Before Angron's unstoppable fury, the Astra Militarum's formidable defensive line, composed of countless trenches, fortresses, and Leman Russ Tanks, was as fragile as a castle built of sand. Angron did not even use his two weapons. He simply ran. Every time his immense body, brimming with explosive strength, struck the Imperium's defenses, it smashed open a breach dozens of meters wide, filled with twisted steel and mangled flesh. Behind him surged a crimson tide.
The defensive line crumbled at a terrifying speed visible to the naked eye.
Just as Angron was about to charge into the ancient final fortress, he suddenly stopped. He snapped his head up, and for the first time, a flicker of excitement-the thrill of battle-flashed through eyes that endless fury had burned down to nothing but pure bloodlust.
He drove his enormous axe and sword deep into the earth beneath his feet, opened his mouth, twisted by the Butcher's Nails, and unleashed a blasphemous roar steeped in the ritual solemnity of ancient blood rites.
"In the name of Khorne! By the Skull Throne! Blood for the Blood God!!!"
With his demonic roar, charged with divine power, the entire sky over Malakbel instantly turned an ominous blood red. An immense crimson portal, formed from Warp energy of pure slaughter and rage, burst open above Angron's head!
Then eight immense figures slowly descended from the portal. They stood over ten meters tall, their bodies burning with hellfire, ragged wings sprouting from their backs. They brandished enormous brass axes and flaming whips.
Bloodthirsters, the mightiest and most bloodthirsty Greater Daemons in Khorne's service. Eight of them.
As these eight incarnations of Khorne's wrath descended, an endless demonic legion of lesser Bloodletters and Flesh Hounds poured from the crimson portal like a torrential rain of blood.
And just as this demonic army, powerful enough to drag any mortal world into hell, was about to fully descend into realspace, the white spire that had stood silently on the distant horizon-the Hymn Engine-finally struck back.
HUMMMMMMMMM-!!!
A visible golden halo, composed of pure order and sacred psychic energy, burst from the summit of the Hymn Engine, spreading like ripples across water! Wherever the halo passed, the lesser daemons that had only just entered realspace melted and disintegrated like snow beneath sunlight, without even time to scream, banished back to their home in Chaos.
The eight mighty Bloodthirsters also roared in agony beneath the impact of this pure divine power of order. The hellfire burning across their bodies instantly lost most of its brilliance, and golden wounds appeared across their enormous, terrifying demonic forms, as though seared by branding irons.
Even Angron, the incarnation of fury, staggered back a step beneath the psychic impact. For the first time, his brain, utterly twisted by the Butcher's Nails, felt an excruciating pain, as though purification itself were tearing it apart.
Yet it only drove him back a single step.
"...Noise!"
He forced the word from his throat, laden with endless fury and hatred. He pulled his immense axe and sword from the earth and hurled one of them forward like a javelin! The axe traced a blood-red arc through the air before burying itself in the ancient final fortress's enormous alloy gate.
Then, using the axe as an anchor, Angron hurled himself forward like a shell fired from a cannon. He and his eight mighty, equally enraged bloodthirsty servants charged without hesitation toward the last fortress, shrouded in purifying light, and toward the small hearth within it, burning with an equally mad flame.
In the fortress's central command room, lined with countless monitoring screens, Alexander silently watched the immense dark-red figure on the screen approach at an unstoppable speed. He turned to the Imperial officer beside him, who had remained silent from the very beginning, his face already as pale as paper.
"Colonel," he said, his voice frighteningly calm, "it seems our guest has arrived."
Colonel Carsten did not answer. He merely drew the Power Sword that symbolized his authority, slowly and deliberately.
"For the Emperor," he murmured.
Alexander smiled. He picked up the highest-priority communicator linked to the Fourth Fleet's flagship. He knew the time had come for the final curtain call. For this grand fireworks display he had personally directed, he would deliver one last opening address.
On the bridge of the flagship Glory of Terra, Admiral Abukhensis gazed through the immense viewport at the planet below, mercilessly ravaged by war. His face seemed covered in ice that had remained frozen for ten thousand years, betraying no emotion. But his hands, gripping the edge of the command console so tightly that his knuckles had turned white, exposed the turmoil raging within him.
"Bad" no longer came close to describing the battle. Thousands of Space Marines, millions of Astra Militarum soldiers, and thousands of tanks and artillery pieces melted away before that unstoppable dark-red figure like ice and snow cast into a furnace, unable to make even the slightest meaningful impact.
"Report! Ground defense sectors seven, eight, and nine have gone completely silent! Sectors ten through twelve are being overrun by the demonic legions! We have lost over five hundred thousand soldiers!"
"Report! Angron has breached all outer defensive lines and is assaulting the fortress beneath the Hymn Engine!"
"Report! The cruiser Shield of Defiance has been hit by the main guns of the enemy flagship Conqueror! Its reactor detonated! We... we've lost General Marcus and his entire fleet!"
One report after another, filled with despair and death, cut like the sharpest of blades, carving away at the heart of this legendary veteran who had fought for the Imperium for over three centuries. Behind him, the once-arrogant naval commanders had long since shed all their arrogance and prejudice. Their faces now shared only one expression: fear.
They were afraid-afraid of that incarnation of destruction, as incomprehensible as divine punishment; afraid of the Daemon Primarch whose mere existence was enough to crush every last shred of mortal courage and hope.
Just as the plague called despair was about to engulf the entire bridge, a highest-priority communication request, unexpected by everyone, suddenly appeared on the main screen. It came from the final fortress on the surface, on the verge of destruction. The caller was the young Commissar they had long since chosen to forget-Alexander von Lawrence.
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