Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

They are dead. Jack thought, completely, without any life left, and there is no hope of saving them.

His channel was deadly quiet, so quiet that his stomach began to tighten. Maybe he should shout something, report their names one by one, as if this was the simplest way to revive a dead soul. No, he didn't do that, because-

Because he also lost his language.

Thanks to the damage to the temporal lobe, no doubt. A little help from the outside, a little change, the wound is not big, but it is accurate enough.

Throne, he thought, his mind was still working, but it was no longer in the Gothic language that humans could use. His mind wandered between the cracks of his will, as if he had returned to his childhood in the space marine surgery that he had long forgotten.

The transformation surgery filled his abdominal cavity, stuffed him with more unimaginable parts that could upgrade a mortal punk to a secondary immortal, just like when he was a taciturn little technician apprentice, installing dials in instruments according to the master's requirements.

It replenished him, but also took away another part of him, the shadow of him who was once nameless, the shadow that observed the world in a more simple and pure way, the shadow that had never armed himself with language and logic, and opened his whole body and mind to the world.

Now, Jack returned to that moment.

He was a little distressed, a kind of pain grabbed his heart and rolled inside him.

It was not just the frustration of being unable to speak - even though this was enough to kill a Shadow Moon Wolf. It was anger, sadness, fear, and some shame and regret derived from fear.

He looked at the bodies of the warriors lying at his feet. A close-range psychic vortex took their lives. In their solid armor, their spirits were destroyed into what kind of fragments, and what kind of broken darkness was involved? Jack couldn't imagine.

He only knew that death was always in an instant.

Jack breathed into the communicator and opened his mouth, but couldn't say a word. He looked up in frustration and looked at the bone mountain not far away, looking unwillingly at the black indentation like mold on the mountainside. The clue was there, but he didn't have time to alert more people.

He took a deep breath, and for the last time, he looked at his companions lying on the ground one by one. He recognized each of them, but again, their names escaped his lips.

Then he lifted his feet and walked in the direction he saw he needed to go. His footsteps would be recorded in satellites and combat support systems, and other warriors would wonder why he went to a specific place on the mountain of bones alone. His actions would become his words, proving everything for him.

With every step towards the mountain of bones in front of him, Jack was terrified, not knowing whether a new, unexpected attack would kill him before he reached his goal. But as time passed, his fear changed.

He began to fear what he would find. He was afraid of the truth.

Why did Lion El'Jonson disappear in the battle? Was he alive, or was he the next Primarch to be lost in Randan?

If he was alive, was he in battle, constantly fighting an endless stream of enemies? Oh, then he, a mere Space Marine, can't help the Primarch.

Jack gave up his thoughts on the past. He continued to move forward, looking for a way. Although the Bone Mountain is flat, it is not easy to climb. The gray-yellow fog that seems to never dissipate surrounds this pile of flesh and blood. The bone spurs all over the mountain and the slug-like poisonous glands that briefly flash with water are attached to its surface, forming a large number of ugly and dangerous gaps.

The thick fog scorched his power armor scorchingly, testing the ability of the Space Marine armor to maintain temperature, as if some kind of terrible dragon or the embers of a dead firebird lived inside the Bone Mountain.

The psychic environment fell like a tide, and just as Jack relaxed a little, new enemies quietly emerged from the black shadows. He had to fight and run, taking steps, hoping that a crack in the flat ground would crack so that he could hide temporarily.

The mountains retreated under his feet, cracks that were not wide enough to enter were crossed, and hot steam rushed out of the cracks, carrying a strange smell of blood mixed with engine oil. The hissing sound was hidden deep in the bones, broken bones rolled down, and there were some grinning heads - they were not actually smiling, but the skeletons themselves seemed to be smiling.

Then, the psychic tide surged again, and the violent vortex hit Jack's mind, prying open a new hole in his stubborn and dull shell.

This was much easier than before, he thought, maybe because his only layer of protection - his language and thinking structure, had been destroyed by brain damage.

Lion El'Jonson, still handsome, with a face like alabaster and golden hair hanging dignifiedly, did not look injured at all, nor did he look like he had experienced a battle. He was facing a metallic and gorgeous corridor, with a crimson flag standing upright behind the shimmering glass cover as the background, and he was saying something to someone opposite him.

"Where are we going?" the lion asked, his voice cold, the scabbard hitting his legs as he moved.

Then, the psychic wave faded, throwing Jack back to reality.

Who was he talking to? Jack couldn't help but wonder, when did this conversation take place? Why did Lion El'Jonson disappear in the battle?

A worse possibility. Jack thought, so abruptly, the last face of Hashem returned to him.

The smile of the Word Bearer did not even end with the chopping of the power claws, but solidified and froze on that smooth face, and did not disappear until his head was chopped off by Jack himself. Jack kissed his cheek, his tears moistened Hashem's face, and the blood from the Word Bearer's neck splashed on his chest.

If this worse possibility fell on Lion El'Jonson...

A sense of refreshing that made him deeply ashamed came to him instantly: the First Primarch, who had a deep conflict with his own genetic father, the Wolf God, had forced him to chop off his brother's head. And now, his brothers died, all of them, just to find the lion who had ventured here in violation of the rules - this was not Lion El'Jonson's fault, but Jack couldn't help but closely connect the two things.

There was a very terrible moment, Jack maliciously hoped to reward the cruel ideas held by the lion to himself.

He didn't believe that Lion didn't know the true identity of the Silver Angel, and if his guess was correct, when the Dark Angels stubbornly insisted on acting alone, Lion El'Jonson might have already begun to be ruthless on the surface, but secretly did secret things that needed to be judged by strict laws...

The Moon Wolf painfully suppressed this thought. This is not what he should think.

He continued to move forward, and the pain in his heart intensified. Lion El'Jonson had better not deceive them, otherwise, otherwise-

What is the death of Hashem? Even-what is the death of Gri-Gris?

Jack continued to climb, bones trembling dangerously under his feet, and loose things above his head issued terrible, pre-fall warnings. When he got close enough to the rift, he smelled more fresh smells-blood, alien blood, Space Marine blood, and even...that strange smell. The blood of the Primarch.

In this dark crack, a fierce battle once broke out. The fighters went deeper and deeper, all the way to the depths of the rift...

The tide surged again, and the sparks of psychic energy crackled and flashed, blooming with dazzling and disgusting brilliance. Jack fell and slid over several chaotic bones until he threw his body on the surface of a barrier formed by a giant skeleton inside the rift, and his helmet was against the edge of a deep rift.

Through the corner of his eye, he peeked into the dark rift and saw that Lion and another tall being seemed to be fighting, attacking each other with bare hands in the corridor...

Without thinking too much, he knew that it must be another Primarch, Duncan Aihe. The Primarch can only be defeated by the Primarch.

As the tide receded again, Jack took a breath, recovered his spirit, and stumbled forward in the inner passage of the tilted bone mountain. The layout here began to make him feel inexplicably familiar, whether it was the width of the passage or the distribution of each turn. He was sure that he had never been here before.

Soon, the first corpse appeared—it was an alien, not a silver angel, and was embedded in bones and flesh in a mess.

Jack found traces of bombs here, but no bodies of his cousins.

He was taken away again, he thought angrily, coughing in the strong smell of blood, and moving forward alone along all the suspicious traces.

The road inside began to narrow, and soft flesh and blood squeezed inward from the walls around. They were fresh and fragile, but too much and too dense, as if they were about to seal the passage. There were constant grumbling and blood flowing around him, hot air lingering, and his power armor sounded an alarm.

Jack squeezed through these narrow gaps, and soon he had to bend over and move forward, and then his limbs touched the ground.

Like a wolf, he thought, no wonder he joined the Shadow Moon Wolf that year, it turned out that his fate was fulfilled here.

Then, the second wave of pain defeated him, knocking him hard to the ground, and the pain was as if his soul was torn apart. He wanted to curse a few colloquial words, whether in Cosonia or High Gothic, as long as they could express his anger and confusion.

No, he couldn't find it - Jack had never wanted to find his language so much.

Lion El'Jonson held the long sword in his hand and pierced the chest of the second Primarch. Jack breathed a sigh of relief, and then he saw more - no!

He held his head and wailed loudly, and the cry of pain broke through all the closed barriers. A strong feeling of suffocation grabbed him, and together with the severe headache, it seemed to kill him on the spot. Blood overflowed from the wound on his head, flowing all over his face, almost drowning him.

It killed them!

He roared loudly, and this overwhelming psychic energy tore his soul apart, making him fall into the darkness and coldness of death. It was this huge psychic tide that killed his companions. Why did it come into being?

Then, he saw it. In the suffocating fear, he saw Lion El'Jonson, in his prime, with a face as white as stone and untouched by war. He asked him: Who are you?

And the flag protected by the glass cover in the corridor where he was...

Jack stretched out his hand tremblingly, reached into the surrounding flesh wall, and pulled out a blood-stained flag with a completely broken glass cover from the flesh of the corridor, faintly showing its former deep red color.

The Moon Wolf barely managed to use his weak limbs and crawled forward in the extremely low corridor. The tide rose and fell. He saw Lion El'Jonson greet Duncan three times, fight each other five times, shake hands twelve times, and pierce Duncan's chest with a sword thirty-one times. Over and over again, everything happened in the Glorious Queen of the Second Legion. Everything...

It all happened here. Inside this bone mountain. Or, it happened in the illusion when this bone mountain had not been covered and eroded by flesh and blood, and was still bathed in the glory of the Emperor and sailed in the void...

Jack exhaled a foul breath. He couldn't hold on for too many times. The repeated psychic tides tortured him deeply. All the signals were warning him that his brain was about to dissolve.

Maybe, there was one more time left. The biggest psychic wave. This was the limit he could endure.

Finally, he found a relatively open path in the corridor filled with flesh and blood. There were sword marks and knife wounds all over it, and someone had cut a path through it.

Lion El'Jonson.

He had been contaminated. He had been trapped in the cycle of corruption.

Jack couldn't tell how far he had advanced, maybe a few kilometers, maybe more.

After he climbed over a pile of corpses made up of various aliens, Jack fell into a dome hall behind a cross section. This was probably some kind of ritual site of the Second Legion. Except for being covered in blood and full of cracked bones, it was even relatively well preserved.

Then he saw the lion, half of his body was trapped in flesh and blood, his chest was exposed, his head was lowered, his brows were furrowed, and a huge wound made his face bloody, trapped in an endless nightmare, unable to escape.

He was so fragile... so unprotected. He was already injured. The Primarchs were not indestructible... Jack knew they would be in pain and bleed. And there were too many bullets in his grenade launcher.

Even if he still had the control of consciousness, Jack thought, but...

There is no precedent for this. The Leon said in his memory that the temporary war council would be informed of this information.

- There is a precedent for this. Jack thought, it has already happened. Everything is a repetition of the past. The wolf seeks the lion. The pure executes the polluted.

He heard the lion's teachings, and once again, he will never forget that moment.

"You can kill him, Shadow Moon Wolf." The lion said to him.

Jack raised his gun, and a cold and desperate pleasure urged him. The opportunity was not to be missed, and he had already felt the signs of the psychic tide.

Then, he put the gun down.

Everything that exists is an infinite repetition of the past, but he-he will not join in it. Not anymore.

A possibility. Jack thought. A possibility that Hashem and Gri-Gris never had.

A possibility... that he himself will never have the opportunity to have again.

The huge psychic tide finally broke his last shred of consciousness. His brain was boiling and burning in extreme pain. Everything was leaving him. He was spinning in pain, gasping in silence, and kneeling in frenzy of pain.

He had reached the lion. More people would follow the path he left behind. Like... who? He thought, remembering.

Norwood. The Iron Warrior who had shown them the way with his life.

Iron Warriors, Dark Angels, Word Bearers...

It was his turn.

The bolter fell from the Luna Wolf's hand.