**Chapter 2: The Echo of Flesh**
The silence that followed a battle was a lie.
It was a hollow, ringing void where the screams and explosions had been, now filled with quieter, more intimate horrors. The wet, gasping breaths of the dying. The low, sobbing grief of a soldier cradling a dead friend. The rhythmic *squelch-squelch* of the medicae-servitors' boots as they moved through the bloody mud, administering the Emperor's Mercy with bolts of sanctified lead to those too far gone.
Likas stood apart from it all, a silent monolith near the trench's command bunker. The ANITO Protocol, ever the dutiful engine, was already deep into its post-battle functions. It was cataloging his injuries—thirty-seven minor subdermal tears, a class-two concussion, severe Aethel-fatigue—and initiating micro-repairs, diverting proteins and nanites to knit him back together from the inside out. He could feel the faint, internal tingling as his own body became a hyper-efficient factory of healing. A normal man would be crippled for a month. By dawn, he would be fit for duty. It was a miracle of his design, and it felt like a curse. There was no reprieve, no honored wound to earn him a week in a clean infirmary. His only reward for survival was to be ready for the next meat grinder.
He was watching Private Roric. The boy was on his knees, scrubbing furiously at his las-rifle with a piece of burlap, his movements jerky and obsessive. He wasn't cleaning the weapon; he was trying to scour away the memory of what he had seen. The Bile-Titan's disintegration had sprayed the trench line with a fine mist of vaporized ichor, and a few drops had mottled the boy's flak armor with greasy, black stains.
Likas walked over, his heavy footfalls cushioned by the mud. He knelt, the motion surprisingly gentle for a man of his mass. Roric flinched, his eyes wide and haunted.
"That won't come off with grit-cloth, kid," Likas said, his voice a low rumble. He produced a small, metal flask from a pouch on his belt. "You need solvent."
He uncapped it and a sharp, clean scent of high-proof alcohol cut through the trench's foul air. He poured a small amount onto a clean patch of the burlap. "Here. This will break it down."
Roric took it, his hand trembling. He started scrubbing again, and this time the black stains began to dissolve. The boy didn't speak, but his frantic motions slowed, becoming more deliberate.
"You did good today, Roric," Likas continued, his voice neutral. It was a simple, objective truth provided by the ANITO Protocol's combat analysis. The boy had held his position, maintained fire discipline, and hadn't shot any of his comrades in a panic. In the Trench Crusade, that was tantamount to heroism.
Roric finally stopped scrubbing and looked up, his young face a mess of confusion, terror, and a dawning, hero-worshipping awe. "I… I saw what you did, Stigmator. The shield. The way you… you flew. I've heard the litanies from the Ecclesiarchs, but I never… I never thought…"
"Thought what?"
"That it was real," the boy whispered, his voice cracking. "That the Saints truly walked among us."
Likas felt a familiar, weary pang in the echo of Reyes's soul. A Saint. They called him that, or Demigod, or the Emperor's Fury. They saw the impossible power, the divine intervention. They didn't see the source. They didn't understand that he wasn't channeling the light of some distant, benevolent god-emperor. He was syphoning power from the same hell his enemies crawled out of, twisting its foul energies through the filter of his own will. It was like fighting a fire by breathing in smoke and spitting out sparks. Sooner or later, your lungs turn to charcoal.
"I'm just a soldier, Roric. Like you," Likas said, the lie tasting like ash. "Just with a different kind of rifle." He tapped the Stigmata brand on his chest plate. "Some weapons, you don't get to put down at the end of the day."
Before Roric could reply, a shadow fell over them. Sister-Sergeant Elara stood there, her silver armor pristine, her gaze sharp. Her presence changed the very atmosphere of the trench, her disciplined rigidity a stark contrast to the chaotic aftermath of the battle.
"Stigmator Reyes," she said, her voice clipped and formal. "The Lord-Militant requires your presence. Debriefing. Now."
She didn't wait for a reply, simply turned and strode towards the reinforced command bunker dug into the trench wall. Likas gave Roric's shoulder a final, reassuring squeeze and rose to follow her. The boy watched him go, his expression one of a believer who had just had his faith confirmed by a miracle. The seed of hero-worship had been planted. Likas knew, with a grim certainty, that it would likely get the kid killed someday.
The command bunker was a cramped, humid space, smelling of ozone, sweat, and cheap, recycled air. Hololithic projectors cast a flickering, ghostly blue light over a central tactical map of Baal-Secundus. The Lord-Militant, a portly, jowly man named Varus, stood over the map, his ornate uniform stained with sweat. His face was a mask of stress and frustration. He was a political general, a man who had won his command through connections on some distant Hive World, and he was utterly out of his depth in the raw, visceral reality of the Shroud.
"Ah, the blessed Knight," Varus grunted as Likas entered, his tone a mixture of forced reverence and clear resentment. Men like Varus were uncomfortable around Stigmators. They were unpredictable, terrifying assets that couldn't be easily controlled by rank or protocol. "A spectacular, if… unorthodox, display out there."
"The line held, Lord-Militant," Likas stated, his eyes on the tactical map. The ANITO Protocol was already absorbing the data, running predictive models.
"Yes, it held," Varus conceded, wiping a sheen of sweat from his brow. "But at what cost? We repelled one wave. The Augurs predict another before the next cycle. And our supply lines from the orbital plate are being harassed by Hegemony raiders." He jabbed a fat finger at a flashing red icon on the holo-map. "We are bleeding, Stigmator. Bleeding men, bleeding munitions, bleeding time."
Likas remained silent, letting the man vent. He knew this dance. The commander, overwhelmed and desperate, looking for a silver bullet. A miracle. He was looking at it.
Sister-Sergeant Elara spoke from the corner where she stood, arms crossed. "The Carrion-Kind's assault was a probing attack, Lord-Militant. A coordinated one. My scouts report similar incursions along a fifty-kilometer front. They were testing our defenses. Softening us up."
"For what?" Varus demanded.
The ANITO Protocol supplied the answer in a cold flash of intuition. *Objective analysis: the enemy is not seeking territorial gain. The distributed attacks are designed to maximize psychic resonance, to create a specific frequency of terror and despair across the battlefield.*
"They are tuning the battlefield," Likas said aloud. The words felt alien in his own mouth. "Like a string on a violin. All this… all the death… it's a prelude. They're preparing the ground for something else. Something bigger."
Varus stared at him. "Tuning? What in the God-Emperor's name does that mean?"
"It means the whispers will get louder," Likas said, his gaze distant. "The veil between this place and the Maelstrom is thin here. They are tearing at it. Making it thinner."
Just then, a vox-officer in the corner yelped, ripping his headset off as if it were burning him. "My lord! An urgent message… from the Sanctum Astra! The Astropaths… they're screaming!"
A wave of psychic static washed through the bunker. It was imperceptible to the others, but for Likas, it was a physical blow. The Stigmata on his chest burned with a sudden, vicious intensity. The ambient whispers in his mind rose to a frantic, shrieking crescendo. His vision swam with images of twisted geometries, impossible colors, and a single, vast, unblinking eye.
He gritted his teeth, the muscles in his jaw bunching like steel cables. He fought it back, erecting mental walls, reinforcing the dam of his will against the tide of madness. The soul of Reyes, the man who had endured decades of slow, quiet suffering, was an unexpectedly resilient bulwark.
"Stigmator?" Elara's sharp voice cut through the psychic noise. She had taken a step closer, her hand resting on the hilt of her power sword. Her face was pale, but her eyes were steady. She had felt it too, a lesser echo, but she had felt it.
"They've broken through," Likas rasped, the words tasting of blood. "Not physically. Psychically. The Astropathic choir… they were the weakest link. The most sensitive minds. They've been turned into a gateway."
As if on cue, a new sound began to filter in from outside. It started low, a guttural chanting that seemed to come from all directions at once. It was not the gurgle of the Carrion-Kind. This was rhythmic, disciplined, and utterly malevolent. It vibrated in the bones, a resonant frequency of pure hate.
Varus's face had gone ashen. "What is that?"
Likas strode to the bunker's exit, Elara a half-step behind him. He looked out into the trench. The rain had stopped. An unnatural fog, thick and yellow-green, was rolling across the no-man's-land, blanketing everything. The chanting grew louder, weaving itself into the very fabric of the air.
And in the fog, he saw them.
They were not a shambling horde. They were a legion. Ranks of tall, gaunt figures clad in decaying, rust-colored power armor adorned with blasphemous sigils. Their helmets were fashioned into leering, skeletal visages, and they marched in perfect, unnerving lockstep. They were the Lost and the Damned. Traitor Guardsmen, mortals who had sworn their souls to the Tyrant of Chains.
But it was what marched with them that made Likas's blood run cold.
Towering over the traitor legionaries were figures of polished black and bronze armor, their forms twisted and warped into a parody of the holy Astartes. Chaos Space Marines. The ancient enemy. And leading them all was a single, colossal figure, his armor a deep, corrupted crimson. A jagged iron halo was welded to his helmet, and he carried a massive, two-headed axe that wept molten slag onto the ground with every step. The air around him shimmered with palpable hatred. A Chaos Lord. An Apostle of the Abyss.
The psychic pressure radiating from this one being was immense, a focused beam of pure, relentless malice. The whispers directed at Likas changed. They were no longer the gurgling hunger of the Carrion-Kind. They were sharp, intelligent, and deeply personal.
*…we see you, broken thing… a flickering candle in a hurricane of our design… you fight for a corpse on a golden throne and a future of mud and graves…*
Likas ignored the voice. The ANITO Protocol was in overdrive, its processing power pushed to the limits. It analyzed the enemy legion's numbers, their armaments, their formation. The conclusion was stark, brutal, and simple.
*Threat assessment: Unsurvivable. Conventional forces will be overrun in 17.4 minutes. Strategic withdrawal is the only viable option.*
"Lord-Militant," Elara's voice was ice. "You must give the order. We must fall back to the secondary line."
Varus was paralyzed, his face a mask of disbelief and terror. "Fall back? The Lord-Commander on Terra-Sanctus would have my head! We were ordered to hold this position at all costs!"
"This position is already lost!" Elara snapped, her discipline finally cracking with raw urgency. "The cost is now our lives, and we are wasting them!"
The Chaos Lord stopped its advance, fifty meters from the Concordat wire. It raised its massive axe and pointed it directly at the command bunker. Directly at Likas. The voice in his head was no longer a whisper. It was a roar.
*…you wear a slave's brand and call it a shield… I will show you what true power is… I will break your body, devour your soul, and offer the dust of your bones to my god…*
Likas felt a surge of cold fury. This being, this champion of damnation, spoke of slavery. Reyes, the man who had been a slave to his job, to his poverty, to the cancer eating his body, knew the taste of chains intimately. And this was not it.
"Elara," Likas said, his voice dangerously quiet. He didn't take his eyes off the Chaos Lord. "Get the men out. All of them. Get them to the transport hub at the secondary line. That is an order."
Elara stared at him. "What are you going to do?"
"Buy you time," he said simply. He unslung the las-cannon he had recovered, its power cell freshly replaced by a servitor. "This rifle is heavier than the last one."
"That's suicide!" Varus shrieked from inside the bunker. "You can't face that thing alone!"
A grim, humorless smile touched Likas's lips. It was a strange, alien expression on his face. "Suicide is a choice made out of despair, Lord-Militant. This is tactical. ANITO, calculate maximum effective duration for a single combatant diversionary action."
*Calculation complete. Estimated duration against designated threat apostle: 4 minutes, 12 seconds before catastrophic system failure and host termination.*
"Four minutes," Likas said to Elara. "Get them clear."
Elara's face was a conflict of duty and something else, something he couldn't quite decipher. A flicker of respect? Concern? "The Concordat thanks you for your sacrifice, Stigmator."
"Don't thank me yet," he grunted. "I'm too stubborn to die the same way twice."
With that, he vaulted over the parapet and landed alone in the churned mud of no-man's-land. He began to walk forward, towards the silent, waiting legion of Chaos, the las-cannon held steady in his grip. The fog swirled around his massive frame. One man against an army. A demigod against a devil.
The Chaos Lord let out a booming, metallic laugh that echoed across the field. *…YES… COME TO ME… COME AND DIE…*
Likas raised the las-cannon. The targeting data streamed into his vision. The ANITO Protocol was a cold, silent partner in his mind, devoid of fear or hope, running the numbers on his imminent death. But Reyes, the soul within the machine, felt a strange sense of calm. He had faced an unbeatable enemy once before, in a quiet, sterile room. He had lost with a whimper.
This time, he would lose with a roar.
He focused on the Chaos Lord, the source of the psychic poison infecting this battlefield. He poured every ounce of his will, every scrap of his Aethel-sensitivity, into his senses. He saw the minute fractures in the crimson armor, the slight flicker of a personal energy shield, the tell-tale heat signature of the daemonic heart beating within the Apostle's chest.
He smiled. "My turn."
And he opened fire. The world erupted in light and fury.