The momentum of his charge, together with the burning rage in his chest, seemed to ebb away little by little in the long, lonely passage.
Without realizing it, Saladin slowed his steps.
Ahead, the metal corridors remained a tangled maze. Emergency lights flickered intermittently overhead, stretching his shadow across the walls, twisting it, then shortening it again.
The air reeked of Smoke, Ozone, and the distinctive sweet, metallic tang of xenos blood, but the clamor of battle receded swiftly like an ebbing tide, until it vanished altogether.
It was too quiet.
Quiet enough to hear the low hum of his power armour's servo system, his steady yet powerful heartbeat, even the faint crunch of broken metal debris beneath his boots.
This silence offered no safety. Instead, it closed around him like a thick layer of cold grease, with an unsettling viscosity.
He stopped and tilted his head slightly, listening.
He raised his Helmet's audio enhancers to maximum sensitivity. Apart from a distant, indistinct groan that might have been structural stress releasing, there was only this boundless silence that swallowed everything.
Takidin's heavy Terminator footsteps, the guards' terse calls to one another, the sounds of Saolis and the Word Bearers fighting—all had vanished.
It was as though, once he had rounded that corner and entered this branching passage, an invisible wall had cut him off from the world behind him.
Had they lost track of him?
No. Takidin and the guards would never make that mistake.
Had a powerful enemy held them up? Or... was there something wrong with this damned place itself?
Beneath his Helmet, Saladin's golden eyes narrowed slightly. His mind, previously unsettled by hallucinations and anger, was forced back into absolute calm and focus by this unnatural silence.
Hallucinations could deceive his eyes, but this soundless stillness, this