The cavern trembled as the Necrons emerged, their green eyes cutting through the darkness like cursed lanterns. Skeletal and relentless, they marched forward, an army of death forged from some unknown xenos alloy. "Throne's mercy... what are those?" Cassian whispered, his voice trembling over the vox, his empty bolter shaking in his hands. Vorn's lips curled, his stoic mask slipping. "Xenos filth," he growled, the words dripping with contempt.
Serek, however, was beyond reason. The Red Thirst burned in his veins, stoked to a fever pitch by the Keeper of Secrets' psychic torment. With a guttural roar, he charged the Necron Lord, his chainsword howling as it spun, a whirlwind of fury and teeth. The towering Necron Lord, its form unyielding and cold, raised its staff of light, the air around it crackling with malevolent energy.
Amid the chaos, the Keeper of Secrets shrieked, its Warp-spawned flesh torn by a Necron Warrior's gauss blast. Thaddeus saw his chance. His power sword flared as he lunged, striking with born savagery - cutting and cutting and cutting and slashing and cutting and slashing and cutting and cutting and slashing - each blow a blur of speed and wrath. The daemon's form unraveled, dissolving into nothing but a fading wisp of Warp ichor, its demise a fleeting victory in the growing storm.
The cavern erupted into all-out war. The Word Bearers and Emperor's Children, their dark ritual shattered, turned their bolters and blades on the green-eyed xenos. But these creatures were relentless - falling only to rise again unless completely destroyed, their metal bodies stitching back together with an unnatural will. The traitors were being pushed back, their numbers thinning under the Necrons' unceasing advance.
Cassian scrambled for a fallen Word Bearer's bolter, its magazine still loaded. He fired with desperate precision, bolts tearing into Necron Warriors and traitors alike, their forms bursting in sprays of green ash and crimson blood. Vorn, his plasma pistol spent, unleashed the sonic blaster's keening wail, shattering Necron limbs and traitor armor with each blast. Together, they held their ground, crimson figures in a sea of chaos.
Serek's fury met its end against the Necron Lord. He fought with wild abandon, his chainsword carving into the xenos' frame, but the Lord was unstoppable. A sweep of its staff unleashed a beam of blinding light, and Serek vanished - evaporated into nothingness, his final snarl silenced. Thaddeus, locked in his own fight, saw it all. "BROTHERRR!!" he screamed, the cry raw with anguish, echoing through the cavern.
The Necron Lord turned to Thaddeus, its staff firing a beam of searing energy. Thaddeus raised his power sword, the impact slamming him back several meters, his boots scraping stone. His arms burned, feeling as if they might snap, and he dropped his bolt pistol, gripping the sword with both hands to hold off the assault. The blade's field flickered, but he endured, deflecting the beam with a surge of defiant strength.
Breathing heavily, teeth clenched, Thaddeus surveyed the battlefield; time went slow for him for a moment. Serek was gone - the brother who cared most for his kin, a veteran of Gorgona Secundus, reduced to memory. These unknown xenos overwhelmed the traitors with cold efficiency. The Word Bearers' chants faltered as gauss flayers turned them to ash; the Emperor's Children's elegance crumbled under the weight of unyielding metal. The green-eyed horrors pressed forward, rising again and again, their advance unbroken.
Realizing the battle was lost, Thaddeus made his choice. "Cassian, Vorn, retreat!" he commanded, his voice firm despite the grief clawing at him. "Find a defensible position, scavenge ammunition and weapons, and hold until reinforcements arrive!" The two brothers obeyed, battered but resolute, covering each other as they withdrew into the cavern's shadows, leaving the clash of xenos and traitors behind.
---
Years had passed - how many, Thaddeus Valen could no longer say. Time had blurred into an endless grind of battle and survival on the forsaken rock of Valthrex Prime. He stood at the edge of a shattered hab-block, his crimson armor dulled by dust and scars, gazing out over a world that had become a nightmare made manifest. The flickering lumens still sputtered in the distance, casting weak, erratic light across a landscape of twisted wreckage and blood-drenched rockrete. Once a festering abyss of decay, the planet had been reshaped by the Necrons' awakening. Jagged pylons of alien metal now pierced the ground, their surfaces pulsing with an unnatural green glow, as though the planet itself bled the essence of its xenos masters. The air thrummed with the low, incessant hum of gauss energy, a sound that had become as familiar to him as his own heartbeat.
He sighed, the sound heavy with exhaustion. The weight of leadership pressed down on him, unyielding as the adamantium cape - the Crimson Veil - that hung from his shoulders. Given to him by Captain Raldoron after his victories against the SwarmLord and Orks on Gorgona Secundus, it marked him as Warden of the Crimson Veil, a title earned in blood and fire. Now, it felt more like a chain than an honor. Is this how Azkaellon felt?
Behind him, his brothers toiled in the shadow of their makeshift refuge. Cassian, who became the squad's tech-adept, hunched over a salvaged auspex, his grimy fingers coaxing life from its circuits. Vorn stood watch nearby, his left arm a crude amalgam of scrap metal and a chainsword, a brutal prosthetic forged by Cassian's ingenuity. A second plasma pistol, scavenged from the battlefield, hung at his hip. They were battered, their armor patched with whatever scraps they could salvage, but they endured. They had become experts in this war - killing Necrons, evading their relentless patrols, and surviving against odds that would break lesser men. Yet the Necron Lord remained, a specter of death they could not outrun.
Overlord Zarathul - that was what he called himself. Thaddeus had learned the name from fragments of data Cassian had pried from the planet's dying cogitators. A towering figure of cold menace, Zarathul wielded a staff of light that reaped lives with every sweep. Thaddeus had faced him more than once, each encounter a brutal lesson in the Necrons' power; even with his little control over the Red Thirst, he couldn't win. The Overlord was the heart of their enemy, but a heart that could not be stopped by blade or bolter alone.
The years had been unkind. Torm's team was dead, the ships reduced to smoldering husks by the traitors who had betrayed them all. That daemon - whatever it had been - had sought to destroy Valthrex Prime to prevent the Necrons' rise, but its failure had unleashed a tide of xenos that now drowned the planet in death. Reinforcements were a distant hope, their fate unknown. Thaddeus's thoughts turned to the wider Imperium. Were other loyalists facing similar traps, ambushed by treason and abandoned to their doom? He clenched his fists, the need to escape this grave-world burning within him. They had to reach Terra, to join the fight against the traitors who gnawed at the Emperor's realm.
Through his eyes, Valthrex Prime was a vision of damnation. The sump chamber, once a cavern of rusted machinery and gore-stained stone, had been overtaken by the Necrons' alien blight. The twisted cogitator lay silent, its purpose lost, while the rockrete walls crumbled beneath the weight of time and war. The flickering lumens danced like dying stars, illuminating a wasteland of shattered spires and skeletal ruins. The Necrons' influence had turned the underhive into a mausoleum, its corridors echoing with the metallic clatter of their undying legions.
At first, Thaddeus had dreamed of slaying Zarathul, of ending the threat with a single, decisive blow. But the knowledge they had gathered - pieced together by Cassian's relentless efforts - revealed a harsher truth. The necrons were not mere machines; they were an ancient evil, their bodies wrought from living metal that repaired itself with every wound. Even if Zarathul fell, another would rise. Their numbers were vast, their technology beyond comprehension. Three Space Marines, no matter how skilled, could not defeat an army that knew neither fear nor fatigue. To destroy them, the planet itself would need to burn - a feat far beyond their reach.
Escape was their only path. They had located a Thunderhawk, a battered relic of the Imperium, in Sector 7-G, Hangar 13. It was their lifeline, a chance to break free from this tomb. But the journey would be perilous. The Necrons adapted quickly, their patrols tightening with every move the squad made. The Thunderhawk had to remain intact, or their hope would die with it.
Thaddeus straightened, his resolve hardening. As the Warden of the Crimson Veil, he bore a duty greater than survival. He turned to his brothers, his voice cutting through the oppressive silence. "Cassian, Vorn - we move at dawn. The Thunderhawk in Sector 7-G is our salvation. We reach it, we secure it, and we leave this cursed place behind."
Cassian nodded, his eyes sharp despite the weariness etched into his face. "The auspex shows a window - minimal Necron presence. But we'll need to be swift."
Vorn tested his chainsword, the weapon growling to life. "We've made it this far. We'll make it out."
Thaddeus felt the ember of pride within him. His brothers were unbroken, their faith in the Emperor unshaken. He touched the Crimson Veil while thinking about Kael, Talos, Darios, and Lysor (Darios and Lysor died on Gorgona Secundus)... This was his oath - he thought while feeling its cold surface grounding him - to lead, to endure, and to deliver them to Terra.
"For Sanguinius," he said, his voice a low rumble of defiance. "For the Emperor."
Their reply echoed as one, a vow forged in the crucible of war. At first light, they would march - to the Thunderhawk, to freedom, or to their deaths. The decision was made.