in his dreadnought hand began to scream. Bloodfire coiled tighter. Daemon-faces howled. Then—snap. The axe turned against its bearer. Cut through armor, through gorget, through Valkor's neck. The Chaos Lord's head dropped like a crown cast down.
The greater daemon within the axe took control. The bloody Vortex was triggered. The Axe rose on its own. Spun. Screamed.
A ring of bloody skull phantoms erupted outwards. Then came the lunging slam, the axe driving itself into the ground. The bridge died. The explosion was not sound. It was absence—like God choked. A pulse of red light, shaped like a star's death scream. Blood vortex spiraled outward—structure shredded, even the daemons and Bersekers, the entire Khornate Horde were ripped apart by this power, air ignited, metal folded like wax. The dead screamed through time as the vortex exploded outwards like a nuclear bomb. Even the warp reeled as the last portal was annihilated. Even time staggered.
Slayer stood his ground not getting sucked by the vortex like everything and everyone else in the immediate vicinity—until it all exploded and shockwave hit. He was punched downward, through the bridge, through ferrocrete, through steel, vanishing in a plume of fire and daemonic wails. Plunged into the toxic river where the corpse of the fallen Warhound still lay into two titanic pieces.
And from the eye of the explosion—sealed Greater Daemon within the axe rushed out unshackled and bursting with force of countless furious souls it had consumed in its long entrapment. A mountain of hatred. Horns wreathed in flame. The souls of the dead fed his form. The retreating Imperial line began to break.
The guardsmen saw it first—not clearly, not wholly. Their eyes caught the shape but their minds could not hold it. A surge of red light burst from the heart of the ruined bridge like a flare ignited in hell. From the fire rose a silhouette, vast and burning, but every man who turned to see it saw something different.
A mountain of pain.
To one, it was the commissar who shot his brother for cowardice. To another, it was a heretic's face—twisting into that of his own mother screaming in agony. Some saw warzones they'd buried deep. Others saw cellblocks, lashings, hangings, dismemberments. Some heard voices: old betrayals, old punishments, screams that never ended. Each memory was a mirror—shattered, red-lit, seething with blood.
They clutched their helmets. Their lasrifles dropped. A wave of madness passed through the ranks like a shockwave. Some shrieked. Some dropped to their knees and beat their heads against the ferrocrete. Others opened fire blindly into the sky, screaming prayers. Teeth cracked under pressure. One man tore out his own eyes to be free of it.
But not the Space Wolves.
They stood.
Gorrulf's spear slammed to the ground and he howled—not in despair, but in fury. A clarion, pure-throated Fenrisian war cry. Around him, Hardrad followed, lightning claws singing with war-hymns of old. Their voices rose like a storm, and others joined: the howls of wolves in a world of blood. They were calling to each other—to themselves—forcing memory into coherence, denying the creature its entrance into their minds.
Only then could they see it truly.
There was a rumble, low at first, then building—rising like a beast's breath. A flare of yellow fire struck the sky, blinding bright, and with it the pillar of smoke was gone. In its place: terror incarnate.
The Great Daemon rose.
The fire writhed as if in submission. Sparks fell like meteors. From within the inferno leapt a shape—a shadow that shrieked as it came forth. Towering. A titan in silhouette, but only just. It was violence made form, titanic in scale and movement. It strode with the gravity of a falling star, and where it passed the air died, as if afraid to share the space.
It was shaped like rage.
It came to the edge of the abyss where the bridge had fallen, and light bent around it. The flame that licked at it seemed to feed it. It leapt, and the fire followed. Its hooves struck earth with a crash like continents colliding. Smoke followed in vortex swirls, cloaking it—but never fully hiding it.
Its mane streamed behind, like a banner of war aflame. Eyes like twin suns. Muscles like chained thunder.
In its right hand, it wielded the Axe of Blind Fury—now fully transformed. It pulsed with sentient fire, and each stroke of it in the air left afterimages of dying worlds. The head was jagged, glowing, weeping molten gore that steamed with the heat of a volcano's breath.
In its left, a barbed whip of many thongs, each tipped with a brass fang, each spitting sparks and smoke. It snapped and cracked like a storm of breaking bones.
Varrik stood at the front.
He alone among the Space Wolves did not howl. He knelt and drew a circle of rune-blood in the ash, channeling ancient wards. The storm in his mind parted. The hallucinations slowed. And through the shattered veil, he saw the truth.
It was red flesh and brass and wrath made visible. Ten meters tall. Horned skull crowned in eternal flame. Eyes like fissures in a world breaking open. Wings furled like battlefield banners soaked in blood.
He saw a Bloodthirster. But not as the tomes described—not in clean glyph or sterile engraving. No. This was not a thing bound by any parchment or Imperial record. It was rage incarnate, built from the souls of the damned, shaped by their screams, clad in the wreckage of a shattered Contemptor soul-prison.
The heat of its breath was a weapon. The scream of its presence a curse.
And it had come for war.
Varrik rose, his staff blazing, eyes alight with stormfire. "By the Allfather..."
The blood rain fell harder. The Bloodthirster charged, and everything was murdered beneath its hooves. Flames followed in its wake, as if hell itself had unshackled its weight upon reality. Smoke poured from its nostrils, every exhale a furnace-breath scream. It laughed without mouth or lungs—the laugh of a god of murder, the scream of every soul it had ever claimed echoing in its voice.
Its Axe of Blind Fury carved through tanks as if they were parchment. One Hellhound burst apart like something rotten under a falling hammer, crew still inside. A Baneblade tried to reverse, track whining—then vanished in a single cleave. The whip lashed across a whole platoon of guardsmen, slicing them open with the sound of meat splitting.
Four platoons ceased to exist in under a minute. Vox traffic degenerated into screaming static. A Sentinel walker fired point-blank before being vaulted by the daemon and split in half, pilot still trapped inside.
No formations held. No command was heard.
Men ran.
Some alone. Some screaming. Some still firing until their barrels burned their hands. The Space Wolves didn't run at first—but then even they understood. This thing wasn't coming for a duel.
It was coming to erase the species.
"Fall back!" Gorrulf roared, dragging Hardrad behind him. "To the gate!"
It wasn't enough.
The Bloodthister was faster.
It trampled a Hellhound and turned it into a flaming smear. Another squad of guardsmen vanished under its charge. The whip snapped a full hundred meters and pulled a fleeing Wolf into the daemon's waiting maw. Bones cracked.
Then—Varrik stopped.
He turned.
He stood at the center of the bridge, backlit by the inferno.
And he raised his staff.
The Rune Priest looked into the god-form of his death—and did not flinch. His brothers were still running, howling, dragging survivors, pushing wounded. But he stood alone now. The wind from the Greater Daemon's charge nearly blew him off his feet. The heat peeled skin from his face.
And he began to chant.
Not Fenrisian. Not High Gothic. Not even Astartes script. He spoke in the God Tongue of Enuncia. Even the mere knowledge of its existence was a secret in the galaxy, and even within the priesthood of the Space Wolves, the few words known were treasured and only passed down to the most trustworthy of the priests, passed down only after taking an oath to treat them as if they could only be uttered once in their entire lives and only when their life dependent on it. These words of power were said to pose danger to everyone even the one utters them—for Language of Gods were not built for mortal tongues and if not uttered perfectly it could destroy both body and soul.
The Words before meaning. The syllables that built stars and unwrote them. The land shook from its weight. Reality groaned, as if cracking under what it heard.
"Thur'Akhen."
A wrongness bloomed in the air. The word was too real. Too old. The fire around Varrik snuffed out—not extinguished, just… denied. The daemon staggered mid-stride. The whip curled in on itself.
The daemon roared.
Then Varrik said the second word.
"Mael'Karach."
The blood in every living thing within a hundred meters boiled—but did not kill. Instead, it froze them. Motionless. The daemon slowed.
Then came the third.
The final word.
"VONN-KAOR."
The air itself tore. A blinding lance of pure, ancient sound hit the Bloodthirster in the chest—no light, no fire, just force older than language, raw and mathematical.
The Bloodthrister stopped.
The daemon reeled. The Axe fell from its hand for a single second. Its wings flared wide to steady itself. Blood poured from the eyes in its armor. Something inside it—something deeper than daemonic flesh—shuddered.
"YOU—SHALL NOT—PASS!"
Varrik slammed his staff into the bridge. It didn't crack. It ceased to be beneath him. A sigil bloomed outward like a nova, burning lines into the steel. His body began to disintegrate from the backlash—flesh turning to ash, armor vaporizing—but he did not break.
The Space Wolves reached the far end.
Gorrulf turned just once. Saw Varrik for one last time ablaze with words too old for the Emperor Himself.
He whispered: "Brother…"
Then all the charges detonated. It was if the world fell. The bridge collapsed in a thunder of rockcrete and fire. The Greater Daemon of Khorne plummeted into the abyss in the night, roaring like a god in agony, wings wrapped in flame, pulled down by the implosion of Varrik's last act as the Rune Priest turned to dust and died.
It was over. The Space Wolves alongside the surviving gaurdsmen of the Steel Legion stood on the far platform. Bruised, bloodied. And alone.
For a breath.
Then came the sound. Beats of leathery wings. Like mountain storms colliding. And then the Bloodthirster rose. Blackened. Cracked. But laughing—deep, hollow, eternal. The Axe returned to its hand. The whip unraveled. The daemon stepped onto the far side of the bridge as the Imperials fled in all directions.