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"This offensive will be a Black Crusade for the ages—unprecedented, on a brand-new line of advance!"
Abaddon spoke with hungry ambition.
Before him stood his inner circle: the Chaos Seer Moriana, the abominable tech-brute Valicar Hane, and four handpicked Chosen—all elite, all expectant.
The Despoiler, Warmaster of Chaos, had quietly summoned his strongest to set the Fifteenth Black Crusade in motion.
This time he would not batter himself senseless against Cadia and the Nachmund Gauntlet as he had a dozen times before.
Those paths might point straight at the Imperium's heart, but they were encrusted with auspex chains, Fortress Worlds, and massed garrisons—an assault course of pain.
Abaddon, at last, had learned the lesson: ramming the same wall thirteen times was… a bit stubborn.
He would change the game—strike hidden, strike fast.
In the past, the Black Legion lacked the means. But now he had Blackstone.
With Blackstone-laced Arks of Omen, his hosts could carve short, savage roads through the roil of the Great Rift—
—appearing deep in Imperial sub-sectors before any alarm could properly ring.
"Warmaster, this will be a campaign for the annals," Valicar Hane's mech-tendrils writhed, his voice thick with glee. "The Imperium will taste a hurt it cannot forget. The galaxy will wail beneath your heel."
"Yes. We will win—and keep winning. Battle after battle," Abaddon answered, eyes cold and lucid.
He had found clarity: he didn't need to hold everything he hit.
He only needed to break it.
The Arks' reach and speed would let him bypass bastions, sear one system after the next, and rip out each target's most precious cores.
War feeding war.
That upstart Savior thought he could reform, rebuild, and rally the Imperium?
Then the Black Legion would light fires everywhere, rally every stripe of Chaos to widen the raiding net—
—until the Savior could only sprint between crises, exhausted and late.
"Brothers, this will be a long, glorious war. When the warp's powers see our tally, they'll flock to our banners…"
Abaddon gazed toward the roaring forges.
Ark after Ark—vast void-beasts plated in Blackstone—crawled toward completion. Heat rippled in his chest.
"When the Savior takes the throne, his 'new' Imperium will greet only war and ruin. He will watch it happen—and be powerless to stop it."
That was the logic of it.
Destruction is cheaper than creation. Under Ark-borne blitz, the Imperium would bleed and keep bleeding.
Even the Emperor returned would struggle to stem it—especially if Chaos acted in concert.
When the prey grew weak enough, Abaddon would sail for Holy Terra and seize the heart.
And Commorragh's webway nexus?
That carefully sculpted jewel of a city would become the Warmaster's sweetest prize.
"Soon—within half a Terran year—the Arks will fly, and the Fifteenth Black Crusade will rise," he murmured.
Half a year was a blink to the warp-touched—yet to Abaddon it crawled. He wanted the victory in his hands. He wanted to see the Savior's fury curdle into helplessness.
"Perhaps I should… call a few allies I can actually trust."
The thought had barely formed when—
Hummm.
Witch-light tore a slit in the air. An invitation.
He accepted. Blood-red radiance gathered into a half-torso holo: Huron Blackheart, Tyrant-King of the Red Corsairs.
"An ally arrives," Abaddon thought, smiling despite himself.
The Red Corsairs were the strongest Astartes renegades besides the Black Legion itself.
He opened his mouth—but Huron spoke first, and not politely.
"Abaddon. Looking well."
Blackheart's voice was cold and curved. "Your recent raids seem to have perked you up. Congratulations."
"What do you want," Abaddon said flatly, smile gone.
"Reckoning. Your warriors pillaged my demesne. I require an account—and I will have one."
"Are you… questioning me, Huron?"
A short, contemptuous breath served as answer.
The Warmaster explained himself to no one. If the Black Legion had stripped a Corsair world—so be it.
Yes, the Legion had been… exuberant in its resource hunts. But a Despoiler does not apologize to a pirate-lord.
"You heard me. Black Legion blades fell on my holdings. You think I'll swallow that in silence?!"
Huron's anger bled through.
"I will compensate you—with an opportunity beyond price," Abaddon replied, making the effort to sound gracious. "Join the Fifteenth Black Crusade under the Black Legion's aegis—an unprecedented great harvest.
"You'll stand in the front rank. First cut of the spoils.
"What you take will more than pay every loss—and then some."
He stared through the red haze, pressure rising in the chamber. "You won't want to miss this, Huron."
Honey and threat. The old recipe.
Abaddon judged it fair. The Corsairs weren't in a position to haggle with the Black Legion anyway.
"…I will consider it," Huron bowed his head a fraction under the weight of the Warmaster's will. "You will have my answer when I am satisfied."
Abaddon laughed, kinglike. "My decks are open. Choose wisely."
Huron ended the link with the slightest of nods.
Abaddon felt buoyant. With the Red Corsairs aboard, the tally would be richer still.
The feeling lasted days.
Then the report struck like a thunderhammer: a Black Legion fleet, ambushed en route home; a hold full of Blackstone—gone.
"The audacity!"
Rage shook him. It had been a long time since anyone dared rob his ships—let alone near the Eye of Terror.
Naked provocation.
But when he demanded the raiders' name, his eyes went wide.
"Say that again. Who raided us?"
The adjutant swallowed. "Warmaster… the attackers claimed to be acting—by order of the Despoiler. They called themselves your host."
…?
"The Despoiler?"
For a heartbeat even Abaddon blinked. He'd… robbed himself? Impossible.
But then he remembered the galaxy's odd new currents—and Blackheart's tone.
A prickling foreboding crawled up his spine.
Surely the Fifteenth would still run clean—
He drew in a hard breath and turned to the black-clad prophet with the ebon staff.
"Moriana. I need your sight."
Danger was moving. He wanted a foretell, a face to the threat—contingencies primed.
He didn't get it.
Before any prophecy resolved, more strike-reports battered Savagar—one wave, then another.
The Eye seethed.
…
Earlier.
Outer Eye of Terror, Blackstone Fortress.
In a vaulted hall, Blackheart cut the link and faced his gathered captains.
"You all saw it. Abaddon the High—and blind." His voice carried. "He plunders our worlds, murders our crews, and tosses us a 'place' as if charity.
"Can you stomach that?"
Flame flickered in their eyes. To the Corsairs, Abaddon's posture was an insult cut to the bone.
"I will not accept it," Huron pressed, voice sharpening. "We strike back. We make the Black Legion pay. We are not cattle to be culled."
Truth be told, he knew there was trickery in the raid that sparked this feud—had even steered the talk with Abaddon.
It didn't matter.
He needed a casus belli.
Blackheart dropped the last of his pretense. He had always wanted the Warmaster's mantle—wanted to etch his saga across the Eye.
The window would be brief.
The Black Legion had new engines and arts and was surging. If he didn't rip those forges bare now, he might never get them.
That was the rule of the Eye—Chaos eats Chaos. No one abides as second long.
Show weakness and the pack descends.
Huron felt the turn of the galaxy's wheel and knew this was it. He would not miss.
"Armies are threading into the Eye from half the map," he told his captains. "The Black Legion will show a fatal seam. We will harvest it.
"And grow."
He believed—utterly—that he could do what Abaddon had not. The Despoiler had needed millennia to claw back to the Sons of Horus' former height.
Huron had done his rise in three or four centuries.
Yet the Eye still flocked to the other man's banner.
Time to correct that.
"Even so, we'll never crack Savagar fast enough alone. We need more blades. More teeth.
"We must strip their vaults and war-engines before they can drag in field armies from other wars."
He had made arrangements.
Under the shadow of a Blackstone Fortress, Red Corsair spear-fleets edged inward toward Savagar, waiting for the spark.
…
"Sigh. Must you engineers always ask for more Blackstone?"
Savior's Sanctum, Office of State.
Eden frowned at the sweating works commissioner and tapped the desk, displeased.
"This is a major miss. You should have found it in planning—not bring it to me now."
The official ducked his head and took the scolding without a syllable of excuse.
The "miss" was simple: the Holy energies bleeding off the Black Throne had warped the webway sheathing. They needed more Blackstone to stabilize it.
No one had seen it until the first hub-port core was rising.
It was the first project of its kind; the simulations hadn't captured the hidden shift. Even the Archmagos and the Machine-Goddess herself had signed the previous numbers.
In other words—force majeure.
But the result was a yawning material gap. Dawnlight City's schedules were blown open. They needed more Blackstone—yesterday.
And where to find it on short notice? He couldn't just rob Vigilus blind, could he?
Tempting—he'd eyed those stockpiles for months.
But Vigilus was a blender: to take it, he needed a continental-scale army and the will to eat everyone else's counter-punch.
Any would-be ruler of Vigilus becomes everyone's target.
That was why neither Black Legion nor Imperium had ever planted their flag there for good.
A slow campaign—or nothing.
Even if he could tank the alliances that would dog-pile him, stripping his own borders of troops would hollow out Dawnlight and all his Protectorates.
And no one knew how long Vigilus would take to crack. Time he didn't have.
While Eden weighed the world—
A ping. A message. He read—and grinned.
"Well now. Abaddon hoarded a mountain of Blackstone—and looks like a coalition just jumped him?"
The beating was expected; Eden had redirected plenty of hate the Despoiler's way.
But the scale—that the man had smuggled that much off Vigilus under everyone's nose—was a surprise.
And the source… Red Corsairs?
The signal was layered, bounced, masked. The Machine-Goddess still traced it.
Blackheart's angle? Eden thought. "The Tyrant doubts he can finish this alone—wants me in the scrum?"
Eden actually feared Blackheart more than Abaddon. The rogue lord had brains and nerve; he'd once played Roboute Guilliman like a harp.
One does not blunder where that man lays snares.
If it was a trap, that was trouble—likely worse trouble waiting behind it.
And trap it was—partly. Alongside his die-hard allies, Huron had tipped off the Savior.
Of all powers, only Eden could flash-mobilize and reach the Eye in time to help strip the Black Legion.
Time was short; the Savior couldn't bring too much.
Perfect. The Corsairs would keep their upper hand—and if things broke perfectly, they might even pivot, ambush, and crush the Savior's expedition after the plunder…
…for an encore of glory.
"Whatever. We go see it ourselves."
Eden slapped the desk. "All Resource-Collection battlegroups currently in Dawnlight—marshal! Shortest webway and warp threads to the Eye of Terror. Move!"
Another day, he might have hesitated.
Massing that much force had risks; borders thin, opportunities missed.
But he'd prepped this raid for months, tuning every local defense to carry the load.
Minimum exposure.
And the raiding host was fresh off a run—ships topped, magazines full, crews itching. They could launch at once.
A gift from the stars. The Despoiler was finally dropping gold again—and there was enough Blackstone out there to feed Dawnlight's hunger.
How could he not go?
He'd shorn Abaddon often enough that the Legion's vaults now felt… provisionally his.
Missing this would hurt.
Worth the gamble.
"Though if he's stacked that much Blackstone… Abaddon must be cooking something big," Eden mused—then chuckled. "I tossed a net at random and it's spitting treasure.
"What luck."
Was he lucky—or was Abaddon cursed? Given fourteen failed Black Crusades in a row…
Let's just say Tzeentch's dice hated the man.
Because the stakes were high, Eden would lead from the front.
Without a Primarch on deck, you couldn't dance with a Warmaster, a Tyrant-King, and every other monster sniffing blood.
He donned dark-gold armor in the armory. As he sealed the last clasp, the Khan came pounding in—answering the call.
They would ride together.
"Brother Eden!"
As the two Primarchs strode from the Sanctum toward the docks, Roboute Guilliman arrived in full panoply.
He wanted in. To stand with his brothers, blade to blade.
"Roboute…"
Eden breathed out, clapped a gauntlet on Guilliman's shoulder. "Dawnlight's defense is paramount. We need a Primarch here. I'm entrusting that to you."
He held the Ultramarine's gaze—weight of duty in his eyes.
The Khan nodded, a touch dry. "Two of us is plenty. Stay here. Just in case someone gets clever."
Truth? Dawnlight was stuffed with Salvation, Ultramar, and White Scars brigades—and the Emperor himself on the throne.
Nothing was going to happen.
But Eden still kept Roboute home.
This was a strike-and-scoop. Speed mattered.
And—well—Roboute had a way of… jinxing long trips. Warp squalls, ambushes, engine blackouts—Eden preferred not to test the pattern today.
"I'll hold here," Guilliman said at last, smiling. "Guard Dawnlight."
He watched his brothers go.
And if he felt a small, quiet ache—well, being left behind by your brothers is a kind of distance.
Soon, Eden's fleet cleared dock and dove into the webway—gone like a knife-point into cloth.
—
Eye of Terror.
Dreamweaver, command bridge.
With the armada burning hard, Eden watched warp-light boil beyond the armor-glass and frowned.
"Hang in there, Abaddon. I'm coming fast!"
Fresh reports rolled in.
Savagar was a cauldron. The Warmaster was being dog-piled by Chaos warbands, Orks, Necrons, Aeldari, beastmen, and—Emperor save him—a stray Tyranid splinter.
Even a daemon tide's shadow stretched across the brawl. No one had expected this.
Maybe Eden had pulled the hate lever a little too hard.
He only hoped Abaddon could hold a little longer—long enough for him to arrive.
"Because all of that is my Blackstone…"
(End of Chapter)
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