After the Lion disappeared, a sacred hymn echoed across Terra—melodious, haunting, eternal. It danced upon the winds like a forgotten prayer, rising above the shattered skyline. Carlos's Destiny Sky Eagle Battle Standard unfurled its brilliance, painting the Throneworld in radiant gold. The Astronomican itself flared brighter, its divine pulse scorched into the blood-red heavens.
The holy choir reverberated through every soul—faint, yet impossible to ignore.
Above the crimson skies, a rift tore reality asunder, opening into what seemed like a paradise of light and madness. A great presence was near—imminent, inevitable—poised to descend upon this battlefield steeped in absurdity and heresy.
Mankind roared in jubilation, strength surging through their veins. In contrast, the daemons wailed, their unholy forms recoiling as if subjected to a baptism of flame.
Just as mortals falter under the taint of Chaos, so too do daemons crumble beneath the fury of the Emperor.
Angron stood like a monolithic war-god amidst the storm, his gaze locked skyward toward the inferno above.
And from the epicenter of the Astronomican's flare, a voidship unlike any other tore into realspace—vast, venerable, and resplendent.
Golden rays lanced through the corrupted skies, breaking the blood-drenched clouds. Liquid gold—thick, divine—poured across the firmament like a tidal wave, drenching the world below in the Emperor's wrath.
From the depths of despair rose a blazing conflagration. A storm of flame and light, it scorched Terra's skies and bathed the battlefield in purifying destruction. The pillar of fire, spanning heaven and earth, stood as the purest expression of Mankind's divine fury.
Daemons shrieked as the firestorm drew them in. Thousands were incinerated instantly, reduced to ash and scattered upon the wind.
"For Dukel!"
The cry split the air—first a whisper, then a roar. One voice became thousands, then millions. A tide of humanity shouted with singular purpose:
"For Dukel! For the Golden Throne!"
The skies of Terra thundered with the descent of drop pods—tens of thousands of them. They fell like a wrathful meteor storm, blotting out the sun, pummeling the traitorous legions below. Each one a clenched fist hurled by the Emperor Himself.
Astartes war cries merged with the scream of impact, and the battlefield cracked beneath the weight of their arrival. Loyalist soldiers beheld this awe-striking sight with pride that could not be put into words.
From the fire and ruin strode living demigods—Champions of the Emperor. Warriors in baroque ceramite, armed with heavy-caliber bolters and brutal close-quarters weapons.
They descended like wrathful angels. Every shot, every swing, was death incarnate.
Twin-barreled bolters, more cannon than firearm, unleashed red flame in sweeping arcs. Daemons screamed as they were torn apart, reduced to cinders and memory.
Cultists fared no better. The blessed of the Ruinous Powers, those pathetic zealots, rushed forward in mad ambush—only to be dismembered by a single punch. The warriors barely noticed their existence.
The Imperium's vengeance was relentless.
Behind these armored giants marched the Brides of the Emperor. Battle Sisters clad in adamantine and faith, moving in unison through the inferno. Their formations were flawless, their judgment swift. Even the Grey Knights would hesitate to match their killing efficiency today.
Gods and daemons screamed their defiance into the heavens. Reality quaked with their fury.
And yet, Angron—the Red Angel, Primarch of the World Eaters—fell silent. He stared, unmoving, eyes locked on the rising flames.
"Shameless wretch," he growled. "You would twist the battle's fairness so easily?"
The flames surged higher, eclipsing the sky. All could hear the voice—thunderous, resolute—rising from within the firestorm.
From the fire stepped a colossus.
The God of War, enshrined in burning armor, emerged from the inferno like an ancient legend reborn. Saints and Seraphim stood with him, noble and silent. Around him, the flame danced, and in his grasp unfurled a banner blazing with imperial glory.
His cloak, blood-red, surged like a tide. His gaze burned with unending purpose.
All present held their breath, stunned by the sheer presence of this being.
Perfection. Divinity. Rage subdued into righteous fury.
He was the beacon in the dark, the pillar of mankind. No soul questioned his identity.
They knew. They believed. They followed.
Even should the stars die, even should the galaxy fall to ruin—they would follow him into the abyss.
He was the Flame Imperishable, the Sword Unending.
He was Dukel, Lord of Destruction.
"Dukel!" Angron bellowed, voice cracking across the battlefield.
But Dukel's gaze did not meet his. He looked through the traitor, beyond him.
"You enslaved my brothers. You piled skulls beneath the Throne. You dared disturb the celebration of my ascension as Warmaster. Does your fury stem from old wounds, from pain that still festers in your heart?"
He gazed past Angron—into the warp beyond. There, in his soul-sight, bloomed a red haze. An ancient presence.
Once, this god—this Khorne—had dragged Dukel into the Immaterium. There, Dukel had wounded him. The wound had not healed.
And now vengeance had come.
Eighty-eight daemon lords. Eighty-eight legions of blood. Even the traitorous demigods answered the call. Khorne had shattered the supposed neutrality of single combat.
But Dukel did not falter.
He burned with conviction, with defiance. He stared into the abyss—and sneered.
"I'm surprised your canine intellect can form such complex thoughts," he said coldly. "But let me tell you this: the moment you dared reach for Holy Terra, your failure was sealed."
Even now, standing before gods and nightmares, he was fearless. His will blazed like a nova.
Human courage does not bow to darkness.
The fire in Dukel's soul became a wildfire. Across the battlefield, soldiers felt it. They rose to fight again. They believed.
The Imperium would triumph.
"Failure?" The Blood God's will churned like boiling tar. "You think to defeat me? With mortals? With a corpse on a throne?"
Angron raised his chain-axe high, its teeth afire. His rage spiraled into the void, saturating the Warp. Every drop of his blood howled with hunger, every cell a temple to Khorne.
Flesh squirmed. Steel groaned. The scent of blood was thick enough to choke the air. Khorne's avatar unleashed its fury without restraint.
The veil between realspace and the Warp dissolved. From the upper reaches of the Immaterium, beasts gibbered and fled, terrified by the rising darkness.
Stars wept. Minds cracked. Entire worlds trembled.
And yet, Dukel stood—unmoved.
Angron stood wreathed in blood, his form overflowing with unholy might. Power surged through him, eclipsing anything he had possessed before. If he were to face Lion El'Jonson now, it might take only a single swing of his axe to end the duel.
His voice, soaked in divine fury, echoed like a warhorn across the battlefield.
"You cannot fathom divinity. Every clash of blades is my incarnation. Every drop of blood spilled feeds my strength. Wherever rage burns and weapons meet, there my dominion grows."
"Mortal, my power swells with every heartbeat. My legions are endless, my daemons uncountable. Your armies bleed dry day by day. No matter the outcome, I do not know defeat—just as you shall never know victory."
The powers of the Warp were already entwined into every moment of reality. Every flicker of desire, every spasm of violence, every collapse of life, every flash of insight—they all nourished the Ruinous Powers.
Their dominion was not over a single realm or species, but over the very nature of existence. From the highest light to the deepest shadow, every mortal act fed their ascension.
For millennia, all sentient life had known, deep within, the futility of resistance.
Even the Emperor of Mankind, in all His wisdom and power, had placed His hope in the Webway Project—not to win, but to escape the gods' influence upon humanity's fate.
Yet in the face of such inevitability, mankind had never surrendered.
Dukel's gaze remained firm, undeterred by the storm of power before him.
"You'll soon understand what I rely on," he said.
And when his defiance reached its zenith, it became something else—something mad, something apocalyptic.
BOOM—
A violent tremor shook the void itself.
From a place beyond time, beyond even the Warp's perception, a forbidden weapon stirred. It was a thing capable of annihilating both the material universe and the highest dominions of the gods.
The universe seemed to wail in horror. The stars themselves flickered as if afraid.
The daemonic hosts—avatars of Khorne—recoiled. Fear, an alien sensation to them, began to slither into their hearts. They had never known fear.
Until now.
Even the ancient god felt it—a deep, nameless dread. As if the cosmos itself had entered a countdown toward annihilation.
"What have you done?!" Angron roared, his twin chainaxes howling as he surged forward.
Dukel didn't flinch. He drew the Sword of Mind, and as it cleared its sheath, golden fire burst forth. The Emperor's light poured through the blade, brilliant and terrible.
The loyalists of the Imperium roared in triumph at the sight.
In grim contrast, the daemonic hordes screamed in fury. But this time, it wasn't bloodlust that drove them—it was desperation.
They surged, a crimson tide, not for glory, but to stop Dukel. They would break every rule of warfare, abandon every pretense of honor, if it meant halting the activation of that weapon.
They no longer fought for Khorne's delight. They fought against oblivion.
As the daemons hurled themselves at him, Dukel couldn't help but feel the irony—they saw him now not as a defender, but as a destroyer. The end of all things.
In orbit, aboard the flagship of the Imperial Guard, Lord Commander Valdor stood frozen.
"What in the Emperor's name was that tremor? What insane thing has Dukel done this time?!" he barked, as the bridge crew scrambled and alarms screamed.
His gut twisted. Valdor had always trusted his instincts, and right now, they screamed of something cataclysmic.
Since Dukel's return to Terra, every move he made had grown more erratic, more dangerous—and far more effective.
Valdor turned toward Sanguinius, seeking assurance.
But the Angel only met his gaze—and silently shook his head.
That silence said more than words ever could.
Dukel hadn't even told his brothers what he planned this time.
And that, more than anything, terrified Valdor.
Even when Dukel had pierced the Emperor's heart in that accursed gambit, he'd warned them. He had explained.
This time, there had been no warning.
"My lord…" Valdor whispered. He could feel his sanity fraying, even in stillness.
Then his voice rose—hard, resolute.
"Rally to Warmaster Dukel! Support him, no matter the cost! We fight for him! If we are bound for damnation, then so be it—but it will not be today!"
The Guard regiments surged forward, their formations echoing those of ancient wars, advancing like an unstoppable golden spear into the heart of the daemonic horde.
Across every legion, the same scene played out—mankind's scattered warriors uniting, charging across the battlefield under the banner of the Aquila Imperialis, their zeal ignited in the face of extinction.
Before annihilation could claim them, humanity's conviction burned into a fanatical blaze. Their collective will rose as a tidal force, washing across the blood-soaked fields.
A monstrous Bloodthirster barreled toward Dukel, the earth cracking beneath its weight. With every thunderous step, it left behind smoldering, blasphemous prints. Its flame-wreathed greatsword howled through the air, and its whip, lined with infernal barbs, lashed violently as it closed the distance.
"You aberration! You madman who defies all logic and place!" the daemon bellowed. "You should not exist in this world—DIE!"
But Dukel's voice rang out in reply, steady and unshaken, even as Angron himself pressed the attack beside the daemon host.
"In this universe where there is only war," Dukel answered, "the roles of executioner and victim constantly shift. If pain must be voiced… then why shouldn't the screams come from your own mouths?"
He parried Angron's axe with the Sword of Mind, golden arcs flaring as warp-light and physics clashed. Despite the weight of the ongoing duel, Dukel found a spare instant—and delivered a single punch to the charging Bloodthirster.
His eyes burned with warp-mist, reality around him twisting and coiling, dreamlike and unstable. The boundary between the Warp and the Materium had blurred entirely.
The Bloodthirster shrieked, bat wings flaring as it tried to retreat—but found it could not escape.
No matter how it dodged, no matter how it twisted in the air, it could not break free.
Terror—a concept unknown to the scions of Khorne—bled into the daemon's mind. Too late, it understood.
Dukel wielded not only psychic power, but a conceptual force that distorted causality itself. Even before the punch had landed, reality had already been rewritten—cause and effect reversed.
The punch's success was not a likelihood. It was a certainty beyond logic. The chance of impact was not 100%—it was 120%.
No mortal could understand how the blow struck. But it did.
Just one punch.
And before it truly landed, the Bloodthirster began to scream.
Its mountainous form exploded mid-air—muscle, metal, and immaterium vaporized in a burst of golden fire and broken law.
The battlefield fell silent.
Veterans who had fought daemons for decades could only stare, unable to speak. A Greater Daemon of Khorne—slain in a single blow, by means utterly incomprehensible.
What power was this?
In that moment, Dukel was no longer a Primarch in their eyes. He was something more—a god clad in mortal form.
"You feel it too," Dukel said, his eyes locking onto Angron. Though calm, madness hid just beneath the surface.
"The reckoning has come. Now you will know suffering."
His voice was an ultimatum—absolute, final.
Within the Immaterium—the Sea of Souls—countless daemon-infested worlds, all marked by the Imperial Beacon long ago, ceased to exist. Entire planets, saturated with corrupted faith and bound to the gods, were erased from reality in mere moments.
They didn't fall.
They didn't burn.
They were unmade.
Where once were realms, only wreckage remained—swallowed by annihilation.
From the heart of this cataclysm, a colossal entity emerged, wreathed in flaming thorns, its presence eclipsing worlds. It consumed the dying echoes of thousands of corrupted domains, rising higher, transcending ruin itself.
Born of destruction, this being tore across the heavens, devouring every soul in its path.
Angron—or more precisely, the Warp-shadow behind him—screamed in wrath.
"You madman! What have you done?!"
"You've extracted primordial power—weaponized it? Do you even understand what you've unleashed?!"
The Sea of Souls—the Warp itself—had ruptured. A rent in its once-seamless surface now spilled its essence, bleeding into unknown depths. Even the oldest gods could not fathom where the energies were going.
Perhaps it meant little for the moment.
But in time… the collapse of both realspace and the Warp would be inevitable. Entropy on a scale no one could stop.
And who could guarantee that Dukel would stop at one breach?
"I told you before," Dukel said, raising the Sword of Mind, golden flame licking across its edge.
"Humanity, the most brilliant of all species, will never remain victims forever. If screams must fill the galaxy, then let them be yours this time."
He pointed the blade at the crimson specter looming behind Angron.
"I return your own words to you."
His voice thundered like a dying star:
"My legions are endless. Your daemons dwindle with every passing second."