At this moment, Cassius was already at his absolute limit.
The golden light flickered erratically in his empty sockets. His body trembled with a rhythmic, mechanical violence; the muscles beneath his shattered plate were entirely necrotic, burnt away by the very power that sustained them. His actions were no longer physiological; they were a manifestation of unwavering will and the Emperor's final, searing blessing.
With each agonizing step, copious amounts of blood leaked from the gaps in his armor, making a heavy drip-drip sound against the fungal floor. To Sarah, that sound was a death knell—the countdown to her execution.
Cassius "stared" at her, his right fist wreathed in that persistent, holy flame. He repeated a single word under his breath, his voice a hoarse, broken rasp: "Revenge... revenge..."
Sarah dragged her mangled body backward, her tearing claws leaving deep furrows in the carpet. For the first time, she did not calculate; she only prayed. She prayed that death would hesitate. She prayed that the judge from hell would finally stumble.
But Cassius did not stop. He dispelled the surrounding darkness with his aura, sealing away her last shred of hope. Finally, he stood over her. He raised his fist, the golden light illuminating Sarah's desperate, multifaceted face.
Judgment was here.
At that precise second, a cold, domineering command echoed in Raynor's mind, and by extension, the battlefield.
"System: Initiate Forced Dialogue!"
In an instant, an overwhelming power invaded Cassius's consciousness. It was a force that did not belong to the Warp or the Materium—it was a cold, absolute authority that forcibly suppressed the golden flames. The "Miracle" was being smothered.
Even the God-Emperor's blessing began to dim, fading at a speed visible to the naked eye. A surge of primal resentment erupted in Cassius's mind. He wanted to scream, to rebel. He was one strike away.
"ARGH!!!"
The intense psychic turmoil of suppressing a "Saint" caused Raynor, who was staggering not far behind, to shudder violently. He felt his mental energy being drained as if a vein had been opened. A metallic, sweet taste filled his throat, and he spat out a mouthful of blood that stained the floor.
His vision blurred. His mind went blank. His body slumped forward, but he mustered his last shred of willpower to dig his fingertips into the floor, forcing himself to stay upright.
In that moment, an identical thought resonated through the souls of both Raynor and Cassius: "I cannot fall yet. Not here. Not while they are still waiting for me!"
A silent, agonizing tug-of-war of spirit commenced. Blood began to seep from Raynor's eyes and ears, sliding down his cheeks. The massive internal hemorrhaging made his consciousness flicker like a dying candle. His hands grew weak.
Conversely, in Cassius's empty sockets, the golden flames surged again. The tattered Terminator armor began to ripple with a renewed light. He was breaking free of the System's shackles.
Pfft!
Just as Raynor's mental defenses were on the verge of total collapse, a sharp sound of tearing flesh pierced the silence.
Sarah seized the fleeting opportunity. Enduring the searing agony of the golden light, she used her last ounce of strength to swing her tearing claw. The blade pierced Cassius's chest, entering through the back and erupting from the front in a spray of warm blood and pulverized organs.
Under the dual blows of the System's suppression and the total destruction of his physical form, the last golden light in Cassius's body was extinguished. The light in his sockets vanished.
He had finally lost.
Sarah withdrew her claw, and Cassius's body crashed to the ground like a pile of scrap metal and rotten meat. He remained motionless.
Yet, the soul that had been baptized by centuries of war was finally liberated. As his consciousness began to dissipate, he could vaguely perceive Sarah dragging her dilapidated body toward Raynor. He could sense Raynor, on the verge of death himself, struggling to crawl toward her, each inch an act of total exhaustion.
Cassius recalled the sensation he had felt from Raynor earlier. It wasn't hostility. It wasn't murder. It was something shy, tinged with a desperate longing, and weighted by an indescribable sense of inferiority.
It was a feeling Cassius hadn't known for three hundred years—not since a girl named Alyssa had bandaged a teenager's wounds in a monastery.
At the edge of the abyss, Cassius finally understood. The relationship between this "Anomalous Node Alpha" and the heretic Raynor was something the Imperium had long ago rejected as a weakness.
In this cannibalistic universe, tainted by gods and filled with slaughter, they had found something else. In his final moments, Cassius did not curse them. He offered a silent, heartfelt blessing to these two souls who walked in the deep darkness.
He saw Alyssa one last time. Three hundred years of service had erased her face, but the feeling remained—the girl with the scars who bandaged his wounds. She was the only light he had ever truly cherished.
A slight upward curve appeared on the corner of the warrior's blood-filled mouth.
On the other side, Raynor finally reached Sarah. He grasped her blood-stained, torn claws with his last bit of strength. The touch allowed his frayed nerves to finally release. An irresistible drowsiness swept over him.
A cold, robotic notification chimed in his mind:
"Side quest contract target (Cassius) confirmed dead. Contract terminated."
The weight lifted. The tension snapped.
"Finally... it's over," he murmured.
Raynor fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, his hand still gripped tightly around Sarah's claws.