The Doom Slayer
…
The Nodal Cavern
The Doom Slayer crossed the distance between them as Doombreed's arms continued growing back. Bone pushed from his shoulders, wrapped itself in cords of black muscle, and divided into fingers tipped with brass claws. Once almost instantaneous, each layer now took several heartbeats to form.
The Daemon Prince was running out of strength.
His body was not flesh in any mortal sense, but a shape imposed upon reality by will, hatred, and the power of the Warp. For thousands of years, slaughter had sustained that shape. Every life taken in his presence had fed the bond between Doombreed and Khorne, allowing torn limbs and shattered organs to be remade from smoke and congealed blood. That source had been cut away.
All seventy-two survivors were behind Celestine's barrier.
The wounded lay beneath white-gold light while medicae workers moved among them, sealing arteries, binding broken limbs, and cutting ruined armour from burned flesh. No mortal blood reached the Daemon Prince, and no dying soul passed close enough for him to seize. The blackstone surrounding the nodal cavern made his hunger worse.
Although the pylon network remained dormant, the nearest pillars had already been aligned to becalm the Immaterium, and their faint null pressure narrowed the paths through which Doombreed drew upon his god.
He struck before his new hands had finished forming.
The Slayer caught an unfinished wrist and twisted, breaking the bone beneath his gauntlet. He pulled Doombreed forwards, drove a knee into his chest, and crushed the brazen plates covering his ribs before the Doomblade cut through the Daemon Prince's left leg above the knee.
Doombreed fell upon the stump.
The Slayer seized one horn and drove his face into the cavern floor. Stone burst beneath the impact. Before the daemon could rise, the Slayer planted a boot between his wings and tore the half-formed arm from its socket. The roar that followed shook dust from the ceiling.
The Slayer stepped away and waited.
Black vapour coiled around the severed leg. A new femur emerged, followed by a kneecap and the beginning of a shin as the stolen strength of forgotten massacres flowed into the wound. The Slayer allowed the limb to reach the ankle, then crushed the new knee beneath his boot.
Doombreed slashed at him with his remaining claw.
The Slayer caught the hand, bent each brass-tipped finger backwards, and forced the arm behind him until the shoulder tore free. Another wound opened, and this one closed more slowly than the last.
Lesser daemons rushed from the wreckage of the fallen defensive lines. Bloodletters climbed over broken tanks while packs of Flesh Hounds raced between them, drawn by the violence and the scent of mortal blood beyond the barrier.
Celestine descended before they reached the Slayer or the survivors. The Ardent Blade swept through the first rank.
White-gold fire followed its edge, severing the daemons' hold upon the Materium and hurling their essences back into the Warp. A second stroke destroyed the Flesh Hounds at the front of the pack. Those behind them turned upon her, leaving their prince alone with the Slayer, and she held them there.
Her barrier covered the survivors, Cawl, Trazyn, and the machinery surrounding the central node.
Eleanor and Genevieve helped the medicae workers beneath it. Greyfax had finally stopped arguing with the Kappic Eagle treating the wound in her side. Nearby, an injured Custodian knelt beside his planted guardian spear while Captain Cerantes sat among the remaining Ultramarines, his helmet removed and one arm hanging uselessly at his side. Their weapons lay within reach, but none of them needed to lift one.
For the first time since entering the cavern, the survivors were allowed to breathe.
Some watched the Slayer because exhaustion would not let them sleep. Others watched because Doombreed had broken seven defensive lines and killed the soldiers who had stood beside them. No one cheered when the Daemon Prince screamed; too many bodies covered the ground for that.
Within Celestine's barrier, Belisarius Cawl and Trazyn the Infinite worked at the pylon interface.
Cawl's mechadendrites moved through open control housings and severed Imperial cables, joining human machinery to systems built before mankind had discovered fire. Trazyn read the streams of Necron glyphs passing across the blackstone with the impatience of someone correcting another species' clumsy work.
Neither spared Doombreed more than a glance as the Slayer drove him into the ground again.
Doombreed forced himself upright upon one leg. Black blood leaked between the plates of his armour. The new arm growing from his shoulder ended at the elbow, and one wing dragged behind him where the Slayer had broken its central bone.
"You believe pain can diminish me? I drowned worlds in blood before your species learned to name the stars. Civilisations have burned upon my altars. Their skulls built the road to my ascension." Doombreed raised his broken body as high as one leg allowed. Wounded pride made his voice thunder through the cavern, as though volume could disguise his pain.
The boast opened the corruption inside him, and the Slayer saw what fed the daemon.
A city stood above a black ocean, its white towers rising from the water upon narrow pillars. Bridges joined districts crowded with people who had never heard of Cadia, the Imperium, or the god waiting for their blood. Doombreed's armies surrounded the coast for thirteen days. When the defenders surrendered, he promised that the civilians would live, then killed the soldiers first.
The citizens were taken from their homes afterward and driven onto the bridges. Their bodies fell until the water changed colour. Doombreed remembered how many skulls he had offered to Khorne and reveled in it.
The vision changed, revealing another world burning beneath a red sun. Its last fortress guarded a launch field while transports carried children and wounded soldiers towards orbit. The defenders knew they could not win. They remained at the walls because each minute purchased another launch, but Doombreed broke through before the final transport escaped.
The soldiers met him with empty rifles, broken blades, and the banners of regiments whose names died with them. He laughed as he killed them.
Then came a world that possessed no army capable of opposing him. Farmers, labourers, priests, and children knelt around an altar built from the bones of those slain during the invasion. They did not understand the language of the cultists surrounding them, but they understood the axe. The Slayer felt their terror enter Doombreed with their final breaths.
Countless other deaths lay beneath those memories. Worlds and centuries had been pressed together until their last moments formed a single weight inside the daemon's soul. Even his earliest atrocities remained there: nations ravaged upon ancient Terra, long before the Imperium, when the mortal who would become Doombreed first drew the gaze of a young and hungry Khorne. He had forgotten nearly all of them. Their suffering survived only as strength he believed belonged to him.
"Their blood raised me beyond mortality. Every civilization I destroyed made me greater." Doombreed spread his half-formed arms as the last of his jaw knitted itself together. Triumph returned to his ruined face as he claimed the suffering of countless dead as proof of his own greatness.
"You fed upon those who could not stop you." The Slayer lowered the Doomblade towards him. Disgust showed in the tightening of his grip.
"Strength is the only truth." Doombreed bared his new teeth and forced himself upright. Defiance hardened across his face, covering his unease.
The Slayer struck him across the mouth. Teeth and half the rebuilt jaw vanished into the darkness. Doombreed turned with the blow, but the Slayer caught his damaged wing, braced a boot against his back, and ripped it free.
The Daemon Prince collapsed among the remains of the sixth defensive line, and the Slayer followed at a walk.
His firearms waited within the pocket dimension bound to his armour. The Crucible rested there as well, dark and inactive. He needed neither. Doombreed possessed nothing capable of harming him, and Celestine had removed the last place he could hide. Black smoke gathered around the missing jaw.
"Khorne will restore me. Every death upon this world belongs to Him." Doombreed clawed at the broken ground and lifted his unfinished jaw towards the Slayer. He intended the promise as a threat, but fear had already hollowed it out.
The Doomblade pierced his chest and pinned him to the wreck of a Leman Russ. The Collar of Khorne flared around his throat, its ancient wards seeking the psychic force attacking their master. They found none. The blade and the strength behind it possessed no source in the Warp for the collar to repel.
"You will speak no more." The Slayer leaned closer, leaving the Doomblade buried in Doombreed's chest.
Doombreed's new hand closed around the Slayer's shoulder. Warp-fire ran across its claws, struck the Praetor suit, and broke apart without leaving a mark. The Slayer withdrew the blade, caught him by the throat, and threw the Daemon Prince across the cavern.
Doombreed struck the ground beside one of his severed hands. His broken Axe of Khorne lay farther away, buried in the cavern wall, while the Rod of Khorne rested among the dead near the final barricade. His gaze moved from one weapon to the other, then settled upon Celestine's barrier. The Slayer stood between him and all three.
Doombreed charged towards the axe. The shortened weapon tore itself from the wall before he reached it. Red fire wrapped around the broken haft and dragged it into his regenerated hand. He turned with the motion and swung the remaining blade at the Slayer's head.
The Slayer caught its edge between both gauntlets.
Runes blazed across the weapon. Red lightning crawled over the Slayer's arms and vanished against the Praetor suit. Doombreed leaned into the strike until the stone beneath his hoof split, but his opponent did not move. The Slayer twisted his hands in opposite directions, and the axe head broke through the centre.
Doombreed stared at the divided weapon. The Slayer tore both pieces from his grasp and crushed the burning runes beneath his fingers. What remained struck the ground as lifeless metal. An axe that had ended worlds had lasted less than a second in his hands.
Doombreed stepped back. Rage still twisted his face, but beneath it another emotion had taken root.
Fear.
The daemon finally understood why he still existed. It was not because he had endured the Slayer's attacks, but because the Slayer had permitted him to endure them. He could have ended the battle at any moment. He had chosen to wait.
"Final synchronisation has begun. The network will achieve coherence in one hundred and nine seconds." Cawl drove three mechadendrites deeper into the interface as warning sigils flashed across his lenses. Urgency sharpened every syllable.
"The network will achieve coherence only if the damaged node remains aligned for those one hundred and nine seconds. Any significant displacement will return us to the beginning." Trazyn swept his staff across a new sequence of glyphs. His controlled irritation was unmistakable as Cawl's improvised connections trembled.
The defenders did not reach for their weapons. They had already given everything those weapons could take from them. The Custodian studied the fractured pillars while Greyfax ordered the medicae workers to move the worst casualties closer to the centre of the barrier. Eleanor and Genevieve helped without leaving Celestine's protection. Cawl and Trazyn stayed linked to the interface, because there would be no second attempt.
Doombreed heard them and stopped retreating. Black vapour reversed around his wounds. Instead of rebuilding missing flesh, it flowed back into his chest. The unfinished arm withered. His new leg darkened and split as stolen strength withdrew from it. Brass plates dropped from his body with their runes extinguished, while the light behind his eyes grew bright enough to reveal the shape of his skull.
He had abandoned regeneration. Everything he possessed was being gathered for one attack as the Rod of Khorne rose from the battlefield.
It was a weapon made to draw upon the Immaterium. The twisted staff had broken sorcerers by drinking the power from their spells and had gathered the currents of the Warp into storms of its own. Now it pulled at every trace of empyric corruption left in the cavern. Red flame peeled from the dead, and the last echoes of daemonic manifestation streamed towards its carved icon. Lightning joined the Rod to Doombreed's surviving hand as his claws closed around it.
"If Khorne cannot claim their blood, then this world will become their grave." Doombreed tightened his surviving claw around the Rod and leaned towards the survivors. Hatred consumed the fear in his face.
Doombreed lunged as though he meant to drive the weapon through the Slayer. The Slayer moved to intercept him, but at the last instant the Daemon Prince turned the point towards the ground. The Rod struck the cavern floor.
The Slayer reached him before it could discharge fully and knocked the weapon aside. Its lower point carved through stone instead of entering it. Red power burst from the cut, opening a fracture that raced towards the central pylon, and the nodal cavern convulsed.
Cables tore loose from the surrounding machinery. Dust and slabs of rock fell from the darkness overhead. The fracture divided beneath the central node. One branch ripped open a bank of Imperial equipment beside Cawl. The other struck the base of a blackstone pillar and climbed three metres through its surface before stopping. The streams of light inside the pylon flickered.
Feedback travelled through Cawl's connections and snapped his body backwards. Two mechadendrites locked in place, their joints smoking. Trazyn drove the butt of his staff into the floor and held his link while the surviving Necron constructs closed around the damaged relay. Neither disconnected.
"The foundation beneath the central node has failed. A second discharge of equal magnitude will collapse the cavern and break synchronisation." Cawl tore two smoking mechadendrites from the ruined controls and redirected the others. Despite his alarm, his hands never stopped working.
Celestine spread her wings, and the barrier thickened above the survivors as the ceiling shed more stone. Falling slabs struck the white-gold field and shattered. She guided the fragments away from the wounded, but the damage extended far beyond the space she protected. No shield could hold three kilometres of collapsing cavern once the foundations gave way.
"I can protect them from the first fall. Not from the mountain above it." Celestine lifted her sword and spread the barrier farther across the ceiling. Grim determination tightened her expression as more stone shattered against the light.
Doombreed wrenched the Rod free, and the Slayer broke his wrist. The hand remained locked around the staff. Doombreed forced the ruined joint straight with a surge of red power and drew the last of his strength into the weapon. Its head became a second sun, filling the cavern with the colour of fresh blood.
This time the gathering force spread beneath the floor. It sought the weakened foundations, the central pylon, and the people sheltered above them.
Doombreed no longer needed to defeat the Slayer. One successful strike would bury the node and end the activation sequence. The collapse would accomplish what his army had failed to do.
The Slayer measured the pressure building inside the Rod. He could sever the arm and break Doombreed apart again. He could continue until the daemon possessed nothing left to gather. Doombreed had suffered for only a fraction of the lives carried inside him, but another wound would not contain the power already drawn into the weapon. Each moment of punishment gave Doombreed another chance to reach the foundations.
Seventy-two life signs glowed within the Slayer's visor. Some were faint. Several survivors would die if their temporary dressings failed before they reached a proper medicae station. They had endured seven fallen lines, the destruction of their units, and Doombreed's advance. Celestine and the Slayer had reached them before the final defence broke, and they would not die so that vengeance could last a little longer.
The Slayer remembered the mountains west of Kasr Kraf and Celestine standing beneath Cadia's violet sky. She had not asked him to forgive the creatures he hunted or spoken of mercy. She had asked what mattered more when vengeance and mortal lives stood on opposite sides of the same choice.
Then judge that need by the living, not by what daemons deserve. Celestine's remembered voice carried the same calm conviction it had beneath Cadia's sky. The Slayer tightened his hand around the Doomblade as anger gave way to resolve.
Doombreed raised the Rod.
The Slayer made his choice, and golden-white light spilled from between the plates of the Praetor suit as he released a fraction of the power sealed within him.
The noctilith reacted. Its dormant null pressure deepened, searching for an empyric current to suppress, but the power emerging from the Slayer possessed no reflection in the Warp. There was no psychic conduit to close and no immaterial source to sever. Every daemon in the cavern felt it.
Celestine felt something else. The fragment within her answered the greater essence from which it had come. White-gold fire travelled over her armour and along every feather of her wings. The barrier brightened, reinforced without taking more from the Emperor's distant light, and she turned towards him.
Celestine witnessed a measure of what lay sealed beneath his armour. The release was vast, but it was not uncontrolled. It passed around the survivors and left the pylon machinery untouched. Every part of it converged upon Doombreed, and the lesser daemons broke.
Bloodletters stopped mid-charge. Flesh Hounds flattened themselves against the stone. Horrors let unfinished spells die in their hands, while winged creatures turned towards the tunnels. Then they fled.
Doombreed brought the Rod down, but the Slayer caught his arm. The gathered Warp power struck the Praetor suit and vanished into the light surrounding it. His gauntlet closed. Doombreed's wrist collapsed, and the Rod came free.
The broken Rod burned in the Slayer's grasp. The storm trapped within it searched for the ground, a living mind, anything through which it could escape. His fingers tightened, and the Rod of Khorne broke into three pieces.
Golden-white fire entered the fractures and consumed the stolen Warp power before it could discharge. The pieces fell as dull bone and metal, their runes dark and their bond to Khorne severed. The Slayer seized Doombreed by the throat.
At last, the Daemon Prince did not roar a challenge. He did not invoke the Blood God or boast of the worlds he had killed. His claw scraped uselessly across the Slayer's breastplate while his mind searched for an escape into the Immaterium. He found the path that had sustained him since his ascension.
The active blackstone had not yet closed it, but its pressure had made the passage narrow. Beyond it waited a realm of brass, fire, and endless war. The Slayer felt Doombreed reach for his god.
The Doomblade entered the Daemon Prince's chest, passing through brazen armour, bone, and the corrupted heart beneath them. The Slayer's essence followed the blade into the wound, and Doombreed convulsed.
Light filled the veins beneath his black flesh. It burned through the runes cut into his armour and ignited the power stored inside him. Not one spark escaped towards the cavern floor; the Slayer held it all inside the daemon.
Doombreed's path into the Warp opened for less than a heartbeat. Something vast waited beyond it. Its rage shook the connection, but there was no concern within that rage. Khorne reached only to reclaim what had been invested in his servant, and Doombreed tried to surrender himself.
The Slayer reached the opening first, and his power burned through the bond. The Daemon Prince's armour collapsed into glowing fragments. His last wing became ash. Flesh vanished from his bones, and the bones broke apart within the light.
The destruction did not end with his body. His soul fled along channels worn through millennia of sacrifice, and the Slayer followed it through every one. Each path burned behind him, cutting away Doombreed's name, his claim upon the Warp, and every road that might carry him back to the Skull Throne.
Nothing escaped. Nothing returned to Khorne, and the presence beyond the severed bond withdrew with a final surge of rage.
The echoes trapped within Doombreed faded as the corruption holding them came apart. The city above the black ocean disappeared, followed by the fortress beneath the red sun and the altar built from human bones. The victims were beyond the Slayer's reach, but their killer was not.
Doombreed vanished, and the pressure beneath the floor vanished with him. The Slayer retracted the Doomblade as the golden-white light withdrew beneath his armour, leaving the Praetor suit dark once more.
Celestine destroyed the last daemon that had failed to flee. The Ardent Blade passed through its chest, and holy fire stripped its essence from the cavern. She landed beside the scorched ground where Doombreed had stood, then turned first towards the central pylon. The fractures beneath it had stopped spreading. No more debris struck the barrier, and all seventy-two life signs remained.
"You could have continued your punishment." Celestine lowered the Ardent Blade and studied the empty ground. Quiet understanding softened her expression.
"More would have died." The Slayer turned his visor towards the wounded. He spoke without regret and held himself with quiet certainty. Celestine followed his gaze through the barrier before looking back at the empty ground.
"But they did not. For that, you have my thanks." Celestine watched the medicae workers tend the wounded beneath her barrier. Relief eased the strain in her expression, though grief for the dead remained in her eyes.
Behind them, the pylon interface gave a final pulse.
"All viable pylons are aligned. Trazyn, complete the sequence." Cawl locked his surviving mechadendrites into the final controls. Wonder broke through his machine voice.
"I completed my portion before you finished speaking." Trazyn lowered his staff to the blackstone interface. Dry satisfaction coloured the rebuke, while the Slayer turned towards the central node.
The cavern became still.
Gunfire faded in the distant tunnels. Loose fragments settled across the battlefield. Even the smoke seemed to pause as the streams of light within the blackstone pillars reversed and descended towards the central node.
Noctilith could be turned towards either purpose. One alignment amplified the Warp and thinned the veil between realities, while the opposite becalmed the Immaterium. The Necrons had raised networks of pylons as part of a greater design to divide the Materium from the realm of souls. Millions of years later, when the Eye of Terror tore open, Cadia's surviving nodes constrained the storm and left the relatively stable passage known as the Cadian Gate. For ten thousand years, the Imperium had built its greatest fortress upon those buried foundations without understanding them.
Now Trazyn gave the buried network its final command.
The pylon awakened.
There was no blast of force. Instead, something was taken away. The Slayer felt the boundary between the Materium and Immaterium harden. The blackstone did not destroy the Warp; it denied the Warp access to realspace, closing the fractures through which its power bled and forcing reality back into its proper shape. The null field passed over the Praetor suit and found nothing to suppress.
Warp-fire vanished from the cavern floor. The last red flames left by Doombreed went dark, followed by the runes burned into the wreckage. Corruption peeled from stone and metal like ash caught in a sudden wind. Nothing else was restored. Wrecked tanks still burned, seven defensive lines lay buried beneath their dead, and every wound suffered before the activation remained. The pylons offered no healing; they only denied the Warp further access to the world.
Daemons lost their purchase upon reality. Those held together almost entirely by Warp power dissolved where they stood. Bodies became smoke, then were dragged through closing breaches into the Immaterium. Creatures that had achieved a stronger material anchor remained, but the change crippled them. Bloodletters stumbled as the fire left their hellblades. Flesh Hounds collapsed beneath the weight of bodies no longer sustained by impossible strength. Greater daemons struck sealed passages and discovered that the Warp could no longer carry them around the stone.
Not all had been banished, but those left could be killed, and no endless army could follow them. Then the field reached Celestine.
Her connection to the Emperor receded until even the Slayer could scarcely sense it. She felt the silence closing around that distant light and turned at once to the second fire within her. The fragment answered, and the change took less than a heartbeat. The Slayer's essence replaced what the pylons had suppressed, flowing through flesh, armour, wings, and sword beyond the noctilith's reach.
Celestine did not fall, and her barrier did not flicker. The radiance surrounding her changed from the gold of the Emperor to the white-gold fire the Slayer had placed within her, but it never diminished.
One source had grown distant; the other burned on.
"My lady?" Eleanor pushed herself upright behind the barrier and reached towards Celestine. Anxiety showed in the tension of her outstretched hand.
"The Emperor's light is distant, but I have not weakened." Celestine raised the Ardent Blade and showed Eleanor the white-gold flame along its edge. Her calm expression offered reassurance, and her wings remained fully spread above the survivors.
"The null matrix has suppressed all measurable local empyric activity, yet the secondary source within the Living Saint shows no loss of magnitude." Cawl angled several lenses towards Celestine while auspex beams crossed her armour. Fascination displaced every trace of concern as he compared the readings.
"Because your instruments are searching for a reflection in the Immaterium. There is none." Trazyn tilted his metal skull towards Cawl. His green oculars brightened with amusement as the Archmagos continued searching for a reading that did not exist.
"A divine manifestation without an empyric signature. Such a phenomenon lies outside every accepted classification." Cawl refocused every available lens upon the Slayer. Intellectual excitement quickened his remaining mechadendrites.
"Then accept that your classifications are inadequate." Trazyn tapped the base of his staff against the pylon. Condescension sharpened the words.
The Slayer turned his visor towards Trazyn, who returned to the pylon without another word. Beyond them, the null field spread through the buried conduits beneath Kasr Kraf and divided along pathways reaching across Cadia. One pylon answered, followed by another. Within seconds, hundreds of blackstone structures had joined the sequence.
A hololithic globe opened above Cawl.
Violet storms surrounded the projected world. Black points marked every functioning node, and pale lines joined them as the network achieved coherence. The first reports came from Kasr Kraf, where Warp breaches closed across the fortress-city and daemons vanished in the middle of charges. Sorcerous flames went out before reaching Imperial barricades, and traitor psykers collapsed as the Immaterium disappeared from their minds.
Kasr Myrak answered next, followed by Kasr Tyrok, the Elysion Fields, and defensive positions represented only by damaged runes in Cawl's display. Some pylons remained dark, destroyed during the invasion, but the surviving nodes carried the null field across the gaps.
Vox channels filled with overlapping voices as officers reported storms breaking above their positions. Soldiers described daemons turning transparent, or becoming flesh that could bleed and die. Others called for ammunition and reinforcements to finish those left behind.
Astropathic channels fell silent as sanctioned psykers lost their sight of the Warp.
Wards guttered, and force weapons became ordinary metal. The sudden quiet disoriented the Imperial forces, but among the servants of Chaos it became terror. Their blessings failed. Their mutations weakened. The gods they had worshipped could no longer reach them.
Across Cadia, reality closed its wounds.
The Eye of Terror pressed against the network from beyond the planet, its storms fed by an ocean of emotion and thought that no mortal weapon could exhaust. The pylons did not fight that ocean. They raised a wall it could not cross, and on Cawl's projection the violet light surrounding Cadia began to contract.
Celestine kept the barrier raised until the last hostile manifestation had vanished from the nodal cavern. Only then did the white-gold wall dissolve. Medicae workers moved first, and those still able to walk lifted stretchers and carried the wounded towards the upper tunnels. Salamanders took the heaviest casualties in their arms. The Custodian forced himself upright with his guardian spear, while Greyfax resumed command of the Vostroyans and Kappic Eagles securing the evacuation route.
Eleanor and Genevieve returned to Celestine's side, though neither raised a weapon. Captain Cerantes stood with help from one of his Ultramarines, then directed the rest of his squad towards those who could not walk. The unnamed Custodian looked at the scorched ground where Doombreed had been erased and inclined his head once towards the Slayer. Cerantes followed with a warrior's salute.
No words accompanied either gesture; there was nothing left in the cavern for them to fight.
"Seventy-two survivors. All alive." Cawl lowered his mechadendrites as the final life signs moved away from the node. Solemn relief replaced his earlier excitement.
Celestine closed her eyes for a moment, and the Slayer sensed her relief through the fragment. It carried no triumph. Thousands lay dead beyond the central node, and the pylons had awakened too late to save them. Yet the final defenders had lived. Their comrades had not held seven lines only for Doombreed to bury the survivors beneath the last one.
Celestine embraced Eleanor and Genevieve briefly before sending them to help with the evacuation.
The Slayer looked towards the ceiling. Kilometres of stone and a ruined city hid Cadia's sky, but he felt the pylon network moving beneath his feet. The pressure that had hung over the world was receding.
Doombreed was gone, the pylons were awake, and above Cadia, the Eye of Terror began to close.