With less than five kilometers to the objective, the ferocity of the fighting was beyond imagination.
The shriek of a power sword carving metal. The banshee whine of a chainsword chewing through ceramite. Bolt rounds hammering armor. Flesh being split. The ground trembling under impact. Beastlike roars. Detonations. Daemons screaming—everything piled together into a single, incomprehensible storm.
The battlefield was pure chaos.
"BOOM—!!!"
An explosion went off, and a blinding flare held for several seconds—like a flashbang, bright enough to stab at the eyes.
The blast itself didn't crater much—just punched a shallow pit into the ground.
But the Planetary Defence Force trooper who triggered it was turned into fragments in an instant.
"Damn you!"
A corrupted Chaos Astartes bellowed in a fury that sounded like his vocal cords were half-ruined.
He was furious—furious that an Astartes could be reduced to this by a mere mortal's bomb.
His entire body was riddled through, as if something had taken bites out of him again and again.
What did it was a moment's carelessness, and a "bomb" that was less than a tenth explosive. The rest of it was packed with specialized metal shards.
When it detonated, those fragments sprayed in every direction, shredding even power armor.
Without armor, it would have made him a literal honeycomb—then he'd have collapsed into a puddle of pulp.
Suddenly sensing something, he yanked up his chainsword to guard behind his flank.
In the next instant, sparks erupted. Metal screamed.
Then the chainsword that had been with him for years split apart—cleanly—while a cold flash crossed his face.
His vision turned strange. Double. One figure became two.
It took him less than a millisecond to understand what that meant.
He'd been cleaved straight down the middle.
His eyes were separating, and that was why the world had doubled.
And somehow, his consciousness still hadn't ended.
"BANG—!"
A massive force struck him. His body—already divided—was blasted into four chunks and launched away.
Launched—by his "ally."
That ally had surged in right after the vertical cleave and swung in a waist-cutting sweep, trying to take Kain with him—trying to cut down the one who'd split his brother even if it meant chopping through him as well.
It failed.
Because his back had already been opened.
The ally drove forward anyway, slamming into him and knocking the remains of his body clear.
"I regret it."
"Regret letting me go?"
Kain tightened his grip on his power sword as he answered, narrowly avoiding being bisected at the waist by the other man's blade.
The Chaos Astartes in front of him—he'd fought this one on Valens.
One arm and part of the shoulder that Kain had destroyed back then were now restored, but not as they'd been. It looked like something monstrous had been grafted on in their place.
Worse, the arm felt alive—like it had its own will—locked into a parasitic symbiosis with its owner.
Kain wasn't even wearing the same armor as before, yet the traitor still recognized him without hesitation.
That wasn't strange. An Untouchable who could warp the battlefield with a bizarre, shifting null radius… there was only one conclusion to draw.
"I regret it, yes. But I'm angrier than anything. Untouchables are hated in the Imperium—so why would you swear yourself to that false Emperor?"
By the time he finished that sentence, Kain had already weathered countless strikes—almost all of it on the defensive.
Every block felt like being hit by a heavy truck. The impact traveled through the armor into his bones until it felt like his skeleton itself was screaming.
This enemy was stronger than before—almost certainly because of that new arm.
It moved like rubber, stretching and retracting at will, snapping out like a whip—fast enough to blur.
And it looked like it could grow larger, too.
It made Kain think of a certain straw-hatted kid who wanted to be Pirate King.
No—this was closer to something else.
More like Venom.
"See that Inquisitor? Have you noticed how he looks at you? That's disgust. He's already halfway to classifying you as xenos—like you're not even human."
"A xenos-hunting Inquisitor, huh?"
Kain had felt that gaze too. It made his skin crawl.
And he could tell the man was planning something.
In plain terms: when this was over, they weren't going to let him simply walk away.
"I can tell you're not truly with them. So do you know what they'll do to you after the mission? They'll make you wish you were dead—"
Nearby, a Salamanders warrior—locked in combat with another traitor—went tense with alarm.
That bastard was trying to poison the kid's mind. If Kain actually wavered, the balance that was finally tipping toward victory could flip right back.
And if Kain's null-field influence vanished, the traitors would surge in strength.
The Salamanders and Deathwatch were affected by the null aura too—but nothing like the traitors who'd thrown themselves into Chaos.
"Get—get away from him!"
"Are you panicking? If you're really worried about the kid, you shouldn't interfere. Once an Inquisitor decides you're xenos, do you know what that ends like?"
"Shut your mouth!"
With the roar, the Salamanders warrior jammed his boltgun forward—
—and it exploded like a spinning detonation.
Not a shot detonating on the target.
The weapon itself—its chamber—blew out, as if every round had been set off at once.
The blast tore away his arm.
But the traitor opposite him lost half his body.
A Salamanders trade: injury for injury—without hesitation.
The boltgun's catastrophic detonation was deliberate. He'd forced it, igniting every round.
"Oh, right. There's another way," the traitor rasped. "Just make the Inquisitor die. In a mess like this, who's going to prove what really—"
The words cut off.
Rawls' chainaxe tore through the traitor's skull.
Even dying, the bastard had tried one last little shove—one last nudge to make Kain murder the Inquisitor.
Rawls yanked the chainaxe back and took a few steps forward, intending to go help the kid—
—and then a wave of crushing weakness hit him.
He looked down.
His abdomen had been ripped open into a savage gash.
In his current state, charging in wouldn't help anyone.
He'd only get in the way.
He'd only become a burden.
Where were the others?
No one else could spare a hand.
And worse—Deathwatch fighters were positioned at his side. The sight made Rawls' stomach sink.
They'd taken the Inquisitor's hint. They were fighting "near" him, but the pattern was clear—they were isolating him from the Salamanders.
If they decided he was compromised—if they questioned his loyalty—
His fate would be the noose.
They might not kill him outright. Not when they could "study" an Untouchable's nature.
But that would be worse.
Much worse than death.
(End of Chapter)
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