Blood flowed on the battlefield, the Eternal Wall stood like an insurmountable barrier.
Chaplain Tzepech had heard the legends of this Dorn-forged wall ten thousand times, and had recounted them ten thousand times.
But this was the first time in his life he had seen the wall with his own eyes, and he had never hated it so much.
Chaplain Tzepech had been a devout child since he was young, worshipping the Emperor with unparalleled fervor.
He worshipped the Emperor's courage, for only the Emperor was willing to stand up and save all humanity during the bleak Old Night.
He worshipped the Emperor's strength, for xenos, daemons, and traitors could not defeat the Emperor and all loyal humanity.
He worshipped the Emperor's justice, for only the Emperor protected humanity in the face of evil and depraved things.
It was for this reason that Chaplain Tzepech became a Chaplain of the Adeptus Ministorum, voluntarily going to the most chaotic, lawless, and impoverished areas of the hive city to spread the Emperor's faith.
He hoped to possess a millionth of the Emperor's courage, strength, and justice to protect the weak.
He always believed this, always acted this way, using his humblest strength to protect the Emperor's people.
Until the Great Rift tore open the galaxy, until the Blind Days descended, until hunger, drought, and suffocation spread through the hive city.
Chaplain Tzepech watched in a daze as his familiar, devout followers died one by one, watching them, in order to survive, gnaw on the corpses of their closest relatives, drink the blood of the deceased, but even so, they could not escape the fate of death.
But what about the nobles, overseers, merchants, and lords who ruled Terra in the Emperor's name?
Their palaces never lacked food; their warehouses always hoarded supplies; their banquets could consume a family's year's worth of rations.
They used the remaining shipping lanes to transport soldiers, ammunition, and apples and pears, but were unwilling to bring even a drop of food or water to the poor.
Chaplain Tzepech was lost. He knelt before the saint's bones in his small chapel, praying to the Emperor a thousand times.
Why do You bestow such a cruel fate upon Your people?
Why do Your faithful, who remain devout even unto death, only endure hunger?
Why do the nobles who rule in Your name refuse to protect the humblest commoners?
Oh Emperor, the Emperor who has sat silently on the Golden Throne for ten thousand years,
Please open Your mouth and tell me,
Tell Your lowliest people, why are You unwilling to protect us?
The Emperor did not answer, but another god answered Chaplain Tzepech.
Blood flowed from the saint's bones, baptizing Chaplain Tzepech.
That divine being did not demand Chaplain Tzepech's faith; He never craved false belief.
That divine being did not demand Chaplain Tzepech's sacrifices; He never craved the flesh and blood of livestock.
That divine being blessed Chaplain Tzepech, but only demanded that Chaplain Tzepech kill.
"Oh Emperor!"
Chaplain Tzepech stood on an altar made of furious, hungry, and frenzied mortals, roaring towards the Eternal Wall:
"I know! I know!"
"I know how to protect Your people now!"
"With courage! With strength! With justice! With killing! With killing! With killing!"
"Kill!!!!"
But Chaplain Tzepech's roar abruptly stopped.
The veil of reality trembled violently, and the twisted mortals, gathered like ants in a tide of blood, were violently scattered, with corpses, blood, and organs raining down.
Powerful Psyker energy uncontrollably overflowed, shattering the half-beast, half-human guards protecting Chaplain Tzepech.
A woman wearing a much-washed grey-green Cadia uniform, with a deep scar below her left eye, suddenly landed on the altar of flesh and blood built by mortals.
The altar shattered with a roar under the impact of the woman's powerful Psyker energy, sending flesh and blood flying in all directions, and Chaplain Tzepech fell from mid-air, collapsing to the ground.
But the woman in the Cadia uniform, wielding powerful Psyker energy, charged like a cannon towards Chaplain Tzepech in mid-air.
Chaplain Tzepech let out a savage, mad laugh. He suddenly raised the battle standard in his hand and smashed it towards the psyker woman.
Suspended from the battle standard was the sacred corpse from his small chapel.
No, that was never the corpse of an Emperor's saint; that was the corpse of one blessed by the Blood God, the corpse of one who had wrought boundless slaughter in the era of Ancient Terra, the corpse of one who once sought to protect his nation through slaughter.
In terms of bloodline, Chaplain Tzepech was his descendant, and the Blood God had chosen him for this reason, allowing him to inherit the slaughter, madness, and roar within his ancestral blood.
Blood flowed from the corpse, turning into a tide that surged towards the psyker woman.
Powerful Psyker energy collided with the tide of blood, formed from slaughter and rage.
Tens of thousands of years of blood-soaked faith surged from the corpse, momentarily pushing the psyker woman back.
But...
Chaplain Tzepech turned his head in a daze, looking at the psyker woman who had suddenly appeared behind him, wearing a ridiculous hat.
Psyker sorcery?
But in the domain blessed by the Blood God, how could such weak power take effect?
The mechanical hand on the ridiculous hat suddenly pointed at Tzepech, and a power completely different from Psyker energy instantly restrained him.
Then, powerful Psyker energy roared and slammed into Tzepech's body.
Flesh twisted, the world spun, blood splattered the earth, and the Eternal Wall looked down upon Chaplain Tzepech.
He crashed heavily to the ground, feeling as if all the bones in his body had shattered.
Tzepech could feel that his body below the chest had been completely pulverized by the Psyker energy; even the Blood God's blessing had not protected him.
If not for the blood, rage, and desire for slaughter still flowing within him, he would have been utterly dead by now.
"Emperor…"
Tzepech spat out a mouthful of blood, watching the woman in the Cadia grey-green uniform appear before him.
"Go and kill."
He shouted with what little life he had left:
"Go and kill! Go and kill! Go and kill!"
But the woman with powerful Psyker energy remained impassive, merely raising her arm, enveloped in Psyker energy.
"First to Ascend!!!"
But just then, a roar erupted from behind the woman, from before the Eternal Wall.
The woman turned her head in surprise; she had clearly realized Chaplain Tzepech's tactic.
Chaplain Tzepech himself was merely a decoy; strategy and tactics were also the domain of the gods of blood and war.
A brute with horns growing from his head, his entire body mutated blood-red, with muscles bulging nakedly, charged towards the Eternal Wall.
He firmly gripped a crude iron blade like a horseshoe in his hand, climbing a ladder made of countless corpses towards the highest point of the Eternal Wall.
Lasers, artillery, and bolter rounds continuously poured down upon the demon-like mutated brute.
But the ladder made of countless killings, blood, and corpses beneath his feet seemed like an altar, continuously drawing the Blood God's blessing into his body.
All long-range artillery became ineffective, and the brute's body swelled even further, looking more like a crimson demon than a mortal, and he ran faster and faster.
"Oh loyal followers of the Emperor! Do you know that this Terra is not solely protected by the Emperor!"
"Blood, when humanity first forged swords, the Blood God cast His gaze upon Terra."
"He protects nothing! But He gives us courage and strength! To seek justice and desire through killing!"
"He gave us the greatest fairness, the fairness of violence!"
Chaplain Tzepech laughed savagely, madly:
"That blade was forged from the horseshoe that trampled the last Caliph to death tens of thousands of years ago."
"Even the shadow of a god on earth can be killed by violence!"
"Collapse! Dorn's Eternal Wall!"
As if hearing Tzepech's roar, the demon-like mutated brute raised the horseshoe-like blade in his hand high, about to stab the Eternal Wall.
"I am the First to Ascend!"
"The first to ascend among ten thousand armies!"
Screams, roars, rage, and blood surged on the ramparts of the Eternal Wall.
The brute climbed to the highest peak of the Eternal Wall, the Blood God praised, and the horseshoe-like blade swung down heavily.
Neither mortals nor Astartes could match his speed, he was almost unstoppable.
But there were not only mortals and Astartes on the city wall.
Shield-Captain Valerian left only a golden afterimage in everyone's eyes, and the power spear named intellect plunged directly into the brute's chest.
The ancient disintegration field suddenly burst, and the twisted body decomposed into a flare, disappearing from the city wall.
Only the horseshoe-like blade fell from the Eternal Wall, landing on the muddy ground covered with blood and corpses.
"You failed," Reyna said calmly. She raised her hand, intending to give the struggling fallen Chaplain on the ground a swift death.
"No."
Chaplain Tzepech murmured.
Then, a roar echoed on the Eternal Wall, and eight hideous blood-red lights rose from afar.
Like a thin veil being torn, like a curtain shattering with a crash, reality let out a sharp shriek, and the sky seemed to be permeated with blood.
A sky full of blood rain fell from the clouds, and cracks appeared on the Eternal Wall, which had stood for ten thousand years.
In an instant, everyone saw another dimension.
The dimension of the unliving, the dimension of the Blood God, the dimension of daemons.
At this moment, the Imperial Palace and reality were not as resilient as before. Battle cries echoed beneath reality, and the Blood God's army strode across the crimson wasteland in the Warp, over the burning hive cities, tearing the veil with winds of slaughter, and entering reality.
"Did you think it was just me?!"
"Did you think it was just us!?"
"So many people are filled with rage, so many people crave slaughter, and only one person needs to succeed!"
"This is the justice gained through courage and strength!"
Tzepech shouted with his last bit of strength:
"Emperor above! Please open Your eyes!"
"Open Your eyes and see clearly! See how many people are filled with rage!!"
"Oh Emperor!! We all hate You!!!"
His head exploded under Reyna's Psyker power.
Instantly, a sky full of blood rain submerged all of Terra.
Imperial Palace, Throne Room, the Eternal Gate opened with a heavy sound.
Bright light shone and flickered, a corpse sat withered on the Throne at the end of the hall.
He lowered his head, and violet tears flowed from His empty eye sockets.
Hot, scorching fire was burning.
Why was this hot night so hard to endure?
The Primarch had returned; shouldn't this long night of heavy, Weird, and dark nightmares have ended?
Then why did Tieron still feel himself struggling and floating among daemons, being scorched by the raging fire beneath reality?
He curled up, cowering in his bed, drenched in sweat that soaked through the fabric.
He was trapped in a dream, a dream more terrifying than any of the nightmares of the past few months.
He dreamed that all of Terra was burning fiercely in an evil fire, everything in the world consumed by blood-red flames.
Scarlet faces, neither human nor inhuman, emerged from the flames, entering reality, opening their mouths to reveal blood-dripping fangs and writhing tongues, wielding brass-forged weapons, and smashing them towards Tieron.
Tieron felt the blanket on him also catch fire, the entire room burning in a wildfire.
The daemons beat Tieron with pure, brutal violence, cursing him with blasphemous language.
Bruises spread across Tieron's skin, and blood flowed continuously from his broken flesh.
Pain assailed his body, making him groan and cry uncontrollably.
"This is just a dream!"
Tieron screamed in his dream, yelled in his dream, but he couldn't wake up from it.
"This is just a dream!"
Tieron yelled, in pain, struggling...
In the dream of a hot night, Tieron saw a terrifying, giant scarlet demon, a hybrid of ape and beast, appear on the edge of reality.
That demon had eight horns, four large and four small, with exposed white bones on half of its face, wielding two bloody chain-axes, and a pair of broken, ferocious wings on its back, as if it had suffered some severe injury.
That Greater Daemon took a step, about to enter the realm of reality to begin its slaughter.
"This is just a dream!" Tieron cried out in terror.
Just then, Jackie shook Tieron, who was twitching, awake.
"This is just a dream," Tieron said, still shaken, clutching the sweat-soaked blanket tightly.
"No longer, sir."
Jackie's voice was filled with fear:
"The nightmare has come to reality."
Tieron felt a suffocating sensation; he smelled the acrid scent of gunpowder, blood, and brass in the air, saw a crimson light, like pulsating blood, stream through the window, and heard the clashing of weapons and the roars of beasts in his ears.
The air was so hot and dry that he could no longer hide under the covers, for he feared the high temperature would ignite everything around him.
Jackie pointed to the window in terror, seemingly already anticipating what lay outside.
"Don't look."
Tieron said to Jackie.
But Tieron himself staggered to the window, looking out in terror.
Tieron knew of the existence of daemons, knew the forbidden names of those Great Enemies, but had never seen them with his own eyes.
Now, Tieron witnessed horror firsthand.
He was grateful to those wise ones who had deprived the common people of the right to know of the existence of daemons; he had never so fully understood the wisdom of those who established the great laws.
Mortals were weak; merely looking upon this scene with their own eyes would drive them into madness, leaving only terror and screams in their consciousness.
Rain of blood poured over the entire world, and a tide of blood swept across the land.
Crimson daemons, raising crude weapons, charged at the warriors who were blocking the gaps in the Eternal Wall with their flesh and blood bodies.
Then, the sea of blood surged.
Splashing blood was the waves of this sea, the billows were flying shredded flesh and severed limbs, and the foam was the hazy spray.
In just an instant, the human formation was shattered by the blasphemous evils from the Warp.
Tieron's heart was filled only with bone-chilling despair, unspeakable fear, and hatred for this malevolent scene.
But just then, a clear, slightly sacred, and indescribable voice suddenly flashed past Tieron's ear.
Was it truly a voice? Or was it actually some kind of illusion? Some pure sensation?
Tieron instinctively looked towards where the voice came from, only to see the Sanctum Sanctorum deep within the palace enveloped in a bright glow.
He heard it, the Eternal Gate had opened.
He heard it, the sacred voice of the Emperor.
"We cannot hold the Eternal Wall!!"
Bathed in the overwhelming blood rain, Reyna, wearing the Cadia grey-green military uniform, roared, unleashing her Psyker powers on the Khorne daemons, while shouting at Shield-Captain Valerian:
"The Eternal Wall has collapsed, the Space Marines are too few, and the Astra Militarum only have un-modified flesh and blood bodies; they can't fill so many gaps!!"
"We must narrow the front and retreat to the Lion's Gate!"
Valerian fought a horde of daemons with the relic power spear in his hand.
The Custodes were extremely powerful, but this power was limited to the material realm.
When the Emperor designed them, he did not grant them the supernatural powers of the Warp, so Valerian clearly felt his powerlessness when facing daemons.
"No!" Upon hearing Reyna's suggestion, Valerian instinctively refused: "We cannot go to the Lion's Gate! Beyond the Lion's Gate is the Sanctum Sanctorum!"
"But we cannot possibly hold the Eternal Wall with so many breaches, nor can we hold such a large outer palace."
Reyna suddenly pulled up a fragment of the Eternal Wall from the ground.
The Eternal Wall was so tall that even a fragment was as large as a small mountain, and Reyna, guided by her Psyker power, slammed it heavily into the Bloodletters in front.
She constantly referred to the knowledge in her mind; before joining the battlefield, she had imprinted the palace's topographical map onto a memory bread and eaten it.
The city walls were too vast, mortals too frail, and the Astartes too few; to hold this palace, at least tens of thousands of Astartes would be needed.
Damn it, why does an Astartes Chapter only have a thousand men? Can't there be more?!
"The number of these daemons is almost comparable to the Cadia War! And our manpower is far less than Cadia!"
"Even so, retreating to the Lion's Gate will take time; someone must stay here and hold until the other units complete their retreat!" Valerian swung his spear, severing the head of a Bloodletter, and shouted back at Reyna.
"The Cadia 184th Regiment will hold here," Reyna said, crushing several Steel Bulls, her expression unchanged.
"Daemons of this magnitude?" Valerian was shocked by Reyna's words.
Even the most elite Cadian Shock Troopers of the Astra Militarum, even with Reyna, a top psyker, even with Astartes alongside them, even if they only needed to hold until the other units retreated to the Lion's Gate...
"We are different from you."
"We do not have genetically modified bodies, nor infinitely powerful boltguns or power spears, nor power armor forged from ceramite or auramite, nor minds far superior to mortals."
"We only have crude flak armor, simple lasguns, rigorous training, and..."
"Adamantium courage?" Valerian asked, looking at Reyna floating in mid-air.
"Huh?" Reyna blinked, slightly confused: "No, I meant the tools bestowed by Saint Doraemon."
"All Denko-Maru Squads!!! Use Denkōmaru!"
Reyna's voice, carried through the communication frequency, reached the ears of every soldier of the Cadia 184th Regiment.
Those soldiers, who had been holding their lasguns with serious expressions, suddenly smiled.
They instantly threw down their lasguns and drew toy-like short swords from their waists.
To Valerian's bewilderment, those soldiers, armed with these toy short swords, charged directly into the Khorne demon army, and with just one toy, they engaged several Khorne daemons in close combat, fighting to a standstill.
These warriors temporarily blocked the gaps in the walls, and at the same time, they used the anywhere door to directly go to other breaches, briefly stopping the entire Khorne demon army's invasion.
However they did it, Valerian knew he had to seize the opportunity created by the warriors of the Cadia 184th Regiment.
"I will lead the other units through the underground passage used by the Custodes to the Lion's Gate."
This, of course, violated the internal regulations of the Custodes, but Valerian felt now was not the time to consider such things.
"Hmm?" Valerian suddenly noticed Reyna's expression was a bit blank.
"I heard it..."
Reyna murmured as if in a dream:
"I heard it... the Eternal Gate has opened."
"I heard it... the sacred voice of the Emperor."
And on the other side of the battlefield, Kellam Purion, the Minister of the Astra Telepathica, who was unleashing his Psyker powers on the daemons, also showed a similar expression.
Bound to the Emperor's Psyker power, he also showed an expression similar to Reyna's.
He looked with joy and emotion towards the Sanctum Sanctorum deep within the palace.
He heard that the Eternal Gate had opened.
He heard that sacred voice of the Emperor.
Deep within the palace, the Sanctum Sanctorum,
"Do you know who is the most powerful person in the Imperium of Man?"
"Is it the Minister of Adeptus Administratum? Is it the Inquisition representative? Is it a Primarch?"
"No, it's the Pope of the Saint Church."
"You see, even the fathers of the Primarchs, if they don't believe in the Adeptus Ministorum, will be locked in torture devices and suffer for ten thousand years."
Looking at the slowly opening Eternal Gate, Alexander couldn't help but tell a joke in a playful tone.
"Yes, yes, they even locked the father of the Ultramarines, who didn't believe the Emperor was a god, into a Static Field," Sanguinius said, a smile flitting across his lips.
"That Pope truly wields immense power, to be able to make Horus and Fulgrim his Executioners," Guilliman responded with his grim, peculiar sense of humor.
Just then, the Eternal Gate opened with a roar.
Alexander slightly turned his head to look inside, and then... Alexander saw light, heat, anger, and wailing.
The wailing of countless psyker being drained pierced the veil of reality, transforming into an endless, eternal sound, terribly penetrating Alexander's skin, flesh, and bones, sending the sound directly to Alexander's ears.
Alexander heard it, the Eternal Gate had opened.
Alexander heard it, the sacred voice of the Emperor... heard it clearly...
"My butt itches so bad."
It didn't seem so sacred after all.