The iron thunder of the Adeptus Mechanicus and the heavy footfalls of the Titans drove into the Empire's crumbling defensive line like a shot of steel straight to the veins.
The Skitarii's artillery began suppressing the surging Chaos fanatics. At range, the Warhound-class Titan's Volcano Cannon traded blows with the Heldrake's desecrating breath, detonating massive fireballs of mingled plasma and warp-energy.
The line stabilized. In certain sectors, the Imperium even launched small-scale counterattacks, bolstered by the freshly committed steel.
---
I Am Not God drew a deep breath and suppressed the tremendous shock that came with having invoked the title Sun Lord.
Whatever it meant could wait. The battle in front of him could not.
He swept his gaze across the field. Not far away, a Mortal Wargod Dreadnought, freshly awakened by a Tech-Sergeant, ground forward with ponderous steps, clearing a path through packs of Poxwalkers and rebel heavy emplacements.
A perfect point of breakthrough.
"Follow the Dreadnought! Clear the flanks! Retake Corridor B7!"
He pushed the order through the vox to the surviving Krieg soldiers and the newly arrived Hebrew Blade Legion troops, then tightened his grip on the chainsword. He was ready to join the steel-edged spear of the counterattack led by that iron veteran.
He stepped forward. His focus locked on the battle ahead.
---
Then every sound around him died.
Artillery thunder, war cries, grinding metal, the boom of Titan footsteps, all of it was muffled, distorted, dragged away, as though smothered behind a thick curtain of crimson.
A whisper crept in. Impossible to describe. It acted directly upon the soul, slithering like a parasite into the depths of his consciousness.
The voice did not come from his ears.
It seemed to well up from within his own blood, his own bones, from the cracks in his will that had been filled by the Living Saint's blessing. Low. Ragged. Saturated with a primal, savage allure.
Each syllable hammered at the deepest core of his warrior's instinct.
"I… know your loyalty…"
The voice carried a peculiar admiration, as though appraising a finely crafted weapon.
"I… know your will…"
Like weighing a piece of tempered steel.
"I… commend your… virtue…"
The word virtue dripped with thick irony and twisted approval.
---
I Am Not God's stride snapped to a halt.
The air around him was no longer the scorched, smoke-choked atmosphere of battle. It had begun to blush faintly red, suffused with a sweet, iron-rust stench. The temperature climbed for no reason he could name.
At the edges of his vision, blood-light rippled outward. Invisible rifts in the warp yawned open beside him, silently reaching to drag him into an eternal realm of nothing but slaughter and ruin.
The whisper did not stop. It grew clearer. More penetrating.
"Do you hunger? Do you hunger to go on serving that cold, golden God-Corpse on His throne?"
"Do you hunger to carve out territory for that bloated, rotting Imperium with the mundane iron in your hand?"
"Have you not bled enough? Have you not slain enough to prove your worth?"
Each question was a barbed blade, raking across the exhaustion of days of grinding battle, the confusion in the face of sacrifice, the instinctive craving for greater power.
Then the voice pitched upward without warning, filled with a sense of promise as though capable of tearing the stars apart:
"Come… surrender yourself to true eternity!"
"I will give you… endless war! Foes without number to cut down! Blood that never runs dry… and supreme power!"
"No false faith required. No hollow sacrifice. Only battle! Only conquest! Only a feast of skulls and blood!"
"Come! Follow this most ancient, most honest impulse! Repeat after me:"
The voice condensed into an irresistible, ritual-laden proclamation, crashing through his soul like a great bell:
"Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!"
---
Those final words landed with tangible weight.
Something dormant within I Am Not God ignited, a primal, savage instinct that belonged wholly to the warrior.
A surge of desire erupted in his chest like a volcano. Pure. Burning. Hungry for battle and annihilation. He seemed to see himself wielding a weapon vast and wreathed in blood-flames, rampaging across an infinite battlefield, grinding everything in his path to dust, Chaos and Imperium alike.
Power. He needed power. More of it. More direct, more savage, more absolute.
His lips began to move without his command. His tongue pressed the roof of his mouth. Breath gathered in his throat.
Almost. Almost.
The ruinous syllables were a heartbeat from spilling past his lips.
---
Hum!
The chainsword gripped in his right hand shuddered violently, not from its mechanism, but from deep within the hilt. From between the teeth, perpetually humming with the dried blood of countless Chaos foes, a surge of scorching golden radiance erupted.
The light was not blinding.
Yet it carried weight, like a father's steady palm pressed firm against his chest. It flooded up along his arm, surging against the crimson current, slamming into the mindscape that had nearly drowned in scarlet.
The Living Saint's blessing, that faint gaze and recognition from the God-Emperor of Mankind, became, in this moment, the last anchor holding his soul in place.
The most unbreakable line of defense.
---
"Guh, aah!"
I Am Not God let out a short, pained grunt, as though wrenched forcibly from the deepest nightmare.
The blood-red visions receded like a tide. The seducing whisper was replaced by the chainsword's roar and the genuine explosions of the battlefield. The savage hunger that had nearly devoured him was swept away by ice-cold relief, and a far more resolute defiance.
He stumbled a step and steadied himself on the chainsword, gasping. Cold sweat beaded on his brow and mingled with grime and dried blood. He looked around in a daze.
The air had returned to its ordinary, filthy, sweltering state. The sweet-iron smell was gone.
That instant of temptation had been terrifyingly real. Yet it felt, now, like nothing more than a brief mental assault.
---
He didn't know exactly what had happened, or where that whisper had come from.
But he was absolutely certain of one thing: what had just occurred was deeply, fundamentally wrong. Not a hallucination born of exhaustion, but something external. Malicious. Intent on twisting his will.
He looked down at the chainsword. It still faintly radiated golden light, the bloodstains along its length somehow dimmed. It was the sword, or rather, something within the sword resonating with his Living Saint state, that had pulled him back at the very last moment.
He shook his head hard, flinging the last remnants of dizziness and the shards of that blasphemous whisper from his mind.
His gaze sharpened. It fixed on the Mortal Wargod Dreadnought advancing steadily ahead, and beyond it, the Heldrake locked in fierce exchange with the Mechanicus Titans.
---
The road ahead was perhaps more treacherous than ever. Temptation and threat pressed in from every direction.
But the path he had chosen had never changed.
Tightening his grip on the chainsword as its golden radiance faded, I Am Not God straightened, the spine of a man left with only one arm, and stepped forward once more.
Following the Empire's tide of iron. Charging into the frontline where destruction and hope were inextricably entwined.
Khorne's temptation had not shaken him in the slightest.
If anything, it had left his will like a blade newly drawn from the quench: colder, and more unyielding than before.
۞۞۞۞
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