[Units Deployed: 14 Panzergrenadier Ptoons; 5 Combat engineer ptoons; 8 Pak 40s, 10x Heavy Weapon squads (MG, mortars, AT Rifles; 8x 30mm Fk 30 Autocannons]

  [Command Mode Active: Frontline Assault]

  [Remaining Points: +++++++]

  [Designation: Hold The Line]

  An unholy vibration surged through the undercity — not air, not sound, but soul-resonance. The death of the Nethersmith echoed through the warp-linked hive of the Verminthar like a ruptured artery.

  The Halls Roared Back.

  Then came the war drums.

  They didn’t sound like drums. They were more like the grinding of colossal gears, warped by time and infused with warp resonance. The ancient forges of the undercity hadn’t gone silent — they had been waiting. Now, they answered.

  From the deepest tiers of the ruin-city, the Verminthar surged again — but this time, they came with purpose.

  From the shattered buildings below, dozens of cloaked figures stepped forward — Netherfme Warlocks — their bodies hunched, their faces hidden behind bone-masks, their spindly arms clutching rods of Netherstone-infused metal.

  With a shrieked chant, they raised their staffs — and the air boiled.

  A hailstorm of corrupted fireballs unched skyward. These weren’t simple magical projectiles — they twisted midair, splitting into smaller clusters, exploding in erratic arcs. One struck a mortar team directly, vaporizing the gunners in a bst of viridian fme.

  Another collided with a heavy MG nest. The gunner screamed as his weapon sgged beneath his hands, burning through the steel shield before it detonated in a chain reaction of cooked ammo.

  The ground below trembled again.

  Six-legged Siege Crawlers, mechanical-biological hybrids built from scavenged dwarven scrap and mutated sinew, crawled into the open. On their backs: crude catapults, hurling votile payloads of warp-resin and bone-shrapnel toward the ridge.

  Behind them charged the Rattlebeasts — massive, quadrupedal monsters with flesh stitched from dozens of rat corpses, their heads enclosed in steel cages and their mouths vomiting a constant screech. Chain-bound warlocks followed behind them, controlling the beasts with shes of pure energy.

  Autocannon fire ripped into the first wave, but the Crawlers’ thick pting held long enough to unleash their payloads. Glowing green projectiles impacted the cliffside, dislodging stone, colpsing firing positions, and turning killzones into rubble-filled mazes.

  From the ceiling of the cavern — far above — something new descended.

  Glider packs. Warped constructs made of stretched skin, leather, and bone, carrying screaming Verminthar gliders who dove from the stactites and rope bridges high above.

  Reinhard’s HUD flickered.

  [Aerial contacts detected] [Glider units inbound – altitude breach imminent]

  "Helvig!" Reinhard barked. "Anti-air teams up! I want every flier down before they hit the lines!"

  “Suppressing fire—now!” Helvig roared.

  Heavy machine guns and autocannons swung upward. A flurry of tracer rounds stitched the cavern roof, catching gliders mid-dive and sending them crashing into the ridge, the cliffs, or their own allies.

  But some made it through.

  Three gliders smmed into the fortified positions. One detonated on impact. The others disgorged elite melee fighters — Stormvermin: hulking albino Verminthar wielding serrated axes and crude bck-iron armor. They screamed curses as they waded into close combat, hacking through two rifle squads before they were cut down by fnking fire.

  From deep in the city, somewhere beyond visible range, an explosion thundered — but no debris followed. Just a pulse.

  Reinhard’s HUD lit up:

  [Unknown Warp Signature Detected] [High-Intensity Warp Convergence Building Below the Ridge – Estimated 30 Seconds to Manifestation]

  Erich’s voice crackled over comms. “They’re activating a node! A psychic breach engine — they're trying to pull something through!”

  Reinhard didn't hesitate.

  "Hartmann. Prep fre rounds. Load AP on the Pak 40s. I want that convergence bsted off the map before it breathes."

  "Yes, Commander!"

  Bright red fres arced into the air, painting the target coordinates.

  Moments ter, eight Pak 40s boomed in perfect sync.

  The shells streaked downward — and the world below erupted.

  A fsh of white-green fire, brighter than anything yet, detonated in the lower levels. The convergence colpsed before it could fully open — but not without cost. The ground buckled. Entire sections of the undercity fell inward, colpsing buildings and bridges. Dust clouds swept upward like volcanic breath.

  Verminthar poured over the ruined infrastructure, shrieking their fury. The death of their Nethersmith had galvanized them — not weakened them.

  They were driven not by fear, but by desperation — nothing was left, but vengeance.

  Reinhard stood at the ridge’s peak, the distant fires painting his uniform in violent hues. He checked his magazine, smmed it home, and raised his rifle again.

  "They want a grave," he said through clenched teeth. "We'll give them one."

  Smoke choked the air. Screams mingled with gunfire. And for the first time since the battle began… the Verminthar reached the ridge.

  A section of the eastern wall buckled under the weight of colpsed masonry and explosive impact. The fallback trench there — manned by only three squads and a damaged autocannon — was overrun.

  Dozens of Verminthar surged through the breach. These weren’t the panicked, gas-choked mobs from earlier. These were Stormvermin shock troops — albino brutes, strong and methodical, armed with obsidian serrated axes, crude bck-iron armor and shard-rifles that spat nether-touched splinters.

  They moved in squads. They had discipline.

  Reinhard’s rifle barked as he emptied another magazine into the breach. “They’re in,” he growled.

  “Helvig! Status on the eastern fnk!?”

  “Compromised!” the captain shouted, voice cracking through the vox. “We’ve lost six positions! Autocannons two and four are down! Ammunition dump in sector three is burning!”

  A second ter, a shockwave rocked the command trench as a fireball detonated too close to the line. Reinhard was thrown into the dirt. His HUD glitched momentarily from the kinetic interference.

  [DEFENSIVE LINE BREACHED – SECTOR EAST] [CASUALTY REPORT: 34% – LOCALIZED] [ENEMY PRESENCE: CRITICAL] [REINFORCEMENT WINDOW: NOW]

  A figure emerged through the smoke of the breach.

  Elder Threxor the Mad.

  He wore a cloak of skin, engraved with still-living runes. His body was half-flesh, half-armor, with pulsating pipes embedded into his back feeding a crown of Netherstone circuitry fused directly into his skull. His four arms carried a stave, a curved saber, a chain-whip of warped teeth, and a mindfire engine—a gauntlet emitting ripples of psychic energy.

  He didn't shout. He simply walked through the breach, and the Verminthar surged in his wake.

  The air warped around him.

  One of Reinhard’s machine gunners tried to track him — only to convulse, scream, and fall limp, blood pouring from every orifice. The machine gunner hadn’t been shot — his mind had been crushed.

  One Pak 40 crew saw him, aimed, and fired — but the shell hit an invisible wall of distortion. It froze midair, rotated, then shattered into a cloud of molten shrapnel.

  "That’s a full psy-warlord," Erich’s voice crackled through comms, as he was informed of the grotesque figure. “He’s got battlefield-wide amplification. If you don’t deal with him now, everything falls.”

  Reinhard stood up. Grit. Blood. Fury.

  “We’re not falling,” he growled. “Not today.”

  They were outnumbered. Overwhelmed.

  But they were dug in — and the Steel Legion did not break.

  The engineers colpsed part of the lower staircase, bottlenecking the breach.

  Two autocannons were manually rotated by sheer force and braced against sandbags. Their gunners screamed rage into the void as they fired directly into the breach. The recoil bruised shoulders, tore flesh — but they didn’t stop.

  Pak 40s shifted focus — not to the general, but the structures behind him. Reinhard pointed to a towering archway behind Threxor.

  "Bring it down. Bury the spawn behind him."

  Two shells fired in sequence. They hit true.

  The arch colpsed, crushing dozens of oncoming Verminthar and severing reinforcements. For a moment, the tide slowed.

  Threxor raised his twin staffs. Green light fred — but Reinhard was already moving.

  He grabbed a fre gun that id in the dirt. Aimed, and pulled the trigger. And shot it straight at Threxor’s feet. The fre buried itself right in front of Threxor.

  The Elder expected an explosion, and that half-second of anticipation and hesitation was enough.

  Reinhard shouted into his vox unit.

  “Pak 40. High explosive. Fire.”

  A second ter, 5 shells nded dead center.

  The explosions fred with searing orange light — Threxor was thrown back, cape burning, one of his arms severed in the bst. He hit the stone hard, his psychic field sputtering.

  But he lived. Crawling, bleeding warp energies.

  “He’s not dead yet,” Hartmann yelled.

  Reinhard shouldered his rifle, eyes locked on the breach.

  “Then we keep firing. Until he is.”

  Threxor writhed in the crater below the breach. His cloak was gone, his left side reduced to warped, half-fused sg. Still, he breathed. Still, the warp pulsed around him.

  On the ridge, the Steel Legion stood bloodied but unbroken — they began to reform, their wounded pulled back, the breach filled with debris and scorched corpses.

  *******************************************

  Reinhard stood like an iron statue amid the smoke and fme, HUD pulsing bright with possibility.

  [Soul Point Surge Detected] [Kill Count Confirmed: 14,842] [Requisition Order]

  [Soul Points Avaible: 15,282][15 × Panzergrenadier Ptoons (1800 SP)][6 × Combat Engineer Ptoons (350 SP)][12 × Heavy Weapon Squads (MG42 teams, mortars, Anti-Tank rifles) (225 SP)][10 × 30mm Fk 30 Autocannons with Crews (220 SP)][10 × Pak 40 Anti-Tank Guns with Crews (175 SP)][1 × Forward Command Node (F.O.B.) (500 SP)][1 × Warden-Css Suppression Drone Swarm (300 SP)][Soul Cost: 3570]

  Steel hit stone.

  Dozens of autocannon legs locked into pce. Ammunition chains spooled. The second wave of the Steel Legion took formation behind the original lines, ready to crush anything that moved.

  The F.O.B. unfolded from a bck sb into a fully functioning forward base — medics already treating wounded, ammo lifts cycling crates of 7.92 and shell casings.

  Overhead, the Warden Swarm took flight — a dozen heavy drones, their sensors glowing with red target-ser pulses.

  “Swarm locked. Primary target: Threxor the Mad. Suppression pattern: Annihite.”

  They dove.

  The ridge erupted with renewed power.

  Autocannons stitched the city below, focusing on rge enemy clusters. Anti-Tank rifles hunted high value targets and decapitated command units. Heavy machine guns swept courtyards with merciless bursts. Mortars rained clustered death on newly forming warlock groups.

  Pak 40s pivoted toward deeper structures — hammering barricades, towers, and potential rally points.Engineers moved like ghosts, reinforcing the breach, pnting mines, and dragging fme-nozzles toward narrow approach tunnels.Panzergrenadiers reloaded with cold, efficient motion. No cheers. Just work.

  This was what the Steel Legion was built for.

  ***************************************************

  Pinned by autocannon fire, stalked by drones, and bleeding warp energy, Threxor rose to his knees, screaming a command in a nguage that bent reality around his voice.

  But it was too te.

  The Warden Swarm hit him in unison — targeting every limb and crude neural impnt. Micro-missiles screamed. Light pulsed. The crater was swallowed in a burst of fire and pressure.

  When the light faded — there was only ash.

  [Enemy Commander Neutralized] [Soul Points +750] [Undercity Warp Link Severed – Localized Disruption]

  A visible ripple tore through the Verminthar ranks below. The psychic coordination snapped. many fell, clutching their heads. Others screamed and ran. Units lost cohesion.

  The once united swarm was now a mob.