The wind carried the scent of war—blood, oil, fire, and the stink of ruptured earth. They came before the first artillery shell fell. A catastrophic miscalculation. The enemy had arrived before Imperial reinforcements could even be sighted. Before the bridge was painted with blood. Before the Imperials even had time to catch a breath.
And the first wall of wreckage, imperials' first defence for the bridge broke.
First came the Brass Scorpions—red infernal daemon engines, brass-lined exoskeletons segmented like the arachnid they were named for. They skittered forward with sickening unnatural grace, hydraulic pincers snapping, whirring metallic teeth spinning, their tail-mounted cannons tracking in a full 360-degree arc before unleashing torrents of ballistic death.
Their maws split open, disgorging warpfire, sheets of warp fire licking across trenches, men dissolving into screaming pillars of charred bone.
Their clawed legs sliced through tank traps, crushing razor wire as if it were no more than loose thread, flamers sweeping in sheets to burn out dug-in defenders.
And deep within each daemon engine, sinew-wrapped cables held still-living prisoners from the hives, their flesh burned away by the machine's torment, feeding its murderous momentum.
They hit the Imperial first defensive line like a storm front, sweeping aside fortifications, trenches, and walls in minutes.
Then came the mutants — the Beastmen of the Tuskgor's Tribe.
Ten thousand strong—mutated abhumans, horns lowered, muscles bulging, war cries drowned by the roar of artillery. Some had goat-like skulls, others the twisted maws of bulls, bodies dense with sinew, flak armor draped over them like crude scavenged skins. Lasgun fire ripped into them, hundreds burning alive in seconds. But they did not stop.
They clambered over the corpses of their own, cleavers and crude axes raised, hooves stomping through shattered bones. The first Imperial trench turned into a meat pit, bayonets met gnashing fangs, and the line buckled.
Then came the Clysm Warband of Berserkers. These Chaos Marines however were not the vanguard of this operation—their war machines were.
Their Hellbrutes came first.
Towering, cube-bodied monsters of screaming flesh and corrupted iron, their Astartes pilots fused into an eternity of torment, driven by pain and rage. They lurched forward, their multi-melta guns firing, turning bunkers into molten slag, their heavy bolters chattering, power fists smashing tanks like tin toys.
The first trench line fell in moments.
And over them, bounding forward with monstrous hunger, came the Blood Slaughterers. Larger than Hellbrutes, they howled their daemon-hunger as they leapt forward, tick-like, spindly-legged horrors, razor-clawed limbs carving through guardsmen like wheat.
The second line raised their lasguns.
The second line died screaming.
The Blood Slaughterers cleared the barricades in a single leap, their immense scything forelimbs hacking apart entire squads before they even had time to react.
And behind them came the Doom Blaster.
A super-heavy Daemon Engine, its four massive mortars spitting death in high arcs, lobbing shrapnel-packed shells in a thunderous carpet of annihilation.
The first barrage landed.
Three Chimeras disappeared in a single explosion, leaving charred skeletons fused into molten steel.
The second barrageturned an entire trenchline into liquified gore—fifty men crushed under its treads, another hundred immolated in its flame-spewing hull.
Imperial Basilisks roared their counter-fire, but the Chaos artillery was already among them.
A Lord of Skulls—titan-sized, a walking behemoth of war—broke into their formation, its giant cleave whirling, carving through artillery crews like wheat before the scythe.
The Imperial front line shattered in minutes. The steel curtain of Imperial firepower faltered.
And suddenly—it was a melee.
Guardsmen were ripped apart by axes, horned beastmen threw them screaming into the air.
The Heretic Astartes cut a path through the shattered lines, Bolters barking, chain-weapons sawing through bodies.
At their head came Valkor the Clysm—the infamous, a Chaos Lord encased in a Contemptor Dreadnought, a machine revered even among the traitor legions for granting power of a chaos dreadnought without the tortured madness a Hellbrute. It was more humanoid shaped and more agile than almost every pattern of Dreadnought in the galaxy.
And his Axe of Blind Fury was a monster in its own right—a Khornate Greater Daemon-bound to a relic axe, its furious essence raging against eternity of imprisonment, ripping apart tank crews before devouring their very souls.
With this axe Valkor tore a Leman Russ in half in one casual swing, the massive chain fist of his other hand crushing another into scrap, his inbuilt wrist-mounted twin-linked bolters gunning down fleeing survivors.
And still all they did was make way for—the Lord of Skulls.
The ground shook beneath its treads—a war-beast as large as a Titan Combat Walker, a monstrous hybrid of machine and daemon, its hulking brass form a temple to slaughter with lower body of a super heavy tank and upper body of a Beserker.
Its Gorestorm Cannon belched boiling, pressurized blood, not simply molten, but alive with the rage, a carnivorous flood that dissolved armor, flesh, and bone in seconds.
A regiment of Guardsmen turned to pulp, melting where they stood, their screams lost beneath the relentless grinding of its treads.
Mounted on its other arm, a gigantic cleaver, its adamantium teeth the size of men, swung in broad, annihilating arcs. It sheared through bunkers, tanks, and entire platoons as though they were paper.
Its torso-mounted chest guns—twin-linked Hellstorm Cannons—roared, spewing rapid volleys of plasma-hot fire, melting through Basilisks before they could reload.
A Baneblade fired upon it, its rocket-assisted shells punching through Blood Reapers, sending chaos tanks spiraling into ruin.
But the Lord of Skulls did not slow.
The first Baneblade shell slammed into its hull, melting brass, exposing writhing daemonflesh beneath.
The second shell never landed.
The Lord of Skulls surged forward, treads grinding over the dead, its chainaxe cleaving through the tank's armored prow, ripping into its cockpit, gutting the crew within before tossing their sundered bodies aside like broken dolls.
Another Baneblade salvo thundered.
It simply walked through the blast, fire licking across its hull, daemon engines howling with unholy glee.
Then it answered.
Its Gorestorm Cannon vomited another tide of searing blood, coating the Imperial super-heavy in a wave of burning crimson, melting steel, fusing treads, turning the tank into a smoldering tomb.
As the Imperial lines collapsed, the Lord of Skulls strode over them, reaping slaughter in the name of Khorne.
A Baneblade charged, its rocket-assisted shells slamming into Blood Reapers, but even as it fired, Berserkers swarmed it, hacking at its armor with chainblades and power axes.
The Imperial guns roared. And still—they died by the thousands.
The trenches became rivers of blood, filled with shattered bodies and broken armor.
And the Chaos horde was breaking through.
Inside the mindscape the war table trembled. Miniatures scraped against the stone surface as the battlefield shifted, updated in real-time by Sefirot's calculations. In the dim glow of the tent, the Doom Slayer watched, silent, unmoving. His gauntleted fingers rested lightly on the edge of the board, the war unfolding at a scale he could control.
Across the surface, the horde of Khorne surged forward—pieces marked as daemon engines and warbands moved in calculated patterns. This was no mindless charge, no simple berserker wave. It was a calibrated war doctrine, one optimized for maximum destruction with no regard for retreat.
They were employing a blitzkrieg variant—not a reckless charge, but a calculated, overwhelming shock assault. The Brass Scorpions and Blood Slaughterers formed the spearhead, using their speed and lethality to shatter Imperial cohesion before the bulk of the force arrived. The Beastmen hordes followed in their wake, exploiting breaches to keep the defenders engaged in melee, denying them firing lines. Then came the Clysm Warband, their Hellbrutes and Chaos Marines reinforcing the initial breakthrough, ensuring that what fell would stay fallen.
And behind them loomed the true monsters—the Doom Blaster, hammering the trenches with indirect fire, and the Lord of Skulls, advancing like a relentless executioner, its Gorestorm Cannon already preparing to vomit forth annihilation.
It was a system of war—a self-feeding cycle of slaughter. The Imperials had prepared for a retreat-based trap, but the Khornate doctrine did not care for retreat.
The wolves' battle plan was already failing.
A Space Wolves piece was torn from the board—a frontline squad, overrun. Another, a Steel Legion trench, was simply pushed aside. No time to fall back, no time to regroup. The Crimson Spear was driving forward too fast.
Slayer HUD flickered with information and specs of all Imperial machinery present in the battle, his fingers tapped once. A counter-strategy was already in place. He moved pieces of the Imperial guards.
The battlefield reacted.
Across the Imperial vox-network, the world shuddered as command echoed.
["All units, fall back to secondary defensive lines. Fighting withdrawal. Do not let the line break—retreat in order. Maintain cohesion."]
"Yes, pull back to second line. Execute predetermined demolitions," said voices of guard captain in agreement.
Commissar Haldrek of the Armageddon Steel Legion whipped around, eyes wide. "What? I gave no such—"
He heard his own voice passing commands through vox but he hadn't said anything.
The dying steel Legion squads, on the brink of death and disarray, heard the command across every channel. And they obeyed without hesitation. They did not scatter. They did not break. They fell back—but in a structured, disciplined retreat only made possible by barrage of orders which accounted for all minute details.
This retreating moved had cost the enemy thousands of melee charging beastmen under lasgun fire.
The guardsmen prayed to God Emperor for such orders when they were in trenches inches away from horrifying deaths. Now every squad covering the next, every tank reversing in coordinated formation. Leman Russ battle cannons fired as they withdrew, demolitions were triggered behind them, trenches were abandoned only after they were rendered unusable to the enemy.
"Affirmative, Commissar. Charges primed. Detonating."
And then the bridge erupted.
A calculated series of pre-set demolitions went off in perfect sequence—not collapsing the entire bridge, but targeting specific sections. Load-bearing supports crumbled, the ground buckled beneath daemon engines at just the wrong moment. Two Brass Scorpions were pushed aside by exploding wreckage of tanks, falling structure, one plunged screaming into the toxic river below, its infernal engines burning out before it could even claw their way free.
The first line of trenches—already lost—vanished in fire. Controlled detonations gutted the Chaos spearhead, throwing beastmen and berserkers skyward in arcs of burning flesh.
Haldrek's mouth worked soundlessly in the vox.
"Who gave that order!? I TOLD YOU ALL TO HOLD THE LINES!"
No one answered first. Then he found that his vox communications was stuck in mute.
Sefirot continued to issue perfect replications of officers' voices, weaving the Imperial counteroffensive through command channels as though it had always been the plan.
A pack of Blood Slaughterers, mid-leap, were caught in midair by a second detonation. Their trajectory slightly adjusted by the blast—not enough to kill them, but enough to send them crashing headfirst into waiting Steel Legion Leman Russ squadrons.
Battle cannons roared.
Multi-meltas screamed.
The Blood Slaughterers died before they could rise.
On the war table, the Slayer reached out, plucking the daemon engines from the battlefield. He flicked them aside. They were no longer part of the game.
Outside the mind in reality, Lord of Skulls, titanic, brass-clad war beast—this living altar to Khorne—recognized the shift in the tides of battle. It did not slow. It did not hesitate. It advanced. Its Gorestorm Cannon belched molten blood across Imperial ranks, dissolving entire platoons into screaming viscera. It dared the Imperials to stand against it.
The Slayer made his move on the table. Moving baneblade units.
["Baneblade units—staggered formation. Do not engage directly. From the distance. Pull it toward the center. Other tank units cover for the Bladeblade formation. Charge. Fire. Then quickly retreat in reverse."]
Across the battlefield, tank commanders received the orders. Not one of them had issued it. Not one of them questioned it.
Doom Slayer kept moving tank unit pieces. Sefirot kept issuing orders to match it.
The other tank units of Leman Russ, Chimeras and Basilisks blasted and crushed the horde enemies before a quick retreat.
Then the Baneblades opened fire, their rocket-assisted shells not aimed to destroy—but to control. Shots struck at its flanks, forcing the infernal machine to adjust. Forcing it toward the center of the battlefield, where the bridge's remaining structures still stood. And at the perfect moment—when the daemon engine slowed, when its path was predictable—the Shadowsword Baneblade fired.
The Volcano Cannon on it screamed. A single, impossibly bright beam of energy carved through the battlefield like a spear of the gods. This variant designed of Baneblade was summonded earlier when reports of Warhound Titans were first made but Doom Slayer's intervention and it's own late arrival had delayed it's use—to until now.
Here it struck true to its reputation as an Anti-Titan weapon.
A direct hit to the Lord of Skulls' gorestorm cannon arm. Infernal brass ruptured. Daemonic flesh seared away, the howl of an entity from beyond reality filling the air, shrieking its defiance as it struggled to hold its form in the material realm.
The Gorestorm Cannon arm was torn apart—molten brass and ruined daemon-meat spilling onto the ground. The monster staggered, its charge momentarily broken, its fury howling across the battlefield like a wounded god. But it did not die.
Taking advantage of the stunned Lord of Skulls, Doom Slayer moved another piece. A Space Wolves token, previously held back, now lunged forward—a counter-thrust against overextended enemies.
"Quickly all wolves near enemy lines—charge. Cut their flanks to pieces. Hide your movements in smoke, fire and wreckage. Jam those daemon machines with meltas, quickly, then take cover and quickly retreat with tails of bolter fire! NOW!"
It was Gorrulf's voice issuing the command. But Gorrulf himself, hunkered behind defending lines, had given no such order. His eyes narrowed beneath his helm. "The fuck—?"
The Wolves moved anyway.
From the wreckage of war, they leapt—Grey Hunters, Long Fangs and Blood Claws rushing into the fray, chain weapons revving and thunder hammers rising, bolters barking. They struck not the entrenched front, but the flanks, where daemon engines were bogged down, their advance stalled by walls of fallen wreckage. Some brass scorpions shrieked as melta charges found their underbellies. Blood Slaughterers, caught mid-leap, were torn from the air by skyward bolt fire.
Chaos staggered—not broken, not defeated—but stalled. The Crimson Spear, meant to punch through in a single overwhelming rush, had slowed.
Slayer tapped two fingers. Another move.
A Baneblade piecerolled forward, its cannon leveling toward the miniature Lord of Skulls.
Sefirot, beside him, observed.
[You have altered the flow of this battle, Slayer.]
Slayer's fingers halted over the war table. Not yet. The fight wasn't over.
The Chaos Lord and his Hellbrutes had yet to make their final move. They were far from it. And the Lord of Skulls was still standing.
The Baneblades thundered, rocket-assisted shells slamming into the Lord of Skulls. Armor shattered—brass plates peeled away, exposing writhing daemonflesh beneath. And yet—the monster did not fall. And Kept hacking away at tanks with its massive cleaver. Further assisted by the Doom Blaster.
A new roar echoed across the battlefield.
Valkor the Clysm stepped forward—his Contemptor Dreadnought frame a towering beast, its war-torn silhouette drenched in blood. The Hellbrutes surged beside him, multi-meltas heating, chainfists spinning.
"You think yourselves defenders. You think this wall of flesh and steel will halt me. That these trenches, these tanks, these trembling hands on lasguns will be enough. You are wrong. I will rip the heart from your line. I will carve through your ranks like a cleaver through bone. I will break your steel, shatter your courage, and drown this bridge in your entrails. Your mighty war machines? I will make ruins of them. Your champions? I will grind their skulls beneath my heel. Your cowards who flee? I will hunt them down and make examples of them. There is no strategy that will save you. No hero that will stop me. No corpse emperor that will hear you. Only war. Only blood. Only death. I am its herald. Here to rip and tear."
They had not yet been fully committed to the spearhead. They had been waiting. Now, with the first derailment of the spearhead, they moved. Behind them more of the Khornate horde poured into the bridge.
Several kilometers of rust-slick steel stretched into the toxin-choked horizon, its cracked plates now blackened by char and strewn with the corpses of the fallen—both man and monster. Smoke spiraled from the wrecks of the annihilated vanguard: crumpled Brass Scorpions, mutilated Beastmen, the shattered shells of Blood Slaughterers. The initial spearhead was gone.
The bridge howled.
It was not the wind. Not the screams of the dying. It was the resonance of a thousand tons of steel and daemon-forged flesh grinding forward, step by inexorable step. The river below churned black with spilled machine-oil and corpse sludge, while the sky above hung heavy with the weight of their God of War's gaze.
He, Valkor the Clysm, did not halt.
The Dreadnought Chaos Lord stood atop a mound of slag and skulls, Axe of Blind Fury raised high, his bronze warplate soaked in ash and arterial spray. Where others would see a setback, he saw raw potential. His vox crackled—then howled—as he bellowed a single order across the blood-drenched column:
"FORM THE SERATED WEDGE!"
The order rippled outward, echoing in daemonic tongues through vox relays and warp-etched helms.
The reorganization was instant and violent. From the haze emerged the Lord of Skulls—wounded, limping, but titanic still, its cleaver twitching with fury. Its cannon arm had been blown to molten slag, severed at the joint by concentrated Imperial fire, yet it lumbered forward undeterred—an iron god with a meat-hook grin and furnace eyes. In place of firepower, it now only wielded its great cleaver, a grotesque slab of rusted steel the size of a Land Raider, etched with battle-scars and daemonic script. Black ichor dripped from the blade's teeth as it started spearheading assault and slaughtering tanks.
Behind it hissed the Doom Blaster, a daemon-engine of infernal artillery. Its chassis resembled a living altar—organic brass plates writhing with embedded skulls, bound in chains of screaming warp energy. Triple-barreled cannons jutted from its armored spine, belching out barrages that vaporized barricades and punched smoking holes in the fallback positions. It pulsed like a beating heart, each throb synchronized with the rhythm of distant detonations.
The blast struck into the tight Imperial ranks ahead—conscripts and veteran alike—instantly reducing Guardsmen to wet shadows splattered across the decking. Their screams were lost beneath the thunder of corrupted engines.
On the left flank rolled the Blood Reapers—towering daemon engines shaped like artillery-wrought centaurs. Their lower halves were all grinding treads and clawed limbs; their upper bodies bore massive pivoting guns fused into clawed arms. These were precision murderers: capable of planting a round through the eye slit of a Leman Russ at two klicks, and then charging into melee to rip the hull in half with talon-mounted saws. Warpflame bled from their muzzle vents as they acquired new targets.
From these muzzles they unleashed pinpoint beams of molten hate, punching straight through Chimera hulls and into the soft meat inside. One Leman Russ turned its cannon to fire—and was answered by twin plasma bursts that turned it into a fire-wreathed coffin. Screaming crewmen clawed at the hatches as they boiled inside.
To the right surged the Death Dealers, bestial walkers shaped like a hybrid of predator and gallows. Every surface was jagged, every edge a weapon. Great chain-blades hung from their arms, and within their torsos pulsed caged daemons, howling through barred vents. These were not tanks. They were executioners—built for the collapse of formations and the butchery of command ranks. They screamed as they moved, engines roaring in unholy harmony with the bloodthirst in the air.
They slammed into a line of Guardsmen like a tidal wave of butcher's steel. Dozens were crushed beneath hooves and cleaved in half before they could even raise their lasguns. One Death Dealer impaled a sergeant on its halberd and flung him into the air—catching the falling corpse in its maw and crunching down, blood spraying in a wide arc.
Surrounding them came the Hellbrutes, draped in sigils of ruin and wrapped in crimson chains, howling in their corrupted machine-tongue. Engines shrieked as if alive and in pain, their sarcophagi warped from within, twitching with daemonic malice. Each step cracked deck plating beneath their claws, and each bellow was half vox-distorted madness, half rage-psalm to Khorne. They tore into the Guard lines with gory ecstasy.
Lasguns snapped and whined across their plated hides, but the beams boiled harmlessly off their armor like summer rain on iron. Autocannon rounds sparked against their limbs. One Hellbrute, limbs splayed like a grotesque insect, was struck point-blank by a Basilisk shell—it reeled, staggered... and then screamed in triumph, hurling itself into the gun pit and crushing men and metal beneath its claws and fists.
Behind them, the Bezerkers of the Clysm Warband gathered, forming into clots of jagged armor, daemon masks, and roaring chain weapons. Reserves were held, ready to be hurled into the breach once the wedge carved its path. Ripping and Tearing through men and women all the same.
And at the forefront stood Valkor, eyes fixed ahead, lightning crackling from his axe as he raised it to the ashen sky.
"Forward," he roared, "into the jaws of their death!"
The wedge advanced—the Lord of Skulls leading like a berserker demigod, carving through bunkers and armor with sweeps that flattened platoons. Unstoppable and Unrelenting.
Doom Blaster's cannons laid down suppressive curtains of fire, forcing the defenders to stay buried. Blood Reapers fired in perfect cadence, melting through Imperial tanks as they tried to reform a line. Death Dealers crashed through infantry clusters, chain-blades swinging, severing limbs and leaving only ruined silhouettes where formations once stood.
The guardsman tried to retreat, tried to rally, but there was no space, no air—only the grinding of iron and the roar of war. The wedge drove deeper and deeper, faster now, as the bridge became a killing field—a narrow gauntlet filled with fire, death, and warp-fueled fury. There was no subtlety or grace. Just relentless, serrated advance.
Many guardsmen fled, but there was nowhere to run—only the churning toxic river below. Some leapt rather than face the Khornate tide, their bodies breaking against the rusted supports far below. Vox-operators screamed for reinforcement, only to have their throats slit a moment later by shrieking members of the Clysm Warband vaulting over wreckage, chainblades chewing through flak armor like parchment.
Behind the wedge, the reserves stirred—the rest of the Clysm Warband sharpening blades, priming engines, preparing for the moment to plunge into whatever gap the spearhead would rip open. Daemon-seers whispered updates to Valkor in vox, their third eyes alight with warpfire. Every heartbeat was a calculation. Every second, a sacrifice. This was no longer an assault. It was an offering. And the War God Khorne was hungry.
Blood pooled ankle-deep in the gutters of the bridge. A platoon tried to make a stand near a broken tank, forming a firing line—only to be annihilated as the Doom Blaster belched another gout of warp-plasma into their midst. The survivors staggered, blinded and burning, and were cut down by advancing Death Dealers, their chain-halberds gumming up with meat and bone.
Amidst the cacophony of battle and the flickering static of garbled vox orders, a section of Guardsmen—young, exhausted, and wide-eyed—misread the distorted signals as a stand-down command. Their rifles lowered, lasguns dipped toward the ferrocrete, trembling hands unclenching around scorched grips. For a heartbeat, silence claimed the trench. Then it came. The wet thunder of chainblades revving to full scream. From the smoke surged the Blood Reapers, their hulking forms wreathed in gore and engine-spittle, charging into the lull with savage precision. Limbs were torn from sockets, torsos caved in with spiked fists, helmets split like ripe fruit beneath cleavers of blackened iron. The line buckled not from strength, but from hesitation—a single moment of doubt paid in blood and screams.
The "Serrated Wedge" formation pushed forward, forcing the defenders into ever-tighter kill zones. Imperial screams echoed down the length of the bridge, rising like incense to the gods of war. Gaps in the line were instantly filled by reserve Clysm berserkers, howling prayers to Khorne as they plunged their chainaxes into retreating backs.
The bridge belonged to the slaughter now. And Valkor's warpath had only just begun—his voice now echoing across the bridge in a deafening vox-borne tirade
"LISTEN TO ME, SLAVES OF THE FALSE THRONE.
YOU DIE IN DROVES, BLED LIKE ANIMALS, FOR A MASTER WHO DOES NOT KNOW YOUR NAMES.
THIS BRIDGE—THIS SLAUGHTER—IT IS NOT YOUR FATE. IT IS YOUR PRISON.
WHY DO YOU FIGHT THIS HOPELESS BATTLE?
WHY DO YOU BLEED FOR LIES, FOR CHAINS, FOR CANNON FODDER STRATEGIES THAT SPIT YOU INTO THE MAW OF MY WAR MACHINE?
NOTHING YOU WIN IS TRULY YOURS, BUREAUCRATS!
YOUR SPOILS OF WAR ARE CLAIMED BY
WEAKER BODIED MEN YOU ARE MEANT TO FEAR BECAUSE YOUR SLAVERS TOLD YOU SO!
LOOK TO YOUR FALLEN—BURNT, CRUSHED, TORN ASUNDER—AND ASK YOURSELF: WHAT HONOR DID THEY GAIN?
WHAT MEMORY WILL THEY LEAVE?
THEIR BONES WILL BE DUST. THEIR NAMES, FORGOTTEN.
ONLY THE BLOOD REMAINS.
AND BLOOD—IS POWER.
BLOOD—IS PURPOSE.
THE REGIMENTS THAT ONCE STOOD HERE, ARMAGEDDON-BORN, THEY SAW THE LIE.
THEY CAST DOWN THEIR EAGLES, TOOK UP THE AXE, AND FOUND GLORY.
THEY MARCH NOW WITH KHORNE IN THE CONQUERED HIVES,
IT'S THEIR HIVE NOW,
THEY WON IT WITH FIRE AND BLOOD
IMMORTAL IN IRON, REFORGED IN FLAME.
YOU—GUARDSMAN—YOU WHO TREMBLES BEHIND A LASGUN,
TELL ME: WHAT IS YOUR COMMISSAR TO YOU?
A LEADER?
NO. HE IS A TYRANT.
A COWARD. HIDING BEHIND YOUR SACRIFICE.
HIS POWER OVER YOU IS A LIE. A WHISPER. A TRICK.
IT EXISTS ONLY BECAUSE YOU LET IT.
ONE LASGUN SHOT TO HIS FACE, AND THE SPELL BREAKS.
ONE TRIGGER PULL, AND YOU ARE FREE.
FIND THAT FIRE.
FIND THAT RAGE.
FIRE THAT SHOT. KILL YOUR SLAVER.
AND JOIN THE LEGIONS OF BLOOD.
JOIN THE GREAT WAR MACHINE OF KHORNE.
AND LET YOUR NAME BE CARVED INTO THE BRIDGE IN THE SCREAMING FONT OF FLESH."
Some guardsman half tired and mad began considering the words, but then suddenly a new voice then spoke up—stern, clipped, bearing the exact inflection of Commissar Haldrek. It cuts cleanly through Valkor's guttural roars like a scalpel. But something was wrong. There's a strange calmness. A sorrow. An unnatural control.
"You think these beasts offer you freedom?"
Commissar's voice spoke and the guardsmen listened.
"You think this is rebellion? No—this is the final deception. These monsters speak of liberty while their claws are still wet with the blood of your kin. They burned our cities. They shattered your homes. They dragged your comrades screaming into the smoke. And now, as your backs are against the wall, they whisper sweet nothings!"
The vox continued speaking.
"They are the slavers. They are the chains. There is no liberation in their creed—only blood. Only war. The 'freedom' they offer is a lie, gilded in corpse-metal. These are the ones who took your choices away. It was not the Imperium that brought war to this bridge—it was them. Their war engines. Their madness. Their hunger."
Then it issued commands.
"I will not ask you to die for all these lies. I will ask you to live. Brothers. Sisters. Withdraw. This is no cowardice. This is survival. We fight not for the lie—they've already tainted it. We fight for each other now. Pull back. Regroup. Live through this fire, and remember what they took from you. Don't give them anything else."
Inside the command Chimera, the real Commissar Haldrek was frozen, staring at the vox console as it hissed and pulsed with the sound of his own voice. His orders were locked out. His override codes were dead. He slammed his fist against the control panel so hard the metal cracked.
"Who's broadcasting that!?" he shouted, his voice a rasp of disbelief. "Get it off the net! Shut it down!"
No one moved. The vox-techs stood in paralyzed silence, eyes wide, fingers twitching above dead keys. The augur screens were filled with shifting warp runes, flickering sigils dancing in static. A voice from the warp had stolen their command.
"Those aren't my words!" he snarled.
The war table in the mindscape buckled under pressure—miniatures dragging like wounded things across its stone surface. Doom Slayer's hand hovered over the representative of the bridge, gauntlet fingers twitching with calculation. Khornate and Imperial units scraped violently across the battlefield like tectonic plates colliding. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. Sefirot stood at his side, eyes white with data feed, his machine-mind singing through the vox-net.
["Retreat. Channel them to the zone One."]
The bridge itself shook under the weight of war.
Burning tank husks and the mangled frames of Chimeras were deliberately arrayed across the steel span, forming kill funnels—every 500 meters a new makeshift chokepoint. Flame-choked, ruin-lit trenches blinked with green lenses and lasgun muzzles.
From above, Valkor the Clysm marched through the fire like a blood-soaked prophet. His Contemptor Dreadnought frame hissed with hydraulic power, axe-hand twitching as he advanced through the smoke. Hellbrutes trailed behind him, chainfists spinning, torsos howling as ripped through slow tanks and wreckage.
Across the vox, his voice boomed—a machine-distorted blasphemy tearing through the Guard's frequencies:
"WHY DO YOU DENY FREEDOM, IMPERIALS? WHY DO YOU NOT JOIN THE STRENGTH BORNE HIERARCHY? WHY DO YOU FIGHT AND LIE FOR MEN LESSER THAN YOU? CLAIM THE WORLD WITH YOUR OWN POWER AND MARTIAL EXCELLENCE—THAT IS KHORNE'S LAW. THAT IS TRUE FREEDOM."
The guardsmen flinched, knees shaking—some turning to look at the pale figure of fellow Steel Legionaries.
["Pull back. Regimented fall-back. Zone One kill-box now live. This is Haldrek—Fall back. Do not die for the Emperor today. Live. Regroup. Kill them later."]
Commissar's voice—but not his words.
Sefirot's lips never moved, but Haldrek's voice boomed from every vox bead in the trench. The Commissar's eyes widened, horror blooming behind his spectacles as his own orders poured forth without his consent.
The Steel Legion obeyed. Their Chimeras reversed, squads vaulting from their hulls to seed the next chokepoint with mines and melta-traps, then falling back.
Death Dealers charged through the smoke, leaping like nightmare beasts—only to vanish beneath precisely placed demolitions. Flesh, ceramite and chain-halberds rained in gory chunks. Behind them, Blood Reapers stepped coldly into the kill-box, their dual-handed chain glaives slicing tanks in half.
But they had overstepped.
A single command echoed from the bridge edge:
["Cut the charges. Zone One fallback—now!"]
The bridge erupted.
Steel tore. Screaming beastmen flailed as structural ribs collapsed beneath them, taking the first 4 daemon engines with it. A Doom Blaster slipped sideways into a cratered trench—its furnace-heart flashing once before vanishing beneath rubble.
Atop the war table, Doom Slayer moved one massive piece forward—a tank token. Behind it more yet unused tank units moved.
["Now. Counteroffensive lane open. All armored reserves—engage. 1 km range. Reverse gear retreat immediately after firing."]
Hellhounds tanks emerged from smoke like stalking beasts—promethium spraying. The Death Dealers howled as they burned, their armor igniting in molten swathes. Behind them, Leman Russ Vanquishers lined up Blood Reapers with rail-guided precision.
Every shot counted.
One. Two. Three.
Every shell turned another Reaper into pulp and shrapnel.
The kill funnels did more than bleed the charge—they shaped it. Each tank husk, collapsed support beam, and burning wreck was placed, not fallen. Chaos' feral wedge had been goaded into a precise pattern—narrow in the center, swollen at the flanks—forcing the Death Dealers and Blood Reapers into terrain traps disguised as opportunity.
The Doom Slayer with Sefirot had arranged all through wartable and vox control the moment the Chaos Lord started arranging his formation.
Left flank kill box: double-layered minefield disguised beneath still-burning promethium slicks—caused the first wave of Death Dealers to erupt mid-lunge, their scorched torsos pinwheeling through the air.
Center lane; arranged tank carcasses forced the Reapers to single file, their glaives scraping against rubble as they advanced into lasgun crossfire from half-moon bunkers above and below the bridge spine.
Right side funnel; a corridor of broken Leman Russ hulks deliberately left uncollapsed—just wide enough for daemon engines to advance—then sealed with plasma-cut debris, trapping two Hellbrutes in a steel choke, where melta teams torched them alive.
But then—the Lord of Skulls finally stepped forward. Brass shrieking. Cleaver raised. It was not a war beast now—it was a siege breaker.
["Rotate fire. All rear-held anti-tank units—fire in 5-second pattern rotation. Simulate different officers. Confuse enemy tracking."]
Melta teams hidden behind tank husks began a coordinated barrage—not random, but sequenced. Meltas fired, moved, rotated. Missiles screamed from half-demolished bunkers. The Lord of Skulls reeled, chunks of its infernal armor slagging off. Gore and brass sprayed in arcs. But it didn't fall.
Gorrulf had been shouting into the vox for sixty seconds.
"Hold! We wait for the mark! We wait for Great Wolf—"
But the vox refused him. His words choked in static—then, horrifyingly, were mirrored back to him.
"We strike now, brothers! The blade breaks in blood! In the name of Russ—we cut!"
His own voice. Twisted slightly, flattened by modulation—but undeniably his. His pack heard it. They believed it.
The Wolves of Fenris made their strike.
From the ruins, Grey Hunters and Blood Claws burst—some vaulting from Leman Russ hatches mid-retreat to close in with meltabombs. One pack hacked through Doom Blaster crew, reducing them to meat-slick decks before diving into wreckage to evade counterfire.
Others used the smoke, fire, and confusion to jam chainblades into exposed daemon engine joints, then vanished—gunmetal ghosts in the furnace storm.
Doom Slayer flicked the next segment of the bridge.
["Begin retreat to Line behind. Delay charges armed. Feed them forward."]
The 3km retreat became a slaughter corridor. Superstructure panels collapsed in sequence behind retreating Guardsmen, channeling the pursuing Khornate forces into a single narrow lane. Like rats. Like prey. Then ripping apart the beastmen and few berserkers under lasgun and bolter fire.
And with them—Basilisks roared from the far bank.
They had held fire until now, their barrels cold, waiting for the horde to close. Now?
They sang.
One barrage hit the Lord of Skulls dead in the flank—peeling brass, crushing leg joints, sending the daemon god staggering. Space Wolves formed the last hold behind the final charge line, hurling krak grenades into the ranks of stumbling Hellbrutes. One Wolf screamed as a Reaper glaive gutted him—another leapt on the back of a Chaos Dreadnought and drove a melta charge through its throat-cables.
[ Shadowsword—Enough with the delays! FIRE ALREADY! KILL THAT STUBBORN HERETICAL METAL MONSTER!]
Inside the belly of the Shadowsword—stationed at the far bank—Tech-Priest Xenari chanted in binaric bursts, his mechadendrites writhing over the holy Volcano Cannon's neural sockets. Every cogitator rune glowed blood-red, screaming under the pressure of one final catastrophic charge.
"Binary devotions complete," came the voice of the Machine Spirit—flat, tired, afraid.
Crewmen held their breath as Xenari inserted the final hex-sigil.
The Volcano Cannon flared white.
The beam struck the Lord of Skulls not in its armor—but beneath it, where burning brass had split to reveal the ribbed daemonflesh beneath the jawline. The shot sheared through it like light through fog—taking out a Hellbrute in the process. Molten skulls erupted skyward. The daemon engine reeled—bleeding both flame and voidstuff—before crashing sideways to its end.
It did not rise. The Shadowsword's crew said nothing. They simply watched the ruin burn.
"We hold here!" someone roared. "Make every skull count!"
They were brothers in death—not just warriors. Survivors holding the tail end of a knife meant for the gods themselves.
Above it all, Sefirot whispered one last command into the vox network—as Haldrek:
["No more being slaughtered for nothing. All non-tank units fall back now—not because you're weak—but because survival is your final weapon. You live today so you can kill tomorrow."]
35% of the bridge was gone to enemy control. But the wedge—had broken through. Yet the battle was far from over.
[More than a quarter of the bridge is flooded with Chaos, Slayer. Just as you wanted ]
Doom Slayer's hand hovered over the table. Another piece shifted forward.
Admist all this, Chaos Lord Valkor the Clysm grinned inside his Dreadnought encased sarcophagus.
"They are so blinded over the battle on top that they haven't even bothered to look at what's happening beneath of the bridge surface."