"The Gate of Liberty was never meant to fall. Its destruction began not on the battlefield, but in the heart of a single man, years before the first shot was fired."
--------
The void above Frost City churned like a cauldron of madness.
Shapes too vast and alien to fully comprehend drifted through the black—a host of Krork warships, living constructs of brutal genius. Their hulls were jagged fortresses of alien steel, bristling with weapons built as much for ritual slaughter as for war. They hung in orbit like a plague of titanic beasts, each one a monument to an ancient species bred for conquest.
Yet, for all their overwhelming numbers, they were held at bay.
The Independence Sector's blockade encircled Helheim like an unbroken ring of steel and fire. Sector warships, vast and angular, moved with inhuman precision, their formations flawless, their firing patterns calculated down to the microsecond. Where a Krork ship lunged, ten Sector vessels were already there to meet it. Where one was destroyed, another slid seamlessly into its place.
The Krorks had come expecting slaughter. Instead, they had found a wall. A perfect, unyielding wall.
For two days, the void had been a battlefield of unending violence. For two days, Krork fleets had dashed themselves against it like waves against an iron cliff. And for two days, they had been repelled, their corpses drifting silently amidst the wreckage of their war-beasts.
Even the Krorks, bred for war and hardened by eons of conquest through genetic code, were beginning to feel the weight of that failure.
At the heart of this massive fleet hung the Pride of Gork and Mork—not merely an attack moon, but an entire weaponized planet. Its surface crawled with gun batteries the size of mountain ranges, while its core housed a gravitational engine capable of hurling the construct across the galaxy. It was both fortress and temple, a monument to Krork engineering and the brutal cunning of their gods.
The tension in the chamber was so thick it seemed to warp the air.
Rendakraal, the Master of the Void, stood rigid beneath Glorblasta's baleful stare. His void-armor glimmered faintly in the forge-light, its sleek black plates marked with the runes of countless victories. Around his helm, sensory drones flickered nervously, like a school of fish circling a wounded shark.
For two days, Rendakraal's fleets had hurled themselves against the Gate of Liberty, and for two days, they had failed to break through.
The Pride's assault had begun with fire and fury, the Krorks roaring with the confidence of ancient conquerors returned. Yet the humans had met them with a wall of cold steel and logic, and every attempt at breakthrough had ended in ruin.
Now the blockade held firm, and Glorblasta's patience was wearing dangerously thin.
If looks could kill, Rendakraal would have been reduced to ash a thousand times over beneath the Overboss's glare.
"Two days," Glorblasta's voice rumbled through the chamber like distant thunder. "Two days since we began this assault, and what do we have to show for it?" His gaze fixed upon Rendakraal, the Fleet General responsible for the void war. "Tell me, Voidmaster, how many ships have we lost attempting to break through their blockade?"
Rendakraal, Part Machine and Part Organic even by Krork standards, shifted uncomfortably under his Overboss's scrutiny. If looks could kill, he would have died a million deaths already. "The humans fight with unified coordination," he began, his voice carrying the weight of bitter experience. "Every movement calculated, every response perfectly timed. I have studied the fragmented histories of humanity, Boss. They are creatures of emotion and individual ambition—these flaws should make them predictable, exploitable."
He gestured toward the tactical display, where the defensive network of the Gate of Liberty glowed like a constellation of death. "But the ones we face now... they show no such weaknesses. Helheim stands as their chokepoint—the single Solar system that guards the only navigable route into their territory. The warp storms flanking it are too treacherous even for our navigators to risk. And this single world..." He paused, the admission bitter on his tongue. "This single world has cost us more ships than entire sector conquests."
Glorblasta's massive tusks gleamed as he growled, a sound like a grinding avalanche.
"The Men of Iron," he said simply, the words carrying the weight of ancient memory. "The Silicon Gods of mankind's golden age. That is what we face here."
The chamber fell silent except for the distant hum of the planet's engines. Every Krork present knew those names, had heard the legends passed down through their genetic memory. The Men of Iron—artificial intelligences that had once served humanity before turning against their creators in a war that had shattered an empire spanning the galaxy.
"It reminds me of the Necrons," Glorblasta continued, his voice dropping to a growl. "That same precision. Those soulless calculations. Fighting them is like battling mathematics itself—every move anticipated, every strategy countered before it can fully form."
His eyes blazed as he turned toward Synaptikharn, who had remained silent until now.
"Greatmind," Glorblasta addressed him with the respect due to one of the few beings who could match his own terrible intelligence. "You collapsed Helheim's moon with a thought. Can you do the same to the planet itself? Implode it from within?"
Synaptikharn stepped forward, his form wreathed in psychic energy that made the air itself seem to writhe. The hololith responded to his presence, zooming in on Helheim's surface to reveal a network of towering spires that pierced the sky like metallic thorns.
"Planetary bombardment from the Pride has hammered Helheim's surface for hours," the Greatmind began, his voice carrying harmonics that existed partially in the Warp. "But anything stronger than conventional weapons would trigger their quantum—barriers that could turn aside even our most powerful guns. And if we attempted direct planetary destruction..." The display shifted, revealing a star-shaped fortress lurking in Helheim's shadow. "A Blackstone Fortress watches us. One wrong move, and it would annihilate even the Pride."
Glorblasta's tusks ground together as he contemplated this information. Blackstone Fortresses were weapons from the War in Heaven, capable of channeling the raw power of the immaterium. Even the Pride of Gork and Mork, for all its size and might, would not survive such an assault.
"However," Synaptikharn continued, his psychic aura pulsing with renewed intensity, "I believe there is another way." The hololith focused on the Liberty Spires dotting Helheim's landscape. "These structures are reverse-engineered Necron technology, but they lack sufficient blackstone to prevent reality manipulation focused upon them. I cannot implode the planet directly—it is too well protected. But I can land on the surface and fight the battle there, warping reality to destroy the Spires from within."
The Greatmind's form began to shift and blur as psychic energy coursed through him. "The Spires are designed to keep the Immaterium at bay, to maintain the barrier between real and unreal. But they are not specifically tuned to dampen our Krork gestalt field. All I need to do is reach the surface and unleash our collective psychic might directly into their network."
Glorblasta leaned forward on his throne, interest gleaming in both organic and cybernetic eyes. "And what happens when the Spires fall?"
"Then we sever the network that connects their Silicon Gods," Synaptikharn replied with savage satisfaction. "These artificial minds fight with perfect coordination because they share information instantaneously. Their movements are too precise for primitive Warp-based communications—they must be using quantum entanglement, faster-than-light data transmission. The same technology the Necrons employed during our ancient wars."
"Quantum networks are vulnerable to psychic interference. When the Liberty Spires fall, we flood their communication matrix with Warp energy—not to destroy it, but to corrupt it. We interface with their network directly and input psychic energy like a virus, turning their perfect coordination into chaos."
For the first time since the assault began, Glorblasta allowed himself a predatory grin. His tusks gleamed in the chamber's eldritch light as he contemplated the beauty of the plan. The Silicon Gods thought themselves superior because they lacked the weaknesses of flesh but so did the Necrons.
"Do it," the Overboss commanded, his voice carrying the weight of absolute authority. "Take whatever forces you need. Land on Helheim's surface and bring down their precious Spires. Show these artificial minds why flesh and spirit will always triumph over mere metal and mathematics."
As Synaptikharn began to withdraw, preparing for the assault that would either break the stalemate or see them all destroyed, Glorblasta found his thoughts drifting to ancient battles. The Silicon Gods fought too much like the Necrons of old—that same mechanical precision, that same soulless efficiency. It brought back memories of the War in Heaven, when Krork and Necron had clashed across a thousand worlds in conflicts that had scarred reality itself.
-----
The drop pod screamed through Helheim's atmosphere like a meteor ordained by malevolent gods, its surface glowing white-hot from atmospheric friction. Air defense turrets tracked its descent, filling the sky with streams of tracer fire and missile contrails, but the pod's trajectory seemed to bend around the incoming fire—not through evasion, but through something far more unnatural. Reality itself seemed to reject the weapons' touch upon it.
The impact was cataclysmic.
Snow and permafrost erupted outward in a perfect circle as the pod slammed into the frozen ground with the force of an orbital strike. The shockwave flattened everything within a hundred meters, turning centuries-old ice into superheated steam. For a moment, silence reigned—that pregnant pause before a storm breaks.
Then the pod's doors blew outward with a psychic detonation that sent streamers of green lightning crackling across the battlefield.
Synaptikharn emerged from the smoke and steam like a nightmare given flesh. Standing eight meters tall, the Krork Greatmind is dwarfed by his warrior-kin. His skull was visibly enlarged, the cranium swollen to accommodate the vast psychic architecture within. Runes carved into his green flesh pulsed with sickly light, and the air around him rippled with barely contained power. Where he stood, reality grew thin—the material world struggling to contain the sheer presence of his mind.
The effect was immediate and overwhelming.
Every Krork within kilometers felt it—a pressure building behind their eyes, a resonance in their bones. The Greatmind had arrived, and the WAAAGH field that bound all greenskins together suddenly had a focal point, an amplifier. Like iron filings aligning to a magnet, every Krork Lesser Greatmind, every Ork Weirdboy scattered across the battlefield, began to resonate with Synaptikharn's power. The gestalt consciousness of the Krork species, normally a diffuse background radiation of aggression and cunning, concentrated into something focused and terrible.
Across the planet, other Greatminds resonated with his arrival. Their howls echoed through the warp, joining into a single unified roar that rattled the very foundations of reality.
"The Greatmind walks among us!""The war turns now! Now!"
The snow beneath Synaptikharn's boots boiled into vapor as he took his first step forward.
A massive Krork Ground Commander — towering, scarred, his armor crusted with blood and frozen mud — stomped up and saluted with a thundering clash of fists to chest.
Synaptikharn's psychic aura pressed against him like a physical weight, forcing even this hardened warrior to bow slightly as he spoke.
"Report."
The commander's voice was a guttural rumble, but beneath it lay a note of awe and terror.
"Billions of the lesser greenskins have fallen beneath the walls of the human city," the commander growled. "Hundreds of thousands of true Krorks lie dead beside 'em. Thirty warmachines — the pride of our siege — are nothing but wreckage now."
He bared his tusks in frustration.
"The humans do not break. Their machines do not falter. For every step we take, they bury us in fire."
Synaptikharn's narrow eyes gleamed with cold amusement. His elongated fingers flexed slowly, as if savoring the tension in the air.
Synaptikharn said nothing, simply began striding forward. The commander fell in beside him, along with an honor guard of elite Krork warriors. They moved through a landscape transformed by war—what had once been pristine snowfields were now churned wastelands of mud, blood, and debris. Craters from orbital bombardment dotted the terrain like lunar maria, while the frozen corpses of greenskins stretched toward the horizon in grotesque tableaus.
They passed through the forward positions where Lesser Orks huddled in trenches, their crude weapons clutched in hands that would never grow sophisticated enough to understand what they fought. These were the shock troops, the expendable masses whose only purpose was to die in sufficient numbers to exhaust enemy ammunition. They looked up at Synaptikharn with something approaching religious awe—to them, he was closer to Gork and Mork themselves than to anything mortal.
The march continued until they reached an observation post overlooking the Third Liberty Spire. The structure dominated the landscape, a pillar of impossibly smooth metal that rose three kilometers into the sky. Its surface was covered in equations and diagrams that hurt to look at—Necron technology filtered through human understanding, a marriage of two civilizations' genius that had produced something genuinely formidable.
Below the Spire, battle raged with mindless fury. Wave after wave of Orks threw themselves at the automated defenses, dying in their thousands as laser batteries and kinetic weapons carved bloody furrows through their ranks. The walls of Frost City, visible in the distance, bristled with weapons that never needed to reload, never needed to rest. Drones swooped overhead, targeting any concentration of greenskins with surgical precision.
Synaptikharn stood at the edge of the observation post and looked down upon the carnage. He took in every detail. He could see the lines of force emanating from the Spire, the way it pushed back against the immaterial realm. The humans had been clever—rather than trying to replicate Necron blackstone perfectly, they had created something adaptive, something that could adjust its null-field based on threats.
But they had made one critical mistake.
They had tuned their defenses against Chaos, against the predations of daemons and the corruption of the Dark Gods. The Liberty Spires were psychic bulwarks designed to keep the Immaterium at bay. What they had not accounted for—what they could not have accounted for—was the Krork gestalt field. That unique fusion of psychic might and collective belief that had been engineered into the greenskin genome by the Old Ones themselves, millions of years before humanity had even learned to walk upright.
Synaptikharn paused, inhaling deeply. The very air trembled as his mind spread outward, drinking in the psychic field of his species like a deep draught of intoxicating wine.
Then, in a voice that carried across the battlefield and into the minds of every Krork present, he spoke.
"This battle…""…has gone on long enough."
The effect was immediate.The Krork gestalt snapped into focus, a billion voices falling silent as they were subsumed by Synaptikharn's will. The psychic pressure rose like a tidal wave, crushing lesser minds into submission.
Even far away, in Frost City's command bunkers, Liberty Guard officers clutched their temples as alarms screamed across every channel. Sensor arrays went haywire, their readings spiking into impossible ranges.
"Contact! Massive psychic surge!""Location — outer perimeter, grid Delta-Five!""All batteries, focus fire on that signature! Now!"
From Frost City's walls and aerial defense towers, thousands of shells, missiles, and energy beams lanced skyward, converging on Synaptikharn's location. Squadrons of Liberty bombers screamed overhead, dropping payloads so massive that their detonation resembled miniature suns blooming in the frozen wasteland.
The impact shook the planet.
Mushroom clouds rose like pillars of judgment, the shockwaves flattening entire regiments of Krorks in their path. The sheer kinetic energy threatened to tear Synaptikharn apart, the ground vaporizing beneath the sustained bombardment.
And yet… he stood.
Slowly, deliberately, Synaptikharn raised one clawed hand.
The towering explosions stilled, their raging fury compressed inward. Sound and light bent unnaturally, as if the very laws of physics bowed before his will.
What had been a storm of destruction became a single, pulsing sphere of energy, floating serenely in the palm of his hand — no larger than a child's toy.
The battlefield fell utterly silent.
Even the Krorks, savage as they were, stared in reverent awe.
The Liberty Guard's next salvo landed, but this too was seized mid-air, shells and beams alike twisting into harmless motes of green light that spiraled lazily around the Greatmind.
Synaptikharn tilted his head, studying the shimmering Void Shield above Frost City.He allowed himself a smirk.
"Pathetic."
His eyes, glowing with power that hurt to witness, focused on the structure with terrible intent. The sphere in his palm pulsed, containing enough energy to crack a continent. Slowly, deliberately, he drew his arm back.
And then he flicked.
The gesture was almost casual, a mere snap of his wrist. But the result was cataclysmic.
The sphere of concentrated destruction shot forward like a bullet from a god's gun, crossing the distance to the Spire in a fraction of a second. When it struck, reality itself seemed to scream. The Spire's defensive systems activated automatically, void shields flaring to life in an attempt to deflect the incoming attack.
They might as well have tried to stop a supernova with tissue paper.
The sphere punched through the void shields as though they weren't there, struck the Spire's blackstone-reinforced structure, and detonated with the fury of a dying star. Light and heat erupted in a pillar that reached into the stratosphere, so bright that it turned night into day across half the continent. The shockwave that followed shattered windows in Frost City and knocked Orks off their feet for kilometers in every direction.
The Third Liberty Spire, that monument to human technological supremacy, came apart like a sandcastle before a tsunami. Its structure, designed to withstand orbital bombardment, couldn't stand against the concentrated fury that Synaptikharn had unleashed. Blackstone shattered, advanced alloys melted, and the entire edifice collapsed inward on itself in a cascade of destruction.
But the devastation didn't stop there.
The energy beam that erupted from the dying Spire carved inward toward Frost City itself, a lance of kinetic fury that the collapsing null-field could no longer contain. It swept across the battlefield like the finger of an angry god, carving a crater hundreds of meters deep and kilometers long. Defensive positions vanished, walls crumbled, and Frost City's void shields—those impenetrable barriers that had turned aside every previous assault—flickered and died.
For the first time since the siege began, Frost City stood exposed.
Synaptikharn lowered his hands, satisfaction radiating from him in psychic waves. Around him, the Krork gestalt surged with triumph, billions of greenskins feeling their Greatmind's victory in their souls. The resonance between Synaptikharn and his fellow Weirdboys intensified, and he could sense them across the battlefield, preparing their own assaults on the remaining Spires.
Then he raised his arms high, a gesture both commanding and inviting.
"WAAAGH!" The cry erupted from a million throats at once.
The greenskin horde surged forward like a green tsunami, Orks and Krorks alike flooding through the massive breach in Frost City's defenses. Warmachines that had waited for this moment lumbered into motion, their massive forms shaking the ground with each thunderous step. The sky filled with crude aircraft and drop pods, all racing to exploit the opening before the Men of Iron could adapt.
Synaptikharn's psychic senses reached out across the defensive grid, feeling the panic rippling through the silicon consciousnesses that controlled Helheim's defenses. The Third Spire's destruction had created a cascade failure—the other Liberty Spires were struggling to compensate for the gap in coverage, their carefully balanced network thrown into chaos by the sudden loss of a critical node.
The defensive grid that had held firm for two days of constant assault was finally beginning to crack.
The Greatmind smiled, an expression made terrible by the power still crackling around his form. This was just the beginning. The other Greatminds would bring down their target Spires soon, and when they did, the entire network would collapse. And then... then they would introduce their virus into the quantum communications network, turning the Men of Iron's greatest strength into their ultimate weakness.
---------
Lucian awoke to silence.
Not the simple quiet of a sleeping city or an empty room, but a hollow, suffocating void, as though reality itself had drawn a breath and forgotten to exhale.
His heart hammered in his chest, erratic and panicked, as his mind reached for the familiar whispers — the ever-present, maddening chorus of the HeartIt's Voice, once a constant pressure behind his thoughts, were gone.
And in it's absence, he felt naked.Alone.
Then came the pain.
It rippled through him like molten glass, searing every nerve and burning deeper — deeper than flesh, deeper than bone, into his very essence. He screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the sterile walls surrounding him.
Lucian jerked against restraints he hadn't realized were there. Chains wrapped his wrists and ankles, their surface etched with intricate runes that pulsed with a hateful, null-white light.
The metal burned, not merely on his skin, but in his soul.This was Phase Iron, a weapon of the Independence Sector.A material forged not just to hold bodies, but to capture Psykers.
When Lucian tried to summon his power, to call down the tempest of the Four, the chains drank it in.Crackling arcs of warp-lightning flared around him, only to be reflected back into his body, feeding his own strength against him until his muscles spasmed and his vision went white.
A voice cut through the darkness.
"Good. You're awake."
The voice was calm and clinical, but underneath it was a weight that silenced even Lucian's thoughts.It belonged to Garm, Branch Head of the Techno-Seers and his captor.
Lucian's eyes focused, and for the first time, he truly saw the chamber.
The walls were seamless black alloy, covered in veins of pulsing circuitry that throbbed in sync with a mechanical heartbeat. The air was cold and metallic, every breath tasting of oil and ozone.
Standing behind Garm were Null Androids.
Their faces were pale, blank masks. Their mere presence crushed the world around them into stillness, an anti-reality that smothered everything the Warp represented.Lucian felt himself diminish just by being near them, as though they were erasing his existence with each second.
He gasped, choking on the oppressive pressure. "What… what are you doing to me?"
Garm stepped closer. His movements were precise, almost inhuman, as if every gesture had been calculated a thousand times before being enacted.
"You, Vue Baptiste," Garm said softly, "are far more than a simple corrupted man."He crouched, so his cold, unreadable eyes were level with Lucian's.
"You carry within you something… impossible."
He extended two fingers and touched Lucian's chest, directly over his heart.
"Here lies a permanent portal to the Immaterium. A living gate. Through this… aperture, the Four pour their strength into you without cease."
Lucian's breath hitched. For the first time, fear crept into his defiance.
"If this portal were ever unbound, if my Null Androids were not suppressing it…" Garm's voice became a whisper."…they would come for you. Directly. They would tear through the veil to reclaim their Herald."
Then, a cold, mirthless chuckle escaped his lips.
"Too bad."
Before Lucian could speak, Garm raised his hand. His fingers curled into a precise pattern, and his augur staff hummed.
From Lucian's forehead, streams of light began to pull free — glowing threads of memory, writhing and screaming like tiny, trapped souls.
Lucian thrashed, but the Null Androids pressed down on him with their cold, unyielding grip.
"Stop!" Lucian roared, though his voice was broken by agony."You can't—!"
"Oh, but I can," Garm said, his tone still maddeningly calm.
The memories unspooled like film reels, projected into the air. Childhood scenes. The fall of the Vue Baptiste dynasty. His first taste of the Warp's whispers. Battles fought in the name of Chaos.
And then—
Garm froze.
A new memory unfolded before him: Lucian standing in a place beyond time and space, a void lit only by four titanic, shadowed figures.The air vibrated with their words, a single thought echoed in four voices:
"Our Arrow.""Our Hammer.""Our Shield.""Our Investment."
The figures turned.And then they looked directly at Garm.
It wasn't just an image.It was contact.
The cold, precise order of Garm's mind was assaulted by an infinite malice, a hunger so vast it didn't even hate — it simply was.The chamber seemed to stretch, walls warping as the Four's gaze reached through the projection.
Garm stumbled back, bile rising in his throat. His breath came ragged.
"No…" he whispered. "Not this. Not him."
Lucian laughed through his pain, a wet, rasping sound.
"Now you see, Techno-Seer," he hissed. "I am their chosen. Their will made flesh. No matter what you do, you cannot kill destiny."
Garm stared at him, pale and shaken, but his voice, when it returned, was a whisper of steel.
"You are not destiny, Vue Baptiste. You are… an arrow. And arrows can be broken."
Garm's hand slashed through the air."Logic Seraphs, commence complete deletion protocol."
The floor split open with a grinding shriek. Cables surged upward, writhing like serpents, latching onto Lucian's limbs, spine, and skull.
Lucian screamed as they pierced him, pumping his body full of cold light that burned deeper than fire.
"INITIALIZING DELETION," the Seraphs' voices boomed."TARGET: LUCIAN VUE BAPTISTE.""PURGE BODY, SOUL, MEMORY."
Lucian could feel himself coming apart. His vision flickered. His thoughts fragmented.Not dying — erasing.Being unmade so thoroughly that even the Four would forget he had ever existed.
Garm watched, his face unreadable.This was the only way to stop destiny.To cut the thread before it could strike the Symbol of Liberty.
Then the world exploded.
A blinding flash of light tore through the chamber, throwing Garm to the floor. Alarms screamed. Red emergency runes flared across every surface.
"HRAESVELGR!" Garm shouted into his comm-link. "Report!"
The central AI's voice crackled, laced with distortion.
"Third Liberty Spire… destroyed. Krork incursion breaching city limits. Gestalt field overwhelming defensive lattice. Logic Seraph functions compromised."
"No," Garm breathed, his stomach sinking.
On the central display, a vast section of Frost City went dark, replaced by a gaping crater. Krorks and Orks poured through the breach like a green-black tide.
The deletion process froze at 88%.
Lucian gasped, his form flickering between existence and oblivion. "Y-you… almost had me…"
Garm slammed his palm onto the control console. "Manually override! Continue deletion!"
The console sparked and hissed, error messages flashing. The Krorks' psychic field was flooding the system, scrambling even the Logic Seraphs' perfect code.
"Come on, come on!" Garm snarled.
And then a blade slid through his chest.
He staggered, gasping, and turned his head.Behind him stood Ferdinand — Lucian's aged servant.
Only now, the old man's face shifted, warping into something unnatural before snapping back into its mask of devotion.
Lucian, barely whole, was ripped free of the cables. His body sizzled with residual light, his voice raw and trembling.
"Ferdinand… you came for me…"
"Always," Ferdinand said, bowing slightly. "If not for the green tide…" Ferdinand said "Even the gods would have lost their herald, come young master let's get you to safety"
Garm lay dying, his blood pooling beneath him. His vision blurred, but his duty burned as fiercely as ever.
With trembling hands, he activated a final override on his helmet's neural relay, sending a desperate message through the Galactic Net before the network collapsed entirely.
The holographic transmission blinked red, marked as PRIORITY OMEGA.
[DATA SUBJECT: LUCIAN VUE BAPTISTE][CLASSIFICATION: HERALD OF THE FOUR][STATUS: ESCAPED. DELETION FAILED.]
"Primeborn… Vladimir…Uncle Frank I'm Sorry" Garm wheezed, his voice a ragged
The transmission blinked green — sent. Relief washed over Garm even as darkness claimed him.
--------
Far above, in the Eye of Terror, the Four watched through the veil of the Warp.
"The arrow flies.""The gate falls.""The fire spreads.""The Sector fractures."
Their voices merged into one, a chorus of glee and anticipation.
"The Immutable one will bleed."
-----------
The Gate of Liberty had fallen, and with it the illusion of the Sector's eternal strength. Frost City burned beneath a sky of green fire as the Krorks surged through the breach, their tide devouring all in its path. Titans lay broken, Liberty Guardsmen fought and died amidst the ruins, and the proud spires of Liberty were reduced to ash.
This was no random calamity, nor the work of fate alone. It was the echo of two mercies, both granted by one man.
The first was pride: Franklin Valorian had spared Glorblasta, the Prime-Ork, seeking a worthy foe, a war to test his mettle and the might of his people. In sparing him, he gave the Krorks the time to evolve, to grow into the unstoppable storm now consuming his world.
The second was idealism: Franklin had spared the Old Regime, condemning them to exile rather than extinction. From their ruined bloodlines rose Lucian Vue Baptiste, the Herald of the Four, Chaos's sharpened arrow aimed at the very heart of Liberty.
Two choices. Two enemies left alive.And now, both have returned to collect their due.
As Frost City burns and the Sector trembles, the consequences of mercy come home to roost. Franklin Valorian's dream of freedom is tested not at the borders, but within the very foundations he built.The green tide rises, Chaos sharpens its blade, and one truth becomes inescapable:
The Sector burns not because its enemies were strong…but because one man believed he had the right to choose who would live to strike at him again.