The starboard engine room of the Ever Given had been turned into a meat grinder.

The body fragments of thirty Tech-Priests floated in the weightlessness, their cybernetic limbs still twitching, their servoskulls trying futilely to piece themselves back together.

In the zero-gravity environment, the blood formed strange spherical liquid masses, floating in the air like strings of scarlet pearls.

The eight arms of the Khorne Demon Engine "Skull Grinder" slowly turned, and each weapon was dripping with liquid of different colors. The chainsaw axe was hung with brain matter, the power hammer was covered with bone marrow, and the nozzle of the flamethrower was dripping with half-coagulated blood.

There was a sudden sharp pain in Sigismund's neural interface.

The data stream from the command throne exploded in his consciousness, and the bioelectric signals of thirty technical priests before their death poured into his brain like their last prayers.

The Grand Marshal saw the last thing they saw: the monster of brass and screaming souls tearing open the blast door, the tech-priests raising their welding torches and wrenches in a last-ditch effort.

"The bridge is in your hands, Captain." Sigismund's voice was eerily calm.

The joints of his armor made a dull hydraulic sound as he stood up.

The black sword awakened in his hand, the ancient runes on the sword lit up one by one, and golden light flowed on the blade like liquid.

Captain Cassius, a veteran of hundreds of battles, looked at Sigismund and said, "May the Emperor guide your sword, Grand Marshal."

As the blast-proof door of the command room slid open, the screams outside came in like a tide.

Sigismund's Terminator Guards were already lined up in the corridor, twenty battle-hardened Templars standing silent as iron.

Their black and white paintwork took on a bloody color under the emergency red light, and the cross emblem on their shoulder armor was stained red by fresh blood plasma.

"Follow the Emperor's will." Sigismund gave a simple order and pointed the black sword forward.

The entire Eternal Crusade now looked like a dying giant.

Every cabin they passed told a different tragedy. Area C-42 was engulfed by the flames of the warp, and the humanoid torches inside were still running. The air pressure door of area D-17 failed, and thousands of corpses floated in the vacuum like dolls.

The worst happened in Sector E-09, where the crew were chained together by Khorne berserkers and turned into a floating human altar.

But the chants continued.

From deep within the ventilation ducts, from sealed shelters, from every corner where the battle was still going on, the hymns of the Ecclesiarchy mingled with the binary chants of the Mechanicus.

A crewman who had been cut in half leaned against the wall and sang the last prayer with his leaking lungs before he died. Sigismund passed by and gently closed his eyes.

"May the Emperor bless you..."

The sudden burst of gunfire around the corner interrupted the mourning.

Five red-armored World Eaters burst through the ventilation duct and leapt down, their chainsaw axes humming hungrily.

Sigismund didn't even stop, and the black sword drew a golden arc.

The first traitor's helmet was split in half along with the head inside, the second was cut in half, his intestines scattered like ribbons, and the third raised his power axe to block, but the black sword directly split the axe handle and cut off half of his shoulder.

The remaining two World Eaters were shot to pieces by the Terminator Guard's Storm Bolters before they could even pull the trigger.

Their bodies smashed against the wall, and the impact of the explosives squeezed their internal organs out of the cracks in the armor, forming a strange red mist in the zero-gravity environment.

"The left passage." Sigismund's combat instinct suddenly gave an alert.

As soon as he finished speaking, the entire bulkhead was violently torn apart. A killing squad of twenty Chaos Terminators broke through the wall, led by the Chaos Lord "Bloodmaw" Karndar, wielding eight chainswords - each weapon of this fallen World Eaters Space Marine was engraved with the names of a thousand victims.

"Offer his head to the Blood God! Blood sacrifice to the Blood God!"

Karndal's roar was reinforced by the warp, shattering the explosion-proof glass in the corridor. His Terminator armor was inlaid with hundreds of Black Templar helmets, and the freshest one was still dripping with blood.

Sigismund's black sword collided with the eight chainswords, creating dazzling sparks.

The two men wrestled in the middle of the narrow corridor, and the servomotors of the power armor groaned under the strain.

The Grand Marshal suddenly withdrew his force and turned sideways, allowing Kahndar to rush forward due to inertia, and then he hit the opponent's spine with an elbow.

Blood spurted from the seams of the Chaos Lord's armour, but was quickly repaired by the energies of the Warp.

"No mercy! No pity! Only destruction! Destruction!"

Two hundred World Eaters poured in from the breach, their scarlet armor stained with the flesh and blood of the Everlasting Crusade's crew.

Many of them were in berserker mode, their muscles swollen to the point of bursting through their armor, their exposed skin engraved with Blood God runes.

Bombs, chainsaws, and power weapons intertwined into a death storm in the narrow corridor.

Sigismund's black sword turned into golden lightning. Three World Eaters who rushed over were pierced through the throat by the sword, and the blade pierced precisely through the breathing grid of their helmets.

The fourth traitor's chainsaw axe struck the Field Marshal's pauldron, but Sigismund caught his wrist with his backhand, and his power fist crushed the bones beneath the ceramite armor.

The fifth World Eater took the opportunity to launch a sneak attack, but was blocked by the Black Sword. Sigismund kicked him into the range of his companion's flamethrower.

The Black Templar's tactical proficiency was fully demonstrated in this melee.

Although they were outnumbered, they always maintained a fighting formation of three people.

Storm shields formed a mobile wall, and bolters fired accurately from the gaps.

"For the Emperor! For Dorne!"

Ulrich's battle cry blasted across the comms as the veteran impaled two World Eaters with his power sword, pinning them to the wall like kebabs.

The third traitor took the opportunity to pounce, but Ulrich suddenly let go of his weapon, pulled out the relic bolter from the side of his leg, and shot the other person in the head.

The impact of the explosive bullet caused the headless corpse to spin three times in the air before stopping.

The duel between Sigismund and Kahndar reached a climax.

The Chaos Lord's eight chainsaw swords danced into a bloody whirlwind, but each attack was accurately blocked by the black sword.

The Grand Marshal spotted a flaw and suddenly changed his tactics and stabbed forward, with the black sword piercing through Kahndar's power backpack.

The Chaos Lord roared and turned around, letting the blade rotate inside his body, using this self-mutilation method to close the distance, and then slammed into Sigismund's visor.

Spiderweb cracks appeared on Sigismund's helmet, and then Kandar's chainsword was slashing at his neck.

However, his weakness was exposed in an instant. Sigismund stared at his neck with cold eyes, and then stabbed his exposed flesh with force.

Stab it!

Followed by the sound of flesh tearing.

Then, a headless body fell next to Sigismund.