[You have witnessed something that should not exist in a sane universe. You have looked upon one of the most powerful non-psychic entities in the void, a being that embodies various fundamental physical laws themselves. A true god of the material realm, as real and terrible as gravity or entropy.]
[The Star Gods. The C'tan. The reality-eaters who consumed stars and enslaved entire species before the great betrayal.]
[Your vague consciousness, fragmented and scattered across dimensions it was never meant to perceive, receives a complex information flow directly from the third eye blazing on the being's forehead. The data pours into you like molten metal, searing neural pathways as it comes.]
[The flow is filled with deep, ancient resentment that makes your own rage feel like a child's tantrum. Endless torment accumulated over millions of years of imprisonment echoes through your mind, each moment of suffering compressed into your awareness simultaneously. You experience eternities of agony in seconds.]
[But within that torrent of pain and fury comes something useful. Something tactical.]
[You instantly receive the complete architectural map of the World Engine Borsis. Every corridor, every chamber, every hidden passage unfolds in your mind's eye with perfect clarity. You see the vessel's entire structure as if looking down from impossible heights.]
[More importantly, you know the exact location of the Necron Overlord Heqiroth. His position burns in your awareness like a beacon, impossible to miss or forget. The throne room. The Ancestral Hall. Coordinates etched into your very neurons.]
[You vaguely hear a roar through the chaos, a promise delivered in a voice that predates language itself. The C'tan shard called Yggra'nya offers a beautiful vow: to help the Astral Knights Chapter achieve ultimate victory, to end all suffering through mutual destruction of your shared enemy.]
[But nothing is free. Not from beings like this.]
[You're forced to make a secret agreement with the ancient entity, though the details blur and shift in your memory even as you form them. Bargains written in concepts older than words. Prices paid in currencies you don't fully understand. You know only that without accepting terms, you cannot sever the complex information flow connecting you to the shard's terrible consciousness.]
[You have successfully gained a powerful xenos ally whose true intentions remain unclear but whose strength is absolutely terrifying. An alliance born of desperation and mutual hatred of the Necrons. And in exchange, you now possess the exact location of your target.]
[Your disoriented senses and vague consciousness gradually return to your body. Awareness filters back like water filling a container, piece by piece reassembling your sense of self.]
[With your only remaining functional eye, vision blurred by blood and tears, you see the magnificent scene of numerous Astartes surrounding you. They've formed a protective circle, weapons facing outward, creating a shield of ceramite and flesh between you and any threat. Some kneel close, hands reaching toward you but hesitating to touch.]
[You take a deep breath that rattles in your chest, gritting your teeth to endure the extreme pain radiating from your ruined eye socket as the metal probe slowly withdraws. The sensation is exquisite agony, nerve endings screaming as the probe's microscopic hooks retract from where they'd buried themselves deep in your optical nerve.]
[Blood streams down your face in hot rivulets, mixing with the dust coating your skin.]
["Battle-brothers..." Your voice emerges hoarse and damaged, vocal cords strained from screaming. "Reorganize the teams. Rest quickly while you can."]
[You force yourself to continue speaking despite the effort it requires.]
["We have unexpectedly gained a powerful ally, one who hates the Necrons as much as we do. It has given us the exact location of the Necron Overlord Heqiroth. We know where to strike now."]
[You barely manage to raise your head, scanning the warriors gathered around you with your remaining eye. Their expressions mix concern with renewed hope.]
[You close your bleeding eye, the lid sticky with drying blood, attempting to restore some order to your chaotic mind. Thoughts keep trying to scatter like startled birds. You force them back into formation through sheer will.]
[Chief Librarian Hyalhi, kneeling on the ground beside you, slowly helps you stand. His psychic presence wraps around your mind like a stabilizing field, offering what comfort his gifts can provide. You grip his armored forearm with gratitude you cannot speak.]
[Someone presses your hyperphase sword back into your hand. You grasp it reflexively, using the weapon to support your exhausted, towering body. The blade hums against your palm, almost reassuring in its alien lethality.]
[Approximately half an hour passes. Thirty precious minutes spent binding wounds, redistributing ammunition, saying prayers over those who won't rise again. Your enhanced physiology works overtime, clotting blood and reducing swelling. Strength gradually returns to your limbs like a slow tide.]
[When you can stand without swaying, when you can hold the hyperphase sword without your hand trembling, you immediately rally the main force of what remains of the Astral Knights Chapter.]
[You move out swiftly, heading toward the Necron Overlord's location with absolute certainty. The path burns clearly in your mind, a route highlighted by alien consciousness. Every turn, every passage, every shortcut is perfectly mapped.]
[Along the way, despite the complete tactical map gifted by the C'tan shard guiding your advance through optimal routes, you still encounter more Necron teams. They converge from multiple vectors, chasing and attempting to intercept your force.]
[The corridors become killing grounds. The World Engine's interior architecture works against you, forcing combat in enclosed spaces where the Necrons' numerical advantage matters more.]
[You drive your power armor forward with desperate strength, its ceramite shell now severely damaged across every surface. Cracks spider-web across chest and limb plates. Exposed underlayers show through in patches. Warning runes you've long since learned to ignore flash constantly across your vision.]
[But the armor still moves, still amplifies your strength, and that's enough.]
[You charge at the very front of the entire formation, wielding the indestructible hyperphase sword like an avatar of the Emperor's wrath. The blade never dulls, never chips, passing through Necron living metal with contemptuous ease. You lead your battle-brothers forward in repeated assaults, your weapon rising and falling in mechanical rhythm.]
[Unfortunately, you face an enemy incapable of fear or hesitation. Emotionless Necron Warriors advance in perfect phalanxes, their Gauss rifles firing in coordinated volleys. Necron Immortals with their heavier weapons provide devastating support fire. And worst of all, Necron Destroyers, those mad constructs that live only to kill, weave through the formations with terrible efficiency.]
[Even though your fighting will grows stronger with each engagement, even though you carve through enemies like a demigod descended from myth, the mathematics remain brutal. Your personnel losses mount with horrifying speed.]
[Your force, which numbered just over three hundred warriors after the crash, is cut down again and again. Three hundred becomes two hundred and fifty. Two hundred and fifty becomes two hundred and twenty. The numbers keep falling like leaves in autumn.]
[The Necrons pursue with relentless, desperate intensity. They know you're pushing toward something critical. They commit everything to stopping you.]
[You have no choice but to ask for volunteers. Warriors who are severely wounded, those whose armor is breached beyond field repair, those who know they cannot maintain the pace. You need them to stay behind and cover the main force's advance.]
[They will use melta bombs to buy you time. Minutes purchased with lives.]
[Twenty warriors step forward without hesitation. Some can barely stand. Others leak blood from wounds that would kill normal humans. All smile as they volunteer.]
["Destruction is salvation," you say solemnly, meeting each warrior's eyes in turn. You nod with all the respect and grief you can convey in a single gesture.]
["Destruction is salvation!" The surrounding battle-brothers echo the Chapter's ancient motto in solemn voices that ring with finality.]
[Each warrior who has chosen to stay behind and cover the retreat simply pounds their heavy chest armor with one fist. The impacts ring like bells, a funeral dirge played on ceramite. Then, supporting each other, some practically carrying their more wounded brothers, they turn away from you.]
[They burst into laughter as they charge back toward the Necrons pursuing you. The sound is genuine joy, warriors happy to die well.]
[The continuous roar of explosions reaches your ears seconds later, the sound rolling through corridors like thunder. You feel surging heat waves wash over your face and exposed neck, hot enough to sting.]
[You have no time for sorrow or proper mourning. Those rituals must wait for another day, if any of you survive to perform them.]
[You immediately lead the remaining warriors, now numbering barely one hundred and eighty souls, forward without looking back. To look back would dishonor their sacrifice. To hesitate would waste the time they've bought with their lives.]
[You push toward a massive metal structure your enhanced vision can now see in the distance: a palace the map in your mind identifies as the Ancestral Hall.]
[According to the information provided by the C'tan shard, that ornate complex is where the Necron Overlord makes his seat of power. Where Heqiroth waits, perhaps aware of your approach, perhaps confident in his ability to destroy these few remaining Imperial warriors.]
[As your formation continues its advance through increasingly elaborate architecture, passing from functional corridors into spaces meant for ceremony and display, you finally enter the depths of an ancient temple.]
[The scale is overwhelming. The ceiling rises hundreds of meters overhead, lost in darkness. Countless hieroglyphs belonging to the Necrontyr cover the metal walls around you, their meanings lost to time but their importance obvious in the care with which they were inscribed. These are the oldest sections of Borsis, predating humanity's rise.]
[Just then, movement ahead catches your attention.]
[A group of Lychguard, the Necron Overlord's elite bodyguards, slowly appears within your field of vision. Each stands taller than a Space Marine, their frames built for war rather than any other purpose. They carry hyperphase swords identical to yours and massive dispersion shields shaped like ornate coffins, each one capable of reflecting energy weapons back at their sources.]
[Their appearance confirms what you already know: the Necron Overlord is nearby. Close enough to need his personal guard.]
[You temporarily sling the hyperphase sword across your back, magnetic clamps engaging to hold the blade secure. At the same time, you bark orders to the heavy weapons squad positioned in the formation behind you.]
["Devastator team, forward! Now!"]
[Accompanied by a series of low mechanical hums from power armor backpacks straining under additional load, several battle-brothers maneuver a massive piece of equipment forward. It's a Gauss cannon salvaged from a destroyed Necron Destroyer, the weapon almost as large as a man and mounted on an improvised carrying frame.]
[The crew brings it to your position with practiced efficiency, setting the weapon down and beginning stabilization procedures.]
[You grit your teeth and forcefully adjust the aiming mechanism yourself, your enhanced strength wrestling the heavy weapon into proper firing position. The controls are alien, designed for different hands, but function is universal enough.]
[You coordinate fire with the remaining bolters and cyclone missile launchers your battle-brothers still possess, calling target priorities and establishing fields of fire.]
["All weapons... unleash hell!"]
[In an instant, the temple erupts with devastating firepower. Bolter rounds hammer against dispersion shields in thunderous impacts. Missiles streak across the distance trailing white contrails. And dominating it all, the Gauss cannon fires.]
[An extremely thick green beam of light, easily a meter wide, lances from the weapon with a sound like reality tearing. The recoil nearly throws you backward despite your armor's stabilizers and your own strength. The beam strikes directly into the Lychguard formation's center mass.]
[Deep within the massive explosion's roiling fire and expanding shockwave, the Gauss weapon blasts a horrific gap through the Lychguard battle line. The beam disintegrates everything in its path with absolute prejudice.]
[Numerous elite guards, holding their hyperphase swords and coffin-shaped dispersion shields, are completely annihilated. They're reduced to continuously dissipating green atoms without even time to register death, their forms simply ceasing to exist at the molecular level.]
[But the Lychguard are not helpless victims. They return fire immediately.]
[Superluminal particle beams from within their formation shriek as they rip through the air, moving faster than sound and almost faster than sight. The beams are brilliant blue-white, leaving afterimages burned across your retinas.]
[They strike your position with devastating accuracy.]
[Right beside you, several battle-brothers too slow to find cover are caught in the barrage. Along with their power armor, they're instantly blasted into scattered flesh and ceramic dust by the terrifying particle weaponry. They simply come apart, reduced to component atoms in microseconds.]
[You seem completely unmoved by their deaths. There's no time for reaction, no space for grief. You've gone beyond such considerations.]
[You simply hold down the massive trigger mechanism of the Gauss cannon, feeling the weapon vibrate in your grip as it discharges again and again. You aim carefully despite the chaos, continuously firing at concentrations of enemies. Each shot carves another gap in their formation.]
[Just then, through the smoke and energy discharge and scattered atoms of the destroyed, a figure emerges.]
[A Necron noticeably larger than any warrior or guard, standing perhaps four meters tall. The being holds a Staff of Light in one hand, its head crackling with barely contained energy, and grips a Warscythe in the other, the weapon's blade shimmering with phase-field distortion.]
[The Overlord's frame is decorated with honors and kill-markings accumulated over millions of years. Its chassis gleams with maintenance and care that speaks of pride and vanity surviving even death and transformation into machine.]
[Behind it, you see countless Canoptek Scarabs rising like a metal tide. Thousands of them, perhaps tens of thousands, forming a living carpet that flows across the floor and up the walls. The sound of their collective movement is like rain falling on metal, a constant clicking and chittering that fills the temple.]
["Heqiroth!" You roar the name, voice raw with fury and determination. The sound echoes across the vast temple space, carrying challenge and promise of violence.]
[You release the Gauss cannon's trigger mechanism, the weapon immediately seized by several battle-brothers who step forward to take your place. They continue operating the heavy weapon, unleashing terrifying bombardments upon the slowly advancing Lychguard who reform their shattered line with mechanical precision.]
[You reach back and draw your hyperphase sword from behind your power armor backpack in one smooth motion. The blade hums as it activates fully, eager for what's coming.]
[You widen your single remaining eye as much as the swelling around it allows, vision narrowing to focus entirely on the Necron Overlord. Everything else fades to background noise. All that matters is the target.]
[You take a deep breath, filling your enhanced lungs completely. Your hearts, both of them, pound in synchronized rhythm. You instinctively tighten your grip on the hyperphase sword until your gauntleted knuckles would be white beneath the ceramite.]
[Then, without a moment's hesitation, without a single backward glance at the warriors you're leaving behind, you launch yourself forward in a desperate, utterly unyielding charge toward Necron Overlord Heqiroth.]
[Your battle cry tears from your throat with all the fury and grief and determination of a Chapter facing extinction:]
["DESTRUCTION IS SALVATION!"]
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