"Be worthy of the blood of Sanguinius!"
"Praise Sanguinius! Praise the Primarch and His Divine Majesty!"
The Archangel raised his blade high, his battle cry piercing through the din of war. Every warrior stationed near the Lion's Gate turned instinctively toward the angelic figure. Their voices—those of the Blood Angels—rose in a crescendo, a thunderous choir that surged like a tidal wave across the battlefield.
What had once only been glimpsed in sacred murals, ancient tapestries, and stained glass now stood before them—real, divine, terrible in beauty. The Astartes recognized him instantly. Their gene-seed stirred in reverence, resonating with the presence of their progenitor.
The screams of Khorne's maddened followers began to fade. A hundred Blood Angels advanced onto the field with thunderous steps—personal guards of the Archangel, every one a Primaris Space Marine clad in crimson warplate.
These post-human warriors were demigods of flesh and steel. Their bolters roared with divine fury, each shell a miniature inferno that scoured heretics from existence. Chainswords revved to life, teeth gnashing through flesh and bone without resistance.
Bolter shells, blessed and refined, exploded with the fury of a dying sun. Promethium from their flamers engulfed scores of cultists in a purifying blaze.
They followed behind their angelic sire, bathing in blood, their slaughter rhythmic and unrelenting.
The cultists of Khorne, frothing with mindless hatred, fell like sheaves before the scythe—bodies shattered, bones pulverized. Even in death, their gurgling mouths chanted praises to the Blood God.
Blood was harvested. War engines thundered, their treads grinding heretic corpses into a fetid mulch. The land groaned beneath them, slick with gore.
But the suicidal frenzy of the traitors was no match for the loyalists' discipline. No matter Khorne's so-called blessings, mere mortals could not stand against the god-wrought steel of the Imperium. Their torn flesh mixed with the earth, exuding the stench of corruption.
"Lord Sanguinius," came the reverent voices of the faithful, saluting the Primarch wherever he passed. His divine presence justified his title: the Angel, the God Among Men.
Blood sprayed in arcs as the Spear of Telesto danced in his hands, its strikes turning enemies into ruin. No mortal could stand against the Angel of Baal. His wings, pure and white, cleaved through darkness with divine fury.
Sanguinius nodded respectfully to his warriors. Then, he turned his gaze to the shattered corpses of cultists littering the battlefield. A glacial coldness surfaced in his golden features.
This was only the beginning.
The whispers of Chaos would not stop. As more souls across Terra were consumed by daily bitterness and rage, they would turn to Khorne. The cycle would repeat.
What unsettled the Primarch most was the absence of the Emperor's will. Within this holy realm—the very Throneworld—the God-Emperor had not stirred. It was as if He allowed this nightmare to unfold unchecked.
Sanguinius knew. This was no isolated incident. The tide would return.
He looked up. Crimson clouds churned above Terra, writhing like a sea of blood. The entire world was cloaked in a veil of impending damnation.
The Ruinous Powers were here. Their hunger demanded a festival of blood on Holy Terra.
Hovering above the battlefield, the Archangel's eyes swept the earth below. Confusion flickered across his face.
He felt no trace of his brothers. No echoes. No psychic resonance.
Here, in the seat of Mankind, Sanguinius fought alone.
"Where are my brothers?" he thought.
Meanwhile, in the Ecclesiarchical District
Atop a towering Gothic spire, the Archpontiff stood solemnly, overlooking war-torn streets from his sanctum.
The faithful suffered. The traitors reveled.
Fires spread through Terra's districts, and the Ecclesiarchy worked desperately to shelter refugees. Combat priests held the perimeters—for now, it was a sanctuary.
But even this bastion would fall.
The will of the Blood God permeated Terra. Every skirmish became a sacrificial rite. Every drop of blood spilled fed the Immaterium. The barrier between realspace and the Warp thinned by the hour.
The Archpontiff—once granted audience within the Emperor's golden realm—was chosen to safeguard His flock. But now, amid catastrophe, he could only salvage what he could. The faithful would be protected, but not saved.
He had broken his covenant. He had failed the Emperor.
The scent hit him first—iron, thick and pungent.
His private chambers were silent. His servants lay butchered, their corpses strewn across marble floors. Not one had been spared.
Yet he did not flee.
He adjusted his robes, gripped his scepter, and walked calmly into the throne hall.
He knew what Chaos wanted—to see his despair, to witness his fear. It was their usual ploy.
"Welcome home, Your Holiness," came a mocking voice.
A hulking figure lounged on the throne, armored in crimson, his flesh engraved with unholy sigils. A Chosen of Khorne.
"I didn't think you'd have the spine to walk in," the daemon-host sneered.
Dozens of cultists surrounded the chamber. Blood painted the walls. Runes formed sacrilegious circles, throbbing with Warp energy.
"Heresy," the Archpontiff spat. "What do you seek?"
"To deliver my master's will," the Chosen replied, leveling a grotesque musket—flesh-bound and spiked with bone.
"I never thought the Emperor's lapdogs would truly die for the rabble. But your foolish compassion gave us our opening."
He pulled the trigger.
The shot—stinking of corruption and brimming with Warp-energies—blasted toward the Pope.
It struck an invisible force field, ricocheted off his chestplate with a clang, and clattered uselessly to the floor.
Silence followed.
The cultists gaped. The Chosen roared, "Impossible!" Eyes wide, he stared at his god-blessed weapon. "This can't be..."
It could.
The cultists lunged, howling, blades raised high.
The Pope didn't flinch.
"You serve a false god," he said coldly. "His so-called blessings are hollow."
With a single sweep of his scepter, he shattered a heretic's skull. Warp-twisted flesh and bone burst like overripe fruit.
More followed. One by one, he laid them low—his life-magnetic field flaring with righteous fury.
"You cannot comprehend the power we receive in the Kingdom of my Master," the Pope growled.
The Chosen of Khorne watched, stunned, as the elderly priest slaughtered every last cultist with maddening strength.
This frail man's eyes glowed—not with madness, but with divine wrath.
"Before the end comes, pray."
"May the True God bless you, child."
"Follow the path of glory—for the Savior calls you…"
He chanted as he fought, his voice a resonant hymn.
And with each verse, his power grew. The life-magnetic field surged beyond mortal limits, searing like a solar flare.
With a final roar, the Pope struck.
Bang!
The Chosen One was flung across the hall, blood spraying in an arc.
The Archpontiff raised his scepter high.
"Begin the sacrament."
"Madman! You madman!!!"
The Chosen of Khorne shrieked in a frenzy, staring at the Grand Pope's serene, almost beatific madness. The contrast shattered his composure entirely.
With a solemn prayer—"Amen."—the Grand Pope brought his scepter down and pinned the Chosen to the blood-soaked floor of the sanctum. The battle was over.
Deep beneath Terra, within a hidden sanctum...
Shrouded in robes, several figures huddled around a glowing display, watching the chaos unfold above. The state religion district, once vulnerable, now seethed with divine wrath.
Anglican priests—long thought missing—had returned en masse. With scripture on their lips and fire in their eyes, they tore through the cultists in a brutal, one-sided purge.
"It's over. The clergy's strength far exceeded our calculations," one whispered bitterly, breaking the tense silence.
Before another could reply—
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Heavy knocks thundered against the chamber door. The room froze.
Weapons drawn, the conspirators crept toward the entrance.
Just as the first hand reached out—
BOOM!
A firestorm tore the door from its hinges. Through the smoke and shrapnel stormed towering warriors in obsidian green: the Dark Angels.
"Repent, heretics! Today, your sins are judged!"
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Bolter fire and war cries echoed through the chamber. The cultists died where they stood—cut down before they could even react.
Then, a taller, more commanding figure entered. His presence was suffocating—ancient, noble, wrathful.
The Lion had come.
"Is this the source?" he asked, his voice a low growl.
"Not yet, my liege," a Dark Angel answered.
"Then continue. Leave no crevice untouched."
With that, Lion El'Jonson, Primarch of the First Legion, gave the order to resume the purge.
This underground sprawl was a warren of pipes and rot—a forgotten refugee sector beneath the hallowed surface of Terra. It was also a nest of heresy.
The Lion had come to cleanse it.
The Dark Angels split into kill-teams, methodically sweeping the twisting metal labyrinth.
Eventually, they found it: a cavernous space cloaked in roiling black fog. Vision flickered and failed. The atmosphere was thick with warp-taint.
The Lion was the first to move.
He leapt silently into the darkness, his superhuman mass making no sound as he landed. Behind him, his sons followed, their optics casting faint green glows across the gloom.
This place... it was no mere hideout.
It was a mausoleum, vast and forgotten, carved into Terra's bones. Its power supply sputtered, casting twitching shadows. The air was rank with sacrilege.
Every surface was defiled—walls etched with blood-runes, blasphemous symbols scrawled in tongues meant never to be spoken.
The Lion's enhanced senses caught the low muttering of cultists deeper in the vault. They were no longer hiding. No longer scurrying like rats.
Now, they rejoiced in their corruption.
Their brazenness was galling.
"They dare..." the Lion muttered, fury rising behind his calm exterior.
"Advance!" he ordered.
Then he was gone—a shadow of death racing into the abyss.
The Dark Angels followed, but they could not match their gene-father's pace.
El'Jonson plunged into what had once been living quarters for Terra's underhive refugees. Now, it was a charnel pit.
Bodies—Imperial citizens and beasts alike—were flung about like refuse. Some were still alive, their mangled forms suspended from the ceilings by barbed chains.
Their eyes, ears, and noses had been carved out, leaving only screaming mouths. Blood poured from them, a sacrament to their dark patrons.
The scent was unbearable. The cruelty, unspeakable.
Every wall bore the eight-pointed star of Chaos, drawn in gore.
And yet, even here, in this abyssal shrine, hope still clung to life.
In the cages lining the walls, surviving citizens stirred. When they saw the towering figure of the Lion approaching—wreathed in silent fury, the light of vengeance in his eyes—they began to cry out.
Desperation. Relief. Prayer.
They called to him, the Emperor's wrath made manifest.
The Son of the Emperor had come.
To the survivors huddled in rusted cages and broken shelters, the sight of the Primarch was like a beam of divine light cutting through the endless dark. Their hope surged. Surely, in the presence of one touched by the God-Emperor Himself, the foul things of Chaos would be swept away.
They whispered prayers of deliverance. They believed salvation was at hand.
But the cultists thought otherwise.
They turned, shrieking and howling—twisted mockeries of humanity, stripped of reason and soul. Even at the sight of the Primarch, their eyes gleamed only with feral hatred.
Their minds had been shattered. Their spirits enslaved.
Blood-runes were carved deep into their flesh, and whatever remained of their human features had long since been consumed by madness. Even now, faced with a demigod, they showed no fear.
"Heretic."
Lion El'Jonson drew his blade and surged forward.
To stand against a Primarch is to court instant annihilation.
The Lion moved with calculated fury. His sword carved effortlessly through the heretics—his strikes as swift as they were merciless. The corrupted swarmed toward him, only to be reduced to butchered meat in seconds.
Without hesitation, he cut a path through the blood-soaked mob, heading directly for the center of the blasphemous rite.
"Purge them all. Leave none alive." he ordered.
The Dark Angels obeyed without hesitation.
Grenade flashes tore through the gloom, lighting up warped, shrieking silhouettes. Many of the cultists bore grotesque mutations—bone spurs, bloated limbs, and gaping maws formed where no mouth should be.
They charged forward in waves, shrieking their praises to the Blood God.
But the Lion knew no pity.
Each swing of his blade left a trail of shattered bodies and severed limbs. A radius of death spread around him—carnage dealt with surgical precision and mechanical efficiency.
He moved like a force of nature, unstoppable and silent.
Within minutes, he reached the heart of the rite: the eight-tiered altar, a towering structure of bone and iron, soaked in blood.
Atop it stood a grotesque figure—the God-Given, chained in iron, his flesh branded with the sigils of Khorne. With a crazed grin, he slashed open his own arteries, letting the blood pour freely across the altar.
The blood did not merely spill—it steamed, glowing with warp-taint.
"You're too late," the heretic rasped, voice gurgling. "It's already begun! All the skulls of this world will adorn the throne of the Blood God!"
The Lion didn't respond.
He stepped forward and cleaved the heretic in two with a single, decisive blow.
When the last cultist fell, the Dark Angels arrived—bolters ready, eyes wary.
"Orders, my lord?" one asked.
The Lion paused. Something dark flickered behind his eyes. For a moment, even he seemed troubled.
Then, quietly, with measured certainty, he spoke:
"Move all the corpses to the altar."
The Dark Angels blinked.
"...My lord?" one asked, uncertain.
This was no ordinary command. Feeding the altar more corpses would empower it, amplify the very ritual they had come to halt.
"Why would we do that? Shouldn't we—shouldn't we destroy it?"
The Lion's expression hardened. "This is not for you to understand. Carry out the order."
A beat passed before he added, with grim finality:
"It is His Majesty's will."
The warriors looked to one another, confusion flashing through their helmets.
But none disobeyed the Lion.
"…Yes, my lord."
Elsewhere…
Far above, upon the Lion's Gate, the commanders of the Astra Militarum stood frozen. The skies of Terra twisted. Familiarity was erased. A metallic tang filled the air as the scent of blood spread like fog.
Red light bathed the towers. Warp-taint pulsed at the edges of reality.
High above, Lord Commander Sanguinius stared into the heavens, his golden armor tinged crimson in the eerie glow.
His face was grim.
"They are coming," he said quietly. "Khorne's legions march… and with them, my traitorous brother."
"Angron."