The battlefield was lost to screams and gunfire.
The Blessed Hinge, once a proud line of relic and unbroken faith, crumbled under the Heretic onslaught like a cathedral collapsing into dust. Trenchworks that had been blessed in blood and scripture were ripped apart by artillery spells, while the very air writhed with corrupted hymns leaking from the mouths of Heretic Choristers.
When Aaron, Saint Grave—fell, cleaved neatly in half by the Red Choir Butcher's singing cleaver, a terrible silence rippled across the trenches. It was not the silence of disbelief. It was the silence of something sacred shattering beyond repair.
Faith cracked like bone under a hammer.
Some Redemption Soldiers dropped to their knees where they stood, helmets clattering against churned, blackened mud. Their prayers faltered into choking sobs that smelled of ash and terror. Others tore off their relic-etched helms with blood-slick fingers, staring at the ruin before them, faces smeared with ash and despair. Their mouths opened to wail, but the only words that came were broken, blasphemed fragments of what had once been certainty.
"The Saint is dead—"
"Saint Grave has fallen—"
"There is no light left—"
Among the Pilgrims, those battle-hardened zealots who had marched through fire and daemonstorms without faltering, something deeper broke. It was not their courage that shattered, it was their hope.
They howled like broken bells, a sound so raw that it tore through the battlefield's chaos and reached even the iron-clad hearts of the Heretic ranks. Their prayers no longer resembled psalms but rage, ripped from the bottom of their lungs with the savage grief of those who had lost everything.
They charged.
Relic-blades raised high, cracked flamers vomiting dying streams of blessed fire, teeth bared in cries that barely resembled human language. Their holy psalms twisted into war-cries, half-curse, half-blessing, more desperate than triumphant.
Two saints fallen now.
Father Dren.
Saint Grave.
Two flames snuffed out, leaving nothing but choking smoke and hollow prayers.
The Red Choir Butcher laughed.
It was not a sound a human throat could make. It was a deep, hollow roar, the sound of a grave cracking open. It vibrated through the trenches, rattled relic-shields nailed to bunker walls, and bent vox-prayers into static.
It met the charging faithful not with caution, but with open arms, arms that swung the cleaver in long, sickening arcs. Each sweep carved the battlefield into screaming ribbons. Every impact sang a bloody hymn that rewrote the very ground, painting new prayers in death and entrails.
Pilgrims were smashed aside like insects under a boot. Flames sputtered and died in the air. Relic steel bent and cracked as though made of paper. Their faith, their courage, their very souls, all had fed the Butcher.
Their hymns had crowned it king.
And still they charged, desperate, furious, knowing they would not survive. They screamed Dren's name. They screamed Aaron's name. They screamed God's name.
And the Butcher reveled in it.
Grinning, the monster stooped low over the ruin it had made.
It reached out one clawed, blistered hand and closed its fingers around Aaron's broken upper body. It lifted the limp corpse into the smoky air, shaking it slightly as if weighing the false saint's worth.
It sniffed him, the way a predator savors the kill. Its bone-stitched face twisted into a mockery of tenderness, a grotesque affection reserved for trophies.
It would peel the skin from this false idol.
Offer it like a flag, an offering of despair.
This is how your faith dies.
But then—
a spark.
At first it was nothing. A flicker. A stubborn ember clinging to the shredded remnants of Aaron's relic-robes.
The Butcher frowned—or did the closest thing it could to frowning.
It squeezed tighter, trying to snuff it out.
The spark grew.
From ember to flame.
Aaron's body ignited.
Not just the upper half—the severed lower body, still standing like a grotesque idol of defeat, burst into impossible, searing light. Fire spilled from his wounds, his mouth, his hollowed eyes. It was not mortal flame, nor daemonfire, nor even the relic-blessed fires of the Church.
It was something older.
It sang in forgotten tongues, languages that predated cathedrals, predated trenches, predated even the first written prayers of men. It sang not to comfort but to scour, to cleanse.
The Butcher recoiled, trying to drop the corpse.
Too late.
The fire bit deep, crawling up its wrist like a living serpent, slow at first, then hungrily.
The Butcher screamed, a deep, inhuman sound of rage, of pain, but also, for the first time since the battle began—of fear.
It staggered back, trying to tear away the burning corpse.
The battlefield froze.
Heretics stumbled in confusion.
Pilgrims halted mid-charge, tears still streaming down soot-streaked faces.
Even the warbeasts hesitated, snapping at the air as if it had changed.
The Butcher howled again, shaking the heavens with its anguish.
Aaron's body began to move.
Bones snapped into place.
Muscle slithered like living cords across splintered frame.
Skin sealed over still-smoking wounds.
Healed by fire, clothed in light, Aaron, Saint Grave, stood once more.
Naked light poured from the scarlet sky, framing him in a corona of flame so blinding that even those without faith fell to their knees in awe.
He opened his mouth.
And ancient Hebrew thundered out, a chant not meant for human ears, heavy with the authority of lost ages.
The ground itself shivered beneath the weight of the words.
The Red Choir Butcher, ablaze now from the inside out, stumbled.
Aaron stepped forward, barefoot across burning mud, the flames wreathing him like a living, breathing thing.
And in a voice not booming or triumphant, but dry, worn, and utterly human, he muttered:
"Yeah... weird powerup….
Guess I'm not done yet.
Bad day to be you, freak."
The faithful gasped in wonder.
The Heretics began to stumble back, whispering in fear, their courage faltering like snuffed candles.
The Pilgrims didn't understand the words.
They didn't need to.
They understood the fire.
They understood the return.
The trenches that had burned now hardened. The relics that had faltered now shone. The prayers that had twisted now snapped back into furious, righteous song.
Aaron walked forward, flames growing larger with every step.
The Red Choir Butcher shrieked one last broken hymn, its body splitting open from the inside as holy fire devoured it, turning flesh, bone, and false prayer into drifting ash.
And then it was gone.
Aaron stood alone in the ruins, haloed in living flame.
Where he walked, trenches held.
Where he spoke, courage returned.
Where he burned, the Heretics fled.
And the faithful, broken and bleeding, rose.
*****
In the shattered shadows of a ruined bunker…
Aleric, bloodied, dust-choked, weeping, opened his battered Codex.
By broken candlelight and a trembling hand, he wrote:
🕯️ Codex Gravis: Book of Ash and Fire 🕯️
by Aleric, Scribe of the Last Witness
"Here fell Grave, the Broken Saint, torn by the butcher's hymn.
But from ash and agony he rose again, crowned in the fire of the Old Tongues.
A prophet of the trench and flame,
A blade of lost worlds and burning faith.
Saint of Paint, Fire, and Ash—
He who forged miracles from broken dreams and ruined fields.
He shall not kneel, nor shall he weep,
But walk the broken fields,
And light the way for the dying and the damned."
At the bottom of the page, written in trembling, smudged ink, Aleric added a final note in the margins:
"I saw him.
I swear it.
Fire poured from his wounds, but he did not burn.
He did not scream.
He only stood, and the world stood still with him.
Saint Grave returned to us when all hope was ash.
And he smiled."