Kochav's mind, usually a storm of whispers, daemonic mutters, and fractured foresight, fell eerily quiet.
All the voices faded. Only one remained.
A voice he knew. A signature he could never mistake.
Bergelmir.
"What is going on?" Kochav demanded in his head, his voice ragged, strained.
"Why are you in my body?"
—
The reply came rough and steady, like iron dragged across stone.
"I'm merely borrowing your body… to finish what I started."
—
For once, there was no chorus of interruption. No daemon sneers. No foresight static.
Just that one presence.
"So This bastard—you failed to kill him and now you want my help?"
Kochav sighed. His lips curled into a crooked grin, even as blood steamed down his face.
"Fine. Go on then. Borrow away."
—
The ward on his severed stump flared—normally a searing pain against the daemonic attempt on his soul.
But not this time.
Instead of pain, it spread, light racing like molten fire across his veins, etching itself into his flesh.
His whole body became a living rite, holy and oppressive, every breath radiating a weight that pressed on all around him.
—
The tundra seemed to bow. Frost thick on shattered banners melted away in rivulets that hissed when they touched the snow. Air warped faintly, like heat over a forge.
Even the blizzard itself recoiled, its endless snow drifting slower around him, unwilling to trespass too close.
He was no longer just a Psyker. He was something else.
Something unstoppable.
The chaos around him shifted.
—
Mira broke through at last, flanked by her beastman guards, their tusks still slick with gore but their eyes clear again under the halo's presence.
The battlefield that had been madness moments ago was now a tableau of hesitation: beastmen halted mid-roar, Xarcarion troopers shaking their heads as if waking from nightmare, all of them thrown away by the sudden weight of this new aura.
—
She froze when she saw him. Her hands signed sharp, fractured, swift:
"K… No. B?"
Her chest rose with a rare sigh of relief—then uncertainty clouded her eyes, her fingers trembling before she forced them still.
—
Bergelmir answered with a low, wordless "Hmm."
The sound was flat, cold. A stark contrast to Kochav's usual reckless spark.
—
It unsettled her more than the battlefield ever had. Her hands faltered.
She stumbled into her beastman guards awkwardly, tusks scraping against her pauldron as they steadied her with surprised growls.
—
Bergelmir's voice came again, this time pitched with a mock humor that only made it harsher.
"I heard a female voice cursing in the battlefield." His gaze, borrowed through Kochav's eyes, swept her with iron weight.
"You wouldn't know a thing about that… would you?"
—
Mira froze. She said nothing.
The silence between them thickened like a shroud.
And for the first time in the battle, awkwardness hung in the air.
".....That was a jest."
Bergelmir added, colder still.
—
An even longer awkward silence....
From the ranks of beastmen, one finally murmured, low and nervous, tusks flecked with frost.
"Are you okay, Apex?"
—
Kochav's inner voice groaned, directing his thoughts to Bergelmir.
"Great. Now you've ruined my image. How are you going to fix this, huh?"
—
Bergelmir offered no answer, only an exhale of presence, a sigh like the scrape of steel over stone.
But before silence could thicken further, the moment broke in fire and thunder.
Jaeger erupted, the tundra split beneath his roar, crimson light detonating from his chest in a blast that turned the battlefield inside out.
Corpses—Xarcarion and beastman alike—were hurled skyward in pieces, jagged limbs and broken steel flung wide in an obscene storm.
The ground shook with the impact, snow liquefying into red slush that splattered across the ridges.
Bodies flew everywhere. The blood spray, thick as rain, rushed toward the halo's light.
And then—stopped.
The torrent never touched them.
Droplets hissed to vapor mid-air, bones veered aside as if struck by invisible walls, shattered blades twisted away before they could strike true.
Kochav—no, Bergelmir wearing his flesh—had not even raised a hand.
—
The storm simply bent around him, blood mist deflected as though the world itself refused to touch his frame.
He stood unmoved at the center, boots firm in the snow, halo flaring brighter with each impact that failed to reach him.
Mira's guards stared in open silence, tusks dripping crimson spray that never came near.
Even Mira herself flinched once before realizing—the halo itself had chosen to protect them.
—
Across from them, Jaeger straightened in the aftermath, steam rolling from his shoulders, his face streaked with gore.
His grin had only widened, his voice rolling across the blood-soaked field like gravel dragged over iron.
"You stand in borrowed light, pretender. You think a halo makes you more than meat? I'll—"
BOOM!
He didn't get to finish.
Bergelmir raised a single finger, pointing straight at Jaeger.
A blast like a thunderclap ripped the silence apart.
Force compressed into a bullet erupted from the fingertip, streaking across the field in a beam of cerulean fire.
—
It struck Jaeger square in the right torso and shoulder. Crimson flesh tore apart. Bone exploded outward. Half his frame vanished in a storm of gore and steam.
The Khornate was hurled sideways, crashing through corpses and snow, his roar breaking into a guttural bellow that rattled the haze itself.
Steam poured from the ruin of his body. His chain and tail thrashed around mad.
Across the battlefield, Bergelmir lowered his hand, expression unchanged. His eyes glowed cerulean fire, halo blazing behind him.
Not a word. Not a flinch.
The silence after the shot was heavier than Jaeger's roar had ever been.
—
Jaeger stirred in the crater, a guttural roar bubbling out of the ruin of his chest. His remaining arm clawed into the snow, dragging him upright as blood pooled from a dozen corpses and slithered toward him in thick rivers.
Crimson veins crawled across his skin, knitting flesh, re-forging bone. The stump of his shoulder bubbled, muscle crawling out like molten wax.
His roar became a scream of triumph as his body swelled back into grotesque shape.
—
Bergelmir did not move, raised his finger again.
BOOM.
The force round blasted through Jaeger's half-healed chest, shredding the crimson mass back into ruin.
Jaeger roared, staggered, lurched forward. More blood streamed toward him, feeding his flesh. His shoulder split, bone spilling outward to become another weaponized spur.
BOOM!
The round sheared the limb clean off. The stump burst open, blood spraying wide before being burned away into steam.
The rune overhead pulsed faster, feeding him.
His body strained, repairing, mutating, refusing to stay broken. His grin returned through the gore, teeth glinting in the haze.
Bergelmir's expression never changed. His finger rose again.
BOOM! BOOM!
Jaeger staggered sideways, flesh shredded, half his jaw blasted away. He spat blood and marrow, laughter choking through his mangled mouth. His tongue dragged across exposed bone, as though savoring the ruin.
Still, he tried to rise.
And still, Bergelmir hammered him down.
BOOM!
A leg exploded into shards of bone. Jaeger collapsed into the snow, clawing forward on all fours, dragging more blood into himself.
BOOM!
The other leg disintegrated, flesh torn from bone by psychic fury. Jaeger lay writhing, a torso of rage and hunger, drinking whatever he could reach.
Bergelmir advanced, each step calm, crushing snow into stone beneath his boots.
BOOM!
Another round smashed into Jaeger's gut, hollowing him out.
The Khornate screamed, but even that scream carried laughter.
His ruinous form still tried to stitch, dragging marrow like threads, sucking blood like wine.
But Bergelmir never allowed it to complete.
No clever flanks. No shifting tactics. No hesitation.
Just relentless, merciless hammering—until there would be nothing left for Jaeger to consume.
Bergelmir stopped advancing. His hand rose—fingers splayed like a priest giving benediction.
The air bent.
Then came the storm.
—
Force-lightning erupted from his hand in searing arcs of cerulean fire, splitting the battlefield in a roar of thunder.
It did not seek Jaeger directly—it sought everything else.
The corpses littering the tundra, the broken beastmen, the mangled Xarcarions—every scrap of flesh ignited.
Their bodies blackened, curled, and collapsed into drifting ash.
The blood-soaked snow boiled into vapor, great red clouds hissing skyward. Pools of gore screamed as they were evaporated in bursts of steam.
The whole graveyard of slaughter was scoured clean in seconds.
Jaeger's howl split the air, half agony, half rage.
He clawed at the steaming ground as his regenerative web collapsed, his veins starving, his stolen fuel burning away.
The rune above pulsed frantically, a furnace demanding sacrifice—but there was nothing left to feed it. No corpses. No blood. No bone.
Only Jaeger, alone, reeking of smoke, his crimson flesh cracking as his body tried to repair what it could no longer sustain.
Bergelmir's eyes glowed cold as he lowered his hand, lightning still twitching across his fingertips. His presence pressed like judgment over the field.
For the first time, Jaeger faltered—not because of wounds, but because the battlefield itself no longer answered him.
—
He staggered, steam rolling from his wounds, crimson cracks splitting across his flesh. His eyes burned brighter than the rune overhead.
He raised his arms to the sky, claws spread wide, and the air answered.
Skulls began to rise.
Not from bodies. Not from the ground.
From the air itself. Out of memory. Out of tally. Out of every kill Jaeger had ever claimed in Khorne's name.
A maelstrom of bone took shape above him, ghostly crowns snapping into solidity.
Their sockets burned, but not with flame—with blood. The red pooled and dripped down, like each skull was an eye weeping crimson.
Then the sockets turned.
They found the survivors. Beastmen and Xarcarions.
Wherever those sockets met eyes, the victim screamed. Blood welled in their vision, bursting from their sockets.
Heads split from within, exploding in showers of red mist.
Every death fed the storm. Each skull, slick with stolen gore, drank it greedily.
Flesh and sinew crawled across the bone, knitting onto the grinning crowns, building shape where there had been only fragments.
Jawbones cracked wider, vertebrae slithered downward, torsos formed in spasms of blood-stuff. The air stank of copper and smoke.
And then the faces emerged.
Not random. Not nameless.
His face.
Hundreds of Jaegers, half-formed and hideous, screamed into being—warp-born copies born of murder, each one a fragment of rage given flesh.
Each warped reflection wore Jaeger's grin, stretched too wide, too many teeth. Horns erupted in grotesque variations—some spiraled like drills, some curved like broken crowns.
Their flesh boiled crimson, but it never held steady; muscles melted and reformed with every heartbeat, as though the warp itself struggled to remember what Jaeger was supposed to be.
A legion of half-born Jaegers.
They stalked forward on unsteady limbs, some dragging chains of bone, others clawing at the air, every one of them screaming with his voice.
The rune above shrieked in delight and agony, tearing wider with each copy birthed.
Warp-fire bled across the sky, the tundra trembling under the weight of their emergence.
Jaeger's true body stood at the center, laughing with throat-splitting joy as his warped reflections clawed their way toward Bergelmir and Mira.
—
They came on like a tide.
Legion of Jaegers, void-born copies, half-flesh and half-warp, rushed forward with chains of bone rattling and claws slashing at the air.
Their howls were a chorus of the same voice, layered and maddening, shaking the snow loose from the shattered ridges.
Bergelmir met them without hesitation. He moved like a guillotine given flesh—every strike precise, every motion final.
A dagger cut a throat, a finger-shot collapsed a skull, a force-snap twisted spines until they broke like brittle reeds. Bone cracked. Flesh tore. Each warped reflection fell in pieces.
But it didn't matter.
—
Every one he destroyed vanished into smoke, only to reappear behind Jaeger, reforming whole, screaming anew, their rampage never slowed.
Mira pushed into the tide beside him. Silent. Unwavering.
Where Bergelmir's methodical violence carved, her pariah presence erased.
—
A copy lunged for her with claws wide—she caught its wrist, and the instant her skin brushed it, the thing collapsed in on itself, unraveling like ash in the wind.
Another charged; she struck with a gauntleted fist, and it dropped like a puppet whose strings had been cut, no return, no reform.
The void-born screamed louder, recoiling from her null aura, their shapes flickering unstable. Only those she struck stayed dead, their bodies hitting the snow with dull thuds, still and final.
Her beastman guards rallied to her flanks, tusks flashing and axes biting, but even their kills reappeared behind Jaeger.
It was Mira alone who broke the cycle.
—
In the red haze, Bergelmir's cold efficiency and Mira's anti-warp touch carved a strange symmetry—holy and null.
The tide of void-born surged again, screaming copies hurling themselves at Bergelmir and Mira alike.
Bergelmir's eyes flicked to her, sharp and assessing.
Realizing that only she can silence them. His gaze lingered a fraction longer than usual, weighing the weapon she was and the battlefield's sudden shift.
Jaeger noticed too.
His crimson grin faltered for the first time, jagged teeth bared not in triumph but in wary fury. He spat blood and snarled, voice doubled by daemon echo:
"The Null." His horns lowered, muscles trembling with rage.
"The soundless chorus."
—
The rune above them shrieked, crimson light flickering erratically. Each copy faltered a step before surging back into the fray, their hate now twisting toward Mira.
—
Jaeger bellowed and hurled himself forward, crimson muscle bulging, horns low, tail lashing behind him like a spined whip.
The rune overhead shrieked in tandem, pulsing faster as if urging him on.
The tide of copies rushed with him, a crimson sea converging on Mira.
Her beastmen threw themselves into the gap without hesitation. Tusks gored, axes swung, spears shattered against bone.
One by one they fell—slain, trampled, torn apart—but they died roaring, their last breath still shielding their Queen.
Still Jaeger came on, carving through them like parchment, his laughter splitting the snowstorm. His claws stretched wide, hungry for Mira's throat.
Mira braced, fists ready, silent even as the last of her guards crumpled around her. For once, her stoicism flickered—the red tide was too thick, too fast—
Then her boots left the ground.
Force surged beneath her, invisible yet absolute. She shot upward, carried on an unseen hand. The snow blurred beneath her as jagged stone rose to meet her feet—a shard of earth ripped upward into a high ridge, a throne of ice and rock above the carnage.
Bergelmir stood below, arm still raised, eyes cold. He hadn't even looked at her—just willed it, and the battlefield obeyed.
Jaeger's claws snapped shut on empty air where she had been. His roar cracked the night, echoing off stone and storm.
The Khornate rune flared brighter, crimson light drowning the sky in rage.
Mira steadied herself on the rise, breath misting in the cold, her eyes wide in awe.
Bergelmir lowered his palm, gaze locked on Jaeger, voice iron-flat
"You will not touch her."
—
Bergelmir launched upward, cerulean fire wreathing his frame, until he levitated beside Mira atop the jagged rise. The air bent beneath him, snow swirling away in rings.
Below, the Jaeger-spawn seethed. Warped copies crawled over one another, clawing, snarling, their eyes and teeth glinting red as they stacked like a tide of flesh.
They clambered high, climbing toward the ridge like a living wall.
Bergelmir's hand flared, fingers spread wide.
Shzzzz Shzzz Shzzz!
Force lightning screamed downward in endless streams, burning through the swarm. Each bolt tore dozens to ash, leaving only smoking husks—but the tide kept building, hurling themselves upward with mindless hunger.
Bergelmir cut the lightning short, then hurled himself down into the writhing mass without hesitation.
Thrum!
The impact detonated like a meteor, blasting bodies apart in showers of gore and fire.
In the midst of the eruption, he stood unbroken, his hand already driven forward.
He seized the real Jaeger by the throat.
Crimson steam hissed from the Khornate's skin, claws raking against Bergelmir's grip, but the hold did not falter.
A talon of pure psychic will formed around Bergelmir's boot, solid and blinding, and with one merciless thrust he crashed it through Jaeger's chest.
The psychic edge burned through flesh and bone alike, pinning him in place.
—
Bergelmir's eyes never wavered. Cold. Undeterred.
Then, slowly, he turned his head toward Mira above.
Their gazes met. He gave her a single, steady nod.
Mira leapt.
Her fists clenched, gauntlets gleaming with the null's silent hunger. She fell like judgment incarnate, ready to erase Jaeger from both realspace and the Immaterium in a single strike.
But Jaeger only grinned through the blood bubbling at his teeth. His voice was low, guttural, daemon-echo curling around the words.
"Not today. I will come back to break your chains… both of you."
His lips split wider—then his own claws scythed across his neck.
The head rolled free, landing sideways in the gore.
A moment later, it dissolved into dust, scattering on the crimson wind before Mira's fist struck.
Her gauntlet slammed into empty ground. The shockwave shattered stone, cracked ice, and vaporized the gore in a wide ring—but Jaeger was already gone.
Mira dropped into a crouch beside them, gauntlets slick with red haze. Her eyes narrowed, and her hands signed sharp and cutting through the silence:
"Ironic, Khornate running from a fight."
—
Bergelmir only gave a low, steady hmm in reply. The sound was cold and unbothered, more stone than flesh.
The battlefield hung quiet around them, the red haze thinning in places where the rune above flickered uncertain. Beastmen shifted uneasily, watching their Apex and his strange stillness.
Inside, Kochav's voice pressed through, flat and unyielding.
"He ran."
—
Bergelmir answered, steady as ever, his words like iron hammered on an anvil.
"He will be back. Then we face him together."
—
A pause. Kochav's thought sharpened, striking with the weight of a vow.
"Within our own bodies."
—
And Bergelmir echoed, the same words returned with finality, binding the two of them in grim accord.
"Within our own bodies."
—
Kochav's eyes slid shut.
The cerulean fire that had burned behind his lids dimmed, then guttered out.
When he opened them again, they were his own.
Dark brown.
Mortal.
Tired, yet stubbornly alive.
Mira stepped forward. Her gauntlet tapped once against his shoulder—not heavy, not soft.
Just an acknowledgement. A warrior's wordless gesture.
Kochav let out a long breath. The sight around him was nothing but ash. The ground where Bergelmir's lightning had scoured the field was a barren plain of grey powder, bones cracked and blackened.
Only here and there did fresh corpses remain, too recently felled to have been caught in the storm of psychic fire.
He lowered himself onto the snow, sitting hard, exhaustion pressing into every bone. His chest still heaved, his coat scorched and torn, but what weighed heavier was disappointment.
—
Mira turned south, guiding her guards and the remnants with a silent sweep of her hand.
They made for the forest.
Back at their base, the air here was warmer, less bitten by the tundra wind, and the shadow of trees dulled the red haze that still lingered faintly in the sky.
Dozens of beastmen—ragged, battered, scarred, but alive—stood waiting.
Their weapons hung loose in their hands, their tusks chipped and bloodied.
One by one, they stepped forward to clasp the Queen's hand. No words were spoken.
Only the silent press of palm to gauntlet, their services renewed by the gesture of gratitude.
—
Beside her, Kochav sat slumped on the roots of a tree, watching the procession with heavy eyes.
His presence went unmarked at first, just another shadow at the Queen's side.
But then, slowly, one beastman broke from the line and came toward him.
The tusked warrior knelt and extended a hand.
Kochav blinked in surprise, then grasped it weakly.
Another followed. Then another. Soon a small cluster had formed, waiting their turn to clasp the Apex's hand as well.
The corners of Kochav's mouth twitched. Not a smile, not fully—but something lighter than before. His shoulders eased a fraction.
The forest hush held for only a moment longer.
Then—
Sizzzzzzzzz.
The scavenged vox crackled, breaking the fragile silence like glass underfoot.
"Inquisitor to Dead Rogue and Centura," Helsin's voice drawled through the static, calm but clipped, authority woven into every syllable.
"The Xarcarions made their move. Meet us down at these coordinates."
—
The dataslate wired to the vox flickered to life, runes scrolling before locking into a set of fresh marks. New data, fresh orders.
Around it, the mood collapsed.
Kochav's head dropped with a weary exhale, shoulders heavy.
Mira's gauntlet froze mid-sign, then curled tight before she let out a soft sigh through her nose.
Even the beastmen, battered and half-dead on their feet, released a guttural chorus of growls and huffs—something between complaint and resignation.
The moment of peace was gone.
Duty called them back to the fire.
—
North of the tundra warfront, ivory One.
The frozen peaks of Thrysa split open into jagged valleys where black stone and steel clashed.
Amid the snow, the Xarcarions had carved their command base — a fortress of iron teeth sunk into the mountain's side, half-subterranean, half-throne.
Smoke stacks belched a steady plume into the pale sky, staining the heavens with soot.
Signal masts thrust upward like spears, their vox-dishes swiveling with restless purpose.
Crimson banners of House Xarcarion whipped violently in the blizzard, each emblazoned with their fractal sigil — jagged geometry that seemed to shift whenever eyes lingered too long.
Inside, the command levels were a hive of discipline and precision. Troops in stark white armor moved in drilled columns, their pace mechanical, unbroken by the storm outside.
Servitors scuttled past them, hauling girders, spools of cabling, and fragments of what appeared to be a massive drill-head.
Around them, Tech-Priests chanted binharic hymns, sparks dancing across their mechadendrites as they fitted together pieces of some vast war-machine.
Above them all, in the central command dais, holo-projectors displayed shifting maps of Thrysa, glowing with red runes marking enemy sightings.
The tundra southward pulsed with unstable warp interference — the aftershock of Jaeger and Kochav's duel.
Officers murmured over the data, their voices clipped, but their eyes betrayed unease.
At the core of the dais, Commissar Reyvis Fitz stood still, his cloak whipping faintly in the filtered air.
Cold eyes scanned the maps, then flicked to the servitors lowering the enormous drill-head into its mount.
The construct was not just a machine of war — it was a key. Something meant to burrow deeper than rock, deeper than ice.
Something beneath Thrysa was waiting.
—
The chamber fell into silence as Reyvis stood at the center of the command dais, hands clasped behind his back, eyes fixed on the controlled chaos below.
Ivory-armored officers barked orders, servitors clanked on tracked limbs, and Tech-Priests whispered static hymns as sparks crawled across the half-complete frame of a war-engine.
One officer broke from the line, striding up the steps with rigid precision. He stopped a pace before Reyvis, bowed his head, and delivered his report in a clipped tone:
"The Knight is ready, Veylar."
For a heartbeat, the base held its breath.
Then—
THOOM.
The sound was deep, resonant, like the mountain itself groaning. Dust trickled from the rafters. Vox-screens flickered.
THOOM. THOOM. THOOM.
The rhythm of colossal footsteps shook the entire command level, each impact a drumbeat that echoed off the stone walls and steel bulkheads.
Officers froze mid-step, servitors fell for the quake. Even the Tech-Priests faltered in their canticles, their vox-voices stuttering into static.
The glow of lumen-strips dimmed as a shadow swallowed the chamber.
It spread across the deck like a storm front, devouring men, servitors, even machinery into its outline.
The officers stiffened as the shape grew larger and larger, filling the high archway at the far end of the hall.