"Unseal the gates and let them loose."
Dante remained at his tactical post, though the grid squares and combat units left for him to command were dwindling by the second.
The outer defenses of the Arx Angelicum had been utterly breached. The mortal auxiliaries assigned to the forward lines had executed their duties with supreme distinction, fighting a desperate delay before falling back alongside the Astartes into the secondary killzones.
In Dante's tactical estimation, the shrinking perimeter was not entirely a disadvantage. A narrower frontline meant the concentration ratio between opposing forces at the point of contact actually favored the defense.
It was a simple, brutal truth of siege warfare: the surface area for engagement was physically finite.
"Send them out here," Dante decreed softly. "They have earned this final ending."
Heavy iron locks disengaged as several hundred Blood Angels clad in obsidian armor were released from their secluded vaults. Joining their ranks were scores of Space Marines from Successor Chapters who shared the same tragic fate.
These were the fallen—warriors consumed by the Red Thirst or lost to the absolute madness of the Black Black Rage.
The gene-seed of Sanguinius carried two infamous curses: the Red Thirst and the Black Rage.
While the Red Thirst was an inherent biological flaw, its danger paled in comparison to the Black Rage—a psychic trauma born at the exact moment their Primarch, Sanguinius, was slain by Horus, imprinting his dying agony into the soul of every Blood Angel across time.
Once claimed by the Black Rage, a warrior saw every entity around him as Horus himself, his mind forever trapped in that agonizing, blood-soaked moment aboard the Vengeful Spirit.
Now, it was time to unleash their endless agony and rage upon the swarms.
"KILL!"
"HORUS! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
Unbound by the soothing litanies of Chaplains, these screaming berserkers roared into battle, venting their unbridled fury for the first and final time.
The black-armored Space Marines smashed directly into the infinite ocean of bio-forms. Whirring chainswords tore through chitin as they unleashed every drop of their hyper-lethal martial training upon the swarm.
By sheer coincidence, their path crossed directly with Yuki, who was advancing with several of his surrogate bodies to press the assault.
Yuki looked at these rabid, mutating Blood Angels with a somewhat awkward expression. "Look, if you guys choose to retreat right now, you might actually make it out alive."
"HORUS!"
Yuki sighed inwardly. Reasoning with the Death Company was a physical impossibility. Even if he chose not to engage, these suicidal warriors would throw themselves onto his blades without a second thought.
Still, battling the legendary Death Company of the Blood Angels was certainly a novel entry in his Warhammer universe logbook.
"What are our remaining numbers?"
"Approximately three thousand Astartes, all consolidated from the shattered remnants of various sectors."
"And the xenos forces?"
"They are still locked in combat, but tracking their total operational endurance is impossible."
Dante's expression remained frozen like stone. Over the course of this continuous engagement, he had processed critical telemetry confirming that Hive Fleet Aether was deployed in full force, bringing along hyper-lethal entities beyond the two previously cataloged.
Four humanoid forms, alongside a winged terror suspected to be a Necron construct.
Furthermore, command telemetry clearly indicated that the broader Leviathan swarm was coordinating directly under Hive Fleet Aether's strategic vectors.
A deeply unsettling suspicion stirred in Dante's mind, but he kept it strictly locked away. Until he verified it with his own eyes, such a concept could not be voiced aloud.
"What is the status of Hope?"
"Missing in action. Her final transmission confirmed she ordered her Sororitas forces to fall back to the Arx Angelicum while she charged into the swarm alone."
"Dammit."
Dante was beyond words. So many Chapter Masters who had answered his summons and brought their entire Chapters to Baal were already dead, their bloodlines erased beneath the radiation-bleached sky.
Now, from ancient Dreadnoughts to heavy Terminator suits, the Blood Angels had deployed every sacred relic in their armories. Yet the Tyranids remained infinite, and Baal—a world so breathtakingly beautiful to the Sons of Sanguinius—had been reduced to a devastated wasteland beneath the alien tread.
"From the very beginning, we should not have aimed to hold Baal," Dante murmured softly. "Our only objective should have been to buy time and bleed their fleets."
"Dante! You old bastard, you aren't dead yet? Hahaha! Just joking with you—hey, why aren't you laughing? Was it not funny?"
The abrasive, taunting voice forced Dante to look up. Approaching him was Harriman, the newly appointed Chapter Master of the Angels Numinous.
"Harriman, your Chapter Master—"
"Dead. So now I'm in charge," Harriman cut in bluntly. "Don't overthink it; there was no succession dispute. Everyone ahead of me in line to take command died on the ramparts."
"What are you doing here?"
Dante recalled the subtle warning the previous Chapter Master of the Angels Numinous had given him: under dire circumstances, Harriman was the type to cut and run.
Dante would never tolerate desertion. To have a Chapter flee while the Sons of Sanguinius bled to defend their homeworld—a dishonor that would stain the Chapter's history and mock every warrior who had fallen—was something he would forbid until his dying breath.
"Ammunition, Dante," Harriman stated, his tone suddenly dropping into deadly seriousness. "We have nothing left. We've fired our last rounds, broken our melee weapons, and our power armor is cracked to hell. I can accept death, but I refuse to die without a loaded bolter in my hands."
Dante paused. Harriman gestured behind him toward a meager group of forty Astartes in scorched, shattered armor, some lacking even functional helmets.
"These are the absolute last battle-brothers of our Chapter. The Chapter serfs and Battle Sisters who fought alongside us are gone, and the fate of our Strike Cruiser in orbit remains unconfirmed. We held the line against the Tyranids at the Sarcophagus Vaults—so no matter how you slice it, we've earned a fresh batch of ammo, haven't we?"
Without a word, Dante ordered a massive stockpile of munitions brought forward.
Harriman nodded in grim satisfaction.
Loading his weapons, he led the surviving Angels Numinous away from Dante's command post, where the final honor guard of the Sanguinary Guard was gathering.
"Harriman... what about Lord Commander Dante?" a battle-brother asked quietly.
"Don't worry about him. He won't fall so easily—have faith in the old man. I hear some folks even view him as our Primarch reborn in this broken era."
Harriman surveyed their surroundings: crumbled walls, scorched corpses, and cratered stone. The Tyranids had already breached this sector once, only to be repelled by the desperate fury of the Blood Angels.
He stared at the shattered spires of the Fortress-Monastery.
Faced with such an absolute nightmare, he admitted to himself that the thought of retreating had crossed his mind.
Yet, looking up at the sky choked by the endless biomass of the Tyranid fleets, he truly understood the terrifying weight of the swarm's focus on Baal.
Under these conditions, the only way any warrior on Baal would survive was if an outside crusade fleet punched a hole through the void.
Harriman took a deep breath, drew his power sword, and racked his bolt pistol.
"For Sanguinius and the—"
Harriman charged through the ruined entryway, his battle cry dying instantly in his throat.
The scene unfolding before his eyes was pure, unadulterated madness.
Angron was roaring in a frenzied duel against a black-robed humanoid bio-form. Further off, a C'tan shard trapped within a tesseract labyrinth was engaged in an extraordinary display of cosmic power against the Void Dragon.
Down on the ruined earth below, an absolute free-for-all had erupted: Harlequins, Craftworld Aeldari, Necron constructs, Tyranid monstrosities, Space Marines, Imperial Guardsmen, and Battle Sisters were all locked in a chaotic, chaotic melee.
Harriman blinked in utter bewilderment, his eyes catching sight of the remaining hyper-adapted bio-entities tearing through the last surviving Imperial Titans.
"What in the Emperor's name is happening here?!"