The smoke of the battlefield had long stained the skies above San Gallus Castle a murky gray-black.
Raynor leaned his back against a shattered marble pillar, his chest heaving violently.
The human guards by his side had suffered total casualties, their corpses scattered by the hundreds around him.
His platinum-gold master-crafted power armor was pitted and corroded by Chaos energy, with dried blood weeping broad, dark-brown stains across the stone flags.
Not far away, three small frost dragons—each several meters long—were bitterly holding the line.
They were originally deployed to cover Raynor's evacuation, yet now they were swarmed by dozens of Pink Horrors and Nossak warriors left behind by Attiya.
Ice-blue breath continuously swept across the enemy crowd, freezing daemons into crystalline statues; yet the next second, even more daemons crawled out from Warp rifts without end.
Up in the sky, the true lethal strike was already fully prepared.
Luna rode upon the back of a Heldrake, her broad Chaos hood concealing most of her face, leaving only half a golden mask gleaming with cold metallic light visible.
Purple-black psychic lightning flickered at her fingertips; with every wave of her hand, twisted arcs of electricity crashed down, landing with pinpoint accuracy around the cover where Raynor hid.
Shattering stone flew in all directions as the marble pillars were corroded into honeycomb-like holes at a rate visible to the naked eye.
She had waited for this day far too long.
Raynor's elite guards were exhausted, and Sarah's main body was pinned down by Attiya without any leeway; right now was the prime opportunity to take him down.
As long as she captured Raynor, all past failures and humiliations would be thoroughly washed away.
"Roar!"
A small frost dragon was bound by three Nossak warriors simultaneously, bone blades sinking deep into its wing membrane.
It roared in pain, thrashing its neck to tear the daemons to shreds; yet at that exact moment, a purple-black bolt of psychic lightning plummeted from above, striking its skull with precision.
"Sizzle!"
Ice-blue scales turned instantly scorched and black. The dragon's body stiffened violently before crashing heavily to the ground, twitching a few times before ceasing to move altogether.
Under the corrosion of Chaos energy, the corpse rapidly melted into a puddle of foul, black water that seeped into the crevices of the stone flags.
"One less."
Luna let out a soft chuckle, her voice carrying a twisted malice through her mask.
She raised her hand to stroke the Heldrake's cold armor. The giant beast beneath her let out a low growl, wild lust for violence churning within its eerie blue eyes.
This batch of Daemon Engines was a blessing she had purchased from the Architect of Fate by offering ten psycher souls.
The daemon engine inside every single drake imprisoned over a hundred despairing souls—flying as fast as lightning, with combat strength far exceeding ordinary daemon entities.
"Raynor, you cannot run." Luna's voice drifted down with the wind. "Kneel before me and repent; perhaps I will grant you a swift death."
What answered her was a precise shot from a laspistol.
The round grazed Luna's hood and struck the Heldrake's armor, sparking a tiny, faint flash.
"Stubborn to the end." Luna's eyes turned cold, and she raised her hand to give a gesture downward.
Two Chaos Knights that had long been holding their momentum erupted forward with startling speed.
Nearly ten meters tall, their armor was covered in Tzeentchian runes. The volcano cannons mounted on their arms charged rapidly, glowing a dangerous red.
The one on the left swung a buzzing chainsword, while the one on the right clenched a massive power fist, striding heavy steps straight toward the pillar hiding Raynor.
With every footfall, the ground shuddered in response.
"BOOM!"
The chainsword struck down first, severing the half-meter-thick marble pillar clean in two.
Amidst flying stone fragments, Raynor's silhouette had already disengaged from cover, rolling sideways to evade the power fist that followed closely behind.
The colossal fist slammed into the ground, forcibly cratering out a pit two meters in diameter.
Raynor used the momentum to rise and leap.
Instead of choosing to fight head-on, he stepped lightly, retreating rapidly under the cover of flying debris.
Yet the moment he leaped half a meter into the air, the wind above his head suddenly grew sharp.
Sailing the Heldrake, Luna swooped down from the high sky!
The golden mask under her hood reflected the glare of Chaos fire, and the corners of Luna's lips curled into an uncontrollable grin of wild joy.
Now was the moment!
As long as this pounce succeeded, she could capture this man with her own hands, torture him brutally, and present him to the Architect of Fate!
Closer, even closer.
She could even make out the shock on Raynor's face and smell the faint blood on his body.
Victory was within arm's reach.
Yet right at that instant, a cold whisper burrowed into Raynor's mind without warning.
The voice was gentle yet alluring, like a lover whispering in his ear, or a daemon in the abyss tempting a lost lamb.
"Embrace it... you were meant to hold the power to command everything..."
"Those petty souls were meant to serve you..."
"Why do you hesitate? Just reach out your hand, and everything will be yours..."
The Warp's temptation was like maggots in bone, burrowing deep along his nerves.
The vision before his eyes began to distort; Luna's figure grew blurry, and the surrounding battle cries drifted away, leaving only that tempting voice repeating endlessly.
Immediately after, a cold system popup illuminated sharply across his retina.
[Skill Triggered: Grip of Dominance]
[Effect: Target a unit with mental strength significantly weaker than yours to instantly dominate... everything about them.]
[Warning: Frequent usage will deepen Warp corruption, posing a risk of total fall.]
Raynor's consciousness drifted between excruciating pain and temptation.
He knew better than anyone that this unearned "convenience" was never a free lunch.
Relying on it repeatedly would ultimately lead to sliding step by step into the abyss of Chaos—perhaps losing himself forever in the end.
Yet he raised his eyes to look at the battlefield nearby.
The remaining two small frost dragons were covered in wounds, their wings torn and golden blood oozing beneath their scales, yet they still stood firmly between the daemons and Raynor, refusing to retreat half a step.
Farther up in the sky, Sarah's main dragon form was locked in a fierce battle against Attiya; ice-blue and rainbow energies collided continuously, shaking the entire sky until it trembled.
To pin down Attiya, Sarah had risked everything.
She was fighting for him, giving her all so he could survive.
How could he fall here?
He was never the kind of man to let down a girl!
"So what if I fall into the abyss?" Raynor roared in his heart, his gaze turning resolute.
"Grip of Dominance—activate!"
The moment the words fell, an invisible surge of purple power erupted from the deep recesses of Raynor's spirit.
A giant purple hand materialized instantly inside the body of the Heldrake, tightly clamping down on the frantically pulsing daemon engine deep within its chest cavity.
Inside the engine, over a hundred imprisoned, despairing souls were shrieking in agony. Having howled for the Chaos Gods for over a thousand years, they had long turned numb and insane.
Yet the instant that giant purple hand descended, every single shriek came to an abrupt halt.
It was as if time had frozen for a fraction of a second.
Then, every soul was hit with a cosmic pause button.
The beating frequency of the daemon engine shifted abruptly.
It was no longer roaring for the Architect of Fate, no longer burning for Chaos.
With every shudder, it began to submit entirely to Raynor's will.
The pair of eyes on the Heldrake, originally churning with eerie blue fury, suddenly went dark.
The eerie blue flames receded at a rate visible to the naked eye, replaced instead by a deep, elegant purple infused with a sense of absolute dominance.
Purple flames burned quietly within the dragon's eyes. The giant beast's body stiffened violently; its wide-open jaw closed silently, and the momentum of its dive suffered an imperceptible veer.
Meanwhile, Luna, riding atop the dragon's back, remained immersed in the wild joy of her imminent success.
She had even raised her hand, purple-black psychic energy condensing in her palm as she prepared to shatter Raynor's limbs in a single strike, depriving him entirely of any ability to resist.
She failed to notice in the slightest that the Heldrake beneath her—once bound to her soul—had long slipped from her control.
Even the grand might of Tzeentch lost its luster briefly under the suppression of that purple power.
The anticipated scene of biting the target whole never occurred.
The Heldrake's colossal frame swooped past, almost grazing Raynor's body, its powerful air current knocking Raynor back two steps.
Luna froze.
What happened?
It missed?!
Just as she tried to channel psychic energy to command the drake to turn, the giant beast beneath her suddenly unleashed an earth-shattering roar and executed an extreme, high-g hard turn in mid-air!
The massive centrifugal force nearly threw Luna free of her mount.
"You brute! What are you doing?!"
Both shocked and enraged, Luna hastily drove her Tzeentchian staff deep into the dragon's back, attempting to inspect the situation through their soul bond.
Yet the moment her psychic energy touched the dragon's consciousness, it slammed into a cold, hard purple wall and was instantly repelled back.
How is this possible?!
Her pupils shrank sharply.
This drake was summoned through a sacrifice she performed herself, its soul stamped with her mark. How could it suddenly go rogue?
Before she could piece together the reason, the Heldrake violently snapped its wings shut. Like a bolt of blue lightning, it lunged straight toward a Chaos Knight nearby that was preparing to open fire on Raynor!
That Chaos Knight had just aligned the muzzle of its volcano cannon with Raynor, the red light at the tip charging to its absolute limit, ready to spew a beam of devastating energy the next second.
Yet its pilot never dreamed in his wildest nightmares that his own team's drake would suddenly pounce on him.
"Have you gone mad?!"
The pilot's enraged roar was only halfway through the loudspeaker when the Heldrake slammed brutally into the volcano cannon's muzzle.
Its massive frame jammed the gun barrel shut entirely.
"BOOM!!!"
The fully charged volcano cannon instantly suffered a catastrophic breech explosion.
Incandescent plasma streams backflowed into the cockpit structure, detonating the barrel.
Immediately after, the daemon engine inside the Heldrake's chest was ignited by the chain energy, triggering an even more terrifying explosion.
A fireball of purple, red, and blue expanded violently, enveloping both the Chaos Knight and the Heldrake completely.
The ionic shield reinforced by the STC fragment held out for less than half a second before registering an overload, followed immediately by a chain reaction of melting armor and detonating munitions.
A massive shockwave spread out in a ring, sweeping away the surrounding daemons in swaths.
Luna bore the brunt of it.
The instant the explosion occurred, she instinctively erected a psychic shield, enveloped at the center of a rainbow-hued light barrier.
Yet the power of a point-blank chain explosion far exceeded her imagination. The psychic shield cracked like glass and shattered with a roar the very next second.
"Pfft!"
Luna spat a mouthful of blood, her body thrown out like a ragdoll by the shockwave.
She slammed heavily into the ruins dozens of meters away, landing with a sharp crunch.
Within the dust and smoke, Raynor knelt on one knee, one hand propping himself up while the other pressed tightly against his temple.
A excruciating headache felt as though it were splitting his skull in two.
Something cold and unfamiliar was spreading continuously along his nerves, rewriting his brain, his blood vessels, his internal organs, and even his very soul bit by bit.
Everything in his vision spun; his ears buzzed loudly. The Warp whisper from earlier seemed to linger, echoing repeatedly in his mind.
The transformation brought by the Grip of Dominance was far more violent and swift than he had anticipated.
"Cough, cough..."
From the nearby ruins came Luna's violent coughing.
She dragged herself out of the rubble in utter disgrace, her broad corrupted robes torn to shreds, her hood long gone.
Half of her golden mask had cracked open with a gruesome split, revealing the bloodied half of her face underneath.
Her once neat long hair was a disheveled mess, covered in dust and bloodstains—lacking even a fraction of her former posture as a high-and-mighty Chaos Champion.
She raised her head, her venomous gaze pinned dead onto Raynor, practically dripping with poison.
"Raynor, what trick did you pull this time?!"
Luna's voice was raspy to the extreme, laced with uncontrollable fury.
Even now, she couldn't understand why her Heldrake had suddenly turned coat.
Raynor didn't answer.
He merely gritted his teeth, forcing himself to stand, his fingertips instinctively seeking to channel that dominant power once more.
If he could dominate a drake, could he dominate the remaining Chaos Knights?
If he could just hold out a bit longer...
Yet the moment he focused his mind, the headache intensified once again. His vision went dark, and he nearly tumbled to the ground.
It wouldn't work.
Using it continuously in a short frame of time was something his mind simply couldn't withstand.
Luna also noticed Raynor's state was off.
He was bluffing his way through.
That bizarre tactic earlier had undoubtedly come at a massive cost.
Yet she didn't dare charge forward blindly again.
Who knew if this man still had other hidden tricks up his sleeve?
She had experienced his cunning and deviousness far too many times.
"All seven of you, attack together!"
Luna barked a harsh order at the remaining seven Chaos Knights, her voice laced with suppressed anxiety.
She knew her time was running out.
The profane barrier had fallen, the Imperial fleet was streaming in endlessly, and the Chaos forces in Midtown were retreating step by step.
If she dragged this out until Attiya was also defeated by the Frost Dragon, she would lose her chance entirely.
Finish this quickly, take Raynor down, and evacuate immediately!
All seven Chaos Knights roared simultaneously, closing in slowly in a fan formation.
Volcano cannons, melta cannons, chainswords, power fists...
Various weapons lit up with dangerous glints at the same time, completely sealing off all of Raynor's escape routes.
Raynor tightened his grip on his power shortsword, his breathing growing heavier.
The headache was still intensifying, and double vision had begun to set in.
Was he truly going to fall here today?
Right at this critical juncture, dense artillery fire whistled through the sky like a rain of steel, slamming down violently in front of the seven Chaos Knights!
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
Deafening explosions rang out in rapid succession. Scorching plasma flares overlapped with detonations, forcibly plowing a trench several meters deep directly before the Knight engines.
The sheer ferocity of the bombardment and the density of the fire rate were completely unlike what one or two Knight engines could output—it felt more like an entire Knight lance pouring out munitions at once.
"Who's there?!"
Luna raised her head in rage, looking toward the direction of the incoming fire.
The smoke and dust slowly cleared.
A giant Knight engine, clad entirely in bright yellow, stood quietly at the end of the ruins.
Just a few minutes ago, Raynor was still kneeling on one knee, his face pale as paper.
His temples felt as if pierced repeatedly by countless steel needles, the aftereffects of the Grip of Dominance continuously festering.
Cold, alien energy rampaged through his blood vessels, and everything in his vision twisted and spun.
Ahead, three Chaos Knights had re-adjusted their formation; the red glow of their volcano cannons lit up in sequence, and the hum of their chainswords caused the ground to vibrate subtly.
The remaining two small frost dragons stood before him on wounded wings, their scales covered in scorched marks left by Chaos corruption, yet still refusing to yield half a step.
A dead end.
Raynor gritted his teeth, attempting to summon the purple power of dominance from the depths of his mind once more, but the moment he focused—
Excruciating pain swept through his skull like a volcanic eruption, darkening his vision and nearly bringing him to the ground.
Using the Grip of Dominance repeatedly within a short frame of time had pushed his mental threshold to its absolute limit.
Right at that moment, the earth shuddered violently.
It was not the blast of artillery, nor the footfall of standard Knight engines, but a heavier, far more massive metallic roar.
It came from deep within the ruins on the western side of the castle, approaching step by step from afar.
"BOOM!"
A surviving marble wall collapsed with a crash.
Amidst the billowing dust, a giant, brilliant-yellow Knight engine stepped slowly onto the battlefield.
Standing over twelve meters tall, it towered a full head above standard Knight suits.
Its broad, thick shoulder carapace extended to both sides, with four shoulder-mounted cannons symmetrically arranged; faint red residual heat still hovered at their muzzles from a recent volley.
The Ironstorm Missile Pod on its back raised slowly, its honeycomb-like launcher cells dense and gleamning with cold metallic luster.
The winged angel crest engraved on its heraldic shield was enveloped in a faint golden halo, every inch of its armor bathed in a warm, holy golden light, as if the Emperor's gaze itself were descending upon the mortal realm.
Wrath of Holy Judgment.
The Dominus-class Knight of House San Gallus, a family totem that had lain dormant for twenty years.
Inside the cockpit, Leo's hands holding the control levers trembled slightly—not out of fear, but from the raging anger and battle-lust churning within his chest.
He had just piloted the Wrath of Holy Judgment out of the underground vault, rushing to reinforce along the sound of gunfire, arriving just in time to see Raynor surrounded.
Seeing those Chaos Knights carved with Tzeentchian runes trampling upon his family's lands, and seeing those twisted daemons devouring the corpses of soldiers, the fire in Leo's chest threatened to ignite the cockpit itself.
"Luna! You colluded with Chaos and betrayed our house—your sins demand death!"
Leo's voice thundered through the Knight's vox-amplifiers with a metallic roar, causing the surrounding rubble to fall like rain.
The moment his words landed, all four shoulder cannons unleashed a deafening roar simultaneously.
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
Four streams of incandescent plasma pierced through the smoke like golden dragons, slamming brutally into the two Chaos Knights nearest to Raynor.
These were no ordinary plasma weapons.
Every single cannon on the Wrath of Holy Judgment had been blessed by the High Kings of House San Gallus through generations, their barrel interiors inscribed with the purest sermons of the Ecclesiarchy.
Combined with His watchful gaze, every round carried golden holy flames, possessing a naturally devastating counter to Chaos entities.
"Sizzle!"
The plasma streams struck the Chaos Knights' ion shields, yet instead of producing a violent explosion, they passed easily through the barriers like hot blades through water.
Golden holy fire flooded frantically through the melted breaches, seeping inward along the seams of their armor.
The two struck Chaos Knights instantly let out agonizing mechanical shrieks, the Tzeentchian runes on their armor dimming rapidly amidst the holy flames.
The mutated Chaos flesh clinging to the war machines sizzled and popped, belching foul, black smoke.
"Dammit!"
Luna's pupils shrank sharply as she instinctively took half a step back.
She recognized this Knight.
Ever since she was young, she had seen the silhouette of the Wrath of Holy Judgment countless times in family records and castle murals.
It was the pinnacle of House San Gallus's military power, the personal mount of every High King, and the ultimate symbol of authority and glory.
She had fantasized countless times about sitting in that cockpit, piloting it to lead the family toward a more brilliant future.
To obtain it, she had spared no effort in colluding with Chaos, scheming against Caladogon, and turning against her own nephew.
Yet now, the Knight of her dreams stood on the opposing side.
And the one piloting it was Leo—the nephew she had never once taken seriously.
On what grounds?
Why did this wet-behind-the-ears brat earn the recognition of the Wrath of Holy Judgment?
Why, after she had sacrificed everything, was she left abandoned by all?
Luna's fingernails dug deep into her palms, a fleeting trace of desolation and yearning flashing across her eyes.
Yet that emotion lasted for only a split second before being replaced by an even thicker venom and madness.
She had no turning back.
From the moment she touched Chaos, from the moment she made her wish to Tzeentch, there was no returning.
So what if it was the Wrath of Holy Judgment? So what if it was Leo?
As long as she killed Raynor, retrieved the STC fragment, and obtained the blessings of the Architect of Fate, she could acquire far more than just a Dominus-class Knight—even a God-Engine Titan wouldn't be out of reach!
"Four of you, tie it down! The remaining three—kill Raynor for me!"
Luna swung her staff violently, purple-black psychic lightning blasting a deep crater into the ground.
She refused to believe four Chaos Knights couldn't drag down a single Dominus-class machine.
Once Raynor was dead, Leo would be left fighting alone, and this Knight would still end up in her hands!
The four Chaos Knights previously besieging the small frost dragons immediately pivoted, swinging their chainswords and power fists as they charged toward the Wrath of Holy Judgment.
The red glow of their volcano cannons lit up in sequence, discharging several rays of destruction straight toward Leo.
Yet Leo had no intention of dodging.
"With just you scrap piles corrupted by Chaos?"
Leo sneered, reacting in unison with the machine spirit.
The golden aura on the surface of the Wrath of Holy Judgment flared violently, expanding into a dense shield of holy fire.
"BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!"
Four laser beams struck the shield back-to-back, setting off only four tiny sparks without even penetrating the shield's outer layer.
The next second, the Ironstorm Missile Pod on its back emitted a swarm-like hum.
Hundreds of micro-missiles dragged golden rocket trails behind them, pouring down like a torrential golden rainstorm.
These were no standard high-explosive warheads.
Sealed within every missile was a fragment of holy fire.
As the missiles rained onto the daemon hordes, onto cultist positions, and onto the armor of Chaos Knights, they detonated not into shrapnel, but into spreading sheets of golden flame.
"AAAAAAAAAAH!"
Agonized screams erupted in waves.
Daemons touched by the holy fire vanished from flesh to soul before they could even finish wailing, leaving behind not even a scrap of Warp energy residue.
The Chaos rune armor on the cultists shattered instantly, their skin charring rapidly under the holy flames until their entire bodies dissolved into wisps of green smoke.
In a matter of seconds, the daemons and cultists within dozens of meters around Raynor were wiped clean.
Even the viscous Chaos blood coating the ground was burned away completely, revealing the clean stone flags beneath.
The four Chaos Knights that had charged forward were now in utter disarray.
The holy fire clung to their armor; no matter how they thrashed or dumped energy to purge it, the flames would not go out.
The fire seeped inward along the gaps in their plating, searing the pilots and Chaos flesh inside, forcing their movements into awkward contortions.
"How is this possible..."
Luna gritted her teeth, her eyes filled with disbelief.
She knew Dominus-class Knights were powerful, but could they truly be this absurd?
Taking on four opponents at once with ease while casually clearing out every single minion across the entire battlefield?
Was this the sheer strength of the San Gallus bloodline? Or was it due to the divine protection of the Emperor's Holy Light?
Jealousy gnawed at her heart like a poisonous viper, leaving her almost unable to breathe.
Yet she quickly forced herself to calm down.
No matter how strong Leo was, he was still just one man.
With four Knights tying him down, he wouldn't have a spare moment to protect Raynor.
And on her side, she still had three fully operational Chaos Knights.
Against ten or so scarred, small frost dragons and Raynor—who was mentally battered and had practically lost all combat capacity—it was more than enough.
She continued summoning daemons!
"Charge!"
Luna pointed her staff, and several deep-purple Warp rifts split open across the ground in an instant.
More Pink Horrors, Chaos Spawn, Daemon Rays, and even Bloodletters and Fiends poured out, howling as they rushed toward Raynor as one.
The three Chaos Knights advanced in a triangular formation, their volcano cannons charging rapidly as they locked onto Raynor's position.
She wanted to see what other tricks Raynor could pull off without the frost dragons protecting him.
Raynor propped himself against a shattered pillar, barely keeping himself upright.
His headache was still intensifying, and the Warp whispers in his ears grew increasingly clear, tempting him to unleash the power of dominance once more.
Yet he knew all too well that forcing it one more time would likely cause his mind to collapse directly, leaving him completely swallowed by the Warp.
Was he truly going to fall here?
Right at that moment, the sky suddenly dimmed.
It was not clouds blocking the sun, but something cutting through the warped light of the profane barrier—dropping rapidly toward the ground with a sharp, air-rending screech.
"What is that?"
Raynor snapped his head up to look at the sky.
He saw hundreds of drop pods trailing green rocket tails like a dense meteor shower, streaming in through the breach in the profane barrier.
Their landing points were widely scattered, yet the vast majority aimed with surgical precision toward the Warp-contaminated zones of Midtown.
The timing was terrifyingly sharp.
It caught the exact window when the Imperial fleet in orbit finished a volley and their guns were cooling down.
Orbital space, aboard the bridge of the Gemstone.
Dominic had just ordered a position adjustment for the guns, preparing to blanket the Chaos positions in Midtown with a second salvo, when he witnessed this celestial drop.
"Greenskins?!"
He slammed his hand onto his armrest, his face turning thoroughly grim.
Damn greenskins!
Not earlier, not later—they just had to butt in right at this critical juncture!
The profane barrier had just fallen, the Chaos forces weren't even cleared out, and Brevis was at its most vulnerable—yet this pack of greenskins actually timed their entry down to the second?
"Have the scan results come back? Is it Ragnar's main force?"
Dominic demanded harshly, veins bulging at his temples.
He was already burning with anger from being delayed six months by Warp turbulence with nowhere to vent it.
Now look at this: arriving at Brevis only to run straight into a Chaos siege, and just as they were about to turn the tide, a pack of greenskins popped out of nowhere.
Did the Calixis Sector dig up an alien nest or something?!
"My Lord... something's not quite right," the radar officer's voice carried a hint of confusion. "The landing points for these drop pods... are almost entirely inside the Chaos-controlled sector."
"And according to ground observation feeds, once these greenskins hit the dirt... they didn't attack the Imperial defenders. They went straight into a brawl with the Chaos forces."
"What?"
Dominic froze, striding over to the screen to look at the few available feeds from Midtown.
Through the swirling smoke, green figures and multi-colored daemons could be vaguely seen locked in a brutal melee across Midtown's streets.
The Ork WAAAGH! roars and the daemonic shrieks mashed together into a chaotic stew.
They were actually fighting?
The greenskins and Chaos were brawling with each other?
"Magnify the feed!"
"Sir!"
The camera zoomed in rapidly, projecting the Midtown battlefield onto the holographic display.
The greenskins were clad in mismatched armor, all bearing a unified emblem on their bodies: a cloud motif crossed by a horizontal slash.
Their weapons were also somewhat different from typical greenskins; many possessed strange biological grafts on their arms.
Some had sharp bone scythes, while others had gland cannons capable of spraying acid—looking somewhat revolting, yet packing terrifying lethality.
Even stranger was their demeanor.
Facing hideous, twisted daemons, these greenskins showed not a shred of fear; instead, every one of them wailed with excitement, hacking into daemons with even more gusto than they did humans.
The way they looked didn't resemble a fight for survival—it looked like kids who had just received new toys, faces full of novelty and pure enjoyment.
"The cloud motif with a horizontal slash..." Dominic frowned. "Does Ragnar have a clan like this under his command?"
Before arriving, he had reviewed intel on the greenskins in the Calixis Sector. Big Gutt Ragnar's forces were primarily composed of clans like the Snakebites, Evil Suns, and Deathskulls.
He had never heard of a clan bearing a "cloud slash" emblem.
Where did these new greenskins spring from?
No one could answer his question.
Because in front of San Gallus Castle right now, everyone's attention was drawn to the largest meteor of them all.
It didn't land in Midtown; trailing a long green tail of fire, it slammed with pinpoint precision straight onto the plaza at the castle's main gate.
"BOOM!!!"
The colossal force shook the entire castle three times. Smoke and dust shot skyward, and shattered stone flew hundreds of meters.
A massive crater fifty meters in diameter was instantly blasted into the plaza.
At the bottom of the crater, a lopsided, brightly graffitied greenskin meteor drop pod was issuing wafting wisps of white smoke.
The hatch was kicked open from the inside with a heavy CLANG, slamming hard onto the ground.
An honest, booming voice echoed out from the dust and smoke:
"Boss! I've come to save ya!"
The next second, a towering figure strode out from the haze.
It was a four-meter-tall Ogryn.
Dressed in custom-made Warboss-grade power armor over rough gray-green skin, his plating was covered in Ork-style graffiti and rivets.
Most eye-catching was his left arm—it wasn't a normal arm at all, but a hybrid mechanical-biological bionic limb.
The outer layer was a cold, hard mechanical skeleton, while the inner layer was wrapped in Tyranid muscle fibers and nerve bundles.
At the hand position, three sharp chitinous scythes formed a three-pronged claw that sent chills down one's spine just looking at it.
"CHIII-LA~"
With a casual sweep of his arm, his mechanical claws tore a charging Chaos Spawn into shredded meat with ease.
Dark green blood splattered all over the ground, yet it didn't slow his movements in the slightest.
The mechanical gearwork on his arm emitted a faint whirring sound as the three scythes rapidly retracted, flipped, and reassembled.
In just two seconds, the sharp claw blades receded into the arm guard, replaced instead by a thick gun barrel whose muzzle still gleamed with the sheen of corrosive acid.
It was a miniature Haruspex acid spray cannon.
"BANG!"
A blob of concentrated dark-green acid shot from the muzzle, tracing an arc and slamming precisely onto the mechanical arm of a Helbrute nearby.
"SIZZLE!!"
An ear-splitting sound of corrosion rang out.
The Helbrute's mechanical arm, reinforced by Chaos power, rapidly melted and snapped under the acid's corrosion like milk ice cream under the hot sun.
The entire mechanical limb detached completely at the shoulder joint, crashing down onto the ground.
"ROAR!!"
The Helbrute unleashed a pained roar, its off-balance frame staggering back several steps.
It all occurred in a flash of lightning.
Raynor looked at that familiar figure, stunned for a moment, before letting out an involuntary laugh.
Dobby—or rather, Strange-Hand Dou.
The leader of the Ogryn bodyguard unit he had recruited back on the Song of Praise, that honest, straightforward big guy who always kept "protecting the Boss" on his lips.
Back then, feeling that Dobby's combat strength couldn't keep up with the increasingly high-intensity battles, Raynor took the opportunity when Tooth-Plenty headed to Dead World-A to send Dobby and that team of Ogryns along, letting them train under Tooth-Plenty on the greenskin battlefield.
Empowered by the "I Think, Therefore I Am" Waaagh! energy, this group of naturally burly Ogryns had actually managed to blend into the greenskin community, becoming recognized "big ladz" in the Orks' eyes.
And Dobby, relying on his master-class "lootin' and moddin' skillz" and a fearless fighting style, had become the number one fierce boss under Tooth-Plenty's banner.
"Dobby!"
Raynor called out, a faint, almost imperceptible smile in his voice.
"Hey! Boss!"
Hearing his name, Dobby turned his head immediately, breaking into an honest grin.
Seeing that Raynor was unharmed, he let out a huge sigh of relief. Then, adopting a fierce and menacing scowl once more, he spun back around and roared at the surrounding daemons:
"How dare ya pick on my Boss! I'll mess ya all up!"
As his voice fell, even more Ork boyz flooded out of the drop pod.
Most were elites of the Hokage Clan, their bodies modified to varying degrees with Tyranid biomorphs.
Some had extra chitinous arm-blades growing from their shoulder blades; others had their eyes replaced with compound insect eyes; some had simply retrofitted their firearms into a hybrid of gland cannons and scrap dakkas.
Bone scythes and metal choppas swung together while acid and lasers flew wildly—looking utterly absurd, yet packing devastating lethality.
A wild wave of flesh-punk atmosphere instantly swept across the entire plaza.
The moment they rushed out, they immediately threw themselves into the fray.
Daemonic shrieks, Ork battle cries, and the clashing of weapons merged into a single roar. The originally one-sided Chaos offensive was forcibly halted by this suddenly appearing Ork force.
Right at that moment, an invigorating electric guitar intro suddenly echoed from deep within the drop pod.
A heavily metallic riff pierced through the smoke and artillery fire, bringing an unbridled, wild energy that slammed into everyone's ears.
CLANG!
A heavy bassline joined in, synchronized with a dense drumbeat, as the wild rhythm vibrated through everyone's hearts.
Smoke and dust blasted outward with a crash!
An eight-meter-tall Ork mecha, riding on a chainsaw unicycle base, charged out from the drop pod!
The design of this mecha was ridiculous to the extreme.
The base was a giant chainsaw wheel five meters in diameter, emitting an ear-splitting hum as it turned, sawing deep trenches into the stone flags wherever it rolled.
The torso of the mecha sported a full set of six arms.
The top pair of hands each held an electric guitar; the middle pair cradled a massive electric bass; the bottom arms operated a suspended drum kit.
Inside the mecha's head cockpit sat a burly Grot.
Wearing absurdly oversized sunglasses and rocking a colorful, spiked mohawk, he gripped a microphone and thrash-ing his head wildly to the beat.
It was none other than the boss of the Hokage Clan—Rock 'n' Roll Freak, Tooth-Plenty!
"Lads of Brevis!!"
Tooth-Plenty's voice boomed through the mecha's loudspeakers, laced with static distortion yet radiating pure passion.
"The Hokage Clan's exclusive show starts NOW!!"
All six arms moved simultaneously.
Guitars strummed, basslines grooved, and drumbeats exploded.
Wild rock music instantly filled the entire battlefield.
Accompanied by the rhythm of the music, the Ork boyz around the mecha grew as hyped up as if they had been injected with adrenaline. Their attack power and speed surged across the board, their war cries echoing through the heavens and earth.
Looking at that absurd six-armed rock mecha and listening to the deafening Ork rock, Raynor couldn't help but twitch the corner of his mouth.
...
The battle in Midtown, too, reached an irreversible avalanche for the Chaos forces the moment the Ork tide flooded in.
The breach in the profane barrier tore wider and wider. Orbital Imperial fleets were able to adjust their gun positions with composure, slamming volley after volley of pinpoint firepower deep into Chaos lines.
The energy of the Warp rifts shuddered continuously under the dual impacts of artillery fire and the Ork WAAAGH! field, drastically reducing the number of emerging daemons.
Even those that managed to manifest were instantly torn to shreds by crossfire from both sides.
The ground was an absolute mess.
With the Imperial forces and the Plague-Cleansing Sect pressing in from the front and the Hokage Clan Orks launching rabid attacks from the rear, the Chaos horde, caught in a pincer move, was instantly shattered into pieces.
The moment those Pink Horrors tried to float up and cast Warp spells, they were hit full-on by a volley of acid gland cannons from the Ork boyz.
The corrosive acid sizzled against their flesh, making them scatter in shrieking panic.
A Bloodletter had just brought down two soldiers with its bone blade when several boyz wielding bone scythes pounced from behind, splitting the daemon clean in two.
To the Hokage Clan boyz, these fanged, clawed daemons were practically far more "friendly" than the lifeless bugs back on Dead World-A.
Those bugs fought silently—they didn't scream, didn't feel fear, and acted like machines with zero "satisfying feedback."
These daemons were different: they screamed, wailed in pain, and contorted into bizarre poses. Hacking them felt crisp, and burning them smelled surprisingly "intoxicating."
This wasn't a battle—it was breaking in new toys!
"WAAAAAAGH!!" The Orks' roaring drowned out the daemonic shrieks, mixing with the Imperial soldiers' bugle calls as it exploded over smoke-filled Midtown.
The Chaos defensive line was like a sand dike washed away by a flood, falling back again and again as massive swathes of territory were reclaimed. The speed of their collapse was faster than anyone could have imagined.
On the plaza before San Gallus Castle, the situation reversed even more thoroughly.
Dobby led the modified Ogryns through the enemy lines as if entering an unpeopled realm. His hybrid bionic left arm switched modes seamlessly—at times sweeping bone scythes to shred Chaos Spawn, at other times using the acid spray cannon to blast distant daemon clusters.
The pressure on the remaining small frost dragons eased significantly, allowing them to draw in their formation and guard before Raynor, sweeping icy breath across incoming mobs and freezing enemies into crystalline statues.
Propping himself against a pillar, Raynor slowly stood straight. The excruciating pain in his temples still throbbed in waves, and the foreign energy from the Grip of Dominance continued to course wildly through his veins.
However, his vision had finally cleared again.
He looked at the Ork mecha ahead—ridding its chainsaw unicycle and waving six arms of musical instruments as it slaughtered daemons—and couldn't help but take a few extra looks.
"Boss! I'll clear the path!" Dobby's booming voice echoed from up ahead as he crushed a charging Chaos Spawn with a single fist.
Covered in green splatter, he wiped his face nonchalantly, pointing his thick arm directly at the two remaining Helbrutes nearby.
Those two Helbrutes had been working alongside the Chaos Knights to suppress the frost dragon, but seeing the Ork forces swarming in, they immediately pivoted their muzzles.
Storm bolters and assault cannons roared simultaneously, sending a metallic tempest straight toward Tooth-Plenty, who was charging in front.
"Come at me!" Tooth-Plenty's voice blasted through the mecha's speakers, heavily distorted with electronic reverb and pitched high with excitement.
Instead of dodging, he slammed his hands down onto the drum kit before him.
Thump, thump, DUANG!!! A visible wave of green sonic energy expanded outward with the mecha at its center, turning the air thick and stagnant within its blast.
The incoming bullets and melta beams seemed to plunge into thick resin, their speed dropping drastically until they crawled like snails.
Time itself seemed to slow down several-fold around Tooth-Plenty.
"Dat's it? Dat's all da dakka ya got?" Tooth-Plenty cackled. The chainsaw unicycle base issued a piercing screech, guiding the eight-meter-tall mecha smoothly through the gaps in the projectile trajectories.
Its metal treads ground across the floor, mincing a few evasive daemons straight into paste, splattering shredded flesh and snow everywhere.
In a matter of a few breaths, he had already closed in right before the first Helbrute.
"Showtime starts now!"
All six mechanical arms moved simultaneously.
The electric guitar bodies instantly disassembled and reconfigured, sharp edges snapping out to transform into a pair of dual-bladed weapons wrapped in green WAAAGH! energy; their serrated edges vibrated at high speeds, emitting a teeth-grinding hum.
The long neck of the electric bass flipped and extended, its axe blade unfolding to turn into a massive battleaxe taller than a man.
The two drumsticks popped out hardened bludgeoning headpieces, morphing into a pair of warhammers.
"CHIII-LA!!!"
The dual blades struck first, slicing into the Helbrute's mechanical leg; the serrations easily cut through armor and conduits, sending sparks flying in all directions.
Before the Helbrute could react, the battleaxe followed immediately behind, hacking violently into its main weapon joint and forcibly twisting the assault cannon's barrel out of shape.
Without waiting for the target to fall back, the twin warhammers slammed heavily onto the Helbrute's chest armor.
"BANG! BANG!" Following two dull thuds, the thick adamantium armor caved in directly, its internal conduits and bloodied tissue instantly churned into a messy pulp by the massive force.
The entire assault sequence flowed smoothly like a furious piece of heavy metal music, every strike landing precisely on the most lethal node.
The Helbrute let out an agonizing mechanical roar as the Chaos flesh within it writhed frantically, attempting to repair the damaged areas.
Yet Tooth-Plenty gave it no breathing room whatsoever; the unicycle base kicked into high gear, causing the entire mecha to spin at high speed on the spot.
The six weapons traced perfect arcs of death along with the spin.
Dual blades slicing, battleaxe hacking, twin hammers crushing...
A complete offensive cycle repeated continuously in the rotation; the sound of tearing metal, shattering flesh, and crunching bone intertwined, forming the wildness of accompaniments.
Another Helbrute charging over to assist had barely entered attack range when its flank armor was caught by the spinning axe blade.
It staggered back as a deep, bone-exposing slash tore open across its armor; crimson blood gushed frantically from the wound, only to sizzle and smoke under the sear of the green WAAAGH! energy.
In a matter of mere dozens of seconds, two Helbrutes that had once left the Imperial forces helpless were dismantled into scattered pieces.
Armor plating fragments, snapped conduits, and scorched flesh components splattered wildly to both sides like shredded prey.
When the spinning mecha finally came to a stop, both Helbrutes had collapsed to the ground, their core furnaces hacked to pieces.
The Chaos engines inside had shut down completely, leaving only sparse electrical sparks dancing across the wreckage.
Tooth-Plenty gave his six mechanical arms a shake, the weapons rapidly switching back to their musical instrument forms.
He strumed a guitar string, letting out a high-pitched chord, and declared triumphantly: "Dis little bit of dakka ain't even enough for me to warm up!"
At the edge of the plaza, seeing this scene unfold, the three remaining Chaos Knights couldn't help but halt their advance.
The pilots looked at the wreckage of the two Helbrutes, then at the Ork tide surging endlessly from afar, beginning to re-evaluate Tooth-Plenty's threat level.
Yet before they could make a decision, sharp air-rending screeches suddenly descended from the sky.
"THUD! THUD! THUD!"
Three heavy crashes slammed down onto the plaza back-to-back; rubble and dust shot skyward as the ground shuddered violently three times.
As the dust cleared, three massive mechas stood firmly opposite the Chaos Knights.
Standing over ten meters tall, their overall silhouettes retained the lopsided, wasteland-punk wildness of Ork Gargants.
Spikes, graffiti, exposed conduits, and cobbled-together armor plates were all present; while appearing crudely built, they oozed a fearless ferocity.
Yet unlike traditional Gargants, their bodies featured a large array of bio-mechanical components that didn't belong to greenskins.
Tyranid muscle fibers wrapped around their joints, providing explosive power far surpassing pure machinery.
Chitinous gland cannon barrels extended from both sides of their shoulder armor, their muzzles glowing with corrosive green light.
Most eye-catching of all was the pair of wide chitinous wings on their backs; with a wingspan of barely fifteen meters, the proportions were absurdly small for a ten-meter-tall heavy mecha, defying aerodynamics entirely.
Yet under the empowerment of the Orkish "I Think, Therefore I Am" field, this pair of seemingly impractically flashy wings managed to flap up wild gales, lifting a thousand-ton iron monster to descend from the skies.
Though they didn't fly particularly fast and their posture was lopsided, it was already an epic mobility upgrade.
Nid-Gargants...
Raynor mentally named these creations.
The wild crudeness of Orks combined with the bio-bizarre nature of Tyranids—two completely opposing creation styles merged together, as absurd as a nightmare spawned from Catachan hallucinogenic mushrooms.
The next second, the three Nid-Gargants moved.
Propelled by treads, they charged straight toward the Chaos Knights; their gland cannons opened fire first, slamming blobs of concentrated dark-green acid toward the enemy like artillery shells.
"Fire! Block them!" Luna ordered sharply as volcano cannons and plasma cannons roared simultaneously, their searing beams meeting the acid blobs and bursting into clouds of pungent vapor in mid-air.
Ion shields lit up around the Knights, firmly blocking the splattering acid.
Yet shield energy readings plummeted frantically as the corrosive energy gnawed continuously at the shield structure like maggots in bone.
"Damn it, what on earth are these things?!" the pilot cursed, controlling his Knight to swing its chainsword forward in response.
The three Nid-Gargants refused to back down either: some swung massive flails, others sprayed denser acid mists, and some even flapped their wings to take to the air briefly, slamming down toward the Knights' heads.
The metallic clashing was deafening.
The Chaos Knights' chainswords struck the Nid-Gargants' armor, easily tearing through the outer scrap iron, only to become stuck in the tough chitinous carapace beneath, unable to penetrate further.
Yet the Nid-Gargants' counterattacks were overwhelmingly fierce: massive power claws firmly clamped down on the Knights' mechanical arms while acid poured inward along the seams, corroding internal wiring and flesh.
Green bio-juices and metal scrap splattered across the battlefield; every impact was accompanied by harsh metallic tearing sounds.
Three against three, locking into a fierce deadlock.
The surrounding Ork boyz went wild watching it.
"WAAAGH! Dat's propper awesome!"
"Dis is a real fight! Dis is what we wanted!"
Howling excitedly, they threw themselves even more frantically at the breaking Chaos forces, hacking with choppas, slashing with axes, and spraying acid, putting down waves of retreating enemies.
The entire plaza sank into a fanatical battle atmosphere as the WAAAGH! field surged step by step, subtly boosting even the attack power of the Nid-Gargants.
While the ground battlefield burned hot, up in the high sky, the outcome had long been decided.
Attiya piloted his damaged Disc of Tzeentch, fleeing in disgrace through the cloud cover.
His robes were tattered, his helmet long missing to reveal the pale, twisted face underneath, black blood continuously oozing from the corner of his mouth.
The flames of the Crucible of Ten Thousand Souls had long extinguished, its sealed souls exhausted, and fine cracks had appeared across the crucible itself.
Behind him, that damned Frost Dragon pursued relentlessly.
Ice-blue breath and psychic attacks followed like shadows; every graze left frost behind on his disc.
Attiya exhausted all his psychic spells and evasive maneuvers, yet failed to shake off the terrifying beast behind him.
In his heart, he knew he had been wrong from the very start.
He had underestimated this "Frost Dragon's" psychic strength, and even more so its near-unsolvable psychic resistance.
Every psychic spell cast on it was like a stone dropping into the ocean, whereas every attack from the dragon left his soul trembling.
"Luna... Luna, where are you?!" Attiya roared frantically across the psychic network, yet received no reply whatsoever.
What he didn't know was that Luna was currently thrown by the explosion's shockwave, barely able to save herself and completely unable to mind him.
"It's over." A cold female voice rang in Attiya's mind, devoid of any emotion.
Sarah didn't bother engaging him any longer.
Purple light flared in the dragon's eyes as invisible mental force condensed into a single point, slamming hard into Attiya's soul core.
This time, there was no Crucible of Ten Thousand Souls to block it.
"AAAAAAAH!!!" Attiya let out a heart-wrenching scream, his brain feeling as if pierced through by red-hot iron rods.
The Disc of Tzeentch beneath him lost control instantly, shaking violently in mid-air before breaking apart with a loud CRACK.
Losing his flying platform, his body plunged toward the castle below like a severed kite.
Sarah flapped her wings and swooped down.
Her icy left claw condensed concentrated psychic energy, its tips gleaming with lethal purple light.
"RIP!" The talons easily tore open the power armor, shredding half of Attiya's body clean off.
Flesh and internal organs splattered in the sky, blood raining down.
Attiya didn't even have time to let out a final scream before his consciousness sank into endless darkness.
With the demise of this Thousand Sons sorcerer, the Chaos forces across the entire battlefield initiated a chain-reaction collapse.
Within Midtown, the twisted Warp realm began to fracture like glass, cracking inch by inch before dissipating.
Several daemons that had manifested out of thin air lost their energy source; their bodies turned transparent and ethereal, uttering shrieks of unwillingness.
Yet they remained powerless against the compression of realspace laws, dissolving bit by bit into ash.
Atop the profane spire, the STC spell fragment controlled by the Dark Mechanicum magus suffered instantaneous energy turbulence.
Rainbow-hued runes flickered wildly, glowing and dimming erratically as the energy output maintaining the profane barrier sputtered like a loose lightbulb.
The originally dense barrier thinned and dimmed at a rate visible to the naked eye, bound to vanish into thin air altogether.
The Imperial fleet in orbit unleashed their full firepower downward without hindrance, macrocannons and lance batteries bombing the surviving Chaos positions without restraint, reducing fortifications to powder.
Losing the restraint of their thrall-marks, the cultist thrall regiments instantly fell into chaos.
Some dropped their weapons to kneel in surrender, others fled frantically in all directions, and some simply turned their coats, raising blades against their former accomplices.
"Charge!! Wipe out the heretics!" Imperial commanders seized the moment, issuing the order for a general assault.
Soldiers shouted as they charged out from cover behind tanks and armored vehicles, launching an assault toward the final Chaos strongholds.
The Orks were even less willing to fall behind, howling and surging at the absolute front, competing to "harvest toys."
Caught in a two-front pincer, the total annihilation of the Chaos horde seemed to be a matter of moments.
No one noticed that Attiya's broken, half-shredded frame falling from high altitude did not turn to ash along with his departing soul like ordinary daemons and psyker entities.
His remaining half-face kept its eyes closed; the flesh around his wounds had stopped bleeding, instead giving off a sinister blue glow.
Sarah's swooping dragon silhouette paused slightly, her ice-blue pupils contracting.
She sensed something amiss.
Attiya's soul signature had indeed vanished—as if dragged forcibly from his body by some power, popping like a bubble and dissipating instantly.
By all logic, losing the support of its soul and psychic energy, this flesh body mutated by Chaos energy should have withered and collapsed right away.
Yet it didn't; instead, like a vessel, it was accumulating something far more terrifying.
Sarah did not hesitate, condensing richer purple psychic energy in her right claw, preparing to obliterate this broken remnant completely.
Yet right before her talons could descend—
Attiya's sole remaining left eye snapped open.
No sclera, no pupil.
The entire eyeball was filled with an extraordinarily dazzling, brilliant blue light.
A terrifying psychic pressure far exceeding Attiya's personal scale exploded outward from that half-body with a roar.
Like a sleeping deity finally opening its eyes.
Darkness completely enveloped the ruins of San Gallus Castle.
It was not the gradual dimming of dusk falling, nor the surging rainbow lights released by Warp rifts, but an absolute, total darkness.
Like a heavy obsidian dome, it slammed down straight from the firmament, devouring all light, swallowing the residual glows of artillery, the shrieks of daemons, and the screams of soldiers.
Even the smell of gunsmoke in the air receded rapidly, as if sucked away by something.
The sole light source was the exploded head atop Attiya's remnant frame.
Using skull as frame and marrow as core, it unfurled a dark blue vortex toward its surroundings.
The vortex's edges were sharp as blades and its center collapsed continuously, pulling all light, heat, and soul fragments within reach straight inside.
That was no fire, nor psychic radiance, but a forming black hole—a cold star fueled by the Warp and primed by despair.
Standing beside the shattered pillar, Raynor felt his limbs turn uncontrollably weak.
The stone flagstones on the ground vibrated as debris floated skyward, drifting like feathers toward that center of blue light.
He tried to stabilize his center of gravity, only to find even breathing difficult as the air in his lungs was drawn outward by an invisible force.
Along his nasal passages, throat, and pores, his soul was pulled toward that vortex.
Gritting his teeth, veins bulging on his forehead, he forcibly suppressed that pulling thread back into his body.
Beside him, Dobby and Tooth-Plenty froze simultaneously.
The Ogryns' massive frames leaned forward subtly against their control, as if dragged by their spines by invisible chains.
Tooth-Plenty's rock mecha issued a piercing screech from its unicycle chainsaw; though the Orkish and Tyranid physiologies allowed them to barely stand their ground, their movements grew visibly sluggish.
Farther across the battlefield, human soldiers were not so fortunate.
The vanguard troops who had been cheering for the counteroffensive just moments ago, the Battle Sisters charging with chainswords, the PDF veterans reloading behind cover...
Their movements froze at the exact same instant. Immediately after, a hair-raising scene unfolded.
Fine, pale-blue light threads seeped from the seven orifices of every person.
Those light threads flowed slowly from eye sockets, ear canals, nostrils, and mouths—slender as spider silk, yet bearing the warmth of living things.
Unaffected by gravity, they floated slowly upward like countless streams flowing in reverse, converging toward the blue light vortex in the sky.
The soldiers whose souls were drawn out trembled violently, their pupils dilating rapidly; some opened their mouths wide yet couldn't emit a single sound.
Others fell to their knees, clutching their temples tightly as their nails dug into flesh.
Still others rolled their eyes back, foaming at the mouth, their bodies twitching in unnatural postures like wrung-out rags.
One after another, row after row, hundreds and thousands of Imperial soldiers lost consciousness within seconds, like marionettes with severed strings.
Meanwhile, the drawn soul threads gathered into flowing streams, climbing upward against the darkness to pour into that blue vortex.
With every thread that merged, the vortex spun a fraction faster, the blue light shone a fraction brighter, and that invisible suction grew a fraction stronger.
In the sky, the Frost Dragon formed by Sarah had forcibly halted its dive the moment that psychic surge erupted.
Her wing membranes deployed urgently, rolling up wild headwinds that forcibly bounced her hundreds of meters back from Attiya's remnant frame.
Her ice-blue dragon eyes contracted violently, the cold Hive Mind will deep within her pupils suppressed to the absolute limit in an instant.
She felt it.
That was not Attiya at all.
That Thousand Sons sorcerer had died long ago; his soul had been completely devoured by something at the final moment of his fall.
His husk was merely a door, a pre-reserved channel, a vessel washed clean and awaiting its new master.
And what occupied this broken body right now was an existence far exceeding the level of mortal life.
That aura was cold and vast, stable unlike a living being, resembling instead a machine that had operated for billions of years—precise, indifferent, completely devoid of ripples.
Sarah hovered in mid-air a hundred meters away, her wings trembling subtly, fine purple light flashing across the surface of her teal scales.
She forcibly summoned all psychic nodes in her body, casting the Hive Shadow defense barrier over her entire form to barely resist the suction's pull on her soul.
Her gaze crossed that churning vortex of blue light, staring dead at the transformation of the remnant body.
The cracks on Attiya's remaining skull expanded outward with that point of blue light as its core, spreading across the entire skull surface.
Immediately after, the skull collapsed inward as bone, flesh, and armor fragments were compressed in an instant into a fist-sized core of light; the vortex snapped inward, then exploded.
A silent explosion.
A ring of shockwaves expanded outward with the light point at its center; wherever it swept, space was flattened as if ironed out.
The shockwave swept across the ruins, across the defeated remnants on the plaza, across the castle's broken spires—noiseless, yet carrying an irresistible, arcane power.
When the shockwave swept through the darkness, the dark curtain obscuring the firmament shattered abruptly.
Not peeling away bit by bit, but collapsing with a crash like an entire dome of shattered glass.
Countless black fragments flew in all directions, burning, dissolving, and turning into wisps of green smoke in mid-air.
Sky light reappeared, yet that light was not the radiance of a star, nor the color of an atmosphere.
It was a deep, eerie blue—profound as dark currents at the bottom of the deep ocean, cold as ice sheets frozen for billions of years.
The sky above the High City was being dismantled and pieced back together into a different realm of space.
Raynor looked up, his pupils contracting violently.
The skyline once filled with castles, streets, and hive spires was rapidly twisting and blurring, like ink washed away on a canvas.
Replacing it was a vast, boundless void, dotted with the faint outlines of distant nebulae and countless statically floating asteroid fragments.
The ground beneath their feet was changing as well.
The foundation of San Gallus Castle issued a dull snapping sound as the entire structure, along with hundreds of meters of surrounding ground, was uprooted—like a giant tree pulled out by its roots, floating in the void.
Shattered stone bricks, broken pillars, and overturned statues all maintained the postures they had when severed, floating around the castle ruins to form an island of broken land.
Inside the bridge command center of the Gemstone, everyone's eyes were fixed on the primary display showing the image above the planet—currently splitting, reassembling, and redefining itself.
"Your Highness, the spatial coordinates of the San Gallus Castle sector are undergoing extreme displacement!" the radar officer's voice cracked. "The entire area... has been peeled away from Brevis's surface by some Warp field!"
Dominic pressed down hard on the command console, his red hair jumping like fire under the flashing alarm lights: "Can you lock onto its location?!"
"Unable to lock on! No such coordinates exist in the star maps! It... it's been dragged into an intercalary layer on the edge of the Warp!"
Everyone froze.
That was no Warp rift, nor a conventional method of daemon invasion; the entire battlefield had been forcibly "cut and pasted" into another layer of reality.
As if a god had casually picked up a puzzle piece from the table and placed it onto another chessboard.
...
On the edge of the Warp, between the intercalary layers, sat a desolate, silent graveyard.
Attiya's remnant frame—or rather... the Avatar of Tzeentch—moved with unhurried composure.
Its psychic energy formed the right half of its body, blue light condensing into fluid lines that outlined sharp, angular limb contours.
Behind its shoulder, countless slender psychic tentacles extended outward, intertwining, weaving, and ultimately condensing into an extraordinarily massive single wing.
The wing membrane was covered in dense arrays of eyeballs, every single eye blinking at different frequencies as their gazes swept in all directions.
Floating at the center of the void, its remaining right arm raised slowly, five fingers curling into a loose fist in mid-air.
That movement was very slow, yet it carried an irresistible pressure, as if the universe itself moved alongside its fingers.
"Witness, my godhood!"