Four beams pierced the heavens.
Each one a pillar of impossible light—white at the core, bleeding into gold at the edges, their radiance cutting through the black clouds that still churned above the plains.
Between them hung the Gate—a suspended sphere of perfect darkness, its surface devouring every reflection, every color.
It pulsed faintly, like a heart still trying to remember how to beat.
The right flank blazed brightest.
There, the Gellar lattice had already synchronized—two harmonizers singing in perfect rhythm, the energy threading between them in a straight, unwavering wall of light.
A barrier of reality itself.
Every mote of ash shimmered as if uncertain whether it still belonged to the physical world. And beneath those beams, the surviving Knights held their ground, their reactors pulsing in harmony with the lattice, their silhouettes framed in golden haze.
The box was forming—one wall complete, three more to align.
Each pulse from the harmonizers drove another stake into unreality, sealing the battlefield tighter, forcing the storm to retreat inch by inch.
But the work was far from done.
The other nodes still flickered — out of sync, trembling under the pressure of two worlds grinding together.
If they failed to tune perfectly, the lattice would collapse.
If they succeeded—
the Gate would be sealed, and everything inside would be trapped with it.
—
SCREEEEKKKK.
The sound tore through the air—like a blade carving molten metal, like an engine dying mid-prayer.
Thanatos' reaper-blade bit deep into the swollen flank of the Putrid Xenoform, splitting its glistening hide with horrifying ease.
Boiling filth and black rot sprayed across the ash, hissing where it struck the Knight's armor.
The aberration bellowed in laughter—each guttural note shaking the earth, its open wounds birthing clouds of corpse-flies that spiraled outward into the poisoned air.
Thanatos drove the blade deeper, reactor flaring as he twisted it sideways, widening the wound until inner plating cracked and a wave of rancid sludge poured out like molten tar.
The first wall of the Gellar lattice pulsed from his right—pure, golden, unwavering.
Reality itself stood as his backdrop while he waged war against decay incarnate—
PHOOM! PHOOM!
The air rippled with heat as Morphael's thermal spear fired, each blast a molten lance carving burning paths through the plague tide.
The bursts struck like hammer-blows beside Thanatos, vaporizing heaps of filth in twin pillars of fire.
Behind her, Vorgane stood immovable over the tuned Second Harmonizer—the guardian of that sacred engine of reality.
—
Within the harmonizer's field, the air was different.Still heavy, still charged—but stable.
Here, physics obeyed once more.
Rounds flew true, motion flowed clean, and the oppressive drag that smothered the rest of the battlefield simply—ended.
His battle cannon thundered in perfect rhythm, each shell cutting clean through the air, unimpeded by the warp-pressure that bent everything beyond the node's reach.
Every impact tore new craters through the advancing tide spilling from the Gate.
Each recoil, each muzzle flash, each echo—perfectly timed to the pulse of the Gellar field itself.
—
"Morvhar," Obol's voice cut through the link—measured, deliberate, absolute.
"Redeploy to the First Node. We'll need your Avengers in line of fire."
—
"Understood." Thrykos' reply came without hesitation.
Morvhar broke formation, its massive frame pivoting in a slow, thunderous stride. Servo-locks released with heavy clanks, the sound rolling through the haze like distant drums.
The Knight began its march across the ash fields—toward the lower ridge where the First Node stood half-buried beneath wreckage and debris.
With every step, the ground trembled.The faint shimmer of the Gellar field wove around his hull, a thin mirage of stability in a world unraveling at the edges.
His cannons spun up—slow at first—then settled into their measured rhythm once more, tracking targets beyond the harmonizer's reach.
—
At the last node—the southern flank.
The march toward the Bastion began in silence.
The Magos led—iron gait steady, each step leaving molten prints in the scorched earth.
Light from the harmonizers rippled across his crimson frame as he passed beneath their beams, vox-relays whispering binharic fragments into the storm like mechanical prayers.
Behind him strode Cinerion—a wounded colossus dragging his own ruin through the ash.
The Quake Cannon's recoil had exacted its price: his left arm was nothing but shattered plating and torn hydraulic veins, sparking with every step.
Still he moved, reactor heart dim but unbroken.
Halfway to the Bastion, a familiar silhouette emerged from the haze.
Phorxys advanced in the opposite direction—her lances dimmed, coils pulsing a steady blue.
The Knights crossed paths beneath the storm.
For a heartbeat, neither spoke.Only the low hum of reactors and the distant keening of the Gate above filled the silence.
Then Vaeleen's voice broke across the vox—dry, roughened by exhaustion but still edged with mirth.
"The gun was too big for you to handle, Lord Maeric?"
Cinerion paused, helm turning slightly toward her.
A distorted exhale slipped through his vox—half huff, half laugh.
Then he pressed on without a word.
—
The Magos did not pause.
He strode between the towering warforms, cloaked in the rising hum of the harmonizers, heading straight for the Bastion and its pulsing core.
Behind him, Cinerion came to a halt at the perimeter.The Paladin sank to one knee, his remaining arm braced against the trembling earth.
A grinding shriek tore through the din as the ruined limb detached—falling free in a thunderous crash that sent dust rippling outward.
Servitors converged at once—mechanical locusts of steel and devotion, their welding claws hissing as they set upon the damage. Sparks cascaded in bright fountains while they worked, grafting a new arm into place, pistons locking, hydraulics bleeding pressure like sighs.
Cinerion did not look at them.
His gaze stayed fixed upon the Bastion—upon the crimson silhouette of the Magos disappearing into its sanctum.
—
Within, the air shimmered with layered Gellar fields and the low drone of interference.
The Navigators waited in the half-light, their skin ghost-pale beneath the glow of conduits, veins traced with threads of living gold.
Magos Dominus Thale Serekin entered without ceremony—only purpose.
His mechadendrites unfurled in a storm of motion as he approached the central relay shrine, each metallic limb alive with crackling energy.
Before him, through the Bastion's fractured arches, the vast silhouettes of Knights loomed against the dark horizon—sentinels of fire and faith, fixed in their appointed stations around the Gate.
Their reactors pulsed in rhythm with the lattice's deepening hum, the beams of the harmonizers crisscrossing the heavens like the strings of some cosmic instrument.
To Thale Serekin, this was not a battlefield.
It was a machine in divine tension, a creation caught between order and annihilation.And he was its conductor.
He raised one hand, fingers clicking through the sacred motions of command.The harmonizer relays pulsed in immediate obedience.
Every Gellar node flared brighter, their light rippling outward in concentric waves, synchronizing heartbeat by heartbeat.
The war had become symphony.And the Magos would see that every note was played true.
His mechadendrites struck home, locking into the brass-edged data slots of the relay shrine with a staccato rhythm of sparks and hissing pneumatics.
—
"Initiating lattice verification," Thale intoned.
His voice was perfectly flat—yet it filled the chamber like a sermon, every syllable resonant with authority.
"Primary field amplitude—stable."
"Node coherence—ninety-four percent."
The Bastion lights dimmed.
A low hum rose through the walls—deep, resonant, alive.The sound of a world aligning.
Thale paused, optics narrowing as runes flared across the relay's brass surface in lines of binharic flame.
Then, without turning, he gave a single nod toward the Navigators.
—
Lysan's breath steadied.Blood-slick fingers hovered over the sigil-plate, eyes unfocused as the lattice threads came into view before his inner sight—burning veins of gold stretching across the world's skin.
"Beginning counter-clockwise tuning," he announced.
"Harmonizing Second to Third node—"
—
"Belay that."
The voice cut through the chamber like a blade of iron.
Obol.
For a heartbeat, even the harmonizers faltered—their hum falling into an uneasy drone.
"Magos. Navigators. Connect the Third and Fourth nodes."
The command needed no explanation.
—
Thale did not turn from the relay.
He inclined his head once—a precise acknowledgment.
"Acknowledged."
A single dial turned beneath his hand.
The conduits above the altar flared with renewed light, the relays shifting tone as new pathways opened.
Behind him, Lysan and Seraphine moved in unison, redirecting their focus westward through the lattice—toward the two untouched nodes.
Their voices fell to low whispers—overlapping, steady, deliberate.
The Bastion thrummed again.The tuning had begun anew.
—
Outside, the world thrummed.
The Third and Fourth Nodes flared in sequence—two pillars of green lancing between the white beams already clawing skyward through the storm.
Each pulse rippled outward in concentric rings, bending the air, distorting the light, reshaping reality itself.
The tuning had begun.
From the Bastion, the lattice's hum deepened—an echo of the Navigators' will carried through soil, steel, and storm alike. Every beat rolled across the plains like the pulse of a colossal heart.
Obol felt it even through Thanatos' armor. Each vibration thrummed through the cockpit frame, syncing with his own heartbeat until man and machine moved to the same rhythm.
But the tide did not slow.
Rotting silhouettes crashed through the smoke in endless waves—hulking plague-beasts and half-melted forms dragging their swollen limbs toward him, each one birthing another with every step.
Thanatos met them in silence.
His Reaper chainsword drew a diagonal arc across their ranks, carving through regenerative flesh with the sound of grinding steel. Boiling rot sprayed in ribbons that clung to the blade's teeth and hissed as it struck the Knight's carapace.
The stench hit like acid through filters—hot decay and ozone.
Obol exhaled once through the vox.
The sound might have been a sigh—or the slow release of reactor pressure.
Eight waves. Eight tides of corruption.
But this one was different.
For the first time, they faced the true core of the infestation.
It was not swift. It was not cunning.
It was enduring.
Each motion carried the weight of a collapsing fortress.
Every swing of its swollen limbs landed with the force of falling towers, shaking the ash plains beneath him.
Thanatos braced—armor joints groaning, pistons shrieking.
Even movement was costly now. The air dragged at him like wet iron.
Every step demanded power.
Every breath of the reactor burned hotter than it should.
The world pressed down, as if the immaterium itself wanted him to kneel.
The abomination moved through that same air as if it were mist. Its massive form was untouched by drag or weight, the storm parting around its presence like water around a hull. With every exhalation, it unleashed new corruption—spores drifting like embers, melting into fresh horrors where they fell.
Thanatos advanced through it all, undeterred.
The Reaper blade came down again—slower than he wished, but true.
The chain-teeth bit deep, carving through putrid mass. Boiling ichor burst outward, steaming as it met sanctified plating.
The creature laughed.
A deep, wet rumble that vibrated through the ground and armor alike—like a mountain remembering how to breathe.
Obol's helm tilted slightly, tracking its chest cavity as it began to knit itself whole again.
Flesh sealed over wounds that should not have closed.
Rot reassembled into shape, pulled together by invisible force.
It was regenerating faster than he could wound it.
He pressed forward, refusing to yield.
The next swing came faster—driven by reactor override and muscle memory older than fear.
The blade hit at the base of the neck, where the tissue was thinnest.
It didn't cleave—it tore, ripping in jagged layers.
Bile and liquefied meat sprayed across his legs, hissing where it struck the plating.
Each droplet burned like acid, scoring lines into metal.
And still, Thanatos stood firm.
—
The xenoform stomped down.
The ground broke.
Stone and ash folded inward as its immense weight crashed into the earth, sending a shockwave rippling through the ridge like a living drumbeat.
The impact reached Thanatos a heartbeat later.
Grav-stabilizers screamed.
Warning runes cascaded across Obol's display as the ground beneath his feet turned liquid.
Ash buckled. The soil split.Fissures tore open and bled green fire into the choking air.
Obol reacted before the collapse could swallow him. Reactor coils flared white as Thanatos drove both legs down, anchoring himself in the imploding plain. Each foot sank half a meter deep, but held.
The creature advanced through the smoke—its bulk dragging a wake of corruption behind it. Every step brought a new quake, each tremor bending the world closer to breaking.
Thanatos' optics flickered—golden lenses struggling to hold focus as distortion warped the image before him, the abomination's outline bending like molten glass.
He raised the thermal lance again.It was no longer an act of aim or accuracy—only defiance.
FWOOM!
The beam fired point-blank.
The incandescent column punched into the thing's leg, erupting in a bloom of molten fat and burning ichor that rained across the trenchline like corrosive rain.
It laughed.
The sound rolled through the vox—low, guttural, infectious.
Every note carried rot in its echo, seeping into static, clawing at the edges of the Knight's machine-spirit.
Thanatos didn't yield.
He pressed the lance forward, reactor screaming, until the limb collapsed beneath its own decay and the monster's knee drove into the earth with a seismic crack.
Still it grinned—its half-melted jaws stretching wide, pus dripping in ropes that hissed against the ground like molten tar.
The nodes' hum deepened.
Obol could feel it now—vibrating through Thanatos' hull, steady and climbing in pitch, the harmonizers reaching toward perfect alignment.The air grew thinner.
The weight eased.
His movements sharpened.
The drag was lifting.
He only needed to hold—
just a little longer.
—
ZHOOM! ZHOOM! ZHOOM!
Lances of molten light tore through the smog—Morphael's thermal spear hammering the xenoform's torso in rapid succession.
Each strike cored through rancid flesh, sending fountains of boiling ichor into the air.But the regeneration was instant.
The wounds didn't close—they multiplied.Every cauterized crater swelled, blistered, and split again, birthing clusters of new pustules that erupted in seconds.
Corrosive bile rained outward, spattering across the ridge in curtains of acid.Each drop hissed where it fell, birthing clouds of green vapor and puddles of half-living sludge that crawled across the stone like worms.
The vox flared—Isera's voice cutting through static, ragged with exertion.
"Targets regenerating—can't make a dent!"
—
Thanatos' reactor burned hotter, golden light leaking from its vents in streaming arcs.
Obol's reply came cold and absolute.
"Lady Isera. Withdraw from assist. Stay with Vorgane and hold the Second Node."
—
A beat of silence.
Then her voice returned—tight, defiant.
"—But, High-Scion—"
—
He cut her off.
"I've got the Third Node."
—
The vox went quiet again.
Only the hum of the lattice and the roar of molten fire filled the world.
—
Thanatos surged forward—venting superheated air as ash and flame spiraled in his wake.
The xenoform loomed ahead, its maw splitting in another wet, gurgling laugh—just in time for Obol's Reaper chainsword to connect.
The blade cleaved upward in a brutal arc, shearing through its face from jaw to crown.
Rot and vapor geysered outward; split halves twitched violently as bile poured down its chest in thick, glowing ropes.
And still—it smiled.
Its ruined jaw stretched farther than any bone should allow, teeth cracking, flesh splitting wide in a grotesque imitation of joy.
Obol wrenched the sword free, reactor burning white-hot as he primed for another strike—
—when the chainsword faltered.
The blessed growl of adamantium teeth stuttered into a grinding choke—then silence.
Obol's helm lowered.
He looked down.
The teeth had stopped mid-spin. The entire chain was rusting before his eyes—holy metal flaking away into orange dust that drifted off in the warp-tainted air.
Thanatos' right arm hung heavy, then he half-buried the blade in the creature's abdomen, fused in place like a sacrificial spike.
For a heartbeat, everything was still.
Then Obol exhaled once.
No anger. No disbelief.
Only acceptance.
"You can have it."
—
He drove the ruined weapon deeper, forcing it through layers of rancid flesh until it struck spine.
The green filth screamed—not in pain, but in pleasure.The sound bubbled wetly from every open sore, echoing through the haze like laughter drawn through blood.
Thanatos' left arm came free.
Servos whirred. Obol's fingers tightened around the thermal lance's haft as its coils began to spool—rising from a hum to a shriek.
The creature raised one decayed claw, each fingertip trailing a shimmer of oxidizing air that turned stone and armor alike to rust on contact.
The ground beneath its hand withered into iron dust.
Obol shifted his stance.
Reactor heat vented through Thanatos' flanks, white fire cutting lines through the rolling corruption.
—
He didn't step back.
He pivoted—letting the corrosive breath slide past, its vapor scoring long scars of rust and black decay across his hull.
Every inch that died was reborn in fire.
Reactor light surged beneath the armor plates, counter-burning the infection away in rippling sheets of molten heat.
Then the lance fired.
FWOOM!
The beam punched through the creature's arm, erasing rot and matter alike in an instant.
Flesh turned to vapor. Bone became light.
Obol's voice came low over the vox—half prayer, half defiance.
"Purity through combustion."
—
The warp-beast convulsed—its swollen abdomen splitting down the middle like a rotted sack.
Flesh tore. Boils burst.
The chainsword lodged in its gut clung to one side, half-swallowed by pulsing tissue that flexed like a mouth around it.
Then the birthing began.
Dozens—no, hundreds—of small, writhing shapes spilled from the wound.
Tiny, bloated spawn, each a grotesque reflection of their parent: horned, grinning, leaking.They hit the ground wetly, shrieking as they crawled forward on hands made of teeth and pus.
The air curdled.
Every drop of fluid that touched the soil hissed into vapor, spreading a new miasma of corrosion that clung to Thanatos' greaves and ate into his plating like acid frost.
—
Inside the cockpit, red sigils cascaded across Obol's display.
CORROSIVE CONTACT – REACTIVE PLATING FAILING – OXIDATION RATE INCREASING.
Obol's teeth clenched.
He could taste the static bleeding through the vox—metallic, bitter, alive.
Even the Knight's machine-spirit growled, its binary voice breaking through the channel, distorted by fury.
He could feel it.
The rot blooming under the armor's skin—as though he were feeling his own flesh begin to fever and peel.
—
And still, he refused to step back.
Thanatos' left arm ignited—the thermal lance burning to sunfire.
Obol turned the weapon downward and swept it in a brutal arc across the ground.
The first line of spawn vaporized instantly.
The second burst apart.
The third screamed as they melted, their voices twisting into warped hymns that echoed through the smoke.
But they kept coming.
Clawing over their burning dead.
Reforming from the slime pouring out of their parent's wound.
The warp-spawn laughed again—louder now, delighted by its own regeneration.
Each laugh made the air heavier, denser, more suffocating.
Rust bloomed faster. Servos strained.
Thanatos moved slower—
—but he still moved.
Obol exhaled. Reactor temperature climbed.
"If decay is your weapon," he murmured, fingers tightening around the lance,
"then purity will be mine."
Flames roared from every vent as Thanatos charged, wading into the swarm like a walking furnace.
The Xenos lurched forward, birthing another tide of rot from the gash in its gut.
Thanatos met it head-on—half-blind, half-burning—his armor bleeding rust where the filth clung.
Alarms screamed across the cockpit.
INTEGRITY BREACH (PLAS-VENT 02–05)LATTICE DRAW: 81% / STABILITY Δ–0.6
He didn't hesitate.
"Magos. Increase shared strain to Thanatos—thirty percent."
—
The reply came at once—a burst of machine-cant wrapped in the cold authority of the Martian priest.
"Request acknowledged. Diverting lattice current. Maintain structural cohesion, High-Scion."
Then the cable binding Thanatos to Kaelthorn blazed white.
Buried conduits beneath the ash flared like veins of light through the earth—some visible, some hidden, all pulsing with power like caged suns.
The surge hit hard.
Thanatos' frame shuddered, plating groaning as the overload poured through his systems. Every rune on the console burned crimson—and still, Obol held the controls.
His nose bled. The inside of his helm fogged with heat.
The machine-spirit's voice rose around him—half warning, half war-hymn—chanting through static and pain.
"Gloria Mechanicus… Deus in ferro…"
The Knight's limbs locked—then reignited in motion.
The reactor screamed. Servos roared like choir bells reforged in light.
Corrosion blistered and peeled away beneath the combined fury of heat and sanctified current, leaving the armor blackened but clean.
Obol lowered his helm, breath steady though his vision swam red. His hands tightened on the controls.
Thanatos surged forward again—every movement burdened by strain, every step carving glowing scars through the corrupted ground. Behind him, the tether to Kaelthorn pulsed like a living artery of fire.
The buried cables glowed beneath the ash, white-hot veins feeding energy through his frame. Heat rolled off him in shimmering waves; the air bent and fractured around his silhouette.
Armor plates hissed where welds expanded, seams glowing orange before cooling to red. Black smoke vented from every joint, as though the Knight exhaled through burning lungs.
Thanatos was overheating—a walking crucible of iron and will, driven past all safe limits.
Acid struck his plating and turned to steam.
Spawn that clung to his legs were cooked to vapor before they could scream.
The world around him boiled, but his frame endured—glowing brighter with every step.
He moved slower, heavier—the weight of heat pressing on every motion—yet he did not stop.
He no longer looked alive; he looked tempered.
The transfer struck like judgment.
Obol felt it first: the surge hammering through his veins, reactor pressure spiking, heat blooming until the cockpit itself became a crucible.
The metal sang. The air shimmered. Blood slid down his face, but he didn't wipe it away.
—
Around him, the world changed.
Every Knight felt the strain ease—the invisible drag of the warp lifting from their limbs as though a great weight had been shifted. The air grew lighter, clearer.Thanatos had taken their burden for himself.
The giant moved again.
Slow. Deliberate. Each motion radiating unbearable heat. His armor hissed, vents spewing black smoke as molten light bled from every seam.
The sigils carved into his hull burned white, then orange, then deep red—until he no longer resembled a Knight of steel, but the skeleton of one, a war-titan stripped to its blazing bones.
Rust that once spread like infection now simply vanished, burned to drifting ash.
Acid spittle struck his plates and vaporized into white mist.
Lesser Warp-spawns hurled themselves upon his legs and ignited instantly—flesh to vapor, bone to shadow.
He did not dodge.
He did not yield.
Thanatos advanced—overheated, relentless, absolute.
The warp-beast roared and spewed another tide of filth, but the wave met the wall of his heat and died before it reached him.
Steam rolled outward, veiling him in a haze that shimmered with refracted gold and blood-red light.
The earth beneath his stride softened, slagging under the pressure of his core.
Every step left a glowing crater.
The air itself began to warp—light bending around him in a lens of trembling heat, as though the world itself was trying to look away.
Obol's hands tightened around the controls.
The machine-spirit within Thanatos screamed and sang in the same breath, its voice fracturing into binharic war-chants that echoed through the vox like a choir trapped in a furnace.
"In ferrum vita."
"In ignem puritas."
Obol's teeth bared behind his helm. His voice followed like a verdict.
"Burn."
Thanatos charged—each stride a quake, each footfall a furnace.
Molten craters bloomed in his wake, the plague tide boiling away to vapor as the heat of his advance reshaped the battlefield itself.
The world bent around the Knight—an inferno forged in faith, dragging the lattice's radiance straight into the heart of corruption.
—
The warp-creature lurched forward, its laughter breaking into a convulsion of retching noise.
Then it vomited.
A tide of green cloud erupted from its throat—thick as oil, bright as poison—rolling over the ground and swallowing Thanatos whole.
The cloud burned like acid and shimmered with flies, its edges hissing where it touched the lattice's light.
For a heartbeat, the Knight vanished within the storm.Only the sound of boiling metal remained.
Then—movement.
The silhouette inside began to grow.Larger.
Brighter.
Hotter.
A glowing shape pushed through the haze, molten seams cutting the cloud like fractures in the world. When it stepped forward, the mist ignited around it—green vapor turning to white fire.
The rotting form roared, raising its rust-corroded cleaver.
Thanatos did not slow.
His left arm shot forward—massive mag-clamp closing over the creature's skull, choking its plague-ridden maw into silence.
The right arm rose—the thermal lance shook violently in its housing, plasma coils spinning out of control, containment runes flaring red.
Obol drove it upward—point-blank—into the creature's ribcage.
Pew—pew—pew!
Each muffled shot exploded inside the mass of rot, bursts of white plasma carving through bile and sinew.
The stench was indescribable—boiling pus, charred fat, ozone and burnt stone.
The creature convulsed, its abdomen splitting wider, liquid corruption cascading down the weapon as it fought against the purifying flame.
—
Obol held it there until the lance screamed.
When he pulled back, the weapon was no longer a melta gun.
The barrel had twisted and fused upon itself—
a spiraling needle of warped metal glowing white-hot, half-melted, alive with unstable light.
The machine-spirit howled through the link, begging release as the trigger lock flickered between red and green.
Obol ignored it.
He tightened his grip, thumb hovering over the firing stud while every system in Thanatos shrieked for shutdown.
Thanatos twisted.
The stump lodged in the creature's maw moved—servo pistons screamed, armor joints locked—
and with a single, grinding motion, he wrenched its head sideways.
CRACK.
A gout of black-green filth erupted from its throat.
The warp-beast reeled, arms flailing, bellowing through a throat half-collapsed.
Obol didn't let go.
Thanatos drove forward—every actuator howling—as he forced the monster backward, inch by inch, toward the luminous wall of the Gellar lattice.
His right arm plunged deeper into the warp beast's chest, elbow-deep in rotting mass, molten light bleeding from the wound as the weapon burned through bone and bile alike.
The creature howled, but the Knight did not stop.
Step by step, he shoved the abomination toward the rising barrier.
The ground split beneath their weight, twin trenches carved through stone and ash in their wake.
Half of Thanatos' frame vanished inside the creature's body—his blazing silhouette visible only as a skeleton of fire burning inside a mound of living decay.
The warp-thing thrashed in desperation.
Clawed limbs raked across Thanatos' armor—flesh sizzling on contact.
Each strike only seared itself away.
Nothing reached him.
Thanatos' heat was beyond pain, beyond touch, beyond sense.
Every motion left molten scars across the creature's body as he drove it, inexorably, into the burning lane between the mirrored Gellar walls.
The lattice flared in response—reality's heartbeat pounding against the corruption pressing into it.
The air screamed.
And still, Thanatos pushed.
—
"Activate it now would be nice, Magos!"
Obol's voice tore through the vox—raw, distorted by feedback and strain.
—
Inside the Bastion, Thale's optics flared white.
He gave a single mechanical nod to the Navigators.
"Confirmed," the Magos said, his tone calm against the storm.
"Engaging lattice compression."
—
Lysan's blood-slick palm struck the sigil-plate.
Seraphine mirrored him, her veiled eyes blazing gold beneath the flicker of the conduits.
"Synchronizing Third and Fourth—"
The Bastion shook.
Outside,
the harmonizers answered.
Twin beams of white-gold light roared skyward, their brilliance converging until they met above the battlefield.
The final seam of the lattice closed—the southern arc of the Gellar Wall snapped into place.
For a suspended heartbeat, the world held its breath.
Then—
FWUUUUMPH.
The new wall ignited.
A shockwave of crushing force tore through the plains, bending the air into molten distortion.
The light surged outward, swallowing both combatants—Thanatos half-buried in the warp-creature's chest as the wall of pure, weaponized reality slammed into them.
The effect was immediate.
The bloated monstrosity convulsed—its form glitching, flickering between presence and absence.
Its outline shattered in stuttering frames, mass phasing in and out of existence faster than sight could follow.
Obol's vision went white.
Then—
BOOM!
The ruined thermal lance exploded, a supernova of vented plasma that hurled Thanatos backward from the collapsing warp-skin.
The blast flung him clear just as the creature vanished—dragged screaming into the living wall and erased from existence.
But not cleanly.
Thanatos' left stump—still buried in the creature's skull—was caught in the boundary.
It disappeared for a heartbeat.
Then it returned.
The metal was wrong now—twisted, pitted, still weeping black ichor.
It flexed once, reflexively—like a thing trying to remember that it was metal.
The vox dissolved into static.
Thanatos knelt—
half of him bathed in lattice light, half shadowed in the lingering taint of what the wall had consumed.
—
It spread fast.
Warning runes flared crimson across Thanatos' throne, every cogitator voice overlapping in a panicked chorus.
The machine-spirit's hum turned guttural—its once-holy cant fracturing into distortion, half prayer, half scream.
Corruption crawled up the Knight's left side like veins of oil, spreading from the wrist inward.
Metal blistered. Runes flickered. Cables writhed as if alive.
Obol felt it through the throne's neural link—like molten fingers clawing into his spine.
Instinct took over.
The left interface locks disengaged with a hiss of pressurized air.
Obol slammed the manual override and tore the corrupted circuit free from his own control harness.
"Purity above life," he rasped.
The left arm went dead.
Thanatos' corrupted limb—still twitching, still steaming with residual warp-light—detached from the shoulder housing with a shriek of tearing hydraulics.
It fell in a crash of molten metal, kicking up a wave of ash and light as it struck the ground.
The limb spasmed once.
Then stilled.
A cloud of black vapor leaked from its joints, the stench of scorched oil and blood merging into one—the smell of sacrifice, and survival.
—
Inside the cockpit, Obol's nose bled freely.
His breath came ragged, his helm's display swimming with interference sigils.
The machine-spirit quieted—pained, but alive.
And Thanatos—half-maimed, half-reborn—straightened once more beneath the pulsing light of the lattice.
Then the light began to fade.
Silence—momentary, brittle—settled over the ridge.
Thanatos stood motionless amid the wreckage of his own making.
Steam rolled off his armor in slow, ghostlike sheets. Every vent bled black smoke; every plate glowed dull red along the seams.
Then—
Creak.
The Knight shifted. His left shoulder jerked once, then froze—the linkage sparking where the arm had been severed.
The other limb hung limp, the ruined lance now little more than a bundle of twisted metal and sparking wires.
Obol's breath rasped through the vox, harsh and uneven.
Warning runes pulsed across his vision in cascading crimson columns:
REACTOR OUTPUT—CRITICAL LOAD EXCEEDED
PILOT NEURAL STRAIN—UNSTABLE
He tried to force Thanatos upright again.
The servos groaned. Pistons screamed.
But the giant did not rise.
The Gellar field's light guttered across his hull—dimming, fading, then gone.
And finally—
Thanatos fell.
The Knight collapsed to one knee, then to the ground in full, the impact shaking the ridge like an artillery strike.
His reactor vented in a last, shuddering exhalation—a long, ghostly sigh that rolled out as steam and ash.
The light in his optics flickered once.
Then went dark.
—
Morphael saw Thanatos fall.
The Gate's glare painted his frame in red ruin—one arm gone, the other fused white-hot to slag.
She didn't hesitate.
"Caldrin, the ridge is yours," she voxed—sharp, decisive, cutting through the chaos.
Before he could answer, she was already moving.
Morphael drove forward, crushing the tide beneath her.
Rotlings, carrion-mites, and half-born warp-spawns burst into vapor under her heels.
Her stride never faltered.
The Gellar light shimmered across her hull as she pushed into the thickening storm.
The warp-pressure clawed at her joints, dragging at pistons and servos—but she ignored it.
Each step was a rejection of entropy, each motion a declaration of will.
To her, the storm was a wall.
To Thanatos, it had been death.
To her, it was only resistance.
Above, the lattice walls shimmered—two mirrored curtains of gold and white cutting the world in half.
Between them, the air burned with the fury of reality made weapon.
And somewhere in that blinding glow, a fallen brother waited.
—
From the Bastion, Cinerion moved.
The Magos' order still echoed through the vox:
"Immediate retrieval. Priority Primaris."
Cinerion's reactor surged as he stepped from the Bastion's shadow, half his frame still glowing from incomplete repair.
Sparks trailed from his newly-fitted arm while servitors scattered out of his path, their vox-hymns drowned by the rising hum of his reactor.
He slid down the ridge—each step shattering stone, his weight carving trenches into the slope as stabilizers fired in short bursts to steady the descent.
He passed the Fourth Node.
Its harmonizer flared as he crossed, reality bending around his frame before settling again.
Ahead, Morphael's silhouette burned in the toxin fog—her advance carving a path through the plague-tide brutes and other warp-spawns.
And from behind, Cinerion followed—alone across the burning plain, each stride pounding in time with the lattice's heartbeat.
Every impact was a vow:
to drag Thanatos back from the edge, no matter what the Gate still vomited into the world before them.
—
Within the Bastion, the walls sang with pressure.
The Gellar conduits pulsed in erratic rhythm, light racing through the etched sigils that climbed every column. Ozone thickened the air. The chamber tasted of copper and burning incense.
Thale Serekin stood at the center of it all—motionless, yet alive with current.
Cables and mechadendrites anchored him to the relay shrine; the entire altar trembled from the stress running through its veins.
Runes flared red across his optics:
LATTICE STRAIN DISTRIBUTION IMBALANCED
NODE III — CRITICAL LOAD
THANATOS — OUTPUT NULL / FEEDBACK RISK: HIGH
The Magos' internal processors cycled through a thousand calculations in the span of a heartbeat.
Thanatos' link to the lattice was failing—its conduit lines blackened, heat signatures collapsing into silence. If the node's power flow held steady, the imbalance could shatter the lattice's coherence entirely.
He did not speak at once.
Then, with mechanical precision, he raised one hand—and began to rewrite the world.
"Thanatos can no longer bear the lattice strain," he announced, voice flat yet resonant through every vox channel.
"Reassigning load distribution."
Binharic sigils cascaded from his palm.
Across the tactical projection above the altar, light rippled outward—power lines diverting from the fallen node, branching into the remaining Knights.
"Recalibrating harmonic strain vectors."
"Kaelthorn—maintain as anchor. Thanatos—excluded from draw."
"All other nodes—accept additional load. Increase lattice coupling twenty-one percent."
Warning runes ignited across every Knight's display as the surge struck home.
In the Bastion's heart, Kaelthorn's hull vibrated as the conduits sang louder, gold fire crawling through every seam.
The strain climbed—but the system held.
Thale's vox-tone hardened.
"Equilibrium restored. Maintain coherence."
"Let the others carry his burden until retrieval is complete."
He lifted his gaze toward the vault above—toward the storm-lit sky where the lattice lines converged like the veins of a living god.
—
The lattice screamed.
Across the battlefield, every Knight felt it hit—an invisible weight slamming into hulls, into minds, into the core of their machine-spirits.
Warning runes flared. Servos howled. Voxes filled with static and pain.
Vorgane staggered first.
The siege claw slammed into the ground to brace his frame, lightning erupting around the impact as the overload arced through his systems. Caldrin's teeth clenched behind his helm, one hand pressed to his temple as a migraine of molten wire crawled through his skull.
—
To the south, Morvhar's vents roared open in a plume of fire.
Thrykos' breath hitched—but he forced it steady.
His grip tightened around the Avenger triggers, barrels whining back to full speed as he poured suppression fire into the tide of warp-born xenoforms surging toward him.
—
Vaeleen's scream tore through the vox next.
"FUCK—fuck, my brain is melting!"
Phorxys lurched under the new current, lightning coils flashing unstable blue.
—
A burst of coughing cracked through her open channel before Thrykos' voice answered—calm, measured, resolute.
"Endure, young Scion."
—
Isera's voice followed, sharp and defiant through the static.
"If you can't fight it—act like you can."
Her Thunderstrike Gauntlet came down like a meteor, crushing a knot of warp-spawn into the mire.
—
Beside her, Cinerion arrived in silence.
His Reaper sabre swept wide in a single arc, cutting through the advancing swarm—dozens of xenoform heads bursting into vaporized rot.
"I'll get him back," Maeric voxed, helm turning toward the fallen Thanatos.
"You take his point."
—
Morphael met his gaze through the haze—one Knight haloed in fire, the other in lattice light.
She gave a single nod.
"Go."
—
Cinerion knelt beside Thanatos, his armor hissing with strain.
Steam bled from his vents as he turned his left side toward the fallen Knight—toward the shattered socket where Thanatos' right arm had once been.
The magno-clamp couplers along Cinerion's new limb hissed open.
Servo-locks aligned.
Magnetic teeth snapped into place with a thunderous click—Knight to Knight, frame to frame.
For a heartbeat, their reactors rejected the union—one pulsing bright, the other flickering on the edge of death.
"Thanatos," Cinerion voxed through the static, voice low but unwavering.
"Lord Obol… requesting locomotion sync authority."
Silence answered him.
Then—
"Granted," Obol's voice rasped, ragged and half-lost beneath feedback.
The command seals released.
Cinerion's arm locked onto Thanatos' ruined socket—metal to metal, joint to joint—until their frames sealed with a single resonant clang.
Magnetic couplings bit down, conduits linking through the exposed power feeds that still burned white-hot.
A surge followed.
Two reactor hearts screamed—then began to synchronize, pulse by pulse, until their rhythms found one another.
Both Knights trembled as their machine-spirits protested, binary hymns distorting into overlapping static and fury.
Then the noise steadied.
The pulse aligned.
The link held.
Energy bled between them—one steady heartbeat shared by two broken giants.
Warning runes flared across their displays:
REACTOR PACE LINK: ACTIVESYNCHRONIZATION: 83%
"On your feet, High-Scion," Maeric muttered.
Slowly, deliberately—one giant lifting the other—until both stood once more against the storm.
Metal screamed. Ash hissed away beneath their feet. But the motion held.
The two Paladins began to move—step for step, pacing mirrored, every servo echoing the other's stride.
Each footfall struck like a heartbeat, twin engines pounding in unison against the dying world.
Cinerion's right hand—his sabre hand—remained free.The Reaper Sabre hung low, humming with residual charge, its edge alive with ghost-light and wrath—ready to cut down anything that dared approach their path.
Behind them, Morphael and Vorgane held their stations.Their weapons spoke in perfect rhythm—melta bursts and siege shells trading thunder across the plains, a duet of iron and fire shielding the retreat.
Above,
the lattice burned brighter.Four beams speared the heavens, their radiance crossing in sacred geometry—lines of gold and white carving constellations through the storm.
Between those pillars of light, the two wounded titans marched—joined at the shoulder, bound by faith and steel—toward the Bastion's rising glow.
Their silhouettes burned against the horizon, walking through ash and ruin toward what little salvation the Emperor still allowed.
—
Each step was war.
The wounded giants moved in lockstep, joined at the shoulder by cables that burned with molten light.
Their reactors pulsed together—one heartbeat, one rhythm, one will.
Cinerion bore the weight.
Thanatos followed—half-dragged, half-marching—his ruined frame still rumbling with distant thunder.
The storm met them halfway.
Warp-spawn poured from the shadows in screaming waves—pale, chimeric things with too many mouths, wings, and limbs fused by nightmare logic.
Cinerion's Reaper Sabre blazed to life.
The blade sang—a roar of blue fire and spinning teeth, the chain biting through flesh and spirit alike.
He carved a path forward, the weapon sweeping in great arcs that left trails of burning ichor hanging in the air.
Every stroke cut deep—cleaving the abominations that lunged too close, turning their black ichor to vapor.
Each swing bought another step forward.
Another heartbeat closer to home.
—
Thanatos' vents screamed as he moved, reactor flaring each time Cinerion hauled him through the crush.
His left arm was gone entirely—nothing remained but torn sockets sparking with blue-white discharge.
His right side—now Cinerion's.
Power conduits ran between them like veins of fire—white-hot arteries pulsing with shared current.
Two Knights. One circuit.
When Cinerion moved, Thanatos followed—the joined arms groaning under the weight of twin reactors beating as one.
Each stride gouged deep scars into the ground, synchronized footfalls shaking the ash like war drums.
Hydraulic pressure hissed between them. Sparks rained from the coupling points as warp-touched debris clattered off their hulls.
The fallen Knight twitched—servos firing in phantom rhythm, as if still trying to fight on his own.
Cinerion bore the strain in silence.
The tide pressed harder.
Dozens became hundreds.
And together—fused by duty, not mercy—they advanced.
The Reaper Sabre came down like judgment, cleaving a charging brute from crown to groin.
The blow cracked the earth, molten blood spilling around their feet.
From the Bastion's distant ridge, Phorxys' pulse-lances fired again—twin beams punching clean through the swarm ahead, lighting their path with arcs of chained lightning.
Through the chaos, Cinerion didn't slow.
He dragged Thanatos through the carnage, his Sabre flashing like a signal beacon in the dark.
Each swing sang with fury.
Each step rang with faith.
—
Then the earth shook.
From wings.
A shadow fell across the burning plain—vast, crimson.
Its span blotted out the light of the lattice towers, casting half the battlefield into a bloody eclipse. The air convulsed as a low, guttural bellow rolled across the vox—a sound that crawled into the machine's soul and made the world shiver.
Cinerion froze—not in fear, but in instinct.
Then came the second sound.
Laughter.
High. Cold. Beautiful.
From the fog stepped a creature of impossible grace and hunger.
A violet horror, its skin gleaming like wet silk in the firelight, every motion too deliberate, too perfect. Four arms moved in mirrored rhythm—each gesture a promise of death.
And above it, the shadow biggen, descending through the storm like a comet of brass and blood—
Wings of burning membrane unfurled as the greater beast struck the ground hard enough to split the plain. Its whip trailed behind in molten coils, its axe dragging deep scars of glass through the ash.
The storm recoiled at their arrival. The Gate pulsed open once more.
Cinerion turned his helm upward, sabre raised, as Thanatos' damaged optics flickered to life beside him.
One embodiment of rage.
One of elegance.
Two gods of ruin.
Two for one.
The signal of the Ninth Wave.
The crimson fiend cracked its whip—
a chain of living fire that screamed through the sky, igniting the air into a storm of molten sparks.
The violet one laughed—
a sound that glided through the smoke like silk dragged across glass.
And together, they charged.
Straight for the crippled pair.
—
All the lesser beings knew.
Their lords had come.
The weak scattered before them in blind devotion and terror.
Some were swept away like flies—caught by the crimson giant's whip and turned to vapor across the field.
Others were crushed beneath clawed hooves as the violet fiend passed, her perfect stride grinding them into the earth without a glance.
Each step of the two empyreal horrors remade the battlefield—lines of flame and trails of perfume-laced corruption mingling into a storm of fire and scent.
The horde no longer fought; it parted, forming a living corridor of flesh and worship as their masters advanced toward the two broken Knights.
Above, the Gate pulsed again—hungry, rhythmic, alive—its heartbeat echoing theirs.
Two lords of the Immaterium.
Against.
One crippled pair of iron giants.
And between them, the ground trembled as though reality itself were about to break.
—
"Emperor's grace, they really don't make this easy,"
Maeric muttered, the static in his vox barely masking the wry exhaustion beneath.
—
Obol's exhale rasped like grinding metal.
"Ease died eight waves ago."
—
"Two lords for two of us, then," Maeric said,
shifting Cinerion's stance, his optics locking onto the crimson and violet shapes ahead.
"Almost seems fair."
—
"Fair enough," Obol replied.
"Let's not disappoint them."
—
The crimson horror struck first.
Its whip lashed forward—an incandescent vein of iron and fire that split the air with a thunderclap. The crack left molten sparks drifting in its wake, the sound like tortured metal flayed from the bones of the world.
Cinerion met it head-on.
His Reaper Sabre rose in a cross-guard, catching the burning lash mid-swing. The impact flashed white—plasma against empyreal alloy—shockwaves rippling through the ash plains.
The creature used the recoil to its advantage. It wrenched upward, wings snapping wide as it hurled its massive frame into the sky—then crashed down in a storm of brass, fire, and fury.
Below, the violet one moved like liquid murder. It leapt on all fours, claws spread wide, every strike aimed with surgical precision—not at Cinerion or Thanatos individually, but at the space between them.
CRACK!
The blow met resistance—not armor, not ceramite—but a shimmer of half-born force.
An incomplete Ion Gauntlet, still wrapped in exposed conduits and half-formed plating, had risen between the two Knights.
The impact burst into a storm of blue-white arcs. The nascent field flared alive in a fractured dome that caught the strike dead center.
Sparks poured across the ground like molten rivers, every pulse of energy mirrored in the violet horror's gem-bright eyes.
The shield groaned. Circuits screamed.
But it held.
The gauntlet moved—slow, uncertain—flexing its fingers as if testing the physics of existence itself. Servo-lines trailed from its wrist like veins of light, binding the two Knights through the shared limb.
The hand curled into a fist.
Then opened.
Then curled again.
It was learning—searching for its range, its strength, the angles it could strike without tearing itself apart.
Cinerion braced.
Obol's reactor flared through the connection, power surging down the shared conduits like a heartbeat between two titans.
The gauntlet clenched once more—harder this time.
The arcs brightened, washing both Knights in pale fire.
The violet horror drew back, claws dragging molten lines through the ash, its head tilting in silent fascination.
The Ion Gauntlet flexed again—
ready now.
—
Cinerion's Sabre screamed as it carved through the air, meeting the crimson horror's descending lash with a thunderclap of sparks.
Each impact hurled molten fragments across the ground; each recoil shuddered through both Knights via their shared limb.
Obol barely felt the impacts anymore. His hands danced across Thanatos' sanctified relays, sparks crawling up the conduits like veins of living lightning.
"One of us is controlling both Knights," he muttered—breath harsh through the vox, every word trembling under reactor strain.
He paused only long enough to glance at the flickering readouts linking Cinerion and Thanatos—barely stable, their machine-spirits snarling against one another through the connection.
"Magos," he voxed, voice iron amid the static.
"Is it possible to initiate a throne synchronization?"
A pause—half a heartbeat of silence and machine noise.
"A partial link," he continued, "between Thrones Mechanicum."
—
For a heartbeat, only the Bastion's low hum answered him.
Then came Thale's voice—flat, mechanical, absolute.
"Such synchronization is not sanctioned."
"Machine-spirits resist shared cognition. Cognitive bleed is certain."
—
Obol cut in before the Magos could continue.
"I refuse to backseat while Cinerion carries both our weights," he said, voice strained but steady, sparks dancing across the throne's conduits.
"Give me possible function, Magos."
—
Static filled the line.
Then Thale's tone sharpened, modulated with something almost resembling emotion.
"High-Scion—what you propose is heresy."
"The Omnissiah forbids shared will within the Thrones Mechanicum."
"To link two Thrones—cognitive engines made solitary by the Omnissiah's will—into one containment is violation of divine structure."
—
Obol exhaled—a dry laugh caught somewhere between fury and exhaustion.
"In the heart of battle, Magos… does not the end justify the means?"
He leaned forward, hands closing around the burning levers of Thanatos' throne.
"If Mars itself descends upon us for this, then let it be so."
"I—Obol Kharon V, High-Scion and Head of House Kharon—take full responsibility for this act."
"If damnation is the cost of victory, then I will pay it."
—
A pause.
Even the machine-spirits seemed to hesitate.
Then came Thale's reply—low and final, each word clicking like a lock sealing shut.
"Understood."
"Then may your will outweigh the sin, Lord Kharon."
—
"Whatever you two decide, it better be quick!" Maeric growled through gritted teeth.
The Ion Gauntlet flared against the relentless assault, its incomplete field cracking with blue arcs as whip and claw hammered down.
Sparks rained from the impact; each blow shook Cinerion's frame, every parry with the Reaper Sabre barely holding the line.
The Xenos pressed closer—one strike born of brute rage, the next of cruel precision—and every second they delayed risked the entire front collapsing.
—
Inside the Bastion, Thale turned toward Kaelthorn's towering silhouette, its reactor flaring in solemn rhythm beyond the archway.
"The Gellar lattice shall serve as the conduit—the shared medium," he intoned.
"Kaelthorn's harmonics will buffer the feedback and equalize cognitive load."
He gestured once. Sacred seals along the relay's edge burst into light.
"The lattice carries both psychic and mechanical resonance."
"Through it, I will bind Thanatos' and Cinerion's sensory field into a single rhythm."
Runes cascaded across the relay screen in lines of red code:
WARNING: UNSANCTIONED PROTOCOL DETECTEDCOGNITIVE BLEED RISK: CRITICAL
Thale did not falter.
"Cognis-Braid Protocol—initiated."
"Neural anchors—engaging."
"Lattice harmonics—synchronizing."
The Bastion darkened as energy drained from its heart. Golden arcs climbed the walls and raced into the heavens, threading themselves into the glowing lattice that spanned the world above.
—
Outside,
both Knights shuddered—reactors flaring in unison, optics flickering.
Their machine-spirits screamed.
The moment the Cognis-Braid engaged, the world fractured.
Obol and Maeric felt the jolt like a hammer to the skull—then everything went silent.
No pain.
No air.
Only the hum.
The sound of machine-spirits awakening.
A storm of gold circuitry unfolded around them, stretching into infinity—cathedrals of data and prayer, the ghost-architecture of the Mechanicum's inner sanctum.
Cog-runes drifted in endless orbits, rotating like planets around a sun of pure thought.
—
Both men found themselves seated—their Thrones no longer steel, but living code, each one pulsing with the color of its master.
Thanatos burned crimson and black.
Cinerion gleamed silver and blue.
Between them pulsed a single bridge of light—half solid, half thought.
The Braid.
Across it, two machine-spirits clashed like chained gods.
One screamed in devotion—a hymn of wrath and fire.
The other answered in defiance—its song sharp, cold, and pure.
Their hymns collided—binary and warp-echo fusing into a single, deafening storm.
—
Obol opened his eyes.
He saw Maeric—gaunt, spectral, stitched from light and data.
But behind him, he saw the battlefield: Cinerion's vision layered over his own—the crimson's wings blotting the sky, the scarlet's claws carving violet scars through the ash.
At the same time, Maeric saw through Obol's world—Thanatos' skeletal frame wreathed in molten light, the lattice burning gold above.
Two worlds, half-merged.
Two minds, out of rhythm.
They both spoke—
but the words stumbled, overlapped, lost beneath the roar of war.Static and fury filled the gap between them.
Obol gritted his teeth, the sound of battle bleeding through their shared skulls.
How do you bridge the divide between souls? he thought.
Then he looked up—
and grinned.
He met Maeric's eyes across the golden void.
"Remember our motto?"
The words echoed through both realities at once.
Maeric's eyes widened.
Understanding struck like lightning.
They both spoke—this time perfectly in sync.
"When the toll called—"
The world turned to darkness.
"—we answer."
Light returned.
The two Knights moved as one.