Khorne's Blessing!

The boy's mother's curses sounded so feeble amid the Chaos warrior's heavy breathing and the scrape of iron armor.

Yet they were so sharp, like a needle trying to pierce steel.

"Heretics! Scum! The Emperor's curse will burn your souls to ash—!"

She struggled desperately in the giant hand, pounding against that cold, filthy armor.

Her nails clawed at those blasphemous runes, even if all she could leave behind were a few futile white scratches.

There were no tears in her eyes, only blazing fury.

It was the purest hatred for the invaders, and the most resolute defiance of her own Destiny!

Even in death, she would never become Chaos's slave, never let her flesh become fodder to nourish those monsters!

This was the humblest yet most absolute loyalty she, a Gracia farmwife, could offer to the Imperium of Man, to the silent god-emperor upon the Golden Throne.

Her resistance, however, made the Chaos warrior holding her feel... irritated.

This monster had been born directly from the agonizing pain and infusion of Chaos energy within the Daemonculaba.

Its mind had long since been churned into a boiling slurry of violence and primal desire.

It possessed neither the tactical thinking of a normal Astartes nor even a clear sense of purpose, only the instinct to obey orders to seize slaves and the urge to seek "fun" anytime, anywhere.

At first, this tiny creature's struggling and cursing might have seemed somewhat novel, but now, all it felt was annoyance.

"Too noisy... insect..."

The voice squeezed out from behind its helmet grille was muffled, like gravel rolling inside an iron can.

Its crimson lenses fixed on the writhing human shape in its palm, and a simple, direct thought took form in its chaotic mind: crush her.

End this boring interruption in the most violent, bloodiest way possible, and while it was at it... please itself.

Yes, please itself.

The fleeting thrill brought by killing was one of the few "pleasures" in its Chaos life.

Its free metal fist, smeared with scraps of flesh and blood, slowly rose.

The rough overgrown bone spikes and blasphemous iron nails on its surface reflected malicious light beneath the stars.

The fist aimed at the woman's head in its palm. All it needed was one light smash—no, one hard smash.

Like crushing an overripe melon, it could splatter that irritating voice and its life away together.

The mother stopped cursing.

She raised her head and looked at the iron fist brimming with destructive power. Strangely, a trace of relieved calm appeared on her face.

This was the ending she wanted: clean and swift, returning to dust, never defiled.

She even straightened her back slightly, ready to face the final moment.

"No—!!!"

A childish roar that tore through the night, yet brimmed with explosive force, erupted like thunder from a clear sky!

It was Kai!

He knelt in the mud, watching helplessly as his mother was about to die.

Boundless fear, towering rage, and bone-deep helplessness erupted simultaneously within his small chest like three volcanoes!

He hated them!

He hated those black giants!

He hated this world that had destroyed his home, killed his father, and now sought to take his mother from him!

And he hated... himself even more!

He hated his weakness, hated his helplessness!

Why was he only a child?

Why could he not lift his father's heavy wrench?

Why could he only hide, only cry, only watch as everything happened before his eyes?!

"AAAAAH—!!!"

Like a wounded cub, he let out a desperate roar.

His fist slammed viciously into the soft earth beneath him, as if he wanted to pour all his rage into the ground!

Squelch.

His fist sank deep into the wet mud.

Yet the sensation against his fingertips... was wrong!

It was not the softness of soil, but a cold, hard, regular... and strangely familiar outline!

What was it?

The instinct to survive and the mad obsession to save his mother overwhelmed everything else.

Kai paid no heed to anything else and violently clawed aside the wet mud with both hands.

His ten fingers clamped tightly around the hard object buried beneath the earth, and he pulled upward with all his strength!

Splash!

Mud and water flew everywhere.

Without warning, a beam of light pierced the darkness around him.

Kai froze, remaining half-kneeling as he raised both hands over his head.

Held firmly in his grasp was a sword!

A longsword suffused with pure silver radiance!

Its blade was long, its lines elegant yet powerful. It was not crudely forged, but rather seemed like the perfect crystallization of some lost art.

Silver formed its foundation, but more miraculous still was the faint golden halo, flowing like living water.

It slowly coursed and coiled within the blade, sometimes gathering into starlike glimmers, sometimes spreading like the thin mist of dawn.

It had been pulled from the mud, yet not a speck of dust clung to it. Its light was gentle yet steadfast.

It illuminated Kai's face, smeared with mud and tears, and a small patch of trampled rice field around him.

How... was this possible?

This land, Gracia's most fertile alluvial plain.

His ancestors, his father, every person in the village had plowed it countless thousands of times!

They knew every inch of soil.

How could such a conspicuous longsword have remained buried here all this time, never discovered?

But Kai had no time to ponder this unbelievable mystery.

A fiercer emotion scorched through his mind— a weapon!

A weapon!

It was in his hands!

A weapon that looked... extraordinary!

Could it cut those black giants?

Could it save his mother?

He did not know, but he had to try!

He had to!

"Ah—!"

He growled, tightening his grip around the hilt.

A weight that had originally required both hands just to barely lift now felt remarkably suited to him, as though this sword had always belonged in his hands.

The instant his ten fingers locked around the hilt, the light upon the blade abruptly intensified!

The silver radiance became brighter, the golden glow more dazzling, as if answering the surging courage and resolute will in his heart!

He rose to his feet.

His legs still trembled faintly with fear, but his spine was straight.

Holding the longsword in both hands, he pointed its tip at the Chaos giant preparing to commit murder.

With every breath in his lungs, he unleashed the loudest, angriest roar of his life, one that sounded least like it had come from a child:

"Heretic—!!!"

The sound exploded!

What it contained was not merely the grief and fury of a child who had witnessed his home destroyed and his loved ones murdered.

It also carried something vast and desolate, as though thunder accumulated across endless ages had been unleashed, bearing ultimate hatred for betrayal and pure rage at defilement!

Even space seemed to tremble faintly beneath that roar, while dew drops rolled from the rice stalks in a patter.

The Chaos warrior, just about to swing its fist, suddenly froze.

For the first time, its senses, corroded by Chaos energy, felt something... painfully glaring.

Not physical light, but a kind of "light" that made its soul instinctively feel revulsion, rejection, and even a trace of... fear!

What was that boy holding?

A psychic focusing device?

Some kind of holy relic?

Or...

Its crimson lenses lowered, finally seeing the source of the light clearly.

A small, frail human child, his face covered in grime, held aloft a glowing longsword.

The golden and silver currents running across the blade looked so abrupt, so... "wrong," against the pitch-black night sky!

"No! Kai! Run!

Get away from here—!!!"

When the mother saw her son rise with the glowing sword in hand, her heart nearly stopped. She shrieked with every last ounce of strength, her voice agonized.

Yet Kai merely turned his head slightly and looked at his mother.

At that one glance, the mother's voice abruptly died away.

She saw... her son Kai's eyes.

Those brown eyes, which should have been filled with fear and tears, belonging to a ten-year-old boy, had... changed.

Within those deep sockets burned two clusters of cold, pure golden flame!

That gold was not the color of warm sunlight. It was like molten gold hammered trillions of times, stripped of every impurity.

Glorious, majestic, supreme—it carried an absolute will that looked down upon ants and judged all sin.

That expression, which should never have appeared in a child's eyes, rendered the mother speechless in an instant.

All that remained was boundless shock and a faint stir of hope so fragile that even she did not dare believe it.