Cold Void, eternal darkness, dotted with the indifferent lights of distant stars.
Beneath this boundless curtain of deep space, fifteen streaks of light tore through the silence, racing onward with grim resolve.
They were a wolf pack forged of steel and fury. Their stern thrusters spewed azure plasma exhaust like the long tails of comets, tracing merciless paths against the ink-black backdrop.
On every warship's thick armour plating, snarling wolf-head markings and crossed-fang insignia radiated a chilling savagery, even beneath the faint starlight.
They were the Space Wolves, the Emperor's Sons of Fenris, hunters renowned for their loyalty and fury.
This was no premeditated, large-scale crusade, but a hastily assembled rapid strike group, pieced together from elite Space Wolves fleet elements patrolling nearby star clusters.
Their target was clear, their mission singular.
They were hunting the traitors who had scattered like the discharge of festering sores and hidden in the galaxy's shadows—the poisonous remnants of the former Second Legion.
While the Dark Angels served as the Emperor's silent executioners, concentrating on exterminating external threats such as the Rangdan Xenos.
The duty of purging internal rebels and hunting down fleeing Rebel Forces had settled around the Space Wolves' necks like a heavy chain.
Among the Imperium's loyal Legiones Astartes, they were the military police charged specifically with internal punishment and pursuit.
Now, leading this wolf pack toward its prey was Beowulf, captain of the Eighteenth Company under the Space Wolves Legion's Twelfth Great Company.
His name itself carried the valour of ancient Fenrisian legends, and he lived up to it. Like a pack leader that had caught its prey's scent, he stood on the Bridge of the fleet's Flagship, the Snow of the North, beneath a wash of dim red light.
Cold light from the virtual viewports gleamed on his power