Valkor strode through the gunline with the inevitability of an executioner. A Battle Cannon shell detonated midair—caught, twisted aside, and crushed by the jagged-toothed edge of his daemon-bound axe, the Axe of Blind Fury. The weapon shrieked as it drank in the death, its edge blazing with barely contained madness.
Lascannon strikes lanced toward him, spearing through the smoke—and halted, mid-strike, in the air, as if space itself refused to permit his death. The Axe swatted them aside like vermin, warping the light around it. The very air bled red where it passed.
A Demolisher shell roared toward him.
He caught it with an axe swing.
The ground shook from the impact, but Valkor did not fall. Smoke cloaked him for an instant—then he emerged, one arm raised, the crushed remnants of the shell bleeding fire and warpflame from his gauntlet.
He roared, voice booming through every cursed vox-channel at once:
"BRING YOUR GREATEST MACHINES. I BREAK THEM BENEATH MY HEEL."
He broke into a charge.
Men screamed and scattered—some fired, some fled, some dropped to their knees in blind worship or madness. Valkor's axe scythed through infantry and armor alike. He carved open a Chimera like it was parchment, his blade melting through adamantium as if guided by divine hatred. Flames engulfed the wreck, and from it, he pulled a wounded commissar by the throat—then snapped him in two like a toy.
A Sentinel, a light bipedal gun platform combat walker, tried to step away, legs hissing in panic—but Valkor moved faster. One leap, one swing—both legs sheared off, cockpit split open, pilot's upper body gone in a red mist.
Smoke curled in twisted banners across the charred length of the bridge, and the iron feet of the Lord of Skulls lay shattered, half-fused into the ferrocrete where it died roaring. Basilisk strikes continued to hammer the rear lanes, blasting Khornate lines into flaming ruin. Every foot gained was bought with a hundred corpses.
And yet Valkor advanced.
His Contemptor frame—wreathed in the blood of tanks and men—stood unmoved at the center of the chaos. The Axe of Blind Fury pulsed in his grip, veins of warplight crawling through its jagged edge. He turned his helm toward the vox-altar built into his chestplate and bellowed a single command.
"Iron Maw—UNLEASHED."
The first sign was the groan of metal. Then came the shrieks.
In the under structure of the bridge, from rust-choked access ports and gnarled maintenance hatches below the bridge's spine, some beastmen surged up like bile forced through a wound. They came with axes and flamers, with their bodies wrapped in scrap-iron and sacred chains. The understructure bent with the weight of their rage, and the first hatches blew open beneath an active Guard artillery nest.
Guardsmen barely had time to scream.
Plasma grenades and warp-fused claws tore into spotters and uplink crews, scattering their remains across cogitator screens. Vox channels glitched with panicked echoes as the very underside of the bridge began to bleed. Some troopers fired into the hatches blindly, only to be dragged down into the tunnels by clawed hands and gnashing fangs.
55% of Bridge was now under enemy contol. More of the Khornate horde flooded it from behind the enemy lines.
But only some beastmen had made through because the Doom Slayer at his wartable had foresaw this move of Valkor and moved Steel Legion pieces to the metal skeletal structure underneath the bridge and Sefirot imitated vox orders to suit it—sending the earlier retreating Steel Legionaries climbing underneath.
The understructure of the bridge groaned like a wounded beast. Steel trusses and ferrocrete ribs formed a labyrinth of twilight maintenance tunnels, ancient broken elevator shafts, and corroded power arteries—a forgotten world beneath the war above. Structures too thin and brittle for a power armored space marine to battle upon.
Beastmen swarmed it now.
They crawled along vent ducts and dropped from inspection hatches, hoofed limbs clanging on metal rungs. Their eyes burned red in the dark, mouths frothing, blades scavenged from wreckage or bone. Behind them, cultist engineers scuttled with stolen relics, painting blood-runes on struts and plasma conduits—not to destroy, but to pervert. The bridge was not to fall. It was to change.
But the Steel Legion was waiting.
5th Commando Demolition Unit and more –had been inserted into the bridge's under-lattice two hours before the ritual began. Flak-blackened armor, muffled auspex pulses, no vox chatter. Only kill-signals.
[VOX TRANSMISSION — Commissar Haldrek, encrypted channel V3-RED]
"...This is Commissar Haldrek. All underbridge units, listen and listen well. I know what you see down there. I know the stench. The things in the dark that don't bleed right, that whisper when they should scream. But hear me now, and hold fast to these words—
You are soldiers of the Imperium. You do not run. You do not break. You do not fear. You push forward.
That fear in your gut? That means you're still alive. Use it. Turn it into fire. Into hate. Into fury. Push through. Clear those decks. Purge every last heretic thing that dares crawl under our lines.
The Emperor watches you from the Golden Throne—and I do too.
Now move. Burn them. Break them. And do not stop until the metal runs red with their filth."
[END TRANSMISSION]
They moved in staggered fire teams, silent through the shadows.
The first contact came at Junction Boltwell-31.
A beastman with a daemon-faced rebreather rounded a corner, knife raised. He didn't even scream—a short-range lasburst took him through the skull. His body hit the floor at the same moment the squad set a fragline across the duct grid.
Then came the stampede.
Beastmen erupted from every hatch—howling, swinging chains and jagged blades, driven by the scent of Imperial flesh. They surged across the catwalk, kicking up rust and bile, crashing toward the forward team. Their goat-like mutations made them ideal for moving through his unstable terrain.
The detonator clicked.
The catwalk split in two—a precise line of breacher charges vaporized the floor, dropping the front rank of Beastmen into the reactor gullet three stories down. Those that didn't fall were engulfed in flamethrower arcs, the air filling with the smell of burning hair and cooked filth.
But they kept coming.
Hand-to-hand broke out.
Las carbines fired point blank.
Combat knives slashed at fur and bone. A Steel Legionnaire was torn apart by two Beastmen grabbing each arm and pulling until the ligaments snapped like cables. His partner repaid them with a demo charge thrown into their chests—no ceremony, just fire and red paste.
Every corridor fought for. Every kill measured.
In the east duct, cultists triggered a localized warp pulse, boiling the air. Two Imperials combusted from the inside, screaming as their flak armor fused to their ribs. The sergeant, vomiting blood but still breathing, triggered the sacrificial melta-rig before he died, collapsing the entire tunnel onto the invaders.
Section by section, the Steel Legion fought to derail the advance. Every dead Beastman was another foot of tunnel denied. Every corpse piled at a hatch meant one less coming up top.
Below the surface, it was a different war: a butcher's crawl through iron, blood, and shadow.
Above them, the bridge surface shuddered—not from artillery this time, but from something deeper. A pulse. A throb. A living heartbeat of rage.
Valkor the Clysm stood amidst the carnage, his massive form sheathed in daemon-bound ceramite and warplate thrumming with power. He raised a severed head skyward, still dripping with arterial fire, and roared a single, guttural order. Around his neck, inside layer of ceramite, the Talisman of Burning Blood ignited—its glyphs flared crimson and unholy brass, sending a warp scream skyward that shattered vox-nets for several seconds across the entire central line.
From the blood-soaked rear, a new surge thundered forward.
Khornate daemon engines, until now held back in reserve—many barely functional, some weeping ichor from glancing Vanquisher rounds—were now reborn in berserk clarity. Blood Slaughterers, hunched and blade-limbed, skittered low like charging spiders. Skull Cannons, dragging themselves on warped wheels, howled as their living-bound souls shrieked within brass armor. Even a crippled Brass Scorpion, missing half its plating, scuttled forward trailing black smoke and screeching metal.
But they were not the main strike—they were the bait.
Artillery crews took the trap.
From the Imperial ridge, Baneblades bellowed their god-voices, firing plasma shells that scorched the horizon. Vanquishers lined the parapets, locked in on the shambling mass. The sky lit with detonation after detonation as the Imperials unleashed all remaining ordnance, vaporizing half the daemon engine wave in a cacophony of holy fire and shrapnel storms.
But that was exactly what Valkor intended.
In the dust cloud, in the rupture of shrapnel smoke and false targets, the real strike surged.
The air changed.
It wasn't just the heat from the burning wrecks or the howling winds of battle—it was something deeper. A pulse. A heartbeat made of iron and rage. Valkor the Clysm raised his gore-slicked axe high, the blade still dripping with the molten remains of a Shadowsword's command deck. Clutched in his clawed gauntlet, the Talisman of Burning Blood hissed with warp heat, runes glowing with a lightless crimson.
But that was the point.
As the barrage rained down, obscuring vox targeting and deafening auspex stations, the Berzerkers surged—a crimson tide of roaring hatred. Boosted by the talisman's bloody pulse, they moved too fast. Too fast for standard ballistic compensation. They leapt over fallen tanks, vaulted wreckage and descended into the frontlines.
The bridge groaned beneath the weight of war.
Ash, blood, and smoke choked the air, curling between twisted tank husks and shattered artillery. The once-proud span of black ferrocrete stretched in ruins toward a horizon lit only by gunfire and daemonic flame. Thunder rolled not from the sky—but from the tread of the mad, charging horde.
They came. In their thousands.
The Beastmen surged first—the broken tide, the fodder. Horned wretches with cleavers, rusted chains, crude rifles, and bone-trophies stitched into necrotic flesh. Driven by the lash, the drugs, and promises of the Blood God, they spilled forward in a wave of shrieking filth, clambering over wreckage, trampling their own dead beneath cloven feet.
Waiting for them stood the last bastion.
A pack of Space Wolves.
Each clad in scorched Mark VII plate, daubed in blood and ash. Their blades crackled with hate. Their eyes burned with the fury of Fenris.
Gorrulf, the pack leader, stood at the head. His wolf-tooth necklace swung in the wind, and in his hands, the power spearSkjold-Bane hummed with anticipation. His helm was shattered, revealing a face striped with blood and scar tissue, bared teeth in a snarl. "Let them come."
At his side, the young clawHardrad flexed his blood-slick lightning claws, the energy arcs crackling like hungry fangs. He laughed like a madman, eyes wide, high on the scent of blood. "I live for this!"
Varrik, the Rune Priest, stood behind them, robes scorched and etched runes glowing faintly on his armor. Warp lightning whispered around his fingertips. He was already chanting—low, guttural, pulling power from the storm.
And with them stood their brothers:
Bjarn the Grim, bearer of the heavy flamer, eyes dead and cold as the void.
Hjaldr the Bear, who carried two thunder hammers, one for each of his fallen kin.
Erik One-Eye, who never blinked, never spoke, and never missed.
Thorgarr Iceheart, too wounded to speak, but too angry to die.
Skjorn Red-Hand, who had replaced his bolter arm with the chainblade of a dead berserker.
Ulf Ironhowl, the deaf one, who sang hymns through the roaring shellfire.
And there were more....
The Beastmen hit like a tide—and shattered on them as though they were mountains.
Gorrulf's spear took the first through the eye, then pivoted into a sweeping arc that bisected three more. Blood sprayed like fine red mist.
Hardrad was a whirlwind of death, lightning claws shearing limbs, guts, and skulls as he bounded from wreckage to wreckage, laughing through a mask of gore.
Bjarn turned his flamer on a packed column of mutants and ignited thirty in one roaring breath. Screams rose. Flesh melted. The flames painted the bridge in flickering orange death.
The Wolves fought like a myth—like a saga sung at the end of all things.
Varrik raised his storm staff, and the Runes of the Tempest Wyrm burst to life around him. With a roar, he slammed it into the ground—lightning erupted in every direction, arcs of warpfire cooking packs of Beastmen alive in their charge. Their bodies jittered and exploded mid-scream.
The Wolves moved as one—pack instincts, battle rhythm. Shields locked. Blades swung. No pause. No retreat.
In minutes thousands were dead.
But then… the real enemy came.
From the smoke and burning wrecks, they emerged.
Berzerkers of the Clysm warband, clad in baroque red and brass, foam-flecked mouths bellowing oaths to Khorne. Chain blades revved. Eyes burned with insanity. Valkor's chosen.
Behind them, Khornate Daemon Engines—Blood Slaughterers, Brazen Striders, and a limping Lord of Skulls—barked smoke and rage. But Valkor, distant now, had lit the Talisman of Burning Blood.
It surged like wildfire through the daemonic cortex of his machines.
The weaker daemon engines surged ahead, baiting the tanks—Gorecrawlers, Skull Thralls, screaming quadruped constructs of brass and sinew, sped forward.
Steel Legion artillery opened up, hurling death. Basilisk shells detonated with thunderous booms, turning the bait engines to flaming ruin. Tanks reversed, guns roaring—too late.
The real wave leapt through the fire.
Enhanced by the Talisman, frothing with Warp-fueled speed, the berserkers and even beastmen of the surface cleared the wrecks and tanks in single, inhuman bounds.
The Wolves didn't flinch.
Varrik howled and slammed both palms to the ground—Runes of Banishment burned blue and gold across the ferrocrete. Warp energy coalesced into a storm vortex, ripping the closest berserkers apart mid-flight. Their armor peeled back from the inside. Their blood turned to fire.
Then the Wolves were engulfed.
The lines collided.
Chainswords shrieked against wolf-steel. Blood sprayed in arcs. Arms were torn off, skulls caved in.
Gorrulf impaled one berserker through the gut, tore the spear free, then spun and drove the haft into another's throat. One tried to flank—Gorrulf headbutted him into the ground, then stomped through his helm.
Hardrad danced—feral, unpredictable, his claws shearing torsos in half. One berserker carved his shoulder—he didn't stop. He ripped out out the traitor's throat and flung the corpse away.
Hjaldr the Bear crushed two in one hammer blow—then took a chainaxe to the neck. He staggered, laughing, and swung one last time, his hammer caving in a helmet before he was hacked apart by four more.
Thorgarr Iceheart fell second—his chest plate cleaved open, still swinging his sword until his spine snapped.
Skjorn Red-Hand went down under a tide of three maniacs, roaring all the while, drowning them in promethium from his ruptured fuel line—and igniting them with a grin.
Erik One-Eye killed thirteen before one struck from behind—he turned, bleeding out, and blew off the traitor's head with a point-blank bolt. Then collapsed in silence.
Varrik, blood streaming from his eyes, channeled one final storm. The World Howl of the Skyfather.
The runes on his chest ignited. He raised his arms. Warp lightning, frost, and thunder detonated outward in a dome of annihilation. Berserkers screamed. The ground cracked. The bridge itself buckled under the power.
The Rune Priest's body turned blurry mid-spell from the reality fracturing.
Gorrulf, his armor scorched, and Hardrad, missing an arm and half his helmet, remained standing.
And Bjarn the Grim, flamer ruined, wielding a looted chain axe.
They stood in a circle of corpses—Khornate and Fenrisian alike. Bodies burned. Blood ran like rivers. Smoke rose.
And still they stood.
The Wolves.
Surrounded. Wounded. But unbroken.
And as more shadows formed in the smoke—more howling fanatics rushing forward—
Gorrulf raised his Power Spear and roared:
"For the Allfather! For Russ! For every brother fallen—COME AND DIE!"
All the while the battle of underbridge structures countinued. Substructure Deck 09-C — Maintenance Truss Under the Clysm Gate Bridge
The metal creaked beneath Vek's boots.
Delta-Six moved in formation—two fireteams stacked in the corroded remains of a maintenance catwalk, flanked by reinforced lattice supports. Red emergency lights flickered dimly from rusted panels overhead. The floor was slick with machine oil, blood, and something worse—black ichor that steamed where it touched the floor.
Their vox crackled with static. Nothing clean had come through for minutes.
Vek kept his iron sights leveled as the squad advanced, lasgun tight to his chest, breathing shallow beneath his rebreather mask. Every bolt, every shadow, every hanging chain swaying in the dark seemed like it could come alive and lunge. And often, it did.
They passed the first breach point—where the last squad, Gamma-Two, had disappeared. Charred flak armor still smoked in the corner. A helmet, split clean through, rested in a puddle of blood thick enough to ripple on its own.
"Contact right!" hissed Corporal Marnik.
From the access duct, the Beastmen came—not in formation, not with tactics, but with sheer, primal fury. Hooved, mutated horrors with tangled horns and jagged cleavers stormed out of the dark.
Delta-Six opened fire.
Lasguns screamed, cutting down the first wave in a flurry of flash-fried meat and evaporated blood. Grenades popped and sent steel shards into the narrow corridor, lighting the space with deafening concussion. One trooper, Halder, jammed his hotshot lasgun and was dragged into the dark with a cry. His screams were cut off by a sickening crunch.
Vek advanced with Marnik and Grenser. The bridge groaned above. Explosions. Artillery fire.
The underbridge shook—and out of the maintenance shaft came more Beastmen, now fused with augmetics: rusted power blades, surgical drills, and meaty limbs stapled with servo-grafts. Some had rebreather tubes stitched into their throats, hissing black smoke with every breath. One lumbered toward them on two bent steel legs like a spider, clank–clank–clank, before Marnik blew it apart with a frag charge.
"Hold this chokepoint!" Sergeant Garrin shouted. "Vek, Grenser—left side! Secure that relay uplink!"
Vek kicked in the panel to the uplink alcove. The walls were pulsing. Something was breathing behind the wall.
Grenser hesitated. "Throne… what is—"
The wall exploded, sending meat and steel flying. A Beastman half-merged with a mechadendrite rig tackled Grenser, pinning him to the floor with jagged claws. Vek fired point-blank—four lasblasts to the skull—before crushing it with his boot. Grenser didn't get up.
"Mission priority: purge the relay. Cut the infiltration route," Garrin barked. "No more dead. MOVE!"
Delta-Six split again.
New route: crawl-duct maintenance shaft 2-B.
The squad crawled through the tight, corpse-choked ventilation tunnels, lasguns on single-fire, rationing shots. Something moved in the shaft behind them. Scraping. Metallic breath.
They emerged into Maintenance Hub Theta—a central control chamber beneath the bridge's power spine. Half the walls were blood-soaked shrines. Severed heads. Crude bone idols. There were skulls stacked like data-tapes.
Then came the sound of boots. Not Beastmen. Heavier. Angrier. Measured.
Vek turned.
It stepped into the light—a towering Beastman, nearly three meters tall, fused from the waist up with a rusted augmetic spine. One arm was a spinning sawblade; the other a spiked auto-borer drenched in gore. Horns spiraled out like antennae, and servo-mandibles clicked around a wet, snarling jaw.
It let out a static-choked roar, like vox-screams over boiling blood. The entire hub pulsed with the beat of its charge. It wasn't just augmented. It was powered by something deep and foul beneath the bridge.
"DEATH FORMATION DELTA!" Garrin yelled.
Vek rolled to cover as the goatman's borer-arm chewed through one trooper like paper, blood misting the air. Two others fired plasma guns at its chest—plating cracked, but it didn't stop. It turned toward Vek. He stared. And the goatman charged and Vek and other guardsmen fired and ran.
On the surface, wind howled across the shattering bridge, carrying with it the stench of death and burning promethium. The thunder of artillery had gone silent—only the screams of the dying and the bellowed war cries of the Blood God remained. Amid the rubble, firelight flickered over corpses stacked like barricades. And in the center of that hell stood Hardrad, his armor pitted and scorched, his left arm gone below the elbow—torn off in the last wave.
Yet still he stood.
Breathing ragged, one lightning claw sparking in his remaining gauntlet, his fangs bared in a bloody grin. Across from him emerged a shape through the smoke—larger than the others. Slower. More deliberate.
The Champion of Valkor's personal guard.
His crimson armor was ornate, plated in overlapping brass ridges. Bone talismans hung from spiked pauldrons, and his chainblade was no crude weapon—it was a masterwork, two-handed, twin-toothed, its teeth serrated inward like a meatgrinder's maw.
He spoke no words. His helm, wrought into the leering visage of a skull, simply nodded in challenge.
Hardrad lunged.
Like a wolf striking prey, he closed the distance with a burst of movement, claws flashing in brutal arcs. Sparks flew as he scored deep gouges across the berserker's chestplate. The champion stepped back—not slow, not clumsy. Precise.
The chainblade revved.
It caught Hardrad's claw mid-swing, the twin blades locking together in a scream of metal. Then, with brutal efficiency, the berserker kicked Hardrad in the chest, sending the young claw sprawling across shattered rubble. The breath left his lungs in a wheeze.
The champion didn't gloat. He charged.
Hardrad scrambled to rise—too slow.
The chainblade slammed down—biting through shoulder armor, tearing ceramite, scoring deep into the muscle below. The screaming teeth stopped just short of Hardrad's neck, snarling with blood.
Hardrad roared in defiance, hooking the blade's length with his lightning claws, trying to shove the blade away—but his strength was fading, blood pouring down his chest.
Then—
A scream of power. A blur of blue and brass.
The power spear slammed into the berserker's flank, the crackling field exploding like a thunderclap. The Khornate champion staggered, armor sparking. The chainblade was ripped away from Hardrad's neck.
Gorrulf had arrived.
He stood over Hardrad like a wolf over its wounded kin, spear gripped in both hands, eyes burning with cold fire. "Touch my brother again," he growled, "and I'll mount your skull in the Fang."
The Champion roared and came again.
The duel began.
The berserker struck with raw brutality—overhead cleaves, sweeping arcs, wild hammering strikes meant to batter armor to pulp. But Gorrulf moved like the storm.
He sidestepped, the power spear spinning in flawless arcs—parry, strike, riposte. One blow knocked the chainblade wide, another jab struck the champion's pauldron—fracturing it in a blast of sparks.
Then he turned his body, spun low, and hooked the champion's knee, sending him off balance.
The champion recovered—too slow.
Gorrulf's spear punched forward—right into the gut, the point bursting from the back in a blast of flesh and gore. The champion screamed, dropped his blade—but Gorrulf did not stop.
He ripped the spear upward, splitting the heretic from pelvis to collarbone in a geyser of steaming viscera.
Hardrad gasped, crawling upright, blood smearing the ground.
But the Wolves were not alone.
More Khornate warriors charged—at least a dozen, bounding over corpses, howling, weapons raised.
Gorrulf didn't retreat.
He raised his spear again.
And then he danced.
High Fenrisian spear-forms, passed down from Old Night. His spear became a blur of arcs and thrusts—one-handed sweeps that severed limbs, reverse-grip jabs that pierced hearts, spinning slashes that decapitated with surgical precision.
Two berserkers charged side by side—he impaled both in a single thrust, then turned and hurled one corpse into a third attacker.
A fourth tried to flank—the butt of the spear slammed into his chin, lifting him off his feet. Gorrulf pivoted, dragged the blade across his throat, then rolled into another lunge.
Four down. Six. Nine.
Hardrad, bleeding but still mobile, tackled another berserker, driving his claw through his ribs and out his spine with a bellow of fury.
Gorrulf fought like Russ reborn, his every movement poetry and death.
But it could not last.
One berserker tackled him, knocking the spear from his grip.
Another raised a power axe—Hardrad leapt, claws biting through the attacker's skull just as the axe fell wide.
Gorrulf retrieved his spear mid-roll, swept the haft into the back of another warrior's knees, and plunged the tip upward—straight into the mouth of the next.
The final two berserkers hesitated—but were quickly down by tank fired shells and bolters of fellow brothers.
Hardrad collapsed to his knees. Gorrulf stood over him, panting, blood dripping from a dozen rents in his armor.
They were still alive.
But barely.
"I'll... live," Hardrad gasped, coughing blood. "That bastard nearly took my head."
Gorrulf nodded. "That's why you don't duel madmen without your alpha, pup."
He offered a bloodied hand.
Hardrad took it.
The bridge behind them was littered with the corpses of their enemies. The air burned with ozone and blood. And more shadows stirred in the distance.
The Wolves were not done yet.
Not while breath remained.
The Talisman of Burning Blood pulsed like a second sun on the horizon—its foul crimson glow casting hellish light over the shattered battlefield. The World Eaters of the Clysm warband surged forward in an unending tide, blood-drenched and screaming. But amid the frenzied hordes, one behemoth barreled toward the Imperial rear with murderous purpose.
A Hellbrute—flesh-welded to iron, a juggernaut of madness—broke through the artillery cordon.
It smashed past a line of Earthshaker emplacements, crushing a Basilisk's cannon with its claw, sending crewmen flying like ragdolls. The daemon engine roared with a noise that sounded like a dying god screaming in metal. Chained skulls clattered at its waist. Twin plasma cannons on its back blazed indiscriminately, turning fleeing guardsmen into clouds of boiling gore. Fire licked up from its mutated hull as it charged toward the Vanquishers and Shadowswords.
Too fast. Too close.
"Target of priority," growled Gorrulf, his one good eye fixed on the rampaging monstrosity. "That thing breaks the armor line, we lose the bridge."
"Orders?" barked Bjarn the Grim, eyes narrowed.
"We do what we were made for."
He looked to his remaining pack—Hardrad, Bjarn, Varrik—ghostly afterimages flickering from his psychic exertions, Ragnar Stonefang, and Thorgarr Iceheart.
"Executioner Protocol."
There was a time when the Imperium whispered of the Vlka Fenryka not as warriors or defenders—but as judges, hunters, killers. Where other Legions fought battles, the Wolves hunted prey.
They would do so again.
Like wolves on the tundra, they spread out in a crescent across the rubble-strewn bridge, forming a loose ring around the Hellbrute. The thing howled and turned its plasma cannon toward Ragnar—but the Wolf was already sprinting full tilt across shattered ferrocrete, drawing fire away and baiting the beast like a matador.
Bjarn fired krak grenades from his belt launcher, scoring hits on the Hellbrute's rear actuator ports—forcing the beast to twist in fury.
That twist exposed its underbelly.
Thorgarr emerged from rubble like a wraith, meltagun raised. One clean shot right into the exposed venting muscle—and the Hellbrute stumbled, its left leg melting into slag.
It bellowed and fired wildly, but the Wolves had already shifted.
Varrik raised his stormstaff, eyes glowing pale blue. A runic circle shimmered under the Hellbrute's feet—gravity surge. The beast's mass doubled in an instant. It dropped to one knee, roaring in confusion and fury.
Hardrad didn't hesitate. He charged up the creature's slumped back—claws shrieking across daemonic armor, sparks flying as he scaled the beast like a leaping wolf on a wounded bear. The Hellbrute tried to shake him—but it was too slow.
He plunged his lightning claw deep into the beast's left eye socket—ripping free a mess of black ichor and shrieking flesh.
The Hellbrute lashed wildly, knocking him flying.
But then came Gorrulf.
Charging full force, his power spear held reverse-gripped. He leapt onto the creature's back just as it turned—driving the spear into its reactor vent, twisting the haft with both hands. The weapon thrummed and detonated—an internal explosion bursting from the Hellbrute's side as it staggered, flaming ichor spewing from open wounds.
It wasn't dead. It refused to die.
A lesser squad might have fallen back. Hesitated.
Not the Vlka Fenryka.
"Bjarn! Bring it down!" Gorrulf barked.
Bjarn sprinted low, dove under a swiping claw, planted a melta-charge beneath the daemon-engine's knee joint, and kicked off. "Fire in the fang!"
BOOM!
The left leg detonated. The Hellbrute toppled forward, crashing onto its torso, plasma cannons discharging wildly into the sky.
All five Wolves converged.
Thorgarr with his frost axe—cleaving into the spinal armor.
Ragnar with a chainfist—ripping into exposed tubing.
Hardrad, bloodied and limping, leapt onto the chestplate—tearing open the pilot sarcophagus with his claw.
Inside: a screaming, eyeless corpse, still semi-living, fused into the controls by fleshy cables.
Hardrad raised his claw. "You don't get to scream anymore."
And ripped it out.
The Hellbrute howled one last time, then collapsed into a heap of gore and slag.
Silence.
Steam rose from the ruptured beast. Blood pooled across the deck. The Steel Legion tanks began creeping forward again.
The Wolves stood over the kill—smoke rising from their armor, weapons still hot.
Execution complete.
They were the Emperor's executioners.
And the hunt was not over.
Below the surface, a squad emerged from the cracked service hatch into a shattered maintenance chamber—full of death.
"What the feth…" whispered Trooper Kreel, sweeping his flashlight through the gloom. The beam revealed a pile of corpses—Steel Legion, flayed, limbs twisted into crude chaos runes, their own lasguns driven through their guts like stakes.
The lights flickered. Static crackled over the vox. Then… the thrum.
Heavy.
Uneven.
Metal scraping metal… but also the clatter of hooves.
"Contact! Ahead!" barked Sergeant Halvyr.
The wall exploded inward in a shriek of rusted steel and bone.
The Goatman—or what had once been a Beastman—charged through the smoke and sparks. A hulking, monstrous form with cybernetic limbs fused to muscle and bone by welding torches and daemonic bile.
"Delta-Six! Fall back—"
It moved faster than anything that size should. Corporal Dren was the first to die—caught mid-shout as the bone saw carved clean through his ribcage, bisecting him like meat on a butcher's block. Blood sprayed over the squad's visors, blinding them as they opened fire.
The lasgun blasts barely slowed it. It crashed into Trooper Grahn and crushed his head underhoof, cracking helmet and skull alike against the ferrocrete floor.
"GRENADE! Use the GRENADE!"
Grenadier Tors flung the canister. It detonated in a burst of blue-white light, throwing arcs of electricity across the Goatman's chassis. It shrieked—an awful, wet sound—and stumbled.
"Hit it now! Bring it down!"
They unleashed hell—plasma rifles, frag grenades, even a meltacutter—but the beast rose again. The Goatman dodged—explosion only angered it. Smoke poured from its back as it activated a built-in incinerator, releasing a cone of fire that engulfed Trooper Menek, his screams echoing long after he collapsed into a burning pile of armor.
Vek fell to his knees, gasping, his vox crackling with sobs and curses.
"Th-throne protect us! Emperor—Emperor—"
Sergeant Halvyr charged the beast with a bayonet, driving it into the Goatman's throat. The Goatman grabbed him by the spine and snapped him in half, tossing the corpse into the ceiling where it stuck like a discarded ragdoll.
Only Vek, Trooper Rahl, Juno, Grenner, Karvek and Vox-Tech Nera remained.
But the goatman was already on them. One swing and Karvek was pulp, slammed into the wall, ribs bursting from his back. Blood sprayed Vek's face. He froze—paralyzed, a child in a nightmare.
Juno grabbed him. "MOVE, VEK!"
The beast howled. It hurtled through twisted gantries, took a grenade blast to the hip—barely flinched. Grenner leapt on its back, stabbing wildly, roaring.
"DIE YOU FILTHY—"
The beast buckled—then launched itself backward into a cog tower. The impact caved Grenner's ribs in with a sickening crunch.
Vek turned to run but slipped on Karvek's ribcage, fell hard. His helmet cracked on the deck. Dazed, he saw Garras get lifted and torn in two.
"This isn't real," Vek muttered. "It can't be real."
Juno, panted, her face slashed open.
Krak grenade. Shotgun blasts. Las rounds. Screams.
The goatman wouldn't stop. It gurgled, machinery whining, blood spraying from cracked vents in its armor. Juno screamed as it stabbed her through the gut and lifted her. Her last act—jam a hot laspistol under its jaw.
BLAM.
It roared in fury. Let go. She fell twitching.
The Goatman still standing, surged forward, hurling its bulk at them. Rahl took the hit—screaming as spinal cables burst from the Goatman's back and impaled his chest, pulling him into the monster's torso like a screaming offering.
Nera turned to flee. The Goatman opened a chest-mounted hatch and fired a spike launcher—a foot-long harpoon tore through her torso, slamming her to the wall, twitching.
Vek—splattered with blood, hearing only his own breath and heartbeat—stumbled backward and found a loose plasma charge in the remains of Tors's gear. He primed it.
"Burn, you bastard, burn—"
He rammed it into the Goatman's open chest cavity and dove behind a fallen pipe.
The charge detonated. The blast tore the Goatman in half, its upper body thrown across the room, twitching violently. It crawled, even as its legs remained upright for a moment before collapsing.
Vek watched in silence, ears ringing, hands shaking.
Only he remained.
Everything was burning. The wall, the floor, the corpses of his comrades.
A last vox flicker came through, distorted:
"Delta-Six… report… Vek, report…"
Vek didn't respond.
He stared at the remains of the Goatman's twitching, headless corpse and whispered, "They're all gone…"
Across its cracked surface, blood-slicked span—among shattered tanks, smoking craters, and heaps of the dead—a pulse echoed. A rhythmic thrum of bass deeper than thunder, as though the bridge itself had become a heartbeat. But it was not alive.
It was becoming something worse.
Beneath the central span, in a pit of blasted concrete and ruptured metal, lay the corpse of the Lord of Skulls. The massive daemon engine had been slain not long ago, its bleeding engine heart-casket caved in by Shadowsword cannon fire and the fury of the Emperor's wrath.
But it was not the end.
It was the beginning.
Around its broken, burning bulk, dozens of cultists—bare-chested, emaciated, frothing at the mouths—chanted in a tongue not meant for mortal throats. They daubed symbols in blood and filth, their hands flayed from hours of ritual carving, their minds long since unraveled by the screams whispering from beyond reality.
Nine Warpriests of the Clysm raised their athame-blades and plunged them into the scorched flesh of the daemon engine. With a shriek of warpfire and gore, the corpse of the Lord of Skulls convulsed.
The runes ignited.
The bridge shook violently, throwing men and machines from their feet.
Blood portals tore open across the span like infected wounds bursting. Geysers of crimson warpfire erupted skyward and downward, slashing through dimensions, burning holes in reality. Beneath the bridge, within its maintenance corridors and hellish caverns, the same gory rifts tore open—splitting ferrocrete and flesh alike.
From the largest portal—rising from the gut-wound of the dead Lord of Skulls—they came.
First, came the Bloodletters—scores, hundreds—marching in disciplined silence, blades of burning hate held ready. Their red eyes locked onto the mortal world, and they screamed for blood. Each one was more lethal and horrifying than the cybernetic Goatman.
On the north flank of the bridge, a Soul Grinder tore its way from a gory rift—its spider-legs impaling the bridge deck with every step, its upper torso howling praise to Khorne. From the lower causeway exploded two Blood Slaughterers, gore-slick claws rending the underbridge fortifications like paper.
And from the shadows—Daemons came in flood.
Bridges and corridors became charnel rivers.
Guardsmen screamed as a Skull Cannon erupted behind their lines, its chassis coated in skulls, its maw vomiting molten brass shells that tore men in half.
Vanquishers swiveled, firing point-blank, their shells punching through daemon engine armor only to be answered by charging Brass Scorpions and Warp-enhanced monstrosities bursting through new portals behind them.
On the underbridge, Trooper Vek—bloodied, shaking—watched in horror as a pentagram of bone spikes erupted from the floor. One of the guardsman was dragged screaming into the lightless depths of the portal, his bones flung back through but without the skull like a joke. Whatever did this—even a single one was horrifying than the horrors before. And insude the portals there were countless of these monstrosities.
Above and below, all across the span, reality wept blood.
The Bridge of the Damned had become a gateway—not just a battlefield, but a cathedral of carnage, a pier through which the Realm of Khorne now poured.
And Valkor the Clysm, laughing, wreathed in warpfire, raised his chainfist toward the sky.
"It is done! Let the skull tide rise! Let this bridge drown in divine slaughter!"
The final phase had begun.
The bridge was no longer a passage.
It was a sacrificial altar—and Khorne's legions had come to feast.
Doom Slayer's war table—miniature replica of the span crafted from ferrocrete and brass—shuddered as magnetic servos updated the battlefield. Tiny red lights pulsed across the model, indicating breaches in Imperial lines. Glowing crimson arcs now flared like cancer across the bridge surface and its understructure—representing the bloody portals from which daemons poured.
The hololithic model of the Lord of Skulls flickered. Where its corpse had once been rendered inert in miniature, it now bled sigils of warp energy onto the digital landscape.
Doom Slayer stared in silence, fists clenched around the edge of the table. Beside him, the towering silhouette of Sefirot shimmered into coherence—ethereal limbs unfolding, his spiral flce aglow with visual data projections.
[We are observing a self-reinforcing annihilation loop. A convergent system collapse where every blood sacrifice triggers new inputs for daemonic summoning. It is not a wave. It is a recursive feedback engine of slaughter.]
[However… the outer augur webs detect Imperial reinforcements breaching low orbit—thirty-seven gunships, six Thunderhawks, two Knight banners aboard mass landers. ETA: fifty-one minutes at current burn vectors.]
The red-limned war table continued updating, projecting miniatures of Bloodthirsters ripping through Leman Russ formations, daemon engines crushing infantry positions, and flickering red mist devouring entire squads beneath the bridge.
["Reinforcement delay exceeds viable containment curve. Estimated probability of bridge retention: Ten-point-six percent and deteriorating. I advice tactical martyrdom may be required to prevent systemic daemon seep into adjacent fronts. To preserve the wider war, this battle may need to be lost."]
The war table dimmed slightly, and a single golden rune blinked in the far distance—the mark of the arriving reinforcements. Still too far.
The Doom Slayer looked up from the table, jaw clenched. He said nothing.
But the bridge ahead only burned brighter.
[ 71% of the Bridge is lost, Slayer.]
Doom Slayer had done all that strategy could go in saving the mortals from needless deaths. But strategy and tactics alone won't be enough for this daemonic flood.
He stood up and gave up the remaining commands of the Imperial retreat to Sefirot. Now was his time to—RIP AND TEAR! until it's done...