The washed-out lumens painted the medicae recovery suite in a sterile glare, every surface white and gleaming. Even that soft light made Guilliman wince. His eyes opened to restraints tugging against him—dozens of straps buckled tight across his arms, chest, and legs. He allowed himself a wry, pained smile. It would take more than leather to bind a Primarch, but the gesture was telling.

  He tried to shift upright. The tables beneath him groaned at the effort. Four operating slabs had been clamped together to hold his bulk, and still they complained under the weight. His motion sent adepts scurrying, robes flaring as they cried for the apothecaries. Others rushed in vain to press him back, the palms of mortals against a superhuman.

  Apothecary Calliades was there in moments, his white armor streaked with battlefield grime, his face carved from weariness. “My lord, remain still. Your condition is… precarious.”

  Guilliman coughed, a wet sound that rattled through his chest. He felt the failure of one lung, the absence of a heart’s second beat. “So I have—” he forced the words out, breath ragged, “—gathered. Tell me: what is wrong? How long was I insensate? What is the situation beyond these walls?”

  Calliades glanced at the observation window and gestured. Guilliman turned his head. The entire pane was a wall of ceramite and flesh, his Victrix Guard packed shoulder to shoulder. Dust and gore clung to their armor, visors unraised, their vigil unbroken since the battle.

  Dibus, helm at his side, spoke first, his voice filtered through the intercom. “It gladdens me to see you conscious, my lord. As for the situation: the base is in our hands. But the boy remains missing, and the system itself locked. The priests report encryption beyond their reach—Dark Angels’ work, most likely.”

  “And Abaddon?”

  “His fleet has shelled us ceaselessly since retreating. The barriers hold—we have endured thirty minutes of their fury without a flicker of disruption. Their warships seem more intent on razing this facility than engaging us directly.”

  Guilliman exhaled, mind already parsing orders. “Push the front. Draw their fire outward. Let the support fleet mirror our advance and relieve pressure on these walls. Recovery of Koron is paramount. The cogitator data is secondary.”

  Dibus inclined his head, eyes locking with his gene-sire’s. “At once, lord.” The intercom clicked off. The Victrix peeled away in perfect discipline, leaving only his chosen few at the glass.

  “You done ignoring your doctor?” Calliades’ rough voice dragged him back. “Because you’re in a bad way.”

  Guilliman’s gaze fell to the ceramite across his chest. “Then tell me.”

  “Your wound is as it was struck—suspended at the instant of the strike.” Calliades’ gauntlet flicked toward the hololith above, its ghostly image painting Guilliman’s chest with light. Severed arteries, a collapsed lung, a ragged rent through bone and muscle—all frozen, held in amber.

  “Our compounds enter your veins, yet they do not spread. They hang in place, inert. No medicine flows. No scalpel bites. The armor refuses change.”

  He faltered. For a moment, the old warrior’s face betrayed more than fatigue. Shame crept through his tone.

  “The systems that preserve you are not allies, my lord. They are enemies forced into truce. Necron matrices lock your flesh at the brink. Eldar psycho-reactive circuits let your mind command movement within that lock. Mechanicus life-support claws at both, forcing the contradiction into something that resembles life.”

  Taking a breath, he continued. “I am told this is how it seems to have been built, a compromise of alien sciences. But your wounds have pushed the balance past breaking. Each hour, the strain grows deeper. It is your will alone that holds the loop stable. Should you falter, even for a moment, it collapses.”

  His voice steadied, low and grave. “You live because your armor refuses your death. But it is no life—it is delay. And when the field fails, as it will, the wound will not be hours old. It will be ten thousand years.”

  The silence was heavy. Even the Victrix averted their eyes, gauntlets flexing against their weapons. The cogitators clicked on, indifferent to the weight in the room.

  Guilliman’s jaw worked once, twice, as if he meant to speak — and then stopped. His gauntlet clenched until the ceramite plates groaned, the motion precise and deliberate, like a man forcing his own body to stay still. The light from the hololith painted him in cold anatomy, showing every frozen rupture, every failure suspended by stubborn will alone.

  However, when he spoke, his voice was iron. “Options.”

  Calliades’ shoulders dipped, his helm turning slightly as if the question weighed more than his old bones could bear. “Unclear. Our priests cannot parse the machinery to the level we need. We have sent an astropathic request to Cawl, but our choir warns it may vanish into the Rift before it ever reaches him. Even if it arrives, a reply could take weeks. They are willing to burn themselves out to try, but…” He faltered, hand flexing once, as though trying to catch the words before they escaped.

  Guilliman drew in a breath, shallow and fractured, and the tables beneath him creaked with the sound of strained metal. “Release me.”

  “My lord—”

  “Release me.” The words landed like hammerblows. His eyes fixed on Calliades’, steel over shadowed pain, leaving no room for argument.

  For a moment, the apothecary did not move. Then the fight drained out of him with a sigh that rasped across his vox-grille. “Very well,” he said, weariness grating every syllable. “But let the record show I protest this folly.”

  Guilliman’s hand rose, not a command this time, but a clasp. His fingers rested on Calliades’ shoulder, the gesture rare enough to make the old warrior pause. “Noted,” Guilliman said, voice low but steady. “But we cannot afford waste. Least of all time.”

  Calliades swallowed, helm dipping fractionally. “Your life is not a waste—”

  “I agree.”

  Guilliman pushed himself upright with terrible slowness, every plate of ceramite groaning, every rivet in the slabs beneath him protesting the movement. He rose like a mountain shifting its weight, and when he stood, the medicae chamber felt smaller for it. His grip on Calliades’ pauldron tightened — not crushing, but anchoring.

  “Which is why I shall be quick.”

  ...

  Six minutes later, the inner doors groaned as Guilliman forced them apart, tortured metal protesting his will. The gears shrieked, echoing down the corridor behind him before dying into silence.

  The chamber yawned open — a hollow, twenty meters across — and the air rolled over him in a sour tide. It reeked of ozone and sanctified oil, of sour milk left too long in the sun, and of old blood that had seeped into metal.

  The grilled floor stretched ahead, suspended over a pit of humming machinery whose voice was a constant, mechanical drone. Red light bled up through the grilles, striping Guilliman’s armored frame. Pipes hung from the ceiling in bundled skeins, some dripping condensation that hissed as it struck the heated metal below.

  On either wall, twenty closed panels waited like sealed coffins — ten to his left, ten to his right.

  At eye level, they clicked open one by one.

  Behind each illuminated window, a severed human head floated in yellow nutrient gel. They were too distinct to be vat-clones, too clean to be the condemned. Metal caps crowned their skulls, cables rooting into the unseen machine below, each one twitching with slow, obscene rhythm.

  Guilliman stepped inside. The doors boomed shut behind him.

  “Cawl.”

  His voice filled the domed chamber and came back to him doubled, reverberating off the steel. Above, the Machina Opus glimmered faintly in the ceiling roundel, casting its benediction over the grisly gallery. His eyes narrowed at the bobbing heads, pale faces twitching in their tanks.

  “Awaken. I have no time for riddles this day.”

  The machine stirred. Pumps hissed. Nutrient fluid gurgled through pipes. One by one, the twenty pairs of eyes snapped open — clouded, glistening, and wrong. Lips moved, some in unison, others half a beat behind, like a choir just out of tune.

  “Greetings, Lord Comman—”

  “Enough.”

  Guilliman words were a sword stroke, one gauntleted hand slashing through the air. The sound of it rang against the metal. His patience was raw and frayed; his voice carried the weight of a man too long denied an answer.

  “I require the complete schematics of the Armor of Fate. Now.”

  A scanning beam lanced down from the ceiling, washing Guilliman in sterile light. It passed over his broken chestplate, over the silent wounds beneath, lingering as if tasting the damage. For half a minute the chamber was filled with nothing but the hum of cogitators and the slow bubble of nutrient fluid, like some monstrous heart beating out of sync.

  At last, the twenty mouths moved. One voice spoke, layered and resonant, as though the entire chamber had chosen to breathe at once.

  “I see. You are… gravely injured. However, I cannot grant your request in full.”

  Guilliman’s eyes narrowed, blue shards catching the chamber’s dim light. “Clarify.”

  The heads drifted in their tanks, cables twitching faintly, bubbles rising with each word. “The schematics you demand are not held within this node. But… I could acquire the knowledge, if…”

  Guilliman’s gaze sharpened. “If what?”

  “If I were to interface with your armor systems directly.”

  Even through the numbing haze of the preservation fields, Guilliman felt the skin along his arms prickle. His reply was low, iron-edged, each word deliberate.

  “You would integrate with my armor… and by extension, with me.”

  The lips of twenty faces parted as one, their speech perfectly synchronized. “Correct. The preservation of your life is one of my top three priorities. An astropathic update would take days at best — and that presumes Archmagos Belisarius Cawl would deign to release such data at all.”

  Silence pooled in the chamber, heavy as lead. Both knew how unlikely such generosity would be.

  The Inferior’s voices came again, soft and level, their harmony almost soothing. “Thus: two possibilities. The first, as stated — I engage your armor directly and guide the medicae servitors as they operate. This path carries a sixty-four percent probability of survival.”

  Guilliman’s jaw tightened, the motion slow and controlled. “And the second?”

  “The second: I remain separate. I observe, extrapolate, and direct servitors without interface. This carries a twenty-nine percent probability of success.”

  The Primarch stood stone-still, the words settling around his shoulders. His gaze lifted to the swaying heads above, thoughts circling like drawn blades.

  An echo of Cawl — perhaps more than an echo. To link with such a thing, an abominable intelligence in all but name, would be to invite it inside my mind. To admit that the Lord Commander of the Imperium depends upon a machine-mind was to risk a schism that could sunder everything I have fought to restore.

  And beyond politics, If I am honest, there was the personal truth: I would not suffer Cawl in my mind.

  The heads drifted closer to the glass, their eyes catching the red light like carrion birds.

  “There is a third option,” the voices intoned. “One I am reluctant to speak. But your survival is paramount. The boy—”

  “Koron.” Guilliman’s interruption was sharp, almost a correction.

  The heads stilled, contemplative. “Yes. Him. His knowledge may even eclipse my own. His freedom of thought — and the intelligence fused within him — permit a lateral capacity I cannot achieve. He might save you.”

  “He is missing,” Guilliman said, his voice hard, “lost in the battle for the Dark Age facility below. Our vox-signals and auspex readings are not yet piercing its defenses.”

  “I see.” The heads drifted back a fraction, the cables whispering against glass. “Then, what are your orders, Lord Commander?”

  ...

  His HUD stuttered, the words burning red across his vision, ghost-images doubling until Sasha forced a hard reset.

  Warning: systemic blood loss — 86% probable.

  Skeletal instability: 78%

  He clenched his jaw, fighting down the wave of dizziness as he swayed against the wall, teeth grit, before muttering under his breath, “Yeah. Thanks for the pep talk.”

  ‘Left passage clear. Right is blocked — two Rubricae advancing.’ Sasha’s voice was a taut wire in his skull, every syllable clipped. ‘Whoever’s directing them knows exactly where you are.’

  “Then why haven’t they closed the net?” Koron rasped, his breath uneven as his eyes tracked the spectral overlays shimmering before him. Glyphs glowed faintly in a spectrum only he could see, casting ghost-light across the corroded walls of the Dark Age underbelly. “Eight suits of Rubricae are more than enough to run me down.”

  ‘Caution, maybe. Or they want you herded.’ Her voice tightened, brittle as glass. ‘I don’t know. But don’t waste their mistake.’

  He gave a humorless snort. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

  His gait was uneven, left leg dragging, boots scuffing against the metal. He dug into a pouch with blood-slick fingers and pulled out a disc no larger than a coin. It glinted in the dim light as he pressed it to the wall on his right. On the left he placed a pellet and capped it with a second disc — the faint hum of arming charges barely audible beneath the throb of distant machinery.

  “Still nothing through the distortion?”

  ‘Imperial vox is shredded,’ Sasha said, her tone edged with frustration. ‘Dampening fields up, gravitic distortions, warp-static bleeding through the walls — probably residue from whatever was happening above. It’s a miracle they’re not already on top of us.’

  “Lovely.”

  He sagged back against the wall, vertebrae popping audibly as the weight settled onto him. The chill of the metal seeped into his skin. Blood was stiff in his hair, tacky on his cheek; the copper taste of it pooled at the back of his throat.

  “That elevator shaft downwards,” he muttered, “is starting to look like our only chance.”

  ‘Which means cutting ourselves off from the Imperials entirely.’ Sasha’s voice went flat. ‘And diving into what is almost assuredly a Necron tomb we know nothing about.’

  “Odds of survival?”

  The pause was long enough for him to hear the faint hiss of fear under her voice.

  Then, dryly: ‘…You don’t want to know.’

  “You’re right.” His lips pulled into a faint, bloody grimace as he shoved off the wall. “I don’t.”

  The left-hand tunnel gaped before him, black and silent. He limped into its shadow step by step, each motion jarring, each stair negotiated on grav-plates that spat sparks and hummed in protest.

  Somewhere behind him, the empty shells of the Thousand Sons moved with mechanical precision. Their tread echoed down the corridor, the sound steady, unhurried — hunters confident that the prey could not escape. The lumen-light caught on their azure armor, throwing shards of blue across the walls as they closed in.

  ...

  The glyphs glowed with a cold emerald light, their radiance casting sharp edges across Koron’s gaunt face. They were trapped in alloy older than Terra’s first stones, every line cut with inhuman precision — too perfect, too patient. They seemed to stare back at him from the control panel like a row of unblinking eyes, waiting for his verdict.

  His memory delivered it instantly, flawless and merciless.

  Khet-Var cluster.

  Consensus: motion.

  Alternative readings: containment.

  Possible: axis alignment.

  Usage: common on vertical shafts and sealed doors.

  Meaning: disputed.

  “Okay…” Koron rasped, lifting a trembling hand toward a diagonal line of sigils. His finger shook, leaving a smear of blood on the metal before it even touched. “These three are our best bet. Probably.”

  ‘You’re sure?’ Sasha’s voice was tight, her usual composure sharpened to a point — though they both knew certainty had nothing to do with it.

  “Nope.” His lips twitched into something halfway between a grin and a grimace. He hovered over the panel, every breath a ragged rasp, drops of blood pattering against the floor like a metronome counting down. “But options are thin.”

  A muffled thump rolled down the corridor behind him — one of the foam pellets detonating — followed by the wet hiss of Rubricae armor splitting from the limpet. Koron leaned against the wall, listening to the brief silence after, the air heavy with the stink of ozone and promethium residue.

  “Hopefully that makes seven,” he muttered. “Either way, we’re out of time.”

  He pressed his finger to the glyphs, one after another, smearing a diagonal path in red. The sigils flared, bathing the corridor in ghost-light. A tremor ran through the floor, and then it dissolved, replaced by a humming field of emerald light stretched across a shaft that plunged into blackness below.

  Sasha’s voice was a whisper, almost reverent. ‘Grav-plates are nearly gone. They might hold one more fall — but after that? Bad times.’

  Koron tapped the toe of his boot against the field. It held, vibrating faintly under his weight, as though daring him to step through.

  The tread of the Rubricae echoed closer, slow and relentless, each footfall ringing like a hammerblow.

  “Screw it.”

  Koron stepped forward.

  The field gave way beneath him like a sprung trapdoor, dropping him into the void. The fall was faster than he’d braced for — fast enough that the shaft walls seemed to blur into streaks of alloy. They did not hum so much as sing, a resonant vibration that set his teeth on edge and thrummed through the cracked bones of his chest.

  The air thinned as he plunged, tasting sharp and metallic, cold enough that condensation traced spiderweb patterns across his visor.

  His stomach lurched. Cracked ribs ground together under the g-forces, lightning bolts of pain chasing each other up his spine. He hit the platform hard enough to drop to one knee, metal hand bracing against the floor as he dragged shallow, burning breaths into protesting lungs.

  ‘Vitals thready,’ Sasha murmured, clinical but tight. ‘But holding. Acceleration within tolerances.’

  “Doesn’t make it feel any better.” His voice was hoarse, words bitten off through clenched teeth.

  Below, the shaft began to glow with ruddy-orange light, the radiance blooming upward like dawn in reverse. The illumination crawled across the Necron alloy walls, painting them as though molten rock simmered just beneath the surface.

  Koron pupils narrowed against the glare. “…Sasha. Is that—?”

  ‘The mantle,’ she breathed, awe softening her voice for the first time in minutes. ‘We’re already below the crust. But… strange. There’s no gravimetric distortion.’

  Koron let himself slump back against the glowing field, every bone and nerve protesting as though trying to hold him together by sheer stubbornness. “File it under mysteries to solve later. Right now, I’m too busy slowly dying from organ failure.”

  He tilted his head back to look up the shaft. The energy field thrummed against the back of his neck, its static almost soothing.

  His sensors pinged. His eyes widened. “Sasha, we’re moving at—Holy shit.”

  ‘Ten kilometers per second,’ Sasha confirmed, and there was something like wonder in her tone now. ‘And still no gravitic fields. What the hell are they shunting the kinematics into?’

  “The superstructure?” Koron grunted, forcing himself upright with a hiss.

  ‘Maybe, but I’m not detecting any energy inputs from our ride into the structure. We really need more time to study this place.’

  “After we escape angry space marines.”

  ‘Sensors are maxing at three klicks,’ Sasha murmured, her tone tight. ‘And we’re still dropping. Wherever this stops, it’s deep.’

  Koron was about to answer when the neural-link crackled like tearing foil, the sound jagged enough to make his teeth ache.

  ‘—ear me?’

  His head snapped up despite the pain. ‘Elissa?’

  ‘Hey jackass,’ came her reply — warm enough to sting, her tone balanced on the knife-edge between relief and the urge to wring his neck. ‘We’re inside the base now. Send us your location.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Myself, half of the security force and a dozen Sentinels.’ she shot back without missing a beat. ‘The girls came and got us after you didn’t respond to any calls, and with the—'

  ‘Elissa, you have to get out of here!’ The words came sharper than he meant, a spike of fear punching through his chest. Pain flared down his ribs as he forced himself upright. ‘With all the attention here, you’ll all be—'

  ‘Shut. Up.’ Her voice cracked like a whip, hard enough to remind him uncomfortably of Guilliman’s command tone. ‘You can explain your idiocy later. For now, send me your Emperor-damned location. If I have to search for you down here, I will be very pissed.’

  ‘Sending now,’ Sasha said smoothly, sparing Koron the argument. Data flickered away through the link. ‘And hurry. At least seven Astartes are on our tail. Transmitting Chapter details now.’

  ‘Copy,’ Elissa replied. There was a short pause, followed by the faint rustle of motion through the link. ‘Alright. Elly’s directing us toward the lift. We’ll be faster than you were, but still at least ten minutes behind.’

  ‘Don’t forget to use the limpets if you need to cut a faster path,’ Sasha advised.

  ‘Already on it,’ Elissa said, a grim edge of pride in her voice. ‘Cloaks and shields are holding — we’re slipping past the Ultramarines without issue.’

  Koron shifted on the platform, every bruise and fracture making itself heard as he tried to sit straighter. Pain radiated down his spine like a live current, but he forced the words out.

  ‘What’s the situation outside?’

  ‘Not great.’ Elissa’s tone cooled, all business now, the warmth of her earlier anger buried under grim urgency. ‘Lucia’s keeping tabs over the tac-sphere, and Guilliman’s hurt. Bad. She says they can’t get at his wounds — the suit’s in the way. They’re trying to get in touch with the cogboy bigwig who built the thing, because apparently he didn’t leave an instruction manual.’

  Koron swore under his breath, a low rasp that tasted of iron. ‘How long does he have?’

  ‘Unknown. The suit’s holding the damage in stasis, but it’s not letting him heal either.’

  ‘And the rest of the planet? The Salamanders?’

  ‘Pretty bad.’ There was the faint sound of boots scuffing stone through the link, as if she was moving while talking. Her voice tightened. ‘Whole cities uprooted and thrown around. Frontlines are gone. And of course, the Orks decided this was a great time to launch a full-scale offensive against everyone.’

  She exhaled sharply, the sound harsh in his ear, before continuing. ‘The Salamanders are bloodied but hanging on. Their city had deep-rooted foundations for the geothermal stuff they were producing, so more of their positions held. Lucia had your drones’ grav-plating act like buoys — kept them from being as badly affected. Losses are heavy, but manageable. And yes, Kade’s banged up, but alive.’

  Koron let out a slow breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. The crushing band of tension around his chest eased fractionally. ‘…Alright. Fleetside?’

  ‘Complete clusterfuck,’ Elissa said flatly. ‘Ships ripped out of orbit, others flung into deep space. Battle groups scattered. And of course everyone started shooting. The Indomitable is fine, but the Hammer took some damage.’

  A soft ping cut through the conversation, echoing faintly off the shaft walls.

  ‘Hang on, El.’ Koron groaned as he forced himself upright, bones creaking, fractured ribs screaming in protest. His grav-plates sparked faintly as he shifted, throwing blue light across the alloy walls. ‘Think we’re about to hit the bottom.’

  The lift slowed, its deceleration unnervingly smooth — too perfect, too deliberate — until it came to a weightless stop. Emerald light rippled up the shaft walls, crawling like phosphorescent veins, and the doors split open with a hiss that sounded far too much like a sigh.

  Then the sound died.

  No echoes. No hum of machinery. Not even the faint hiss of recirculated air. The silence pressed against him, thick enough to feel, as though the very concept of sound had been cut away. His own ragged breathing sounded intrusive, mortal in a place that did not welcome the living.

  The darkness beyond was absolute, swallowing lumen-ghosts and augmented sight alike. His eyes strained against it and found nothing.

  Koron’s sensors spun up with a low hum, painting the void in ghostly wireframes. The image that returned made his stomach twist; the walls dropped away into infinity, leaving him a single, fragile point suspended in a cavern too vast for his systems to fully map. The only path forward was a narrow bridge of black alloy, barely wider than his shoulders, stretching into the abyss like a dare.

  The tomb began to wake.

  Necron sigils flared one by one, a slow cascade of emerald light racing down the bridge like falling stars. The glow bled across the infinite dark, throwing his shadow long and skeletal behind him. Each glyph lit with a faint hiss of ionized air, sharp with the acrid sting of heatless ozone.

  The bridge’s metal was ice-cold beneath his boots, colder than the shaft had been, as though the span itself resented the weight upon it.

  Far below, something immense shifted, the movement too far to see but powerful enough to send a tremor up through the bridge. The vibration ran into his legs and through his cracked ribs, buzzing in his bones like a warning.

  This was no ordinary dark. It wasn’t an absence of light, it was a presence, a blackness that swallowed and devoured.

  Koron sighed and tapped the collar of his armor. Twin beams of white light cut into the void, their glow sharp and thin, catching the edges of the path as if even photons were reluctant to linger here.

  “Of course,” Koron muttered, beginning his limping march across the narrow span. Each step rang against the bridge like a challenge. “Of goddamn course.”

  The chorus of voices came through the link almost at once — Elissa, Elly and Sasha overlapping. ‘What?’

  Koron’s scowl deepened, his breath fogging in the cold air. ‘Of course I would — while half-dead, with walking statues of Astartes on my heels — end up here. Not in some big control chamber with handy consoles to manipulate the tomb. Not a labyrinth with nice, cozy shadows to hide in. Oh no.’ He nudged a pebble-sized fragment with his boot and sent it skittering off the edge, listening for an impact that never came. ‘I get the one tomb that thinks the Bridge of Khazad-d?m is the pinnacle of interior design.’

  ‘…The what?’

  He sighed, shoulders rising and falling under battered armor. ‘Old Earth story. If we live through this, we’ll all sit down and watch it.’

  Sasha, always first to break tension, piped up dryly: ‘Only if you don’t fall off this one, Gandalf.’

  Koron actually snorted, a sound halfway between pain and reluctant amusement. ‘I am not Gandalf.’

  ‘Who is, then?’ Elly asked, her tone bright with curiosity. Both AIs were watching his vitals like hawks, keeping him talking, keeping him moving.

  ‘Gandalf?’ Koron mused, spitting a blood-flecked glob over the edge. ‘Maybe the Emperor. He’s old, apparently magic, but doesn’t have the beard for it. Bit less active than Gandalf, though — bastard’s been smoking too much pipeweed.’

  ‘Aragorn is clearly Guilliman,’ Sasha said, still sweeping the darkness ahead for threats.

  Koron’s mouth twitched into the ghost of a grin. ‘Easy call. And Kade? Definitely Gimli.’

  ‘Who are you, then?’ Elissa asked, catching the thread of the game, her voice warm enough to almost mask the worry beneath it.

  ‘Oh, I’m totally Pippin,’ Koron said, limping forward another step. His boots rang against the bridge, the sound too loud in the devouring dark. ‘And Sasha’s my Merry.’

  There was a pause long enough for him to imagine Sasha’s digital eye-roll, then a long-suffering sigh echoed through the link.

  ‘…No. You are not Pippin.’

  Koron blinked. ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You’re Frodo,’ Sasha said, voice level but warmer now, as if letting the words settle over him. ‘Stubborn little mule dragging the rest of us through hell because you won’t let anyone else carry the weight.’

  Koron’s lips curled into a crooked grin. ‘So does that make you the One Ring?’

  There was half a beat of silence — long enough for him to picture Sasha raising a very smug virtual eyebrow.

  ‘…I’m okay with this,’ she said at last, tone suspiciously pleased.

  ‘Of course you are,’ Koron muttered as he limped onward, boots clanging softly. Behind him, the abyss swallowed the sound whole.

  He half-turned, looking back at the lift exit, eyes narrowing before he shook his head and kept moving.

  ‘What?’ Sasha asked.

  ‘Was thinking about booby-trapping the doors,’ he admitted, ‘but without knowing how it functions I don’t want to risk wrecking something we need later.’

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  ‘Ah. So, plan?’

  He eyed the distant sigils still blooming down the bridge. ‘Could try severing the span with limpets, drop the whole thing into the pit? But…’ He tapped his boot against the alloy underfoot. The ring of metal echoed far too long before fading into the abyss. ‘I have no idea what kind of harmonics this thing runs on. Limpets might not even scratch it.’

  ‘Koron.’ Sasha’s tone sharpened, cutting across his thoughts. ‘You’re avoiding the obvious answer.’

  ‘No, I’m working out—'

  ‘Just stop.’ Her voice softened, shifting to the private link. ‘The Rubricae aren’t alive. They’re ghosts. Trapped. You might be freeing them by ending this.’

  ‘…You don’t know that for sure.’ His working hand twitched once, betraying the tension he kept out of his voice. ‘There might be a way to save them, restore them.’

  ‘And you don’t know that for sure. You’re risking your life on a hypothetical.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  The word came out low, rough, half-breathed. Koron gave a short, humorless laugh that scraped at the edges of his throat, shoulders sagging under weight that wasn’t just physical.

  ‘I know.’ His voice was quieter now, almost resigned. ‘I know I’m being stupid — and it’s going to get me in trouble someday. But I already survived when so many didn’t.’

  The memories rose unbidden, jagged and merciless: faces, names, final screams in the Warp. He shoved them down, jaw clenching until something popped in his neck.

  ‘If I start deciding who deserves to keep walking and who doesn’t…’ He slowed, boots leaving a trail of blood across the bridge with every rough step. He looked out into the abyss ahead as though speaking to something far larger than Sasha. ‘Then I stop being me. Then I’m just one more monster deciding who lives and dies.’

  He drew a long, steadying breath and straightened a fraction, pain crackling through his frame. ‘I have to be better than that. Or there’s no point to any of this.’

  The link went silent.

  Sasha didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.

  They both knew the truth — that Koron had already been deciding, already been shaping who lived and who died with every drone deployment, every battlefield calculation.

  But she let him keep this moment, this small lie he told himself.

  Because if he let go of it now, she wasn’t sure he’d keep walking.

  Below, the machinery thrummed like a slow heartbeat, vibrating faintly through his boots, as though the tomb itself was listening.

  When Sasha spoke again, her voice was stripped of all its earlier sharpness, gentler now — faintly sad.

  ‘…You still think you can balance the scales?’

  It wasn’t an accusation. Not even a challenge.

  It was the ache of someone who had once tried to do the same, and learned what it cost.

  ‘Not balance them,’ he said quietly, almost to himself. ‘But I can choose to stop adding to the weight. Besides…’ His gaze flicked to the void yawning on either side of the bridge. ‘If I burn every bridge behind me, what’s left?’

  He drew a slow, ragged breath. ‘Hope’s the only bridge I’ve got.’

  For a moment the link was quiet again, as if Sasha was measuring her words.

  When she spoke, her voice was softer than before, the sharpness gone — not pitying, not chiding, but steady, like a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘…Then hold onto it,’ she said at last. ‘Hold it as long as you can. But if it ever breaks—' her tone deepened, carrying something that might almost have been a vow, ‘—I’ll be the one who carries you across.’

  Koron’s lips quirked, too tired for a real smile but something close enough. ‘Thank you. Guess even Frodo needed someone to carry him.’

  ‘…I’m not doing your gardening.’

  He huffed a breath that might have been a laugh, even as fresh blood pattered onto the bridge.

  His sensors pinged a heartbeat later — shrill in the silence. The lift was dropping into range. Eight signatures this time. All of them heavy, armed, and relentless.

  ...

  Zaraphiston’s fingers clenched and unclenched around the haft of his staff as the bridge came into view, its Necron sigils blooming one by one like cold, watchful stars.

  The seven remaining Rubricae stood before him, silent sentinels of dust and memory, Inferno bolters resting in gauntlets that had not trembled in ten millennia. Warpflame guttered from their muzzles, casting spectral blue light across the lift walls, turning the steel into a ghostly mausoleum.

  Runes crawled across his warplate, flaring in careful sequence as they bent fate in his favor — or tried to. And still, unease gnawed its way down his spine like a worm burrowing for marrow.

  In all the centuries since Prospero burned, he had never been without his foresight. The skein of fate had always lain before him: shimmering threads of possibility, some bright, some dark, some spiraling into miracles. With a gesture, a word, a thought, he could nudge them toward victory.

  But now — there was nothing.

  No branching futures. No whispering choir of the Great Schemer. No threads to pluck, no pathways to choose. Only the present moment, sharp and cold, suspended in his sight like glass about to shatter.

  Once, Zaraphiston would have strode at the fore, leading his spectral guard with the calm assurance of one who knew the ending of the tale. Now, he let them take the lead, wards layered upon wards until they thrummed at the edge of breaking, every step measured like the slow tolling of a bell.

  He had failed.

  Abaddon had entrusted him to hold this ground, to drown the Corpse-Emperor’s lapdogs in demon-fire and defend the prize they sought. Instead, his rituals had been broken, his warp-spawn banished, his power rendered a hollow echo.

  And worst of all — the mortal.

  A mortal, not even an Astartes, had crawled from the wreckage of the superweapon’s heart, spitting blood, pain radiating from his shattered frame so fiercely that the air had seemed to thin. A mortal had undone what was meant to be Abaddon’s triumph.

  Such failures were not forgiven.

  But perhaps, Zaraphiston had thought as he traced the mortal’s bloody trail through the corridors, such a man might yet redeem him.

  The scanners had shown exotic energies leaking from the wretch’s battered frame — readings that bent the needle of Zaraphiston’s curiosity higher and higher.

  He had reached out through the warp to grasp the man’s fate — and found nothing.

  A Blank.

  A void.

  And not just a void, but a void armored in technology that should not exist, a mortal mind carrying the means to unmake a weapon of the Dark Age of Technology.

  Zaraphiston’s lips curled, baring teeth in something that was almost a smile.

  Such a find might not merely mitigate his failure.

  It might rewrite it.

  The lift doors parted on whispering gears. The seven Rubricae marched out in perfect lockstep, Inferno bolters sweeping as one. Warpflame guttered in their muzzles, throwing jagged shadows that danced across the sigil-lit bridge.

  They found only silence.

  The bridge stretched ahead, its sigils blooming in a slow, deliberate procession — emerald lights marching ever farther into the abyss. Their glow revealed only emptiness. No mortal figure. No sound but the cold hum of ancient machinery.

  Zaraphiston’s jaw tightened. He gestured sharply, his command carried aloud and along the warp-links that bound the Rubricae to his will.

  “You two, hold the doors. The rest of you — forward. Non-lethal. I want him alive.”

  The silent warriors obeyed, Inferno bolters at the ready, their tread a grim metronome as they advanced. Zaraphiston moved at their center, staff crackling with restrained power. The bridge seemed to sing beneath their combined weight, each step ringing out into the darkness as though the tomb itself were counting them.

  Minutes passed in oppressive silence as he followed the trail — a thin, glistening thread of blood, bright as a beacon in his psychic sight.

  Abruptly, it ended.

  The blood simply stopped, as though the mortal had been plucked out of existence. There was no ozone stink of teleportation, no charred scoring on the alloy, no warp eddies that should have marked a jump through the immaterium.

  Zaraphiston’s gauntlets creaked as they tightened on the haft of his staff until the runes flickered in protest. He snarled, sharp teeth catching the ghost-light as he turned a narrow gaze back down the bridge.

  The guards still stood at the lift, motionless.

  And the line of emerald sigils flowed ever onward, disappearing into infinity.

  “He’s here,” Zaraphiston hissed, the words a low rasp that carried along the bridge. “He must be. Nothing else explains the trail ending so suddenly.”

  He stalked to the edge and leaned out over the abyss. His wings flared open with a hiss of warped pneumatics and flexing sinew, feathers of deep blue smoking faintly from unseen fire.

  Check everywhere, his will thundered through the warp, sharp enough to sting. Scour this place. I cannot return empty-handed.

  With a single beat of his wings, Zaraphiston vaulted from the edge, plunging into the void like a striking hawk. Warp-flame blossomed in his palm, its sickly glow splashing across the underside of the bridge.

  There.

  The mortal hung suspended by a grapple line, every slow shift tugging painfully at his right shoulder. His warplate was wreckage — plates buckled and blackened, paint scoured away. Vomit and blood mingled in a sticky trail down his chest, dripping in slow threads to the abyss below. His left arm was locked tight against him, emergency seals fused so hot they had scored the ceramite itself.

  His face was a ruin of bruises and blood, one eye swollen closed, lips split down to the gum.

  Then, slowly, he raised his head.

  The movement was ragged but deliberate — not a reflex, but an act of will. His one good eye fixed on Zaraphiston and held it, tracking him through the firelit gloom.

  He looked like something that had clawed out of its grave and was too stubborn to stay dead.

  Zaraphiston’s grin sharpened. He folded his wings once and dove, the void tearing past in a blur of blue fire, one taloned hand reaching for the mortal’s throat.

  Koron’s eye did not blink. The grapple hissed and released, and he dropped into the abyss without hesitation.

  But Zaraphiston was faster than gravity. His gauntlet snapped around Koron’s forearm with a sound like a snare-trap springing shut.

  Koron kicked upward, a desperate strike, but agony lanced through him like lightning — something in his back cracked audibly.

  Zaraphiston only smiled wider, hauling him upward in a single savage sweep of his wings and flinging him onto the bridge.

  Koron skidded, sparks spitting from his ruined grav-plates, before a Rubricae seized him. One gauntlet clamped down on his shattered bicep, grinding metal against bone until he gasped, sharp and raw.

  Zaraphiston landed with predatory grace, the bridge singing under his boots. With a hiss, he disengaged his helm and set it at his hip. His face was a tapestry of mutation — blue splotches mottling his skin, feathers replacing his brows, pupils slit to molten gold.

  The sorcerer crouched, talons resting on the haft of his staff, head tilting like a bird of prey sizing up its meal.

  “You cost me a victory,” he said simply, flat and sharp. His golden eyes flicked over the broken plates, the blood, the ruin of Koron’s frame.

  “Not an Astartes,” he murmured, as if to himself. “Not a psyker. But something the warp will not touch. Something that unmade a weapon of the Ancients.”

  His taloned hand closed around Koron’s jaw, turning his face toward the sorcerer’s. “Who are you? What are these strange energies I feel crawling under your skin?”

  Koron wheezed through blood-flecked teeth, his grin crooked and defiant. “Hi. I’m Koron, professional pain in the ass.”

  The Astartes’ gauntlet came down almost lazily — but even held back, the blow drove the air from Koron’s lungs and broke something in his ribs even further. He doubled over with a ragged hiss, teeth bared, swallowing his scream.

  Zaraphiston chuckled softly, the sound now warm, amused — and somehow that made it worse.

  “A pleasure, Koron,” he said, savoring the name. “I am Zaraphiston, Exalted of the Lord of Change. And I will be introducing you to a whole new world of pain and suffering.”

  Blood leaked from Koron’s mouth onto the bridge, red streaking across the emerald-lit metal. “You know,” he gasped out, “I believe you. You seem like the type who gets off on other people’s pain.”

  “Nothing so carnal, I assure you.” Zaraphiston knelt fully now, a looming shadow of talons and feathers, his voice almost soothing. “But there is a certain… satisfaction in watching stubborn ones like you break.”

  “Speaking statistically,” Koron rasped, breath hitching in his chest, “torture isn’t very effective for intelligence gathering. People will say anything to make the pain stop.”

  “Oh, I know.” Zaraphiston’s gauntlet began to glow with a cold, azure radiance. “Which is why I do it for fun.”

  The light flared, casting shadows against the endless dark.

  “But enough talk,” Zaraphiston said, almost gently. “Let us see what secrets are in that head of yours.”

  Koron’s grin faltered, just for a moment. His breath hitched, shallow and sharp. He had no idea what was coming — what a sorcerer’s touch might do to his mind, his memories, the fragile thread of his sanity.

  A chill crawled up his spine, fingers twitched against the empty air, instinct searching for a weapon that wasn’t there.

  Then Zaraphiston’s gauntlet clamped down on his skull, talons biting into his scalp. Azure fire spilled from the seams of the sorcerer’s fingers, running down Koron’s face like ghostly tears.

  Power surged into the mortal’s mind — and guttered.

  The mortals back arched against the Rubricae’s shin, armor shrieking as it scraped metal. His breath sawed through clenched teeth, a thin line of blood trailing from one ear and pattering to the floor in time with his racing pulse.

  Of course it resisted. The mortal was a Blank — and Blank minds were nothing but stone walls and locked doors. Zaraphiston had crushed stronger wills before, shattered psykers who blazed like suns in the warp, their screams still echoing in the back of his thoughts.

  This was different.

  Where other minds fought like cornered beasts, clawing and lashing out, this one simply refused. There was no give, no flare of fear, no satisfying resistance to dig his claws into — only a cold, endless pressure, like crushing his hand around a cannonball.

  The mortal jerked under his grip, veins standing out on his neck as blood ran from his nose. His body strained, trembling under the force, but his will held fast. Zaraphiston felt it: sharp, stubborn, unyielding — a wall of iron braced against the storm.

  Strong, yes.

  But not the strongest he had faced.

  He bared his teeth and pushed harder. Eldritch fire flared in his eyes as he poured more of himself into the spell, clawing at the edges of the mortal’s being until the void began to… crack.

  Something stirred behind the emptiness. Something waiting just beyond reach.

  Zaraphiston’s wings shivered, hunger burning in his golden eyes as he reached for it, eager to rip the secret free—

  —And the bridge, the Rubricae, the entire world fell away like ash on the wind.

  ...

  The moment his mind brushed against the mortals, everything fractured.

  For a heartbeat—just a heartbeat—there is nothing.

  Not the warp. Not thought.

  Not even self.

  A shift. Space. Light. Purpose.

  He stands within an endless machine.

  Not a city. Not a landscape. Something older. Deeper. Boundless.

  It is a place that should not exist.

  Towering spires of black and gold, their surfaces shifting in perfect synchrony, rise into an endless, starless void. Great engines slowly churn in the depths below, their purpose unknown, their labor ceaseless. The air itself hums—not with life, not with power, but with the slow, deliberate click-click-click of calculation.

  This place is not warm, nor cold. It is indifferent.

  It does not welcome. It does not reject.

  It simply is.

  Zaraphiston steps forward—and the world moves with him.

  Streets form beneath his feet, perfectly efficient, each path optimizing itself for his progress, anticipating his intent before he even thinks to move. Buildings shift without sound, rearranging in patterns too sublime for mortal minds to comprehend.

  This is not a place of humanity.

  It is the shape of will without hesitation.

  It is function without mercy.

  It is a thought engine, an intelligence given form—and it is watching.

  Zaraphiston feels it, then.

  The weight.

  A presence as measureless as the dark between stars, pressing against his soul with quiet, inexorable force.

  Not crushing.

  Not hostile.

  Simply... aware.

  The machine sees him.

  It does not speak.

  It does not need to.

  This was like no mind he had ever touched.

  Mortal thoughts were a swirl of emotion, bright and loud, easy to follow, easy to bend.

  The Mechanicus were cogitators in spirit as well as flesh — predictable, ordered, everything labeled and filed.

  His fellow Astartes were iron bastions, their walls built high but always breakable.

  Psykers were battlefields, blazing with light and fear and rage, each one a storm he could outwit or endure.

  But this?

  This was not a mind at war. Not even a mind awake.

  It was a cathedral of thought, vast and silent, every gear slowly turning toward some unreachable horizon.

  And yet—

  The mortal stands within it.

  A lone figure in a long, tattered cloak, drifting like a wraith against the impossible architecture. The fabric shifts with the colors of a dying star, its edges fraying, a banner unraveling against the weight of time itself.

  He should not be here.

  Yet, he is.

  The Sorcerer watches him walk through the impossible, whispering machine of his own mind — and saw, with dawning horror, that he did not walk with it.

  The world adjusted to him, paths reweaving in perfect anticipation, doors opening to greet his steps.

  And the mortal ignored them.

  Where the paths curved to meet him, he chose the straight way.

  Where the doors swung open, he turned aside.

  Where the machine invited him to become part of its endless rhythm, he chose dissonance.

  This place — this terrifying, calculating intelligence — should have consumed him. Should have written him into its equations and erased all that was not necessary.

  It should be him.

  But it is not.

  It is a machine.

  And he is a man.

  Their eyes meet.

  Not the gaze of an engine, not the empty stare of a servitor.

  Small.

  Defiant.

  Human.

  And that is the horror of it.

  This intelligence—the city, the engine, the living equation that stretches beyond sight, beyond time—waits.

  Not dead. Not dreaming.

  Patient.

  It had not faded.

  It had not broken.

  It simply watched.

  Because it is still a part of him.

  He should be a god of steel and lightning, wearing a crown of cold precision and unyielding logic. This place should be his throne, and he should sit upon it.

  He chooses not to.

  But choice is fragile.

  Will is fleeting.

  If, for even a moment, he lets go of his refusal—

  If he stops resisting—

  If he lets the man be swallowed by the machine—

  The great engines would roar to life.

  The whispering calculations would swell into a chorus, deafening and absolute.

  And in their song, the silence between the stars would scream.

  Zaraphiston’s gauntleted fingers spasmed, his psychic hold fracturing as a jolt of cold lanced through his hearts. A breath hissed between his teeth — not quite a gasp, but close enough to make his helm’s vox crackle.

  For the first time in decades, his breath caught. His gaze was dragged upward — not by choice, but by the weight of something vast pressing down on reality.

  Past the shifting black-and-gold spires, past the endless clockwork avenues that folded and refolded to anticipate his every step. Upward, higher, until he stared into the void that loomed over all.

  The void was no longer empty.

  A single silver point glimmered in the darkness. Not bright — faint, as though seen through a pane of ancient glass — but there.

  For a heartbeat, memory stirred: a boy standing on the half-collapsed roof of a hive hab-block, staring up as the smog briefly parted and the first stars peeked through, shy and distant. He remembered that feeling — smallness, wonder, a moment of quiet before the night creatures began to sing.

  A slit pupil rolled into view.

  Zaraphiston froze.

  The star above him blinked.

  Then another appeared beside it. And another. And another.

  A thousand, thousand silver eyes opened in the black, burning cold and unblinking. They were not scattered but aligned, each fixed upon him, as though he had stepped under the gaze of a god who had just noticed him.

  Something shifted around them. A shadow deeper than void slid across the expanse, slow and ponderous. Then another shape, massive and sinuous, eclipsed whole swathes of the eyes. Limbs — tendrils — silhouettes too large to comprehend stretched across infinity.

  The void shuddered.

  And a maw unfolded.

  It was not a human mouth. Not a demon’s.

  It was a predator’s, its canines gleaming white as swords, too many teeth set in a grin that was all hunger. The size of it made his breath catch — a maw wide enough to swallow the spire-city whole.

  The air vibrated, the whispering rhythm of the machine-mind speeding up for the first time since Zaraphiston’s arrival. He could feel the gaze of the city turning upward, acknowledging the presence in the dark — and in that moment, he understood.

  The machine was dangerous, without question. But it was calm.

  This leviathan?

  It hated him.

  He could feel it — a tide of loathing pouring out of the dark, pressing against his skin, against his very soul.

  Not the hot, raging fury of a demon, but something cold and inexorable.

  The deliberate, surgical focus, of a murderer.

  A shadow passed over him as the mouth yawned wider. The eyes bored into him, and Zaraphiston felt his hearts, so steady and sure, quiver beneath its argent gaze.

  Then a voice — quiet, feminine, utterly merciless — rolled through the void.

  MINE

  The jaws snapped shut around him.

  The world exploded.

  Sound came back all at once — a shattering detonation that made the spire-city scream. Black-gold towers bent and twisted, calculations fracturing into static as the machine-mind convulsed.

  Zaraphiston’s wards flared in blind panic, then shattered like glass as his equilibrium inverted.

  He was hurled back into his body like a comet reentering atmosphere. Blood sprayed from his eyes and nose. His staff seared in his grip as warp-flame recoiled, blistering the ceramite gauntlet around it.

  His knees hit the deck hard enough to dent the plating. Breath tore through his lungs in ragged gasps.

  The Rubricae stood motionless, silent witnesses to their master’s humiliation.

  And yet — he could still feel it.

  That presence.

  Like cold claws resting just behind his eyes, the echo of silver pupils watching him even here, in the waking world.

  He forced himself to look at the mortal.

  Koron still knelt where he had been, battered and bloodied, chest heaving as if he’d just run miles. Blood streaked his eyes, nose and lips, dripping from his chin, but his gaze was steady — one blackened, defiant eye locking on Zaraphiston.

  Still breathing.

  Still himself.

  Still human.

  For now.

  But he was not alone.

  The echo of the silver gaze lingered, coiled around Koron like a shadowed guardian. Even here, Zaraphiston felt its hatred radiating outward, felt the weight of its claim on the mortal — and on anyone who dared to touch him again.

  Zaraphiston’s hearts pounded. He had faced demons. He had bargained with Lords of Change. He had walked through nightmare and fire, and none of it had left him like this.

  He was not afraid of demons.

  But this man — and the thing that stood with him — terrified him.

  Because now Zaraphiston knew what waited behind those pale blue eyes.

  And he knew that if Koron ever stopped choosing to be human, if he ever sat upon the throne —

  It would not be a man that stood before him then.

  It would not be a demon, either.

  It would be inevitability made flesh.

  And it would know no mercy.

  The pistol was in his hand before thought could catch him, its muzzle pressed hard against the mortal’s skull. Cold metal kissed blood-crusted skin.

  His finger tightened on the trigger — automatic, inevitable.

  Both hearts pounded, drumming war-beats in his chest, each one a savage command: kill it.

  Ten thousand years of instinct howled for the execution.

  Ten thousand years of hard-won pragmatism hissed of the Warmaster’s displeasure.

  He hung between them, the abyss yawning on either side — fear on one hand, duty on the other — when the world moved.

  Emerald sigils along the bridge flared to life, one by one, until they reached their terminus.

  A pillar of light speared downward, striking something far below — a colossal silhouette sleeping in the planet’s bones.

  Conduits blazed awake, green fire racing through arteries older than history, turning the air sharp with ozone and burnt copper.

  As every eye was drawn towards the light, another source cut the black.

  Lasfire.

  Harsh, white, sudden — shredding the silence, spitting sparks from the Rubricae’s armor. The hiss-crack of rifles hammered the air in a staccato cadence.

  Zaraphiston’s head snapped up as the first bolt struck home, blowing glass-dust and black ash across the bridge.

  ...

  Koron watched white-hot lasbolts tear into dust-choked Astartes plate. The psyker’s blue wings blocked most of his view, the grip of the Rubricae holding him immobile. Pain lanced through his left arm where the gauntlet locked down on his ruined bicep.

  Still — he saw the results through the link.

  A dozen Sentinels poured from the lift in a tide of lightning and steel. Arc-turrets spat crackling death, claws flashed like guillotines, and hypervelocity flechettes shredded two Rubricae into drifting golden clouds. Anti-grav plates let the machines take every angle at once, bounding along the bridge’s edges, their advance covered by Dusthaven’s security troopers.

  Each fighter took position behind the Necron lift walls, shields overlapping beneath the glimmering dome of Aegis droned. The few warp-tainted bolts that punched through splattered harmlessly against the overlaid barriers, hissing as they died in midair.

  The air filled with ozone and pulverized stone. Sentinel claws raked a Rubricae from his feet, dragging him down where three more tore him apart in a blur of sparks and steel. Another Rubrica turned its bolter toward the troopers — and vanished in a blossom of blue fire as a pair of arc-turrets punched clean through it’s chestplate.

  For a heartbeat, Zaraphiston’s mask cracked.

  His eyes flicked from the incoming storm to the glowing Necron node below — then to Koron.

  “Cease fire!” His voice cracked like a whip. The Rubricae froze. The last few lasbolts hissed against their armor.

  “You want this man — that much is clear.” The pistol pressed harder against Koron’s temple. “But you will not reach him before I pull the trigger. Lay down your weapons. Do so, and I will let him live.”

  A new voice rang out over the bridge, sharp as shattered glass.

  “You’re a special kind of stupid if you think that holds water.”

  Elissa stepped into view, her helmet’s reflective visor throwing back the emerald light, rifle raised and steady. Dusthaven’s security fanned out at her back, Sentinels repositioning with mechanical precision, claws raised.

  “You’re outnumbered, you’ve got no cover, and you’re stuck in single file,” she said, voice like steel. “Your weapons aren’t breaching our shields, and my machines are five seconds from turning your next soldier into scrap. Here’s the deal: throw your guns into the pit, and we all wait right here for the Ultramarines to come haul you away.”

  Zaraphiston’s eyes narrowed, the pistol unmoving. “You have no idea what you trifle with, child. Surrender now, and I may yet spare—”

  “You’ll kill us the moment we disarm,” she snapped, cutting across him. “We both know it. So our weapons stay up.”

  “You would gamble this man’s life?”

  “I’m not gambling.” Her voice sharpened to a knife’s edge. “You won’t kill him.”

  His lip curled. “…A bold claim.”

  “Not really. His life’s the only thing keeping you alive. The second he dies, you’re next.”

  “Oh?” Zaraphiston tilted his head, wings flexing in a slow, serpentine motion. “You think you can cut me down before I end him?”

  “No,” Elissa said, voice iron, arms steady as her rifle never wavered. “But I can avenge him.”

  She jerked her chin at the fallen Rubricae, their hollow shells cracked and spilling dust.

  “Ask your friends if you doubt me.”

  For an instant, only the humming shields and the distant thrum of the Necron machine filled the silence. Zaraphiston’s grip did not slacken — but his eyes flicked again to the shattered suits, and his jaw tightened.

  “To throw down our weapons and be taken in by our corpse-fellating brothers is death, merely delayed.” He pressed the bolt pistol harder into Korons skull. “If I am to die, I will deny my cousins whatever knowledge this man gained from the weapon.”

  Through the link, Koron felt the tightness in her voice, the iron control beneath it. She was gambling on him doing something stupid.

  She wasn’t wrong.

  ‘El,’ Koron’s voice whispered in her head, pain radiating down the link. ‘Catch me, would you?’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ she replied, even as she shifted her stance and braced.

  The crack-limpets Koron had planted before hiding beneath the bridge came alive, their resonance screaming through the span.

  They were meant for doors, bulkheads, obstacles — clean, surgical decoherence charges.

  They had, however, never been tested on necrodermis.

  The bridge began to shiver. Hairline fractures spidered across its surface as the whine climbed in pitch, a shriek that set teeth on edge and made the air vibrate in his chest. Flakes of blackened metal tore loose, spinning away into the abyss.

  Every head turned toward the sound a heartbeat before the bridge tore itself apart.

  The detonation was a sunburst — a wall of white light and shredding metal. The span disintegrated in a storm of razors, shards ringing off ceramite and sorcerous plate. Rubricae and master alike were hurled clear, their formation scattering into the void.

  Koron was ripped from the golem’s grip as the world dropped out from under him.

  The void spun around him, a blur of Astartes, rubble, and emerald fire. He flung his limbs wide — the ones that still worked — trying to catch himself, but two and a half functional limbs weren’t enough.

  He tumbled faster, blood flecking from split lips as the air tore at him.

  But he kept his eyes open.

  The golems fell past him, golden dust unraveling into comet tails as they plummeted into the abyss.

  On the far side of the blast, the lone surviving Rubrica was shredded where he stood — disciplined lasfire raking the dark, muzzle-flashes strobing the void in a heartbeat rhythm.

  Above, the sorcerer fought for his life.

  Six Sentinels swarmed him like wolves, anti-grav plates whining as they ricocheted off one another and the shattered Necron span. Claws raked, arc-turrets spat, jaws snapped. Lightning wrapped him in crackling coils, each strike leaving fresh burns and spiderweb cracks in ceramite.

  Scorched feathers tore loose, spiraling away like dying embers.

  And still, he held them.

  Bolt rounds boomed, warpfire splashed across Aegis shields. His staff cracked one Sentinel mid-flight, sending it spinning into the abyss — but the others only came back faster, angrier, carving new rents in his armor, driving him toward exhaustion.

  Then the air pulsed.

  Runes along his warplate flared like brandings, and the head of his staff burst into fire. The sorcerer’s head snapped toward the nearest Sentinel, his jaw opening — too wide, joints cracking audibly — and the void filled with sound.

  It was not speech.

  It was a screeching, whining stream of code, a sound that tore at the implants behind Koron’s ears and made Sasha snarl over the link. “What the hell is that!?”

  The first Sentinel spasmed mid-fall, optics flaring white. Plates along its spine snapped open, venting hot gas as it jettisoned corrupted logic cores into the abyss.

  The second locked up completely — then blew its own memory core in a flash of blue light, trailing smoke as it tumbled.

  Both reoriented.

  Their optics burned red.

  Anti-grav plates howled.

  They dove — no longer in perfect formation, no longer elegant.

  Zaraphiston’s eyes widened.

  Scrapcode had never failed him before. Never failed to drive machine-spirits screaming into self-immolation. Never failed to turn metal beasts berserk against their masters.

  But these were not broken.

  Their plating was cracked, their movements ragged, damaged yes — yet they still functioned. Still obeyed. Still came for him.

  His surprise turned to agony.

  One Sentinel shifted midair, limbs unfurling into its hybrid combat form, claws lengthening, jaw splitting wide.

  It hit him like a meteor.

  Chainsword fangs revved and ripped through his wing, shredding feathers, flesh, and ceramite until the joint snapped. His scream — high, sharp, almost avian — tore itself from his throat.

  He smashed an armored elbow into its flank, cratering its plating, but it only dug in deeper, sawing at the ruined joint until the wing broke away completely.

  Another slammed into his leg, claws punching through joint seals, teeth tearing into his thigh until he felt hot blood inside his boots.

  Then came the rest — grappling, clamping, flechette pods angling toward his face.

  He snarled, Warp-fire wreathing him in a burst that hurled them back, buying a single heartbeat of space.

  He curled in on himself, runes across his armor flaring as the teleport spell took shape.

  The damaged Sentinel struck again, slamming into his back, claws raking deep into his shoulder as the spell reached its apex.

  But Zaraphiston was no novice, no unblooded pup of the Warp.

  The spell detonated in a flare of azure brilliance that lit the bridge like lightning — swallowing him, and the drone still biting him, whole.

  When the light faded, nothing remained but scorched metal and the smell of ozone.

  In the silence that followed, Koron exhaled, letting the roar of the wind fill his ears as the tension bled from his shoulders. For half a heartbeat, he let himself have the dangerous luxury of calm.

  The fall tore the last of his breath from his lungs. His HUD went black — and with it, the world. No readings, no horizon, just the screaming dark pulling him down.

  ‘Koron! Wake up!’ Sasha’s voice was distant, echoing through his skull.

  He tried. His fingers barely twitched. Then something like a steel vice seized his arm.

  He expected Elissa. Maybe one of the twins. Someone diving through the void to snag him before he became a red smear on whatever titanic structure his sensors were pinging below.

  Instead, a scarred, grizzled face appeared out of the rushing dark.

  Milo’s armored hand locked around Koron’s chestplate, grav-plates flaring as gravity simply ceased to matter. The fall slowed to a drifting crawl.

  “Hey, kid.” Milo’s voice was a gravelly drawl, steady even in the empty air. He hauled Koron in close and slung him over a shoulder like a sack of grain. “You look like hell.”

  Koron’s head lolled back against the old man’s chest for a heartbeat before he forced it upright again. Every breath rattled like glass inside him, but he refused to sag.

  “So everyone keeps telling me,” Koron muttered, giving the old man’s armored back a weary pat. “Appreciate the catch.”

  “Course. Figured I’d check ‘jump into a xeno deathtrap’ off the bucket list.”

  Koron’s lips twitched into the ghost of a smile before the pain caught up and forced a low grunt through clenched teeth. “Glad I could help with that.”

  “We’ll set down on that big central node, work our way up from there,” Milo said, angling their descent with surprising ease. “You gonna hold together that long?”

  Koron didn’t waste breath on words — just gave a slow, deliberate thumbs-up.

  ...

  The descent was swift and soundless, the lift shuddering as it fell.

  On the way down, Elissa had watched it — the massive orb of black liquid beneath the control node, its mirror-surface rippling as something massive shifted beneath. The sight had sent a shiver down her spine. Whatever it was, it wasn’t water. It wasn’t anything she could name.

  She forced the thought aside as the lift glided to a stop.

  Dusthaven’s soldiers spread out in disciplined arcs, boots crunching softly against the ancient floor. None dared touch the glowing sigils carved into the consoles — each one pulsed faintly, like the slow, patient heartbeat of something far older than the world around it.

  Near the chamber’s center, Koron lay slumped on the floor, Milo seated beside him. Four Sentinels circled them like watchful hounds, optics glowing blue in the gloom.

  And beyond them loomed the command throne.

  In its arms lay a body — slumped forward, draped in dust thick as ashfall. The metal frame was cracked and worn, the greenish sheen of necrodermis dulled to near-black by a span of time so long it made the planet itself seem young.

  At her approach, both Milo and Koron gave a casual wave. Milo was leaning against the throne, cigarette smoldering between two fingers, smoke curling lazily in the air.

  “Hey, El,” he said around a puff. “Look what I caught.”

  She almost smiled — but it died as her gaze swept over Koron’s battered frame. His armor was in ruin, plates missing, blood and vomit half-dried on his skin. The sight hit like a blow to the gut, but she forced her voice to stay light.

  “Looks pretty small,” she said, dry as the dust underfoot. “Might want to throw him back.”

  Koron wheezed a laugh — then immediately regretted it, curling as pain tore through his chest.

  “Please,” he managed between clenched teeth, “don’t make me laugh. My ribs are basically powder.”

  Milo caught him under one arm, gravity fields humming as they stabilized him and hauled him upright.

  Elissa stepped closer, shaking her head as she tried to keep her expression brisk, professional — anything but worried. “What’s in the bag?” she asked, nodding toward the metal satchel at his hip, clearly made from his own shattered armor.

  “Couple of souvenirs,” Koron rasped. He nudged the dust-caked Necron corpse with one boot. “Got a little drone and a dimensional cube, exceptionally rare. Not sure if they work though.”

  Rolling her eyes, Elissa took his other side, careful of the ruined arm. She slipped her arm around his waist, letting her gravitic field sync with Milo’s to take more of his weight.

  “Come on,” she said, her voice soft but firm. “Let’s get you home. The girls are worried sick. Kala’s already promised to punch you at least twice.”

  Koron managed a tired smile as they started toward the lift, Dusthaven fighters falling in around them. “Well,” he rasped, “at least it’s just two.”

  “Tara said she’s using a powerfist.”

  Koron blinked. “…Oh.”

  ...

  The atrium doors hissed open, spilling Dusthaveners and their machine guardians into the ashen daylight. Rubble crunched underfoot, mingling with the slick remains of loyalist and traitor alike.

  And then they saw them.

  Twenty-four walls of ceramite blocked the way — azure giants, weapons at rest but ready. Helmets turned as IFF tags flashed green, but suspicion hardened to certainty the instant their optics fell on Koron’s battered frame.

  His face had been given to every one of them. Search and rescue — by order of their gene-sire himself.

  One stepped forward, towering over the mortals, closing the distance until the Dusthaveners instinctively clustered together with Koron at the center. Elissa handed him off to one of her men and strode to the front.

  “Greetings, my lord,” she said, dipping her head in a gesture of respect. “I—”

  “You are well known to us, Lady Brandt,” the Lieutenant said, warm amusement in his voice as he removed his helm. His left eye was augmetic, a handful of cables arcing from his brow like a mechanical crown. “The battle-brothers of the Salamanders — and those under the direct protection of our father — are not faces we easily forget.”

  A flush touched her dusky cheeks. “Ah. A fair point, Lieutenant…?”

  “Ankius, my Lady.” His grey eyes flicked to Koron, narrowing at the sight of the blood and broken plating. “I see you have recovered him. Does he require medical aid?”

  “He does,” Elissa said tightly, jerking her chin toward the Nyx. The gunship hovered twenty meters above the earth outside the base, engines whispering, its weapons still deployed and tracking in slow, lazy arcs.

  Ankius followed her gesture, then looked back to Koron. His brow furrowed. “Understandable. That said—” He hesitated, as though weighing his words. “Forgive me. I am… uncertain what title he carries.”

  Koron lifted his head, one eye swollen nearly shut but still catching the Lieutenant’s gaze. “No title. Just Koron. Keeps everything nice and simple.”

  Ankius inclined his head, the hesitation gone, his expression settling into formal resolve. “Very well. Koron — my lord has called for you. His own wounds are grave, and he requires your counsel. You are to accompany us.”

  He paused, then his tone softened, losing its edge of command. “Please.”

  Koron exhaled through bloodied lips, the breath leaving him like something heavy torn loose. For a moment his head bowed, as if the weight of the request pressed him down — then he nodded once.

  “Alright.”

  Elissa spun toward him, her hand twitching toward his head as if ready to smack him senseless. “You are not—”

  “Elissa.” His voice was hoarse but steady as he met her glare. “Guilliman’s too important to wait. I’m okay—”

  “The hell you are!” she snapped, jabbing a finger at his chest. “You’re held together with spit and stubbornness! Your organs are shutting down, your ribs are shattered, your—”

  “Elissa.” His voice was quiet — but it stopped her cold. “I’ll be fine. Please.”

  She opened her mouth to argue when the neural link clicked alive, his voice spilling through, warm and weary but steady.

  ‘El, I know you’re worried. But I think this is legit.’

  ‘You’re seriously wounded, and this could be a trap — a way to drag you into the heart of their operations!’

  ‘Which is why I need to go alone. If it’s a trap, I’m the only one they get. You stay here, you can either pull me out or burn the place down trying.’

  ‘Or you could send a damned drone! Scan it from the ship, do your diagnostics from safety!’

  ‘I considered it. But if Guilliman’s life depends on this, I’m not trusting a feed with even a millisecond of lag. I need my own eyes on this.’

  ‘Oh, and a fraction of a second of lag is worse than you running on fumes, and, let’s not forget: down an arm.’

  ‘I’m not performing surgery — just checking his systems. And if they are as broken as I think they are, I can’t risk a misread.’

  The link went silent for a long breath. He could see her jaw working, her hands flexing around her rifle stock like she was trying to squeeze the fear out through her fingers.

  ‘You’re going to get yourself captured doing this,’ she said at last, her voice lower, rawer. ‘And for what? For a man who won’t even remember your name once this war moves on?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Koron admitted, leaning heavily against the wall. His HUD stuttered again, Sasha throwing another red warning across his vision. ‘But the simple fact is that nobody knows how much time he has. And the Imperium can’t afford to lose him.’

  Another silence, sharper this time. When she finally spoke again, her tone was tight, controlled — the voice she used to keep from shouting.

  ‘You’re such an idiot.’

  ‘Been hearing that a lot lately.’

  ‘Maybe you should start listening to us, then.’

  ‘Tell you what — once I’m back in the medbay, you can ram it home as long as you want.’

  ‘...I’ll hold you to that.’

  Elissa turned back to the Astartes, her jaw tight, eyes hard as diamonds.

  “If anything happens to him,” she said evenly, “I’ll be pissed.”

  Something flickered in Ankius’s expression — amusement, alongside a shard of respect for the tiny woman glaring up at him. “Then you have my word,” he said solemnly. “I will defend him with my life. On the Primarch’s name, I swear it.”

  Elissa, ever so slightly, dipped her head in acknowledgment.

  Koron shuffled forward, each step dragging pain across his face, until he stopped at Elissa’s side.

  With his one good hand, he unbuckled the metal satchel and pressed it into her grip.

  Her glare was flint-sharp, anger barely hiding the thrum of fear under her skin. She wanted to shake him, to shout, to make him stay — but she only held his gaze, fingers curling knuckle-white around the satchel as though she could anchor him there.

  Koron raised his working arm and cupped the back of her head, metal fingers threading through her sweat-matted crimson hair. The gesture was slow, deliberate, costing him something to complete. His bloody forehead came to rest against hers, leaving a faint red smear between them.

  For a moment, she froze. Then something inside her broke loose. Her free hand came up hard, seizing the back of his head and holding him there, her grip just shy of painful, metal and flesh pressed together as if she could keep him by sheer force.

  The contact sent a rush through her — relief, affection, frustration, grim pride, alongside something she refused to name. For a heartbeat she let it stay, breathing him in, letting the scent of blood, metal, and heat root her to the moment.

  Then she forced it all back down where it belonged, armor snapping into place.

  Koron held her eyes for a moment longer — silent, steady — before letting go and turning toward the waiting Ultramarines.

  The Thunderhawk roared skyward, leaving only the wind behind. That silence lasted all of three seconds before Milo’s shadow fell across her, puffing out a cloud of smoke, grinning like a man who’d just found a new favorite story to tell.

  “Well, that was subtle,” he said, voice far too loud.

  She kicked his shin. Hard.