BOOM!
BOOM!!
BOOM!!!
One after another, violent explosions pounded against the shattered surface of the fortress city. The endless impacts created raging shockwaves, sweeping across everything like searing hurricanes. The ground quaked, and the entire world seemed to warp under the pressure.
From the Chaos battleships' suicidal ramming, the sky above was torn open. The void shield field overloaded, crackling like lightning, while the distorted gravity arrays rippled violently. Orbital drop pods streaked through the atmosphere, leaving trails of white-hot sparks that shimmered through the turbulent air…
The Chaos fleet's brief but devastating orbital bombardment upon the surface erased what remained of the warship that had acted as their siege hammer—its bloodthirsty machine-spirit perishing in a final shriek, ending a grand yet sinful existence.
A battleship tens of kilometers long, several wide, weighing over ten million tons—regardless of class—was undeniably the core and backbone of the Imperial Navy. Thousands of such ships and cruisers made up the unstoppable fists of the Imperial war fleets.
Whenever one such mighty vessel fell in battle, at least hundreds of thousands of lives were extinguished alongside it.
Even for the traitorous Black Legion, there were only a handful of such precious mainline battleships. Perhaps only Abaddon's personal flagship—the Vengeful Spirit, a desecrated Gloriana-class vessel inherited from his Primarch—surpassed it in power and grandeur.
To use such a warship to pierce Cadia's planetary void shield—what a bold move indeed.
Though many among the Chaos Astartes high command considered it a wasteful gamble, the decision's speed and result justified the cost.
No prolonged orbital siege against the Cadian Defense Fleet or the fortress world's planetary batteries—no drawn-out attrition. The Chaos forces had succeeded in landing before Imperial reinforcements could arrive, dragging the conflict into their preferred form of warfare: brutal, close-quarters planetary assault.
Warmaster Abaddon's determination to take Cadia—his impatience bordering on madness—was palpable to every Chaos Astartes, daemonic ally, sorcerer, and heretek under his command.
Fortunately for him, his audacious plan worked.
On the surface, the once-perfect network of fortresses forged from adamantine, ceramite, plasteel, and reinforced concrete now lay in ruins.
Several destroyers and escorts that followed the main battleship's ramming path had plunged nose-first into the Cadian lines, impaling the scarred earth. Their shattered hulls littered the landscape, forming jagged metallic hills and ridges.
The grand fortress-city—once a forest of gun turrets and cathedral spires—had become a grotesque wasteland of steel thorns, fused with the colossal wreckage of fallen warships.
As the thunder of orbital bombardment faded, guttural howls and the ceaseless thunder of gunfire rose from the ravines between the mountainous wrecks. The roars of the orbital war-beasts had been replaced by the symphony of ground warfare.
No—truthfully, the guns had never gone silent.
Only the Chaos fleet's temporary ceasefire, meant to prevent friendly fire during their mass landings, allowed the sounds of the ground battle to pierce through the chaos.
"Get up! Get up! Everyone still breathing, move it!"
"Fire! Fire! The Chaos scum are here—don't stop!"
A young Cadian Whiteshield, blood trickling black from his nose and mouth, was pulled from a collapsed, molten trench. Clutching his M36 Kantrael Pattern Lasgun, he stared blankly ahead, face caked in mud and ash—expression vacant, ears ringing as if deaf.
The seismic shock from the Chaos ship's impact had collapsed the entire trench line.
Bang! Bang—BANG!
An old veteran from the regiment lay prone beside the young soldier, using the streaks of lasfire from their trench line as reference. He raised his 40mm drum-fed grenade launcher and unleashed a burst toward the corner of a steel ruin a few hundred meters away, where the chaotic din echoed endlessly. Explosions rang out—shreds of human flesh burst upward amidst the rising blood mist.
"Oliver! Stop staring—raise your weapon—!"
Before the shout could finish, a piercing shriek cut through the air.
BOOM!
A surge of dirt struck his stunned face like a tidal wave. The rookie—Oliver—was thrown to the ground, pain jolting him awake as he collided with the hard surface.
He rolled over quickly, staring wide-eyed at where, moments ago, there had been a heavy mortar emplacement. Now, there was only a massive crater. Within seconds, it began to fill with murky, blood-tinged liquid.
Nearby, four or five Cadian Guardsmen and a warrant officer, tasked with carrying shells and lasgun power packs, had been killed instantly. The explosion's blast sent wood splinters, stones, and jagged metal shards flying like a storm of shrapnel, cutting down soldiers in brutal succession.
The cries of the wounded rose and fell chaotically.
Spotting a familiar figure, Oliver crawled and stumbled toward a bleeding veteran—his thigh nearly severed by shrapnel, blood pooling beneath him. Oliver tore open the single-use medikit on his belt, fumbling for a tourniquet.
"Old Steve, hold on!"
He pressed against the wound, wrapping the bandage tightly. The severed leg's exposed bone jutted out, glistening red—barely connected by strands of flesh. It was a horrific sight.
But the wound was far too large. Even after using up his entire roll of bandage, the blood kept gushing faster. Oliver tried to call for a medic, but his voice died in his throat—there were only corpses around him.
The wrecked vehicles lay twisted, command links broken. There were no medicae, no Sisters of Battle to be found.
"Guh… Ol… Oliver… leave me… kill the heretics… Cadia… stands…"
Before he could finish, the Cadian veteran fell still—his last breath fading.
"Hahahaha! The rotting Corpse-Emperor cannot save you!"
"Offer their souls to the gods!"
"Warmaster Abaddon will triumph!"
"The galaxy belongs to the gods!"
The cacophony of warped chants and blasphemous proclamations approached the trembling defensive line—it was the Chaos cultists.
They were half-naked, their bodies twisted by the influence of the Warp, as was the fate of mortals dwelling near the Eye of Terror. Nonhuman organs bulged grotesquely beneath their skin. Skulls of kin and eight-pointed Chaos star tattoos adorned their flesh—a reflection of their depraved faith.
The cultists' blasphemy enraged Oliver and the others. With their captain and commissar both dead, command had fallen to the highest-ranking sergeant, who roared out above the chaos:
"Open fire! For the Emperor! For the God-Emperor of Terra! For humanity!"
"For the Emperor!!"
The Cadians shouted in unison, repeating the battle cry they had screamed countless times before.
They rose together, unleashing synchronized volleys from their lasguns. From hastily-dug emplacements, autocannons and heavy bolters roared like tempests, spewing righteous fury upon the enemies of the Emperor.
"AAAAAAAHHHH!!" Oliver screamed, seizing Old Steve's grenade launcher in one hand and his own lasgun in the other, firing wildly in rage.
Thump-thump-thump—!
The Chaos cultist formation, charging bare-chested across the narrow battlefield formed by the shipwreck debris, was torn apart instantly. Hundreds of shattered corpses fell amid flying blood and shards of steel, tumbling down the jagged slopes and piling up like grotesque mounds.
Any being of sane mind would have stopped such a futile charge.
But these were Chaos cultists—the lowest of the damned. Their lives were the fuel for every dark ritual their sorcerers performed. They had long abandoned reason.
The minds corrupted by Chaos knew no fear. To them, pleasing the Dark Gods was their only purpose.
From their sharp, deformed mouths came inhuman roars. Some wielded blades and crude projectile weapons; others clutched scavenged lasguns. They surged forward like a grayish-pink tide of corpses, heedless of pain or death.
Even the fallen who were not yet dead were trampled beneath their comrades' feet, their bodies crushed into meat and mud.
Suddenly, "Aaaah—!" A scream tore through the line. A large-caliber round struck an Astra Militarum gunner manning a heavy bolter—not piercing, but blasting his torso apart entirely. His body split in two.
"It's Abaddon's Traitor Guard!"
Unlike the frenzied cultists who used their corrupted flesh to defile Cadia's soil, Abaddon's Black Legion fielded vast mortal armies in addition to their Chaos Space Marines.
They were the Chaos counterpart to the Astra Militarum—though far smaller in number.
Their ranks were a grotesque mix: mortal cultists born in the Daemon Worlds of the Eye of Terror, warband thralls reshaped from conquered Imperial citizens, prison-world convicts who had fought for survival to earn a place in their ranks, and even entire traitor regiments such as the Vorskani Ironclads who had betrayed the Emperor and turned to Chaos.
"This is the Blood God's blessing—!"
The source of the voice was obvious—a follower of Khorne. His entire body was drenched in blood, eyes bulging red, teeth bared in manic ecstasy as he fired a compact boltgun suited to human hands at the Cadian defenders.
In an instant, several Guardsmen fell, torn apart by explosive bolts.
The blood-soaked heretic was obliterated a second later under concentrated lasfire, but his appearance signaled the true edge of the Chaos offensive hidden behind the waves of expendable cultists.
With their own blood, they had marked the soil of Cadia—painting the surface of this 'anti-Warp zone' with the colors of the Dark Gods. The taint of the Warp began to take root once more.
"My axe thirsts for your blood!"
A blood-soaked chain-axe roared to life, cutting through nearby cultists as Khornate berserkers tore forward. Their eyes were filled with crimson light, replaced entirely by the madness of bloodlust.
"Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne! Death to the False Emperor!"
They howled, hacking apart everything in their path—friend and foe alike. Human bodies were shredded, the air thick with red mist, and the chorus of screams filled the battlefield.
"Oh, what a grotesque sight… only the Father's blessing is truth. His rot shall cover this world."
The followers of Nurgle lumbered forward—bloated, rotting bodies leaking pus and filth. Their sluggish forms belied their unnatural speed as they charged through lasfire, opening their maggot-ridden mouths wide. With rusted, moss-covered blades, they hacked at Astra Militarum soldiers who emptied their magazines in panic.
"I'll give you rot, you green-skinned bastard! Die, you fat filth!"
It was Oliver. Having run out of ammunition, he had already killed a Khornate cultist with his bayonet. Now bleeding heavily, he stared at the swelling, pus-filled monstrosities charging forward. Without hesitation, he grabbed a melta charge from the ground, armed it, and sprinted straight into the horde.
A moment later—Vwooooom—BOOOOM!!!
A searing orange shockwave erupted outward, vaporizing every living creature within ten meters—including himself—into ash in less than a second.
"Cadia stands!!"
The remaining Cadian defenders let out one final warcry before being overwhelmed by the tide of Chaos forces.
Warp-spawned Daemons and hordes of Chaos Space Marines now flooded the battlefield.
"Foolish resistance. Victory belongs to Abaddon."
A towering Chaos Marine crushed the skull of a still-breathing Cadian officer, his horned helmet and black-gold armor adorned with the eight-pointed star of Chaos. His glowing red eyes turned toward Cadia's largest fortress.
"So… the object even the powers of the Warp covet lies within?"
...
At nearly the same moment, the fortified sectors of the Kasr Kraf Fortress complex—struck by the suicidal Chaos warships—had fallen in large swathes. Every passing second claimed the lives of countless heroic Cadian soldiers.
But their sacrifices were not in vain.
Life is the currency the Emperor grants—use it well.
And they had. Their deaths bought precious time—to reinforce the new defensive line, and to allow the Space Marine Chapters' reinforcements to arrive.
"Foolish mortals, hahaha… the gods are the only truth…"
As a Chaos cultist staggered out of the steel ruins and into the collapsed inner circle of the Kasr Kraf Fortress, a low, heavy gunshot echoed.
Zzzzt—
A bolt of plasma arced through the air, striking the traitor officer emerging from the wreckage. The superheated energy detonated on impact, vaporizing flesh and boiling blood into mist. His skeleton turned to ash, muscles charred black by ionized fire. The Chaos cultists hit by the splash fell silent—burned to nothing before they could even scream.
"It seems your false gods care little for you."
Lowering his steaming plasma pistol, the Astartes in blue armor marked with the inverted Omega—an Ultramarine—glared through crimson lenses at the towering black figure beyond the corpse-horde.
That being—was a fallen brother, one they would never forgive.
"Their very existence is blasphemy against the Imperium! Do not let these traitors reach the relic—kill them all!"
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