The Ogryn's headless corpse had barely hit the ground when the next wave came.
No time to rest.
No time to breathe.
Just more — more heretics, more cultists, more twisted souls pouring out of the hive's shadowed alleys like vermin from a burning nest.
They came with crude guns, flaming blades, shrapnel-spewing stubbers mounted on looted bikes. They screamed oaths to Khorne and Slaanesh alike, their bodies warped with mutation, infection, and rot. Some were shirtless, their skin carved with blasphemous runes. Others wore the remnants of old PDF uniforms, warped almost beyond recognition.
Brother Catalin II raised his plasma repeater.
> Twelve rounds. Full charge.
He fired in controlled bursts — blue fire punching through bodies, liquefying cultists by the handful. Every trigger pull was a miniature sun erupting in the dark, searing flesh from bone, igniting heretic psykers before they could finish their incantations.
He swept left — plasma discharge tearing through a makeshift gunline.
He swept right — caught a pack of charging fanatics mid-sprint, their skulls popping like fruit as fire enveloped them.
But they kept coming.
> Too many.
When the plasma coils glowed red and hissed with heat warnings, he slung the repeater across his back, drew his bolt pistol, and stepped forward into the mob.
The first cultist lunged — chainknife raised — and was blown apart by a bolt round to the chest. A second was caught mid-air as he jumped from rubble, detonated mid-flight. A third shoved a flaming spear at Catalin's helm — he side-stepped, caught the haft, and snapped it, driving his chainsword upward through the cultist's ribcage.
> "None of you are worthy."
He became a whirlwind of metal and gore — bolt pistol barking in one hand, chainsword screaming in the other. Bodies dropped in his wake — some missing limbs, others torn clean in two. Blood coated the walls, the floor, his armor.
Behind him, a miracle happened.
The Guardsmen — battered, broken — found their courage again.
Voss lifted his lasgun and yelled, "Suppressing fire! Give him cover!"
Delta-7 — or what was left of it — rose from the rubble, shoulders square, eyes burning.
Lasbolts lit the street, scything into the flanks of the cultist wave. Hesk shouted a war cry as he emptied a full cell. Denic mounted a fallen heavy stubber, spraying a line of brass-cased lead into the oncoming mobs.
The heretics faltered — not just from fear, but confusion. Resistance had returned.
Catalin felt it. Heard it.
Not victory.
But defiance.
He slammed his chainsword through another cultist, then activated his vox.
> "Catalin II. Enemy force is slowed but not broken. Civilian cult strength exceeding projections. Guardsmen of the 105th are active. They fight."
He turned and shouted over the chaos:
> "Guardians of the Throne, with me! We do not break!"
A roar went up — ragged, bloody, beautiful.
Memories in Blood – Echoes of Catalin
The chainsword choked on bone, then bit clean through.
Catalin twisted, blasting a charging zealot with his bolt pistol at point-blank range. A headless body crumpled beside his boot. Las fire cracked from behind — the Guardsmen held the line.
But as he turned to engage the next wave, a sudden pulse went through his mind.
A psychic backlash? Or something deeper?
Time skipped. His vision shivered.
> You are not only yourself.
A flicker.
Gone was Ishvan II.
Gone was the hive.
Instead, he stood… in a room.
A child's room. Posters on the wall. Crumpled books and scribbled notes. A screen glowed faintly with old fan-fictions — harmless stories about ancient heroes and imagined gods, long before he knew the grim truth.
He was small again. Mortal. Fragile. Scared.
He felt it — that old loneliness, that hollow in the chest that no one saw. He remembered reading late at night, because the dark was safer when filled with stories.
He rembers being beaten. Winning only through endurance — pain was his only teacher, and he learned well.
> I didn't break. I never did.
Another flash.
A mother, warm and kind, whispered lullabies in a forgotten tongue. Siblings he had to protect. A little sister with a gap-toothed smile. A baby brother who cried when the city lights went dark.
Then — he got sick.
Seven days.
Fighting something that had no name. Flesh burning. Organs failing. Just pain. He remembered slowly dying — and in those final moments, not fear, but acceptance.
> I did not cry. Not once.
But the memory didn't end there.
---
Then came the gene-seed.
The implantation.
The awakening.
And with it — memories that were not his.
> The walls of the Imperial Palace.
Rogal Dorn, the giant of golden silence.
The Siege. The Heresy. The burning skies over Terra.
Loyalty that could not be broken. Pain that must be endured.
And then…
The cursed fortress.
A monstrosity of iron and heresy — shaped like an eight-pointed star, drifting in space like a wounded god's corpse. Rivers of blood flowing through the decks. Brothers dying. The Legion nearly shattered.
> But Rogal Dorn endured.
And so will I.
---
📖 Back to Ishvan II
Catalin's eyes refocused — back in the hive, gore thick around him, smoke rising into a starless sky. The heretics were still coming.
But he stood taller.
Not because of pride.
Because of purpose.
Because of legacy.
He reloaded his plasma repeater, voice calm in the vox:
> "This is Catalin. I fight. I remember."
He stepped forward into the next wave, chainsword roaring, bolter flashing, plasma fire crackling.