**Chapter 3: The Echo of Iron**
The first shot was not an act of war; it was a statement.
It was a spear of incandescent light, hurled with impossible precision across the hundred meters of dead ground. It did not target the Chaos Lord. That would have been a fool's gambit, a waste of precious energy against daemonic shields and layers of profane armor. Instead, the ANITO Protocol, in its cold and calculating genius, chose a target of opportunity—a lumbering, eight-barreled rotary cannon held by a trio of hulking Traitor Guardsmen. The las-cannon beam struck the weapon's volatile ammunition drum.
The result was a glorious, secondary detonation. A blossoming fireball of shrapnel and chemical fire ripped through the front rank of the Damned Legion, tearing a ragged hole in their perfect formation. The disciplined chanting faltered for a half-second, a missed beat in the symphony of hate.
Likas didn't pause to admire his work. He was already moving, not charging, but striding forward with a relentless, ground-eating pace. He fired again. And again. Each shot was a masterpiece of tactical physics, a calculated equation of death. One beam slagged the leg joint of a Chaos Marine, sending the nine-foot giant crashing to its knees. Another vaporized a Chaos Sorcerer just as he was beginning to summon a bolt of raw Maelstrom energy.
He was a single, mobile artillery platform, a god of geometry and violence. The las-cannon, a weapon that would dislocate the shoulder of a normal man with its recoil, was a seamless extension of his will. The ANITO Protocol managed the power consumption, the heat dissipation, the targeting solutions, allowing the conscious mind of Reyes to focus on the one true threat.
The Chaos Lord, whose name was Kargos the Gore-Hand, Apostle of the Tyrant of Chains, did not flinch. The loss of his footsoldiers was meaningless. He simply raised his massive, weeping axe and pointed its tip at Likas.
*…a fine display of a slave's tools…* the voice boomed in Likas's mind, laced with ancient, amused contempt. *…but you cannot shoot away the inevitable, little ghost. You cannot hold back the tide with a teacup.*
A wave of pure psychic force, invisible and crushing, erupted from the Chaos Lord. It was not a subtle probe; it was a battering ram aimed at Likas's soul. The world warped around him. The muddy ground seemed to liquefy, threatening to swallow him whole. The sky turned the color of a day-old bruise. The air grew thick, heavy, tasting of ozone and despair.
Likas gritted his teeth, the Stigmata on his chest burning with white-hot agony. It was a fire fighting a firestorm. He felt the mental shields erected by his will begin to crack and splinter under the assault. The whispers returned, a legion of them, clawing at the fissures.
*…he died so small, didn't he?…in a white room, tubes in his arms…fading away…no one to hold his hand…all that work, all that sacrifice for his siblings…and they never even visited at the end…*
The memory hit him with the force of a physical blow. A truth from Reyes's life he had buried deep. The last week. The quiet, lonely room. The nurses who were kind but busy. He had told his family not to come, that he was fine, that they should focus on their own lives. He had lied to protect them from the sight of his decay. He had died alone.
The psychic assault seized on that kernel of pain, magnifying it, twisting it into a weapon. *…they forgot you…you were just a tool to them then, and you are a tool to them now…fight for us…fight for yourself, for once in your two pathetic lives…*
"No," Likas snarled, the word a physical effort. He pushed back, not with anger, but with the cold, stubborn bedrock of his first life's core principle: sacrifice was not a transaction. It was a gift. The value was in the giving, not the receiving. He had given them their future. That had been enough.
He poured that simple, unshakeable conviction into his psychic defenses. The cracks in his will sealed over, reinforced by a resolve forged not in a psych-ward or a battle simulator, but in fifty years of quiet, thankless duty.
The world snapped back into focus. He had stumbled, falling to one knee. The las-cannon was heavy now, the strain immense.
Kargos the Gore-Hand took a step forward, then another. The ground shuddered under his tread. "You have a strong will for a corpse," he bellowed, this time with his own voice, a sound like grinding rocks amplified through a vox-grill. "I will enjoy shattering it personally."
He broke into a charge. For a being of his size, he moved with terrifying speed, a crimson juggernaut of hate and iron.
Likas knew the las-cannon was useless now. Too slow, too cumbersome for a duel with a being of this caliber. The ANITO Protocol confirmed it. *Time to enemy contact: 3.8 seconds. Optimal strategy: discard heavy weapon. Engage in close-quarters combat. Probability of survival: 1.2%.*
*Good enough,* Likas thought.
He dropped the las-cannon and drew the only other weapon he carried: a massive, brutalist combat knife strapped to his thigh. It was a foot and a half of sharpened adamantium, more a short-sword than a knife. In his hand, it looked almost proportional. He held it in a reverse grip.
Kargos was upon him. The weeping axe swung in a devastating arc, fast enough to break the sound barrier. It wasn't a simple weapon of sharpened metal; it was a daemon-forged relic, alive with the caged spirit of a wrathful entity. It screamed as it cut through the air, leaving a trail of shimmering, distorted heat.
Likas didn't try to parry. To do so would have shattered his arm, adamantium knife or not. Instead, he did the last thing Kargos expected. He moved *inside* the arc of the swing.
It was a movement of borderline illogical biomechanics. A hypersonic sidestep that used the explosive power in his legs and a twisting contraction of his core. To a normal observer, he simply vanished from where he stood and reappeared pressed against the Chaos Lord's immense frame, the screaming edge of the axe missing him by millimeters.
He was in the giant's blind spot, pressed against the crimson ceramite of its torso. He could smell the hot metal, the stench of spilled blood and ancient incense. The ANITO Protocol highlighted a dozen weak points in the armor—hydraulic cabling at the waist, a vulnerable power conduit beneath the arm, the unarmored soft-suit at the neck joint.
He struck. The adamantium knife, wreathed in the faint, blue shimmer of his Aethel, plunged deep into the bundle of hydraulic cables at Kargos's hip. He twisted the blade, severing the thick, armored lines.
Kargos roared, a sound of fury and surprise. The leg on that side buckled, its motive power gone. The Chaos Lord staggered, his perfect charge ruined. He swung the axe backhanded, a clumsy, desperate move. Likas was already gone, disengaging, putting five meters of space between them.
The Apostle stood there, one leg dragging, the weeping axe held in a defensive posture. The amusement was gone from his psychic voice, replaced by cold, seething fury. *…worm…you will pay for that insolence…*
Likas circled him, a predator testing a wounded behemoth. The odds had shifted. From 1.2% to maybe 3%. He could feel the Concordat forces behind him, the retreat well underway, the rumble of transports lifting off in the distance. Elara was keeping her word. He just needed a little more time.
The battle became a deadly dance. Kargos, with his immense reach and raw power, against Likas, with his impossible speed and precision. The Chaos Lord's axe cleaved craters in the mud where Likas had been moments before. Likas, in turn, made lightning-fast strikes, targeting joints, power lines, and sensor clusters. He was a hornet stinging a bear, too fast to be caught, his every attack a painful, infuriating distraction.
He shattered the Chaos Lord's knee joint with a hypersonic side-kick that buckled the crimson plate. He ducked under a wild swing and drove his knife into the power pack on Kargos's back, causing a shower of sparks and a fluctuation in the daemon's energy shield.
But it was taking a toll. Every Aethel-infused blow, every physics-defying dodge, drained his reserves. The ANITO Protocol fed him a constant stream of grim data. *Adrenal levels critical. Stored bio-energy at 19%. Aethel-channeling capacity dropping.* The burning in his chest intensified. Black spots danced in his vision.
Kargos was wounded, enraged, but far from beaten. He was an Apostle of Chaos, a being sustained by the raw power of the Maelstrom and the favor of his dark god. He slammed the butt of his axe into the ground, and a wave of crackling, black energy erupted outwards.
Likas tried to leap clear, but he was a fraction of a second too slow. His legs, already strained to their limits, didn't respond with their usual explosive power. The energy wave caught him, and it felt like being struck by lightning. His nervous system screamed. The ANITO Protocol went haywire for a terrifying instant, his vision dissolving into a snowstorm of pure static. He crashed to the ground, his body spasming, the combat knife flying from his numb fingers.
He was down. Helpless.
Kargos the Gore-Hand limped towards him, the iron halo on his helmet seeming to pulse with dark light. He loomed over Likas, a crimson mountain of victory.
*…I told you, little ghost…* the voice was a triumphant sneer in his mind. *…inevitable.*
Likas looked up at the Chaos Lord. His vision was clearing, but his body wouldn't respond. He could feel the ANITO Protocol fighting to reboot his paralyzed nerves, but it was losing. He was out of energy, out of time, out of options.
This was it. The end of his second life. At least, he thought with a strange sense of detachment, he had bought them their four minutes.
Kargos raised his weeping axe for the final, killing blow.
And then, a new voice spoke. Not in his mind. In the air. A voice of crisp, disciplined fury, amplified by a helmet vox.
"For the Emperor and the Concordat!"
A stream of brilliant, silver-white bolts slammed into Kargos's unshielded back. They were not the ruby lances of las-fire. They were bolter rounds, mass-reactive shells that detonated *inside* their target. They came from a squad of figures who had appeared as if from nowhere on the flank, their armor the polished silver and white of the Argent Shield. Leading them was Sister-Sergeant Elara.
She hadn't retreated with the others. She had taken her command squad on a wide, flanking maneuver through the densest part of the fog.
Kargos roared in pain and fury as the shells blew chunks from his back plate, staggering him. He turned away from Likas, his attention now on this new, infuriating threat. "Insects! You dare?!"
Elara and her squad opened fire with disciplined fury, a storm of bolter shells hammering the Chaos Lord. They were aiming with tactical precision, targeting the weaknesses Likas had already exposed.
The distraction was all Likas needed. The ANITO Protocol, freed from the Apostle's direct psychic pressure, won the battle for his nervous system. Sensation flooded back into his limbs in a pins-and-needles torrent of agony. He pushed himself up, his muscles screaming in protest.
He saw his knife lying in the mud a few feet away. But he also saw Elara and her squad. The Chaos Lord, ignoring his wounds, was charging them, his axe raised. They were brave, disciplined soldiers, but they were not Stigmators. They would be slaughtered.
Another choice. Another sacrifice.
Reyes, the man who put his family first, made the call.
Likas didn't go for his knife. He scrambled towards the discarded las-cannon. It was heavy, an impossible weight for his exhausted body. He roared with effort, a raw, animal sound, and heaved it onto his shoulder.
The power cell was nearly depleted. The ANITO Protocol calculated he had enough for one, final, overcharged shot. A shot that would likely slag the weapon and burn out the last of his own bio-energy reserves.
He aimed. Not at Kargos. Not at his armor or his weapons.
He aimed at the ground beneath the Chaos Lord's feet.
The ANITO Protocol ran a complex simulation. It analyzed the composition of the mud, the hidden pockets of chemical sludge from industrial runoff, the ambient Maelstrom energy saturating the battlefield. It found a unique combination of volatile elements just below the surface where Kargos was about to step.
*…fire…*
Likas pulled the trigger.
The beam that lanced out was not red. It was a blinding, desperate white. It struck the mud, and for a second, nothing happened.
Then the world turned to hell.
The overcharged beam, combined with the unstable chemicals and the raw Chaos energy, created a chain reaction. The ground beneath Kargos didn't just explode; it erupted in a geyser of green-black Maelstrom-tainted fire. It was not a physical explosion, but a localized reality failure, a brief, violent tear in the fabric of the universe.
Kargos the Gore-Hand was consumed by it. He vanished into the pillar of screaming, profane energy, his final roar of disbelief and agony swallowed by the unholy fire.
The shockwave hit Likas like a physical fist, throwing him backwards. He landed hard, the world dissolving into a tunnel of black. His last sensation was the burning of his Stigmata, not with pain, but with a strange, terrifying feeling of emptiness, as if something had been scooped out of his soul. His last thought was of the quiet, white room from his first life. It looked peaceful now.
He knew no more.