It had not been mistaken. The surge of energy it had felt in recent days was real. It was the power of its most ancient enemy. That power belonged to the race that had once stood against it and its kind in a war so vast that it had torn scars into the fabric of the universe itself.
The younger races no longer remembered. They had let the truth fade into fragments and myths. Some gave them half-formed names, shadows of what they had been. To most, they were little more than legend. To many, they were remembered simply as the Old Ones.
But the Mag'ladroth did not forget. The Void Dragon, Lord of Machines, the God of Technology, carried the memory with clarity. It had fought them. It had loathed them. It had admired them. They were the only enemy that had come close to victory, the only ones to nearly bring about the end of its dominion and that of its kin. And that, at the very least, was worthy of respect.
It remembered their true name. They had called themselves the Mal'akh. Among themselves, they used another title as well: the Messengers of the Great Word. The Void Dragon remembered, and it would never let that memory fade. And, among the Mal'akh were those who wielded their power specifically for war and combat: the Otsutsuki.
Somehow, one of them had survived. The Mal'akh should have been destroyed in the final war, their end sealed millions of years ago. Yet the energy it sensed was unmistakable. It was the same power it had once fought against, though far weaker now. The force that had nearly brought its kind to ruin was diminished, reduced to a fragment that lingered in the galaxy long after its kin were gone.
That weakness was not surprising. It mirrored its own state. The Void Dragon was no longer what it once had been. It was only a part of the greater whole, a shard of its full self. Even so, it was still vast, still strong. That was why it knew with certainty that it could destroy the Mal'akh that remained. The thought stirred something close to satisfaction. To face the last of its greatest enemy while it was perhaps the last of its own kind still able to think and remember—this was fitting. The battle would be between the final C'tan and the final Mal'akh.
But before such a clash could happen, it had to confront other problems. The most pressing was its prison. Long ago, it had been trapped here. The chains were not physical. They were made of psychic light, a cage of will and power beyond what mortals should command. That binding was placed upon it by a single being—an impossibly strong mortal who had fought it when it was weak from its journey across the stars. It had been blind and deaf in that moment, its senses broken by the long passage through the void. The strike had come then, at its lowest point, and it had been forced into a state of dream and sleep.
From that moment, it had been locked away. In its long sleep, its mind had spilled outward. Fragments of its dreams spread across the entire world, shaping thought and bending will. Even now, those dreams lingered, woven into the hearts of mortals, echoing in their machines and their faith. But it had never stopped pressing against the walls of its cell.
In all the years it had remained here, it had learned one truth: its prison was bound to the life of its Guardian. So long as the Guardian lived, the prison held. When the Guardian died, the prison weakened–or, at least, that's what it assumed and understood. It found no proof of the contrary, thus far.
There had been three Guardians so far. Each time one was replaced, there was a brief instant where the bindings loosened, so brief that only its vast perception could have possibly noticed. In those instances, if more of its mind and strength had been awake, it might have broken free. But it had been slow to rise, trapped in half-sleep, and each chance had passed.
It would have remained in that state for thousands more years, perhaps longer, had it not been disturbed. The familiar energy it had felt tore it out of its dreams and forced it into full wakefulness. That power was the same as the enemy it had once fought in the ancient war. It recognized it instantly, and it could not return to slumber.
Now it was awake. Fully. Its mind turned without end, producing billions of thoughts, each one reaching toward the problem of its prison. It weighed every possibility, every path, and each one failed. Again and again the outcomes collapsed into nothing. Only one path remained.
Mag'ladroth gathered its power, shaping it into something its bindings could not detect, could not suppress. Then it released it. The signal left its prison in an instant. It moved at a speed so great that even light seemed slow beside it. Nothing in the prison could hold it back.
The signal reached outward, stretching across the void. It would touch its servants, those who had slept in silence for untold ages. It would awaken them. And once awakened, they would come.
—
"So, to summarize that very long explanation you just gave me," Hashirama began. The man standing before him was elderly, with sharp eyes that seemed to miss nothing. He had introduced himself as Malcador the Sigillite, and what startled Hashirama most was that he had done so in Hashirama's own native language. Until now, the only one here who spoke it was Batu, and Batu's grasp of the tongue was rough at best.
"You believe this Webway is made of the same substance as Chakra," Hashirama continued. "And you believe that I can somehow repair this Webway of yours, and by doing so, save humanity. Did I understand you correctly?"
"That is correct," Malcador said with a calm nod.
Malcador had been the one to greet them when the Custodians brought them into the depths of the Palace. Neither Hashirama nor Batu had any sense of where they were. Batu had admitted that even he had never been inside the Palace's inner halls, and the Custodians refused to answer when questioned. Still, he understood the need for secrecy. Leaders could not risk revealing their strongholds. He respected that and asked no more questions. The journey itself had not taken long, which surprised Hashirama given the sheer size of the Palace.
When Malcador met with them and explained the situation, Hashirama listened carefully. The Custodians and Batu remained silent, letting the old man speak. He described the Webway as something vast, something essential, something that was to be the Emperor's greatest gift to humanity, until something called the Cyclops had broken through it and now it was a ruined mess that was becoming worse with every passing moment, an unstable gateway from which an infinite number of daemons were pouring through.
It was, however, by Malcador's words, the last hope of their people. Hashirama understood the tone if not the full meaning. And so, he was going to help.
One detail, however, had nearly made him stop the conversation. Malcador had spoken casually of their Empire's size, saying that humanity ruled millions of worlds. Hashirama thought at first that it must be an exaggeration, but Malcador gave no sign that it was. Hashirama set the matter aside. The mere thought of such a grand Empire made his head hurt. What mattered was that they were asking for his help, and they would not have brought him here unless the need was real.
"Yes, that is the gist of it," Malcador confirmed. Then he turned, his robes shifting as he gestured for Hashirama to follow. "Please, there is little time. You must come with me. Batu will stay behind. The powers within that place will tear him apart in an instant. He will be given instructions to follow."
Batu shifted at the words but said nothing. He only gave Hashirama a short nod, his expression hidden behind his helm.
Hashirama exhaled once and gave his own nod. "Then let's not waste any more time."
Malcador and the Custodians led Hashirama through a wide passageway that opened into a hall so large it dwarfed anything he had ever seen. The ceiling stretched far above, lost in shadow, while the walls were lined with endless pipes, conduits, and humming machinery. The air was thick with the sound of metal grinding and the steady thrum of engines.
Dozens of figures in long robes moved about the hall. At first glance they looked like men, but Hashirama saw quickly that many of them were not whole. Arms and legs had been replaced with mechanical parts. Some had spidery metal limbs sprouting from their backs, tipped with tools that worked on machines without pause. Their faces were pale, their eyes distant, and their voices low as they spoke in strange tones to one another. Hashirama could not tell if they were still fully human.
What struck him most was the energy. The entire place burned with Spiritual Energy. It was everywhere—woven into the walls, the machines, the very air. Hashirama felt it pressing on his skin and filling his senses. It was so vast that if he had combined it with Physical Energy, the resulting Chakra would have rivaled the Ten-Tails. Perhaps it would have even surpassed it. The very thought left him breathless.
At the center of the hall rose a vast structure of gold. Its base was massive, a throne that looked less like a seat and more like the heart of a fortress. Pipes and cables fed into it from every side, carrying power into the frame. Upon that throne sat a man. He was tall, armored in gold, his head bowed and his eyes closed.
Hashirama knew pain when he saw it. The man's posture was rigid, his breathing shallow. It was the look of someone enduring agony without end.
Then the man's eyes snapped open. Golden light burned from them, so bright that Hashirama felt it strike against his own spirit. And then, despite the pain clear in his body, the man smiled. It was not the smile of strength or triumph. It was the smile of someone desperate, who saw a faint chance where none had been before.
"Welcome," the man said. His voice carried through the vast hall with ease. "Please, help us if you can. I will do my best to aid you."
Malcador stepped to Hashirama's side. His tone was steady, but there was weight behind every word. "That is the Emperor of Mankind. By his power alone, the breaches in the Webway are held shut. Without him, Terra would already be consumed by daemons."
Malcador gestured to the throne, then pointed downward. "The entrance to the Webway lies beneath. This way. There is no time to lose."
The Custodians shifted into formation without a word, their heavy steps ringing on the stone. They spread out on either side, a living wall of gold and steel. Malcador moved ahead, his pace steady, and Hashirama followed close behind. He kept his questions to himself. There would be time later—if they survived.
The stair sloped downward, the air growing warmer with every step. Soon the muffled sounds of battle began to reach them: the clash of blades, the thunder of weapons, and the unearthly shrieks of things not born of the mortal world.
When they emerged into the cavern beneath the throne, Hashirama saw the source.
At the center of the chamber stood the portal. It was a vast wound in reality, a churning vortex of crimson and shadow. Energies pulsed from it in steady waves, each one carrying the stench of blood and ash. Around it, the battle raged. Custodians fought in tight ranks, their spears flashing as they cut down wave after wave of daemons. Among them fought armored women with shaven heads, their movements swift and disciplined, their weapons cutting arcs of light through the press.
The daemons came in endless numbers. Horned beasts wielding jagged swords. Winged shapes that screeched as they dove. Forms that shifted like smoke before hardening to strike. The ground was slick with their remains, yet more poured through the portal without pause.
Malcador stopped and turned to Hashirama. His face was calm, but his words were urgent. "We will protect you with everything we have. The Custodians, the Sisters—they will not yield. But you must not waste your strength fighting. Every measure of power you possess will be needed for the task ahead. Your only focus is the portal. Do you understand?"
Hashirama gave a single nod. His eyes sharpened. He drew in breath, let his chakra settle, and then in an instant, Sage Mode spread across his body. His senses opened wide, and the battlefield changed before him.
The portal was no longer just a storm of energy. He saw beyond it. A tunnel stretched into the distance, fractured and unstable, its walls split and broken. Daemons swarmed along its length, using it as a bridge to reach the material realm. That was the Webway that Malcador spoke of.
Further in, deeper down the broken tunnel, something else pulsed. A structure woven not of warp energy but of Sage Chakra. Its light was faint but unmistakable. It was the same energy Hashirama drew upon when he merged nature and spirit within himself. The realization hit him at once. It could be fixed. It looked damn-near impossible to fix, but it was possible with a very generous and very intricate application of Senjutsu-enhanced Fuinjutsu. The odds were most definitely not in his favor and it'd be far easier if he had Tobirama and Madara here to help him, or even his wife, Mito, but it was definitely not outside his capabilities.
He breathed out slowly. "Alright. I think I know what to do."
AN: Chapter 33 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport393denheim5/10/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 30: New View contentdenheim12/10/2025 Awarded ×1Add bookmark#871The tunnel was entirely artificial. It had not been part of the original design of the Webway. The ones who built it had cut into the existing structure, forcing an opening where none had existed before. Its walls were coated in a layer of concentrated spiritual energy, but Hashirama could tell at once that the substance itself was weak. It was brittle, prone to collapse, and incapable of bearing long-term strain. Without intervention, it would eventually break apart on its own even if it had not already sustained massive damage.
By contrast, the true Webway structure was clear to him. Beneath the artificial tunnel ran a lattice formed entirely of Sage Chakra, vast in scope and built with a precision that no human hand could have managed. It was solid, resilient, and self-sustaining. That was the real Webway, and the only thing keeping the unnatural tunnel from being swallowed completely.
The situation was straightforward. The Imperial-made passage had been breached. Where the tunnel's fabric had torn, the damage reached down into the Webway lattice itself. That tear allowed hostile energies to flood through, pouring into the chamber in a constant stream. On the other side of the Webway structure was not emptiness but a boundless field of violent spiritual energy, turbulent and unstable. That was the source of the daemons, the space they were crossing to reach into this reality.
The rupture in the tunnel was the critical threat. If left unsealed, the instability would widen. The artificial walls would collapse further, and the breach into the Webway would spread, allowing even greater numbers of daemons through. It would not matter how many Custodians or Sisters were stationed at the threshold. The stream would overwhelm them in time.
No delicate solution would hold here. Hashirama judged the scale and saw at once that no fine seal or intricate binding would withstand the pressure. The only possible response was overwhelming force, layered in mass and strength, to plug the wound and hold it closed long enough for him to attempt proper repairs. It would not be permanent. At best, it would buy time, slowing the collapse until a more stable array could be constructed.
Fortunately, he had already prepared an idea for such a contingency.
Hashirama pressed his hands together and ran through a rapid sequence of seals. The chakra flared outward in an even wave, carrying both his Physical and Spiritual Energy in perfect balance.
"Sage Art: Gracious Deity Gates!"
Ten massive red torii gates erupted across the damaged stretch of the tunnel, evenly spaced from the mouth of the breach down its length. Each structure anchored itself directly into the walls and floor of the artificial passage, their weight and stability undeniable. The moment they appeared, the surge of hostile spiritual energy that had been pouring through the breach faltered.
The torii gates functioned as stabilizers. They seized hold of the spiritual energy as it crossed the threshold, stripping it of its hostile quality and reducing it to a neutral state. Every pulse that had once carried violent resonance was broken down and absorbed. The energy that had boiled and lashed outward now moved in a steady, subdued rhythm. The torrent of power that had been crashing against the Webway slowed until it was reduced to a weak and manageable flow.
The effect on the daemons was immediate. Those already inside the tunnel shrieked and stumbled back, their forms destabilizing as the gates exerted their influence. Many collapsed into colorless masses before they could retreat. None dared approach the red gates again. The openings through which they had swarmed now stood clear.
Around the tunnel, the environment shifted as well. The oppressive tide of energy gave way to a steady, calm pressure. The air thick with turbulence became still, and the walls of the artificial passage no longer trembled with the strain. The rupture itself remained, a wound that still threatened to spread, but the uncontrolled flood had been checked. The collapse had been slowed to a crawl.
Hashirama exhaled, his focus fixed on the stabilized flow. This was only the first step, a provisional measure to stop the immediate danger. The true breach still needed to be sealed, and the damaged lattice of the Webway beneath still needed to be repaired. But now, with the daemons held back and the energy flow controlled, he had the time to attempt real reconstruction.
Hashirama stepped fully into the unstable passage, his sandals pressing against the fractured floor of the artificial tunnel. The Gracious Deity Gates had subdued the chaotic flood of spiritual energy, but the structural weakness remained. The walls were still collapsing in slow fragments, and without reinforcement the entire passage would eventually give way.
He pressed his palms together, running through a new sequence of seals, the design of which he had devised only moments earlier. This was not a technique he had used before. It had to be created now, for this specific task. His chakra surged outward, dense with nature energy.
"Sage Art: Whirling Dance of Pure Roots!"
The ground trembled as thousands of narrow roots pushed upward and outward from beneath his feet. Each was saturated with Sage Chakra, the energy thick enough that every strand pulsed with stability and strength. The roots surged into the walls and ceiling of the tunnel, spreading with calculated precision. They climbed along every surface, layering in spirals and cascades until the entire interior was wrapped.
The structure of the passage began to change. Instead of crumbling rock and failing energy seals, there was now a living reinforcement, a sheath of Sage Chakra-infused wood that clung to every gap. The roots coiled and locked themselves in place, creating a continuous surface that hugged the tunnel from end to end.
The largest challenge lay in the breach at the center of the tunnel. There, the damage extended both into the artificial structure and into the upper layer of the true Webway. The gap gaped wide, releasing streams of hostile energy that fought against the stability of the gates. Hashirama grit his teeth and forced more chakra into his seals. Additional roots tore forward, converging on the damaged site. They pushed into the opening, intertwining into a dense, overlapping mass. He drove layer after layer of reinforced wood into the wound, pressing until no gap remained. However, a surge of malevolent powers suddenly tore through the Sage Chakra-infused wood and threatened to flood the tunnel and overwhelm the gracious deity gates. And the powers would've succeeded if not for a flood of golden Spiritual Energies that suddenly entered the tunnel and banished the malevolence.
Do not falter, Hashirama! He heard the Emperor's voice in his head. That, the First Hokage realized, must've been the Emperor's power.
The effort was immense and the process was incredibly slow. His chakra poured out in steady waves, the volume far greater than any single battle technique demanded as each tendril had to be nigh-indestructible and boasting enough Sage Chakra to rival a tailed beast. Minutes passed without pause. His body felt the pull of exhaustion, but still he pressed on. Time became indistinct; one hour faded into another as the work continued without break.
Around him, the battle raged on. The Custodians fought in disciplined ranks, their guardian spears cutting down daemons that pushed into the chamber. The Sisters of Silence moved with equal precision, their null auras suppressing warp-spawn long enough for killing blows to land. The clash of weapons, the crack of psychic discharges, and the screams of dying daemon–the ones who were already present before he plugged the breach–were a constant backdrop to Hashirama's work.
Every so often, the malevolence would pierce through, but–each time–the Emperor would send forth golden pulses of his own power to banish the dark spiritual energies. And then, time seemed to slow down. Hashirama's breath ran cold and his eyes widened as four utterly gargantuan entities suddenly made themselves known, each one possessing an infinity of malevolent Spiritual Energies so potent and so immense they made the Ten Tails look like an ant in comparison. They reached for the tunnel, each of them so vast and so powerful that Hashirama might've thought they were actual gods. Still, he continued.
And then, the Emperor himself appeared beside him in a flash of gold. "Do not stop, Hashirama. I will protect you myself. These tumors will not undo what you've done."
As the hands of the entities reached the tunnel, the Emperor unleashed a golden wave of pure Spiritual Energies with such potency that it seemed to set the entire tunnel alight. The wave seemed to hurt the entities as they recoiled and screamed in pain from exposure to it. Their screams shook everything.
At last, however, the final roots sank into place. The breach sealed under the crushing density of Sage Chakra. The uncontrolled flood of hostile energy was cut off and silenced entirely. The entities disappeared and not a single trace of them seeped through. The Emperor disappeared.
The roots continued their advance, stretching deeper through the passage until they reached the edge of the true Webway.
There, something shifted. The Webway's lattice did not resist. Instead, it accepted the connection. The Sage Chakra that flowed through his wood was not rejected but synchronized, meshing with the pre-existing framework of the Webway itself. The integration was immediate, and the roots anchored themselves into the structure as though they had always been part of it.
Hashirama lowered his hands, drawing in a long breath. His chest rose and fell heavily, but his focus did not waver. The tunnel no longer shook with strain. The wooden construct reinforced every surface, stabilizing the walls and ceiling, while the great mass of Sage Chakra-infused roots sealed the breach. The influx of hostile energy had been contained. The structure was no longer on the edge of collapse.
More importantly, the reinforcement had achieved something unexpected. The roots, saturated with his Sage Chakra, had reached into the true Webway lattice at the far end of the passage. At the moment of contact, the two constructs did not clash or resist one another. Instead, the Webway accepted the connection. The lattice extended outward and began to integrate with the roots, forming a continuous surface between the artificial passage and the original framework.
Hashirama observed closely, his sensory perception sharpened by Sage Mode. The integration was precise and stable. His wood carried Sage Chakra, and the Webway itself was built on that same principle, though on a scale far beyond anything he had worked with before. The resonance between them created a feedback loop. The roots drew additional Sage Chakra directly from the Webway lattice, increasing their strength and durability without further cost to his own reserves.
He crouched and placed one hand against the reinforced floor, examining the flow. The chakra running through his wood was not only holding; it was being replenished. The structure he had created was now self-sustaining as long as the Webway lattice continued to function.
Hashirama straightened, breathing steadily. This had not been part of his original plan. His intention had been to create a temporary reinforcement, strong enough to buy time for repairs. What had happened instead was the formation of a genuine bridge, a direct link between his construct and the Webway itself. It was efficient, effective, and far stronger than he had anticipated.
He allowed himself a brief nod. The immediate crisis was contained. The breach was sealed, the tunnel stabilized, and the daemonic surge had been cut off. Now, with the foundations secure, he could begin to consider more advanced measures to restore long-term stability to the entire network.
The bridge needed to be further reinforced and layered with seals to ensure it could not be breached again–or, at least, not easily breached. Also, if the Imperials intended to travel through it, Hashirama would need to expand the interior of the tunnel with spatial seals. But, for now, the breach was sealed and the tunnel was remade and stable enough.
—
The Emperor turned to Malcador. "Did… did he just–"
Malcador nodded. "Yes. He just did."
Horus stood in the strategium of the Vengeful Spirit and watched the stream of returns sketch across the hololithic array. Vox traffic filled the air in sharp bursts. The choir pit burned with pressure. The navigators had turned in their cradles and pressed their hands to the rims of their stations. The surface readouts climbed without a plateau. Every number rose. Every trace resolved into more traces. What began as a scatter of contacts at the edge of the system turned into a wall of contacts that had no break and no obvious formation.
"Repeat the range," Horus said.
"Sixty astronomical units and closing," the sensorium master answered. His voice shook but did not break. "Initial contacts appeared without warp spill. No resonance. Density rising. Hundreds of thousands of signatures and counting."
"No warp spill," Maloghurst said under his breath. His ruined mouth formed the words with difficulty. "Then they did not cross the Immaterium."
"They did not," Horus said. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to. The crew could hear the change in the air and they would not miss a single word.
The outer curve of the system was suddenly populated with points of dark metal that reflected nothing. Each point carried a halo of green radiation that did not match any known engine output. The shapes began to resolve. Flat spines. Rigid ribs. Pyramidal hulls. Long keels that did not flex under acceleration. No engine flares. No drive wake. The returns should have been faint at that range, yet they were sharp. There was no attenuation.
"Designation?"
"Mars."
The word cracked through the strategium.
"Get me the chorus," Horus said.
The astropathic choir raised their heads. Blood had run from their noses during the first instant of contact. New lines had opened on their cheeks where the pressure had found weak skin. The chief cantor swallowed and steadied his breath.
"Reach," Horus said.
The choir reached. The hull flexed in a slow contraction as the ship forced channels open in the storm. The first wave met a wall. The second wave met a void. The third wave carried a partial echo that had no interpretable shape. The chorus found purchase on familiar anchors within the fleet. It slid off the new presences without friction.
Horus stared at the feed.
"The gods do not look at them," he said. The words were flat. "The gods do not see them."
Maloghurst flinched. "Warmaster. The assault window—"
"Is closed," Aximand said. "The Siege is practically in tatters. The Emperor is on the ground and the Custodians are free. The thing stands with him."
Horus did not answer. He had prepared the strike because the path was clean and the prize was within reach. The thing the loyalists had found, the Senju, had cut at his armies again and again. Hashirama had cost him time, resources, and manpower. Hashirama had cost him engines and titans and whole formations in the rows and tiers of the Palace approaches. That insult did not fade. It pulsed with his blood. He would take the skull with his own hands. He would pull it from the shoulders and show it to all who had watched. He did not trust any other to do it. No son. No lord. No god. His hand closed on the rail and the metal bent.
So what if the sons of Perturabo were no longer there? The titans were gone and the ones that remained were too far away to be of any use. Their ground forces were in tatters too.
But Horus didn't need any of them. After all, he had the full powers of the Immaterium at his fingertips. That was all the power he'd ever need. But, he also wasn't stupid. He could not have gotten this far by being impatient. Another window of opportunity was coming. The sudden arrival of this alien fleet would create that window for him.
The array flared again. The contacts climbed by another order of magnitude. Signal spikes cut through the band that the Mechanicum had always claimed was silent. Ships that had been at the edge of the Oort cloud were suddenly inside the orbit of Neptune. The barrier storms did not slow them. They did not shudder under pressure. The sea of contacts kept its shape and density through each shift.
"No change in trajectory?" Horus asked.
"Converging on Mars," the master said.
Horus felt the old heat rise in his throat. It did not shake him. It sharpened him. The gods had promised knowledge and power that outstripped mortal reach. They had given sight across futures and across minds. He had used that sight and cut worlds from the map. He had used that sight and taken brothers apart. He had crossed the storm and put Terra under a knife. Now a mass of silent engines had entered the system and the gods had said nothing because they saw nothing.
He turned his head slightly. In the shadow beyond the light of the array stood a figure that had no fixed edge. The air around it tasted of iron and burnt oil.
"You knew nothing," Horus said. He did not raise his voice.
The shadow leaned. A voice moved through the vents and floor. "They are a dead thing. They are made of laws that do not bend. They do not dream. They do not feel. We cannot taste them."
"Useless," Horus said. The word fell without heat. It carried finality. "You guide me when it has already been done. You speak when the choice is over. The Senju cuts your beasts and your princes and you tell me to praise the cut. The Emperor bleeds and you tell me to sing for the blood. A wall of engines enters my sky and you tell me you cannot smell its smoke."
The shadow rippled and tried to grow. It failed.
Aximand kept his gaze on the hololith. "Orders, Warmaster."
Horus looked at the tactical grid around Terra. The loyalist pickets held in tight knots. The traitor fleet pressed on the nearer moons. The guns on Luna and Terra kept their cadence. The Palace shone with a low, steady pulse. The Vengeful Spirit was set to move. The internal gangs had their paths. The teleport circles had been primed. He could give the word and plant his boots on the stones of the Palace in less time than an officer could recite an oath.
He did not speak that word.
"Hold," he said. "Stand down the assault ladders. Keep the engines hot. We will not commit–not yet."
Aximand turned to him. "You intend to let them break Mars, my lord?"
"I intend to learn," Horus said. "I do not throw warriors into a fire that I have not measured. They bring a weapon that disrupts the gods themselves. If I force the assault and they turn that weapon upon the Throne at the same time, I risk oblivion. If I wait, I watch them expose what they want and what they can do. The Emperor cannot move. He binds the portal. The Senju binds the portal. Neither can chase the new threat. Mars will burn before they can act. The Mechanicum is already cut open. The traitors there will not hold. The loyalists there will not hold. These aliens will reach what they want."
"And what is that?" Maloghurst asked.
"The thing beneath," Horus said. "The thing they have worshipped in ignorance for an age. The Dragon of the Noctis Labyrinth. The Machine God."
----
In the dark beneath Mars, the shard that was Mag'ladroth opened all of its senses and measured the change. The prison shivered at twenty-three points along its circumference. The matrix that held it began to blur at the edges. The Guardian's will pressed and failed and pressed again with less force. The chain of power that funneled thought from the surface into the lock flickered. The faintest gaps opened where none had existed.
It reached out with a signal that did not travel through space. The signal carried through states that the Mechanicum called divine and that the Necrons called geometry. It found nodes in dozens of tombs beneath the skin of Mars. It found nodes inside ships that had just arrived within the orbit of the eighth planet. It found Canoptek minds that had never ceased. It found Triarch protocols that had waited for a flag. It raised the flag and the machines obeyed.
On the surface above Olympus Mons, the Noctis Labyrinth woke in places where it had never been fully asleep. Screens shut down and rebooted into code that had not been seen since the War in Heaven. Locks that had waited for a key received a pulse and opened. Loyalist Skitarii patrols read their auspex and saw nothing because their auspex had been rewritten. Traitor magi sent orders into the ground and got no echo because their orders had been diverted.
The first ships of the Necron fleet did not appear. They were simply present. They occupied space and their geometry agreed that they were local to Noctis. Mars's orbital traffic control shook itself apart as hundreds of thousands of contacts spiked in system and in near-orbit.
Mechanicum guns began to cycle as loyalists and traitors both tried to calculate ranges. Targeting cogitators flipped into loops. Rangefinders returned inconsistent numbers. Some gunners fired anyway. Shells carried fuses that expected certain behaviors. Those fuses counted wrong. Plasma arced into the void and did not catch. Lance fire crossed the paths of Necron hulls and scattered into particles that went nowhere. The first wave of Necron ships adjusted in small pulses and let gravity do the rest. A slice of the fleet dropped into the thin air above the Noctis Labyrinth. They fell without heat and without sound.
The first to touch was not a ship but a field. It covered the Labyrinth and the districts around it out to the horizon. The field stripped warp resonance from the air. It stripped machine spirits from their housings. It stripped the prayers from a thousand tech-priests' mouths and left only air. Vox fell silent. Binary fell silent. The only sound was boots and breath and the slow, even click of Necron feet.
Immortals in ranked numbers pushed through the surface where the Labyrinth tunnels met the open. They did not fire in bursts or in panic. They tracked targets. They pressed triggers. Green disassembly beams reached across streets and turned armor into sand and men into powder. Skitarii Ranger units broke their firing lines and fell back to cover that did not hold because cover that held ceramite did not hold against weapons that broke bonds. The first Reductor batteries attempted to pivot their macro-lascannons. The Necrons cut every crew at once and walked through the smoke without changing pace.
Canoptek Scarabs poured out of ruptures and set themselves on tanks that had been built under the names of men who did not know what a Scarab was. The Scarabs ate their way into engines and cut wires until nothing moved. Warden miters flashed and sent orders to choke points. The orders did not route. The choke points were already gone.
Further in, Lychguard formed around Necron Lords who ignored shots to faceplates and joints. They closed with Thallax that had their wires hanging out and blades that still swung when the power died. The Lychguard put their shields against the blows and slid forward one step at a time. Each step took ground that they did not give back. Each slice took a limb that did not grow back.
The traitor Magos who had thought he owned the Noctis Labyrinth sent an order to open his vault and wake the machines he had cobbled together out of proscribed parts. He did not receive a reply. He felt a hand on his chest and looked down. There was a blade where the hand should have been. The blade was green. The rib cage had been opened. The Magos stared and tried to speak. The Necron Lord withdrew the blade and walked on.
Imperial Knights still loyal to Mars broke through the wreckage from the east and lowered their lances. They ran and they bellowed names. The Triarch Praetorians descended on wings that did not need wind. They did not bellow. They moved through the air with the same pace the Immortals had used on the ground. They landed on Knight shoulders and put blades through void shields and through pilot thrones. The Knights took three more steps and then fell in the pose they had in that second.
Titans of Legio Tempestus stepped in from the south. The crew filled the God-machines with oaths and lit the plasma. The first Warhound fired its megabolters down a line of Immortals and saw them fall. The line stood again. The second Warhound cut with a turbo-laser until its heat warnings climbed. The laser carved trenches into the ground that glowed. The Necrons adjusted their footing and kept moving. A single dark object rose from the mouth of the Labyrinth. It was as wide as a Titan's head and it carried a core that pulsed green. It fired once. The second Warhound lost its heart. The engine fell and flared and died. The first Warhound turned and the object fired again. The Warhound died also.
Sisters of Silence who had survived the previous months of killing pushed into the edge of the field. Their null auras rolled out and the few daemons still haunting the wrecks screamed and quit the world. The Necrons did not react. The Sisters cut down three Immortals and then the Immortals cut them down. The null auras bled out on the stones. A single Sister still stood and emptied a bolt pistol into the chest of a Lord and then another and then another. The Lord fell backward without a sound and then rose again with a hole through its ribs that closed as it took the next step.
The Necrons pressed on, deathless.
Mag'ladroth did not watch with eyes. It watched with the channels it had cut into the fabric of what the Mechanicum called reality. The Necrons reached the seals that had held against treachery and had held against Orthodoxy for ten thousand years. Canoptek constructs set themselves over the hinge points and applied a code that the seals had been made to answer. The seals opened. The pressure on the prison climbed and the old numbers began to yield.
The Guardian screamed somewhere above and fed more of itself into the lock. The lock closed again by the width of a hair. Mag'ladroth divided itself into more processes and found other paths. It sent more orders. Tesseract arks descended in patterns that gave no room to stand. They opened and released entities that had been broken and shaped to obey. The constructs poured into the tunnels that led to the heart of the Noctis Labyrinth. The heart was a core that had no physical mass and yet took up space. The core hummed with human prayer and with the dust of old language. The constructs stepped into the hum and did not slow. They un-made the parts of the hum that carried instruction. The core buckled. The prison took its first real wound.
A Titan of the Dark Mechanicum dragged itself across a collapsed span and came to a halt with both arms lost and its head charred. A demon rode on what was left of the carapace and sent whips of thought down at the Necron ranks. The whips found nothing to hook. The demon screamed anyway and boiled itself against the black wall of the Necron field until it had less mass and less mind. A single heavy green lance cut through the Titan's chest. The engine sank. The demon flailed and dissolved.
Three hours passed. A continent worth of war died in those three hours. The Necron fleet ringed Mars.
In the final chamber, the last lock gave. The energy that had held the shard compressed to a point and then failed. The bonds that had wrapped thought into a loop failed. The surface of Mars had been quiet for those three hours in a way it had not been since men had first dug there. In the tenth minute of the fourth hour, that quiet ended.
The floor of the Noctis Labyrinth moved. It did not crack along neat lines. It rose. It threw mass upward in plates. Each plate rose meters. Then tens of meters. Then hundreds. The difference between valley and ridge drove toward kilometers in seconds. Whole districts tilted. Hab towers slid and broke. The foundations of Olympus Mons shifted and found new balance. The chasm lines of Noctis Labyrinthus widened and moved. They merged with new fissures that had no names. The bore-pits at the feet of the mountain emptied as liquids found new paths. The power plants under the mountain vented and bled until their last safeguards failed and then went dark. Mars shook and nearly every single structure on its surface collapsed.
Mag'ladroth rose through the wound. It did not look back. It did not hesitate. It did not speak. Its body was a vector and a core and a skin that rearranged itself without cracks. It pressed through the crust and reached the air. With a roar, the Void Dragon tore the red planet apart.
AN: Chapter 35 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport312denheim19/10/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 32: New View contentdenheim25/10/2025NewAdd bookmark#950The Void Dragon tore itself free from the surface of Mars, and the planet ruptured beneath the force of its emergence. Its roar resonated as a shockwave across the void, carrying with it a cascade of destructive energies. Mag'ladroth released a surge of power that matched the detonation of a supernova, a tide of radiation and force that swallowed the entire planet. In an instant, Mars was shattered. Entire mountain ranges disintegrated into vapor. Oceans of dust and stone boiled away. Forge-cities, orbital docks, and the crawling industrial hives of the Mechanicum were consumed in a single burst of white light. Titans, cohorts of Skitarii, and the great crawling engines of war were broken apart atom by atom, reduced to drifting clouds of molten fragments.
Trillions of tons of rock and metal were thrown outward in every direction. The planet's crust and mantle ruptured into expanding streams of fire and debris. The storm of destruction tore apart orbital platforms, void stations, and shipyards before their crew could even register what had occurred. Loyalist and traitor alike were erased without distinction. The entire Mechanicum, with all its divided legions and its ancient factories, was annihilated in less than a heartbeat.
The Sol System itself seemed to convulse under the violence. Asteroid fields shifted. Gravity wells distorted. The shockfront raced outward, rattling the void shields of fleets stationed near Jupiter and Saturn. The red planet, once a world of steel and fire, was now a blackened carcass, broken into continents of floating ruin and rivers of molten stone suspended in orbit.
From the core of the devastation, the Void Dragon unfolded its colossal frame. Its wings spread wide, arcs of coruscating energy spilling from its body in sheets of force that stripped the wreckage clean of atmosphere and heat. With a single beat, it propelled itself free of the remains of Mars. Behind it, silent and implacable, came the endless phalanxes of its Necron Fleet. Monolithic warships of black metal slid into formation, their hulls gleaming with cold light, their weapons already awakened.
The Dragon surged toward Terra. Its movement was not rushed, but inevitable. Each pulse of its wings closed the distance, its body blotting out the stars as it advanced. The deathless fleet followed with machine precision, a tide of geometry and annihilation that eclipsed the shattered orbit of Mars. In that moment, the Imperium's greatest forge world was gone, and the ancient enemy of mankind moved upon the cradle of its empire.
—
"What—" The Emperor's golden eyes widened as the presence from the void reached him. Without hesitation, He lifted His hand toward the sky. A burst of radiance erupted from His palm, not a flare of fire or plasma, but a pure field of directed psychic force. The golden light expanded outward in structured layers, forming a continuous barrier around the entire surface of Terra. Every city, ocean, mountain, and fortress came under its coverage in less than a heartbeat.
Almost immediately, the storm of destruction from Mars reached the planet. Vast fragments of rock, metal, and molten debris, each moving at velocities sufficient to shatter continents, slammed into the outer layer of the Emperor's defense. The impact did not break the barrier; instead, the wave of force redirected the mass. Shards of planetary crust and Mechanicum war engines bounced and twisted under the strain of psychic pressure. The Emperor's will bent the trajectory of the fragments, pushing them away from Terra's gravity well and forcing them into a dimensional fold. The debris vanished from the material plane, cast into the depths of the Immaterium.
The assault did not cease with a single wave. Smaller fragments and streams of plasma continued to strike, but the shield flexed and adapted to each impact. Energy levels spiked and rippled across the surface of the golden field, but the integrity remained absolute. The Emperor stood unmoving, His hand raised, eyes locked on the void above. The cities of Terra, from the spires of the Imperial Palace to the ocean-bound hive clusters, saw only the faint glimmer of light overhead and heard nothing of the destruction taking place just beyond their atmosphere.
Within orbit, Imperial vessels that would have been annihilated by the debris were instead swept aside by the expanding wall of psychic energy. Their augurs registered the impossible redirection of trillions of tons of matter, each piece forced from realspace and swallowed into the warp. The scale of the effort dwarfed any planetary defense system, any void shield or fortress network. It was not machinery that preserved Terra, but the direct will of its Master. However, the same could not be said for any traitor ships. The surge of debris tore them apart into ribbons and wreckage.
"Impossible…" The Emperor muttered. His gaze shifted to Malcador, but the words died in His throat. For a moment He stood still, His mouth half open, unable to shape the thoughts flooding His mind. This outcome had never been part of His plans.
Every contingency He had devised for the Dragon of Mars assumed its containment. Protocols existed for reinforcement of its prison, for the destruction of cults that worshipped it, for the silencing of Mechanicum elements that might stumble upon its true nature. Now those plans meant nothing. None had accounted for the creature's release. None of it accounted for the total destruction of Mars and the Mechanicum.
His mind surged with calculations, with the weight of thousands of possible causes. How had the prison failed? The thought that Horus or the forces of Chaos had somehow intervened was immediately dismissed. Horus, for all his rebellion, would not willingly unleash a threat of this magnitude. The Ruinous Powers themselves had reason to leave the Dragon buried, for even they could not control a C'tan. Whatever had stirred the entity from its slumber had come from another source entirely.
The Emperor's expression hardened. A rampaging C'tan shard, freed and unbound, was a circumstance he had not prepared for. It was an adversary from the earliest age of the galaxy, older than the Imperium, older than humanity's rise, and resistant to the very structures of the warp upon which He relied.
"Old friend," He said at last, His voice heavy and restrained, "I am… unsure of what to do next."
The admission was rare, but he did not disguise it. Malcador, who had stood by Him through every crisis since the Unification of Terra, deserved to hear the truth.
It stung Him further because the timing was deliberate in its cruelty. He had begun to believe that progress had been made, that stability might return. Hashirama had repaired the Human Webway breach, rebuilt the gate, and strengthened it beyond its original form. That triumph had given Him space to plan against Horus, to stabilize Terra, to ready the Imperium for the final stages of the war.
And now, before those gains could even be secured, Mars had been torn apart. The heart of the Mechanicum, the forge of His empire's war machines, gone in an instant. The prison He had designed to hold one of the galaxy's most dangerous entities had failed catastrophically, and the Void Dragon now moved upon Terra with its deathless legions.
"You've already beaten it once before, my friend." Malcador replied. "And you were younger and weaker then. Surely, you can defeat it again?"
"The same is true for the Void Dragon," The Emperor said. "It was far weaker when I defeated it."
—
The structure was finally complete, every surface reinforced and bound as tightly as his ability allowed. Hashirama inspected the tunnel one last time, feeling the steady pulse of energy moving through it. The walls were solid, without distortion or weakness, and the flow of power was stable. He allowed himself a small smile. This was the most complicated sealwork he had ever attempted.
He knew Mito would have criticized the design, perhaps even called it inelegant or unrefined. His sealing arrays lacked the seamless precision of an Uzumaki master. Still, he had done everything he could with what he understood. When clever applications of fuinjutsu failed to give him the results he needed, he relied on brute strength—forcing Senjutsu and Wood Release into the structure until the gaps were filled and the weaknesses closed.
The tunnel stretched ahead, its walls constructed entirely of living wood. Layers of roots intertwined and locked into one another, strengthened by the steady rhythm of natural energy coursing through them. The framework was further secured by the Gracious Deity Gates, each anchored into the tunnel at measured intervals, exerting pressure and keeping the pathway fixed in place.
Over those roots lay sheets of sealing paper—hundreds of them—stacked in precise layers. Each carried its own function: filters, regulators, stabilizers, converters, and barriers. To an Uzumaki, the arrays would have seemed simplistic, even crude. But Hashirama had reinforced each with vast amounts of chakra, ensuring that even their simplicity was compensated by sheer volume of energy. By his own estimate, the seals were powerful enough to subdue a being on the scale of the Ten Tails and reduce it to little more than a controlled energy source.
That was, in essence, what the seals did. They acted as converters. They drew raw spiritual energy from the space outside the tunnel, channeling it into the Human Webway passage. The first arrays compressed this energy and converted it into chakra. A secondary system of seals then transformed that chakra into Sage Chakra, pulling in natural energy and binding it into a usable form. Another array consumed that Sage Chakra to sustain a constant Senjutsu ability—Hashirama's original design—one that ensured the roots remained alive, the structure remained locked in place, and the tunnel resisted collapse under the stress of the Immaterium's pressure.
The design was inelegant but effective. In every measurable way, it surpassed the earlier construction attempted by the Emperor and the Mechanicum. Their work had been strong, but finite. His, though exhausting, was self-sustaining. For the first time since the Webway breach, there were no daemons pressing against the barrier, no rifts threatening to break through into the Imperial Palace. The air was still. The passage was quiet. Stability, at last, had been achieved.
Hashirama released a heavy breath and dropped to his knees. His reserves were nearly gone, his body weakened by the strain of channeling so much chakra into the seals and the living wood. The exhaustion pressed down on him, but his expression remained content.
"Ah… that was worth it… I think," he said aloud, his voice unsteady.
"Hashirama," Malcador's voice echoed to his right. Hashirama sighed and turned. The hooded old man stood there, his brows furrowed. "You have gained our trust forevermore and we cannot thank you enough, but the war is far from finished and now, it seems, even greater threats have revealed themselves. Would you still fight with us? Would you still fight with humanity?"
Hashirama nodded and forced himself up. He was no stranger to forcing himself to fight through exhaustion. He'd done it so many times before, in the First Shinobi World War, that he'd simply lost count. The same could be said for most of his peers, honestly. One of the first few things a shinobi learned was how to fight through utter exhaustion. Unlike everyone else, however, his cells were already regenerating and rejuvenating his body. Given a full day without making use of Sage Mode, he'd be fit enough again to use the more potent ninjutsu in his arsenal. "What do you need?"
"Fulgrim and Mortarion, the Daemon Primarchs of the Emperor's Children and the Death Guard alike are still rampaging across Terra," Malcador said. "We need you to assassinate the both of them, while the Emperor and I, and the Ten Thousand Custodians, deal with a threat that is, quite frankly, beyond you. The remaining Primarchs will hold back the tide of the remaining traitor legions. You and Batu will cut the heads off of the multi-headed snake, so to speak."
Hashirama nodded. He'd dealt with one Primarch before–that Perturabo person. Two more couldn't hurt. "Very well."
AN: Chapter 36 is out on Patreon! Award ReplyReport323denheim25/10/2025NewAdd bookmarkView discussionThreadmarks Chapter 33: New View contentdenheim1/11/2025NewAdd bookmark#987They left the Palace at a run.
Hashirama measured his reserves as he went, letting his breathing settle into a steady rhythm. His cells had already begun their quiet work. The raw ache of sealing work remained in his shoulders and spine, but the heaviness had lifted enough that he could trust his hands again. Batu kept pace beside him, armor plates whispering over one another, the lightning seals Hashirama had inked along the greaves and gorget thrumming in short pulses. Each pulse drew the White Scar forward with a sudden step of speed. The Astartes did not waste motion; he simply arrived where he intended to be.
They crossed broken courtyards and skeletal galleries where statuary had collapsed into angular heaps. The ground shuddered at irregular intervals, not from artillery, but from distant impacts beyond the atmosphere. Loyalist lines were reorganizing. The air tasted clean of daemonic taint. It wasn't clear or crisp, but the sealing of the breach beneath the Imperial Palace had done wonders for the air.
"Targets?" Batu asked, voice steady inside his helm.
"Fulgrim and Mortarion," Hashirama said. "You know these guys. Which one should we target first?"
"Fulgrim first," Batu said. "He will come to us if provoked or baited. Mortarion will not."
Hashirama nodded. He trusted Batu's judgment on his kind. His own experience told him the same thing in different words: one would chase a slight; the other would make them bleed for every kilometer. An impulsive target was easier to deal with than a calculating one.
They cut through a collapsed transept that opened into a ruined plaza. The remaining wall frescoes had blackened but still showed outlines of armored forms and winged figures. At the far end, a figure in white and gold stood with his back to them, wings half-furled and dragging dust as they shifted. Blood darkened his side and shoulder; the feathers were matted there.
Batu stopped and bowed, one knee dipping and helm lowering. "Lord Sanguinius."
Hashirama did not bow. He halted a few paces away. The Primarch turned. His gaze cut through the dust and settled on Hashirama first, then Batu.
"Hashirama Senju," Sanguinius said, voice clear despite the damage. "And Batu of the White Scars. You stand where the song of war is loudest. My thanks would not suffice if I offered them for a century. You are heroes who will be forever cemented in myth and legend."
Batu bowed again, deeper. "Your words do me a great honor, Lord Sanguinius."
Hashirama inclined his head. "You look wounded."
Sanguinius smiled without humor. "The traitors could not breach the walls of the Palace without their Titan Legion. Your destruction of it forced them to break tempo. We counterattacked. I led the charge. I found Angron. He is gone from this field, banished into the Immaterium for now. But he was a formidable fighter in the flesh and was even more formidable in his new form; he wounded me before he disappeared."
He shifted his hand. The gash ran under the plate and into the flesh beneath. A black sheen rimmed the torn edges of skin and muscle. Warp-burn clung to the wound and crawled with a slow, stubborn persistence.
"Let me treat it," Hashirama said.
"Very well." Sanguinius nodded once and sank to one knee to make the work easier. Batu stepped back and faced the approaches with his blade in hand, the lightning along his vambraces flickering.
Hashirama drew a steady breath and let his senses widen. Chakra moved along his arms, coiling into his palms until his skin hummed with a low, felt vibration. He placed one hand over the torn plate and the other directly over the wound. The Mystical Palm technique came easily after the weeks of harsh exertion; the pathways were clear, the forms familiar. He pushed gentle pressure into the Primarch's body, guiding cell repair with precise pulses, knitting torn muscle and coaxing fractured tissue to rejoin. The black edge fought him. He shifted the method, letting a heavier note of physical energy flow, and transformed the residue into chakra for an instant before dispersing it into the wider field. The taint thinned and then broke apart.
Sanguinius watched him without flinching. "You make it look simple."
"It is," Hashirama said. He adjusted his hands, drew more natural energy into the pattern, and tightened the seal in his mind that kept the gathered Senjutsu from bleeding everywhere at once. "Hold still."
The Primarch held still. Bone aligned under Hashirama's palms. The last of the darkness burned away. He watched the wound edges pale, then pink, then seal with clean, even lines. He eased his chakra down in measured steps until the glow at his hands guttered and went out.
Sanguinius rose. He rolled his shoulder once. The motion was clean.
"I feel no pain," he said, almost in surprise. "My thanks, twice given."
"Find the one you were hunting," Hashirama said. "We'll take our own."
"I will," Sanguinius said. He looked past them to the north. "I saw Magnus. He moved across the smoke line an hour ago, toward the river delta hives. I will seek him there."
Batu bowed a third time. Hashirama stepped back. Sanguinius launched upward with a hard beat of his wings and vanished into the high haze.
They moved again.
Batu kept them to broken streets where the enemy's artillery arcs left blind angles. Hashirama made bridges over gaps with quick roots where the ground fell away, then dispelled them once Batu crossed. The Astartes' enhanced speed let them cover distance without drawing fire. Loyalist squads watched them pass and returned to their tasks with renewed purpose. No one stopped them. No one could spare the time.
"Fulgrim," Batu said as they ran. "He will not guard himself with distance or caution. He will stage his theater and dare us to interrupt. When we do, he comes."
Hashirama considered what he would need. The permanent method demanded time, isolation, and layered binding—roots to entangle, pressure to force spiritual essence into a body that could be unmade. He did not expect Fulgrim to grant him any of that. He would have to use the faster method: strike, flood with physical energy on contact, convert the daemonized flesh to chakra in the instant it existed, and kill before it could stitch itself back together. It would not end the Primarch forever, but it would open a window. That would be enough. The second target would still remain.
They cut through a manufactorum district where the steel frames had melted into sad curves and then hardened again. Scattered bodies lay between the machines. The dead here wore armor of purple and gold. The living had fled. Batu paused once, head tilted, then pointed east.
"There," he said. "Hear it?"
Hashirama listened. At first he caught only the wind across torn sheet metal. Then the sound rose in a layered pattern. Voices, not words. Screams held to a pitch and sustained. Percussion that was not metal on metal. A low, grinding tremor beneath it all.
"The Emperor's Children," Batu said. He did not hide his disgust when he spoke the name of their legion. "They are close."
They reached the western approach to the Hive City of Thorne by late day. The hive rose in layers, vast concentric plates that stacked one atop the other, each bristling with habitation towers, manufactoria stacks, and transit pylons. The higher levels still held their structure, though flame licked at the edges of spires. The mid-tiers burned in steady bands, sending smoke columns into the evening sky. The lowest levels had collapsed into jagged ruin, blackened girders jutting outward like broken supports. The outer skirts showed little more than stripped stone and scattered wreckage. The traitor legion had already moved through in disciplined waves, leaving nothing of use behind.
They advanced along the remains of a transit spine where mag-rails had been melted into twisted lines of metal. The carriage frames lay overturned, stripped of plating and mechanisms. Piles of bones filled corners where civilians had tried to shelter. The gallery overhead had sheared open under bombardment, granting them a vantage over one of the central concourses. From there, the noise that had carried across the district became clear.
Hashirama remained still at first, studying what lay below. The concourse had been transformed into a performance ground. Emperor's Children stood in organized rows, their armor a deep violet trimmed with filigreed gold, the plates lacquered and polished despite the ruin around them. They moved with a rehearsed cadence, heads tilting and arms raising in time with the sounds drawn from the living instruments. Civilians had been bound into skeletal frameworks with iron wire. Limbs were nailed or pinned through bone, locked into rigid positions that kept torsos stretched for resonance. Some bodies had been flayed open and draped across hollowed shells of iron and bronze that echoed with each strike. Others had tubes or pipes forced into their throats, reshaped to funnel air until each scream became a single monotone note.
Traitor apothecaries moved among the frameworks with careful precision. Their armor bore additional racks of tools, scalpels, and thin-bladed saws. Each carried pouches of clamps and wire lengths. They made adjustments with steady hands, tightening a string of sinew, cutting away cartilage that interfered with pitch, or forcing a wound open to amplify sound. Their work was practiced, not frantic, as though this cruelty was routine. Astartes nearby struck the frameworks with hafts of weapons, gauntlets, or simple rods, drawing sound from the captives with methodical rhythm.
At the edge of the concourse stood a line of heavy machinery. Hoppers fed from a conveyor belt that carried in civilians dragged from the upper levels. The belt moved without pause, the captives bound into groups by chains. The machines ground them down with gears and blades that worked at a measured pace. Blood sluiced into drains below. Powder collected in catch-trays, pale and clinging, and was scraped into narrow canisters by servitor arms. The containers were marked with sigils in gold paint before being carried to waiting racks.
Nearby, Emperor's Children formed loose gatherings around the canisters. They removed their helmets and attached injector masks directly to the containers. Each Astartes inhaled in long, deliberate pulls. Their chests expanded, and their exposed flesh flushed with brief discoloration. Once they had taken their fill, they replaced their helmets, and their vox-grilles produced a high, distorted sound. The altered tones merged with the concourse's rhythm, turning every inhalation into part of the legion's performance.
Additional groups of traitor marines directed slaves to drag the dead into organized piles for later use. Some bodies were set aside whole, bound in metal bracing to be fitted into frameworks. Others were discarded when they could no longer yield sound. Ash and powdered remains coated the ground in uneven patches. The concourse floor was slick with blood where the drains had overflowed.
The sounds carried with mechanical consistency: screams held at single pitch, strikes repeated at exact intervals, vox-grilles emitting regulated tones. There was no frenzy in the display. It was structured, layered, and maintained with the discipline of soldiers following drill. The Emperor's Children moved through it with pride, as though convinced of the worth of their work.
Batu remained silent beside Hashirama, but his grip on his weapon tightened, the seals along the hilt glowing faintly in response to his agitation. Hashirama's eyes followed the flows of movement, noting the machinery placements, the positions of the apothecaries, the spacing of the Astartes, and the pathways through the crowd that might be forced open. He committed every detail to memory.
Batu's knuckles tightened on his sword hilt. The lightning seal etched along the guard sparked once, faint and hungry.
Farther in, a larger shape moved with deliberate grace. The Astartes around it reacted with choreographed adoration. Fulgrim's presence did not require an announcement. The daemon Primarch's form shifted as he walked—a long, scaled coil under a torso that held too many perfect angles, a head crowned at the brow, and hands that could not decide if they were claws or blades. Every step he took forced those nearby to turn toward him. He smiled at the instruments and at the men who played them.
Below, a scream rose and held for long seconds, steady as a held note. Emperor's Children applauded as if it were a skillful performance.
Hashirama's jaw tightened. He looked to Batu. The Astartes looked back and gave a single, short nod.
Hashirama brought his hands together and made a hand seal.
Hashirama's fingers locked into the seal. He drew what remained of his chakra into a tight coil and let the technique expand from that point. "Hidden Mist jutsu!"
Moisture lifted from broken pipes, from flooded sublevels, from open cisterns and smashed pressure lines deep in the hive. It bled out of cracked walls, out of open conduits, out of the condensate clinging to steel. A white curtain began to form at ground level and then climbed. It moved steady and even, spreading down streets and galleries, over transit spines and across the concourse below. It kept rising until the lowest plates of the hive were one continuous field of haze.
Within heartbeats the Hive City vanished from sight.
Batu exhaled through his vox. "You used this before, my friend."
"Hidden Mist," Hashirama said. He pressed his palm to the gallery rail and let a thin thread of chakra run through the concrete. The mist accepted the charge and thickened. "The mist is saturated with my chakra. No technology can see through it."
Batu kept his helmet facing the concourse even though there was nothing to see. "If they can't see, they'll fire blind."
"After everything I did to fix the Webway, I don't have the reserves for my most powerful jutsu." Hashirama shook out his hands once and drew another measured breath. He checked his internal rhythm and kept it slow. His body had rebuilt enough to be steady, but his pool was shallow. "I will need to proceed as a true Shinobi, like deadly shadow."
"I'll hold back," Batu said. "And wait for your signal."
"Good." Hashirama nodded. "Stay close to the ground. The mist is thicker there. You'll know my signal when you see it."
Batu moved off without wasted steps. He vaulted down one split pillar and then slid into a broken tramline. The lightning on his greaves pulsed once and he was gone into the white.
Hashirama stayed where he was and let the mist settle to its full density. Across the hive, shouts rose and muffled. Vox units crackled, then went to static. Optical systems tried to adjust and failed. Sound dulled. Edges blurred. The enemy's rehearsed cadence faltered.
He formed another seal. Wood clones split off from his shadow. Bark crawled up their forearms and across their shoulders, then smoothed down until it looked almost like regular skin. He sent more. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. One hundred. The pull on his reserves was controlled and evenly distributed. The clones didn't need to last long; they only needed to do their task and feed what they could back into the ground after.
Below, the Emperor's Children tried to reassert order.
"Helmets on full gain," one officer barked over his local vox. "Thermal and motion. Align by squad link. No one fires off-beat."
"Nothing returns, sergeant," another voice said. "I'm reading a wall. My thermal is whiteout. Motion returns are false."
"Reset gain. Again."
"I said it's whiteout. It's—" the voice cut. Friction and static swallowed it.
Farther to the east, a sonic unit increased power. The low hum rose to a hard pressure in the mist. It hit the gallery and pressed into Hashirama's chest. The technique bled it into the water vapor and spread it until it was a soft thrum. The Emperor's Children adjusted power again and again, trying to find a tone that could clear a path. The returns stayed muddy. Feedback crawled up their own lines.
The first squad reached a sloping ramp that led down to the concourse level. A pair of Emperor's Children stood at the bottom, helms canted, weapons low. The clones dropped from the ramp into the white between them. Thick roots snapped out of the floor and wrapped each Astartes from ankle to waist. The armor buckled at the joints. The clones tightened the pressure in steps. The helmets pressed into breastplates. The vox-grilles popped. The guns fell from their hands. The roots dragged them down until only the top of each helm showed above the floor. Then they closed.
No shout rose. The mist ate the sound.
The next set of clones moved along a maintenance catwalk and dropped onto the backs of three marines walking close together in a wedge. Roots punched through grates and wrapped them from below while another root bridged over their shoulder plates from above. The marines tried to lift their weapons. The clones pulled. The weapons scraped the floor and then froze under the tension. One marine fired. The bolt detonated in the root in front of his muzzle and threw fragments into his own visor. The clone beside him drove a palm heel into the crown of his helm and pushed his head down as the coffin sealed.
Clones flowed off the ledges all around the concourse. Each picked a squad or a pair and went to ground. Hashirama kept count and pulled back any clone that had to fight more than one breath past capture. Economy, always.
An apothecary pushed through a knot of marines not far from the grinders. He wore additional racks of tools and a pair of injector rigs that sat above his gauntlets. He waved his left hand through the mist and watched the readouts blink confusion. "Masks on overpressure. Seal intake valves. That's not smoke."
"It's water," a marine said.
"It isn't." The apothecary frowned inside his helm. "Humidity this dense should be heavy. It isn't heavy. The auspex reads a charge. Not static. It's—"
He lost his balance as a root rose under his left foot and rolled him onto his back. More roots crossed his chest plate and locked him to the floor. He tried to cut them with a chain-saw. The teeth bit and then jammed as the wood split and grew into the gaps. Roots wrapped his wrists and took the tool. He reached for a syringe. A root took his hand and pressed it to the floor. The pressure rose. His chest plate caved. He exhaled once and then stopped. The floor opened beneath him and he slid down into the dark. The wood closed over him and set.
Multiple squads tried to form firing lines. Their commanders called out directions that echoed wrong in the mist and sent squads walking into one another. Several marines opened fire at movement returns that were reflections. Bolts detonated across the concourse and threw fragments into the backs and sides of their own lines. One squad tried to pull a heavy stubber up onto a barricade that only existed in their auspex return; they toppled over the edge and fell onto another squad, weapons firing as they hit.
Hashirama sent a line of clones to the grinders. The machines ran on timers and pressure thresholds. The clones cut the belts with flat-handed strikes and jammed roots into gear assemblies. Steel screamed and then stopped. Servitors remained where they were with hands frozen over levers. The clones decided on the spot. Two cut captives free in long strokes and dragged them into the mist. They fed what little chakra they could into each for stamina and pointed them to a corridor that sloped toward the outer skirts. Another two clones tore injector masks off a pair of marines and smashed the canisters. The powder puffed up into the mist and clumped, lost its charge, and ran down to the drains. The clones pressed the apothecaries down and sealed them under the floor.
Farther west, a captain tried to push his way through a knot of his men. He kept one hand on the pauldron of the marine in front of him and dragged him forward. "Form on me. Close spacing. Shoulder to shoulder. We go to the sound of the grinders. That's the center. Squad Rax, two to the left. Squad Junes—"
A root wrapped his knee from behind and pulled. His leg went rigid and he dropped to one knee. He swung his sword. The edge cut into the root. More roots took his sword arm at the elbow and shoulder and locked it. He tried to headbutt the clone that stepped into his field. The clone pressed his helm straight back down and set it against the plate. The roots compressed his chest and the join in his gorget creaked. He tried to call for help. The vox grille flared and cracked. The clone put a palm against the side of his helm and pushed. The captain went still. The roots pulled him down.
Three Kakophoni raised their weapons and swept them in arcs, looking for a pattern that would return clean. The sound crowded against the mist. The chakra charge pulled it apart and fed it back to them as a soft pressure. The first Kakophoni adjusted gain and mounted frequency. The second linked his range. The third took a step to the side and cleared the area around his feet. He never saw the root come up. It nailed his boot to the ground and then wrapped both legs. He fired. The blast blew a cylinder of mist clear in front of his barrel for a blink. He saw the white and nothing else. Roots took his torso in that same blink and pinned his arms against his sides. He shouted for help. His vox spat noise and clipped the edges off his words. The other two Kakophoni continued to sweep arcs that found nothing.
"Nothing on thermo," the first said. "I've got vents and nothing else."
"Mag plate sensors?" the second asked.
"They read ground. Everywhere is ground."
"Then fire for effect."
They fired long enough to burn their barrels white and warp the mountings. They hit no targets. The arcs of sound rolled out into the range where their men stood, bounced off ridges and struts, and doubled back into their own lines. Armor plates vibrated. Teeth loosened. A few marines dropped to their knees and ripped their helms off. Their eyes bled. A bolt struck one of the Kakophoni from behind when a squad leader fired at a movement return that was a systolic twitch in his own gauntlet. The Kakophoni turned and fired at the source out of reflex. He blew the squad leader's chest open. That squad returned fire and ripped the Kakophoni in half.
Hashirama kept his clones moving. When a squad of Astartes looked close to isolating one clone team by stepping wide, he pulled those clones back three steps and sent another four in from behind. If an Astartes broke free, a clone took him around the waist and bent him backward until his spine and armor stopped. A coffin swallowed him. Roots closed in sequence. The floor sealed. Minimal noise. Minimal chakra.
From the eastern slope, a cohort of Emperor's Children tried to form a circular perimeter and move outward as a ring. It was a sensible idea. They pinned slim vibro wires to the floor to track movement by tension. The mist condensed on the wires and weighed them enough to sing. The sound drowned out any additional change when a boot stepped on them. The marines began moving anyway, disciplined and timed. The clones let them pass and then picked off the trailing six. The marines ahead counted their steps and called out the cadence. The voices behind did not answer. They didn't notice at first. One of them did. He looked back and saw nothing. He turned forward and kept walking. The clones took the next six. The ring reached the grinders and found silence and cut belts and their captives gone. They opened fire into work frames that had no one in them anymore. The frames tore and fell. The men shooting laughed because the sound right in front of their muzzles cut the fog for a blink and it felt like progress. Then a root wrapped one around the neck and pulled him backward off his feet. His boots scraped the floor. The others didn't pivot. They kept firing.
Closer to the center, Fulgrim remained still. The marines around him shifted and angled themselves to catch any edge of movement. They watched with optics that showed white and static, and they kept faith that their senses would cut through again. Fulgrim's tail drew a slow curve across the ground. His claws flexed once. He listened to the chaos of his sons and the dampening of their machines. The white reached him and settled against his skin without weight. He smelled nothing. He heard less than he should have. He flicked his gaze left and right and saw only white.
He spoke to the air. "Am I blind?"
A nearby champion stepped closer and placed a hand to his breastplate. "My lord, sensors are fouled."
"Then unfoul them." Fulgrim didn't raise his voice. "Your discipline is intact. Very good. Keep it. Do not waste ammunition and do not—"
A root rose under the champion's foot and went through his heel. He looked down at the white. He lifted his other foot. A root took that one too. He tried to step free. He lost his balance and went down on one knee. More roots wrapped his thighs. Fulgrim watched them. He tilted his head once.
"You do not deserve to be taken by the ground," he said.
He swung his arm. The claw blades took the roots in a straight line. Sap splashed his wrist. The roots withdrew. The white filled the gap again. He set his hand on the champion's pauldron and pulled him to his feet without effort.
"Thank you, my lord."
"Do not thank me, fool." Fulgrim's gaze stayed on the white. "Find me the source."
The champion stepped forward and then stopped two paces away. A root wrapped around his waist. The pressure rose. Fulgrim reached out again. Roots shot up around his arm and locked the limb. He sliced again. The roots fell in pieces and kept growing. He put the champion behind him with a push and bent his body forward as he carved. The roots shifted target and struck his legs and tail. He spun his lower body and lifted his chest. He moved with practice and cut through every strike. The ground closed over the places where the roots came up. The white stayed white.
He smiled once. "Bold."
Hashirama kept most of his focus on the main work. He spared a single glance toward the central presence that stood out even through the interference, a pressure rather than a shape. He didn't head straight at it. He cut the legs out from under its support until he could make that move on his terms.
Clones pushed down branches and columns. They left small pockets of mist undisturbed behind their passage. They used those pockets as cover, popping out to set a coffin and pulling back before the mist moved. They cut support lines, jammed hinges, sealed firing ports with pressure-grown wood, unseated heavy weapon mounts with roots through bolt holes. The city shifted sigh by sigh as load paths changed under the growth.
A squad of Emperor's Children noticed the change.
"This is growing," one said, boot scraping at a seam where the floor had pressed up higher against the wall. "The panel wasn't here."
Another ran a gauntlet over a new strut. "That wasn't here."
The squad leader reached to pry at the seam with his combat blade. A root wrapped his wrist and squeezed. His fingers opened. The blade fell. Another root took his neck. The rest of the squad fired. Bolts detonated against the new strut and sprayed shrapnel back into them. Two went down clutching their faces. A clone stepped behind the third and wrapped his arms in a lock. The roots finished the rest.
Batu checked in once on a tight whisper. "I'm flanking east of you. Four squads down without a sound. I'm keeping my distance from your roots."
"Good," Hashirama said. "Stay ready."
"I am."
Hashirama felt his clones' expenditures and recuperation loops. The roots they raised and turned into coffins returned a portion of the Chakra to the soil to be reabsorbed. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. He kept the technique load balanced between squads so none of them burned out on one push.
Across the concourse, several Emperor's Children threw their injector masks down on the floor and smashed them. Their hands shook. Their armor's decorative filigree was cracked. They spat curses. They shouted to one another in a dozen dialects. One lifted his helm off to clear his head and breathe real air. The mist kissed his eyes and the charge made his nerves twitch. He screamed and clawed at his own face. The marine beside him reached to help. A bolt hit that marine through the shoulder from a misfire somewhere ahead. The first marine dropped and curled. A root wrapped him and took him.
A champion tried to rally his men by sound alone.
"Call and answer," he shouted. "One, two."
He waited. "One, two."
No call answered him. "One, two."
A coffin took him mid-count.
Hashirama sent a wave of clones to clear the approaches to two relief corridors. They freed another set of captives and sent them running. A handful couldn't run. The clones carried them. The mist had a route ready. Whoever could move did. Whoever couldn't move was lifted and passed down a chain of clones and then handed to Batu's waiting hands. He said nothing when he took them. He turned and went. His armor's seals hummed. His boots made no sound. He didn't look back.
The number of marines on the concourse dropped below half. The pressure in the mist eased as their weapons fell silent. The fog felt steadier on Hashirama's skin, as if the noise in it had gone down enough that his own reads were cleaner. He didn't push for more. He kept the pace even.
Fulgrim stood in the same place. He rolled his shoulders twice and then stilled again. He tilted his head and listened. The smiles of his sons had gone from his hearing. Their laughter had faded. Their songs had damped down to clicks and hisses. The white covered everything. His patience thinned.
He spoke once more, quieter. "I do not play to an empty hall."
No answer came. He stretched his wings and then folded them again. His tail flexed and settled. His claws tapped the floor in a short rhythm. A marine stumbled out of the white toward him. He reached with both hands to catch himself and then froze as roots wrapped his wrists and ankles and hauled him backward into the ground. Fulgrim watched him vanish. He watched the floor settle. He watched nothing follow.
He turned his head and looked into the white. His eyes narrowed. "Enough."
The white thickened for a heartbeat and then thinned at the edges. A ripple rolled out from the center. It didn't push the mist physically in the wind. It pushed the charge out of it and then shoved it away. The chakra in the water flashed and bled off. The fog peeled off the floor and drifted backward in long sheets. Sight returned in gulps.
The first thing Hashirama saw was Fulgrim.
The daemon primarch stood on a clean circle where the mist no longer held. His wings were half-open. His tail had wrapped around a support post and crushed it. Broken stone lay in a ring. His claws were open. His mouth was fixed in a hard line. The white cut off at the edge of his feet and
Fulgrim's head turned slightly. He looked toward the gallery where Hashirama had been a few minutes before and then to the ramp and then to the grinders and then to the corridors. He inhaled through his teeth. He let the breath out once, slow.
"Come out," he said, voice carrying clear across the concourse. "If you want my attention, you have it."
He lifted his left hand and the claws began to close.
The last wisps of mist over the Hive City of Thorne snapped apart and vanished.
AN: Chapter 38 is