"Arrrggh!"
A guttural growl tore from Threxus.
His helm was half gone.
Flesh burned away.
Bone exposed.
Foul, thick fluid dripped from the ruin of his face.
Yet he still stood.
The wound moved.
Twitched.
Rotting tissue began to crawl back into place.
One ruined eye locked onto Atharion.
Still burning with hate.
Still alive.
"You… will need… more than that…" Threxus rasped.
His grip tightened on the manreaper.
Then he lunged.
Faster than before.
As the duel raged on, another threat grew.
The sorcerer continued to murmur dark words.
The green miasma thickened.
It spread wider.
Heavier.
The fallen rose faster.
Wounds closed quicker.
The traitors became harder to kill with every passing second.
Then—
The sorcerer suddenly swung his axe to the side.
Clang.
A force sword caught the blow.
"Huh," Orion said, gripping his blade tighter as silver lightning surged along its edge. "I do take pride in my cloaking."
The two locked for a brief moment.
Green energy pushed against silver.
Warp against will.
Then Orion moved.
Using the axe as leverage, he pushed himself back—
And vanished.
Gone in a shimmer of sliver light.
The sorcerer paused.
Then turned—
Just as Orion reappeared behind him.
His force sword was already thrusting forward.
A strike aimed for both hearts.
Using his psychic power to enhance his body, the blade moved with unmatched speed.
The sorcerer saw he could not evade.
So he did not try.
Instead—
He lunged forward.
His axe raised high.
Believing in Nurgle's blessing, he chose to trade the blow to kill this threat before it could ruin his plan.
After all, their goal was not to destroy Camelarion or kill Atharion, but to corrupt the Realm into a garden worthy of the Great Father and also to corrupt Atharion, so that not only the Great Father can obtain a new powerful 'son' to help him, but also to obtain more blessing for themselves.
But the presence of another powerful psyker was never part of the plan.
Just as the sword was about to pierce his rotten flesh, and the axe was about to strike Orion—
The blade began to disperse into silver smoke from the tip that touched the sorcerer.
At the same time, Orion's body also broke apart into silver mist as the axe passed through him.
Only drifting smoke remained.
The sorcerer's brow—if any flesh still remained to form one—twitched as realization set in.
"So you realize," Orion's voice echoed, calm and clear. Though the battle still raged around them, it felt distant, muted, as if the two of them were sealed within a space of their own, cut off from the noise. "Not only are you trapped in here, but your miasma does not work on us."
"A curious thing, isn't it?"
As the words ended, Orion suddenly appeared behind him and struck, his force sword slicing across the sorcerer's back in a flash of silver light—before he vanished again.
"Face me, coward," the sorcerer growled, pain twisting his voice—pain he had not felt for a long time, not since he embraced Nurgle's blessing. "Hiding in the shadows like some frightened wretch."
His grip tightened on the axe as he turned, trying to sense where the next strike would come from. The silver mist still lingered around him, thin strands drifting through the air like threads of light.
Orion chuckle echoe through the air.
"You have no privilege to understand what's happening," his word become more real as he keep talking, "the only thing you have, is death."
The final word didn't echoes, it come from Threxus behind.
The sorcerer quickly swing his axe.
But, when he fully turn his body, he didn't see anything.
"Wrong one."
Orion's voice came from the other side.
His fist, wrapped in psychic power, drove straight into the sorcerer's body—through the wound he had already made.
Warp energy flared as his hand forced its way inside.
The sorcerer growled in pain, his body convulsing as Orion reached deeper, searching.
Then—
He found it.
"Since you can grow back flesh," Orion said, his tone thick with sarcasm, "I can take this, right?"
With a firm grip, he pulled his hand free.
The sorcerer screamed.
In Orion's hand was a green, warp-corrupted heart—still beating, still pulsing with foul energy.
"A Chaos sorcerer's heart," Orion said, almost captivated by it, ignoring the screams. "A fine trophy for the Librarium."
"How dare you!" the sorcerer roared, pain and fury mixing as he forced himself steady. "How dare you defile the gift of the Great Father!"
"Well, from what I see," Orion replied, tilting his head slightly as he studied the weakened figure, "it seems your power comes from your two hearts."
He tossed the heart lightly into the air and caught it again.
"And you chose to store your strength there."
Another toss.
"Not the best decision."
The sorcerer unleashed a stream of corrupted filth, a wave of foul gas sweeping toward Orion's position.
But Orion was already gone.
He vanished into silver mist just as the attack consumed where he stood, leaving nothing behind but drifting smoke and the echo of his presence.
"Well, I had hoped to take your head as a trophy," Orion's voice came from behind him, calm and almost amused. "But the Supreme Grand Master wants answers… so, unfortunately, you need to live."
Before the sorcerer could react, Orion was there again.
Both hands drove into the sorcerer's body through the torn armor.
The impact forced a ragged gasp from the traitor as Orion reached deeper, his grip locking onto the spine.
Then the silver light flared.
Orion's psychic power surged through his arms and into the sorcerer's body, spreading along the spine and branching outward like lightning through flesh and bone.
The sorcerer screamed.
Warp energy around him twisted violently, trying to answer—but it faltered.
Orion pressed harder.
His power flooded the body, overwhelming the corrupted channels, choking the connection to the warp.
"I won't kill you," Orion said quietly. "But I will take away what makes you dangerous."
With a sharp motion, he wrenched—
A crack echoed through the air.
The spine snapped.
The sorcerer collapsed, his body convulsing as the warp energy around him broke apart into fading strands of green mist.
The miasma thinned.
Flickered.
And began to die.
Orion stepped back, watching as the broken form lay twitching on the ground—alive, but cut off.
"You still get to live at the very least," Orion said before lfiting his head and look around. "unlike your friend."
Around him, the battle already ended.
The Terminators of the 2nd and 5th Companies had wiped out the Plague Marines, while the Argent Wardens had finished the Blightlords.
Atharion had also captured the Lord of Contagion—though he was far more damaged than the sorcerer.
Threxus' head, once blasted apart by plasma, had reformed. But now he was missing his jaw, and all four of his limbs had been crushed beyond use.
"Isn't this a bit extreme?" Orion asked as he stepped beside Atharion. Behind them, the sorcerer was being secured by two Argent Wardens. "Without a jaw, how are we supposed to get information from him?"
"They won't speak even if they can," Atharion said coldly, standing over Threxus. "And I believe the interrogators will find a way."
He looked down into Threxus' eyes.
There was no fear.
No anger.
Only mockery.
A silent, broken laugh.
Atharion tightened his grip on his hammer—the same hammer that had shattered the traitor's limbs.
For a brief moment, he said nothing.
Then he turned away.
"Secure them," he ordered.
The Argent Wardens dragged Threxus toward a waiting Thunderhawk, escorted by a full tactical squad assigned to guard the prisoner.
The same was done for the sorcerer.
He was taken to another Thunderhawk—this one guarded even more heavily, with a tactical squad and two Librarians watching over him.
As the gunships began to lift, their engines roaring through the ruined battlefield, the war for Virtus was in theory ended with the destruction of the traitor Astarte main elements and the capture of the invasion force leader.
Soon after, the Dark Knights' armored units returned from their engagements.
Predators and Land Raiders rolled back into formation, their hulls scorched but intact.
The traitor Predators had all been destroyed.
The same fate had met the corrupted Land Raiders.
What remained of the poxwalkers and the traitor guardsmen was nothing more than a shattered mass. The first assault by the Redeemers had already broken them, and when the traitor Land Raiders pulled away to engage, they had been left exposed.
They never recovered.
When the Redeemers returned, they finished what they had started.
Flamestorm cannons burned through the remnants.
Assault cannons tore apart those who tried to flee.
By the end—
There was nothing left worth counting.
At the same time, reports from the other attack groups began to come in.
Originally, Atharion had brought a total of one hundred and fifty Terminators with him, excluding the ten Argent Wardens. Of those, only fifty had joined him in the strike against Threxus. The rest had been split into separate groups, each assigned to reclaim key locations—hives, ports, and cities that had fallen to the traitors.
Supporting them were the 101st and 501st Auxilia Regiments, both highly trained in aerial assault.
The results were decisive.
The majority of Hive Diana had been secured, with only scattered pockets of resistance remaining. Those could be dealt with by the local Cohorts, who were already moving in to stabilize the situation and re-establish control.
Other major ports and cities were also retaken, restoring control over large regions that had been lost, and re-establishing communication with Cohort units that had been cut off behind enemy lines during the traitors' rapid advance.
With the situation on Virtus now largely under control, Atharion began preparations for departure. He left behind two Auxilia regiments to support the Cohorts—both to clear the remaining traitor elements and to reinforce the defenses in case the Death Guard attempted another assault.
===
When Atharion entered his chamber aboard the flagship, multiple reports from other warzones across the Realm were already waiting upon his table.
The first came from Caden.
The 1st Company had been dispatched by Atharion to counter a major traitor assault upon the Caen System, an important system containing two hive worlds and one industrial world.
According to the information gathered at Sapientia, the invading traitor forces had split into multiple attack groups after entering Camelarion space. Other than the Death Guard and a core Black Legion force that still followed the original invasion plan, many of the other warbands—including several Death Guard warbands—had already strayed from their assigned targets, instead spreading destruction simply to fulfill their own agendas.
Caen System had become the target of the Black Legion.
Leading the assault was Urkrathos, one of the Four Chosen of Abaddon and master of the Hounds of Abaddon warband. Though the Chaos Lord had not brought the full strength of his own warband, he had instead subjugated two Khorne-aligned warbands into serving under his command, using them as the spearhead of the invasion.
Unlike the Death Guard assault on Virtus, which relied on attrition and corruption, the attack on Caen was direct and brutal.
Urkrathos unleashed devastating drop-pod assaults alongside massive waves of cultists, causing catastrophic damage across the system.
By the time Caden arrived, all three worlds were already under attack. Loyalist forces only still held the capital cities and the small regions surrounding them.
Leaving the traitor fleet to be dealt by the Camelarion battlegroup,
Caden immediately began efforts to save the worlds.
According to his reports, the two hive worlds had already been liberated. Though, much like Virtus, scattered traitor remnants still remained and would need to be eliminated by the local Cohorts. Now, Caden was turning his attention toward Caen Primus, the industrial world that served as the system capital, where Urkrathos was believed to still be operating—assuming the Chaos Lord had not already abandoned the system.
Atharion placed the report aside before reaching for the second one.
Aldarion reported that he had engaged a large traitor force made up of multiple Chaos warbands near the western border systems of Camelarion. Unlike the organized invasions at Virtus and Caen, these forces seemed focused entirely on destruction and plunder, raiding frontier worlds, supply routes, and isolated stations before moving on.
Despite their lack of coordination, the damage they caused was severe. Several Quintus and Quartus worlds had already fallen before Aldarion managed to intercept them.
Eventually, he succeeded in cornering the largest of the warbands at a Tertius world that the traitors had attempted to conquer in order to gain access to the chain of Quartus worlds behind it.
The destruction of that warband had effectively crippled the enemy force. Other than that main group, the remaining traitors possessed only small numbers of Chaos Space Marines. Most were little more than pirate gangs led by one—or at most a handful—of traitor Astartes calling themselves warbands.
Because of this, Aldarion believed it was only a matter of time before the remaining enemy forces were destroyed and he could return to the main front.
The next report came from Valentus.
He reported that he was currently engaging a massive Traitor Guard force, supported by a smaller Dark Mechanicum contingent, at Fidelis—a Secundus world.
Even with support from the local Titan garrison, the defenders had been unable to destroy the traitor force. The Dark Mechanicum had brought with them five super-heavy regiments, each consisting of six Shadowswords.
The presence of such a large concentration of Shadowswords—especially in traitor hands—was highly unusual.
Their deployment had severely limited the Titans' effectiveness, as the god-machines could not fully commit themselves without risking destruction from concentrated volcano cannon fire.
Still, at the end of the report, Valentus expressed confidence in his ability to destroy the enemy force and merely requested more time.
Next, the Angels of Wrath and the Fire Hawks had also submitted their own separate reports.
They had successfully destroyed the traitor forces at Medina and Soraren, and had now joined together to relieve the Siege of Agnor, a system that contained an important fortress-industrial world, which also one of the few Secundus worlds located in the far northwest, close to the border of the Camelarion Realm.
However, both Tristan and Garron had requested Titan reinforcements.
According to the reports, Titans of Legio Laniaskara had joined the assault on Agnor alongside a Death Guard warband and a massive force of traitor guardsmen and cultists.
From the fragmented transmissions received from the world, Legio Laniaskara had deployed one Warlord Titan, four Reavers, and five Warhounds.
The only reason the world had not yet fallen was because the capital's defense laser batteries still threatened the traitor Titans, preventing them from advancing too close.
But the situation is still bad due to a failed counterattack early in the siege.
Believing they could destroy the invaders before the traitor forces fully established themselves, the local Princeps Ultima had lead the Titans garrisson, one Reaver and two Warhounds to attack the traitor forces supported by a large Cohort elements and Skitarii forces.
It ended in disaster.
All three Titans were destroyed by Legio Laniaskara.
Much of the Cohort and Skitarii support force sent with them was annihilated as well.
As a result, while the traitor Titans still could not directly assault the capital due to the defense batteries, the traitor Space Marines, guardsmen, and cultists were steadily closing in on the walls.
And if the batteries fell—
Nothing would stop Legio Laniaskara from marching directly upon the capital.
Last came the report from the combined force of the Lamenters and Black Dragons, who were still fighting on Hedera against the previously rumored—but now confirmed—presence of two World Eaters warbands and a smaller Thousand Sons warband.
Because both the Lamenters and Black Dragons were operating below full strength, they remained locked in brutal fighting against the traitors, especially the World Eaters.
However, the arrival of two Dark Knights Librarium detachments—consisting of two Masters of Librarium and four Librarians—had drawn much of the Thousand Sons' attention away from the main battlefield.
As a result, much of the conflict on Hedera had split into two separate wars.
One was fought openly in the burning cities and trenches, where the Black Dragons and Lamenters battled the World Eaters in savage close-range combat.
The other was fought in the shadows of the warp.
Still, like Valentus, both the Chapter Masters of the Lamenters and the Black Dragons expressed confidence that the battle could be won.
Atharion finally placed the reports down.
Only then did he notice something wrong.
Something that should have been impossible.
The timestamps.
His eyes narrowed as he looked over the dates again.
Every single report had been written in the future.
Not years ahead.
Not decades.
Only a few months beyond the current date.
The reports from the Angels of Wrath and the Fire Hawks were the closest to the present, dated only one month ahead.
Slowly, Atharion leaned back in his chair as his mind worked through the implications.
The warp distorted time for everything that passed through it.
That was a fact every void commander understood.
But every report carried the same anomaly.
Too precise.
Too consistent.
Far too much to be coincidence.
As he considered this, Atharion sent a request to Currus Venatores, the main Titan-Barque of Legio Solaria, ordering it to deploy toward the Siege of Agnor and assist in destroying the traitor Titans.
Once he signed the order, he handed the document to a waiting serf to deliver the transmission.
When the door open as the serf closing it, another figure is waiting behind it.
The serf bow to the figure before leaving the chamber as the figure enter, though he stop just after he stepped in.
"So, Orion," Atharion said he looking at the Master of Ordo Hexmortis. "have you get anything worth of our attention from the traitor?"
"Well," Orion begin. "it might be the best we discuss it at the Librarium Chamber."
"If what I get from them are true, then we are in for a bad time."