The air had a weight now. You could feel it, thick and oily, sliding down your throat with every breath. The fog that rolled across the southern plains of the Imperial Palace wasn't mist—it was decay, tangible and wet, carrying the smell of open graves and dying gods.
Kael Varan stood at the edge of the breach, the scorched remains of his company arrayed behind him. The ground at their feet was no longer stone or soil; it was a slow-oozing sludge of melted metal and flesh, black and green where the plague had soaked deepest.
Every step sank and hissed. Even through sealed armor, the reek was a living thing—sweet rot, iron, mildew, bile. The kind of smell that made you remember the worst days of being human.
They were in the lower districts now, a labyrinth of collapsed hives and manufactorums that had been converted into kill-zones. The Death Guard had taken the area two days prior, spreading contagion like paint on a canvas. Now, they were coming to finish the work.
Kael watched the fog with eyes that saw everything but the horizon. His precognition flickered constantly—short bursts, half-images, seconds of awareness devoured by interference.
He could feel something foul pressing against the edges of his sight, warping what was real. Nurgle's gifts came in whispers, in warmth that festered.
"Captain," Malchion said through the vox, his voice distorted by static. "Our auspex can't read beyond a hundred meters. The fog's alive."
"It's not the fog you should fear," Joras said. "It's what thinks it's hiding in it."
Kael didn't answer. His hand rested on Veilrender's hilt. The blade pulsed faintly in response, whispering back like an old friend ready for violence.
The Silent Company held their line in silence, the black of their armor glistening under the oily drizzle. They were fewer now—barely two hundred from what had once been thousands. Their banners were ash. Their faces had been forgotten by the galaxy. But their eyes—those all-black eyes—still burned with purpose.
The fog parted.
Shapes emerged, slow and deliberate. The Death Guard advanced in perfect, shambling formation. Their armor was a patchwork of rusted green and filth, every plate swollen with blisters and fungus.
Tubes pulsed with yellow bile. Some marines had no faces left, only gaping pits filled with writhing maggots. Others dragged diseased chains and bone totems that clinked like wind chimes in the rot.
Kael raised his sword.
"Burn them."
The Silent Company opened fire. Bolters barked in unison, their shells cutting through the fog with sharp cracks. Each detonation tore chunks of rotting ceramite and infected flesh into the air—but the Death Guard didn't fall. They absorbed it. They enjoyed it.
One of them laughed as a bolter round blew through his chest. The sound was wet and gurgling, a child's giggle trapped in a throat full of mud.
Then came the mortars.
Kael's precognition flared just in time—five seconds of certainty. He saw the arcs before they landed, the poison shells blooming overhead like flowers. "Down!" he barked.
The world erupted in green fire.
The ground liquefied. Armor screamed under corrosion. Astartes dropped to their knees as their plate hissed and smoked. The air turned to syrup, thick with spore clouds that made every breath a gamble.
Kael's armor sealed itself automatically, but even the Aegis Tenebris struggled against this level of corruption. Warning runes flared along his HUD, and he felt his own shadow recoil. The darkness beneath him twisted as if it, too, was choking.
"Malchion!" he shouted. "Flame teams—front!"
The order was obeyed instantly. Promethium burst in gouts of orange fire, burning through the fog, igniting corpses and rot. The stench became unbearable.
A figure stepped through the flame.
A Death Guard champion—massive, armored in a grotesque parody of Cataphractii plate. His helm was fused to his flesh, one eye a glowing pustule. The other socket was a hive of flies that poured from him in clouds. His voice was deep, ragged, and terrible.
"Night's Child," he gurgled. "Still loyal. Still cold. Does the corpse on the Throne thank you when you bleed for Him?"
Kael leveled his sword. "He doesn't need to."
The champion chuckled—a noise like a bubbling swamp. "Then let me show you what gratitude looks like from a true god."
He charged.
Kael met him halfway.
Veilrender struck like lightning, cutting through air thick with disease. The Death Guard's power scythe intercepted it with a clang that shook the ground. Sparks danced across their blades, sizzling as they hit the wet air.
Kael moved fast, faster than any human eye could follow. But the Death Guard didn't need speed—he absorbed Kael's strikes like stone, retaliating with blows that could shatter ceramite.
Kael's foresight flickered—then failed. The warp's interference had crippled it. His gift, his edge, was gone. He fought now on instinct alone.
The scythe scraped across his pauldron, shearing half the plate away. The rot clung to his armor, eating into the surface like acid. Kael retaliated, driving his knee into the champion's gut, then slashing upward, tearing through a layer of armor and flesh. The wound spilled black ichor that hissed as it touched the ground. The champion only laughed harder.
"Yes!" he roared. "That's it! Bleed with me!"
Kael stepped in close and slammed his gauntlet into the Death Guard's chest. The shadows beneath his boots surged up, wrapping around the traitor's form.
The darkness coiled like serpents, squeezing, breaking armor, cracking ribs. The champion thrashed and howled as Kael's power devoured him, the black swallowing the light in his eyes.
When the shadow receded, only an empty shell remained—an armor husk, still standing upright, hollow.
Kael staggered. His vision blurred. His own shadow writhed unnaturally at his feet, whispering in voices that didn't belong to the world.
He forced himself upright, forcing the dark back into obedience.
Behind him, Malchion's voice barked over the vox. "Right flank collapsing! Plague engines incoming!"
Kael turned.
The fog rolled apart again—and from it came nightmares. Plagueburst Crawlers the size of cathedrals, crawling on legs of corroded steel and tendon. Their cannons oozed pus and fire. Behind them marched dozens of poxwalkers—once-human, now little more than animated filth.
Kael's heart hammered. His armor's auto-senses screamed warnings of biohazard and corrosion. His company was being torn apart, their lines dissolving under relentless plague fire.
"Joras," Kael said through gritted teeth, "mark coordinates—firestorm pattern omega."
"Captain, that's too close," Joras warned. "You'll burn with them."
Kael's voice was cold. "Then burn bright."
The vox crackled, and a moment later the Watcher Above, still bleeding from its wounds, responded. Orbital cannons aligned, guided by Kael's mark.
The sky opened.
The bombardment was biblical. Orbital lances carved through the fog, turning the plague fields into oceans of flame. The Crawlers melted, their ichor boiling away into nothing. The ground split open, swallowing poxwalkers whole. The shockwave flattened everything for half a kilometer.
Kael was thrown backward, landing hard against a wall of melted ferrocrete. His armor groaned, the systems screaming, but he stayed conscious. He looked up and saw the Watcher Above in the clouds—a dagger of black and silver, its hull cracked and glowing, but still fighting. Still his.
Malchion stumbled over, armor smoking. "You're insane," he said, voice rough.
Kael coughed blood into his helm. "You say that like it's new."
Joras limped into view, his arm gone from the elbow down, charred black. He grinned. "Still alive. That counts as a win, right?"
Kael looked over the devastation. The Death Guard line was broken, their plague clouds thinning. His company stood bloodied, melted, but standing.
"It counts," he said quietly.
For the first time in days, the air smelled almost clean. Smoke, metal, and ozone—not rot. The shadows beneath Kael's feet settled, no longer fighting him.
He turned toward the distant Palace walls. The bombardment still echoed, the war still raging in every direction, but for one fleeting moment, the night was quiet.
He keyed his vox to Malcador's encrypted frequency.
"This is Kael Varan," he said. "Southern district secured. For now."
There was a pause. Then the Sigillite's calm, distant voice came through the static:
"Good. Rest while you can, my shadow. The next storm will not be made of flesh."
Kael lowered his helm. "Understood."
He turned to his men. "Gather the dead. Burn what can't be carried. Then we move north."
As the flames spread, Kael watched them rise and thought, briefly, of Veyra—the last time she'd smiled before her hair went white, before her hands began to shake. He could almost hear her humming through the ship's comm-echoes.
He whispered to no one,
"Keep counting."
And in the black rain that fell from the burning sky, the night remembered.