The command bridge no longer sounded like a battlefield — it sounded like a slaughterhouse.
The air was thick with screams, overlapping vox-chatter, and the wet, bone-deep percussion of bolter rounds chewing through flesh. The walls wept ichor in oily streaks, running down cracked bulkheads to pool at the boots of exhausted soldiers. The stink of blood, promethium, and charred meat hung in the air like a living thing, smothering every breath.
Lieutenant Darius Branek pressed himself against a blast-scarred pillar, his lascarbine slick with gore. Every inch of cover was pitted and crumbling, bodies slumped against barricades, faces twisted in death or madness.
A heavy tread reverberated through the metal beneath his boots — the bass, predatory march of armored giants.
The vox-net flickered alive.
"—Defense sector Theta overrun. No survivors."
"Gamma holding by a thread — breach imminent!"
"Emperor's Children massing in sector Seven — casualties extreme!"
And then the voice that turned the blood in every Exile's veins to ice:
"Chaos Marine signatures… number too large — estimated main force is coming through the breach!"
A moment of static-laced silence, before Major Halvra's command voice barked through the network, harsh and unyielding:
"Stand to! Weapons up! This is it! You hold now, or you die screaming!"
Sergeant Khor crouched beside Branek, his lascarbine dark with blood and ichor.
"Thirty-eight left in the platoon, sir. Counting us."
Branek's throat was raw, voice a cracked whisper.
"Could be worse."
He knew it was a lie.
"Movement," a Raider vox-officer reported. "Main breach corridor — multiple signals."
Another vox cut in, panicked and jagged.
"It's him! It's the Tyrant — Huron's here! He's leading them!"
The name struck like a thunderclap. This is going to be the biggest fight in the blackstone fortress
"You heard it," Khor rasped. "There's no way back now."
Major Halvra's voice cut through the growing din.
"Defensive line! Reinforce the sanctum perimeter! No retreat!"
Branek forced a breath through lungs that felt like they were drowning in sludge.
"You heard the Major, defensive positions!"
The defenders moved like ghosts, dragging barricades into place, scavenging ammo from the dead, stringing crude tripwires. The walls bled. The lumen strips flickered. The fortress itself screamed.
Then they came.
Chaos Marines strode through the breach like living nightmares. Death Guard in bloated, rusted plate, Word Bearers daubed in profane scripture, Emperor's Children gleaming in corrupted gold and purple.
Behind them swarmed daemons — shrieking, impossibly formed things of flesh, teeth, and void-light. Limbs grew and retracted in madness, faces stretched over torsos, mouths screamed from kneecaps. Warp-beasts slithered across the blood-wet floor, snapping at anything that moved.
"Hold fire…" Branek rasped. "Wait for it…"
At their head walked Huron Blackheart.
His ancient, baroque crimson and black armor radiated unnatural energy. A crackling daemon-claw flexed at his side. His snarling helm glimmered like the maw of some predatory god. Around him stalked his personal Chosen — Possessed, Warp Talons, creatures so corrupted it was hard to tell what parts of them had once been mortal.
"Sir, look!" Khor spat, pointing.
In Huron's claw hung a severed head — the ruined, agonized face of Captain Hallen Varik.
Seconds stretched.
"Fire "Sir— look!" Khor hissed, voice tight.
Branek followed the gesture — and his gut twisted.
In Huron's massive daemon-claw hung a severed head. Blood and spinal tissue dripped onto the deck. The features were ruined, jaw slack, but the scarred face was unmistakable. Captain Hallen Varik. His dead eyes stared, mouth frozen mid-scream, horror etched into his final moment.
A brief, almost imperceptible ripple passed through the line. A tightening of grips on rifles. A few sharp intakes of breath. Even among these hardened men, it was a gut-punch.
"Bastards…" someone muttered, low and raw.
Khor spat on the deck, teeth bared.
"No damned mercy now."
Branek forced the bile down his throat.
"Fire!"
The barricade erupted in lasbolts, plasma fire, and frag blasts.!"
The line erupted in lasbolts, plasma discharges, shotgun blasts. Raiders sprung ambushes — tripwires and monofilament nets slicing lesser daemons apart. Plasma charges gutted Terminators.
The traitor marines opened fire in return. Bolter rounds found their marks, each detonating in wet red sprays.
The vox-net howled.
"Sector Four fallen!"
"Sanctum perimeter breached!"
"Multiple daemonic constructs in the control spire!"
Branek gunned down a Word Bearer, even as the traitor screamed, "For the Pantheon!"
Major Halvra's voice cut through the storm.
"All units! Final fallback positions — reinforce the sanctum doors! Last stand!"
Sergeant Khor grinned through bloodied teeth.
"Guess it's our turn."
Branek nodded. "We don't run. Not today."
The Blackstone howled.
And the slaughter began.
Elsewhere, Major Halvra tried the vox again.
"This is Major Halvra to Division Command! Immediate reinforcement request. Command Bridge under direct assault from Huron's main force! I repeat, we need all available units!"
A beat of static. Then a weary voice, ragged and defeated.
"Negative, Command Bridge. We're at last stands across the sector. Multiple sectors fallen. No units left to send. Emperor protect you."
Halvra slammed a fist against the comm panel.
"Then get me the fleet!"
The comm-adept hesitated, bleeding from one eye. "Ma'am… orbital vox relay's unstable. The fleet's engaged at point-blank. Warp anomalies worsening. They won't break formation or risk reinforcement drops."
"Do it anyway. Patch me through."
Static howled. Then a distant fleet officer's strained voice.
"This is Fleet Operations. Blackstone sector is lost. We're fighting Abaddon's vanguard. Reinforcement impossible. Hold if you can. Death if you must."
Halvra's jaw clenched, throat raw.
"Understood. Halvra out."
On the line, death clawed ever closer.
Death Guard lumbered through lasfire, plague flails crushing Exile troopers. A Terminator's power fist caved in a Raider's chest.
Daemonettes danced through the barricades, shrieking, flesh-knives flashing. A Raider dropped, throat slit, a grin of bliss frozen on his face.
Khor led a charge, laspistol blazing. "For the Ninth!"
Branek followed, bayonet plunging into a shrieking horror's throat. Blood — black and acidic — spat across his visor.
A Vox-officer screamed.
"Contact rear vent. Warp breach! We're flanked!"
Major Halvra's voice roared.
"Collapse choke-point Epsilon! Bleed them!"
Explosives boomed, turning corridors into meat-grinders. Raiders sprung final ambushes. Misdirections led squads of traitor Astartes into kill-zones.
A Word Bearer Chaplain bellowed blasphemies, his crozius ablaze, smashing skulls, shouting:
"The Ruinous Powers feast this day!"
A Raider detonated a plasma charge at his feet.
"Feast on that, bastard."
Branek's HUD blinked. New contact markers. Dozens. Hundreds.
"They are preparing to breach!"
The Exiles formed the final line. Thirty men. Raiders and Ninth together.
Khor gave a blood-slicked grin.
"If we're dying, let's make it loud."
Branek slapped a fresh charge-pack into his carbine.
"Agreed. No one runs. No one breaks. We fight together."
And the Tyrant of Badab came.