The aftermath of slaughter clung to the air like a suffocating shroud. Blood slicked the deck in wide, coagulating pools, mixing with scorched metal and warp ichor. The stench was unspeakable — burned flesh, ruptured viscera, and a sour rot that clung to the back of the throat.
Major Halvra, Captain Vossen, Lieutenant Branek, Sergeant Khor and two raiders.
Only six figures remained alive amid the ruin, ringed by hulking Traitor Astartes. Every inch of the command bridge was littered with the broken, contorted bodies of Exile soldiers.
Lieutenant Darius Branek hung between life and death, bruised and blood-slick, his helm lost and one eye nearly swollen shut. A bloated Death Guard brute pinned him by the arms, its breath a wet rasp through diseased vox-grilles.
His chest rose and fell in ragged, shallow pulls.
Nearby, Major Halvra bled from a vicious head wound, her face a mask of defiance and hatred. Captain Vossen sagged against a broken console, teeth clenched against the agony of a ruined eye and blood-slicked torso.
A deathly hush settled, the heavy, expectant silence before chaos marine unleashed their cruelty.
Then came the tread of booted giants.
Huron Blackheart strode into view, crimson and iron baroque armor radiant with unholy energy, daemon-claw crackling with black fire. His vox-grill distorted his words into a predator's snarl.
"The mongrels bled its last," Huron growled. "The blackstone fortress is mine once more."
His Chosen and Possessed fanned out. A Dark Apostle murmured prayers thick with bile, each syllable leaving the walls pulsing wetly.
Major Halvra spat thick blood at Huron's feet. "You'll die choking on your own rot, dog."
Without hesitation, Huron backhanded her, the daemon-claw's talons raking deep gashes through her cheek.
Halvra sagged, still glaring, even as blood dripped from her jaw.
"You'll scream for me soon enough," the Tyrant hissed.
And then the tortures began.
Emperor's Children marines approached, clad in silk sashes soaked in old gore, weapons adorned with flayed flesh. One hummed a tuneless lullaby while he drove a mono-knife between Halvra's ribs, twisting it slow, savoring each twitch.
A second marine sang softly as he pressed a scalding branding rune to Captain Vossen's ruined eye, his screams muffled behind clenched teeth.
Branek's head jerked as a slender Emperor's Children champion pressed a boot against his spine, forcing him down.
"You'll watch," the traitor crooned, his voice a poisoned sweetness. "Witness what becomes of defiance."
Halvra's cries of defiance broke into ragged gasps as hooked chains peeled flesh from bone. Vossen howled as molten filigree was forced into his wounds. A Raider trooper sobbed brokenly, begging for death.
And then the light changed.
A cold, unnatural pall swept the bridge. The air grew sharp, brittle, the taste of iron and ozone thickening.
From the bleeding shadows, they came.
Figures clad in void-black ceramite, their armor scorched as if drawn from the heart of a dying star. Their shoulders wreathed in pale, spectral flame. The Legion of the Damned.
No vox-call heralded them. No battle cry.
The bridge fell to horrified silence.
Human-sized legionaire in shinobi pattern armor and glinting void-black plates followed in their wake, faces hidden behind blank helms. Some without helmet shows skull wreathed in ghostfire. Two pupil like fires on their eyes.
The astartes bore ancient bolters, others long-forgotten relic blades flickering with void-light. While the human carry laser and rail weaponry and some carry monomolecular blade.
And then, at the fore, a towering figure that easily dwarf even terminator armor.
No head.
Only a burned stump where a helm might once have been — yet the thing spoke, its voice a bone-deep rasp that filled the room without vox.
"By the dead and the damned… retribution comes."
Branek's blood froze.
The memory slammed into him like a thunderbolt his dream, the crimson fire cloaked figure, the words of Sanguinius that he will face a defeat but he just need to endure as reinforcement will come.
This was it. The Gorgon.
His heart pounded against his ribs as the Legionnaire knelt beside him — a human-sized figure in burning black void armor, a gloved hand gripping Branek's shoulder.
Four more human Legionnaires appeared beside other Exile survivors, phasing from smoke and blood-mist. They dragged the broken soldiers upright.
Not Captain Vossen. Not Major Halvra.
Their wounds too severe, their torturers treated them like butchered animals. A sobering moment of grim reality of this galaxy.
The human Legionnaires passed through the traitors like wraiths.
And then Chaos reacted.
Bolter fire barked, but the rounds passed harmlessly through the Legionnaires as if the world itself refused to acknowledge them.
Daemons leapt claws slashing, fangs snapping only for their blows to strike empty air or pass through spectral forms.
Shinobi-like legionaire flickered between existence, killing traitors with swift, precise strikes before vanishing again. Their movements glitched unnaturally, making their attacks impossible to follow.
A Word Bearer bellowed in frustration, charging with a roaring chainblade only for a monomolecular blade to punch through his chest from behind.
A Warp Talon surged forward, its lightning claws catching an astartes Legionnaire's helm. With a swift swipe the lightning claws broke the helmet and its inside.
Yet the figure burst into burning ash and reformed behind him, ramming a blade through his back.
Huron snarled, "What warp sorcery is this?!"
The Gorgon advanced, its hammer a column of warpfire.
Chaos Marines roared, bolters spat death, daemons shrieked their fury but nothing connected.
An Emperor's Children champion was impaled by a Legionnaire's relic blade, ghost-flames devouring him from within.
A daemonette howled, leaping into the fray, only to be met by an ancient sword. Warp-light clashed in a storm of fire and agony.
Barnek heard vox channels erupted in a maelstrom of panic from a nearby fallen traitor marine.
"They're everywhere! chaos curse them!"
"They won't die! Nothing lands a strike!"
"Astartes burning like ghosts! impossible!"
Branek staggered to move his feet, his hands trembling around his lascarbine. His gaze locked with the Gorgon's empty, headless form yet somehow, he felt it staring back.
The battlefield blurred as he remembered Sanguinius' voice. His prophetic dream was not madness.
He turned to see a Raider clutching his chest, eyes wild.
"Are we… are we dead?"
"No," Branek rasped. "Not yet."
Chaos faltered.
A Death Guard Terminator swung a massive scythe, cleaving a Legionnaire apart, yet the warrior dissolved into smoke and reformed in seconds.
Even Huron's daemon-claw found nothing but air.
The Legion of legion pressed forward, relentless and inevitable.