Chapter 887 - 28

Hashirama nodded once. Batu was right. In war, one cannot be in all places at once and so problems had a hierarchy; the most pressing matter had to be dealt with first and foremost and everything else followed after, even if it meant the loss of civilian lives. The greater good, in such cases, simply meant that the living outnumbered the dead. Such sacrifices were never easy and, for once, Hashirama was glad that he wasn't the one who had to make these decisions. That said, he had no idea what an orbital defense platform was, but if it was important, then it was important. "Right."

The journey to the northern orbital defenses took nearly an entire week. Batu's vehicle sputtered to a halt after three days, fumes leaking from its belly, engine clicking, empty. The Astartes merely shook his head, then began walking. Hashirama followed without a word, matching pace. They ran most of the way, pausing only for brief moments of rest, or for Hashirama to gather chakra when the land felt clean enough for meditation.

Along the way they encountered small bands of traitors, renegade Astartes lingering among burnt-out tanks, warped daemons prowling battlefields like predators, and stranger things that wore flesh but moved with jerking, unnatural gaits. Others were misshapen mutants of metal and bone and flesh, and a few were demons that walked on crab-like metal limbs. They fell swiftly. Some never even saw what killed them—a blade flashing in silence, or a sudden burst of wooden tendrils that erupted from the ground and vanished just as quickly, leaving only crumpled forms behind. The larger daemons screamed as they were dragged down, corporealized, and then promptly crushed. They died screaming, unable to truly comprehend death just before they ceased to exist.

They passed villages turned to ash, ruins choked with bodies, shattered settlements filled with frightened faces and eyes wide in disbelief. Hashirama moved among these survivors quietly, speaking gentle words they could not understand, holding out his scrolls. Some hesitated, others ran willingly into the safety they offered. One by one, hundreds, then thousands, disappeared into paper seals alongside the millions already held within. Each scroll Hashirama tucked away felt heavier than the last. Those that did not join them left to fight elsewhere, grateful for the momentary reprieve.

When the villages and little cities were empty, Hashirama and Batu ran on, leaving only footprints behind.

At some point, they reached an abandoned bunker and took refuge from a dust storm that would've shredded the flesh from their bones. It was a common occurrence in these parts of the world, apparently, and not even the traitors braved it. So, there was nothing to be done until the storm passed.

Hashirama turned to Batu and eyed the Astartes' armor. His companion was strong, stronger than most Chunin, but Batu was not strong enough to not be a liability against the most dangerous of foes. If Batu had fought with him against Perturabo, for instance, then the Astartes would've just gotten in the way. If Batu was to remain a companion, if he was to keep fighting alongside him, then he would need to become stronger. Much stronger. But Batu did not have chakra. That left only technology—armor, weapons, augmetics—all of which required resources they didn't currently have. So Hashirama would have to improvise.

Specifically, he was gonna have to get very creative with Fuinjutsu. After all, the Uzumaki Clan of Uzushiogakure were known to create weapons and armor that were enhanced by powerful seals. It couldn't be too hard to do the same, right? Tobirama had a blade that was infused with and channeled lightning chakra that just about anyone could wield.

Hashirama pointed a finger at Batu's power armor. "My friend, may I use Fuinjutsu on your armor to make you stronger? No offense, but there is a noticeable gap between us and I would very much like to narrow that gap to lessen the chances of your death."

"I take no offense in the truth." Batu nodded immediately. "Whatever can be done to hurt the traitors will be done. You're saying this will make me stronger?"

"And less likely to die."

"Then do so, my friend." Batu said. The bunker shook from the storm. Plumes and clouds of dust puffed downwards. "We'll be here a while anyway."

Hashirama nodded once and bit down on his thumb, sharp canines parting the skin with ease. Blood welled up quickly. He brought his hands together and began shaping the first of many seals.

He didn't need anything ornate. No vanity, no aesthetics. Function was all that mattered. Stronger. Faster. Nothing else. For that purpose, Lightning Release offered the most direct path. He crouched near Batu, fingers already moving, drawing patterns across the dull sheen of the Astartes' breastplate with precise, practiced ease.

The plan was simple in concept, near-impossible in execution.

Hashirama's goal was to replicate the Lightning Release: Chakra Mode—a technique developed in the Hidden Cloud that wrapped the user in a high-speed armor of chakra-enhanced electricity. It enhanced reflexes, reaction time, and raw velocity to such a degree that blades could be caught with bare hands, bullets dodged mid-flight. The version he was creating now would be far cruder. Less refined. Less elegant. But it would be self-sustaining.

That was the key.

The seals—dozens layered over each other—would act as siphons. They'd drink the surrounding natural energy, refine it, convert it into a mimicked form of chakra, and direct that energy through conduits shaped into the armor itself. It wouldn't be perfect. It would need occasional recharge. It would likely burn out in extended combat. But it would work. And more importantly, it would elevate Batu's combat prowess to a level far above his fellow Astartes.

He etched the first line across the chestplate—spiraling down into a three-pronged seal, one branch to draw energy, one to filter it, one to distribute it. Then came another. And another. He moved quickly, sliding over Batu's massive frame, arms and hands coated in blood, his own chakra pulsing into the inked grooves as he worked. The seals began to glow faintly, white-blue, humming low in the air like the breath before a storm.

Batu stood still throughout it all. Silent. Waiting. His shoulders only moved when the bunker shuddered around them. Once, dust fell across his helm, and he didn't so much as blink. He let Hashirama work in complete silence.

After what felt like hours, Hashirama sat back on his heels, arms smeared with drying blood, seals now woven across chest, shoulders, spine, thighs, and boots. He drew one last pattern across the front of the chestpiece—a stabilizing core that would serve as the control point for all the others.

He took a breath. Pressed his hand flat against the final seal and infused a surge of chakra.

"Activate."

The armor hissed. Then it howled.

Lightning cracked along the seams of Batu's frame, crawling like living threadwork across his limbs. Sparks raced down the lines of his armor. A dull white glow suffused the joints. The ground beneath his feet trembled. For a moment, the room was filled with the scent of ozone and ash.

Then it faded.

The light remained. A low hum echoed through the room, steady, alive. Batu rolled his shoulders once. Flexed one massive hand. The air hissed as electricity crackled around his knuckles.

He looked down at himself. Then to Hashirama.

"Try not to electrocute yourself," Hashirama said. "I'll have to infuse it with more chakra from time to time, but it should be capable of sustaining this mode for hours at a time."

Batu nodded once.

"Understood." He stepped forward, and the ground beneath him crunched louder than before. Faster. Lighter. Stronger.

Batu swung his cleaver. The blood-written seals along his warplate flared white-blue as the Lightning Cloak surged alive, arcs of electricity snapping across the joints of his armor. The blade moved so fast the air cracked open with a thunderclap, a concussive boom rolling out as the edge bit through the Son of Horus before him. Power shield and ceramite parted like wet parchment—armor split, flesh split, bone split—the cleaver biting clean through from shoulder to hip in less than a heartbeat. The traitor staggered, chestplate sparking, and fell in two pieces, ichor steaming on the ground.

Before the next warrior could raise his bolter, Batu was already moving. The seals hissed and spat light as he lunged, faster than thought, lightning coiling in his wake. The world smeared into streaks of grey and ash. He hit the second Son of Horus square in the chest before his cleaver could even rise, the impact cracking armor with a sound like cracking stone. The traitor's power armor shattered under the force, plates splitting wide, rivets exploding outward as the Astartes' chest imploded. Blood and air burst from the traitor's rebreather grill in a wet hiss. Batu didn't stop.

Momentum carried him on. He tried to slow, feet digging trenches into the floor, but the force of the Lightning Cloak threw him forward like a cannon shell. The walls rose too fast. Stone and steel blurred past him in streaks of dark. Then impact. He slammed through a thick stone wall with a deafening crash, bricks exploding outward in a plume of dust and rebar curling like broken claws. He burst out the other side in a shower of rubble, landing in a crouch as the seals hissed and spat sparks across his frame.

Steam rose from his armor. The air stank of ozone. Batu growled low in his throat and pushed upright, boots grinding on stone, dust rolling off his pauldrons. The third Son of Horus came into view ahead—blade already drawn, helm snapping toward him, bolter rising in one gauntlet. Batu didn't wait.

The Lightning Cloak flared again. Energy hissed over his limbs in crackling waves, burning faint arcs across the ground as he surged forward. He felt the power pull at his joints, dragging him faster and faster until the traitor blurred in his vision. The cleaver rose high and came down in a single arc.

The sound came after the strike. A boom split the air as the blade cut through. The Son of Horus didn't scream. He didn't even move. His helm clattered from his shoulders, bouncing once before spinning across the floor. A jet of blood followed it in a thin spray, misting the air. The body crumpled to its knees, armor hissing as sparks leapt from cracked servos, then toppled forward with a dull crash.

Batu straightened, lightning still crawling over his armor. His breath hissed slow and ragged. Hashirama's upgrades made him a formidable warrior, far above the average astartes, but it made his power armor exceedingly difficult to control. Without his internal augmentations, it was possible that all the high speed movement would've broken his bones. He turned, scanning the wreckage, his gauntlets tightening around the cleaver's haft.

There were fifteen more of them outside the bunker. He and Hashirama had been too late to save the inhabitants when they arrived. But they could avenge the dead all the same.

The wall across from Batu ruptured in a sharp blast, stone and dust exploding outward in a cloud of debris. He raised his cleaver, lightning crackling faintly across the seals etched into his armor, legs coiled to spring forward.

Silence answered him.

No bolter fire. No footsteps. No sound at all from beyond the shattered opening.

A moment later, Hashirama stepped through the settling dust. He moved without haste, robes immaculate, not a single crease or stain to mark the passage of battle. There wasn't a weapon in his hands. There hadn't been a need.

Behind him, the wreckage told the story—fifteen Sons of Horus lay broken in the dirt, their armored forms crushed and torn by roots thicker than a man's torso. Bark coiled around shattered limbs. Splintered helmets gaped skyward, lenses cracked and unlit. The scent of sap and blood clung faintly to the air.

Even now, after all he had seen—after Hashirama had brought down Perturabo himself—Batu still found his companion's power alien in its enormity. Batu had never seen anything close to it in all the battlefields he'd been in–all the wars he'd participated in. Hashirama stood at a level of power that, frankly, almost none of the Primarchs–the demigod children of the Emperor himself–could ever hope to reach. Batu wasn't sure if even the Khan could stand equal to it. Perhaps Magnus with his sorcery. But no others came to mind.

And so, words could not quite describe just how thankful Batu was that Hashirama was on the side of humanity. The very idea of such an entity–one capable of halting an entire titan battlegroup by himself–fighting on the side of the traitors sent chills running up his transhuman spine.

Hashirama's gaze found him. He gave a small nod. "Clear?"

"Clear," Batu answered. His own voice sounded muted against the hush that had settled over the bunker.

"No survivors?"

Batu shook his head once. "Only corpses. Mutilated. Tortured. I had hoped to save at least one life."

Hashirama's eyes narrowed briefly, his lips pressing together. He closed them. A faint breath passed through his nose. Then, quiet. "Nothing to be done now. Let the dead rest."

He opened his eyes. "Shall we move on?"

Batu straightened and nodded. "The northern orbital defenses aren't far if we keep a steady pace."

Together they stepped out of the bunker. The air outside was heavy with the copper tang of blood and the faint sweetness of split wood. They passed the bodies of the traitor Astartes scattered across the ground, some still twitching in the grasp of thick roots, bark tightening with slow inevitability. The bones of the traitors creaked and then broke, until their very forms were crushed. By the looks of things, none of the traitors even had a chance to fight back before they were strangled. Once again, Batu was glad that Hashirama fought on the side of the Imperium.

"We should avoid engagement for a while," Batu said. Five minutes. That was how much time they'd spent to clear out this bunker. In war, five minutes was practically an eternity. Between this and the need to hide every so often from the Dust Storms, they had precious time to waste. "Just until we've achieved our objective."

Hashirama merely nodded. "I understand."

They sheltered from three more dust storms across three days. Each one came with little warning, rising over the broken horizon like a wall, devouring sight and sound in a storm of fine grit. They huddled in old bunkers, craters, and once beneath the broken shell of a transport engine half-buried in sand. The storms scraped paint from stone, peeled skin from bone, and left the world still and stripped behind them.

On the fourth morning, they reached their destination.

Skyfall Anchorage stretched across the northern shelf like a buried beast. Gun towers pierced upward from the ice like claws, their dark barrels pointed skyward, unmoving. Bunkers squatted beneath them. Reinforced walls, sandbag barricades, rusted wire in tight coils. There were trenches packed with snow, long kill-zones marked by signs and skulls, and beneath the frost—landmines. Hundreds of thousands, by Batu's reckoning. The surface shimmered with the suggestion of more traps unseen.

The guns were silent. Cold. Massive. They hadn't fired in weeks, maybe longer. But they were intact.

Batu crouched on the ridge, helm tilted forward. Hashirama stood beside him, arms loose at his sides, watching the compound.

Below, movement.

Dozens of sentries in heavy coats, flak armor patched with bronze and red. Their weapons were standard issue. Lasguns, autoguns, the occasional rocket launcher slung over a back. Mortals. No Astartes in sight.

A few banners fluttered limp in the still air, stitched with the Eye of Horus. Someone down there barked orders. Men moved to obey, adjusting floodlights, checking supply crates. Most stood guard. None looked up.

"They know this place matters," Batu said, voice low behind his helm. "They know what the guns can do. That's why they buried it in wire and mines."

Hashirama said nothing. His eyes were fixed on the nearest tower.

"The weapons are linked to a control node," Batu continued. "Designed for one operator. One command seat. Once I reach it, I can bring them online again."

His gaze shifted skyward.

"The guns can't win the war. But they'll make flying over the pole a losing gamble."

Hashirama nodded once.

The earth stretched wide around the base. White, broken, sharp-edged. The defenses were tight against ground assaults. But not perfect.

And every defense had a flaw. Batu nodded to himself. "A distraction would be the wisest course of action."

"I'll create a distraction," Hashirama said, voice quiet but steady. "You do what you need to do in the chaos."

He stepped forward. The wind stirred dust along the ridge. Batu nodded once and tensed, knees bending slightly beneath the weight of his warplate.

Hashirama exhaled and brought his hands together.

What followed was a blur—dozens of seals in rapid succession, his fingers vanishing into a blur of motion. The air thickened. The ground cracked. Chakra surged beneath their feet, deep and cold.

"Wood Release Secret Technique: Nativity of a World of Trees."

Batu leapt clear of the ridge as the earth below Hashirama split wide.

The first roots punched through the frost with a low rumble. Then came the branches—snapping upward in rapid bursts, thick and gnarled, curling like the limbs of buried titans. They struck the ground with enough force to throw up sheets of frozen dirt and rock. Barbed tendrils followed, coiling fast through the snow, wrapping around the nearest coil of barbed wire and ripping it clean from the ice.

The wave expanded.

Trees burst through the trenches like spears. Their trunks widened mid-motion, crushing sandbag walls and folding bunkers like tin. A line of mortals barely had time to raise their rifles before the forest swallowed them whole. Roots tangled around boots. Limbs slammed into torsos. Screams cut short in the rise of splintering wood and fire.

A transport vehicle flipped end over end, thrown like a toy. It landed on its roof and detonated a moment later. The blast lit the new-grown trunks in a sharp orange glow. The fire spread, catching fuel lines, igniting charges. One detonation triggered another. A row of mines along the outer perimeter went up in a chain of fire and concussive sound. The ground rolled beneath it. Barrels of oil and fuel ignited and lit up the earth and the sky.

Hashirama didn't move.

He stood in the center of it all, arms lowered, eyes fixed forward.

The forest moved around him.

It grew in waves—some trees tall and leafless, others wide and thick, their roots twisting through rock and concrete, their branches raking towers from the sky. Floodlights shattered. Machinegun nests disappeared beneath crashing limbs. Bodies flew, fell, vanished. Blood misted into the air, catching on the bark like dew.

Batu hit the ground running on the far side of the chaos.

Behind him, Hashirama raised a hand and dozens of roots converged and formed a writhing and raging serpentine creature, colossal in scope. It barrelled right into the bunkers, crushing everything in its path. Its roar shook the ground. The wooden serpent coiled and then lashed forward at a speed that one would not expect from a creature of that size. Its gargantuan head crashed right through a wall that'd been erected by the traitors, blasting it apart in a shower of debris and sending hundreds of traitorous mortals screaming and flying into the open air. A cloud of dust erupted and Batu slipped right through.

An hour later, the orbital defenses were active and shooting at the traitor vessels in the sky.

Two hours later, Batu spoke to the Emperor of Mankind.

AN: Chapter 27 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport479denheim10/8/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 24: New View contentdenheim17/8/2025Add bookmark#735It began a few days ago, when he first sensed that strange yet oddly familiar presence. Much of Neoth's attention remained focused on maintaining the integrity of the Webway breach, a tear in the ancient network that threatened to pour forth an endless tide of Warp-spawned horrors if not kept tightly shut. On the other side, fighting in the ruins of what should've been humanity's refuge in the Webway, were his loyal and indomitable Custodians, accompanied by the Sisters of Silence. It was by their combined efforts that a flood of daemons hadn't already overtaken the whole of Terra.

Each breath came slower than the last; sweat traced thin lines down his temples, pooling briefly before dripping onto his robes. Muscles in his jaw tightened with every surge of psychic strain. It was painful–almost unbearably so–but he was humanity's one and only line of defense against Magnus' greatest blunder. But even then, even amidst this immense concentration, that presence teased at the edges of his perception, flickering like distant candlelight in the darkness.

He did not move, could not move—not now, not yet. The effort of holding back the breach demanded complete stillness. But his eyes opened slightly, golden irises sharpening as if he might pierce through the stone and steel walls around him. He exhaled softly, the faintest tremor shuddering along his fingertips as he adjusted his psychic grip on the shimmering barrier between the Immaterium and Terra. Around him, cables hissed quietly, machines whirred softly in the shadowy silence, monitoring the impossible strain placed upon him.

Then, days after the first time, the presence flickered again—closer this time. His heart quickened by the smallest degree, the rhythm shifting beneath his chestplate. In the instant of proximity, Neoth saw it clearly: the energy was contained within a living body, flowing through veins and nerves, twined through muscle and bone. The sensation was vivid, impossibly clear. For a fleeting instant, the clarity startled him, his pupils dilating beneath half-closed eyelids. His breath caught, briefly halting in his throat before slowly resuming its careful, measured rhythm.

Neoth recognized the energy. He had seen it in men only once before, thousands upon thousands of years earlier, in a land long forgotten, a place called India before the world drowned itself in war and darkness. Back then, he'd sat beneath vast, sun-bleached arches of stone as an ancient monk knelt opposite him, skin wrinkled and stretched thin by decades of meditation. The monk had smiled faintly, eyes bright yet heavy with age, and held out a single palm. With little more than a quiet breath, the man had coaxed forth an energy that danced gently across his fingertips—spiritual and physical in equal measure, unified seamlessly into a single force he'd simply named the Spirit of Sages.

Neoth had tried to replicate it—tried until his mind and body and soul all quivered with fatigue and his fingers cramped painfully. Each attempt had ended in silence, his palm empty, nothing but sweat and the faint ache of failure. Physical and spiritual energy were polar opposites. Mixing them was a logical impossibility–or, at least, it should've been. The Old Ones certainly did it and, judging from their works, they did so easily.

And here it was again, this same impossible energy, now shimmering vividly on the edges of his perception. The presence moved—closer, then distant again, drifting through the chaos beyond the palace walls. He sensed its path, tracing carefully, deliberately, through battlefields choked with smoke and fire. He felt the shift each time this energy was unleashed, a tremble along his spine, the briefest flare of hope beneath his ribs. Whoever this person was, they appeared to be on the side of the Imperium, accompanied by a lone son of Jaghatai Khan. Together, they harried the traitors from the flanks, moving away from the palace until Neoth could scarcely feel their presence.

And then Perturabo died.

He felt it distinctly: the ripple of sudden silence, the severing of a bond between creator and created. It echoed outward, reverberating like a tolling bell across the warp-churned landscape. Within each and every single one of the Primarchs was a dormant soul that was once a minor god within the Immaterium, beings of pure power beyond even the greatest of the Perpetuals, excluding himself. Perturabo, like all his siblings, housed the soul of a god of ingenuity and creativity. The destruction of his physical shell resulted in an explosion of psychic energy so powerful it rippled across Terra.

In that moment, true hope bloomed within him. The energy he'd felt—the Spirit of Sages—had struck down a Primarch. The feat was unthinkable. Yet the truth of it remained, etched clearly in the shifting patterns of psychic resonance that lingered even now in his mind. The psychic strain from holding the breach momentarily lessened as his hope surged forward, bright and hot beneath his skin. He did not smile; he did not speak. But his fingers tightened just slightly, pressing deeper against the fabric of his robes.

A gamble, he knew. But it was a gamble he had no choice but to take. The energy this man wielded was like that which had forged the Webway itself—woven by ancient hands, strong enough to endure the endless tides of the Warp. If it could build, it might mend. He did not know how or why this man came to possess such a power, but–at the moment–the Emperor of Mankind did not care. What mattered was the slight chance that the Webway Project might just be saved. That was all that mattered. For if the Human Webway fell, then all of this would've been for nothing.

Neoth's breath deepened, slowing as he adjusted his grip on the breach, gathering his strength for the delicate task ahead. Soon, he knew, this figure would stand before him, the man who held within himself the possibility to restore what he himself had failed to repair. He couldn't directly communicate with the man, unfortunately, as the Spirit of Sages shielded his mind from such attempts. Neoth could force it, perhaps, but doing so to an ally was pointless. That was the one unfortunate thing that prevented the Master of Mankind from witnessing just how this power was used–or how it was created. Instead, Neoth turned to the man's companion, Batu, to deliver his message for him.

—

Hashirama sat cross-legged atop the jagged edge of a half-collapsed building. The structure creaked faintly beneath him, stone cracked and groaning under its own weight, but he remained still. His robes fluttered gently in the cold air, the faint scent of blood, death, and ozone carried on the wind. From here, his gaze swept over the sprawling complex below, eyes fixed on the enormous guns that dominated the landscape.

The gargantuan guns fired in slow, steady rhythms, each shot shuddering through the earth, shaking loose frost from the edges of his perch. With every discharge, a dull flash lit the gloom, and the air seemed to vibrate for several seconds afterward.

The Imperium's technology was vast and alien to him, yet he understood its purpose. These guns—massive, relentless—were meant to keep the enemies in the sky at bay. He wondered, briefly, how long the advantage would last.

They couldn't stay here. He and Batu had no time to garrison or maintain these weapons. Sooner or later, the enemy would send reinforcements. And when they did, this place would burn again. For now, however, the guns remained silent guardians of the sky. The enemy would not claim them today.

Below, the scars of his work lay plain. Roots twisted like enormous snakes across the ground, their bark streaked dark where blood had dried. Splintered wood jutted from bodies half-buried in the frost. Small fires smoldered where trees had crushed vehicles and spilled fuel. He didn't look away from it. After all, it wasn't really anything he wasn't already familiar with. He grew up with war and death. The sight was common.

There had been no survivors. He had ensured it. He didn't want to massacre this many people, but he had no choice on the matter.

His hands rested atop his knees, fingers slack, posture loose. He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly, letting his breath cloud faintly in the cold. The chakra within him pulsed quietly, steady and alive, even as he began to gather it again.

His skin prickled faintly as he activated Sage Mode. The world sharpened instantly. The air around him was suddenly thicker, heavy with life even in this desolate place. He felt the movement of tiny creatures burrowing beneath the ice. The faint pulse of plants twisted and warped by his own chakra.

And beyond that—nothing. No enemies. No mortals. No Astartes.

A faint hum rose in the distance. Once, twice, he felt faint flickers—daemons pressing at the edges of his range. But each time, they recoiled before his awareness fully settled on them, their presence dissolving back into the tainted air. They were afraid of him, Hashirama mused. News of what he'd done to that four-armed monstrosity must've already reached them. Were they afraid of dying as all men were? Or was the concept of death alien to them and they simply feared the unknown? He didn't know.

For the next two hours, he remained motionless.

The guns continued their work, sending shockwaves through the building beneath him. He barely noticed them. Instead, he focused inward, the flow of chakra steadying as it replenished. The faint sting of fatigue faded. His breath deepened. He entered Sage Mode periodically, scanning the area each time for signs of encroaching danger. Each scan returned only silence.

The daemons did not come closer.

Below, in the compound's heart, Batu worked tirelessly. The massive Astartes disappeared into the command chambers with single-minded focus, his armored frame vanishing into the cold gloom of the control node. Hashirama felt the faint ripples of energy radiating from his seals each time Batu pushed the suit's limits.

Eventually, the great guns fell silent.

Batu emerged into the pale light, his massive frame outlined against the steel of the inner walls. His armor still crackled faintly with residual energy from the Fuinjutsu Hashirama had applied, arcs of lightning dancing lazily along his gauntlets. Steam hissed from the joints of his warplate as he stepped forward, boots grinding into ice with each slow, deliberate stride.

Batu staggered slightly at first, catching himself on the doorway before straightening. His breathing echoed faintly in the cold air, deep and controlled, though there was a faint edge of strain.

The First Hokage rose in a single fluid motion, dust sliding off his robes. He landed lightly on the snow-dusted ground below and approached the towering warrior.

He tilted his head slightly, one brow raised. "What happened?"

Batu's helm turned toward him. The faint hiss of his rebreather accompanied his next words.

"New orders," he said at last, his voice low and edged with fatigue. "We are to make our way to the Imperial Palace. As quickly as possible."

Hashirama studied him for a moment longer, then nodded once.

"I see." The First Hokage stood up and stretched his arms and legs. "Let's go, then?

Batu nodded.

Before either of them could so much as shift their weight forward, the air around them warped. Electric blue shimmers rippled across the snow and stone, flickering like heat haze before solidifying into armored forms. Dozens of massive figures materialized in a ring around them, boots slamming into the earth with weight enough to crack the frostbitten ground.

Hashirama's eyes narrowed. Sage Mode surged to life. The world flared bright in his senses—fifty distinct signatures, each one pulsing with staggering power.

They were Astartes, but larger even than Batu, their armor impossibly thick, forged for crushing advance rather than speed. Massive pauldrons flared like stone bulwarks, and every step they took was accompanied by the hiss of hydraulics and the low grind of machinery under strain.

Some were twisted beyond recognition. Bloated flesh pulsed through splits in their plating, veins like blackened vines threading over cracked ceramite. One figure's helm had fused to a skull grown too large for its armor, and a wet, rhythmic sound came from its throat as it moved. Others radiated spiritual energy so heavy it dragged at the air. Outgrowths writhed from their forms—mutated arms tipped in claws, wings of pale feather and bone, bluish tendrils flexing like serpents. No two were the same.

Batu's gauntleted fingers tightened around the haft of his cleaver. Lightning arced faintly across the seals carved into his armor as he raised the weapon to guard.

"Terminators," he said.

The ring of giants tightened, weapons rising in unison.

And then, a final flash of fire and spiritual energy, and four gigantic daemons emerged–red, blue, purple, and green. And reality shook.

AN: Chapter 28 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport447denheim17/8/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 25: New View contentdenheim24/8/2025Add bookmark#758Hashirama's eyes narrowed. Four daemons—each one radiating immense spiritual energy that weighed down the air like a storm about to break. The purple one drew his attention first. He recognized the shape, the twisting horns, the cruel tilt of its grin. He'd unmade one just like it days ago, though smaller, with less adornments, and far weaker. This one gripped a curved sword in one clawed hand, a spiked whip dangling lazily in the other, its barbs glistening as they flexed like living things.

The red daemon stood taller, broader. Brass plates covered its chest and shoulders, though its massive wings were left bare, leathery membranes stretched taut and twitching with anticipation. Twin black axes hung loose in its fists, their edges pulsing faintly with a heat that turned the snow at its feet to steaming slush.

To the side, the green one lumbered forward on legs like swollen tree trunks, its flesh bloated and split, oozing pus that sizzled where it touched the frostbitten ground. A single sword jutted from its grip, almost comically small compared to the massive, corpulent body it wielded it with. Flies buzzed lazily around its bulk, a choking stench drifting from its every movement.

The last daemon, blue and thin, stood stiller than the others. Feathered wings spread wide and slow behind its narrow frame, each motion measured, almost delicate. In its hands, a writhing staff twisted and hissed, strands of mist curling from its tip in pulsing waves of power that prickled against Hashirama's skin.

Hashirama's gaze flicked over each of them, sharp and precise. These four would be the true fight. Dangerous. Resilient. The Terminators—the massive, armored warriors surrounding them—were loud, heavy, mortal. Dangerous in their own right, but ultimately limited. The daemons were the greater threat. And if he was to kill them, he would first need to drag them fully into the physical world. Without that, they were little more than shadows immune to blade or root.

The circle around them tightened. A dozen bolters rose, a dozen crackling claws flexed.

Hashirama didn't wait.

His hands came together in a blur, fingers snapping through seals in rapid succession. He inhaled sharply, chest expanding as chakra surged to life in his lungs.

"Ninja Art: Hidden Mist Jutsu."

He exhaled.

Mist rolled out from his lips in a heavy wave, spilling low across the frost-cracked earth, curling over boots and roots alike. It spread fast, thickening with every breath until the world itself vanished behind a curtain of pale white. The sound of shifting armor dulled to muffled thuds. The Terminators vanished from sight, their massive forms swallowed whole. Even the daemons blurred, their hulking shapes twisting and fading until only faint silhouettes remained in the gloom.

The mist clung tight, dense with chakra. Sight was useless now. Even the keenest of eyes—even the Mangekyou Sharingan, he thought with faint amusement—would see nothing but white. The daemons would be blinded by all the chakra he'd let loose into the mist. And the Terminators would see nothing but white smoke and haze.

A shinobi's true strength was never in brute force—even if Hashirama had plenty of that to spare.

He moved soundlessly, feet barely brushing the frost-bitten ground as he surged through the thick, chakra-laced mist. In a single smooth motion, he reached Batu's side and pressed a hand to one of the Fuinjutsu seals etched into the Astartes' armor.

Chakra flared. The lines of the seal blazed bright white-blue, and arcs of lightning snapped across Batu's warplate. The air hissed with the scent of ozone.

"Don't hold back," Hashirama said quietly, his voice steady. "Attack. Keep attacking. You have the advantage of being surrounded."

"Being surrounded means I don't have to worry about who I'm hitting." Batu's voice rumbled through his helmet, edged with focus.

Then he was gone.

The seals screamed alive as Batu lunged forward, his massive frame blurring in a flash of light and crackling energy. The ground split beneath his boots as he surged into the mist. The air boomed with the sound of cleaver meeting armor. Screams and grinding servos followed in sharp, staccato bursts as Batu crashed headlong into the ring of Terminators.

Hashirama didn't need to look to know what was happening. The mist distorted sound, but each echo told him enough: the hiss of power claws slicing empty air, the thundering steps of giants swinging blindly, and the deafening crack of ceramite splitting under a single, high-speed strike. The mist made their guns useless. Any stray shot risked striking a brother in the haze. Perfect.

Hashirama exhaled once, slow and steady, and brought his hands together. Fingers shifted in quick succession, forming the familiar shapes of a technique older than memory.

"Wood Style: Wood Clone Jutsu."

Roots burst from his forearm, twisting upward and splitting into humanoid forms. Three clones stepped from his side in silence, each one identical to him in shape and weight, their features smooth yet alive. The faint scent of sap drifted as the chakra-infused wood hardened into motion.

The clones moved immediately, spreading out into the mist with soundless precision.

Hashirama raised his chin slightly, eyes narrowing at the four faint silhouettes beyond the fog—the daemons.

The Terminators weren't his concern. Batu and his clones would keep them occupied, hacking through their ranks with blinding speed.

That left him with the true threats—the four daemons.

One by one.

But not like before. Entangling them with roots and forcing their spirit forms into the physical world would take too long. Against a single opponent, it might have worked. Against two, the risk grew higher. Against four? Impossible. Unless he pinned all of them down at once.

No time like the present to come up with an experimental new way to deal with incorporeal enemies.

Hashirama inhaled deeply, the cold air filling his lungs as he shut his eyes for a single breath. The flow of energy inside him shifted instantly, surging in steady waves as his Sage Mode activated. The world brightened in his senses—the thrum of life beneath the frost, the faint vibrations in the air from Batu's onslaught, and the immense spiritual pressure bleeding from the four towering shapes ahead.

His eyes snapped open and then his hands came together, fingers flowing through a blur of seals with precision honed through countless battles.

"Sage Art: Wood Dragon Festival."

The ground around him convulsed.

Four enormous, serpentine wooden dragons erupted from the earth with a roar that shook the frost loose from the surrounding ruins. Each dragon twisted and writhed with terrifying speed, their bark rippling with chakra-infused life. Their gaping maws split wide, sharp wooden teeth glinting with pure physical energy as they lunged forward.

Terminators in their path didn't even have time to scream. One was caught mid-step, crushed flat beneath the coiled body of a dragon as its spine cracked with a wet snap. Another flew end over end, hurled into the darkness as roots tore through the ceramite of his armor. The air stank of ozone and splintered wood as the dragons surged toward their targets.

Hashirama moved behind them, his feet skimming the ground in a blur. Sage energy coiled through his body, his fingers twitching as he directed the dragons forward.

The daemons reacted.

The purple one darted back, its whip cracking through the mist with a hiss. The blue daemon rose skyward in a single beat of its massive feathered wings, the air thickening around its staff as it began to channel some manner of sorcery. The red one crouched low, wings spreading wide as it launched itself into the air, both axes raised high.

But the green one—bloated, sluggish, its festering bulk dragging through the ice—was too slow.

The first wooden dragon's maw clamped over its shoulder with a deafening crack. Bark splintered and groaned as chakra poured into the daemon's form, forcing its spirit body toward physicality. The creature laughed at first—a deep, wet, gurgling sound that rolled through the air like thunder.

The second dragon struck its opposite side, teeth sinking deep into rolls of diseased flesh.

The daemon's laughter faltered, turning into a hoarse growl.

The third and fourth dragons slammed into its legs and chest, wrapping their long, coiling bodies tightly around the daemon's corpulent form. Teeth bit deep, glowing faintly as raw physical energy pulsed into the creature.

The daemon began to scream.

The sound was piercing, gurgling, a strange blend of rage and terror. It thrashed wildly, fat and blight oozing from gashes as it clawed at the dragons. Its sword, pitifully small compared to its size, hacked down at the wooden coils but failed to break through. The more it struggled, the more its spirit form thickened, solidifying as the dragons forced corporeality upon it. And the closer it drew into the physical world, the weaker it became.

Hashirama didn't hesitate. He poured more chakra into the dragons, their teeth glowing brighter with physical energy. The bark creaked louder as their maws tightened, splinters flying in all directions as their coils constricted.

The daemon's limbs flailed weakly. Its scream pitched higher, bubbling wetly in its throat.

Then, with a final surge of chakra, the four dragons pulled in opposite directions.

The daemon ripped apart with a wet, tearing sound.

Chunks of fat and diseased flesh rained to the ground below, steaming and hissing as they struck the ice. Its head tumbled free, maw still gaping wide in a frozen scream as its eyes dimmed, the last of its spiritual energy bleeding out into the air.

The bloated corpse sagged and lingered like the cadaver of a true physical being.

Hashirama's hands dropped slightly as the four dragons reared their heads, steam curling from their fanged maws. One threat down. Three remained.

His eyes locked onto the purple daemon as it circled at the edge of the mist, whip dragging behind it in slow coils. It had no wings. That made it the easier target. But the other two—red and blue—still had the skies. Letting them fly around unchecked would only create more problems later. They needed to be handled now. All of them.

He exhaled slowly and shifted his stance.

"Next," Hashirama muttered.

His hands blurred through a series of seals, too fast for most eyes to follow. Chakra pulsed through his body, rising toward a new technique—but before he could finish it, two of the daemons moved.

The purple one darted forward, low and fast, whip flicking behind it like a serpent. The red one came a heartbeat later, crashing forward in a full charge, both axes raised high. The snow cracked beneath its heavy stride.

Hashirama's fingers twitched mid-seal.

"Substitution Jutsu."

In a blink, he vanished.

The two daemons slammed their weapons down—just as a Terminator stumbled into view, his armor shining faintly. The Astartes didn't even have time to raise his weapon. The daemon's axe bit deep into his shoulder and then went straight through. The whip struck an instant later, slicing through plate and bone. The Astartes screamed once, loud and raw, before his body split apart under the force of the blows.

Six meters away, Hashirama stood perfectly still. Steam curled from his mouth as he exhaled again, mist trailing from his shoulders.

He shook his head once. "Game over."

Then his hands flew up again—seals shaping one after another in a blur.

"Sage Art: Gracious Deity Gates!"

A massive crack echoed through the mist as the first of the red torii gates tore through the sky and slammed down above the daemons. The impact split the ground beneath them, roots and frost flying upward in all directions. The red daemon roared in anger and frustration as the torii gate forced it to its knees. A second gate followed an instant later, pinning the purple daemon, and then a third, each one larger than the last. They came down like hammers, glowing red-hot with sealing energy. The third one struck the blue daemon right out of the sky and into the ground with the rest of its brethren.

AN: Chapter 29 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport429denheim24/8/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 26: New View contentdenheim7/9/2025Add bookmark#780Targets neutralized, Hashirama mused.

The demons lay beneath the massive red Torii Gates, limbs splayed and unmoving. The color drained slowly from their flesh, their once-vivid forms turning dull, muted, inert. Jaws hung slack; eyes stared upward without focus. There were no screams, no roars—just silence. Whatever resistance they once offered was gone, swallowed completely by the sealing power of the gates. They did not twitch or fight, did not even shift. Their forms sank deeper into the cracked ice beneath them, utterly passive. They were even more susceptible to this Sage Jutsu than the Bijuu ever were, Hashirama realized, as the Gracious Deity Gates specifically targeted its victim's Spiritual Energy and demons were made entirely of Spiritual Energy.

In fact, if they were kept subdued for long enough, it was entirely possible that the red Torii Gates would undo their forms entirely, erasing all manner of thought and will, forcing the demons back into a form of neutral Spiritual Energy.

With the daemons subdued, Hashirama turned toward the mist-covered battlefield, shifting his focus to the remaining Terminators. Shapes lumbered through the dense haze—massive, slow, uncertain. Each step echoed faintly as their heavy boots scraped across broken ground. They swung weapons in cautious arcs, aiming blindly at threats they could not see.

Hashirama briefly considered using another Senjutsu technique but stopped himself. It was unnecessary. There would be more battles ahead and he couldn't afford to have to stop and recover Nature Energy every few hours. Taijutsu was the way forward. He glanced down, flexed his fingers, then clenched them tightly into a fist. Chakra surged through muscle and bone, gathering quietly in his knuckles and wrist.

Six meters to his right, a Terminator loomed through the fog, massive armor gleaming faintly. The Astartes turned slowly, bolter rising, helmet swiveling as he strained to spot his enemy.

Hashirama lunged forward.

He crossed the gap silently, his feet gliding swiftly over frost and rubble. The Terminator only began to react when Hashirama's fist crashed directly into the center of his chestplate. Armor cracked, ceramite splintering under the force of the blow, even if his fist did not go through. The warrior flew backward several meters, arms and legs flailing as he crashed into two of his brothers. All three tumbled heavily to the ground, tangled in a heap of armor and sparking servos.

Hashirama paused, examining his fist. Small fragments of broken ceramite fell from his knuckles, the pieces clattering softly onto the ice. He flexed his fingers again, releasing another surge of chakra that quietly reinforced bone and sinew. Chakra spent this way was never wasted—only cycled, replenished, kept within. However, it wasn't enough. Senjutsu, on its own, was not enough and it made sense; the Terminators wore armor that had to be quadruple the thickness of what Batu wore. He needed more power in his punches, without sacrificing too much chakra or stamina.

That left only one solution. Gate of Opening: Open! Gate of Healing: Open! Gate of Life: Open!

Hashirama could only open up until the Third Gate without having to endure any form of physical backlash. The Fourth One nullified his body's natural regenerative ability. The Fifth and Sixth ones were just pure agony for diminishing returns. He'd never managed to open the Seventh. And he would never open the Eighth even if he could.

Time to finish this. He lowered his stance slightly, scanning the shifting mist. Two more lumbering shapes drew closer, bolters raised. Their movements were uncertain, their helmet lenses blinking dully in the fog. Hashirama took a breath and moved again.

He reached the first Astartes in a heartbeat. A strike to the knee buckled armor and sent the Terminator crashing sideways. Before the second could respond, Hashirama pivoted on one foot, driving his elbow up sharply beneath the warrior's chin. Helm cracked, neck snapped back. Spine crushed. The Terminator fell backward heavily, helmet lolling at a twisted angle.

Hashirama did not pause. The mist curled slowly around his legs, quiet as he stepped past the fallen. Around him, the battlefield grew quieter.

A dozen meters away, Batu moved in sharp bursts, lightning snapping along his armor with each swing of the massive cleaver. The blade tore through ceramite and flesh, leaving smoking trails in the mist. A Terminator stumbled back, sparks flickering from his ruined pauldron, before Batu followed through and severed the warrior's helmeted head in a single stroke. It tumbled through the haze, landing with a hollow clang.

Hashirama flowed through the battlefield, his fists and feet striking like hammers. Each blow shattered armor, buckled steel, crushed bone. One Terminator swung a power fist; Hashirama caught the wrist mid-strike, twisted sharply, and snapped it backward with a grinding pop. He stepped in close, drove his open palm into the warrior's chest, and felt the ribs beneath crumple inward and crush all the organs inside. The Terminator collapsed to the ground, unmoving. Another one rushed him afterwards, but Hashirama pivoted and countered with a kick to the head that crushed the skull and tore the Terminator's head from his shoulders in a spray of blood.

Together, they moved from one cluster of foes to the next. Hashirama struck low, breaking knees and ankles, toppling warriors into Batu's waiting blade. Batu's cleaver flashed through the mist, leaving arcs of scorched armor and burned flesh. Terminators roared in fury or pain, their voices muffled and distorted by thick helmet grilles, before they were silenced in death.

Another warrior lunged from the fog, bolter raised. Batu twisted aside, lightning crackling across his chest as the shot glanced harmlessly away. Hashirama closed the distance in a heartbeat, ducking beneath the warrior's grasping gauntlet and driving his elbow up into the Terminator's throat. The armor split with a dull crunch. Batu spun, finishing the kill with a heavy slash, cleaving the Astartes from collarbone to hip.

Their movements soon settled into a brutal rhythm: Hashirama broke the Terminators, shattered armor and joints, forced them off-balance or onto the ground. Batu swept in swiftly behind, his cleaver flashing downward in crackling arcs. The mist darkened, speckled now with blood and smoke, smelling of scorched armor and ozone.

One Terminator raised his clawed gauntlet, readying a blow. Hashirama met the strike, palm slamming into the gauntlet, forcing it back against the warrior's own chestplate. The Astartes staggered, falling heavily onto one knee, and Batu's cleaver plunged straight through the Terminator's chest, pinning him to the frozen earth. Lightning flared sharply, illuminating the scene in stark white for a brief moment.

Around them, bodies littered the broken ground, twisted armor and mangled limbs half-buried in snow. Blood pooled slowly beneath the corpses, steaming gently as it met the frost. The mist thinned further, drifting away in lazy curls until only pale wisps remained. Gradually, silence reclaimed the battlefield, broken only by the soft crunch of boots across ice and the muted crackle of Batu's lightning seals as they slowly dimmed.

Hashirama stood perfectly still for several breaths, chest rising and falling evenly as he released the Three Inner Gates. The faint glow of Sage Mode faded from his eyes, the lines around them smoothing back to normal. He flexed his fingers slightly, easing the lingering tension from his hands.

Batu approached steadily, cleaver resting lightly against his armored shoulder. Wisps of steam rose from his armor, curls of vapor drifting lazily in the chill air. He tilted his helm slightly, scanning their surroundings once more.

"How did they find us?" Hashirama asked, turning his head slightly toward Batu.

Batu paused beside him, gaze fixed on the scattering mist.

"It was only a matter of time, my friend," he said, voice steady behind his helm. "Perturabo died by your hand. Horus Lupercal, the leader of this rebellion himself, is hounding for your blood. That it took them this long was the real surprise."

Hashirama gave a slight nod and began walking toward the place where the Gracious Deity Gates stood firm. Their tall red frames rose starkly from the snow, unmoving, casting deep shadows over the torn landscape. Batu fell into step beside him, cleaver lowering slightly in readiness.

When they reached the spot, however, there was only empty ground. The snow had been flattened beneath the gates, the earth scarred and cracked, but no trace remained of the daemons. Hashirama knelt, fingertips brushing lightly against the frozen soil, feeling the residual warmth left by the gates. Batu raised his cleaver again, helm slowly turning as he searched for movement.

"Did they escape?" Batu asked quietly.

Hashirama shook his head slowly. He pressed his palm flat against the ground for a moment longer, eyes narrowed slightly.

"No," he said finally. "Escape is impossible. The gates unraveled them, I think, purged their sense of selves and dissipated the pure Spiritual Energy that remained."

Batu lowered his weapon and glanced toward the empty space where the daemons had been pinned, the only sign of their presence the faint indentations left by struggling limbs. After a moment, he nodded once, armor creaking slightly as he straightened.

"Very well," Batu said calmly. "I will not claim to understand your powers, my friend. But I trust you."

Batu glanced briefly toward the horizon, distant fires burning red and orange in the fading mist. "Shall we head for the Imperial Palace, then?"

Hashirama stood and turned fully, settling his robes back into place.

"Right," he said, already walking. "Let's go before they send more."

"I spotted a few vehicles in the armory of this facility," Batu said as he moved to keep pace. "One of them is heavy enough to shield us from the dust storms. If it still runs."

Hashirama nodded once. "Lead the way."

They crossed the wrecked compound without speaking. Snow mixed with ash beneath their boots, crunching underfoot. The armory had partially collapsed, but its hangar doors still stood open. Inside, wrapped in shadow and silence, was a low-slung beast of metal. Batu stepped toward it without hesitation, running one gauntlet across its hull. His fingers tapped a control panel, then struck it harder. The lights came alive after a few seconds, humming faintly.

He looked back.

"It's called a Leman Russ Battle Tank, so named after the Wolf King himself," he said, a faint thrum of satisfaction in his voice. "Fuel tank's half-full at best, but it'll get us close enough. I wager we'll reach one of the Hive Cities near the Palace before it gives out."

"Very well," Hashirama said, stepping inside after him.

The interior was cramped and dim. Batu took the forward controls. Hashirama sat cross-legged near the back, resting his hands atop his knees, eyes half-lidded. Meditating. The soft vibrations of the engine rumbled beneath him, steady and slow. Each breath kindled and rejuvenated his mind and body. The battle had drained little of his Chakra, but he would lose more if he let it idle, and so he did not.

Batu operated the vehicle by himself. The tank crushed debris and scattered bone beneath its treads. They avoided the main roads, circling the edges of skirmishes when possible. Once, a group of scouts fired on them with lasguns. Batu kept driving. The tank did not slow. The scouts did not fire again.

Two days passed like that. Blackened skies. Wrecked towers. Shifting dust and blind snow. They did not stop.

Then the fuel ran dry. The engine sputtered and died mid-climb over a slope of crushed stone. Batu cursed under his breath and kicked the controls once before hauling himself out through the top hatch.

Hashirama followed.

They emerged into the cold wind. The slope overlooked a valley of torn ground and smoking rubble. Ahead, rising from the westmost edge of the Himalazyas, was a Hive City, ringed with fire. Trenches and barricades marked the outskirts. Dozens of banners flew above the ramparts, all of them traitorous. From the base of the Hive to the horizon stretched camps and artillery emplacements, all aimed eastward.

Beyond it, behind great walls of blackstone and golden spires rising into ash-heavy skies, stood the Imperial Palace.

Hashirama sighed. "This looks… problematic."

AN: Chapter 30 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport407denheim7/9/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 27: New View contentdenheim16/9/2025Add bookmark#801Batu nodded once, helm tilting toward the sprawl below. "Indeed, it does. But it is no longer an unfamiliar sight for you, is it, my friend?"

Hashirama's gaze swept the expanse. The land ahead rolled in waves of steel and fire, siege lines stretching until they vanished into the haze. Gun emplacements stood in ranks without end, barrels fixed toward the Hive and the Palace beyond. Each discharge lit the horizon, and the air trembled under the weight of constant bombardment. The ground beneath their feet never stilled; it quivered underfoot, a low, ceaseless shudder that shook loose the frost and sent pebbles rolling down the slope.

In the distance, lines of armor crawled forward like black scars across the pale earth. Between them moved tides of infantry, so many that the snow turned dark where they marched. Smoke belched from engines and siege towers, drifting upward to mix with the overcast sky until earth and heavens blurred into one ashen whole. The air reeked of promethium and burnt metal, and the wind carried a chorus of dull booms and grinding treads.

Hashirama measured the scale in silence. Just the section before him must have held billions—men, machines, things that could hardly be called either. In the narrow world of his birth, wars had been fought with thousands. Here, armies filled the horizon. This was a siege without end, fought on a scale that swallowed all measure.

He let his eyes linger on the nearest batteries, each one firing in careful rhythm, and on the craters blooming in the distance where the shells landed. The Hive stood beyond it all, a black mass rising from the ruin, its walls lost in smoke and fire. Behind it, the golden spires of the Palace reached upward, dim through the haze, yet unbroken.

"Not unfamiliar," he said at last, voice steady. "But no less appalling. Do we lift the siege lines here?"

A single, decisive blow could break this stretch of the front. Batu turned his helm toward him. "Do you have a viable method to do so?"

"Of course." Hashirama nodded once. "It will cost me, but nothing beyond what I can manage. I can put a large number of them to sleep, same as I did with the titans—only greater in range and strength. They'll be even more vulnerable to it."

Batu's answer came without hesitation. "Then do so, my friend."

"Stand back."

Hashirama drew in a slow breath. Sage Mode flared in an instant, his features marked by its power. His hands blurred through a dozen seals before the wind between them had time to shift. The pull on his chakra was sharp—more than a third of his reserves gone in a heartbeat.

"Sage Art: Birth of a World of Flowering Trees!"

The ground convulsed. The earth tore itself apart in a roar of splintering stone and shrieking metal. A thousand roots, each the width of towers, burst upward through the frost and rubble. They moved with crushing speed, lashing out across the siege lines. Entire fortifications vanished under the sweep of a single tendril. Tanks split in two, gun batteries snapped and folded into themselves, and lines of soldiers scattered in panic before being swept aside.

The roots did not stop. They surged onward, stretching for dozens of kilometers, branching further into smaller limbs that wormed through trenches and barricades. Dust and debris rose in great choking clouds, pierced by flashes of gunfire and the hollow thuds of collapsing structures. The sound of screaming and metal tearing carried far through the haze.

From the largest tendrils, vast buds emerged. They swelled, then split open in slow, deliberate blooms. Massive flowers, their petals glistening in pale light, released waves of golden-green pollen. The haze rolled out over the battlefield, carried on the shifting wind. It seeped into every gap and opening, curling low through the siege lines.

The effect was immediate. Soldiers staggered mid-run. Voices broke into choked gasps. Engines faltered as their crews slumped over controls. Astartes froze in their armor, bolters falling from their hands, their immense frames collapsing into the dirt. The pollen settled into every corner, filling the air until the entire section of the siege lay buried in its glow.

In moments, the noise began to die. Gunfire slowed to a stop. The constant pounding of artillery faded, leaving only the faint echo of shells from far down the line. Bodies lay strewn across the broken ground, unmoving. Only the distant thunder of the wider war remained, far from this quieted stretch.

Batu stepped forward, the hum of his armor's lightning fading against the silence. His helm turned, scanning the devastation. "That Hive City can finally breathe, at least, and we now have a straight path into the palace."

Hashirama nodded. "Shall we?"

The air bent and shimmered before either could take a step. A weight pressed down on the field, vast and cold, drawn from a well of pure Spiritual Energy. Hashirama's gaze tightened. His hand struck the plates of Batu's armor, pushing a stream of chakra into the metal. The blood-marked seals carved into the plates flared to life. Lightning rippled across the surface in crawling arcs.

The ground rumbled. A heatless wind swept over them as the air split apart in front of the siege lines. The tear bled red light. It widened, ripping through space, and from it came a river of blood that poured without end. The stench of copper and smoke filled the air.

Rage followed. Not in shouts or cries, but in the oppressive weight of it, pressing against the bones.

The first through were lesser demons. Horned shapes, manlike in outline but twisted. Their hides burned red, their legs ending in black hooves. Jagged swords and hooked axes swung in their hands as they broke into a run.

"Bloodletters!" Batu moved first. Lightning flared across his frame as his cleaver came up. He hit them in a blur, cutting through the first two without slowing. Their bodies split apart in sprays of black smoke and embers.

Hashirama's fingers formed the seals almost faster than sight. "Wood Release: Wood Clone."

The ground answered him. Shapes burst from the earth—hundreds of them—each a perfect copy armed and ready. They met the charge head-on, spears and blades in hand.

The Bloodletters crashed into them, mindlessly hacking at the wooden shinobi. Splinters flew with every cut, the ground underfoot turning to muck from blood and sap. Equally, many Bloodletters were immediately overwhelmed by superior hand-to-hand prowess, their heads twisted or broken. There were too many of them, Hashirama mused, to bind with his roots and corporealize and then kill. And doing so would waste too much of his chakra.

Hashirama held his chakra close, drawing on nothing of his Sage energy yet. This was only the first wave. The tear still gaped wide, and beyond its shifting edges something else moved—larger than the Bloodletters, heavier, and steeped in a power far deeper. Its presence poured across the battlefield like a shadow, and even Perturabo's iron weight seemed small against it. And so, because of that, Hashirama limited his mode of fighting. Or… perhaps now was the best time to experiment.

One of the Bloodletters came at him in a leap, its roar cutting through the clash of steel and the pounding of feet. Hashirama met it without stepping back. His hands caught the swing of its blade and turned it aside. He shifted his weight, driving a knee into its ribs, then wrenched its right arm until the bone snapped. The limb hung useless. The left arm followed, twisted until the joints gave way. Its weapon fell to the dirt with a dull clang.

The creature bellowed, black smoke curling from its mouth. Hashirama's gaze fixed on it, steady. The noise of the field dimmed. His eyes traced the shape of its being, reading the flow and weight of its Spiritual Energy. It was not flesh and so it could never truly die until it was corporealized.

He drew his own energy inward, pulling from the coil in his gut, condensing it down to a single point at the tip of his right forefinger. An equal measure of physical energy to match what the demon was made of. When he struck, he drove that point into its chest just below the collarbone.

The effect was immediate. The two energies fused, locking into the shape of chakra. The demon's form thickened, its hide no longer a shimmer of half-light but solid flesh and blood. Breath hitched in its throat.

Hashirama took hold of its horns and turned its head until the neck broke. The body sagged in his grip before falling to the ground, limp–dead. Mortal.

The sound of its death carried across the din. The other Bloodletters answered with harsher cries, hacking into the wall of wood and flesh, their blades catching on clone-formed limbs. The wound in the air stretched wider, the edges shuddering. More demons came through, horns and steel and eyes like coals, spilling into the killing ground in an unbroken press.

Another came for him. Its stride was long, its weapon already raised. Hashirama stepped into it, his eyes tracking the lines of energy that made its form. The measure came to him at once. He didn't bother with the arms this time. He set his right hand, index finger forward, and drove it into the thing's side. Physical energy bled into it, locking with the spiritual frame and forcing it into flesh. Before it could react, he took a kunai in his left hand and pushed it through the creature's eye, deep into the brain. It collapsed at his feet.

Demonic Physical Infusion Jutsu. Not the perfect name, but it was good enough. The first and only technique he had shaped for the sole purpose of ending a spiritual entity, something no other Shinobi had ever needed to do. It was crude and primitive in its application, despite its efficacy. Tobirama would have pared it down, stripped the waste from it, and made it quick. But Tobirama was not here. Between the two of them, Hashirama had raw power, but Tobirama had endless creativity with Jutsu Creation.

His clones moved as one, the knowledge already theirs through the link. They wove through the press, striking at any demon that came within reach, forcing each into flesh before cutting it down. Batu caught on to the shift in the fight. He turned from the unending swarm at the breach and drove himself at the newly solid foes, his cleaver biting deep into them with each swing. The ground grew slick beneath them.

One by one, the red-skinned warriors fell. The breach still yawned, but the flow began to thin. A final handful of Bloodletters forced their way through before the wound in the world gave a low, grinding shudder and closed in on itself. The air where it had been hung heavy, still tasting of blood and smoke.

But the battle was not done.

The ground shook in heavy pulses, each one rolling through the stone beneath their feet. All the blood that had poured through the wound in the air began to hiss, steam rising from it in thin, writhing threads. Boils formed on its surface and burst, releasing a stench like scorched meat. Overhead, the sky darkened as crimson clouds gathered, swirling in slow circles. The air thickened. Then came the sound—drums, deep and relentless, beating in time with the tremors underfoot.

The wound in the world began to stretch wider, its edges straining and fraying. A shadow formed beyond it, and then a massive hand, the skin the color of burning coals, burst through. The fingers sank into the edges of the breach and tore them apart as though it were fabric. Fire licked along its knuckles.

A roar followed, guttural and drawn from some depth of rage that seemed without end. It rattled the teeth in their jaws, shook the dust from the earth, and set the air to trembling. The breach tore wide.

It stepped through like a storm given form. A rush of hateful spiritual energy swept out ahead of it, slamming into them like a wave. The ground split under its first step, hooved feet driving cracks through the stone. Each movement carried a weight that made the land shudder.

The creature's head was crowned with four curling horns, black at the roots and red-hot at the tips. Two vast wings, their membranes wreathed in fire, flared from its back, scattering ash. Its hands gripped an axe as long as a mast, the blade scored and dark with old blood. Eyes blazed in its skull, white-gold light spilling from their sockets, and fire leaked from the corners of its mouth, dripping in long ropes to the ground where it sizzled and smoked.

The voice came again, louder, driven into the air with the force of a blow.

"I AM DOOMBREED!"

It spread its wings, the flames along them roaring higher.

"I AM SKULL LORD!"

It was Doombreed.

Even before the name formed in thought, the truth of it was already there—etched into the marrow of the moment. The shape of the wings, the molten weight of its presence, the cadence of that voice that was not a voice but the ringing of war-drums and thunderous hooves in the soul.

It had been an age since that shadow last fell upon Terra. Thousands upon thousands of years. The last time the Emperor had looked upon Doombreed with his own eyes was nearly fifteen millennia past—long before the Age of Strife, before the rise of the Imperium, before Mankind had even learned to chart its own stars. The years between had been a gulf of fire and ruin, and still, the memory was sharp.

Doombreed—first and most terrible of Khorne's Daemon Princes. Eldest, strongest, and most faithful to the Lord of Skulls. Angron himself, in his current form as a mindless engine of slaughter, could not match the fullness of Doombreed's strength when the Prince walked in his prime. The galaxy had forgotten that truth. The Emperor had not.

And why would he?

He knew its True Name. Had known it before the warp had taken the man it once was. Before immortality had been forged in blood and chains. Before the first offering of skulls had been laid at a god's feet. In the most ancient days of Old Earth—before the advent of the steam engine, before the wheel had turned in iron—the Emperor had known the one who would one day wear this crown of horns and fire. How could he forget? After all, the man who would become Doombreed forged the world's first Great Empire, spanning thousands upon thousands of miles of territory and burying millions of corpses beneath the trampling hooves of the greatest horsemen in the known world at the time, spilling so much blood that it'd awakened the slumbering Khorne.

Now the daemon stood here again, drawn half into the Materium, its form bleeding into reality like molten iron through a cracked mold. A partial summoning, unfinished and imperfect. In this state, Batu and Hashirama together could bring it down. The task would not be easy, but it could be done. Yet the battle would drag on, precious minutes lost. Minutes the Palace could not spare. He needed to get Hashirama into the Webway as quickly as possible. If there was even a chance that the Human Webway could be fixed–if it could still be saved–then he was going to sacrifice anything and everything he had to; for the future of humanity, no price was too great. And the power that Hashirama wielded just so happened to be the same stuff that the Webway was made of.

Using a Daemon Prince's true name did not come without cost and he'd already expended so much of his power, trying to prevent the Webway Portal from tearing itself apart into a warp rift. The Emperor made his choice.

"Temujin."

The name left his lips as a whisper, but the sound carried like thunder. Even as he spoke it, a bolt of golden lightning tore across the distance between dimensions, spearing through the ragged wound in reality in his throne room. It struck with the weight of a supernova, searing a thousand daemons to ash in its passing. The brilliance burned through both the Immaterium and the Materium, its edges ragged with the raw stuff of dreams and creation. Not only Batu and Hashirama heard it. Not only the daemon. Every living thing in the Sol System felt it, heard it—not with ears, but in the deep place of the self where fear and memory lived. It rang in the bones of mortals and the hearts of warriors. It rattled the chains of bound daemons and stirred the dust in ancient places that had not been touched in ten thousand years.

"Cease."

The command was not loud, yet it bent time and space in a flash of golden fire. And it blasted through whatever mechanism of free will existed within the Daemon Prince.

Doombreed froze.

The fires along his wings guttered low, as if robbed of wind. The axe dipped a fraction, still clenched in one great claw. And for a heartbeat—just one—the eldest of Khorne's princes stood as still as a statue beneath the Emperor's gaze. Unfortunately, he could not destroy the Daemon Prince by himself–not without leaving the Golden Throne and dooming all of Terra.

He turned his attention to both Batu and Hashirama.

"Destroy him quickly!"

—

Hashirama moved before the last syllable faded. Sage energy surged through his limbs, the earth answering his will in an instant. The ground buckled, then split as roots thicker than siege towers erupted from the soil. They coiled around Doombreed's legs, winding up to the knees, the thighs, the waist. Another knot of them snaked over his arms, pinning the axe to his side. Bark split under the strain as the daemon's muscles bunched, but the bindings held.

Drawing in breath, Hashirama condensed raw Physical Energy into the tip of his right forefinger. The power gathered until it burned, a weight perfectly measured to match the daemon's own Spiritual Energy. It had to be perfectly equal–or else Chakra would not form and the jutsu would fail. In the instant before Doombreed could wrench himself free, Hashirama leapt.

He landed on the daemon's massive head, feet finding purchase against iron-hard hide. His hand shot forward. The index finger struck just above the ridged brow, driving through the skin as if through silk. The Physical Energy poured in like molten lead, locking into the daemon's frame. It with the massive Spiritual Energy and became chakra, anchoring the entity wholly to the material world. No more half-light, no more smoke—Doombreed was flesh and blood now, every fibre of his body bound to the physical realm.

The change hit him like a blow. The wings flared once in instinct, fire shedding in great sparks, and the hooves gouged deep trenches into the earth. But there was no retreat.

Hashirama dropped back, his heels hitting the churned soil. With a thought, the roots constricting Doombreed tightened with impossible force. There was a sound like mountains grinding together as joints snapped. One arm tore free, trailing blood that steamed where it touched the ground. Then the other. The legs followed, ripped away at the hip, the knee, until the beast was reduced to a writhing trunk held fast in a nest of living wood.

The roots coiled inward. Bark split as their girth swelled, each tendril knotting tighter until the pressure built past bone and armor. The last thing to escape was a roar—half challenge, half agony—that rattled the clouds overhead. Then the torso gave way.

The roots crushed inward, splintering ribs, collapsing the chest, and finally bursting the body into a spray of black-red gore. The sound was deep and thunderous, like the snapping of a vast ship's keel. And then, Doombreed's remains disintegrated into burning ashes that fluttered into impotent motes of dust in the wind.

"Was that the Emperor?" Hashirama asked, wheezing softly. He might've possessed regenerative abilities greater than that of even Jinchuriki, but the constant running and fighting, activating and then deactivating Sage Mode, was taking its toll; he'd lost count of how many days it'd been since he awoke in this place. Still, he had more than enough left in him, by his estimation, to fight for another two weeks, before he'd need food. Otherwise, his combat performance was going to decline rapidly. "That voice in the air and that incredible Spiritual Energy."

"It was the Emperor, indeed," Batu said, sighing as well. "His psychic strength is unmatched. Come, my friend; let us hurry into the Imperial Palace. The Emperor needs your help. Everything else can wait."

The Astartes turned without a word, his armored tread shaking loose small stones from the broken path. Hashirama followed, matching his pace. The air still carried the acrid tang of burning promethium, drifting up from the shattered siege lines behind them. Ahead, the land climbed toward a vast shape that dominated the horizon.

The Hive City rose from the plain like a mountain forged by human hands. Its walls were a labyrinth of steel and stone, studded with gun emplacements that tracked the sky and the ground with slow, deliberate movements. The outer layers were scarred from years of bombardment, whole sections blackened or twisted, yet the city still stood. Through breaches in its outer curtain, Hashirama caught glimpses of tiered hab-blocks rising one atop another until they vanished into the haze. Roads wound through the mass like veins, thick with the movement of armored columns and infantry.

It was immense. In every direction, its sprawl continued until the curve of the land hid its edges. The tallest towers cut into the clouds, their lights dim in the overcast sky. Steam vented from conduits the size of rivers, and the hum of great engines echoed even at this distance.

Beyond the Hive, higher still, but connected to it with what appeared to be a gargantuan golden bridge, the Imperial Palace loomed. It was not a true palace by any metric or definition that Hashirama knew of, but a fortress the size of a nation, its walls stretching farther than the eye could follow. Massive bastions and towers rose from its perimeter, each one bristling with weapons. Between the walls lay wide avenues and open courtyards large enough to hold armies.

The entire structure gleamed faintly, the gold of its spires catching what little light broke through the clouds. Around it shimmered a translucent barrier, its surface rippling with energy. It hung in the air like a second wall, without seam or opening. Hashirama could feel its presence even without touching it, a constant low pressure against his senses; it was almost like the Four Red Yang Formation Jutsu. But the weave of power was unlike any chakra technique he knew—steady, unyielding, and drawn from machinery far beyond his understanding.

They kept moving, the path sloping upward toward the first gates. The sounds of the war beyond the walls faded, replaced by the distant thrum of the Palace's great defenses firing back at the enemy.

The gates of the Hive City opened with a deep, mechanical rumble that rolled across the road in front of them. Chains as thick as trees pulled the massive slabs of reinforced metal aside, revealing the guarded passage within. The air inside was warmer, heavy with the mingled scents of oil, smoke, and the sweat of thousands.

Batu spoke briefly with the soldiers who met them at the threshold. Their armor was battered and their faces drawn from days without rest, but they stood straight and kept their weapons at the ready. Batu returned to Hashirama and explained that their arrival had been expected. Word had already reached the Hive's commander, and a transport had been prepared for them—one that would carry them to the Imperial Palace at the fastest possible speed.

The vehicle waited just inside the gate. It was large, squat, and armored on all sides, its engine growling in a steady rhythm. A driver sat in the forward compartment, hands resting on thick levers. The rear hatch was already open. Batu motioned for Hashirama to follow, and they climbed inside. The door closed behind them with a heavy clang, sealing away the noise of the gate.

The ride began at once. The transport rumbled forward through the Hive's streets, accelerating as the way cleared ahead. The road wound through dense districts of stone and metal, where buildings rose in sharp tiers and narrow alleys cut between them like dark veins. Hashirama saw defenders in firing positions on rooftops and balconies, their rifles braced against the edges. Barricades blocked many of the side streets, and the smell of burnt powder hung in the air.

Even after his attack on the siege lines, the Hive was not at peace. They passed knots of soldiers exchanging fire with enemies hidden in the outer ruins. Further on, armored walkers clattered through the streets, their weapons tracking upward toward the sky. Civilians moved in hurried lines under the watch of armed escorts, some carrying children or clutching small bundles of possessions.

The journey was long. Nearly two hours passed from the gate to the far edge of the Hive, and the hum of the engine was a constant presence in that time. The streets gradually widened, and the buildings became larger, more fortified. Then the Hive fell away behind them, replaced by the open stretch of the approach to the Palace.

Ahead lay the bridge—a span of stone and metal so wide it could have held an entire army. Towers rose from its sides at intervals, each one manned and armed. The water far below was dark, its surface broken by the movement of patrol craft.

As they rolled onto the bridge, another vehicle came into view, this one unlike any Hashirama had yet seen. Its body was shaped for flight, broad wings folded along its sides. Gold and black livery gleamed under the pale light. It waited at the midpoint of the span, surrounded by figures who stood like statues.

They were taller than Batu by at least two heads, their presence unmistakable even at a distance. Each wore armor of gold that caught every flicker of light and turned it to golden fire. Crimson plumes rose from their helms, and in their hands they carried long, ornate weapons that were part spear, part blade, and part firearm.

Batu spoke quietly as the transport slowed to a halt. These, he said, were the Adeptus Custodes—the Guardians of the Emperor. They did not simply defend the Palace; they were the Emperor's own chosen, and their duties were carried out with absolute authority.

The Custodians stepped forward as the transport stopped. One of them spoke briefly with Batu, his voice steady but carrying the weight of command. The message was clear. They were to escort Hashirama and Batu into the Imperial Palace without delay. The Emperor himself had ordered that Hashirama's passage be secured above all else. No obstruction would be tolerated, no interference allowed.

The winged craft's engines began to hum, the sound rising in pitch. The nearest Custodian gestured toward the open ramp at its side. Batu moved toward it without hesitation, and Hashirama followed, feeling the heat of the engines as he approached. The moment they stepped aboard, the ramp lifted, sealing them inside. The Custodians followed, taking positions along the interior as the craft rose from the bridge and turned toward the towering walls ahead.