Chapter 6.2 – Tearing Through the Breach
The air had turned thick—filthy with the weight of corrupted breath. The scent of blood and burnt metal lingered, mixing with the chemical tang of promethium and broken stone. Kael pressed his back against a shattered column of steelcrete, his lungs aching as he reloaded his lasrifle with trembling fingers. His uniform clung to him with sweat, grime, and patches of crimson. Every breath came with the sting of exhaustion, but still, his eyes burned with clarity.
"Another wave—North hallway!" a corporal screamed across the vox, his voice cracking beneath pressure.
Kael barely had time to glance before the cultists surged again.
They emerged from the collapsed corridor like insects, fanatics masked in flayed skin, armed with scavenged blades and stubbers. But what made them truly monstrous was the unnatural rhythm in their movement—jerky, spasmodic, driven by something not entirely mortal.
"Hold the line!" barked a Dark Angels sergeant from atop a piece of elevated ferrocrete, power sword crackling to life. "Keep them from pooling at the bottom!"
That phrase. Again.
Kael narrowed his eyes and ducked under a swinging blade. He retaliated, jamming his bayonet into the ribs of a bellowing cultist, wrenching it free just in time to avoid the downswing of another's axe. He dove sideways, letting the cultist's weight take him off-balance. One shot. Two. Both enemies crumpled.
But the ground—Kael looked.
The floor was dark with blood. Not just a puddle. A reservoir, thick and writhing like oil. And from it, something was moving.
"They're coming back," he muttered, backing away.
Out of the blood itself, severed limbs reassembled. Broken torsos twisted. Bones crunched into place with wet cracks, as cultists once slain clawed their way back from death, their wounds still leaking ichor.
From above, the Dark Angels repositioned, three of them dropping from broken gantries onto the battlefield below with thunderous impacts. One ignited a heavy flamer, jetting a wave of superheated fire at the blood-slicked floor—not to destroy the blood, but to deny its use. The other two cut through cultist ranks like a monomolecular blade through parchment.
Kael fought his way toward a collapsed stairwell, flanked by Astra Militarum guardsmen who, while brave, faltered at the sight of the reanimating dead.
"They can't be killed—just slowed down!" one yelled.
"Not if we stop them from bleeding into that thing!" Kael snapped back, slashing another cultist across the throat. "Get higher! Keep the blood from draining down!"
One of the Militarum nodded, calling for his squad to retreat upward. Kael followed, ducking as a grenade blast threw debris overhead.
Suddenly, a psychic scream tore across the field—a wail of unnatural horror that silenced all gunfire for a breathless second.
At the heart of the courtyard, where the blood was deepest, the Warp Entity began to emerge.
The entity was grotesque and ever-shifting, its form built from the flayed consciousness of the Hive's dead. Wings that weren't wings extended from its spine—stitched from the memory of flight. Its face flickered between thousands of screaming visages, and its torso bled shadow into the air.
The Dark Angels formed a wedge, four taking the front while two others climbed to opposing balconies. Coordinated, calm, terrifyingly efficient.
"Contain it. Push it back to the center. Don't let it extend," ordered the sergeant.
One of the Astartes—towering and swift—used his jump pack to drop behind the entity, forcing it forward. Another threw a gravitic mine that collapsed part of the ceiling behind the beast, restricting its escape.
Kael, pinned with his squad near a high access point, tried to provide covering fire—but even as he fired, cultists kept returning. Blood soaked into the lower levels, and again they rose.
His arms ached. His breathing grew harsher.
But he would not stop.
The warp creature let out a scream—no sound, only agony compressed into force. It shredded part of the gantry Kael stood on. He stumbled, barely catching the rail.
Suddenly—green lightning tore through the sky.
Reinforcements.
Another squad of Dark Angels descended from a Storm Raven gunship, its cannons already blasting cultist chokepoints. Heavy bolters roared, cutting through entire clusters before they could rise. Among them, a psyker walked with a rune-bound staff, eyes lit with fire.
The tide hadn't turned.
But it had found resistance.
The final engagement had begun.