Iron within, iron without!
That ancient creed of the Iron Warriors Legion was no longer merely a maxim engraved on armour or banners. Now it had become a living monument cast from steel, blood, and will upon Ullanor's boundless wastes: the Fortress called Aegis.
In that darkest month, as the Ork tide swept across the planet, communications failed, and the war effort collapsed, Commander Phrax and his Iron Warriors Vanguard had embodied the full meaning of those words through their actions.
When the White Scars' Defense Line was unexpectedly torn apart, when green Ork forces engulfed the world from orbit and the ground alike, when orderly offensive plans gave way to chaos and fragmentation, Phrax made the choice that best reflected his Legion's nature.
The entire Vanguard halted its advance and dug in, turning itself into a steel rivet driven into rotting flesh, one the Orks could never pull free, no matter how bloody they battered themselves against it.
Ullanor's wastes stretched as far as the eye could see, fierce winds whipping up rust-coloured dust and ash.
Here, there were no natural strongpoints to defend, no complex terrain to exploit, only an open killing ground perfectly suited to the Orks' endless, brutally relentless charges.
Yet it was here that the Iron Warriors demonstrated why they were called the Siege Breakers and the Masters of Defence.
One short month.
Just thirty standard days and nights.
Under Phrax's cold, precise, unquestionable command, amid the roar of countless engineering machines and through the physical strength of the Legiones Astartes warriors, a miracle of military engineering rose from the ground.
It was no elegant citadel, but a brutal creation built solely for slaughter and survival.
Along a circular Defense Line hundreds of kilometres in diameter, three nested armoured walls towered over the wastes. Their