As if sensing Calgar's thoughts, Abaddon's face twisted into a ferocious, predatory grin. He signaled his fleet to press the advantage with everything they had.
"Calgar is mine!" the Despoiler roared. "Do not let him slip back into the Warp!"
Abaddon personally led his elite guard—the Bringers of Despair—into the boarding torpedoes. Hundreds of assault rams and Dreadclaw pods launched from the Vengeful Spirit, screaming through the void toward Calgar's flagship, the Victorious Laurel.
Because the Imperial formation had "collapsed," the Victorious Laurel was exposed. The boarding craft slammed into the flagship's hull like iron nails driven into flesh.
The assault was suspiciously easy. Abaddon and his elites met almost no organized resistance as they tore through the corridors. They breached the inner sanctum of the command deck with a speed that would have made a lesser commander wary, but Abaddon was blinded by the scent of his rival's blood.
He stormed onto the bridge, the Talon of Horus crackling with unholy energy. He saw Marneus Calgar sitting alone in his command throne. No honor guard. No desperate last stand. Just the Lord of Macragge, looking as steady as a mountain of marble.
"Marneus Calgar," Abaddon sneered, his voice a guttural growl that filled the silent bridge. "The long war ends for you today. You have lost."
Calgar looked up. There was no fear in his eyes—only a chilling, detached mockery.
"Where is your guard, Calgar?" Abaddon paused, finally sensing the wrongness of the silence. "Why is there no one here to die for you?"
"Finally, you notice," Calgar said, a faint chuckle vibrating in his chest. "I was beginning to think the Warp had rotted your tactical mind entirely."
"You think a simple lure will save you?" Abaddon stepped forward, his massive bulk casting a shadow over the throne. "The Warp in this sector has been smothered by my sorcerers. You cannot use a teleport-flare, and your ships cannot translate to safety. You are trapped in a dead hull, and I am the one who holds the blade."
"You knew it was a trap, yet you came anyway," Calgar stated calmly, his armored finger hovering over a runic trigger on his throne. "Because your greed outweighs your caution. You wanted my head to prove your worth to the Dark Gods. You wanted a trophy to bring to the feet of the Great Powers."
Abaddon's eyes flashed with fury, but he did not deny it. "The price of your head is worth any risk, Calgar."
"Greed always has a price, Abaddon," Calgar replied. His finger pressed the trigger. "The Imperial Navy has cleared the minimum safe distance. Now... the watch begins."
Abaddon lunged, his Talon reaching for Calgar's throat. "Launch what?! You have nothing left—"
Suddenly, Calgar waved a hand in a gesture of dismissive farewell. His entire form was enveloped in a shimmering, chronal distortion—not a Warp teleport, but a localized displacement of spacetime. He vanished from the throne instantly.
"What?! I shielded the Warp! How did he—"
Abaddon never finished the sentence. The entire flagship groaned as if the hand of a god had reached out and crushed it. A violent ripple in spacetime tore through the ship, and the Despoiler felt his very atoms being tugged toward the center of the bridge.
"Lord! We must evacuate!" a sorcerer screamed. "The coordinates! Something is tearing reality apart!"
Abaddon roared in fury, his topknot askew and his eyes bloodshot. "Withdraw! All fleets, full reverse! Accelerate away from this vessel!"
But the "Void Claw" had already found its mark.
After ten thousand years of dormancy, the greatest and most terrifying weapon of the Dark Age of Technology revealed its fangs. A tiny, microscopic speck of light—an artificial singularity—ignited in the center of the Victorious Laurel.
It did not explode. It imploded.
In an instant, the speck of light expanded into a swirling vortex of absolute darkness. Spacetime twisted and tore, forming a miniature black hole. The Chaos fleet, which had surged forward to encircle the "retreating" Imperials, was now caught in a gravitational well that defied the laws of physics. No matter how much their Warp-engines screamed, they could not escape the Schwarzschild radius.
The Victorious Laurel was the first to be consumed, its massive hull twisting like scrap metal before vanishing into the singularity.
Across the system, Marneus Calgar sat in a secure bunker within the Hive Spires of Vigilus, watching the tactical display. The red icons of the Chaos fleet were being dragged toward a central point, their formations collapsing into a crushing heap.
"Order all Imperial Navy ships to come about," Calgar commanded, his voice cold and pitiless. "Unleash all remaining ordnance on the Chaos vessels caught in the convergence zone. Let them die in the dark."
The Imperial Navy, realizing they had witnessed a miracle rather than a rout, turned back with a vengeance. Lances and macro-cannon shells rained down on the trapped Chaos fleet. Under the crushing gravity of the singularity, the heretic ships were unable to raise shields or maneuver. They were sitting ducks in a cosmic slaughterhouse.
"MARNEUS CALGAR!!!"
Abaddon's roar echoed through the vox-channels one last time before the interference swallowed it. He had been forced to trigger an emergency Warp-jump from his own flagship just before the singularity reached it—a maneuver that would scatter his fleet and likely kill thousands of his own men in the process.
"I will remember this, you despicable son of Guilliman!"
The Despoiler had lost his prize. The Black Crusade had been broken upon the anvil of a Dark Age relic and the cold, ruthless resolve of a man who was willing to bet his life on a single, impossible shot.