Excellent! Thanks for bringing that back — this is a brutal and immersive intro, full of grimdark tension and despair. You've really nailed the hopelessness and horror of the Imperial Guard's last stand — and it's just begging for the arrival of Brother Catalin II to turn the tide (or at least make the traitors earn their blood).
Let's continue the story from where you left off — the Guardsmen are on their last legs, and now Catalin II, the 3-meter-tall Space Marine, descends into the meat grinder.
📖 Warhammer 40,000: Hivefall on Ishvan II
Scene: The Arrival of Catalin II
A thunderous crack split the sky.
From the smoke-choked heavens above the hive city, a Drop Pod screamed downward like a meteor of vengeance, its hull glowing red-hot from atmospheric entry. Traitor fire lanced up toward it — lasbolts, autogun rounds, even a few desperate missiles — but none could stop its descent. The pod smashed into the avenue behind the crumbling barricade with an earth-shaking impact, pulverizing a dozen heretics beneath its weight.
Then — hiss-hiss-HISS-THUNK — the pod's petals exploded outward.
Out stepped Brother Catalin II of the Exemplar Aegis, his colossal armored frame rising like a living statue from the smoke. His Mk. X Gravis armor was covered in scrapes and scarring from past wars, the aquila across his chestplate half-melted by plasma burns. His left pauldron bore the stylized tower emblem of the Aegis; his right gauntlet clenched a storm bolter, its barrels already spinning.
No speech. No salute.
Only the shriek of his jump-pack igniting as he launched forward into the horde.
The first heretic he landed on was crushed flat — bones shattered, organs pulped. Catalin's power fist lit up with a humming blue aura as it smashed into a second traitor, reducing him to a red mist. Storm bolter fire shredded the front ranks, bolts detonating inside flesh and armor alike. The horde recoiled, stunned by the fury of the Angel of Death now among them.
The Guardsmen — bloody, exhausted, hopeless — looked on in awe. A few even began weeping as they saw him tear into the enemy like a reaper in midnight.
Catalin didn't stop.
He waded through the heretics like a living tank, his voice finally booming across the vox:
"You die in vain, heretics. The Emperor's wrath is upon you."
A Chaos berserker — half-naked, his skin flayed and covered in skulls — charged at Catalin with a chain-axe. The Space Marine met him mid-swing, grabbing the weapon with his power fist and crushing it in his grip before lifting the berserker by the throat and hurling him into a mass of cultists. Bolter fire followed — mass-reactive rounds tearing through the packed bodies.
The scent of blood and burning flesh clung thick to the air. Even with his helmet's filtration systems, Catalin II could taste the rot of chaos in his mouth — the taint that corrupted Isvan II down to its bones.
He did not care.
He was a weapon.
A blade.
An executioner in ceramite.
As another wave of heretics surged forward, he met them head-on. They screamed oaths to dark gods, their bodies twisted with mutation — extra limbs, eyeless sockets, tongues like worms — but none of that mattered.
Bolt after bolt slammed into their ranks. Explosive rounds tore through their chests, rupturing organs and spraying gore across the hive walls. A cultist in makeshift flak armor tried to flank him — Catalin turned, grabbed him by the head, and crushed it like fruit. Bone fragments and brain matter sprayed across his gauntlet, but he was already moving on.
A brute of a traitor, nearly as tall as a Space Marine and wielding a chainblade of jagged steel, charged him screaming, "Skulls for the Throne!"
Catalin didn't answer.
He ducked beneath the wild swing and rammed his power fist into the traitor's abdomen, shattering ribs and spine in one devastating blow. The man spasmed, vomited blood — and Catalin finished him with a storm bolter burst to the face.
> "You fight without honor. You die without meaning."
The words rumbled from his vox-caster like a death knell.
Behind him, Guardsmen rallied. Hope surged in their chests for the first time in hours. The Emperor's Angel was here — not to save them, but to avenge them.
Catalin advanced.
He climbed over broken barricades, wading through fire and bodies, swatting aside traitors like insects. Some ran. Most charged. All died.
Above, the hive's spires loomed like broken teeth. Sirens howled. Vox-chatter crackled with static and screams. Somewhere deeper in the city, a Warp Rift howled open — Catalin felt its psychic bile tugging at the edge of his soul.
He clenched his jaw.
> "You will not take this world," he growled.
A mutated Ogryn smashed through the ruins ahead, adorned in chains and painted in blood. Its arms had fused into bone-blades, and its eyes burned with unnatural flame. Behind it, more cultists rallied.
Catalin marked it.
A worthy kill.
He stepped forward, vox-chatter spiking.
> "Catalin II to any loyalist forces — fallback corridor is compromised. I will hold this junction. Route all survivors to Level 3-Vox-Node Theta. Repeat: I hold the line."
Then he cut the channel.
His storm bolter clicked empty.
He holstered it — and unslung his chainsword.
It roared to life.
Hivefall on Ishvan II
Scene: From the Mud – Eyes of the Guard
Guardsman Aren Voss coughed blood onto his flak vest, the taste of iron mixing with the ash in the air. His squad — Delta-7 of the 105th — was gone. Or close to it.
Five survivors, maybe six if Sarik was still breathing under the wreckage. None uninjured. Their Chimera was a burning husk, torn open like a tin can by heretic grenades. They'd dragged what was left of themselves behind a shattered plascrete wall, their lasguns down to spare cells, bayonets dulled from hand-to-hand bloodletting.
They had nothing left but prayers and pain.
Then the sky cracked.
At first, they thought it was another shell falling — until the drop pod slammed down like a thunderhead behind their lines. The shockwave sent chunks of rubble skidding past them, and the howls of traitors turned to shrieks of confusion. Voss raised his head, eyes squinting through the soot.
And then he saw him.
> A giant of metal and death.
Three meters tall, clad in black and steel. Brother Catalin II emerged from the drop pod like a god of war — storm bolter barking, power fist pulverizing flesh and bone. Voss's breath caught in his throat. It wasn't just the violence — it was the way he moved. Purposeful. Efficient. Like a sculptor cutting away the weak.
They called Space Marines the Emperor's Angels, but Voss had always thought that was just propaganda.
Until now.
Catalin moved through the enemy like a wrecking machine, his every motion painting the hive-street in gore. The noise was unholy — chainsword roaring, storm bolter hammering, the wet crunch of bodies breaking under ceramite boots.
Private Hesk — barely sixteen, face burnt and hands shaking — whispered, "Is he real?"
"Real enough," Voss muttered, still staring.
The Astartes roared a vox-command. Voss couldn't hear all of it, just enough: "…I hold the line…"
And then the Ogryn thing came out of the fog.
The Guardsmen flinched, instinct telling them to run — but they were rooted. Not by fear.
By something else.
Awe.
Catalin didn't retreat. Didn't hesitate.
He walked toward the monstrosity — weapon drawn, alone, defiant.
"Throne…" muttered Corporal Denic, voice hollow. "He's gonna fight that thing."
Duel in the Ash – Catalin vs. the Beast
The creature lumbered forward, snarling through a jaw broken and reset too many times, bone-blades extending from its arms like butcher's cleavers. Its eyes glowed with warp fire, weeping red smoke. Chains were looped around its torso, each link adorned with the skulls of former comrades — maybe even fellow Ogryns, hacked apart for failing the Dark Gods.
It bellowed, a sound more animal than man, and charged.
Catalin fired his bolt pistol, the heavy sidearm booming with each pull. Mass-reactive shells slammed into the Ogryn's chest, rupturing flesh and blasting off chunks of bone — but it barely flinched.
> Too much mass. Too much momentum. Let it come.
He holstered the pistol mid-stride and slung his plasma repeater off his back — a custom variant, twin-barreled and overcharged. As the beast roared closer, Catalin aimed and fired.
> "For the Throne."
The plasma blast lit the street like a second sun — blue fire engulfed the mutant's shoulder, liquefying flesh and melting half of the bone-blade clean off. The Ogryn screamed, but pain only drove it faster. It slammed into Catalin like a freight transport.
Ceramite cracked. Catalin stumbled.
The beast raised its other arm to strike — but the Astartes caught the limb with his power fist, servos whining as it fought against the mutant's brute strength. Sparks flew. The Ogryn twisted, trying to bring its gaping mouth toward Catalin's helmet.
Too slow.
Catalin headbutted it — once, twice — cracking its snout. Then, with a bellow of his own, he ignited his chainsword and buried it in the Ogryn's abdomen, teeth grinding through fat, muscle, and mutated organs. The beast shrieked, blood and bile spraying across Catalin's armor.
He ripped the chainsword free and swung upward — cleaving into the creature's shoulder and up through its neck, nearly severing the head.
Still, it wouldn't die.
The Ogryn reeled back, swinging wildly, blood spraying in arcs. Catalin dropped low, rolled beneath the strike, and came up firing the plasma repeater again, twin blasts searing through the monster's chest — burning a hole straight through.
The Ogryn staggered.
Catalin advanced. Chainsword revving.
> "You are nothing. Just another failure fed to the Dark."
One final swing — and the beast's head came free, bouncing across the hive floor before landing at the feet of a stunned traitor cultist.
The body crashed to the ground seconds later, shaking the earth.
Catalin stood above it, steaming with gore and plasma heat. He turned slightly, watching the next wave form — mutants, zealots, armed civilians with madness in their eyes. Another horde.
He reloaded his plasma repeater, holstered it with a metallic click.
> "Come, then."
"I have more."