The battlefield stank of rot, death, poison, and burnt chemicals.

  Aethernus Vhal stood before the ruins of what had once been a palace, its spires collapsed inward like broken bones. Twisted trees clawed up through cracked stone, their bark slick with something that pulsed faintly, almost alive. Chaos seeped into everything it touched. It always did.

  He adjusted his grip on the tower shield.

  The shield hummed in response, saturated with absorbed impacts and warped energy, eager for more. Ahead of him, the remains of former people tried to form defensive lines. Their bodies sagged under tumors, extra limbs, and structural deformities that no human frame should have endured.

  Aethernus felt nothing for them.

  They had chosen a False Deity. This was the consequence of their choices.

  Poison fog rolled thick around his armored form, clinging to the ground and swallowing visibility. Cultists stumbled blindly within it, shouting orders that were already wrong by the time the words reached his position. His helmet optics pierced the miasma without effort, highlighting heat signatures, skeletal outlines, threat vectors.

  The poison itself would have dissolved an unprotected man in minutes, lungs first, then flesh.

  His armor filtered it out before it ever mattered.

  Another failed tactic.

  The first wave charged.

  Twenty cultists. Reckless. Desperate. Their bodies were warped into obscene shapes, bloated torsos, fused limbs, blistered skin split by glowing green veins. They screamed as they ran, a chorus of madness and devotion.

  He planted his feet and raised the shield.

  The first cultist reached him and swung a rusted blade wrapped in sickly warp-light. The strike landed squarely.

  The shield didn’t budge.

  Aethernus’s wrist-mounted blaster hummed once.

  A single burst erased the cultist’s head.

  Two more rushed in from either side.

  He turned smoothly, armor weight irrelevant after centuries of conditioning. The shield swept out in a brutal arc, collapsing one attacker’s ribcage with a wet crunch. The second lunged, he fired into its abdomen. The beam punched through and continued on, killing a third figure that had thought the fog made it invisible.

  “Flank him! Beast-handlers, now!” a voice shouted.

  Three massive shapes lumbered forward.

  They were assemblages of stolen biology and forbidden machinery, multiple spines, too many legs, mouths that opened in impossible directions. Shock-poles cracked against their hides as handlers drove them toward him.

  Aethernus angled the shield and dropped to one knee.

  The first beast, five-legged monstrosity and layered with interlocking jaws, hit him like a freight impact.

  He slid back three inches.

  No more.

  As it recoiled to charge again, he fired into its center mass. The creature shuddered, collapsed, and came apart as its many hearts failed in sequence.

  The remaining two circled warily.

  Behind them, a cultist stepped forward. Rank markings were carved into his bare chest. Half his face had been replaced by writhing tentacles.

  “The others failed,” the leader screamed, voice distorted, “but we are legion! The Warp gives us endless vessels!”

  Aethernus raised the blaster and fired once.

  The cultist’s head vanished. The tentacles twitched briefly, then fell still.

  The beasts charged together.

  Predictable.

  He pivoted between them, letting their momentum carry them past. Two precise shots followed, base of the spine, exact placement. Both creatures collapsed, paralyzed, howling but alive.

  This was routine.

  .

  Only the mutations changed. Only the terrain varied. He could anticipate their choices before they made them.

  The next wave arrived disciplined.

  These cultists wore heavy armor much like his brothers. Real armor with weapons humming with condensed warp-energy.

  Champions of the False Deity.

  “Formation delta!” one of them shouted. They spread into a half-circle, attempting envelopment. Five targets with warp-blades capable of breaching his shield if they struck simultaneously.

  He raised his shield and charged the center champion.

  The cultist braced for a frontal impact.

  At the last moment, he dropped low and slid forward, firing upward. The blast tore through the weakest armor seam. He jumped to his feet, spun with the motion, and drove the shield into another champion’s skull.

  The remaining three struck together as reality warped along their blades.

  Aethernus ripped the shield out of the champions skull just in time for two impacts to slam into it. Warp energies screaming past him and whispering death to his ears.

  The metal of his shield shrieked like an unholy beast as it absorbed the impact and redirected the energy around him.

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  Aethernus shifted his posture ever so slightly.

  The third blade passed harmlessly over his shoulder.

  A single shot killed its wielder.

  A shield bash sent another champion crashing to the ground.

  The last stepped back, fear visible even through a shattered helmet. His hesitation was enough of a tell.

  “How is he still standing?” the cultist shouted. “The poison should have eaten through his systems by now!”

  Aethernus did not answer.

  He fired his blasters as response until none of them stood. Silence reclaimed the space.

  New sounds emerged from the fog.

  Coordinated movement. Multiple squads gathering together, but it mattered not in the grand scheme of things.

  He tracked three groups advancing from different angles, ten cultists each, supported by crude but effective ranged units. They attempted to establish crossfire zones.

  Competent.

  Yet, it was too late.

  He struck the weakest squad first, those with the most unstable mutations. Their fire scattered uselessly, shots glancing off shield, strapped as it was to his limb, smacked harmlessly on his heavy armor, or missing wide.

  Aethernus reached them in seconds.

  The shield shattered their barricade and any defenses they had put up.

  The blaster spoke in precise bursts. One shot. One kill. He moved through them without slowing.

  The remaining squads tried to reposition, but they were slow. Pathetically slow.

  He was already tearing through the second squad before the third could settle into their positions. .

  Irritation rose from within him.

  Not from danger, but from the monotony of it all.

  The False Deity knew he was coming. These defenses were insufficient. The same patterns. The same desperate improvisations that it had used to distract him just enough to escape once before. He would savor tearing it limb from limb and ridding the world of its filth and corruption.

  Ahead, voices shouted from the palace entrance.

  “Fall back! To the inner sanctum! The is coming!”

  The remaining cultists fled through the massive doors, movements suddenly crisp and organized.

  A competent mind had taken control.

  He liked crushing the hopeful among them and banishing any light from their eyes.

  Aethernus Vhal advanced toward the final barrier.

  His armor was slick with blood and corrupted viscera. The shield thrummed with stored energy. The blaster remained fully charged.

  The False Deity waited within.

  Soon, another infection would be carved out of the universe and cleansed by holy fire and plasma blasts.

  He did not slow as the palace doors sealed behind the retreating cultists.

  Aethernus Vhal moved through the aftermath with practiced economy, stepping over bodies that were already cooling. His helm tracked fleeing heat signatures, then dismissed them. They would not escape the sanctum. None ever did.

  Panic bled through raised voices and fractured commands behind those sealed doors.

  He listened as he closed the remaining distance, cataloguing tone and cadence rather than words.

  Fear.

  Disagreement.

  Faith cracking under pressure.

  They were arguing about what to do with him. It made them break apart. Fear had stripped away their certainty. Some wanted to fight. Some wanted to flee. Some still believed obedience alone would save them. Others thought it wise to eliminate themselves before he could have the satisfaction of killing them.

  No singular authority.

  Another predictable flaw.

  He stopped before the final doors. They were mammoth and reinforced. Etched with symbols meant to inspire obedience or madness. His optics dimmed automatically, filtering the worst of their effect. He had seen the language before, across worlds that no longer existed.

  Locks engaged from the inside.

  He set his shield, adjusted his stance, and charged.

  The impact thundered through the structure. The reinforced wood groaned but held.

  He stepped back and charged again.

  Hinges tore loose.

  The cultists screamed and shouted with panic growing worse.

  A third charge shattered the frame entirely. The doors burst inward, splinters and warped metal fragments screaming through the chamber beyond. Killing a dozen more.

  He advanced through the wreckage, blasters, bolts, bullets, and even warp energy crashing into his armor and raised shield.

  Yet, it did not slow him down.

  The sanctum was vast and circular. The ceiling disappeared into darkness, where swirling energies pulsed in colors that strained perception. The walls were lined with archaic machines, grown rather than built. Cables pulsing like veins, interfaces resembling exposed organs instead of control panels.

  At the center of the room, suspended within a cocoon of crackling energy, hung the False Deity.

  It had once been something close to human, maybe a corrupted primarch that inherited its previous lords power after its death.

  Now it was a contradiction of flesh and geometry. A torso folding inward on itself, limbs sprouting at impossible angles, anatomy ignoring every rule that reality tried to enforce. Its head, if it could be called that, was a swollen mass crowned with writhing tendrils. It was hideous and unholy to look at.

  It turned toward him ss he entered fully under fire.

  “No,” the voice boomed, vibrating the air itself. “You shouldn’t exist. This wasn’t possible. The psychics were speaking truth! The sacrifice was sufficient!”

  The sound bypassed the ears entirely, resonating through the skull at frequencies that would have liquefied an unprotected mind.

  He did not respond.

  The remaining cultists clustered along the perimeter, technicians, high priests, sustainment personnel. Power conduits fed into the entity from every direction. Champions no longer remained. Just numbers shooting at him that had never needed to fire bolters and blasters before. Only the False Deity remained a threat to him in combat. Even then, it wasn’t much of a threat to begin with.

  The False Deity struck.

  A tendril of condensed warp energy lashed out with impossible speed.

  His shield rose in time.

  The impact detonated like thunder. A shockwave tore through the chamber, shattering fragile equipment and hurling cultists into the walls hard enough to break bone.

  A second strike followed.

  Then a third.

  Each impact shook the room. Dust and fragments rained from the ceiling. The shield screamed as it absorbed and redirected the assault, its surface glowing brighter with contained power. He recognized the pattern it attacked with.

  Shock.

  Escalation.

  Overcommitment.

  They always tried to break him quickly and they always failed.

  He advanced step by step, blocking each strike as he walked it down like the rabid dog it was. Between impacts, his blaster fired, precise, deliberate shots aimed at the conduits sustaining the entity’s suspension field and the power source that kept it going.

  Each hit tore through the energy lattice.

  The False Deity screamed but it refused to stop. The sound made the air shudder.

  “The Warp will not allow my death!” it howled. “I am beyond flesh. Beyond mortality! I am a God! Bow to me mortal!”

  Machinery flared as it drew deeper, greedier power.

  A heavier strike landed.

  The force shoved him back inches, boots scraping against stone. Yet, that was the limit of what it could do. The shield’s absorption threshold climbed into dangerous ranges, its edges burning white-hot. Tolerable. Uncomfortable at worst. Aethernus Vhal had seen and dealt with worse in his time wandering and killing these False Deities.

  He adjusted aim at a central node pulsed within the web of energy and fired.

  The shot struck true.

  Reality around the entity flickered. The cocoon destabilized, its outline tearing and reforming in rapid succession.

  The scream that followed dropped cultists to their knees. Blood poured from eyes and ears as nervous systems overloaded, but his armor and helmet already prepared for this eventuality. Sound was blocked and his mental defenses grew stronger to prevent any attack on mind and soul. There was nothing it could do that he had not seen a hundred times already.

  The False Deity’s form began to unravel, parts phasing in and out of existence, unable to decide which reality to obey.

  Confirmation registered from his helmet

  The warp tether was degrading.

  Two more hits would sever the connection entirely.

  He waited.

  The field fluctuated wildly. The god sensed the danger and lashed out in every direction, tendrils scouring the chamber like a storm of living weapons.

  Most strikes missed. One clipped his shoulder. Armor alarms flared and pain spiked briefly as defenses were overloaded.

  He ignored it.

  When the field stabilized for a fraction of a second, he fired twice. The first shot severed the primary energy feed. The second punched through the entity itself, tearing through layers of impossible flesh and into whatever passed for its core.

  The effect was immediate.

  It’s cocoon collapsed.

  The False Deity slammed into the floor, the impact shaking the sanctum. Its limbs thrashed wildly, gouging trenches into stone. Priests and technicians fled, abandoning their god without hesitation. The entity tried to rise. Without warp reinforcement, its body betrayed it. Portions of its form slipped out of phase, attempting to retreat into the warp while the rest remained trapped and failing.

  It dragged itself toward a nearby console, leaving behind a trail of burning ichor that hissed against the floor.

  He advanced on it. Shield raised and blaster steady.

  The False Deity looked up at him. Dozens of luminous orbs, eyes, if the term applied, fixed on him with hatred and terror intertwined.

  For the first time since his arrival, it was brought low and weak.

  Aethernus Vhal smiled as he recognized dawning in its eyes. The False Deity knew it’s time was over.