Kadora, Mountains Hive City, Upper Hive.
It was late at night, a time when the nobles should have been enjoying music and delicacies. Yet outside a tower mansion in Sector Seven, the air had frozen like iron.
There were no alarms, no warning signs.
Before the mansion's massive alloy doors, five meters tall and inlaid with a family crest and adamantium reliefs, a squad of black silhouettes descended like ghosts from the shadows of a hovering transport craft.
They wore dark gray power armour inlaid with scriptural runes. The sacred images of the Emperor and the insignia of the Word Bearers on their chests gleamed coldly beneath the hive city's dim neon lights.
The sergeant at their head made a terse gesture.
A soldier stepped forward and took an enormous plasma weapon from his back.
The muzzle began to charge. An eerie blue glow gathered inside the barrel with a low, ominous hum, illuminating the harsh contours of the soldier's faceplate and the panicked reflections on the doors: several indistinct figures trying to reinforce the locks from behind.
"Purge the heretics." The sergeant's voice emerged through his Helmet's amplifier, utterly devoid of warmth.
BOOM!!!!!
There was no attempt to pick the locks, no warning shot.
A white-hot jet of plasma pierced the ornate doors that symbolized status and wealth in an instant, like a spear of judgment.
At temperatures exceeding those on the surface of the sun, the alloy melted like butter, vaporized, and exploded inward. Searing droplets of molten metal and fragments swept through the entrance hall like a torrential downpour.
Blinding white light and a deafening blast instantly tore through all the mansion's tranquility and opulence.
"Move! Move! Move!"
The sergeant's roar thundered through the communications channel.
Dark silhouettes poured in like a tide.
The metallic clack of