Crack—creek…
The sound of bark and roots tearing apart marked their passage.
Thud—thud… thud.
A pair of footsteps crossed into the hollowed chamber of the Underwoods.
The air was clear.
The space had been emptied.
But presences lingered still—
the quiet resonance of soulstones,
the slow breath of fungi,
the cold shimmer of fireflies clinging to nothing.
The footsteps pressed deeper.
One calm, muted.
The other firm, deliberate.
"For all my life," Helsin thought,
"I have lived for the righteous design."
"I have killed Your enemies.
Purged the traitors.
Burned the heretics.
All in Your sacred name."
He stopped.
For a heartbeat, his hand tightened around the rosette, metal biting into his palm as he looked down at it.
"I swore," he thought, "never to make another acolyte."
Mira glanced back at him once—silent, unreadable—then continued onward.
He followed her deeper into the hollow.
"For no one else," he whispered to himself,
"should be made to walk the path I paved
or carry the burden I made."
They stepped into another clearing.
At its center stood a slumbering angel—
vast, unmoving—
both hands wrapped around the hammer planted upright before him, as though the weapon itself were what kept him anchored to the world.
Helsin stopped.
"I seek not Your forgiveness," he said quietly,
"for this life was mine."
He lifted his gaze, meeting the darkened visor of the helm.
"Instead," he continued, voice steady, stripped of plea or pride,
"I offer You my resolve."
"Unyielding."
"Until death."
—
Wind howled across the dead ground.
They were back at the battlefield.
The walk had been long—worth it.
A small bag cut through the air.
And Shadowgaze caught it without looking.
The contents whispered softly against her senses—familiar, mournful—before she cinched the pouch tight at her waist.
Only then did she lift her head.
Her gaze met the man who had thrown it.
Theolard Helsin.
"Good," she said—flat, final—and turned away.
In her other hand, Sanguis Ferrum rested heavy and uncooperative.
"Your warlock is still in there," she added, already moving.
She knelt and began reassembling the weapon with the conversion kit, movements precise despite her distaste.
"What a nasty and unnecessary function," she muttered, unlatching the barrel and sliding it free before locking a longer one into place.
An inscription ran along the steel: Furris Serpens.
—
"He has a gift," Helsin said,
his gaze fixed on the storm where Kochav had vanished,
"for unsimplifying what should have remained simple."
—
"Tch—" Shadowgaze hissed.
Clack.
Thud.
The breach opened and she fed a single round inside—
a 30mm standard autocannon shell.
She was already prone, cheek pressed to the broomhandle stock, bipod biting into the dirt.
"What a pain."
BANG!
The recoil carved a violent, V-shaped plume of debris around her.
The bipod screamed as it bit deeper into the earth.
"Line up the next scale," she said, hair disheveled, her expression set in genuine disdain.
—
The nearby beastmen complied, carefully laying the scale flat—twenty meters out.
It joined the others, arranged in parallel lines of scales: vertical, and forty-five degrees.
The moment the round struck the scale, it was thrown forward in a straight line—accelerating as it raced down the channel.
"An improvised railcannon," Helsin whispered, his eyes tracing the structure.
Beyond it, the maelstrom caved.
The newly introduced scales carried fields of their own.
A straight corridor of mismatched energies—positive and negative.
Helsin nodded to another beastman.
The creature stepped forward, dragging a container of scales.
Then it looped a rope around its own neck and moved into the corridor
—
Mira's hands moved in sharp, economical motions.
She looked at Helsin as she signed.
"We don't need to go in there too?"
—
"Contradictory, no?" Shadowgaze said from her prone position.
"A warlock-hunter worrying about her little warlock."
—
Helsin's gaze shifted from Mira to Shadowgaze.
"You understand sign?"
—
Mira's hands moved again.
This time, precise—unmistakable.
"Do you have a problem, Xenos?"
—
Shadowgaze did not look at her.
"A gold-clad unarmed Mon'keigh," she said, her shoulders lifting in a single, careless shrug.
At last, her head tilted—just enough.
"Aren't you asking to be shot?"
—
Mira stepped forward—
"Rouar," Helsin said,
cutting in before the moment could harden.
"Take her and check the parameters."
Mira froze for a fraction of a second.
Then she moved—one clean motion—turning away as her boot kicked dust into the air.
Rouar followed without comment.
"You haven't answered my question," Helsin said again.
—
Shadowgaze scoffed softly.
"I've met others like her before."
"We fought daemons together."
She paused, then met his gaze.
"When the daemons ran out, we fought each other."
Helsin's eyes hardened—cold, assessing, almost lethal.
Shadowgaze caught it and smiled faintly.
"Worry?" she said.
"Too soon for that."
Her fingers tightened once around the weapon.
"We still have use for one another."
A beat.
"Until we don't."
—
Helsin didn't rise to the bait.
"That," he said calmly, turning away,
"is where you are mistaken."
He took a step, then another.
"You need us now."
A pause—measured, deliberate.
"And I allow it," he continued, "because it improves our odds."
He didn't look back as he walked away.
"Until it doesn't. "
—
She did not answer.
Her eyes lingered on his back a second longer.
Crack.
Something in the corridor gave way.
BANG!
The shot came on instinct.
Dust and static tore apart as the round punched forward.
A silhouette filled the corridor—large, misshapen, too close.
She narrowed her eyes, trying to resolve it—
"You could have hit me, you know."
The voice came from behind the mass.
A body was shoved forward. It tumbled, split open where the round had already passed through, and burst wetly against the ground.
"What a waste of good material," he said, looking straight at her.
She sighed.
Of course.
The irritating warlock Mon'keigh.
"And my bullet," Kochav added.
Behind him stood Ruk'tan, Chi'vak, and the same Beastman who had entered the storm earlier.
Each of them dragged something with purpose.
Corpses.
Steel.
Anything that could still be made to matter.
—
"Shame," she said, rising to her feet.
"I missed."
She brushed dust from her knee, then tilted her head slightly, eyes moving over the bodies, the dragged metal, the deliberate way they had been gathered.
"And why," she asked at last,
"are you carrying the dead?"
—
Kochav didn't answer immediately.
He walked back to the cart behind them—the same container that had carried scales, now burdened with bodies.
He leaned, tested a limb that loosely attached to a body, then pulled.
It came away with a wet resistance, dragging a dark line through the ash as he stepped back.
He dragged it across the ash in a slow, deliberate line, darkening the ground as he went.
He stopped beside the nearest scale and let the blood drip onto its surface before dropping the limb.
Only then did he speak.
"Human blood," he said evenly,
"is rich in iron."
He lifted another scale and planted it several meters away, angling it vertically into the ground.
Then he pulled the limb again.
The blood followed—drawn into a dark line that bridged the space between the two.
Kochav knelt and pressed his blood-slick palm against the first scale.
A pulse of force lightning left him—ragged, imperfect.
"Good enough conductor for crude circuitry."
The current leapt.
It raced along the blood-soaked ground, snapping from one scale to the next, the line briefly glowing as the storm recoiled around it.
—
"How your kind thinks," Shadowgaze said, lips parting in quiet disdain,
"disturbs me."
—
"No," Helsin answered from behind her, voice even.
"Do not include him in the norm."
—
Shadowgaze turned around.
"If you are the norm," she said,
"that does not lessen my disturbance."
—
Helsin ignored her and turned his attention to Kochav.
"So this is your plan," he said.
"A circuit."
—
Kochav wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded once.
"Not a plan," he said.
"A gamble."
He gestured toward the scales, the bodies, the trembling line of current between them.
"The storm is a structure.
So we break the foundation."
Then his gaze slid past Helsin—
fixed on something massive in the smoke.
His grin widened, blood still at the corner of his mouth.
"And you," he said softly, almost pleased,
"just brought me the biggest hammer there is."
—
"Then get to it," Helsin said.
"Let's build your circuit."
—
From the sky, one line formed.
Then another.
And another.
Until there were Eight in total, surrounding the Spire.
They carved themselves outward from the storm's edge, zigzagging from node to node, like wounds scored into the world.
At their far ends, a ring took shape—
a circle closing, connecting each line, hemming the maelstrom in place.
Each line bore four nodes.
Capacitors.
Scales driven vertically into the soil, anchored deep—
buried with the corpses of men and machines alike.
At the center if there wasn't the Spire, there would have been only four lines.
—
Mira's hands moved, precise.
"So many lines. So many nodes."
—
"Each node is a defensive point," Kochav said.
"We need to separate our troops as thin as possible."
—
"You are a madman, K," she said, already moving—
stepping past him, toward the storm.
—
Kochav caught her arm—
"Not you," he said.
His grip tightened once, then released.
"You're the one who swings the hammer."
Mira exhaled sharply and stepped back, turning away.
—
At the edge of the formation, Helsin and Shadowgaze had paused, watching as the others moved forward.
"Do you know why she's unarmed?" Helsin asked suddenly.
Shadowgaze didn't look at him, but she listened.
"Because it's her tactic," he continued.
"She claims she's forgotten them.
But the truth is simpler."
He turned back toward the storm, voice steady.
"If there are two enemies," he said,
"and only one carries a weapon—"
A beat.
"Which one do you shoot?"
The question lingered as they parted in different direction.
The corridor's current was thinner here,
a vein cut through the heart of the maelstrom.
He moved from node to node,
until he reached the front of the line and took his place behind the dead—bodies stacked, made into walls.
His teeth clenched as needling pain scoured his skin.
And in that moment, he understood one thing.
This was no longer strategy.
This was luck.
To his right—though the storm denied him sight—
Shadowgaze took her place.
She sat atop the dead, one leg folded, the other braced,
her hand running along the rifle one final time.
A check.
A breath.
She exhaled slowly.
Acceptance.
Her gaze dropped to the soulstones—
the dead she carried, humming softly against her chest.
"Soon…" she whispered, voice barely there.
"I will find everyone."
—
The crowd thinned.
One by one, troops entered the corridor.
Most made it.
Some staggered and collapsed, bodies seizing as the current scraped through them.
Others slipped—
a hoof misplaced, a hand failing—
and were swallowed whole as the storm closed behind them.
No pattern.
No mercy.
Only chance.
Or so they said.
At another node, on another line, Chi'vak stood within the storm's reach—
and felt nothing.
The pressure slid past him.
The interference failed to take hold.
He watched others falter—hesitate, collapse, lose form—
and saw only carelessness.
Weakness.
Luck felt like an excuse used by the weak.
—
Then a voice cut from behind him.
Chi'vak turned as a figure approached through the corridor.
"Guess we're still lucky?" Kochav said before shoving a corpse aside and vaulted the gap, landing beside him.
He leaned back against the wall of bodies, chest heaving, breath rasping wetly through clenched teeth.
Blood crusted his mouth. Static still crawled beneath his skin.
Kochav did not look at Chi'vak.
He simply just sat there.
The storm pressed in around them, shrieking, tearing at form and thought alike.
Others had come this far and failed.
Others stronger. Others more prepared.
They were gone.
Chi'vak watched Kochav breathe.
Not steadily.
Not cleanly.
But breathing.
This was not resilience.
Not compatibility. Not design.
This was refusal.
A body that should have collapsed—had nearly done so—still standing through momentum alone.
Chi'vak felt the first stir of irritation.
Then something colder.
If survival were purely structure, Kochav would be dead.
If it were discipline, he would be screaming.
If it were strength, he would not be shaking.
And yet—He remained.
Chi'vak's gaze drifted to the corpses forming the barricade.
Then to the storm beyond.
Then back to the man beside him, gasping, half-dead, still present.
No equation accounted for this.
Luck was an inelegant variable.
An excuse used by those who failed to understand causality.
And yet—
The system had not rejected him.
Chi'vak spoke at last, voice low, restrained.
"…You should not still be here."
—
Kochav let out a rough breath that might have been agreement.
"But I am."
—
Chi'vak turned his gaze back to the storm.
Because you can.
The words surfaced unbidden—not his own.
He did not reject them.
He could not disprove them.
For the first time, the certainty fractured.
Not broken.
But no longer whole.
—
Outside the storm's reach.
Outside the places where men pretended courage mattered more than probability.
Mira stood alone.
The last of the troops vanished into the corridor, swallowed by distortion and chance.
She watched until the storm closed behind them—until there was nothing left to observe.
She exhaled once.
Then she started walking.
Her gaze never left the motionless Astartes ahead, the massive shape frozen in vigil.
"Of course," she said aloud.
No one stood hear her.
No one—except the one who already had, and had chosen not to care.
She stopped at the hammer and looked up at him.
"Why," she demanded, voice rising despite herself,
"am I stuck doing your job—"
Her hand clenched around the haft.
"—while you sleep?"
She grabbed at his fingers and pulled.
Nothing.
She braced, feet digging into the earth, gold boots scraping as she strained—teeth bared, breath hissing through clenched jaw.
Once.
Twice.
With a sharp cry of frustration, she wrenched his grip free.
The hammer lurched.
Its weight dragged her forward, almost tearing her off her feet—
forcing her to stagger back as she barely kept hold.
She froze.
The balance. The mass.
The sheer, unyielding presence of it.
Almost like an answer.
"Damn it," she muttered, breath tight with effort,
"don't blame me if there's a scratch."
She took her anger out on the weapon.
Both hands locked around the haft as she dragged it free, the head gouging a furrow through ash and stone, metal screaming softly as it moved.
Each step pulled at her shoulders.
Each breath burned.
But the hammer followed.
The furrow stretched behind her—longer, deeper—until she reached the final scale at the storm's edge then Mira dropped to her knees.
Her breath came hard and uneven, shoulders rising and falling as the weight finally settled.
She lifted her head.
Her eyes burned with fury at the simple fact that this had become her responsibility.
"We're all gambling," she muttered, breath ragged, chest rising hard,
"on another one of Kochav's stupid ideas."
Her gaze fixed on the scale at the storm's edge.
"What an idiot."
The words came out between huffs, stripped of heat—just tired truth.
"What if the sand erases a line?
What if nothing happens?"
A pause.
"What if the scales explode and take us with them?"
She planted her feet and hauled the hammer up.
It rose slowly, inch by inch, until it loomed overhead—arms trembling, muscles screaming under the impossible weight.
She bared her teeth.
"Whatever," she growled.
"I'm too lazy to correct every minute detail."
The hammer reached its apex.
She spat the last words like a curse—
"I'm so done with this shit."
And brought the hammer down—
BOOM.
The scale rang like a struck bell.
The shockwave tore outward and flung her from her feet.