The undercity still burned.

  But the fires were controlled now — harnessed, redirected, purged of warp-touched madness by engineers in hazard rigs and drones flew like insects over twisted architecture. Steel Legion banners fluttered from colpsed watchtowers. MG nests overlooked every major boulevard.

  And at the center of it all, rising like a cathedral reborn, was the converted Soul Anchor.

  What had once been a nightmare of netherstone and dwarven torment was now a beacon of soulbound energy, pulsing in precise intervals like the heartbeat of a machine god. It radiated warmth — not comforting, but efficient. Functional. Purposeful.

  Reinhard stood before it with his command team: Helvig, Sch?ffer, Hartmann, Erich via projection, and three newly assigned logistics officers drove in from Stonewatch.

  “We now possess a Tier 3 Anchor,” Reinhard said, his voice measured. He lit a cigarette and took a long drag. After enjoying the taste of tobacco, he exhaled and continued: “This city is no longer an objective. It’s an asset.”

  Hartmann nodded. “We’ve begun phase-two stabilization. Engineers are sectioning districts into quadrants for military-industrial conversion.”

  New Deployment Zones Established:

  Red District (Upper Tier): Barracks, logistics depot, medical triage, administration, Civilian quarters, simple manufacturing district, mustering pointsForge Line (Core Tier): Anchor housing, heavy weapons storage, manufacturing facilities, Command Spire, military intelligence, Aegiron InstituteSub-Nexus (Colpsed rail junction): Bck Artery (Damaged)Logistics Surge Enabled:

  Daily Soul Point trickle at 1SP/minManufacturing lines online: ammo, armor pting, autocannon and artillery repcement partsAmmunition & Weapon upgrades“Give it six days,” Sch?ffer added, lighting a cigarette with his usual grim calm. “This pce will be a fortress. Better than Stonewatch ever was. You could fight a siege here for a year and never flinch.”

  Reinhard didn’t smile. But his eyes sharpened.

  “We won’t be on defense that long.”

  From the new Anchor interface — a holographic obelisk mounted in the newly-cleared control chamber — Erich’s voice crackled in with filtered awe.

  “Reinhard… we’ve been studying the forge’s residual systems. There's more than just Soul Anchor capability. There’s potential here. A dwarven-cybernetic infrastructure corrupted by warp... now aligned to us.”

  UNLOCKED TECHNOLOGIES:

  Soulbrand Modifications (Infantry-tier): Infuse select weapons with condensed anchor energy — armor-piercing, anti-warp, or psychoactive effects. Tier 1 upgrade avaible for all Panzergrenadier ptoons.

  Resonant Bastion Pting (Structure-tier): Anchor-linked defenses regenerate over time. Shield generators, auto-repair kits, drone-based nanofab systems for trench walls and barricades. Repces standard sandbags with reactive alloy ptes.

  Warden-Css Drone Variants (Elite-tier): With Anchor energy, drones can now field limited short-range warp suppression fields. Greatly increases survivability near corrupted zones.

  Command Nexus Rey (Global-tier): Extend Reinhard’s tactical control via soul-link to command elements on other fronts — even in warp-polluted battlefields. You can now project commands from Khazad Varum to other war zones.

  “We’re just scratching the surface,” Erich said. “If we take more anchors like this... we may not just win the war. We may reshape it.”

  ****************Elsewhere*******************

  Far below.

  Far away.

  The warp noticed.

  A temple of silence. Floating bone orbs hummed as they rotated above a blood-slicked floor. Twelve robed figures sat cross-legged, eyes burning green beneath helms of obsidian.

  One of them shuddered.

  “The forge is no longer singing… One of our devoted followers was extinguished.”

  Another voice, like bone snapping, replied.

  “Its song now belongs to steel.”

  Their leader stood — an emaciated figure with spider-like limbs fused to the walls behind him.

  “Reinhard Stahl has taken a core anchor. Worse… he has bound it. That should not be possible.”

  “Then he is not a commander.”

  “No,” the first said. “He is a conqueror.”

  The warp stirred.

  And something began to wake — deep in the fractured core of a forgotten realm.

  ********************In The ruins of Crestshade *************

  A mutated general in pted armor, riding atop a behemoth stitched from ogres and steel, received word via shamanic projection.

  He listened to the report.

  Then growled.

  “Prepare the warcallers. Tell the tribes. Khazad Varum has fallen… but its fire was not extinguished.”

  “It was cimed.”

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

  It took two days of controlled occupation before the Steel Legion reached the eastern quadrant — where the mountain met the stonework.

  The Main Gate of Khazad Varum loomed there like the jaw of a dead god.

  Half-buried in rubble, choked in rust and warp-ced fungus, it stretched nearly 30 meters high and five thick, carved with ancient dwarven runes long since bckened by fire and neglect. Steel bands a meter thick held it together, though twisted in pces by magical bst scars and geological strain.

  No one had passed through for a better part of two centuries. No force had breached it in it’s history. And now it belonged to Reinhard.

  “We’ve cleared the rubble,” Sch?ffer reported, standing atop a scaffold with a ser pointer aimed at the gate’s locking frame. “But this thing wasn’t just closed — it was spellbound. Reinforced with something... old. It’s dwarven, but there’s something yered over it. A curse, maybe.”

  “A seal,” Erich corrected, who stood just behind Reinhard and Mars, arms crossed. “Their st one. The dwarves of Khazad Varum locked this gate from the inside when the Verminthar broke through. They were sealing their own tomb.”

  Reinhard approached the gate himself.

  The air was still. The stone whispered.

  “We’re opening it,” he said.

  “Sir, with respect,” Sch?ffer muttered, “this gate could destabilize if we cut too deep. We’d have a cave-in from the high ridge. Maybe a gas colpse from—”

  Reinhard raised a hand.

  “We’re not cutting it.”

  He pced his palm against the cold, runed steel. The Anchor link in his hand surged, responding to the echoes of soulbound circuitry now woven through the forge-core far below.

  [Anchor Interface Detected: Subsurface Mechanism – Gate Lock Sigils] [Override Permission: Commander-Level Access Granted] [Commencing Recmation Protocol]

  The gate lit up.

  Lines of molten light spread outward from where Reinhard touched the gate, tracing ancient glyphs like blood finding old veins. The stone groaned as if exhaling for the first time in generations.

  Then — a deep boom echoed through the mountain.

  Gears within the wall — once thought dead — began to turn. Runes fred. Locking bars thicker than a man’s torso slowly retracted, one after another, screeching as they moved. A cascade of pressurized steam and dust exploded outward as the final sigil cracked like a spine.

  With a sound like a mountain tearing, the Main Gate opened.

  Just a sliver.

  Then more.

  Sunlight — real, warm, blinding sunlight — pierced through the slit like a bde of judgment.

  And for the first time in centuries, Khazad Varum saw the sky.

  Reinhard stepped back into shadow, his eyes adjusting to the light as Hartmann and the engineer ptoons surged forward.

  “Get it secured,” Reinhard said. “I want the gate sealed behind six fallback yers. Killboxes on every approach, and zeroed in artillery. Tiered AA above. If a bird sneezes wrong near this pass, I want it vaporized.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  The work began immediately:

  Layered Bastion Gates — colpsible soulsteel bulkheads on the inner side, magnetically sealed

  Autocannon Nests — 30mm Fk 30s pced in staggered tiers along the inner wall and outside pteau

  Pak 40 Kill line — four high-ground AT guns with overpping arcs aimed directly down the causeway

  150mm artillery entrenchments — ten high-ground artillery guns zeroed in at the approach to the causeway.

  Warden Drone Umbrel — aerial recon and warp-suppression drones maintaining 24/7 coverage

  F.O.B. Expansion Zone “Ironjaw” — outside the gate, a cleared pteau now being built into a supply hub and airlift ptform

  Anchor-Link Beacons — hard-wired soul rey pylons connected directly to the core for energy redundancy, psychic shielding, and emergency reinforcement calls

  The engineers welded the Legion's Steel Cross Sigil directly onto the gate’s center — burning through the old dwarven crest and repcing it.

  Hartmann looked up at the massive symbol glowing in the early evening sun.

  “They’ll see this from miles away.”

  “Good,” Reinhard said. “I want them to know the gate is open. And who holds the key.”

  As the work finished, and the troops rotated out to fresh barracks within the city, Reinhard stood at the center of the pza, Mars ever vigint, sitting by his side, where a breeze now blew through the city for the first time in memory.

  He didn’t speak. Didn’t move.

  But in that moment, Khazad Varum was no longer a puss filled wound. It became a bde — reforged, regripped — and pointed outward.

  His voice was low. Measured.

  “They’ll come for this.”

  Sch?ffer stood beside him.

  “Let them.”

  Reinhard looked east.

  “We’ll need to strike first. Take more anchors. Consolidate.”

  “Which one next?”

  He raised his gauntlet and pointed.

  The map dispyed another 4 surface cities that were burned to the ground.

  “Varden’s Hollow”.