3rd POV – Agri-World, Plains of Harlon
Cult banners flapped over a grain city turned fortress. The Warp hummed in the wells. Shawn's boots hit dirt first. Mortals followed. Salamanders thundered behind them.
"Arrays forward!" he ordered.
PDF teams jogged, Null Arrays on back-rigs humming. The bubbles swelled—ten meters of "cleaner" air. Cultists screamed invectives and rushed. Basur's Drill Pulse collapsed the front wave like a rug yanked out.
"Link–4! Eight seconds!" Vulkar called. The front rank blackened as one, absorbed a mutant charge, and shoved it back. Shields locked. Boots skidded but held.
Shawn cast Null Net over the spearhead and watched illusions become pale ghosts. "Left wall is fake," he said. "Straight through."
They punched a hole. The fortress broke. No rift. No daemons. Just men and bad choices. Shawn kept the Net up for exactly six seconds, dropped it, and breathed. Shardguard popped to deflect a shotgun blast from an alley; the plate rang, vanished. He stepped, cut, stepped again. Efficient. Honest.
"City clear," Solan voxed. "Casualties minimal."
Shawn nodded once. "Next."
3rd POV – Miner's Moon, Tunnels of Lykos-3
Warp seeped through rock here. Tunnels whispered. Gravity tilted without notice.
"Harmonic Pins at the junctions," Hekor ordered. Each Pin sang; the corridors stopped lying for twenty seconds. "Move."
"Anchor Step," Tahak said. "One tile, one breath." He called the safe ground; squads touched Anchor Step, ankles locked, hips low, and moved like a machine through bad space.
Shawn stretched Lattice Tap across a chokepoint—thin silver-black line on the floor. A Genestealer scythed into it, stuttered, and stumbled as the corridor remembered itself; Serkan removed its head in a flat stroke.
A daemon engine screamed from deeper in. Vulkar and Shawn went in together. Vulkar took the brunt—burst-link eight seconds, hammer ringing; Shawn formed a Wedge, cut a vent line, then drove the tool through the engine's shrieking core. It died like a machine, not a god.
"Moon secure," Vorn intoned. "Tunnels hold."
Shawn leaned on a wall for exactly three breaths. His body shook once. Then it stopped. He pushed off and walked.
3rd POV – Space Hulk, Derelict Saint Aramiel
The Hulk was a maze of dead decks and floating shrines. Runes crawled on the walls. The air tasted like old prayers.
"Short links only," Shawn said. "No grandstanding."
The team advanced in pairs. Burst Link—six seconds to cross a cursed hall under whisper-fire, break, breathe, Link again. Shawn kept Shardguard running on the mortals, punching plates into being where splinters and darts would have taken eyes.
A daemon engine spidered down a chapel wall, oozing psalms. "Pins," Hekor said. Pin A locked the ceiling. Pin B held gravity. Vulkar smashed it off the altar. Tahak pinned a joint with a palm-edge. Shawn put the Wedge through its prayer-box. The song stopped. Silence felt like clean water.
They reached the bridge and found a budding rift—thin as parchment.
"Close it," Valen said. "Fast."
Shawn threw Chains of Binding—only two this time—and held while Vorn prayed and Solan's volley stitched the seam. The rift folded like fabric and was gone. Shawn's arms shook. He let the chains go and didn't fall.
"Done," he said, voice even.
3rd POV – Vox-Ripple
Word spread. Not officially. Vox-tales in canteens, murmurs in press-gangs, a tech-adept's quiet chant: Flameborn. Regiments sent petitions. Naval officers asked for escort. A Ministorum priest wrote a sermon about the strength of will and got away with it.
Valen watched the reports stack. "Fame is a tool," he said to Shawn. "And a target."
"Then we use it where it helps," Shawn replied. "And ignore it where it doesn't."
Eristan lifted a comm-bead. "Forge World Hekaton requests docking. They will fabricate arrays and pins if we bring refined ore from Lykos-3."
Shawn looked at Vulkar, Tahak, Basur. "We're going to Hekaton."
Basur cracked his knuckles. "And if someone tries to take our gear—"
"—we teach them to ask politely," Vulkar finished.
They laughed, tired and ready.