The last offensive began without a trumpet. It began with the sound of the guns not stopping.
They had been constant for days—weeks? Time had worn itself thin, stretched between barrages until seconds felt like years and hours like a single held breath. But there was a change now. A tightness. A decision.
Kael Varan stood on a shattered bastion facing the approach to the Eternity Gate, and he heard it.
The guns did not simply fire. They leaned in.
Earthshaker booms overlapped into a single, grinding roar. Macro-shells hissed overhead, leaving trails of ash that had forgotten how to be clouds. The ground shook under each impact like a beast trying to throw off a rider. The air thickened, vibrating with the drumbeat of artillery.
Malchion stood beside him at the parapet, armor black and ash-gray, lenses dimmed against the glare. "They've thrown subtlety away," he muttered.
"They ran out of time to pretend," Kael said.
Below them, the killing ground before the Eternity Gate burned. The carcasses of siege towers lay in heaps—Iron Warriors war-engines melted into slag, Sons of Horus assault rams cracked open, their insides full of dead heroes and cowards alike.
Between them lay layers of bodies, stacked by accident and intention: loyalists, traitors, humans, Astartes, daemons. Fire crawled lazily through piles of wreckage, devouring old banners.
New banners advanced through the smoke.
Sons of Horus, what remained of them, marched at the center—a dark, wedge-shaped mass of sea-green and black, their eye symbols burned and scarred.
To the left, Emperor's Children moved like a sick parody of grace, armor in polished purple and gold, their weapons screaming thin harmonics no one wanted to hear. To the right trudged Iron Warriors in iron and hazard-stripe, advancing behind mobile barricades of plasteel and ruined tanks.
Overhead, the sky flickered. The Vengeful Spirit hung in low orbit, a black wound surrounded by burning stars. Lightning crawled around its hull in colors that weren't on any spectrum man had words for.
"Captain." Joras' voice crackled in Kael's ear. He stood further down the wall with a squad of the Silent Company, a flamer clenched in his one hand, ash caked on his face. "They're massing under the dead towers. Using the wrecks for cover."
"Of course they are," Kael said. "They built those tombs. They might as well die under them."
He lowered his gaze to the inner line.
Imperial Fists held the bastions flanking the Gate, yellow armor blackened by soot, shields scorched, eyes grim. Blood Angels clustered in tight formations around the great doors themselves, red plate and gold trim dulled but not dimmed, their faces pale and drawn but still beautiful in a way that made war feel obscene.
White Scars rode the avenues between the lines, their bikes leaving tracks in ash, vox-barking coordinates and blessings.
Raven Guard lurked in shadows that had no right to exist in this much light.
And here, on this bastion just off the main axis—Kael and his sixty-odd survivors. The Silent Company. No banners. No great icons. Just the dull gleam of midnight ceramite and the faint silver lines of runes etched into Kael's armor, pulsing like veins.
The shadow at his feet pooled, restless.
His five seconds opened.
He saw the first push—the Sons of Horus running out from behind their cover, firing as they came, the ground chewing them up. He saw an Iron Warriors breach-barge make it to the wall and clamp claws into stone.
He saw a White Scar captain die laughing as a daemon dragged him from his saddle. He saw his own men fall, one by one, in different places, on different decks.
He saw nothing beyond a certain point. A hard, bright blank. Like a door slamming shut in his mind.
He exhaled slowly.
"Malchion," he said. "Ammo status."
"Enough to say we tried," Malchion replied. "Not enough to be remembered for waste."
"Good," Kael said. "Tell them what matters."
Malchion voxed the Company net. "Same creed as always," he growled. "We hold to hurt them. We hurt them to hold what matters. Don't confuse the two."
The reply came back in a low, rough chorus.
"Night remembers."
Kael watched the enemy lines tighten.
A new sound rose out of the roar of the guns—a bellowing chant in a dozen war-tongues, and beneath them all, a single word repeated in a crackling baritone, amplified by sorcery and vox-auguries alike:
"HORUS. HORUS. HORUS."
The Sons of Horus lifted their weapons, firing into the air, into the walls, into the sky. Green tracer fire streaked upward like envy. The chant grew louder, becoming a wall of noise.
On the bastion to Kael's right, Sigismund stood with his Black Templars and Fists, sword point resting on the stone, helm off, hair matted with blood and ash. His eyes were fixed on the horizon. He looked like a man looking at his own execution and wondering if it would be quick.
Kael's vox pinged once. A direct line.
"Night's Child." Sigismund's voice was iron dragged over old stone.
"First Captain," Kael replied.
"When they come, they'll hit the Gate and the flanks together," Sigismund said. "We hold or we die. That part's simple."
"Simple doesn't mean easy," Kael said.
"No," Sigismund agreed. A moment passed, just long enough to be almost human. "If we fall—"
"We won't," Kael said.
"But if," Sigismund went on, stubborn as always, "make sure someone remembers we did not go quietly."
"We're your shadows," Kael said. "Your noise will reach further than ours."
Sigismund barked something that might have been a laugh. "Then let's give them a little thunder before the end."
The channel clicked off.
The traitors began to advance.
Artillery shifted to creeping barrages, shells walking ahead of the infantry, plowing the ground into churned mud and shattered bodies. Warp-light flickered among the ranks of the Word Bearers following in the second wave, their banners aflame with script that tried to crawl off the cloth and into the air.
Daemon engines lumbered forward, brass skulls and chains clanking, ichor dripping onto the gray earth and turning it black.
"Range," Kael said.
"Eight hundred," Joras called. "Seven-fifty. Seven."
"First volley," Kael ordered.
The walls spat fire.
Autocannons hammered, lascannons shrieked, bolters roared. The front ranks of the Sons of Horus staggered under the barrage—armor shattering, limbs flying, torsos punched apart. Iron Warriors marched into the teeth of it, some falling, others simply stepping over them, their own guns answering in slower, measured shots.
The first wave hit the outer obstacles—minefields, razorwire, tank traps half-buried in rubble. Explosions tore holes in their lines. Daemons leapt those gaps and died in midair, their bodies unraveling under las-fire and sanctified munitions.
Still they came.
Kael's five seconds flickered wildly now, futures overlapping, colliding, changing faster than he could count. He stopped trying to see the whole stream. He took it in shards—this bolter-shot, that charge, this grenade tumbling through the air.
A spike hit him suddenly—a flare of light that wasn't light, a pressure behind his eyes that made his teeth ache.
Far above, beyond the smeared bruise of sky, something happened.
He felt Sanguinius die.
It wasn't a vision in pictures. It was impact. A psychic detonation that rolled across Terra like an invisible shockwave. It came like grief weaponized, like beauty broken with a hammer.
Every Blood Angel on the wall screamed.
The nearest squad dropped to their knees as one, hands clapped to their helms, vox-channels filling with wails and ragged sobs. Some tore their helmets off and clawed at their faces.
One simply froze, eyes wide, a low keening sound leaking from his throat. Another slammed his head against the parapet until his forehead split.
"Hold the line!" their sergeant shouted, voice cracking. "For—" His own cry choked off as the wave hit him, and he doubled over, retching, tears streaming down his cheeks.
Azkaellon staggered where he stood before the Gate, wings slumped, blade dipping. His face twisted in a raw, unguarded expression Kael had never seen on a Primarch's son—a child's disbelief as the world pulled the ground away.
Kael's shadow flared up around his boots, lashing like a living thing. For a heartbeat, his own mind bucked, the five seconds vanishing completely. He tasted copper. He heard a single, crystalline scream in his skull like a blade shattering.
"Captain?" Malchion's gauntlet hit his pauldron, anchoring him. "Kael!"
"I'm here," Kael snarled through clenched teeth. "I'm here."
Below, the traitors felt it too. Some of the Emperor's Children laughed, shuddering in ecstasy at the psychic agony rippling the air. A few fell to their knees, trembling, eyes rolled back, lost in whatever perverse communion they had with pain.
Word Bearers howled louder, their chants breaking into wild, arrhythmic yells as they took the shock as a sign. They lifted their weapons and fired blindly, vox-amplified sermons climbing toward shrieks.
The Sons of Horus… did not falter.
If anything, they came faster.
They broke into a run, roaring their father's name, bolters bucking, chainblades revving. A green tide of armored hate surged toward the Gate.
"Blood Angels are rattled," Malchion said, breath rough. "They're going to break."
"No," Kael said. "They're not."
He slammed the butt of his blade against the parapet, hard enough to chip stone.
"Night's Children!" he voxed, boosting his output until his voice cut through the screams and gunfire. "You see them falter, you fill the gap."
He shifted channels. "Azkaellon."
The Blood Angel captain's reply came back like a broken transmission. "Varan…"
"Stand up," Kael said. The words were low, carrying. "He died so you'd stand, not so you'd kneel. You want to mourn? Do it on their corpses."
There was a ragged pause.
Then Azkaellon's voice returned, iron scraped over grief. "All Blood Angels—ON YOUR FEET!"
He rose with them, shoulders squared, wings spreading slowly, as if under terrible weight.
"FOR SANGUINIUS!" he bellowed.
The cry rolled along the wall. The weeping angels dragged themselves upright, hands shaking, eyes bright with tears and rage. They raised bolters. They took aim.
The traitors hit the inner fields.
World Eaters, frothing and howling, surged out from behind the Sons of Horus, chainaxes whirling. Emperor's Children leaped forward in shimmering lines, blades a blur, sonic weapons screaming discordant notes that tried to unmake the bones in loyalists' hands.
The walls answered.
Kael's Company poured fire into the densest concentrations, cutting down the front ranks, blowing apart champions and fodder alike. His bolter clicked empty; he slung it without looking and drew Veilrender.
"Close assault," he said. "We meet them on the lip."
"Finally," Joras muttered. His flamer roared, painting great swathes of the killing ground in white, churning fire. Daemons vaporized. Flesh blistered, ran, burned. Men screamed, some in agony, some in something dangerously close to joy.
Then the first traitors reached the wall.
Hooks bit into stone. Boarding ladders slammed home. Teleport-flares strobed as enemy Terminators blinked into existence atop parapets, chainfists whirring.
A Sons of Horus sergeant appeared in a crackle of sick light ten meters from Kael, Cataphractii plate scorched but intact, eye of Horus emblazoned on his breast. He roared, swinging his power fist in an arc meant to break daemons.
Kael leaned into the five seconds and saw the swing before it began. He stepped inside it instead of away, Veilrender flashing. The black blade carved through the joint at the elbow, then through the gorget. The sergeant's head spun away, helm lenses dimming mid-air.
To Kael's left, Malchion met a pair of Emperor's Children in dueling helms, their armor etched with obscene artistry. He took one's knee with a downward cut, then rammed his sword up under the other's chin, sparks and blood spraying. The surviving traitor shrieked at the sight, moaning in ecstasy even as he tried to swing. Joras immolated him without comment.
The wall became a string of separate, echoing hells—small, self-contained worlds where men killed each other for meters of stone.
Kael fought.
He let the five seconds reduce the world to angles, arcs, openings. A World Eater's chainaxe bit where he had been a heartbeat before. Kael took the man's hand at the wrist, then his head. A Word Bearer started a prayer; the shadow silenced his tongue long enough for Malchion to blow it out the back of his helmet.
On the next bastion, Sigismund became a storm. Sword strokes left afterimages. Sons of Horus fell around him in a widening ring. An Iron Warriors warsmith tried to bring a combi-weapon to bear; Sigismund split the gun, the hand, and the helm in a single, brutal sequence. His armor was slick with blood that had started as red and gone darker.
White Scars darted through the perimeter, bikes skidding, wheels smearing gore across the stones. They fired at close range into traitor faces, then gunned engines and tore through.
The air burned. The ground shook. The sky boiled.
And then—
It changed.
Not gradually. Not with warning.
It snapped.
The warp convulsed.
Kael felt it like a spear through his chest. Every hair on his arms rose. Sparks danced along his armor's rims. His shadows surged up, wild, uncontrolled, reaching toward the sky as if something were dragging them.
Every psyker on the wall screamed.
Astropaths died in their chairs across Terra, hearts bursting in their chests, eyes blackening. Librarians staggered back from the parapets, some clawing at their own helmets. One Raven Guard psyker fell to his knees, hands outstretched, as if begging something unseen to stop.
Kael's five seconds exploded into a blizzard of impossible futures, each one collapsing into ash as he reached for it. He saw a thousand deaths for Horus, a thousand endings for the Emperor, a thousand possible galaxies all burning. None held.
His mind bucked under the pressure.
He gritted his teeth and held on.
This is none of my business, he thought, a thin line of humor in the storm. This is between gods.
The sky above the Vengeful Spirit tore.
There was no other word for it. Reality stretched, howled, and opened, revealing… something. A light, terrible and pure, and a darkness, deep and hungry, interlocked. No eye on the surface could truly see it—it was there and not there, burn-marked onto the inside of skulls more than onto retinas.
The duel had begun.
The traitors faltered.
It was slight at first. A missed step. A hesitated swing. Sons of Horus looked up, as if they could see their father's fate written in the clouds. Word Bearers broke into new, frantic chants.
Emperor's Children shuddered, laughing and sobbing in the same breath as the psychic pressure stroked the sick architecture in their skulls.
Blood Angels, who had just found their feet, dropped to their knees again.
This time they didn't scream.
They howled.
The sound was animal. It ripped out of them raw and broken. Some tore their own armor with their hands. Others beat their foreheads bloody against the stones. Azkaellon raised his sword to the sky and screamed a wordless challenge at nothing.
Kael felt tears prick hot at the corners of his own eyes, rage and sorrow bleeding together under the psychic onslaught. He forced them back. He forced everything back.
"ON THE GUNS!" he roared, his vox making his voice a physical impact. "HOLD THEM! HOLD!"
His Brothers obeyed because they had nothing else left to do. The Silent Company fired, cut, moved. Their world shrank to muzzle flashes, blade edges, and the next breath.
The warp pulse intensified, cresting.
For an instant, Kael saw something that challenged even his hardened mind.
He saw a figure of light, crowned in stars, running through darkness that clutched at his feet. He saw another figure, heavier, wreathed in shadow and red, jaws of a wolf and eagle and serpent all at once, reaching. He saw blood that wasn't blood and fire that wasn't fire and a ship burning in a place that wasn't space.
He saw a hand extended.
He saw a spear of golden light drive forward.
He saw—
Nothing.
A crack, soundless and absolute, split the world.
Everyone heard it.
It wasn't in air. It wasn't in stone. It was in everything—bones, steel, faith. It stopped hearts for half a beat. It shut every mouth. It punched through every thought.
Then the pressure vanished.
The warp storm around Terra recoiled, thrashing. Lightning ran backward, up into the clouds. The sky flickered, darkened, brightened again to its old, ugly bruise. The Vengeful Spirit flared—a burst of light from within, like a sun dying.
Every traitor on the ground froze.
Some dropped their weapons, clutching at their helms as if they'd been struck. Others staggered, stunned, looking around as if suddenly lost. A few—Word Bearers, mainly—fell to their knees, hands outstretched toward the sky, faces slack with horror.
Kael felt… emptiness.
Not peace. Not relief.
Absence.
Something vast and terrible had just ended.
"The Warmaster…" someone whispered over the vox. It wasn't clear whose voice it was. "He's…"
Static swallowed the rest.
Sons of Horus began to howl.
It was different from the Blood Angels' grief. There was no beauty in it. It was raw denial and rage and a child's tantrum wrapped in ceramite. Some turned their guns on the walls with renewed fury. Others simply threw back their heads and screamed.
The counter-orders came through in fractured pieces, bleeding across multiple channels.
"—all forces, fall back—"
"—repeat, disengage, disengage—"
"—this is not a rout, it is a redeployment—"
"—ships vectoring for extraction, make for pickup points—"
The traitor attack began to break.
Iron Warriors fell back in sullen, armored lines, still firing, still calculating. Word Bearers retreated more chaotically, some dragging wounded, others firing into the air as if hoping to kill whatever had just killed their god's champion.
Emperor's Children scattered in various directions, chasing their own private symphonies of agony and delight.
The Sons of Horus… split.
A portion tried to press on, roaring defiance, hurling themselves at the walls in futile assaults that turned into massacres. Others turned and ran for the broken siege machines and the landing zones beyond.
A few killed themselves where they stood—helm off, bolt pistol under chin, trigger pulled without ceremony.
Kael watched, chest heaving, blade slick with blood that steamed in the cold air.
"Do we pursue?" Malchion asked, breathing hard.
A thousand instincts screamed yes. Another part of Kael, older, colder, counted.
He looked along the walls.
The Fists were slumped against their parapets, some sitting where they stood, too exhausted to even cheer. White Scars leaned on their bikes, helmets off, faces streaked with sweat and grime.
Blood Angels clutched at their chests, eyes distant, some whispering their Primarch's name, others silently rocking.
His own men were swaying on their feet, armor cracked, lenses dim, ammo-status runes glowing angry red.
Kael exhaled.
"No," he said. "Let them run. We've done our part."
Joras spat ash over the wall. "Feels wrong."
"It is," Kael said. "So is all of this."
He turned his eyes to the sky.
The Vengeful Spirit was listing, fires crawling along its hull. Other traitor ships were already breaking away, drives flaring, turning for exit vectors as the warp around Terra churned.
The Emperor was no longer visible anywhere.
Kael didn't need to see Him to know.
He felt a new weight descending instead.
It was not the crushing pressure of the duel. This was… heavier. Slower. Like chains being lowered into place. Like a great engine starting to turn for the first and last time. It settled over Terra, over the Palace, over Kael's shoulders.
He bowed his head, just once.
"Is it over?" Joras asked, voice small over the vox.
Kael thought of Sanguinius' wings burning, of Horus' laughter cut short, of the Emperor's hand extended toward a son who had betrayed Him, and then of a chair of gold and wires and agony.
"No," he said. "But that part is."
The walls were very quiet.
No one cheered.
No one raised banners.
The traitors withdrew under a sky that had forgotten how to be blue. Loyalist guns tracked them until they were out of range, then simply… stopped. Servitors busied themselves cooling barrels. Mortals slumped in trenches. Astartes sank to one knee, or leaned on blades, or sat down hard because their legs didn't trust them anymore.
Azkaellon walked slowly away from the Gate, helm under one arm, eyes unfocused. Blood streaked his face, not all of it his. His wings dragged, tips leaving faint trails in the ash.
He stopped when he reached Kael's bastion.
For a moment, they said nothing.
"You knew," Azkaellon said at last, voice hoarse. "Didn't you."
Kael's lenses dimmed. "I knew he would not come back."
Azkaellon looked at him, really looked, seeing not just a Night's Child, not just a terror-weapon, but a man who had counted all of this long before it arrived.
"I felt him die," the angel said. His hand trembled around his helm. "I felt his last thoughts. Not words. Just… acceptance. And sorrow."
"He chose his death," Kael said quietly. "That's more than most of us will get."
Azkaellon swallowed. "And the Emperor?"
Kael looked up at the clouds. The unseen chains tightened. Somewhere deep within the Palace, something massive and sacred broke and kept breaking without ever being allowed to fail.
"He chose His too," Kael said. "For us."
"For man," Azkaellon corrected softly.
"For man," Kael agreed.
They stood together for a while, two very different sons of the same impossible dream, watching the last of the traitors' fire fade into the distance.
"Will you chase them?" Azkaellon asked.
"When they let me," Kael said.
"And if they don't?"
Kael's shadow curled slowly around his boots. "Then I'll remember. And I'll wait."
Azkaellon nodded as if that were the only answer that made sense. "We will sing of this," he said. "One day. When there is time."
"You don't have to," Kael said.
"Not for you," the angel replied. "For them." He glanced down at the battered, ash-covered mortals tending the wounded, hauling bodies, dousing fires.
"For the ones who lived because we killed enough," Azkaellon said.
Kael's chest tightened. "Then sing well."
The Blood Angel turned away, moving toward his broken, grieving brothers.
Kael looked along the parapet.
His Company gathered around him slowly—Malchion, Joras, the rest, some limping, some bleeding openly from broken seals. Helm lenses turned to him, waiting.
He removed his own helm, let the ash settle in his hair, on his scarred skin. The air tasted like burned cities and endings.
"That was it," Joras said quietly. "Wasn't it."
Kael nodded once.
"The Warmaster is dead," he said. "The Emperor is broken. Sanguinius is gone. The traitors run. This… was the peak."
"It feels like a fall," Malchion said.
"It is," Kael replied. "But we're not at the bottom yet."
He drew in a breath and let it out slowly.
"Remember this," he said. "Remember how it feels. The taste in your mouth. The weight in your chest. The ash on your tongue. Remember that this is what it costs when men who should know better forget why they fight."
His black eyes swept over them.
"Because when the talking starts," he went on, voice low but steady, "when they start arguing over who is to blame and what comes next and how to carve this up, some of them will try to turn this into a story about glory and destiny."
He shook his head once.
"It's not," he said. "It's about failure. And what we do after."
The ash fell. The sky didn't change. But something settled in the men around him—a resolve, cold and clear.
Malchion's jaw clenched. Joras nodded slowly, eyes hard.
"What do we do now?" someone asked.
Kael looked back toward the Palace, its towers cracked, its gates scorched, its golden domes stained black.
"Now?" he said.
He slid his helm back onto his head. The seals hissed. The world shrank to reticules again.
"Now we clean up," he said. "Then we see what they try to build from the ruins."
He turned away from the battlefield where gods had just finished killing each other, and walked back into the broken halls of the Palace, his men following like shadows.
Behind him, the ash rained on the empty killing ground, soft and steady, as if the sky were weeping and had forgotten how to make tears.