For thirty-seven days, Myrridian had been a slow grind of death. Trenches bled men into the mud, Guard patrols pushed forward a dozen meters only to be shoved back the next night, and the warp-tainted wind carried the smell of burnt promethium across miles. Aurelius had learned the rhythm of it — the attrition, the small victories, the constant readiness for the next push.
But tonight, the rhythm died.
He felt it before the vox-net screamed warnings.
Observation Haki — sharp, sudden, electric — lanced through the fog of war, and the enemy's intent flared in his mind like a burning brand. It wasn't the skirmishers or the probing cultist mobs this time. It was all of them, moving in unison.
"They're coming," Aurelius said, voice cutting through the command dugout's noise. His Guardian Spear was already in hand. "Not here. Everywhere."
The Guard colonel blinked. "We've had no—"
A thunderclap shook the dugout. Not natural. Warp-lightning tore across the black clouds, staining them crimson. Then came the howls — not just human throats, but daemons shrieking as reality thinned.
The first shell struck Bastion Gate Three. The second landed inside the outer trench line.
The siege had begun.
The opening strikes fell in a relentless rhythm: siege shells that turned ferrocrete into molten slag, teleport flares inside the inner defenses, vox reports of uprisings behind the lines. Aurelius strode into the storm without hesitation, the golden plates of his armor catching the hell-light above.
"Hold your lines!" he roared, Conqueror's Haki flooding outward like a hammer-blow. Even here, where the air burned with the stink of the Warp, it carried — shoring up the will of men who would otherwise have broken. The Guard steadied, the Mechanicus servitors ignored their own wounds, and the Navy's ground crews dragged heavy bolters into position.
He didn't have the luxury of one battlefield. The bastions needed reinforcement, the trench lines needed shoring, the command center was under threat of teleport assault.
Aurelius moved like a storm given flesh. One moment he was atop the bastion walls, hurling traitor marines down into the mud, his spear's blade cutting through warp-forged plate. The next he was in the trenches, intercepting a champion of the Blood God whose chainaxe was already mid-swing toward a Guardsman's skull. His Armament Haki flared black over gold, the blow turning the axe aside before his return strike took the traitor's head.
The cost came fast. Conqueror's projection on this scale was like holding a planet in his mind and forcing it not to fall. Every moment he extended it was another pull on his stamina, but the alternative was collapse.
The middle hours of the siege blurred into a chain of crises.
Bastion Four went dark — an infiltration team of cultist fanatics had overrun the heavy guns. Aurelius led the breach, cutting them down in narrow corridors where the sound of fighting was deafening, every kill another second bought for Myrridian.
The Mechanicus vox relays failed on the east wall — assassins with daemon-forged blades had slipped through the shadows. He met them in the relay chamber, the walls painted with tech-priest blood, and ended them with precision thrusts before they could sabotage the macro-cannon feeds.
Still, the pressure did not break. Chaos poured men, beasts, and machines into the grinder. And through it all, Aurelius felt the warband commander — not just a marine, but something darker — watching him from the storm.
It happened in the ninth hour. The inner trench network, already battered, buckled. Siege shells and daemon artillery had blasted open a breach that led straight to the command dugouts.
Aurelius hit the mud running, spear in hand, Observation Haki stretching ahead of him like a map. He felt the warband commander's killing intent before he saw him — a massive figure in baroque crimson armor, horned helm turned toward the Custodian.
The first clash shook the ground. Spear met daemon-forged axe, sparks and warp-light spilling into the storm. Around them, Guard and traitor fought and died in screaming knots of melee, but Aurelius and the commander were locked in their own war.
The marine moved with the precision of centuries, his strikes fueled by both gene-forged strength and the Warp's boiling rage. Aurelius matched him, spear shifting from thrusts to sweeping cuts, Armament Haki crawling up the haft and blade until it burned black as night.
Still — he was losing ground. The commander's blows were heavier, his resilience unnatural.
Then Aurelius did what he had not dared until now.
He fused it.
Observation and Conqueror's Haki, drawn together in the same instant, his senses sharpening to each breath and twitch of muscle, while his will crashed outward in a wave that crushed the morale of every traitor within a hundred meters. The effect was immediate — cultists faltered, traitor marines hesitated, and the commander staggered as if struck by an invisible hammer.
Aurelius drove forward, spear finding the gap under the commander's arm. The blade punched through, the blackened edge splitting both ceramite and flesh. With a roar, he wrenched it free, the Chaos leader falling into the mud.
When it was over, Myrridian still stood. The flag still flew.
Aurelius stood with it, but barely. His breath came slow and ragged inside his helm. His limbs ached with a weight he had never felt before, his reserves of will burned almost to nothing. Even a Custodian's body could feel the edge of collapse.
He didn't fall in front of the Guard. Not until the last survivor of the counterattack limped back through the inner trenches did Aurelius lower himself to one knee, spear planted in the earth, eyes dimming.
The victory was absolute. But the whispers would be louder now — not just of the Emperor's finest warrior, but of the strange, incorruptible power that had broken a Chaos offensive no other Imperial commander could have stopped.
And somewhere, far from Myrridian, those whispers were already reaching Terra.