Since the launch of the Second Great Crusade of Mankind, the Imperium has known only victory.
The unstoppable Imperial war machine has pierced deep into the Eye of Terror itself, bringing the Emperor's wrath upon the daemonic hordes of the Immaterium. Humanity, once the prey of the Warp's predators, has now become its predator — the oppressor of Chaos, not its victim.
With stable battle lines drawn, the loyalist legions have established a permanent foothold within the Eye. The passage between Holy Terra and the accursed Dark Side is now firmly in Imperial hands. Through this corridor, auxiliary expeditionary forces shuttle tirelessly, aiding the lost worlds of the Dark Age and bringing them back into the Imperial fold.
Survivors of those long-lost worlds now breathe freely under the banner of the Aquila. Across a million planets, statues of Warmaster Dukel rise—not by decree, but from the spontaneous gratitude of the masses. His name is not forced upon them; it is exalted.
The ambitions of the Traitor Legions and the Fallen Sons lie shattered. Every theater of war across the galaxy resounds with only one truth—the supremacy of the Warmaster.
From high-ranking generals to lowly hive-scrubbers, tears brimmed in the eyes of Imperial citizens. Perhaps Dukel's crusade had not yet changed their personal lot—but in their hearts, they had gained something far more precious:
Hope.
Hope, the light of the coming golden age.
Hope, the true inheritance of humanity's rightful dominion.
No matter who you are—a living saint or a child from the outer fringes of the Segmentum Pacificus—none should ever forget the golden dream that once fell, now rising anew.
Long live the Emperor! Long live the Warmaster!
— Anna, Special Field Correspondent, Terra Vox
Dukel folded the newspaper and placed it silently on his desk.
Unlike some of his brother Primarchs, Dukel paid particular attention to the shaping of public opinion. This wasn't a matter of vanity but a matter of unity. With the implementation of the Imperium's expanding noospheric communication network, trillions of citizens across millions of worlds could now be bound together by a common cause—and common truth.
In the dark past of the Horus Heresy, betrayal often stemmed from ignorance, not malice. Soldiers and citizens took up arms without knowing who they fought, or why. Entire worlds had once hailed Horus as Emperor, simply because no one had told them otherwise.
But now, propaganda and truth could merge in a righteous cause.
The words in the newspaper, though dramatized in places, largely reflected reality. The crusade was succeeding. The dark fog of the Warp was slowly being dispelled. Worlds were being reclaimed. Humanity was rising.
The forbidden knowledge of the Martian Mechanicum had been unleashed—under strict Magos supervision—and the might of the Omnissiah's machines had turned the tide of battle. The Warmaster now commanded unending legions, battle-tested fleets, and a peerless array of war machines. Fewer burdens fell directly upon his shoulders.
It would have been reasonable to rest.
But Dukel was no man of rest. Nor was he ever meant to be.
Even now, instead of taking solace in his triumphs, he had returned to Terra. There was still work to be done.
"Your Excellency," came the metallic voice of a tech-priest.
Dukel turned his gaze from the folded paper. Gathered around him in the Primarch's command chamber were many of the Imperium's greatest minds—Magos, Arch-Engineers, and Adeptus Mechanicus elite. Their optics flickered, mechadendrites coiled and uncoiled as they awaited his command.
The Warmaster rose from his seat.
"Then let us begin," he said. "For the Imperium."
With those words, the assembly stirred into motion.
Their destination: the Sanctum Imperialis—the heart of the Imperial Palace.
When Dukel arrived at the Throne Hall, towering over the delegation of robed scholars and data-magi, the Custodes and Imperial Guard standing watch immediately snapped to full alert. They parted without hesitation, falling into defensive positions.
But their vigilance was not against Dukel or his entourage.
It was against what they were about to awaken.
Waldo, one of the ranking stewards, looked upon the Warmaster with conflicted eyes. He respected him. Feared him. Resented the way Dukel disrupted the order of the Throne Room with each new scheme.
But he could not stop him.
No one could.
Because each time Dukel came to the Golden Throne, it was in pursuit of the same goal:
To free the Emperor.
Hundreds of servo-automata moved through the chamber, activating long-dormant machines. Ancient systems roared to life. A massive archway, recessed in the rear of the Throne Hall, began to glow with impossible energy. Sigils of the Dark Age of Technology flickered into visibility.
The priests and engineers moved like dancers in a ritual—each step part of a sequence planned millennia ago. The archway was not just a gateway.
It was the Emperor's final dream.
The Imperial Webway.
The gate's activation sequence was nearing completion. Warning lights blinked red-gold. Instruments screamed in binaric tones.
Sisters of Battle checked their bolters and power armor. Doom Troopers raised their twin-barreled shotguns. The commissar of the mortal auxilia blew a shrill whistle as formation discipline was enforced with brutal precision.
And at the very front stood Dukel, his flame-wreathed sword burning like a beacon of defiance.
Beyond the Webway arch stood a vast, seething tide of daemons—an endless horde, their number enough to drown Terra a thousand times over.
Their sheer presence disturbed even the Emperor, and Dukel—Champion of Mankind and Warmaster of the Imperium—dared not act recklessly within the Webway.
One misstep would mean apocalypse. The end of Terra.
Thus, only after launching the Second Great Crusade, and striking a crippling blow against Chaos, did Dukel prepare to open this gate with full resolve.
He would cleanse the Webway.
He would reclaim the Emperor's lost vision.
He would unbind the psychic chains that held the Master of Mankind in eternal suffering.
The machines rumbled to life.
Each was a relic of the Emperor's own designs, long entombed in the dust of millennia, now awakened to fulfill their ancient purpose. Their energy tore through the void in violent pulses, painting space with halos of roiling, unnatural color.
Before the immense archway—hovering between the real and unreal—stood Dukel. His eyes pierced the veil beyond, unflinching.
"Your Highness," came the voice of Magos Gris, the Fabricator General of Mars. He presided over the entire operation personally. "All systems report optimal. Awaiting your command."
Dukel raised his great blade high. His crimson cloak, soaked in the blood of heretics and xenos alike, billowed behind him.
"Brothers!" he called out. "Take up arms not merely for duty—but for loyalty! Bleed for the living! Fight for our shattered dreams, and the hatred that binds Mankind eternal!"
"If you do not yet know what you fight for—I shall tell you!"
"In the age I forge, the stars are within our grasp. The galaxy is ours to command. My dreams will become reality—and your hopes will find shape beneath the swing of my blade!"
"Whether in the light of our glory or in the shadows where no foe dares tread—our enemies shall fear our name! No one shall stand before us!"
Thunder cracked as if Terra itself roared in response.
The machines exploded with blinding energy, tearing through the dimensional veil in a single, rending instant.
A brilliant, kaleidoscopic rift appeared.
The Webway.
Once the Emperor's most daring ambition—a labyrinthine path through the stars, safe from the Warp. A way to build a future for humanity.
Now? It was overrun.
Warp-beasts. Blasphemies. Daemons by the legion.
And yet… it had been opened again.
As the seal broke, the screams came—mad howls, insidious whispers.
Thousands upon thousands of daemons clawed through the breach, their wings beating madly, their fangs slavering for flesh.
A wave of the immaterium surged forward—capable of engulfing Terra whole.
"For the Emperor! For the Warmaster!"
The loyalists roared as one. A warcry that echoed across time itself.
Blood flowed through the Webway like it had ten thousand years ago. But then, it had been the desperate cries of mankind. Now? It was the funeral bell for the damned.
Dukel strode forward—undaunted—into the daemon tide.
Majestic and terrible, he led the charge.
Behind him, soldiers felt their courage swell like a storm. Their dread faded. Only purpose remained.
The Knight Houses followed.
"In the name of the Warmaster, the Lords of the Stormlands pledge our blades!"
These were not ordinary war engines. They were the newest generation of Knight Mecha—augmented beyond all prior standards.
Neural interfaces fused man and machine. When a Knight activated, pilot and engine became one.
Thrusters flared. Mecha surged forward at breakneck speed.
Daemons perished in droves, crushed, scorched, and cleaved, their warped forms strewn across the forgotten pathways of the Webway.
The Doom Slayer advanced.
Twin-barreled shotgun in hand, he was a whirlwind of fire and gore.
None knew how to kill daemons like him.
None enjoyed it more.
The moment he entered the fray, daemons exploded in flame. He shattered skulls, tore out spines, and devoured even their warp essence.
His crimson blade left burning scars in the Webway's pale mists.
Human gunfire followed, cutting down wave after wave with relentless precision.
The portal to the Webway had opened once more—but no longer would it serve as a door for daemons to feast upon the innocent.
Now, it was retribution.
The rage of mankind burned like wildfire.
The demon tide began to break.
The thunder of bolters and roar of plasma bombs echoed across the impossible architecture.
Blasphemers fell, their limbs torn asunder, their ichor raining down like poisoned sleet.
Warp-fog dissipated under humanity's wrath.
For ten thousand years, the Webway had been a domain of nightmares. Corpses littered its paths. The Emperor's dream had become a tomb of horrors.
The daemons had waited—longed—for this moment.
The final seal broken. Terra ripe for conquest.
To gorge on the flesh of mortals. To drown humanity in terror and despair.
But the gate had not opened for their triumph.
It had opened for vengeance.
And vengeance had a name.
Dukel.
The Warmaster.
Humanity surged forth—undaunted, unbreakable.
No force could stop them.
Bound together by a single will, they shattered stone and tore through the Warp's filth.
The mightiest of the daemon horde, a hulking bloodbeast in service to Khorne, barreled forward with terrifying speed.
It roared the Blood God's name, claws ready to rip mortals apart.
But mid-stride, it faltered.
It was already dead.
Its upper body slid from its lower half, cleanly severed.
Dukel had passed it by without a second glance.
His blade—gleaming red with daemon blood—cut through the beast like air.
The creature collapsed, bisected and lifeless.
Its kin howled, charging to avenge it.
But they, too, would fall.
And fall they did.
The Warmaster's blade struck with impossible speed.
In a single breath, it pierced through daemonflesh. And as the blade withdrew, torrents of ichor followed—rivers of blood born from the raw fury of war.
Dukel's sword was no mere weapon. It embodied the highest principles of energy manipulation, channeling the Emperor's forgotten sciences. It absorbed and unraveled the essence of the Warp-spawned fiends—extracting their corrupt cores from within before their flesh even collapsed.
Silence came before death.
Then, with a scream lost to the void, their forms were snuffed out—gone as if they had never existed.
From the far end of the battlefield, a reanimated corpse lurched forward—bloated, hunched, and obscene. Its flesh was riddled with putrefaction, pulsing with virulent pathogens. It moved with speed that defied the laws of inertia, propelled by the festering will of Grandfather Nurgle.
This creature was suicide given form.
Whether it struck or fell, the plagues within would burst outward—seeking human lungs, human blood, and human death.
Even from meters away, the stench was unbearable. Maggots writhed in translucent flesh. Its pus-filled belly bulged and shuddered.
But before it reached the human line, it was consumed.
A crimson firestorm ignited—like a living drake made of flame—and enveloped the daemon in a howling inferno.
The warp-borne pathogens screamed.
For a brief moment, each strain of plague howled as it died, their microscopic cries vanishing in the blaze. Within seconds, they were reduced to wisps of harmless vapor—smoke adrift on a battlefield that offered no sanctuary.
Over the scorched remains stepped a figure of wrath and steel.
The Doom Slayer.
Encased in armor, his iron boots crushed bone and ash with each step. He advanced without pause, shotgun in hand, eyes like twin furnaces beneath his helm.
No one killed daemons more efficiently.
No one enjoyed it more.
Human firepower surged behind him. Bolters, plasma, melta, and flamer volleys saturated the battlefield. The daemons' warped physiology, once impervious to reason, now met weapons that exceeded their limits.
And still, more of the Imperium's warriors surged into the Webway.
The Catachan Destroyer Corps had yet to fully arrive, but one had already entered the fray.
Sly Marbo.
Encased in experimental Destroyer-class mechanized armor, he had waded into the daemon horde alone.
Without hesitation, he carved through the frontline—like a force of nature made flesh.
"AAAAAAAAA!" his battle-cry thundered—not silent, not subtle, but so raw and primal that only the strong-willed could truly hear its fury.
Beside him stood Devona, once captain of the Catachan Jungle Fighters, now commander of Destroyer One Corps.
She watched with weary admiration as Marbo's armor deployed its powered blade from a mechanized arm. With each swing, bodies were severed, and Warp-tainted viscera painted the obsidian floor of the Webway.
The daemons screamed—but their cries were hollow beside the rage of mankind.
Those few monstrosities that escaped the initial bombardments found no reprieve.
The Loyalist Legions were upon them.
They swept forward in unbroken formation—a living tide of steel and fury.
There was no mercy. No hesitation.
Daemon bodies were torn apart. Their gnarled tongues—lined with serrated barbs—were ripped from their gaping maws. Their cloudy, multi-eyed gazes were gouged from malformed sockets.
Then their twitching remains were crushed beneath ceramite boots.
The ground was littered with shredded flesh and shattered bone.
Rotten meat and Warp corruption—left behind as a warning.
There would be no retreat.
Only annihilation.
—•——•——•——•——•——•—
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