The buzzing chainaxe whipped up a searing wind.
That wind carried the scorched stench of metal friction, mixed with the lingering bloodthirst of the giant over many years, rushing toward them with enough force to shatter the courage of even the most steadfast warrior.
Terrania's small face was completely devoid of color. Her golden eyes reflected those spinning, death-dealing serrations capable of tearing everything apart, and her body trembled uncontrollably.
But the hand holding hers was warm and steady.
Leticia did not retreat.
She even took another step forward, heading straight into that gale.
Her black robes snapped loudly in the airflow, and her hair was blown backward, revealing a face that remained so holy in the dim light it seemed inhuman.
"I am not here to fight you, Angron."
Leticia's voice was very soft, yet like the finest steel needle, it accurately pierced through the deafening roar of the chainaxe and into his ears.
Her footsteps did not stop. Every step landed on the blood-stained sand, yet she remained untainted by a single speck of dust.
Leading the blonde girl, she walked toward the beast on the verge of a rampage, toward the butcher's blade already aimed at them.
Her posture did not look like she was walking onto a battlefield; instead, it was as if she were approaching a lost, weeping child.
"I am here to..."
Leticia looked up, her pure black eyes reflecting Angron's face, twisted in agony.
"...take you home."
"Home?"
This word was like a red-hot iron, ruthlessly searing the never-healing scar in the deepest part of Angron's soul.
Home.
His home was the campfire atop the snowy peaks of Nukeria. It was the laughter shared with his brothers and Sisters over cheap wine and roasted meat. It was the oath to shed every last drop of blood for each other's freedom in the Colosseum.
His home had long since been buried beneath those cold snowy mountains, along with the corpses of all his family, by the Golden Tyrant who claimed to be his father.
This word was the source of his lifelong pain, the fuel for his eternal rage, and his deepest, never-ending regret that could never be vented.
"ROAAAAAAAR——!!!"
An unprecedented fury, enough to burn the entire planet to ashes, exploded from Angron's chest!
His bloodshot eyes, filled with pain, instantly turned a solid crimson.
Reason was completely severed.
He was no longer a Primarch, no longer the Lord of the World Eaters; he reverted to that imprisoned beast who knew only destruction and venting.
His hands gripped the handles of the chainaxe tightly. His bulging muscles made his already burly frame expand further, and the sand beneath his feet cracked inch by inch, unable to withstand the force.
He raised the Twin-linked Chainaxe high.
Then, with all his strength, he brought it crashing down ruthlessly toward the woman who dared to desecrate his pain with the word "home"!
That was not an attack.
It was a storm.
A storm of destruction constructed from pure rage, pain, and hatred, meant to tear every illusion before him into fragments.
Before the axe blade even arrived, the screeching of the torn air nearly caused Terrania to faint.
However, Leticia did not move.
She did not dodge, she did not parry, and she did not even raise a single psychic shield.
She simply let go of Terrania's hand and, under the gaze of those golden eyes filled with horror and confusion, raised her right hand.
Her hand was fair, slender, and flawless, as if it were a work of art carved by a god from the purest moonlight.
Compared to that hideous giant axe swirling with blood and fire, this hand was as fragile as a feather.
A faint emerald light began to gather in Leticia's palm.
The light was not dazzling or searing; it was as soft as the first tender sprout emerging from the frozen earth in early spring. It was filled with an aura of life, serenity, and Hope, completely out of place in this Colosseum filled with death and despair.
She raised her hand just like that, meeting the lethal chainaxe.
Time seemed to stretch at this moment.
The spinning serrations grew larger and larger in Leticia's pupils.
The breath of death was within reach.
Just a split second before the blood-stained and notched axe blade was about to touch Leticia's fair palm.
Angron's movement came to a dead stop, as if defying all laws of physics.
It stopped less than a finger's width from her palm.
His body was trembling violently.
It wasn't rage, but an irresistible shudder born of life's instinct.
His nerve endings, repeatedly scorched by the Butcher's Nails until only fury and pain remained, were frantically transmitting a signal to him that he could not understand.
The green light in that woman's palm...
What was it?
There was no killing intent, no hostility, no deception, and no conspiracy within it.
It was something... he had forgotten for hundreds of years, or perhaps had never truly experienced.
Pure life, without any impurities.
It was the clear spring water flowing over fingertips after the snow on the mountains melted.
It was the fragrance of earth and grass mixed together in a forest after the rain.
It was the steady and peaceful breathing of a newborn infant.
It was... peace.
To his soul, which had long since been scorched into a wasteland by endless pain, this aura was a temptation more lethal than the most potent poison.
His combat instincts, his rage, his everything—all were completely dismantled before this aura.
For the first time, his muscles defied the slaughter commands issued by the Butcher's Nails.
He could no longer make that axe advance even a fraction of an inch.
Leticia's expression did not change.
Her hand passed through the stationary, dangerous axe blade and gently pressed against Angron's forehead, which was covered in hideous metal wires and scars.
Cold metal and burning skin touched her soft palm at the same time.
"I know your pain."
Her voice sounded like the gentlest lullaby deep within his soul.
"I know what you have lost."
"Now, feel..."
Endless compassion flowed within Leticia's eyes.
"...the peace you were meant to have."
The majestic power of Vitality, like a clear and sweet spring, gushed from her palm and instantly poured into Angron's already overburdened brain.
It was a sensation that could not be described with words.
For hundreds of years, the never-ending pain and roar of the Butcher's Nails—like tens of thousands of metal locusts gnawing on his nerves—had always echoed in Angron's mind.
That was the background noise of his world, the total proof of his existence.
But at this very moment.
That green warm current, like a gentle and boundless ocean, instantly submerged the violent volcano in his mind.
The screeching of those tens of thousands of metal locusts vanished.
The severe pain that could burn through the soul was smoothed away.
For the first time, the eternal roar...
...grew quiet.
The world had never been so silent.
Angron's massive frame shuddered violently.
Then came a second time, a third time...
Like a giant struck by lightning, every muscle in his body was convulsing violently and uncontrollably.
It wasn't pain.
It was the most intense rejection reaction his body produced when faced with this sudden "peace" that had been absent for hundreds of years.
He could no longer hold onto the Twin-linked Chainaxe in his hands.
CLANG——
That giant axe, the symbol of endless slaughter and rage, slipped from his powerless fingers and slammed heavily onto the sand with a dull thud.
Slowly, and with disbelief, Angron lowered his head.
He looked at his own trembling hands, stained with the blood of countless enemies and kin.
Then, he slowly raised his head again to look at the black-haired woman who still had her palm pressed against his forehead.
In those crimson eyes, for the first time, that world-destroying tyranny faded away, replaced by an extreme, blank fragility, like that of a newborn baby.
This sudden, brief peace was like a flood capable of washing everything away.
It did not bring tranquility.
Instead, it broke through the final dam Angron had built with endless rage and pain to protect his broken heart.
Behind the dam was that rotting ocean called "sorrow" that he himself had long forgotten.
A scalding drop of liquid slid from the corner of his crimson eye.
Then came a second drop, a third drop...
The liquid, mixed with blood and dust, washed two dirty tear tracks down his face.
He opened his mouth, seemingly wanting to say something.
Wanting to question, wanting to roar, wanting to howl.
But what came from deep in his throat was no longer a roar of rage.
Instead, it was a...
...true wail, suppressed for hundreds of years, containing not a hint of rage, but only endless sorrow and regret.
A mournful cry.
"Wu... ah..."
That sound was like a lonely beast on a snowy mountain that had lost all its companions, letting out the first and last howl of its life to the empty world.
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