**Chapter 10: The Echo of Genesis**
Ascending through the mountain was like flying up the barrel of a gun during a war. Likas was a silver-gold comet, a missile of pure will, punching through floors of rockcrete and plasteel as if they were paper. The ANITO Protocol, now fully unshackled and humming with divine energy, plotted the most direct course to the Cathedral of the Penitent Word, ignoring trivial concepts like corridors and stairwells. His journey was a vertical line of destruction, a trail of perfectly round holes marking his passage through the dying heart of the Convent.
The sounds of battle were a symphony of chaos around him. He could feel the desperate, heroic last stands of the Sisters of Battle in a hundred different chambers, their faith a burning, defiant pyre against the encroaching darkness. He could feel the cold, righteous fury of the Echo of Bone as she finally cornered the Infocyte in the main geothermal reactor, a duel between a ghost of the past and a serpent of the present fought amidst the churning magma of a planet's core. And he could feel the growing, monstrous psychic power of the ritual above, a vortex of spiritual energy that was beginning to buckle the very foundations of reality.
He burst through the final layer of marble flooring and emerged into the Cathedral. The sight was a blasphemy that would have driven a lesser man insane.
The Cathedral of the Penitent Word was one of the grandest holy sites in the entire Segmentum. Its ceiling, a thousand feet high, was a single, breathtaking fresco of the God-Emperor's victory over the Arch-traitor Horus. Its walls were lined with the gilded sarcophagi of countless saints and heroes. A great organ, its pipes as tall as hab-blocks, was built into the far wall.
Now, it was a temple of desecration. The fresco on the ceiling had been corrupted, the image of the Emperor now a leering, skeletal visage of the Tyrant of Chains. The sarcophagi had been ripped open, their holy contents scattered and defiled. The great organ was playing a terrible, discordant dirge, its notes so full of hate and despair that they seemed to make the very air bleed.
In the center of the Cathedral, where the main altar should have been, was the ritual. A circle of a dozen Chaos Sorcerers, acolytes of the Weaver of Whispers, chanted in a sibilant, multi-tongued chorus. Their arms were raised, and from their fingertips, streams of sickly, purple-black energy flowed, converging on a point in the air above them. At that point, reality itself was tearing open. It was a shimmering, ugly wound in spacetime, a nascent gateway to the Maelstrom.
And through that gateway, something was trying to push its way through. It was not a daemon. It was something far worse. A concept. An idea given form. It was the physical embodiment of the Tyrant of Chains' will, a vast, shadowy, crowned figure whose very presence radiated an aura of absolute, crushing domination. It was an avatar of a Chaos God, a being of unimaginable power.
The death-screams of every fallen Sister, every martyred priest, were being funneled into this gateway, acting as the lubricant for the avatar's passage.
"Too late, little godling," the voice of the Chaos Lord from orbit boomed, not just in his mind, but from the very air of the Cathedral itself. "The vessel is prepared. The door is open. Witness the true meaning of power. Witness the apotheosis of this world!"
Likas landed in the center of the Cathedral, the impact cracking the defiled marble floor. The twelve sorcerers turned their hooded heads towards him, their chanting never faltering. Their faces were pale, featureless masks, their eyes glowing with malevolent purple light.
"You talk too much," Likas said, his voice quiet, yet it carried across the vast chamber, cutting through the daemonic organ music.
He did not charge. He stood his ground, and his power erupted from him. The contained furnace of silver-gold light became an inferno. His wings of light unfurled, so vast and brilliant they banished the shadows from the great hall, momentarily overwriting the profane imagery with their own pure, divine radiance. The floor around him was scoured clean of its defilement, the marble returning to its pristine white.
He was a sun of righteous fury in a chapel of hell.
The sorcerers flinched, their concentration wavering. The streams of dark energy sputtered. The image of the avatar in the gateway flickered.
"Kill him!" the Chaos Lord commanded, a note of genuine anger in his voice. "Tear him apart!"
The sorcerers obeyed. They dropped their ritual focus and turned their combined power on Likas. A dozen lances of pure, corrosive Chaos energy, bolts of solidified madness and despair, shot across the cathedral, converging on him.
Likas met the assault with a gesture of sublime, arrogant simplicity. He raised one hand, palm open.
The ANITO Protocol, now a true divine co-processor, performed a feat of metaphysical engineering that bordered on blasphemy. It did not create a shield to block the energy. It analyzed the chaotic, entropic frequencies of the Chaos bolts and instantly computed their exact inverse. It then projected a field of pure, ordered, anti-entropic Aethel.
When the Chaos bolts hit the field, they were not blocked or deflected. They were… cancelled. Unwritten from reality. They simply ceased to exist, their chaotic energy neutralized by a wave of perfect, opposing order. It was the mathematical negation of a god's power.
The sorcerers recoiled in shock, their minds unable to comprehend what had just happened.
Likas smiled grimly. "My turn."
He clapped his hands together once. The sound was not a clap. It was a thunderclap, a sonic boom, and a psychic shockwave all at once. A wave of pure, silver-gold energy erupted from him in a 360-degree sphere. It was not an attack meant to kill. It was a statement of dominance.
The wave washed over the Cathedral. The great organ exploded into a shower of twisted metal and splintered wood, its profane music silenced forever. The corrupted fresco on the ceiling was scoured away, revealing the bare stone beneath. The twelve sorcerers were hurled backwards like ragdolls, their concentration shattered, their connection to the Maelstrom severed. They lay broken and twitching on the floor, their power extinguished.
The gateway in the center of the room, deprived of its power source, began to shrink, the image of the avatar fading with a final, echoing roar of frustration.
But the Chaos Lord was not so easily defeated.
"If the subtle hand fails," his voice boomed, now filled with cold, murderous rage, "then the clenched fist will suffice!"
The roof of the Cathedral exploded inwards. Not from a bomb, but from a physical impact. A massive, clawed hand of black iron and daemonflesh tore through the ancient stone, followed by another. A being of colossal size was ripping its way into the holy place.
It was a Chaos Knight. A towering war machine, fifty feet tall, its form a perversion of the noble Imperial Knights. Its armor was the color of a starless midnight, adorned with the symbols of the Tyrant of Chains. One arm ended in a massive, Gatling-style thermal cannon. The other was a brutal, multi-jointed claw that dripped corrosive venom. Its head was a leering, daemonic visage with a single, burning, cyclopean eye. And it radiated a psychic presence of pure, distilled hatred. This was no mere machine; it was piloted by a Fallen Noble, his soul permanently fused with the daemon-engine he commanded.
It dropped into the Cathedral, its landing shaking the entire mountain. Its single, burning eye fixed on the lone, glowing figure of Likas.
*…I am Scyllax the Unbroken, and I will be the one to extinguish your insolent light!* the pilot's voice screamed in Likas's mind.
The Chaos Knight raised its thermal cannon, the multiple barrels beginning to spin with a terrifying whine.
Likas did not flinch. He looked up at the towering war machine, a David before a daemonic Goliath. He knew he could not fight it directly. Even with his power, a direct hit from that cannon would be devastating. He needed to change the battlefield.
He reached out with his mind, not to the Aethel, but to the very bones of the mountain. He felt the ancient, pre-human technology that slumbered in its depths. He felt the intricate network of power conduits, support structures, and forgotten machinery. The ANITO Protocol, that sliver of a Golden Age AI, understood this language perfectly. It saw not a mountain, but a vast, interconnected machine. And it knew how to make it sing.
"You chose the wrong tomb to desecrate," Likas said.
He stomped his foot upon the floor.
It was not a simple, physical act. It was a command. A jolt of his own silver-gold energy shot down into the mountain's foundations, a wake-up call sent down ten thousand years of slumbering technology.
The entire Cathedral responded.
The gilded sarcophagi that lined the walls, long since defiled, began to glow with a new, blue-white light. The ancient, pre-Imperial tech within them activated. They were not just coffins. They were stasis-field generators, power relays, defensive hardpoints. Massive, hidden adamantium plates slid into place over the stained-glass windows, sealing the Cathedral. The floor beneath the Chaos Knight began to shift, to reconfigure, ancient load-bearing columns rising from the depths to try and entrap the war machine's legs.
Likas had turned the Cathedral itself into a weapon.
The Knight, Scyllax, roared in fury and surprise as the holy place came alive around it. It blasted the rising columns to rubble with its cannon and tore at the sealing walls with its claw. It was trapped. Trapped in a collapsing, reconfiguring kill-box with a being of god-like power.
"Now we are on even terms," Likas said, his wings of light flaring.
He launched himself at the Knight. The battle was a whirlwind of motion. Scyllax was a fortress of firepower and brute strength. Likas was a blur of untouchable speed and precision. He flew around the Knight, his movements too fast for its targeting systems to track. He used the newly-risen columns as cover, weaving between them, forcing the Knight to destroy its own environment to get a clear shot at him.
He wasn't trying to damage the Knight's armor. He was playing for a different objective. With every fly-by, he left a trace of his silver-gold energy on the Knight's hull. A glyph of power here, a sigil of light there. He was not attacking the machine; he was rewriting its daemonic code, painting a new reality over its corrupted one.
Scyllax, enraged, lashed out wildly. Its thermal cannon washed the chamber in fire, its claw tore great gouges in the ancient walls. But it could not land a single hit on the dancing, weaving figure of light.
Meanwhile, a different battle reached its conclusion deep within the mountain. The Echo of Bone, a being of pure, focused vengeance, had harried and wounded the Infocyte until it had nowhere left to run. Trapped in the main reactor chamber, the serpent of the Abyss turned for a final, desperate stand. But it stood no chance against ten thousand years of righteous hatred. The Echo did not just kill the Infocyte. It unmade it, erasing its existence with a final, overwhelming blast of silver Aethel, ensuring that not even a whisper of the agent's soul would return to its dark master.
With her foe defeated, the Echo felt Likas's grand, desperate battle in the Cathedral above. She felt his plan. And she added her own power to it.
A beam of pure, silver light shot up from the depths of the mountain, phasing through miles of rock. It did not strike the Chaos Knight. It struck the glyphs and sigils that Likas had painted on its armor.
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic for the daemon-engine. The silver light of the Echo acted as a catalyst, activating the golden energy Likas had laid down. The two frequencies, the holy and the vital, merged and ignited. The daemonic runes on the Knight's armor began to sizzle and burn away, replaced by the glowing, dual-colored sigil of Likas's own power. The connection between the pilot, the machine, and the daemon within was being violently overwritten.
*…NO! What is this sorcery?! Get out of my machine! GET OUT OF MY MIND!* Scyllax's psychic scream was one of pure agony and terror.
The Chaos Knight began to seize, its movements becoming jerky and uncontrolled. Its thermal cannon sputtered and died. Its claw twitched spasmodically. The single, red eye flickered, shifting from angry crimson to a confused, terrified blue-white. The daemon was being exorcised, not by prayer, but by a hostile takeover of its reality.
Likas landed before the staggering war machine, his wings folded, his aura calm. He placed a single, gentle hand on the Knight's leg.
"It's over," he said, and he pushed.
It was not a physical push. It was a final, overwhelming surge of his will, a quiet command for the new order to assert itself.
The Chaos Knight of Scyllax the Unbroken fell to its knees. The daemonic screaming stopped. The red light in its eye died for good. For a long, silent moment, the massive war machine was still. Then, with a groan of protesting metal, it slowly, deliberately, placed its massive clawed hand on the floor before it and bowed its head to Aki Likas Reyes.
It had been conquered. Tamed.
At that moment, the roof of the Cathedral was blasted away again, this time by the precise, surgical fire of orbital lances. Sunlight, real and pure, streamed into the ruined hall. Hovering in the sky above was the sleek, silver form of the *Sword of Retribution*.
Elara's voice, crisp and triumphant, came over his private channel. "The Chaos fleet is in full retreat, Likas. The Echo of Bone appeared in their midst like a wrathful ghost. They broke formation. We are hunting down the stragglers. We've won."
Likas looked at the kneeling Knight before him, at the sunlight streaming into the ruined but cleansed Cathedral. He felt the faith of the surviving Sisters, a warm and steady glow. He felt the weary, but satisfied, presence of the Echo returning to the chamber. He felt the tired but determined pulse of Elara's spirit from orbit.
He had done it. He had saved them.
The voice of the Chaos Lord spoke one last time, no longer a boom, but a faint, hateful whisper from the void. *…you have won nothing, godling. You have created a new piece for the great game. A piece that does not know its own nature. You are an anomaly. And in the grand calculus of the universe, anomalies are always, eventually, erased. We will be watching…*
The presence vanished, retreating into the Maelstrom.
Likas looked at his own hands, at the faint, silver-gold light that now seemed a permanent part of him. The Chaos Lord was right. He wasn't a human anymore. He wasn't just Project LIKAS. He wasn't a Saint. He was something new, something that had no name. He was a fusion of a tired old man's soul, a hyper-engineered body, a sliver of forbidden technology, a Saint's vengeful spirit, and the raw, untamed power of life itself.
He was an Echo of Genesis. A new beginning, born in the crucible of a dying world. His war was not over. It had just found its true name. And he was no longer alone.
He had a ghost at his side, a commander in the sky, and an army of the faithful at his back. And in the cold, sterile laboratories of the *Sword of Retribution*, two vials of genetic material waited, holding the promise of a future, a legacy, and a hope forged in the heart of a storm.
The mountain was silent, saved. The battle was won. And for the first time in two lifetimes, Aki Likas Reyes felt the quiet, profound, and terrifying stirrings of peace.