When the Ashen Legion's Commissar-General, Harlan Sanders, led two fresh regiments to the southern walls, the Skaven had already been repelled. Fulgrim, personally leading the Phoenix Guard, held the breach. These superhuman warriors, enhanced in the spawning pools of the Lizardmen, left no rat alive in their wake.
"Lehv! Take your troops to reinforce the eastern walls immediately!" Fulgrim shouted, his body soaked in rain and the blood and viscera of Skaven. "Go! Leave this to us!"
"Yes, my lord!" Harlan Sanders didn't hesitate. He led his men toward the Golden Gate, where the situation had already spiraled into chaos.
The cannon fire that once thundered relentlessly had dwindled to sporadic bursts. Countless Chaos warriors had swarmed the battlements, clashing with the defenders in brutal melee combat. Human soldiers, fueled by courage, fought valiantly against the forces of Chaos, but most met their fate as bloodied fragments under the swords and axes of their formidable foes.
The Chaos warriors reveled in the carnage, their laughter and roars of triumph like a symphony of hell. Encased in blackened plate armor, they surged forward relentlessly. The irregular pounding of war drums echoed ominously across the Golden Gate, signaling another section of the walls lost to the invaders.
Every command issued on the walls seemed more desperate than the last:
"The First Regiment of the Fifth Army is wiped out!"
"Commit all reserves from the Third Regiment!"
"We need reinforcements now!"
"The Sixth Army has no reserves left!"
"We're out of ammunition!"
"Then you'll fight with swords!"
"For the Lord Commander! For the Ashen Legion!!!"
Wave after wave of defenders threw themselves at the Chaos warriors who had scaled the walls, engaging in desperate combat to reclaim the battlements.
At 6:30 AM, Chaos forces captured sections of the walls and began hurling defenders from the heights.
By 7:15 AM, the defenders counterattacked, forcing Chaos troops off the walls.
At 8:35 AM, Chaos forces returned, briefly seizing the Golden Gate and attempting to open the city gates.
By 8:50 AM, Phoenix Guard General Pedro launched a suicidal charge with the remaining reserves, including hundreds of riflemen who had run out of ammunition. Their desperate assault retook the Golden Gate, albeit at a staggering cost.
When Harlan Sanders arrived with reinforcements, the situation was dire.
"How long can we hold?" he shouted to Pedro.
"Thirty minutes, at most!" Pedro, drenched in blood, replied grimly. "Harlan, take your men and plug the gaps!"
"How long do you need?"
"As long as you can give us!"
"Understood! Soldiers, for the Lord Commander! For Constantinople!"
Cries of "For Ursun!", "For Sigmar!", "For the Lady!", "For Myrmidia!" and "For Fulgrim!" echoed across the ramparts as Sanders' reinforcements formed tight ranks, pushing forward in an attempt to drive the enemy off the walls.
But Vashta the World-Ender's army seemed endless. By Sanders' estimation, the enemy had committed at least 45,000 troops to the assault on the Golden Gate alone, while the defenders had fewer than 10,000 soldiers.
As Chaos champions and dark elf warriors joined the fray, Sanders' two regiments began to crumble. The defenders were no match for these elite foes—seasoned warriors who had spent centuries honing their craft or earned the blessings of the Dark Gods. Human soldiers fell in droves, their severed limbs and mangled corpses littering the blood-slick battlements.
Among the invaders was a dark elf assassin, Moris Blade-Dancer, who moved like a shadow among the human formations. With each leap and twirl, his blades flashed, cutting through shield walls and pike formations as if they were made of parchment.
Sanders gripped his longsword and pistol tightly, breathing heavily as he surveyed the chaos.
The defensive line was thinning.
The enemy was closing in. Sanders saw Chaos champions wrenching terrified soldiers from their shield walls and tearing them apart with their bare hands. He saw dark elf repeater bolt throwers obliterating entire squads. And he saw the assassin, Moris, dancing through the pike formations, slitting throats with effortless grace.
Sanders and his remaining men were encircled.
The militia, unable to withstand the onslaught, began to break ranks. Sanders shouted, trying to rally them, but quickly realized it was futile. These were conscripts and civilians, many of whom had fought bravely for over a day. Sanders couldn't bring himself to chastise them. He simply loaded his pistol, silently preparing for his final stand.
Memories flooded his mind.
Once known as Lev Davidovich, Sanders had been born into a wealthy boyar family in Kislev. As a young man, he entered the Ursunite clergy, though he had always been a skeptic, dismissing gods and salvation as illusions.
"There is no savior, no gods. If Kislev is to rise from its ashes, we must rely on ourselves!"
This belief had earned him exile more than once for his radical views. But Tsar Boris Ursus had eventually recognized his potential, appointing him as his chief minister. Under Boris' reign, Sanders had helped reform Kislev's military, replacing its archaic centurion system with modern ranks and reorganizing its forces with cutting-edge equipment. It was the pinnacle of his career.
But Boris fell in the Troll Country campaign, and his successor, Tsarina Katarin, rejected most of her father's reforms. The traditionalist boyars and Ice Witches began undoing their progress. Though Katarin initially spared him out of respect for Boris' memory, Sanders was eventually ousted and forced to live as a drifter among pirates, his dreams seemingly crushed.
That was, until he met Ryan, King of Bretonnia. Until he arrived in the New World. Until Fulgrim recognized his talents and gave him a second chance to serve a greater cause. The past few years had been the happiest of his life. He didn't care about being Fulgrim's tool or guiding stubborn soldiers. He only cared about one thing:
His dream.
Sanders had a dream.
He dreamed of a world where humans cast aside their divisions and prospered together.
He dreamed of a world where the son of a noble and the son of a peasant could stand as equals and receive the same education.
He dreamed of a day when all humanity could unite and say "no" to their so-called noble masters and bureaucratic overlords.
He dreamed of a world where liberty, democracy, justice, and righteousness blossomed like flowers on mountaintops.
But today, Sanders knew his dream would likely die with him.
He was too old, too tired.
He saw General Weidenfeller die, his arm severed and his body crushed under the boot of a Chaos champion, impaled through the chest by a massive blade.
He saw his lifelong friend, Marshal Yegorov, fall, his skull shattered by shrapnel, his lifeblood gushing forth like a fountain. Decades of companionship ended in a single, brutal moment.
He saw the officers who had followed him to Lustria cut down one by one.
Finally, the Chaos champions reached Sanders. One swung an axe, shattering his longsword. Sanders raised his pistol and fired at the warrior's helmet, leaving only a white dent.
"Lord Commander, my dream... I leave it to you."
On this morning, the Ashen Legion's Commissar-General, the former chief minister of Kislev, fell at the Golden Gate.
By the time Fulgrim arrived with the Phoenix Guard, the Golden Gate was lost. The defenders had been all but annihilated. The battle for the gate claimed over 8,000 lives from the Ashen Legion but cost Vashta's forces over 12,000.
Atop the shattered gate stood Vashta himself, astride his black dragon, Midnight Shadow. With a swing of his massive sword, he signaled the Chaos champions and Slaanesh raiders to advance.
But the gate was still partially sealed. Its reinforced doors, though damaged, refused to yield to the attackers. The remaining defenders cut the ropes holding the doors, causing them to collapse inward and completely block the passage.
Furious, Vashta commanded his dragon to act. With the power of Chaos coursing through it, the black dragon smashed the gate with its tail. The ancient doors finally crumbled, one half crashing to the ground.
Chaos troops surged forward—until Fulgrim arrived.
Vashta, fully aware of Fulgrim's might, retreated to the skies, leaving the vanguard to face the wrath of the enraged Primarch. Fulgrim, mourning the loss of Sanders, Weidenfeller, and Yegorov, unleashed his full fury. The Phoenix Guard obliterated the advancing Chaos warriors, leaving piles of bodies in their wake.
As the battle raged, Julius and his Huntsmen Cavalry once again answered the call. Charging into the Chaos lines, the Huntsmen clashed with dark elf cold one knights and stormvermin warlords. Julius, wielding his enchanted blade, Knights Do Not Die Unarmed, led his troops in a whirlwind of steel and fury.
"It's a good day to die!" the cavalry roared as they carved through the enemy ranks.
Julius' audacious charge earned him the respect of even the Chaos warriors and dark elves, some of whom considered capturing him alive as a prize.
Together, Fulgrim and Julius reclaimed the Golden Gate.
But their victory was short-lived. News arrived that ...the southern walls had fallen.
The news hit Fulgrim like a hammer. The southern walls, which had been under the command of Steel Felix, the founder of Kislev's Cheka, had finally succumbed to the relentless assault of the Skaven. Felix had led a fierce defense, rallying the defenders with his iron will and unyielding courage, but the overwhelming firepower of the Skaven's warp lightning cannons and their ceaseless waves of stormvermin had proven too much.
Felix himself had been grievously injured, struck by a warpstone bullet from a Skaven jezail sniper. Bleeding heavily, he refused to retreat, ordering his soldiers to bind him to his horse with ropes so he could continue directing the defense. His last words echoed in the ears of his men:
"It's a good day to die. If I cannot return to my homeland, then I will be buried here. This is the fate of a warrior."
Before they could finish binding him to his mount, a direct hit from a warp lightning cannon vaporized Felix, his horse, and several of his closest aides. The southern wall, now leaderless, crumbled under the weight of the Skaven horde.
Fulgrim clenched his fists in frustration. He had trusted Felix to hold the southern wall, but even the Steel Commissar had his limits. The fall of the southern wall meant that the Skaven now had a direct path into the city, pouring their diseased and maddened troops into Constantinople's streets.
At the same time, reports arrived that the northern walls had also been breached. Despite the heroics of the defenders at Golden Horn Bastion, including the daring counterattack by the Janissary Corps led by Grand Wizard Karim, the undead forces of Luthor Harkon had finally broken through. Their enormous undead warships, dragged across land by countless skeletal laborers, had proven to be an insurmountable challenge. Though Karim had personally wounded Luthor Harkon with a summoned fire elemental, the necromancer-pirate had escaped, and the undead now flooded into the northern districts.
The news of these twin disasters meant only one thing: all three walls had fallen. The invaders—Chaos, Skaven, and undead—were now inside the city. The streets of Constantinople erupted into chaos as the defenders scrambled to form a new line of defense.
Fulgrim immediately began issuing orders. Julius and his Huntsmen were tasked with slowing the Skaven advance in the southern district, while Pedro and the remnants of the Phoenix Guard held the northern gates against the undead. Meanwhile, Fulgrim himself took command of the central district, rallying any remaining soldiers to prepare for a last stand.
Despite their overwhelming losses, the defenders were not entirely without hope. Fulgrim's meticulous preparations over the years had ensured that Constantinople was built to withstand prolonged sieges. The city's internal layout included multiple layers of fortifications, choke points, and fallback positions. The invaders, while having breached the walls, now faced the daunting task of fighting street by street, building by building, through a hostile urban environment where every corner could hide a defender's ambush.
But even with these advantages, the odds were grim. The defenders were exhausted, their numbers dwindling. Fulgrim knew they could not hold out much longer without reinforcements.
And then, just as despair threatened to overwhelm the defenders, a sound erupted from the depths of the jungle.
A roar.
The roar echoed through the dense rainforest surrounding Constantinople, shaking the very ground beneath the city. It was a primal, ancient sound—one that struck fear into the hearts of the attackers and hope into the hearts of the defenders.
"W-what is that?!" a dark elf commander shouted, his voice trembling as the roar reverberated through the battlefield.
The ground began to tremble. Trees toppled like matchsticks as something massive moved through the jungle. The invaders turned their attention to the eastern horizon, where the rainforest seemed to part as if making way for a titanic force.
And then, through the canopy, it emerged.
Quimok, the Dread Saurian, the living embodiment of Lustria's untamed fury, stepped into the light. Towering over the battlefield, its massive body was covered in glistening scales, scarred and weathered from centuries of battle. Each step it took shook the ground, sending shockwaves rippling through the ranks of the invaders. Its maw opened wide, revealing rows of jagged teeth capable of shredding even the toughest of Chaos champions.
On its back stood Kroq-Gar, the Last Defender of Xhotl. The ancient Saurus Oldblood, clad in golden ceremonial armor, raised his mighty spear high, his cold, predatory eyes scanning the battlefield with disdain. Behind him marched the might of the Lizardmen army, ranks of Saurus warriors, Temple Guards, and Kroxigors, their movements perfectly synchronized, their war cries echoing across the jungle.
The invaders froze in disbelief. They had not anticipated this. The Lizardmen, who had been presumed to be too preoccupied with their own battles against Chaos in Lustria's interior, had arrived.
"By the Dark Gods… it's the Lizardmen!" a Chaos warlord bellowed, his voice tinged with fear.
Kroq-Gar pointed his spear forward, and with a guttural command, the Lizardmen army surged into motion. Quimok roared again, its deafening cry drowning out the sounds of war as it charged headlong into the Chaos lines. Saurus warriors followed close behind, their obsidian blades cutting through the invaders with ruthless efficiency.
The battlefield descended into chaos. Skaven, undead, and Chaos forces alike were caught off guard by the sudden onslaught. Entire regiments were trampled under Quimok's massive claws, while Kroq-Gar's spear crackled with lightning, striking down foes from afar.
From the skies, flocks of Terradon Riders and Ripperdactyls descended upon the enemy, their riders hurling explosive bolas and javelins into the thick of the invaders. In the rear, Skink Priests called upon the winds of magic, summoning storms of fire and stone to rain down upon their foes.
For the first time since the siege began, the defenders felt a glimmer of hope. The arrival of the Lizardmen had shifted the tide of battle. Fulgrim, standing atop the battered central walls, allowed himself a rare smile.
"Brothers! Sisters!" Fulgrim shouted to his soldiers. "Do you see? Do you hear it? Our allies have come! Fight! Fight with all your might! The gods themselves demand it!"
The defenders rallied, their spirits rejuvenated by the sight of the Lizardmen tearing through the invaders. Even the exhausted Huntsmen under Julius found new strength, pressing their counterattacks against the Skaven. The tide was beginning to turn.
But Fulgrim knew this was only the beginning. The Lizardmen's intervention had bought them time, but the battle for Constantinople was far from over. The invaders, though reeling, were far from defeated. And somewhere in the chaos, Mortarion and his Death Guard still waited, biding their time.
Fulgrim turned his gaze toward the city's battered streets, where the fighting continued to rage. He clenched his fists.
"This is it," he murmured. "This is where we hold the line. For the Ashen Legion. For humanity. For our dreams."
The battle for Constantinople was far from decided. But for the first time in days, the defenders felt the faintest glimmer of hope.
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