At the heart of the chaotic storm, where grit obscured his senses and golden flames intertwined with sand-colored blades of light, every nerve in Lorgar's body was stretched to its limit.
Swirling dust fractured his vision. His ears rang with the eerie hiss of grinding sand and disintegrating doubles. His psychic perception felt trapped in thick quicksand, barely able to detect the nearest disturbances of energy.
Like a blind giant trapped in the eye of a Sandstorm, he relied solely on his battle-honed instincts and undying will, swinging the Greatsword to withstand the dance of death coming at him from every direction, unable to tell the real attacks from the false.
At that critical moment, with his senses severely obscured and his ability to anticipate attacks reduced to a last instant of intuition—
A scimitar thrust out without warning! It came not from any visible double, but directly from a dense cloud of sand beside Lorgar, the remnants of a double he had just cleaved apart that had yet to fully disperse!
It appeared so abruptly that the sand itself seemed to have condensed into a deadly fang.
The sand-colored psychic energy gathered along its edge was dark and concentrated, without the slightest diffusion, aimed straight at the relatively weak joint in Lorgar's Power Armour beneath his ribs!
The timing, angle, and concealment of this strike were flawless, far beyond any of the doubles' previous feints, and carried the cold resolve to kill with a single blow!
It was Saladin himself!
He had indeed been lurking within this ocean of sand doubles, like the most patient scorpion, waiting for the instant when his prey was most strained and the slightest hitch appeared in his defenses!
Life and death hung by a thread!
Lorgar did not even have time to confirm