The Bloodthirster quickly regenerated, and moved like the death of a world. Flesh boiled from skulls within a dozen yards of the crater. The stone beneath him didn't crack—it liquefied, then froze again in a single screaming instant. He rose from the center of it like a god erupting from the bones of a murdered realm with horns wreathed in embers.
The whip dragged behind him. The axe steamed. The Slayer stood his ground.
"Analysis," Sefirot's voice cut through the tension, devoid of emotion. "Like lesser daemons of its kind, the Bloodthirster is highly resistant to firearm damage. Small arms fire won't do anything, even heavy weapons would struggle. However, the psychic power behind your shots will matter."
He paused, as the Slayer's gaze remained fixed on the towering figure before them.
"And while this daemon's resistance is far beyond that of lesser kinds. It remains an amplified version. Not immune but you'll need something near the scale of nuclear ordnance—fifty kilotons of TNT, to break through its regenerative capacity."
The Slayer didn't flinch. His fingers flexed around Lucifer's Bane.
"The Archetypal rule of banishment also applies," Sefirot continued, "the daemon is bound to be defeated through direct melee combat. However, this rule is not absolute. If sufficient force and power is applied—there's potential to kill it from a distance, though the force required would be extreme."
Sefirot's cold, calculating tone never wavered. "Another route is the daemon's true name. It could be deciphered and bound."
Slayer shook his head. Ritual bindings? That is not a fun way to fight. That isn't certainly his way to fight.
"The daemon's psychic vulnerabilities remain," Sefirot added. "With a charged shot, Lucifer's Bane could overwhelm its defenses. Inflict massive agony. But only a multi Onslaught charge may suffice for a killing blow."
The Slayer's jaw tightened, his focus narrowed it was if he said: No...I just don't want to kill it. I want to torture this thing until I am satisfied and only then slaughter it.
Gorlab surged forward. It wasn't a charge. It was impact given form—each step breaking the earth like it owed him blood. Every stomp birthed aftershocks. The Axe of Blind Fury carved a molten furrow behind him, red-hot and trembling.
The Slayer fired once—then again. The first shot struck dead center of the daemon's chest. The second slammed into the throat just as Gorlab dipped his head for a gore-horn strike. The monster reeled—but only for a heartbeat.
Then the whip screamed. It came in from the left, low and horizontal, dragging sparks and flame. The Slayer ducked under, already sliding, boots scraping steel from the fractured earth as he spun his weapon around his finger ejecting shells. The return arc of the whip hissed high, tracing a full circle. Slayer vaulted the second sweep with a meathook blast to Gorlab's pauldron, swung himself airborne, and landed on the daemon's collarbone.
He fired point-blank into the daemon's neck. Blood sprayed—a hot, steaming mist of pain. The whip snapped again.
It caught nothing but air. The Slayer was already gone, grappling to a ruined column, reloading mid-swing. He hit the ground running, every step calculated. His boots cracked black glass where Gorlab's landing had fused the earth.
Gorlab roared. It wasn't a sound. It was a presence—something that shoved into the mind like a blade of molten thought. To mortals, it was madness. To the Slayer, it was a target.
The daemon launched itself skyward, wings wide, then plummeted—axe raised, body wreathed in burning glyphs.
And as Gorlab crashed down like a meteor, Slayer grappled onto him moving upwards. Straight through the rising fire. Spun midair. Kicked off the daemon's horn and landed behind the monster few moments after it slammed into the crater with force of a giant bomb.
The Bloodthister swiftly twisted, spinning his barbed whip in a vicious arc. The barbs of his whip of hatred shrieked across the air. The Slayer moved and fired into the daemon's hip. Then moved again and fired again into the rib.
The whip snapped—missed. Too slow.
The axe rose, howling with a pulse like a heart that hated life. Gorlab lifted it in both hands and began the arc—the Slayer meathooked to his forearm. Climbed it.
Boots hit the daemon's wrist. The axe stalled for thar moment. With one more step he planted a boot into Gorlab's bicep, vaulted off—and fired. The blast caught the daemon beneath the eye. The monster reeled, half-blind, staggered by pain.
Then came the breath.
[Overdrive²]
The world turned slow. Slayer moved faster. Faster than sound. He moved like lighting.
Gorlab exhaled, and a cone of inferno roared from his maw, incinerating everything before him. Even the stone screamed as it vaporized. But too Slayer who moved at lightning speed it was all too slow. He'd seen the tell. Violet aura over the Doom Slayer and Lucifer's Bane as he locked into Overdrive. He moved in a blur dodging the entire flaming sequence.
[Onslaught²]
He dropped from the smoke like a blade. Fired once. The shot split the daemon's fire in half. He fired again. This one hit bone. The daemon's breath halted, broken by the sheer kinetic and arcane force.
Sixteen times the power to each shot.
Then the whip moved. Again. A fast hook-strike—short, deceptive. The Slayer ducked under—barely. A searing line traced across his shoulderplate. He didn't stop. He ran straight into the daemon's shadow, leapt, slammed a boot against Gorlab's knee, and fired up into the gut. A roar answered. The daemon stumbled. But it wasn't over.
Gorlab punched the ground. The world broke. A ring of bloodfire erupted outward. Faultlines cracked wide. Earth crumbled. The Slayer fired downward into the beast's forearm mid-slam, then used the recoil to vault out of the blast radius. He landed on a jagged spike of stone as the ground gave way.
Gorlab charged again. The whip lashed. The axe followed. A dozen overlapping arcs of death. The Slayer wove between them. Each near-miss seared the edges of his armor. Sparks sprayed his visor. He ducked. Fired. Meathooked. Fired again. The Axe of Blind Fury came down in a vertical cleave. He rolled forward, shoved the barrel of Lucifer's Bane into Gorlab's thigh, and pulled the trigger.
Flesh ruptured. The daemon staggered, dripping magma-blood.
The Slayer rose. He stepped forward. One foot in front of the other.
Lucifer's Bane hissed as effects of Overdrive faded. Steam lifted from its vents. Smoke curled from the barrels.
Gorlab stepped back. Then roared again—louder, this time. Louder than thunder. Louder than reason. It wasn't fear. But it wasn't confidence, either. His body convulsed. The wound from Lucifer's Bane smoked but did not bleed—fire ran in his veins now. He raised his head, eyes like molten brass. The earth cracked beneath him, and the air broke apart in layers.
Flames surged outward in a spiral, howling with human voices. The Warp rift pulsed. Chains of hallucination writhed across the minds of every mortal on the field.
The Slayer heard nothing.
Gorlab lifted the Axe of Blind Fury, its head dripping with hate-fire, and swung wide—left, right, overhead.
Each swing threw an arc of searing fire shaped like the dead.
Slayer sprinted through the first arc, ducked under the second. The third came vertical—he planted one boot, fired both barrels mid-leap, and launched himself through the rising heat. A smell of iron and something older. Grapple lashed to Gorlab's shoulder—he vaulted, twisted midair, and rammed the Doomblade across the daemon's jaw.
Bone snapped like ceramic. Gorlab reeled and roared—no pain, only wrath. He dropped the axe low and scraped it along the ground. The blade ignited the floor, vomiting a wall of twisting flame.
Slayer meathooked the dragging edge and used the momentum—climbing the arc as if it were a ladder. Fire chased him, nearly caught the soles of his boots. He launched off the axe's midsection and punched through the smoke veil. Gorlab's arm rose to meet him.
Too slow.
Both barrels buried a twin shot into the daemon's bicep as pump action was pulled, carving open heat-blistered sinew. The Slayer landed behind him. Gorlab twisted, whip raised. The Barbed Whip of Hatred screamed into motion, faster than before—its curve irregular, alive.
The Slayer snapped left. The tip missed his back by inches and cracked a boulder in two behind him. He used the opening. Grapple hooked Gorlab's neck—he reeled in like a missile, booted the spine once, then drove the Doomblade in hard. Metal sang against daemonic bone.
Gorlab howled.
His whip reeled back like a serpent.
The air tensed. The whip moved in rhythmic arcs, too smooth to be muscle—too cruel to be random. A trap.
Slayer waited for the second loop. Then stepped forward instead of back. Grapple flung wide left—his body snapped out of the whip's trajectory and slammed into Gorlab's side during recoil. Doomblade stabbed upward, found the throat.
Gorlab staggered. His left leg buckled. He caught himself with one clawed hand.
Then he spun.
A whirlwind of axe and screams. The wind howled with faces. The spin carved a crater. Slayer went vertical—grapple fired to a burning piece of rebar lodged in broken terrain. He soared, hung midair above the storm. Heat licked his boots.
Then he fell. Lucifer's Bane led the way.
He crashed into Gorlab's head as the rotation ended, the barrels driving into the temple like a guillotine. One pull of the trigger. One blast. A geyser of gore. Gorlab dropped to one knee. The warp screamed with him. And then—he stabbed himself. His hand—still thick with smoke—plunged the Axe of Blind Fury into his own chest.
The blade vanished. It didn't harm him—it entered him.
Daemonic veins turned black. Fire turned white. His horns split and regrew in seconds. Spines erupted from his back, twitching like insects. His skull split at the jawline and reformed into a crown of bone, ragged with gore.
The Greater daemon rose.
Twice the size. Half the mind.
Pure, unfiltered annihilation. The Slayer reloaded on instinct—movement born of ritual more than thought.
Gorlab charged.
A blur of motion. More arms than a body should hold—each claw and blade shifting, spitting, raking. It was a storm of limbs, a hurricane of killing.
Slayer ducked one, parried another with the Doomblade, took a graze across his pauldron that could crack ceramite. He answered in kind. Grapple lashed, pulled him sideways to avoid a pincer swipe. He skated across the gravel, used the inertia—dove into a kneeling slide under a chain-blade elbow, and fired both barrels up into Gorlab's gut.
The shot didn't stagger the daemon anymore. Gorlab's head split open, revealing a ring of fanged mouths—each screamed a different frequency. The sound peeled paint from rock. Guardsmen downwind began clawing at their ears, bleeding from their eyes.
[Berserk]
Slayer ran through the pressure. Lucifer's Bane snapped open—Meathook caught one of the mouth-rings and ripped it free. Gorlab shrieked with the voice of a volcano.
The Slayer leapt, twisted midair, drove doomblade into one of the shoulder-spines. Blood erupted, but it sprayed upward—foul, boiling, acidic.
He dropped free before it splashed. Gorlab reached down. His hand spanned the ground like a guillotine. One clawed palm seized the Slayer mid-dash—fingers locking around his torso like a god closing its fist. But the Slayer's arms were free.And so was his Super Shotgun.
[Onslaught²]
One point-blank super shotgun blast to the eye with four times the power. BOOM. Gorlab screamed and flung him like a stone.
Slayer hit the mountainside hard enough to crater. Rubble buried him. Silence. Then movement. The hand burst out of the stone. Doomblade in one hand. Lucifer's Bane in the other. He charged.
[Overdrive²]
Gorlab's roar split the air as he drove the Axe of Blind Fury into the ground. The ground trembled, a violent quake that seemed to shudder through the very fabric of reality itself.
The Slayer remained unstoppable. He grappled to Gorlab's shoulder as the daemon charged, axe raised high. Gorlab swung—axe first, a flaming arc that tore the air apart. The Slayer, fast as lightning, dodged the axe and fired his Super Shotgun straight at Gorlab's face again with a twin shot. The explosion sent the daemon reeling, but it was only a moment's hesitation. The Slayer was already moving again.
Gorlab growled in fury, now bringing his axe down for another attack. The daemon's axe slashed in three brutal arcs, each one forming a deadly fire-ring in the air. The Slayer anticipated it. He waited.
As the first arc came crashing toward him, he dodged the firestorm, narrowly avoiding the blade. The Slayer moved behind Gorlab, firing point-blank into the daemon's back, sending a shockwave of gore and fire into the air.
Gorlab roared, seething with anger, and lashed out with his whip. The whip followed the Slayer's every movement, a vengeful streak of flame that tracked his earlier grapples. The Slayer broke line of sight, rolling to the side, and then grappled to Gorlab's leg. Before the daemon could react, the Slayer fired a blast into the daemon's knee joint, shattering it and sending the beast into a lurching fall.
Gorlab's strength returned in a fury, and he swung the axe again. He threw the weapon high into the air, and the Slayer saw the movement too late—the whip lashed out, trapping him. The Slayer canceled his grapple mid-flight, dropped low to the ground, and fired a shot straight into Gorlab's leg as the axe boomeranged back toward the daemon's hand. The impact was explosive, but the daemon barely flinched. He reached for his axe, already preparing the next strike.
But the Slayer wasn't going to give him the chance.
The battlefield was a furnace of rage, flames licking at the edges of the battle. The Slayer didn't grapple the same place twice. He switched his points of attack—shoulder, knee, spine—each grapple precise, each movement deliberate. The flame bursts that followed him could have melted steel, but the Slayer moved faster. The daemon began to burn at the touch, the recoil from each failed grapple scorching the Praetor Suit, but he kept moving.
Gorlab's fury reached its peak. His Axe of Blind Fury swept through the air in a furious arc, flames trailing behind it like a comet. The Slayer didn't flinch. He grappled onto the daemon's back, pulling himself up as the axe came crashing down, narrowly missing him again.
[Berserk]
Before the daemon could react, the Slayer shot the Meathook with precision, hooking it into Gorlab's face and then slammed the daemon's face into the ground with bone-shattering force as he came down. The impact left the daemon dazed, its eyes wide as the Slayer ripped the Meathook free.
Gorlab roared in pain, swinging his massive axe in a wild arc, trying to dislodge the Slayer. But the Slayer was already there. Faster. Unrelenting. With savage precision, the Slayer reached down, gripping Gorlab's own axe, and swung it high. The daemon struggled to stand, gasping, too slow. The Slayer decapitated him in one fluid motion, the blade cutting through the daemon's throat with brutal ease.
Gorlab's head tumbled away, his body crumpling as the power of the Axe of Blind Fury faded. The battlefield fell silent, the blood of the daemon pooling beneath the Slayer's feet. The Slayer stood over the dead daemon, the echo of his violent end ringing through the Immaterium.
The Greater Daemon's mangled body exploded and then vanished in flash of red hot smoke and fired.
[Gorlab the Bloodfree—Terminated]
Silence had enveloped the landscape at that moment....
Then from edge of the crater, Logan Grimnar stepped forward, armor scorched, thunder hammer slung across his back. His Terminator-clad Wolf Guard followed, weapons raised. Assault cannons spun with tension. Cyclone launchers locked in place. Storm bolters aimed dead center.
The Doom Slayer stood still. Lucifer's Bane hung heavy in his hands. He began to reload.
Click. Shell in.
Click. Shell in.
Grimnar removed his helmet. He looked younger than his legends—sharper eyes, long dark blonde hair and full beard. Only four years as the Great Wolf, and already marked by gods and monsters.
"Are you enemy," Grimnar said, voice hard, "or friend?"
"Neither," came Sefirot's voice from the Praetor suit.
Grimnar narrowed his eyes. "Then why raise your weapon?"
"Because they raised theirs."
He looked to his Wolf Guard. Their fingers tightened on triggers.
"And if they fire?"
"Then he will slaughter them just like he slaughtered the daemons."
The tension sharpened. Bolter muzzles flared with pre-ignition heat.
Grimnar spoke again, slower this time. "And if they don't?"
"Then he will keep the slaughter for the Blood God's forces."
Silence.
Grimnar nodded. "Stand down."
The Wolf Guard hesitated, then lowered their weapon. Grimnar stepped closer, terminator armor boots cracking the scorched earth.
"Are you willing to wait?" he asked. "Give me time to do my duty. Then we can talk."
The Slayer didn't move at first. Then lowered Lucifer's Bane.
"He agrees."
Grimnar nodded, satisfied. "Then hear me, warrior. I am Logan Grimnar, Great Wolf of the Rout, High King of Fenris, chosen of Russ. And I believe we need to talk."
The Slayer said nothing. But he nodded once. That was enough.
The sun rose slow, blood-colored and bruised behind blackened peaks. It was a weak light—filtered through smoke and warpfire haze—but it came still, stubborn as a survivor. The mountain was cratered. Burnt metal steamed. Frost clung to ruined stone where psychic storms had blown cold.
From the southern ridgelines, drop-ships began to arrive—Valkyries, Stormravens, a Thunderbolt squadron roaring escort over broken skies. Vox channels came alive again, full of choked static and clipped orders. Relief was inbound. Aid. Reinforcements. A moment too late—but not useless.
Across the battlefield, surviving Imperial forces moved fast. Kill-teams swept the high passes, chasing down cultists and broken daemons that had fled the collapse. Sentinel walkers stomped through ash, infrared scanners lit like bonfires. Meltaguns hummed. One traitor was caught crawling from a crack in the rocks. He lasted five seconds.
The Space Wolves, meanwhile, had turned to a grim task.
They moved among the dead. Wolf Guard lifted shattered plate from rubble. Blood Claws dug through slagged hulls to pull out half-melted bodies of their kin. The priests of the chapter marked armor sites for retrieval—some bodies were too far gone to lift by hand. Fenrisian chants sounded low and steady through the mist, war-songs now turned elegies.
Near the makeshift medicae tents, it was worse.
Guardsmen sat slumped against burned rock, eyes vacant, some weeping, some silent. Others thrashed under restraining webbing—screaming at things that weren't there. The medicae worked in silence, administering stimm and neural stabilizers, trying to get answers. Trying to understand.
The medicae tents were bursting. Rows of cots overflowed. Men lined the floors, the crates, the mud. Some bled. Most didn't. Their wounds were deeper—quiet, frantic, twitching in rhythms no body should know. Their eyes tracked things that weren't there. Their mouths moved without sound, or else too much sound—scraps of litanies, laughter, weeping prayers.
Medicae shouted orders. Some gave up. Others tried restraint straps, amnesia drafts, field-soaked incense.
And still the same question kept surfacing, again and again, across a hundred throats:
"What did we see?"
"What was that thing?"
"Why Emperor let that exist?"
None could answer.
Until boots crunched gravel. Not a medicae. Not a commissar. Gorrulf came through the tent flaps, cloak burned, he wore no helmet, armor scorched, blood—his and others'—soaking the wolf-fur on his shoulders. His braid was loose. His face unreadable.
He looked over the sea of men.
"Ya saw daemons," he said, voice rough as iron dragged on stone. "Not a tale. Not a metaphor. Not a vision born of stress. A real one."
The tent quieted. Even the ones trembling held their breath.
Gorrulf took a few steps in, his shadow cast by the braziers long and wide.
"I ken ye came here with yer catechisms in yer head. Believed daemons were just sins with teeth. Symbols. Punishments. A thing far from men, from real dirt, real sky. Some o' ye thought maybe daemons were what happens when faith fails."
He pointed out to the ash-gray skyline.
"But now ye seen one walk. With axe and wings and flame. Ye seen it scream without lungs, burn without fire. That weren't a parable. That weren't a test of spirit. That were hate, made into bone and iron. Rage that walks. That tears tanks in half and grins at the blood."
Vek among the guardsmen broke into choking sobs. Visions of all that died...Juno... flashed in his mind in blood red. Two medicae tried to calm him. Gorrulf didn't stop.
"On Fenris we say: the fire-spirit is real when it burns yer hall. Same here. Some o' ye prayed like it would listen. Some o' ye thought it would leave if ye didn't believe in it. Like it's yer fear makes it true. Bah. It ain't that simple."
He knelt near a cluster of Guardsmen, his voice lowering—not soft, but tired. Honest.
"What ye saw… is like if the skies split open, and the stars sang wrong. Like if the Eye turned sideways and Primarch Leman Russ Himself came screamin' out of it with a blade in both hands and eyes that never blink. Would ye still say ye knew Him?"
Silence.
"That's what a daemon is to Hell. Not a messenger. Not a servant. A fragment. A shard. Like watchin' a thunderstorm bleed. It don't talk because talkin's for creatures with doubt. It don't stop because stoppin's for beasts with mercy."
He stood again.
"Ye thought Hell was a place. It's not just that. It's a pressure. A weight that crushes worlds in the warp. Across Imperium. And sometimes, it leaks through."
A chaplain nearby crossed himself. His hand shook.
"And aye… the Emperor knows. We all do. We just don't talk of it about it so men don't break under that weight. But now ye seen it. And if ye keep breathin', if ye keep fightin'? Then ye'll be the ones who tell others not to blink when it comes."
He turned, walking away into the smoke. Behind him, the madness in the tents didn't stop—but it slowed. The weeping softened. The moaning dimmed. A few sat up. A few whispered oaths of prayer and revenge. And outside, the sun finally rose over the collapsed bridge collapsed in their battle. With it, collapsed hopes of any survivors that had escaped the wrath of chaos in Primus and now fighting of a way to make their escape to Secundus.
The battlefield was quieter now, save for the moan of damaged engines and the distant crack of munitions being disposed of. Overhead, the sky bled slowly into dawn—no glorious sunrise, just a pale light behind a veil of ash. Dropships descended on thunderous grav-wash, scattering dust and wreckage. Lines of infantry spread across the ruin, hunting what was left of the Khornate rabble.
Doom Slayer moved through it like a revenant. Smoke coiled around his boots. His armor still hissed at the heat. Blood crusted over the grounds. He passed shattered Chimeras and burned-out Hellhounds without pause.
Then—motion.
A figure, small beside the armored carcasses, wrapped in crimson and steel. An Adeptus Mechanicus tech-adept stood alone in the debris. His face was half augmetic, half human—if barely. Clawed mechadendrites writhed behind him, servo-limbs humming in thoughtless ritual. A red photolens blinked, whirred, and focused on the Slayer.
He didn't speak. Just stared.
From the fragments of those he'd killed, the Slayer had felt the shapes of these ones: Tech-priests of Mars. Machine God cultists. Builders of engines, keepers of lost data, servants of a Machine-God and they worshiped the Emperor as the Avatar of this Machine God, they called him the Omnissiah. They wired flesh to steel and called it worship.
Their goals: maintain the Imperium's war engines; recover lost STC fragments; reclaim ancient technologies buried on dead worlds. They wire flesh to steel not for power, but for purity—purging weakness through circuitry and ritual. This one tilted its head, like a drone tracking threat. He extended one mechadendrite—not in violence, but analysis.
Doom Slayer stepped forward. The mechadendrite retracted.
Then boots hit rubble behind him.
"Slayer."
It was a voice heavy with ceramite and command. One of the Wolf Guard—terminator-clad, half a head taller than most, blood still drying on his gauntlets. His helm was clipped to his belt, revealing weathered features, ice-burn scars, and one bionic eye glowing faint blue.
"The Great Wolf summons ye. He waits in his war-tent. No one else speaks, not yet. Just him. And he says you'll want to hear what he has to say."
The Slayer gave the tech-adept a last look—then turned, following the giant through ash and silence.
The war-tent of the Rout was a structure of armored plates and frost-hide, raised with ceramite pylons hammered into scorched earth. Braziers burned low, thick with pine-resin and oils. Bones hung from chains—wolf, xenos, traitor. At its center stood a long slab of rockcrete scarred by blades and rounds, now serving as table, altar, and throne all in one. In front of it layed hololithic table which replayed the battle on the bridge.
Logan Grimnar waited alone.
He stood without helmet, runic axe resting against his shoulder. His expression was not warlike—nor at ease. Blue eyes like storm-wracked sky studied the Slayer as he entered, followed by the great green armored shape of the Praetor suit.
"Is it true, what the metal spirit said to Gorrulf? The enemy hunts for you and that you aren't from this reality."
The Slayer didn't answer.
"It is."
Grimnar's gaze shifted—just barely—to the Praetor.
"You speak for him, then?"
"I am his voice. His diplomat. His execution algorithm. He requires none of your words, but I process them anyway."
Grimnar snorted. "And what are you? Warp-sick AI? A Men-of-Iron relic in new paint?"
"I am Sefirot of the Great Maykrs. Not a metal spirit. Not one of your inferior machines. Not your enemy—yet."
Grimnar stepped forward, slow. The war-braziers made his armor glow like a volcano god in waiting.
"Yet. That's a word I don't like in strangers."
"Then earn something else."
Grimnar's teeth showed, sharp wolf fangs exposed, not quite a grin. "You've got bold code for a ghost in a tin. You were warned to stay out of the battle."
The Slayer didn't answer.
"We weren't warned. Words we transmitted. We intercepted. He overruled."
Grimnar's voice hardened. "Someone took Gorrulf's vox. Mid-battle."
"It was malfunctioning."
"You disabled it. You hacked it."
"Affirmative."
Grimnar's knuckles cracked as he clenched the edge of the hololithic table. "You stole operational command of my men."
"We corrected the trajectory of their death."
The tent pulsed red—warning glyphs from the maps flaring, then fading. Slayer remained still. Sefirot's eye-lenses glowed.
"He wished to make it a game. A clean simulation of war tactics. No waste. No stupidity. Your line was fracturing. Your flanks were spread across too many vectors. A death spiral. Inefficient. Wasteful."
Grimnar's voice dropped low. "We are not your simulation. We are the Rout. We bleed real. If you wanted to intervene you said have done so personally. We saw the power. You think if he'd stepped in sooner, no one would have died?"
"Correct."
"Then why didn't he?"
Sefirot paused.
"Because he is not against dying. He is against dying stupidly."
Grimnar straightened, shoulders wide in Terminator plate.
"Elaborate."
"To fight is the right of any living organism. To die is a probable endpoint. We do not interfere with struggle. That is sacred. But to die because a line was misdrawn on a tactical slate? Because a commander bled out his vox-codes to the wrong flank? That is not war. That is accounting error."
He stepped toward the holo-table. One projection flared up: the bridge collapse.
"He let your warriors struggle. They earned their dead. But he restructured the field to prevent waste. He seeks only powerful deaths. To die in power."
Grimnar's jaw locked. His eyes didn't leave the display.
"You call it 'Powerful' when we lose squads in the ash chasing warp-shades?"
"Yes."
"You measure cost in probabilities. I measure it in names."
"Then you are emotional to point of being crippled. He is functional."
Grimnar turned slowly, full weight of his gaze now leveled on the Slayer.
"Then function this, stranger—if you ever hijack a vox on my field again, I'll teach you the difference between leadership and command. And it won't be with words."
The Slayer stepped forward.
Deliberate.
The air thickened.
They stood within killing distance. The firelight flicked across battered armor. Neither spoke. Neither blinked.
Then—
"He accepts the terms."
Grimnar's hand eased off the hammer.
"But answer this. Why do you fight? Really. If you're this calculating… why even care about how men die?"
The Praetor's voice lost its digital sharpness for a moment. It didn't soften—but narrowed.
"Because the Blood God wants them to die screaming in pieces, thinking it meant nothing. He prefers they die with clarity."
Grimnar took that in.
And nodded once.
"A hard line to walk. Between mercy and interference."
"He does not walk it. He cuts through it."
Grimnar turned back to the table.
"No more games then. If you're with us, you're in it real. No override. No handler logic. No leashes."
"Confirmed."
Then Grimnar spoke low: "I don't believe another reality thing you claim. But I saw what you did. Tore a Herald apart like it was parchment. Beheaded a Bloodthirster. We could have done that too, me and my brothers. But it wouldn't have been a game. Even the old Primarchs couldn't kill like that. They banished. You—erased. No echo. No warp-scream. Just silence."
He faced the Slayer again.
"What are you made of?"
The Slayer didn't answer.
Sefirot did.
"He is the Doom Slayer. The slayer of Hell. He does not banish daemons. He ends them. Permanently. No return. No resurrection. It is why they fear him."
Grimnar paced once around the table.
"If that's true, then you're a weapon. A singularity. And weapons… need direction."
"Incorrect. He does not follow. He hunts. And for now, your war and his game intersect."
That hung in the air.
Grimnar folded his arms.
"So that's what this is. A game to him."
"Yes. A campaign. A purge. He plays it because he chooses to. Because someone must."
Grimnar's voice dropped. "Then what do you want? Why even bother talking to us if you are so mighty? What do you want for us?"
"Guns."
"What?"
"Guns. Ammunition. Supplies. Heavy ordnance. Doom Slayer is eternal, but weapons are not. You give us tools. We give you a promise that they will only be pointed at chaos and not your men until this campaign ends."
Grimnar's face twisted. "That's mercenary talk. You want to join the Rout's war, you pay the rite."
The silence in the command tent had turned metallic. Gorrulf stood outside. The Wolf Guard did not enter. Grimnar held the war-map in his gaze but no longer read it.
Sefirot's voice emerged from within—not beside the Slayer, but through him.
"You understood it before you said it. You saw the blood trail left behind. Heralds torn like wet parchment. Bloodletters shredded before they could scream. A Bloodthirster decapitated. You know—he is right. They do not return. They do not scream. There is no echo."
Grimnar didn't reply.
"He does not banish daemons. He devours them. Every soul torn from the immaterium, he absorbs. Every warp-thing slain is another power sealed inside him."
The air in the tent changed. Braziers crackled like they feared him now. Grimnar's hands tensed. His voice turned low, grave. He asked what he should have asked a while ago.
"…Where does that strength go?"
"Into him."
That hit like a bolter report.
"He does not kill to end. He kills and consumes. And every daemon he consumes does not return to the Eye. They are annihilated. The Blood God feels this. It is why his armies come. They feel extinction when they face him. No scream, no glory, no rebirth. Only silence. Final."
Grimnar looked up. And for the first time, he was shaken. He had seen daemons die a thousand times. He had seen fellow brothers, Titans, Crusades crush armies of warpspawn. But always, always, the warp remembered. The echo came back louder. Even if takes a thousands of years for warpspawns are immortal and very things in this galaxy could cut through that immortality.
Slaying a Daemon's physical projection usually only severs its presence in reality, banishing it back into the warp. While its true essence remains unharmed, the blow to the Daemon's pride is considerable, and those that are forcibly returned to their own realm must endure the mockery and torment of their fellows until they can return to corporeal form, gather power and avenge themselves — assuming they are not simply re-absorbed by their dark gods as the price of their failure.
But this? This was erasure. And the cost…
"…How many?" he asked, voice dry.
"You've seen the dozen Heralds. The Bloodthirster. But that's only this war. Add the Citadel of Sol. The black bastions of Nekraxis. The choking vaults of Urdak. Add Hell's own fortresses burned from within."
Grimnar's breath caught in his throat. He didn't understand many words but the scale defied thought.
"The Blood God is right to feel threatened by him. What your Imperium could not kill in ten thousand years—he eats. And he grows."
Silence again. Long. Hollow.
Grimnar stepped back from the map.
And then—
"Information is energy. And I am not separate from him. Every kill, every scream, every signal—it all flows through."
The hololith flickered. Red markers swarmed the map, systems lighting with a sudden cascade of intelligence.
"Enemy commanders confirmed."
Names scrolled in burning letters:
"Commanders: Angron. Kossolax the Foresworn. Skchalick—Slayed. Hans Kho'ren. Forces: Angron's Chosen, The Foresworn, Lord Skchalick's Elites—Disbanded, Skull Takers of Hans Kho'ren, Blades of Range, The Wrath, The Clysm—Disbanded. World Eaters detachment confirmed."
"Daemonhost Covens: twenty Inner Circle cohorts, four Sanctum Guard, many unbound."
"Mutant Cohorts: Jakob's Kin – 17 Cohorts. The Unsanctified – 2 Cohorts. The Children of Garnacea – 31 Cohorts. Kith of Nihil – 4 Cohorts. Tuskgor's Tribe – 12 Cohorts. The Mentes III Migration – 10 Cohorts. Syrcnsk's Reavers – 18 Cohorts. The Stigmatus Covenant – 11 Cohorts. Other groups – estimated 55-65 Cohorts."
"Traitor Titan Legions: Legio Vulcanum II—complete. Legio Mortis—half-strength."
"Traitor Guard: Hive Militia—eighty regiments. Steel Legion—thirteen. Ash Waste units—three. Armageddon Command Guard—two companies."
"Chaos Cults: Eight Ways, True Creed, Noyade, Quietus, Justified Ancients, and more. Estimated fifty cohorts unaligned."
Grimnar stared.
Every name burned.
Every location marked.
Every force… exposed.
"This is your battlefield now. You asked what he wants. He wants only freedom to hunt. You stay out of his way. Or be counted among the hunted."
Grimnar nodded slowly. Not agreement. Not surrender. Just a warrior recognizing what had entered the saga. And that it could change the ending.