At the center of the battle line, towering over the chaos, Sir Lannis Aelann piloted his Errant-class Knight, Roaring Tempest, with reckless abandon, completely oblivious to the fact that his entire army's frontline was crumbling.
Twin Avenger Gatling Cannons thundered, spitting a relentless storm of shells that shredded the fortified buildings ahead.
Each barrel spun with mechanical fury, discharging thousands of high-velocity rounds per minute. Armored walls that could withstand hours of sustained fire from conventional tanks were reduced to slag in seconds.
In just three seconds, entire structures collapsed.
Dozens of Imperial defenders were buried alive beneath rubble and twisted steel.
A Knight was not simply a war machine, it was a walking apocalypse. Standing over 12 meters (forty feet) tall, armored in ceramite and adamantium, and powered by an ancient plasma reactor, it could go toe-to-toe with entire armored columns and emerge unscathed.
In raw destructive capability, a single Knight could rival a battle group of Leman Russ tanks—and outpace them in both speed and precision.
Aelann relished the raw firepower at his disposal.
And so did his Knight's machine-spirit.
It pulsed within the Throne Mechanicum like a second heartbeat, faster, heavier. Beneath his seat, sacred circuits hummed in time with his rage, feeding it, shaping it. Not a tool, but a presence—cold, hungry, ancient.
Unlike most Knights of his lineage, whose machine-spirits craved the dance of melee, demanding their pilots quench their bloodlust with blade and lance.
Roaring Tempest was different.
It hungered for annihilation.
It existed to erase.
....
"Burn! Die! ALL OF YOU—DIE!"
Aelann roared, his Gatling Cannons tracking a squad of enemy soldiers as they scrambled from a collapsing hab-block.
The majority of his rounds detonated nearby, shrapnel slicing through flesh and armor.
Yet not a single soldier fell.
Aelann's blood boiled.
Floating above them, an unmanned combat drone.
Its underside shimmered, an invisible gravity shield absorbing every shot.
The defiance enraged him.
〈"CURSE YOU!"〉
Aelann snarled.
Few things infuriated him more than shielded enemies.
His Knight's machine-spirit howled in unison.
Its vox-grille emitted a shriek not broadcasted by any system, a warped echo of Aelann's own fury.
They would not tolerate this insult.
"Woom∼!"
A deep, resonating hum vibrated through the battlefield as Roaring Tempest halted its advance, lowering itself into a braced firing position.
Its missile pod bay rose into firing position.
One.
Two.
Three missiles launched in rapid succession.
The warheads arced high into the sky before plummeting down upon their marked targets in a cascade of fire and devastation.
The explosions were not merely violent, they were cataclysmic. Each warhead unleashed the equivalent of an orbital strike in miniature, flattening dozens of meters in every direction.
The drone was obliterated.
Human bodie parts and shattered power armor were flung in all directions.
Aelann laughed with delight.
He could feel it—
Roaring Tempest laughed alongside him.
The rhythmic whirring of the Avenger Gatling Cannons, the deep tremor of missile strikes, the sheer destruction he wrought—
It was intoxicating.
....
His mind drifted back.
To his youth on Talon II.
Back when he was just a boy, playing Knight duels with wooden sticks, pretending to be an Imperial hero.
But he had never liked melee combat.
He despised it.
Why charge with a chainblade—
When you can annihilate from a distance?
His family disagreed.
They scorned him, calling him a disgrace to the House of Lannis, shaming him for not respecting the traditions of their Knightly House.
His House, like many Knight Houses was steeped in old codes of honor, rooted in ritual and glory. To them, close combat was a matter of pride, a sacred tradition passed from generation to generation. Pilots were expected to charge into battle with blades drawn, not stand back and spray bullets from afar.
His relatives mocked him, ridiculing him for wanting a Knight armed with twin Avenger Gatling Cannons.
But when he bonded with Roaring Tempest, everything changed.
Unlike the other war machines of his House—
It did not scorn him.
It did not resist him.
It welcomed him.
Not in words. Not in sounds. But in pulses of emotion and flashes of vision.
He remembered standing before the Throne Mechanicum, the technicians still chanting litanies, and feeling... seen. As if something vast and ancient had turned its eye on him and whispered 〈yes, you will do〉.
In that he found acceptance, a purpose. No rituals. No politics. Just destruction, pure and uncompromising.
And together, they would carve their own path.
....
"My family talks of HONOR?"
Aelann scoffed, his Gatling Cannons roaring with another volley of destruction.
"A craven lineage—
Exiled from our homeworld for losing a political struggle.
Speaks of HONOR?"
They had once ruled a world until politics, betrayal, and pride tore it from them. Other Houses had schemed better. Fought dirtier. And now House Lannis was just another Noble house on a forgotten planet in the galactic margins, exiles in all but name.
His rage fueled his machine.
With every shot fired, they mocked the legacy of his bloodline.
With every demolition, they rejected the ideals that caged him.
"I AM THE BLADE OF FEAR!
FOR THE ARCHITECT OF FATE!"
Aelann surged forward, the battlefield trembling beneath each titanic step.
Infantry scattered in terror, barely avoiding being crushed.
A Leman Russ tank wasn't as lucky—
With one massive stomp, Roaring Tempest caved in its hull, sending a shockwave of destruction through the battlefield.
Panicked soldiers screamed warnings.
Too late.
His second step came down onto their heads, pulverizing them instantly.
Explosions continued to rock the battlefield, shells and lasfire pelting Roaring Tempest's armor.
Aelann paid them no mind.
He was lost in the slaughter—
Unaware of the final obstacle standing before him.
....
A shimmering tear in space flickered before him.
A rift in reality itself, bending the laws of physics—
From its depths, a figure emerged.
A man.
Draped in black and gold armor.
Carrying an Aquila staff.
Qin Mo stepped forward, his eyes locking onto the rampaging Knight.
Even as Roaring Tempest continued its slaughter, Qin Mo remained motionless.
He watched as the Knight's silhouette moved within the haze, its footsteps alone collapsing weakened structures. Entire squads had been lost in seconds, crushed, vaporized, or flung like dolls by concussive force. The air reeked of burning promethium and scorched flesh.
His mind raced.
The devastation was staggering.
"I should have planned for this," he muttered.
"A Knight. Here. On this wretched, backwater hellhole."
He had anticipated infantry hordes, even armored columns—
But he had not specifically designed countermeasures for Knights.
And why would he have?
Knight Houses were rarities, fading remnants of feudal empires scattered across the Imperium like old myths clinging to relevance.
Their war machines were typically bound to strategically vital sectors, or called upon by High Lords only in dire circumstances. To see one here in an insignificant system, was not just unexpected. It was almost absurd.
A Knight meant noble blood. Generational oaths. Support crews, infrastructure, a family legacy measured in steel and fire.
None of that belonged here. Not on a forsaken rock like this.
That was his mistake.
A mistake he would now rectify.
"The enemy battle line is in complete disarray."
Grey's voice crackled through Qin Mo's vox-link.
"Excellent," Qin Mo nodded.
"Now, let's put an end to this Knight."
Grey, Anruida, and Yoan altered course, rushing toward Roaring Tempest's position.
Aelann finally noticed Qin Mo standing in his path.
His response?
The highest form of respect—
By unleashing every round from his twin Avenger Gatling Cannons on him.
A hail of shells rained down.
But none reached him.
Qin Mo's gravity shield absorbed everything.
Explosions erupted around him.
Smoke and debris clouded the air.
Aelann grinned.
Until his heat-vision cut through the smoke—
And Qin Mo was still standing, completely unharmed.
....
Aelann advanced, cannons roaring hellfire—
Then his world tilted.
Without warning, Roaring Tempest's right leg sank into the ground.
Aelann's eyes widened.
The metallic surface of the Hive hadn't collapsed.
It had simply ceased supporting his weight.
"This is—IMPOSSIBLE! YOUR A DAEMON!!!"
Aelann struggled to comprehend what was happening.
The ground was still there, but it acted like liquid beneath his feet.
Aelann frantically fired at Qin Mo, but physics itself betrayed him.
Qin Mo twisted the laws of reality—
Gravity altered.
Projectile trajectories bent mid-flight.
The Gatling Cannon rounds, hundreds of them, screamed through the air in chaotic spirals, only to loop around like furious predators and slam directly back into Roaring Tempest itself.
The first impacts struck its shoulder plating, then its hip, then directly into the shattered seams of its own exposed armature.
A split-second later a chain of secondary explosions followed—internal ammunition cooking off, armor plates detonating outward like shrapnel from a dying star.
A metallic screech echoed across the battlefield as Roaring Tempest's right arm crumpled, the elbow joint torn open, cabling flailing like severed tendons, one of the twin Avenger Gatling Cannons crashing to the ground with a scream of rending steel.
Fire blossomed from its knee actuator, and smoke poured from its back vents—black, oily, choking.
Aelann was hurled sideways within the cockpit, thrown against his restraints as sparks burst from the interface node.
He gasped, tasting blood.
His vision flickered—machine-spirit feedback surged, turning pain into data, data into agony.
Qin Mo stood untouched.
He didn't move.
He didn't need to.
Space itself moved for him.
He raised one hand.
Aelann felt the pressure shift—not wind, not force, but an unseen weight pressing down on Roaring Tempest, as though the Knight was being crushed beneath the boot of a god.
Servos shrieked. Hydraulic limbs buckled. One knee cracked—literally cracked, like a mountain's crust under stress.
The left Gatling Cannon began to spool up—
But before Aelann could fire, Qin Mo twisted his wrist.
Reality kinked.
The weapon imploded in on itself, the barrels crushed like tin under impossible pressure.
Fragments exploded outward, metal shards peppering Roaring Tempest's torso, punching through adamantium plating like it was paper.
Aelann screamed.
Not in pain, but in fury.
In denial.
In disbelief.
He had never lost control of Roaring Tempest.
Not once.
But now, the Knight shuddered beneath him.
The machine-spirit howled, not in rage, but in confusion.
Fear.
And something else answered a presence ancient and vast, watching from within the Rift.
Qin Mo took a single step forward.
"You don't understand," he said, his voice calm and unyielding through the Knight's own vox systems.
"This battlefield doesn't belong to you anymore.
It belongs to me."