The battlefield was a ruin of smoke and fire. The twin explosions of the Warhound Titans had sundered a section of the bridge, turning it into a shattered hellscape of broken stone and twisted metal. The bodies of the fallen—Imperial and Khornate alike—littered the ground, some reduced to unrecognizable smears of charred flesh. The toxic river below roiled with wreckage, the remains of the collapsed Titan sinking beneath its surface, its daemonic core sputtering its last curses as it drowned.
And yet, the battle was not over.
From the smoke, the Gorekarn roared.
The Blood God's horde had been thinned, their war machines shattered, their ranks broken. But these were warriors who knew no surrender, whose very existence was bound to battle. They did not retreat. They did not falter. They only charged.
With guttural bellows and gnashing fangs, the Gorekarn Berserkers surged forward, their daemon-blessed weapons gleaming in the ruinous glow of the burning battlefield. Their rage was unrelenting, their war cries deafening as they leaped over the bodies of their fallen kin, hacking, slashing, pushing through the destruction to reach the Imperials.
The Space Wolves answered with a howl.
Blow Claw Hardrad led the charge, his power armour-clad form a storm of death as he moved through the rubble, his Lightning Claws crackling with raw power. His helm was off—he had cast it aside in the frenzy of the fight, revealing his long, frost-white mane and the savage snarl of a true son of Fenris.
"Steel Legion! Stand, damn you!" one of the Wolves barked, grabbing a trembling guardsman and shoving him forward. "You think the enemy will show you mercy? You think they'll spare you if you break?"
The Steel Legionnaires, battered and bloodied, did not flee—but neither did they rush forward. They were soldiers, not warriors. They fought in ranks, in formation. But formations were gone now. There was no battle line, only chaos.
Hardrad turned his blazing claws upon the incoming Gorekarn elites.
The first to challenge him was a towering brute in blood-red warplate, its horns curved and wicked. It wielded a daemon-forged axe the size of a man, its edges lined with chattering fangs. The beast lunged—but Hardrad was faster.
A flash of lightning. A streak of blood.
The Gorekarn staggered back, gurgling as twin claws raked across its chest, carving through its armor like parchment. It roared, swinging wildly, but Hardrad ducked low and drove his claws into its gut. The energy discharge from the Lightning Claws sent a bolt of crackling force through the Gorekarn's body, seizing its muscles, rupturing organs. Hardrad ripped his arms free, tearing the beast apart from the inside out.
Another charged him—a Butcher, its twin chain-axes humming with daemonic energy. It swung for his head, but Hardrad turned the blow aside, catching the axes with his claws before shoving forward, forcing the brute onto its back foot.
A flash of movement—his claws slashed in a cross formation, and the Gorekarn's arms were severed at the elbows. The berserker didn't even have time to scream before Hardrad's next strike punctured its throat, sending it sprawling into the mud, its lifeblood painting the ruined stone.
More fell. A butchered path of crimson marked where Hardrad moved, his name earned anew with every kill.
And then, the warlord stepped forward.
The Gorekarn leader was a mountain of muscle and rage, his bipedal reptilian body wreathed in thick plates of corrupted ceramite, his warplate adorned with trophies of a hundred slain foes. His face was hidden beneath a snarling helm, its maw sculpted in the shape of a fanged beast. In his hands, he carried a massive daemon cleaver, its blade jagged and raw, pulsing with an inner heat as if thirsting for blood.
Hardrad paused, flexing his claws, rolling his shoulders.
The battlefield fell away. The roar of combat faded into a distant echo.
Here stood two warriors.
Two killers.
A duel was inevitable.
The warlord raised his cleaver and pointed it at Hardrad. His voice was like grinding stone.
"You are strong."
Hardrad grinned, baring his fangs.
"You are dead."
Then they charged.
Their weapons met in an explosion of sparks and energy. Hardrad struck first, his claws lashing out like twin streaks of lightning—but the warlord's cleaver was fast, faster than any weapon that size should be. He parried one strike, twisted his stance, and brought the blade down in a brutal overhead swing.
Hardrad sidestepped, but the edge of the cleaver bit into his shoulder guard, slicing through ceramite and biting deep into the flesh beneath. He snarled in pain but did not slow—he retaliated with a savage elbow uppercut, his Lightning Claw finding purchase in the warlord's chest, carving through armor and flesh alike.
The Gorekarn leader grunted but did not fall. He shoved forward, his sheer mass driving Hardrad back. His cleaver swung again—wild, relentless, but impossibly controlled.
Hardrad ducked one leaping blow. Blocked another. The third clipped his ribs, splitting armor.
Most warriors wold have been overwhelmed. But Hardrad was a son of Russ.
With a sudden burst of speed, he lunged, slamming his full weight into the Gorekarn leader, knocking him off balance. His claws lashed out in a flurry—one, two, three strikes, each one carving deeper into his foe's armor.
The warlord stumbled.
Hardrad leaped.
His claws sank deep into the Gorekarn's throat, punching through flesh and bone, his weight carrying them both to the ground.
A flash of light. A final, shuddering gasp.
The warlord was dead before he hit the ground.
Hardrad wrenched his claws free, rising to his feet. Around him, the battlefield raged on. The Gorekarn were still fighting, but their charge had faltered. Their leader was dead.
And Hardrad?
He was still hungry for more. And more of hordes of Khorne charged at him. Gorekarn had simple rule of succession — the one slay a dead Warlord's slayer will become a Warlord himself.
They came at the bridge from all directions, here was an endless desert of wreckage, bones, and war. It was only then when the convoy of guardsmen who were first of this world to catch sight of the Slayer rolled fast, a storm of dust and roaring engines kicking up behind them. Twenty soldiers, twenty vehicles—ripped from whatever Imperial machines they could salvage. Some rode stripped-down Sentinels, others atop armored quad-bikes, their mounts jury-rigged and barely holding together.
At the front, Sergeant Druvan's mole drill ripped through the sands, its massive auger chewing through the terrain. Behind him, Vek rode a battered recon transport—an armored scout vehicle with a top-mounted autocannon and extra armor plating welded on by desperate hands. The others followed in a ragtag procession of battered Imperial vehicles: Scout Sentinels, repurposed Tauros assault buggies, and even a few jury-rigged Chimera hulls stripped down for speed.
Then the warp-damned cultists came.
They surged over the dunes, a swarm of jury-rigged war machines, built from rusted Imperial wreckage and adorned with screaming effigies of Chaos. Ramshackle speeders with spiked wheels, mutant-driven trikes with flesh-welded armor, and a towering battle rig that had once been a Leman Russ, now gutted and turned into a rolling cathedral of blood.
The vox exploded with screams.
"INCOMING! WEAPONS FIRE!"
The cultists struck like a tidal wave. A lascannon blast lanced out from a scavenged Predator, vaporizing one of the leading quad-bikes in an instant—the rider's final scream cut short as his body turned to drifting ash.
Another Guardsman swerved too late to avoid a spiked war-rig, his vehicle colliding with the jagged metal hull. He was thrown from his seat, tumbling through the air before his body landed neck-first onto a cultist's jagged prow. His head came clean off, bouncing against the sand as his corpse twitched on impact.
Sergeant Druvan's mole drill burrowed forward, kicking up an avalanche of sand as it erupted from the earth beneath a cultist war-truck. The drill chewed through its engine block and split it in two, sending the burning wreck tumbling across the dunes. The cultists inside screamed as they were ground into mulch, but one managed to crawl free—only for a Sentinel to step on his skull, bursting it open.
A spike-covered trike screeched up alongside Vek's ride, its driver—a scarred lunatic with his lips sewn shut— hurling a hooked chain at the transport. The barbed end caught the hull, yanking tight. A second later, a deformed mutant leapt from the trike onto Vek's vehicle, his rusted axe already screaming.
Vek didn't hesitate.
He wrenched the wheel hard, sending the vehicle into a brutal swerve. The cultist stumbled—just for a second—and Vek grabbed his laspistol, jamming it under the heretic's jaw and pulling the trigger.
The top of his skull vanished, brain matter spraying against the desert wind. The corpse tumbled off the hood, crushed under the wheels of an oncoming Sentinel.
But there was no time to breathe—
A Chimera on the right flank detonated, its entire crew screaming as warp-infused fire ate them alive. The twisted wreck skidded for several meters before exploding again, hurling body parts in every direction.
To the left, a Guardsman's quad-bike flipped, sending its rider screaming through the air—only for him to be caught mid-flight by a spiked war-rig's jagged prow. His guts spilled out across the hood, but he was still alive, twitching, trying to reach for his pistol. The cultist driver just laughed and hit the gas, ramming the dying man into another vehicle like a battering ram. His body burst apart on impact.
The enemy's biggest beast rumbled into view—The Machine-Killer.
It had once been a Baneblade, now gutted and reanimated as a war-chariot of hell. Its hull was covered in flayed human hides, its sponson turrets replaced with shrieking, chained psykers, their mouths spewing warpfire.
And it was coming straight for them.
Sergeant Druvan didn't hesitate.
The mole drill lurched left, then surged forward—straight toward the Titan-Killer.
"CLEAR MY PATH!"
The Guardsmen hit the throttle.
Vek swerved hard, his vehicle was under a barrage of lasgun fire as the others peppered the Machine-Killer with lascannon blasts. The behemoth shuddered but kept coming.
A cultist speeder suddenly smashed into a Guardsman's buggy, sending both vehicles into a flaming death spiral. The wreckage skidded across the battlefield before slamming into a combat walker's legs, sending the machine toppling over in a heap of flame and screaming driver.
Then Druvan's mole drill struck.
The auger pierced deep, grinding through metal and flesh alike. The Machine-Killer shuddered, its corrupted machine spirit screaming as the mole drill burrowed into its belly.
Then it detonated.
A shockwave of blood, metal, and warpfire engulfed the battlefield, throwing vehicles like children's toys.
A Sentinel was ripped apart midair, its pilot torn from the cockpit and flung screaming into the sky.
Vek's ride flipped end over end, crashing hard into the sand. His vision blurred, ears ringing. When he looked up, the survivors were still fighting. In the distant corner he caught the glimpse of the green marine climbing from edge of the bridge. He kept his word and somehow before they arrived here took out many Titans. The wreckage was enough proof. Now it was Vek's time to keep his word and make it across that bridge.
Only ten Guardsmen of his team remained.
The cultists had lost their beast, but they weren't finished. Mutant shock troops scrambled out from the wreckage, foam-mouthed and howling. Vek wiped blood from his face, grabbed his lasgun, and started shooting.
The river beneath the bridge ran red, choked with the corpses of Guardsmen, cultists, and shattered war machines. The titanic clash of Imperial war engines against the Gorekarn's daemon-infested monstrosities sent shockwaves through the earth, each impact shaking the bridge's ancient ferrocrete foundations.
And at the edge of the battlefield, he sat.
Doom Slayer's boots crunching against the cracked stone as he settled onto the bridge's edge. Ahead of him, the carnage raged—his handiwork still smoking in the wreckage of six fallen Warhound Titans, their corrupted husks burning in ruin. He didn't move. He didn't speak. He just watched.
The Gorekarn charged in relentless waves, flesh, iron, and daemonic fury smashing into the Imperial lines. The Guardsmen were buckling, the Space Marines holding firm—but even they were beginning to bleed.
And still, he sat.
Suddenly there was a growl of armored boots on stone.
A Blood Claw Space Wolf—young, barely blooded, but burning with the unbreakable fury of the Rout—strode forward, his bolter raised, finger tight against the trigger. His battleplate was scratched, dented, fresh with the scars of his first real war. He had no fear. But he had questions.
"Who are you?" the young Wolf demanded, weapon trained on the stranger's temple. "What in Russ' name are you doing here?"
The Slayer didn't answer.
The Blood Claw's hands were steady, but his mind raced. This being—this warrior—was a living nightmare. Too powerful for a mortal, too different for an Astartes, armor design utterly alien. No markings, no sigils, no chapter heraldry—just the unfeeling abyss of his visor.
A psyker? A witch? Something worse?
The Blood Claw tightened his grip.
"I saw what you did." His voice was lower now, something between awe and suspicion. "I saw you bring down six Warhounds. Alone. But you're not one of us. So what are you?"
Silence.
The Pack Leader strode forward, joining in, bolter raised but not firing. "You there! Who sent you?"
The warrior did not answer. He stood, breathing slow and deep, as if the slaughter had meant nothing.
A Blood Claw bared his fangs. "What in Russ' name is he? No markings, no heraldry—he fights like a daemon, but doesn't speak like a man."
Another growled. "Some Imperial assassin, maybe? They make killers for all sorts of kills. This one for Titans."
The novice Rune Priest studied him, his psyker senses flared, his scarred brow furrowed. "He certainly does not stink of the chaos. Whatever he is, he is not touched by the Dark Gods. But there is something about him something I haven't ever felt before."
The Pack Leader grunted. "Then he is no enemy—for now." He turned back toward the battle. "We waste time. The fight isn't over, and he isn't stopping us."
A Blood Claw hesitated. "We just leave him?"
"Aye. But not unwatched." He pointed to the Blood Claw. "You. Keep an eye on him. If he moves against us, cut him down. If he does nothing, leave him be."
With that, the Wolves turned and ran back into the fray, leaving only one behind—watching, waiting.
The young Wolf hesitated. Looked back at the Slayer. Nothing. No reaction. No movement. Just the watching. Just the silence. The Blood Claw finally stepped back. Lowered his bolter. And as the war raged on, Doom Slayer watched and waited for it to end.
The bridge shook under the weight of war. Chunks of ferrocrete crumbled beneath the relentless advance of Khornate mutants and frenzied cultists. The air was thick with the iron stench of blood, the screams of the dying, and the deafening roar of engines and gunfire.
The Steel Legion was barely holding.
Their lasguns snapped off disciplined volleys, cutting down the first wave of frothing lunatics. Bayonets plunged into howling berserkers, their bodies riddled with las-burns but still fighting with mindless fury. Some of the Legionnaires had resorted to trench knives and entrenching tools, hacking and clubbing at the tide of heretics swarming over makeshift barricades. The first wave had been crushed. The second was already climbing over their dead. Then a rumbling was heard from behind, something crossing the bridge from Imperial supply lines towards them, the Imperial armor arrived.
Rows of Tanks charged into the battle. With the deafening roar of engines, the Leman Russ battle tanks rolled forward onto the bridge, their treads crunching over bodies—both friend and foe alike. Chimeras followed close behind, their turret-mounted heavy bolters spitting fire into the seething mass of blood-crazed cultists.
A Vanquisher cannon fired, the shell punching clean through a ramshackle war-rig. The vehicle detonated in a rolling fireball, the bodies of its passengers flung into the air like broken dolls.
A Hellhound spewed a jet of searing promethium across a wave of charging mutants. They didn't stop. Even as their flesh sloughed from their bones, they staggered forward, screaming in agony and ecstasy alike.
One berserker, his body wreathed in flame, leaped onto a Leman Russ, burying his axe into the turret ring before he was blasted apart by a hull-mounted bolter.
They threw themselves into the fire, their bodies breaking against the Imperial war machine. Some wielded makeshift explosives, cramming them into exhaust vents and turret hatches before detonating themselves in crimson sprays. One Leman Russ buckled as a cultist wedged a grenade into its engine compartment, the explosion splitting it open like a metal carcass.
A Melta bomb took out another. The bridge was becoming a slaughterhouse.
A new roar split the battlefield. The true warriors of Khorne had arrived.
No mere rabble—these were the Chosen of the Blood God, warriors clad in blackened armor, their crimson axes thirsty for flesh. They smashed into the front lines, their sheer momentum throwing Guardsmen off their feet. A berserker drove his axe through a Legionnaire's chest, ripping him open before hurling the corpse at his comrades. Another tore a Chimera's hatch off with his bare hands, dragging the screaming crew out one by one.
A sergeant fired his plasma pistol, the shot boring through a berserker's torso, leaving a melted ruin where his chest had been. The warrior staggered but did not fall. He laughed through charred lips and brought his chainaxe down, cleaving the sergeant in half from shoulder to waist. Blood coated the bridge. The Steel Legion was being overwhelmed.
Then, a howl rose above the carnage. The sky darkened. A wind howled through the battlefield, unnaturally cold, as the Rune Priest stepped forward.
Varrik Stormwolf raised his staff, his eyes blazing with the power of the storm. He slammed it down.
The bridge cracked beneath him, ice spreading in jagged lines. A dozen berserkers froze mid-charge, their weapons raised, their faces twisted in eternal fury as their bodies turned to solid ice. Another priest raised his hand and spoke a word of death.
A Khornate mutant, twice the size of a man, staggered. He tried to scream, but his breath caught in his throat. His veins bulged—and then he burst apart, his insides decorating the bridge like a ruptured sack of meat. The storm intensified. Bolts of lightning speared through the battlefield, incinerating entire squads of cultists in blinding arcs of power. The Khornate warriors faltered—not in fear, but in rage. They could not kill the storm.
The Leman Russ tanks rolled forward once more, their battle cannons roaring like thunder. A Demolisher shell slammed into a berserker squad, pulverizing them into bloody mist. Rune Priest brought his staff down again, and the ground beneath the remaining cultists split open, sending dozens plummeting into the toxic river below before closing.
This gruesome battle continued for hours until nightfall. The bridge called P:10 was held. The Imperium had won. But the cost was horrific. The dead lay in mountains. The blood had not stopped flowing — yet Khorne cares not from whence the blood flows, only that it flows. And the war was far from over. But now was time for tending the wounded and dead, to get themselves together into any semblance of military order, now was the time for the wolves to lick their wounds and now was a time of questions and answers.