Beneath the Mine

Elsewhere, Kran and his men had reached their destination.

For Mortals, the fifty-kilometer journey through the Hive City's twisted metal jungle and collapsed structures would have been a lethally long trek.

But for the ten warriors of the Word Bearers, one of the Legiones Astartes, it was merely a brief, efficient forced march.

The servos of their Power Armour hummed low in the freezing air, their magnetic boots striking a heavy, steady rhythm against ice and steel.

In less than twenty minutes, they tore through the deathly silence like a precisely thrown gray-white Dagger and reached the source of the disaster.

After only a few steps, the temperature plummeted.

The Hive City's fetid, stifling heat gave way to bone-deep polar cold.

Before them lay a bowl-shaped valley enclosed by enormous glaciers that gleamed an eerie blue.

At the center of the valley, a vast, unnerving pit tore through the ice field, nearly several kilometers across, its edges jagged.

The shaft plunged into unfathomable depths, exuding a chill more piercing than any physical cold, along with that familiar stench of blood mingled with an unnaturally sweet, sickening odor.

Around the pit lay utter devastation. Huge drilling rigs, transport trucks, and engineering walkers lay overturned in every conceivable contorted position, frozen to the ice like toys carelessly discarded by a child.

Some cockpits had been violently torn open, while other vehicles bore dents and gashes that no claws could have inflicted.

The ice was no pristine white. Vast patches of dark red, brown, and even bizarre yellow-green stains had soaked into it and frozen. The smell of blood was so intense it seemed almost solid in the air, bearing witness to a tragedy far greater in scale than the one at the steelworks.

Sergeant Kran halted, his cold Helmet sweeping across the