Sicarus.
At the edge of the horizon, reaching into the clouds, the colossal Supreme Honkai Titan—painted in spectral blue and bearing the insignia of the VIII Legion—roared, shaking the very ground beneath it.
Its massive, nation-erasing siege cannons bellowed one after another, unleashing a relentless storm of shells. Gigantic orange-yellow beams of energy twisted light and air, while heavy particle rays and blue-white plasma lances streaked through the sky filled with fire and blood.
From the blasphemous Word Bearer monuments that stretched for dozens of miles to the cathedral districts spanning multiple city blocks, devastation rolled across everything in its path.
BOOM!
The bombardment erupted into towering plumes of plasma and molten debris, forming mushroom clouds that tore through the sky. The colossal anti-air bastions, under the hail of plasma fire, saw their void shields overload and shatter into brilliant arcs of multicolored lightning before collapsing entirely into dust and ruin.
More efficient than any demolition crew.
Based on the divine weapon personally commanded by the Divine Empress—the Divine Key transformed into an Ultimate Teigu, the National Defense Machine God—the mass-produced variant Titans had been continually refined and enhanced. Their towering silhouettes, each hundreds of meters high, loomed like living mountains.
Like skyscrapers walking upon two legs, the sight of such godlike machines towering into the heavens was enough to drain the courage of most cultists and traitors.
Far taller than any Titan of the loyal Mechanicum—or even those of the corrupted Dark Mechanicum—their presence alone invoked terror, as though the Omnissiah Himself had descended upon the world.
Naturally, the traitorous Knight Houses and Dark Mechanicum Titan Legions serving the Word Bearers took immediate notice of these monstrous war machines fielded by the Night Lords.
Within moments, the counter-barrage began.
Countless shells shrieked through the air, slamming into the Night Lords' Titans, detonating with thunderous force. Yet their blows were absorbed by the layered void shields, energy barriers, and deflector-field arrays encasing each Supreme Titan.
Thud, thud—!
The Dark Mechanicum's Titan Legions advanced, closing in on the Night Lords' positions.
They appeared like hunchbacked giants—stooped and grotesque, their armor caked in dried blood and rust.
Unlike the holy Titans of the Imperial Mechanicum or the Sacred Selene Empire, these corrupted engines of war were covered in pustulent tumors and oozing foul ichor. Their spiked armor plates were adorned with the bones and skulls of loyalist Astartes, chained among jagged iron and rusted steel.
From Warhound-class scout Titans armed with thermal lances, twin meltas, and multi-barreled Vulcan cannons, to Reaver, Warlord, and Warmaster-class Titans mounting quake cannons, plasma annihilators, and vortex missile pods—every class of war engine unleashed devastation.
And then—Thud! Thud!
The fallen Imperator-class Titans appeared.
Walking cathedrals of Chaos, these mobile temples bore multiple void shields and skyscraper-thick weaponry. The moment they entered the field, they unleashed tidal waves of firepower upon every Night Lord support formation.
There were three of them—three corrupted Imperator-class iron behemoths—marching forth, surrounded by over a hundred lesser Titans. Though most were Warhound-class, the Legion's formation was staggering in size. Accompanying them were nearly as many corrupted Knight armors.
Truly, the power of one of the original Space Marine Legions.
Had the Word Bearers never turned traitor, their industrial and military capacity might have rivaled even Ultramar's.
Even in rebellion, their reserves and logistics dwarfed those of most modern splinter Chapters.
Indeed, because they had fallen, their Legion still retained the full Great Crusade-era military structure—untouched by the mutilating doctrines of the Codex Astartes, unbroken, uncastrated, and far beyond mere "canned infantry."
They commanded their own fleets, auxiliary armies, reserves, armored divisions, atmospheric wings—and their own Titan Legions and Knight Houses.
In a sense, their organization more closely resembled that of Selene's Imperial forces.
Of course, this comparison applied only to the larger traitor Legions that still preserved their complete hierarchy and strength.
Bzzzz—
A formation of over a hundred Titans advancing in unison was a sight rarely seen in the modern Imperium of Man—though this time, it was the shameful traitors who fielded them.
Employing the most brutal Titan Legion siege tactics, their void shields interlinked, forming a vast, impenetrable wall of shimmering energy.
At least they knew their limits. They understood that one-on-one, they could never win—so they abandoned maneuver warfare, instead maximizing their numerical and firepower advantage.
In the next instant, across the vast fortress battlefield, intersecting beams of multicolored lasers cut through the air, while titanic explosive shells—each the size of missiles—soared in all directions. Five-story-high plasma torrents scoured the ground...
Then came the second wave, and the third—Plasma Annihilators, Quake Cannon, Volcano Cannons, Gatling Blasters, Saturnyne Lascutter, Apocalypse Missile Launchers, Turbo-laser Destructors, and more.
Every weapon system that only a Titan could wield was unleashed in full fury from both sides.
This was a clash of superheavy armor—a contest between the divine machines of the Mechanicum. No infantry, no elaborate maneuvers—only raw, unrelenting power.
Who had the stronger shields, the thicker armor, the larger guns, the more efficient reactors and energy outputs?
Simple. Direct. Lethal.
Rumble—RUMBLE—!
The mutual bombardment of the Titan clusters was apocalyptic.
The city foundations—spanning an area larger than continents—heaved and rippled like waves, the shockwaves spreading outward from the Titans' battlefield, birthing concentric rings of seismic tremors.
The roars of fortress-class weapons turned the battlefield into a display of cosmic fireworks visible even from orbit.
Buildings crumbled, cathedrals toppled, and the sacred city painstakingly built by the Word Bearers—their new Perfect City—Monarchia—collapsed as its stone-steel foundations cracked and split, fissures plunging thousands of meters deep.
Above, the power grid ruptured—underground heavy-ion conduits shorted out, and the region's void shields overloaded and burst.
One grand cathedral after another fell. Endless debris and rubble mixed with the screaming bodies of cultists and Chaos Astartes, hurled thirty to forty meters into the air before crashing down like rain.
Just like the unfair treatment their Daemon Primarch suffered elsewhere—this was war. The operators of the Supreme Honkai Titans had no interest in negotiating or dueling.
Their mission was demolition. Swift and absolute. Efficiency, not chivalry.
"Night Lords Legion, 235th Titan Battalion requesting orbital bombardment—designating target coordinates on Sicarus at 42°N, 42°E... uploading, correcting, awaiting secondary authorization. Transmission complete."
And then, before the eyes of all, golden spears of light—like divine blades—descended from orbit, striking directly at the heart of the Dark Mechanicum Titan Legion's formation.
The shockwave rolled outward, sweeping across the land in every direction.
The sky darkened beneath firestorms, and the ground turned crimson, painted in layers of blood and dust.
Both sides—attacker and defender alike—wordlessly avoided that sector, just as they had avoided directly assaulting Inficio Sanctuary itself.
Through the gap carved open by the Titans' annihilating firepower, the towers fell and the fortress walls crumbled. A breach spanning over ten kilometers yawned wide.
The warriors of the Night Lords surged forward, an ocean of ghost-blue advancing lines.
Among them, the Anti-Entropy thunder mechs marched forth, their hydraulic systems hissing and coolant vents humming as they provided tactical squad fire support.
"Die! Die! Die! Blasphemers who defile the sacred ground!"
"For Lorgar's Word! For the True Gods!"
The howling, rune-scarred Word Bearers clashed with the Night Lords, blood spraying in waves. A bat-winged Midnight officer swung a massive twin-linked chain halberd, meeting the strike of a Chaos Lord wielding a double-headed chain axe.
At the same time, on the breach's edge, a Night Lord's lightning claws pierced his foe's guard, the crackling talons punching through the Chaos Terminator's chest. A surge of electric fury vaporized his twin hearts and three lungs, tearing him apart in a storm of blood and metal fragments.
"This is getting exciting."
"The number of heretic Astartes here must be close to two hundred thousand."
Boom! Boom! BOOM!
Dense volleys of missiles and concentrated laser fire rained down upon the entrenched, corrupted Word Bearers who were dug in around the fortress nodes. Explosions blossomed into roaring fireballs and clouds of thick, dark smoke, leaving behind fields of severed limbs and torn flesh among the heretic lines.
Under the cover of the relentless barrage, thousands of ghost-blue figures vaulted over the outer terraces of the Temple of Truth, leading their accompanying AI-controlled cohorts as they conducted a systematic, surgical sweep through every cathedral, chamber, and sewer of the Word Bearer city.
The shriek of energy weapons filled the air, the roar of bolters echoed endlessly, and guided missiles and rockets streaked through the storm-lit sky of Sicarus, raining upon the defiled temples, shrines, and monuments of the Word Bearers.
Smoke boiled up from shattered tanks and collapsed fortifications, while the air vibrated with flying munitions, shells, and coherent beams of energy.
The battlefield evolved with every heartbeat.
"Cease fire, cease fire! Sector 3-2329 has been purged. Medics, Apothecaries—injured here! No combat fatalities, but eight entered neural stasis, we need evac!"
"This is Sector 5-2323, requesting tactical squad support for Titan fire coordination! All accompanying autonomous cohorts destroyed. This area is a large sacrificial complex—multiple daemon engines and possessed warriors confirmed!"
Every Astartes helmet vox was alive with chaos: the thunder of war, inhuman screams, shouted orders, and crackling static.
"Grand Captain, the long-range firepower on this world is weaker than on other fronts. The beings here—human or xeno, physical or psychic—all seem to favor brutal close-quarters combat to end battles."
"Perhaps it's the Warp's influence."
With a faint smile, the blood-winged Grand Captain of the Night Lords dropped what he held—a mangled upper torso, its limbs severed, its horned head crushed to pulp.
"Their so-called blessings from false gods? Hmph. If they can't strike hard enough, then we'll strike harder. Double the charge."
Resting his power halberd upon his shoulder, the Night Lord Captain stood atop the shattered carcass of a daemon engine, its body sliced into seven or eight pieces. With one boot, he crushed the remaining tangle of flesh and servos into paste before gazing toward the distance.
There, beneath the blood-red heavens, the primal energy of the Immaterium streamed endlessly into the bodies of three Primarchs, igniting them into three brilliant supernovae that radiated boundless power.
"Soon, Her Majesty will reap the sweet fruit offered by Night Lords."
The Grand Captain turned away.
"Servitor, transmit my orders—tell the squads to hold back from annihilating the sacrificial complexes. Let them be. The Word Bearers' rituals... they may yet prove useful."
"Prepare the offering ritual. After the purge of two hundred thousand Word Bearers, collect their heads—all of them—and cast them into the pyre."
"Replicate the Commorragh process."
"Yes, my lord."
Rumble... RUMBLE...!
This was a battle long destined.
At the summit of the Temple of Truth, the Inficio Sanctuary lay half-collapsed. Screams and falling debris filled the air as shattered masonry rained from the heavens. The vast eight-pointed dome—symbol of the Word Bearers' faith in the Chaos Gods—shattered under the echoing detonations.
Countless crystal windows burst apart, raining glittering shards across the temple hives for hundreds of kilometers.
BOOM!
The atmosphere itself drummed like a warbeat. A beastly figure, its body inscribed with dark-gold runes, was hurled through the air—pursued by three streaks of light, one azure, one black, one gray. The figure smashed through dozens of towering spires, tearing through a monument hundreds of kilometers long, before plummeting like a burning meteor into the blood-soaked wastelands of Sicarus.
Moments later, a second explosion, brighter than an atomic blast, tore through the plains. Towers crumbled, beams shattered, rebar split, and clouds of pulverized stone rose into the storm.
"Corax... Russ... How laughable. You call yourselves paragons of honor, yet stoop to such wretched tricks."
The Daemon Primarch Lorgar was half-kneeling before a collapsed mountainside, his ash-covered form hiding the dried blood that had once soaked his armor. The dark-golden runes etched across his flesh were dulled with soot, his breath ragged as he coughed up mouthfuls of blood.
He truly was... broken.
From the start, he had sensed it—the biting frost of Fenris, the feral scent of the wolf dens. Deep down, he had known that his blood brother, the one who had hunted him for thousands of years, would come for him.
And indeed, the worst had happened—three against one.
"To deal with you, why should I care about honor?"
The Wolf King of Fenris raised the burning book-shaped insignia he had torn from Lorgar's shoulder plate, hurled it to the ground, and crushed it beneath his boot. His expression twisted into a mocking grin as he lifted his frostblade, baring his teeth.
"Colchis mongrel. You're unworthy. To die by my hand—and Corax's—is the greatest honor you'll ever have."
The nineteenth Primarch, Corvus Corax, remained silent as he raised the Raven's Talons.
He had never had words for Lorgar. On Isstvan V, he should have killed this traitor without hesitation.
Whoosh!
A wave of force split the air, shaking the ground. In an instant, the scorched remains of the battlefield were blown apart. The massive Primarch's body crashed into the ground, throwing up clouds of dust as the earth trembled.
Moments later, a crater several kilometers wide yawned open where he fell.
"Corax—alive."
Arms crossed, Curze gripped Lorgar's battered spiked mace in one hand, its surface glowing with a violet-red distortion field.
"I know."
Corax slammed his hand down, pressing Lorgar's face into the dirt. Yet even that wasn't enough to vent his fury. Raising his fist, he struck with all his might.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
Each blow drew blood from Lorgar's lips. Each strike shattered his flesh and bone—but Lorgar did not scream. His eyes, though sunken and bloodied, still gleamed with conviction—as if silently declaring, I am right.
"Cough... cough... Do you know, my poor brother? I seek nothing but Truth."
He spat blood and teeth. "All I've ever wanted... is the truth. You call me a traitor?"
The blows had warped his face, burst his eye sockets, and filled his mouth with blood—but his tone remained proud.
"I never sought to overthrow our father's kingdom of lies out of arrogance. I never wished to bleed humanity dry. Though I understood why it must be done, I never desired it. All I sought... was the truth."
He turned his gaze toward Curze, fixating on the violet-red energy in his hand—the same essence, the same origin as the Chaos God Finality.
"Hahaha... Look at you now. Look at the Imperium. Look at our so-called Father... Everything I've done was for Truth. How can you call that betrayal? What I sought... has already come to pass!"
Lorgar no longer cared to know or question. All he needed to know was this—the Emperor had allied with the Chaos Gods. Which meant the path he had once been condemned for was right all along.
He laughed—a sound of satisfaction, of release.
Like a martyr, Lorgar raised his hand toward his two brothers. "You've lost. The Emperor has lost. My path was true!"
"Come! Kill me! Let me die victorious! You are the ones who failed!"
He laughed madly, eyes wide with manic triumph.
"Silence."
The Wolf King said nothing more. In a way, Lorgar had indeed won. His expression soured, and as he raised his axe to strike, Curze stepped forward to block him.
"So, you're ready then," Curze said quietly, glancing between the two Primarchs. His gaze swept the ruined landscape, a faint, almost invisible smile curving across his lips—a ripple on still water.
"The martyr's end..."
"You..." Lorgar's laughter faltered.
"The offering."
"Men!" Curze's voice thundered across the wasteland. "Center the ritual here. Prepare the sacrifice."
—
—
40 Advanced Chapters Available on Patreon:
Patreon.com/DaoOfHeaven