78 Interlude: Soul of Night

Sevatar knew everything about Shen, he just hadn't said anything.

The Soul of Night was too old, just like him and Shen. So, long before he boarded it, they had already completed a silent communication.

The Night's Soul informed him of Shen's departure with the mournful, hollow sound of the wind, while Sevatar, with its silent murmur, made it understand that Vengeance was imminent.

He wasn't lying. It had always been so; those he swore to kill had never escaped. But this time was different. Erebus wasn't killed by him alone; the decisive blow came from the Soul of Night.

He was merely a Mars, responsible for igniting the ancient warship's boiling rage.

Sevatar did not see its end, but he was certain that the Night's Soul's Adamantium dragon bones must have been filled with smug satisfaction as they gradually turned to ashes in the flames of Vengeance.

It Vengeance Shen.

And what about him?

Jago Sevatarion plummeted rapidly, his face grim, his weapon following closely behind as Ka'Bandha threw it at him.

Something like dust, not quite clouds, tore at his armor and blocked his vision, while the Daemon's dark wings, obscuring the sky, occupied the remaining portion of his body. In the howling wind, it fought with Ka'Bandha, each clash of claws and greatsword causing the sky to change color.

Black or crimson, two ancient colors that have existed since the earliest days of human history, are now being splashed and swirled across the sky of Calth, as if it were a canvas to be used at will.

Ka'Bandha's maniacal laughter was another embellishment, not thunderous, but far surpassing thunder, cruel yet courageous. Its opponent, however, was not like that; Shen only knew how to remain silent.

Sevatar couldn't help but laugh during the fall—such a signature silence, my dear brother.

In the wind, he reached out and grasped his chainsaw, then calmly turned over, facing the earth now completely covered by the Crimson Demon Army, his eyes blazing with a violent light of psychic energy.

"Boom--!"

He threw himself into them and began to fight.

He swung his halberd again and again. The monomolecular saw blades were supposed to be blunt; durability was not a factor in their design. Yet, they remained exceptionally sharp, easily tearing through the flesh of any Daemon that stood in his way.

Psychic energy poured out of his body; this instinct, suppressed for ten thousand years, was fully integrated into every cell of his body during the battle, making him extraordinarily powerful.

His power was so pure that he could slice through Steel Bull's armor with a simple slash, and his speed was as fast as a "Meteor" shuttle flying close to the ground. That extreme spacecraft, which was only equipped with a heavy machine gun, had a speed that Sevatar had never seen before.

He had completely transformed into a storm of death, capable of utterly crushing even the most fringe Daemon with its undeniable violence.

He fought his way through the enemy lines and fled until he reached the ruins of a Calth fortress.

This place has been burned down, and the bodies of workers, scientists, and soldiers inside were carelessly thrown along the roadside, their skulls piled up into mounds of skulls.

Some of Khorne's Daemon once claimed they only wanted the heads of the strong, but to Sevatar, they were talking nonsense. These things didn't care about the strength of their opponents; they only wanted slaughter, to see rivers of blood and corpses strewn everywhere.

Perhaps a great Daemon like Ka'Bandha, who is allowed to have his own will, can barely resist the temptation to slaughter, but the Bloodletter wouldn't care so much.

He charged into the fortress, with a cacophony of demonic roars behind him.

+ Sevatar Chapter Master.+

A voice rushed into his mind, calm and with a certain characteristic emptiness. Sevatar didn't answer immediately; he didn't want to. He rushed deeper into the fortress and found a hall that had been deliberately blown up among the collapsed ruins.

Every fortress has vertical tunnels and supporting facilities that lead directly to the underground of Calth, and this one is no exception, except that man-made explosions have buried most of its traces.

Sevatar swung his arms, roaring as he channeled his psionic energy into a tidal wave of flames that spread from beneath his feet.

In an instant, these flames completely burned the collapsed ruins and large chunks of building debris to ashes, leaving a huge crater in front of Sevatar.

Without hesitation, he leaped into it, simultaneously using psychic energy to create a maze at the entrance. This wouldn't hold back the Khorne's demonic army for long, but it would buy him some time.

He began to fall again, the rock walls on both sides covered with symbols, phrases, or names, and one winding cave after another. This enormous pit was not dug in a day; it was the work of generations of Calth who created this miracle with their own hands.

Those caves were their former homes, and the traces left behind were naturally carved by them stroke by stroke.

No one wants to be forgotten.

+ Chapter Master, please come to the underground immediately, we are waiting.+

Sevatar gritted his teeth and let out a roar that was not human from the depths of his chest.

+You fucking Hunter.+

Shen volunteered to be summoned by us; he is the Chapter Master Soul Hunters. We respect all those who bravely face death. Please believe us, we are not extremists.

On the other end of the psionic chain, the Hunter sent a location coordinate and then abruptly disappeared. Sevatar could no longer sense his icy, cold thoughts; instead, his own mind was now racing, as if being scorched by flames.

All these years... a voice slowly spoke in his heart. You are still foolish, prejudiced, and short-sighted; you just can't remain indifferent to the death of others.

You lack this wonderful quality, Jago. From beginning to end, you've always been that cowardly child living on dirty streets, watching helplessly as rats gnaw on dead people's fingers, yet too afraid to step forward.

So embrace me, and you will gain the strength to bear everything.

"Get out of here, "Sevatar thought coldly.

The voice faded away without regret, revealing the final scene. In that illusion, both real and unreal, Sevatar saw Karyl Lohars tearing Roboute Guilliman's heart out with his bare hands.

He ripped the image apart and then began to warn himself not to let his guard down.

It is the voice that warned Sevatar. It has existed for a very long time; in fact, it has existed for as long as Sevatar has existed.

It once appeared beside young Jago Sevatarion in the form of a black dog, a crow, or a reflection in the rain, but disappeared for a long time after he became the first reserve, until recently.

It was only after the seal left by the Mourning Bird Fer Zalost was completely broken that this thing returned.

Sevatar wouldn't say he enjoyed its company; in his view, it was merely a side effect of psionic energy, albeit a bit too severe.

Owning it is like an ordinary person borrowing money from a notoriously greedy local banker. Besides the principal and interest that must be repaid, he also has to constantly worry about the banker's henchmen.

And these things are thugs, and the most terrifying kind of thugs at that—the kind of beasts who would beat someone to a pulp for a pittance of money, without caring what might happen afterward.

Sevatar landed lightly, the additional effect of gravity no longer affecting him. He didn't even need to bend his knees to relieve the force; it was as easy as stepping down a staircase. He arrived at the bottom of Calth in this way.

The Khorne's demonic army was still rampaging here. The man-made underground cave system was now flooded with blood. Sevatar forced himself not to look at the pale corpses and just kept moving forward.

He wasn't Calth, nor did he know this place as well as they did, but he was a Psyker, and possibly a very powerful Psyker at that. He didn't need to know much about this place to find his way around.

In less than ten minutes, Sevatar sprinted to the coordinates provided by the Hunter. It was a vast space, so large that it even inspired awe.

The hundred Soul Hunters stood not far from him, a dim Radiance emanating from beneath their feet, revealing the presence of a complex magic circle. Sevatar glanced at it and recognized it as yet another summoning circle.

His eye twitched, and in two or three steps he covered hundreds of meters, arriving before the Hunter. The latter opened his eyes at just the right moment; the murky white disappeared, replaced by a pure, ethereal white.

He nodded to Sevatar and said, "The summoning circle is ready for you, my lord."

"Should I thank you for this?" Sevatar asked.

He casually slammed the chainsaw halberd into the ground, where it embedded itself deeply into the edge of the magic circle, its entire head burying itself in the hard rock wall.

The Hunter remained silent, only shaking his head. He gestured to his brothers and began to warm up the array. The chanting followed, and the light of the array began to shine, as dazzling and brilliant as a rising sun.

Sevatar strode past him, his gaze piercing through the darkness of the space, revealing sights that fueled his growing rage.

He saw countless civilians taking refuge there, and many more were arriving in vehicles under the protection of the Calth's Sons and their Auxilia.

Then there was a precarious defensive line: Shadow Knights, Blade of Judgement, Crimson Claws, and Midnight Blade —the four Chapter of the Night Lords were fighting alongside the Calth's Sons.

Auxilia and Mechanicum's Secutarii are interspersed among them, with Tech-Priest and heavy firepower units providing fire cover behind them. The devastating firepower wielded by these men is the only reason the defensive line has survived this long.

The Mechanicum, which continues to this day on Calth, has not inherited their "glorious" tradition of hoarding; all sorts of weapons that the Sevatar have never seen before are now shining brightly.

But this is still just a drop in the ocean, only slightly slowing down the Daemon's advance.

Their numbers are virtually endless, as is the case with every Daemon invasion. They have no need to worry about manpower until a certain door is closed.

War is cruel, but it becomes less cruel if one side doesn't care about the number of casualties.

Sevatar turned to face the Hunter himself. At that moment, the scriptures hanging on his body were floating up and down in the light; they were not any language that had ever been spoken in this universe.

To this day, very few people understand or use it. Even the Sevatar only know that it is a cuneiform script with characters as red as blood.

"How much longer?" he asked.

"Five minutes," the Hunter answered his question in a calm voice, but his chanting continued unabated.

He was uttering two completely different voices at the same time: one utterly calm, imbued with extreme rationality, and the other exceptionally fervent, making it immediately clear what a devout believer he was.

Sevatar frowned sternly.

The cries of civilians echoed through the vast cavern, the ground trembled from artillery fire, and the air was thick with the suffocating stench of blood. Calth's shouts, crashing against corpses, exploding shells, and blades, became an indescribable echo amidst the Daemon's maniacal laughter.

"Too slow," Sevatar said bluntly. "I need you to be faster."

"Five minutes has special significance in the occult, sir. This is already the fastest speed possible."

"Shut up and go back to your work!" Sevatar roared, then yanked his chainsaw. His movements were so brutal that they didn't damage the magic circle in the slightest, even though it had been stuck at the edge of the magic circle just half a second before.

Shards flew everywhere. He calmed himself and, for the first time, actively summoned darkness to envelop him. This wasn't stealth; it was something completely opposite.

In an instant, the world before Sevatar's eyes was completely shrouded in darkness. All living creatures became simple shades of gray and crimson, their vital points pointed out one by one by the whispering darkness with twisted, slender fingers.

They were yearning for slaughter, but that wasn't why Sevatar was calling them. He suppressed the urge to leave and began to walk around the area.

Some beings, large and some small, passed by him; some ignored him, others were full of malice—just as Karyl Lohars said, there were more than one kind of monster in the darkness.

Sevatar continued forward, and in a timeless manner, he easily reached the very front of the line.

Then he strode out, the darkness vanished, and he appeared before everyone without warning. The sudden roar of chainsaws shattered the war symphony, bringing with it a bloody massacre and a lightning storm of divine punishment.

Unfortunately, his killing spree didn't last long; five minutes passed in the blink of an eye.

Sevatar returned to the center of the magic circle from the darkness without a second's delay.

He clenched his fists, panting, and began to call upon the Soul of Night. His power poured into the magic circle, the air became viscous, and vaguely visible, enormous lines slowly emerged in the blazing light.

A fleeting image flashed through Sevatar's mind: a menacing, burning warship bursting forth from the deepest part of the Bone Wastes.

He brought that scene to life.

The Night's Soul answered their call, emerging from the depths of the Warp. Engines roared, and cannons fired.