Not long after, inside the vast hangar of the Emperor-class battleship Night Blade, the dim blue emergency lighting bathed the space in hues like the depths of the sea.
Dong, dong.
With each heavy footstep echoing through the hangar, the over five-meter-tall figure of Curze slowly emerged from the shadows.
His personal Midnight Wraith armor shimmered with light-absorbing coating, each adamantium plate engraved with Han characters, faintly visible under the low lighting.
Over four hundred Black Guard emerged from the darkness like it had condensed into their form, their black and dark-blue Terminator armor gleaming only with the crimson flash of their visors.
At the center of the docking zone, a Primarch-exclusive Thunderhawk gunship—three times larger than the standard variant—rumbled with a deep engine growl.
Its hull was covered with special silencing material, and its engine nozzles, specially modified, emitted not plasma flame but nearly invisible cold-state ion streams.
Curze's long fingers traced the edge of the hatch, where a line of small script was etched:
"Shadow of the Shadows."
This was the motto his Father had given him.
Once the last of the Black Guard had boarded, the mag-lev launchers began charging, and the warning lights atop the hangar turned crimson.
Swoosh—swoosh—!
In an instant, over twenty Thunderhawk gunships were simultaneously launched.
Curze's personal gunship shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow. As it passed through the plasma seal, its optical camouflage activated, blending seamlessly into the black void of space.
Upon exiting the mothership, one could see the breathtaking panorama of the battlefield through the viewports—
To the left, three Word Bearer cruisers formed a triangular formation, firing beams of hardlight imbued with pure psychic power, vaporizing scores of Chaos fighters into golden particles.
To the right, Grey Knight aircraft darted like silver fish, each strike detonating sanctified rings of fire within enemy formations.
Straight ahead, the thirty-kilometer-long Chaos flagship was releasing waves of blood-red energy, reassembling nearby ship wreckage into grotesque combat constructs.
Suddenly, two Paris-class frigates burst forth from the flanks, weaving through gunfire to carve a temporary corridor of safety for the Primarch's formation.
Hundreds of fighters formed an escort net around them like a metallic storm, shredding any Chaos aircraft that dared approach.
As the formation neared within five thousand kilometers of the target flagship, a sudden mutation occurred.
Dozens of gun ports opened on the flagship's hull—not to fire conventional rounds, but to launch living tendrils of flesh and blood.
These horrifying structures, nearly a hundred meters in diameter, flailed violently in the vacuum, instantly ensnaring and crushing several drones that failed to evade.
"Accelerate."
Curze's voice echoed calmly across the comms. "Ram into its wound."
By "wound," he referred to a massive gash still oozing strange fluid along the flank of the flagship—a scar left by the Emperor-class battleship's main cannon earlier.
All Thunderhawks adjusted their trajectories, engines pushed to their limit, diving into the blood-maw-like fissure without hesitation, like a swarm of nocturnal bats pouncing on prey.
In the final second before being fully consumed by darkness, a data stream flashed across Curze's visor—it was the last message from Lorgar:
"The Emperor is with you, brother."
Immediately after, comms were completely severed by the influence of chaotic warp energy.
The Thunderhawks trembled violently as they plunged into the bloodstained, madness-filled "guts" of the Chaos flagship. Meanwhile, the Paris-class ships, fighters, and drones that had completed their escort withdrew to a safer distance.
Inside;
Upon entering the fissure, the Thunderhawks were instantly engulfed in viscous gore. The metal hulls groaned under immense pressure.
Outside the viewports was no longer cold space but a writhing corridor of flesh and muscle—the walls pulsed with living fibers, the ground was lined with twitching nerve bundles, and the ceiling dripped with pulsating arteries.
Most grotesque of all were the faces embedded in the fleshy walls, screaming or laughing, chanting oaths of slaughter in hundreds of tongues.
"Brace for impact."
Curze's voice was chillingly calm.
A moment later, the gunship slammed onto a "landing pad" paved with bone.
As the hatch opened, a stench of blood and sulfur assaulted their senses.
Over four hundred Black Guard instantly formed defensive ranks, their bolters aimed into the darkness, ready for the slightest movement.
The chamber they'd entered resembled a profane chapel.
Twelve massive pillars twisted from spines supported the vaulted ceiling, each vertebra carved with bloody records of war. The floor was paved with countless skulls, some still mechanically chattering. The walls were adorned not with banners but with flayed human bodies posed in battle stances.
Clang. Ding.
Aaaah!!
From afar came the sound of a forge hammer, mingled with cries of torment.
Curze crushed a skull in his path, from which scuttled a scorpion with human hands. He crushed it instantly with his power claw. Meanwhile, the Black Guard's helmet displays constantly updated environmental data—
"Temperature: 48°C
Air composition: 15% oxygen, mixed with high sulfide content
Psychic reading: Off the scale"
"Hold formation," Curze intoned coldly. "Every stone here lies."
"Blood for the Blood God, skulls for the Skull Throne!!"
"Die! Hahaha! Die!!"
Barely a hundred meters in, the bone wall ahead split open, and over a thousand Khorne Berserkers erupted, bellowing war cries.
These mutated monstrosities were clad in brass armor, their exposed flesh covered in profane runes, chain-axes growling with bloodlust.
Worst of all were their eyes—completely consumed by madness.
The battle exploded in an instant!
Clang—clang clang!!
The Black Guard's first volley of bolter fire shredded the front ranks before the berserkers could counterattack—more than half fell immediately.
Curze darted through the enemy lines like a wraith, each claw strike precisely tearing out a throat.
When the last berserker fell, something bizarre happened—all the corpses began to melt, merging into the fleshy network of the floor.
"They're absorbing combat data," Curze observed coldly. "Next time, they'll be harder."
After pushing through seven such chambers, they finally reached the inner core.
Even the coldest of the Lords of Midnight were shaken by the sight.
In the center floated a blood pool at least eight hundred meters wide, filled with hundreds of Astartes corpses—
Some still bore the blue armor fragments of Ultramarines, others the iron plating of Iron Warriors.
Around the pool knelt a circle of warriors in broken power armor, mechanically dumping spoils into the blood.
As these "warriors" slowly rose, the sound of over four hundred Black Guard locking and cycling their bolters echoed through the chamber.
Some Guards reacted with surprise—their ruined armor, though stained with gore, bore the distinct style of their own universe's War Hounds legion.
Even more disturbing, the usual chapter insignias on their helms had been replaced with brass fangs.
The Black Guard were confused, but Curze recognized them at once: they were the World Eaters from another universe—fallen War Hounds now devoted to Khorne.
These corrupted Astartes were eerily silent. They formed into a wedge formation, seeping dark red mist from the cracks in their battered ceramite.
The lead World Eater tore off his helmet, revealing a scar-ridden face studded with dozens of tiny brass gears, whirring with every muscle twitch.
"For the Blood God!"
With the first war cry, the chamber floor split open, and dozens of grotesquely modified Dreadnoughts burst—no, "ruptured"—from the ground.
Their weapons had been replaced with massive chainsaws and flamers. Through the cockpit windows, pilots forever frozen in agony could be seen.
The first wave of World Eaters surged forward like a red tide, chain-axes screaming. The Black Guard, like streaks of black lightning, moved with astonishing agility despite their Terminator armor.
When the two sides collided, the chamber lit with bolter flashes and arcing power weapons.
Clang-clang-clang————!!
Bzzzz~kkkzz—shriek!!
Though outnumbered, the Black Guard, elite bodyguards of a Primarch, quickly established dominance.
Curze moved like a phantom in the chaos.
The first World Eater's chain-axe was still mid-swing when Curze's claw shredded his throat;
The second raised a shield only to be kicked apart, his body dissolving to bone in the blood pool;
A World Eater Terminator tried to bring down his power hammer—but his arm was sliced off at the joint.
Curze's combat style was terrifying.
Every strike was precisely calculated, yet elegant—like a dance of death. Dozens of World Eater Terminators fell to him in the blink of an eye.
Though outnumbered, the Black Guard's tactical prowess was staggering.
Every five-man "Death Claw" unit coordinated flawlessly, creating breaches in enemy lines. Heavy weapons teams targeted Dreadnought joints, three melta blasts converging on a single point.
When a Guard was surrounded, precision bolter fire always arrived at impossible angles.
But Khorne's warriors were equally brutal.
One flesh-Dreadnought self-destructed, its acidic blood and warp energy instantly dissolving the shields and helmets of three Black Guards—killing them on the spot.
A massive World Eater champion cleaved a Black Guard's chestplate in two with a two-meter chain-axe.
The most tragic was a lone Guard, overwhelmed by a dozen enemies. In his final act, he overloaded his power pack, triggering a micro "nuclear" detonation inside the chamber.
At the eighth minute of combat, the ground—of flesh and bone—began violently shaking.
Then, three Land Raiders modified into spider forms crawled out of the blood pool. Their turrets were replaced with blood-spewing maws, each blast concentrated Warp energy.
"Focus fire!"
A Black Guard captain had barely issued the order when twelve members formed a suicide squad.
Using their jump thrusters for short leaps, they vaulted between vehicles, planting plasma charges into every viewport.
Boom. BOOM—!!
When the third spider-tank exploded, the shockwave sent the blood pool surging ten meters high.
In the end, the brutal fight lasted barely over ten minutes before falling silent.
When the last World Eater was impaled through the spine by a power sword, the chamber fell into eerie stillness.
But before the Black Guard could regroup, all the fallen World Eaters began to spasm.
Their flesh melted like wax under a blowtorch, brass armor clattered to the bone floor, and the twitching meat was drawn toward the churning blood pool.
The pool began to boil violently, spewing sulfur-scented red steam. The floating corpses swirled by unseen forces, forming a horrific sigil.
"All units, prepare for engagement."
Curze's voice was colder than the storms of an ice world, sensing an overwhelming psychic force gathering.
In the center of the pool, a massive swelling rose—blood coalescing into a thirty-meter-high face.
This visage of pure violence slowly opened its pupil-less eyes, its gaze warping the air.
"Amusing little toys."
The voice of the blood-face was like a chorus of ten thousand battlefields, shaking the skull-paved floor. "But the real feast—"
Step, step!
But Curze moved faster than physics should allow.
He leapt, his power claw slashing five streaks of violet through the air—tearing the blood-face apart mid-formation.
"Spare me the cheap theatrics," the Primarch's voice snapped with rare irritation. "We're not here to play your savage, childish games."
"ROOOOAAAR————!!"
The torn blood-face bellowed loud enough to shatter mortal bones, but its blood form splashed wildly out of control.
Blood droplets that hit the walls let out faint sobs, then reluctantly slid down into the pool again.
The Black Guard silently reformed ranks. Though half were damaged, their eyes beneath the helms remained razor-sharp.
Curze flicked his claw, elegant arcs slicing the air, casting off imaginary taint.
Then, his gaze passed the now-calm blood pool and locked onto the twenty-meter-tall skull-shaped door.
From its seams came not mere chaotic aura, but something older, far more dangerous—and a familiar psychic signal.
It was the resonance of the Primarch of the War Hounds.
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