Entry III – First Blood

 

Entry III – First Blood

The first clash came not with surprise, but with recognition.

The Orks did not blunder into the Eldar lines by chance. Their patrols tightened, their crude movements gaining cohesion as instinct sharpened into purpose. Safar Timura felt the contraction of the skein moments before the first shot was fired — a sudden narrowing of futures, as though the planet itself had drawn breath. Striking Scorpions struck first, erupting from concealment with disciplined violence, cutting down Ork Boyz in silence and shadow. For a fleeting moment, the path of battle aligned.

Then the warboss made his presence known.

Kraznakh One-Eye did not need strategy to dominate the field. His arrival was a psychic impact — a blunt knot of aggression in the warp that dragged lesser Orks into order around him. Towering above his kin in layered scrap-plate and trophies taken from fallen foes, he bore the scars of countless wars. One eye was long gone, replaced by a crude augmetic that burned with feral focus. Where Kraznakh advanced, probability faltered. Blows that should have slain him glanced aside, and wounds that should have slowed him only fed his momentum.

As the warboss drove forward, Timura reached into the skein — and reeled. The futures ahead fractured violently, but one truth burned through the chaos with painful clarity. In every viable path, the Guardians lived. Not as survivors of chance, but as fulcrums of fate. Their presence echoed forward to a battle yet to come — a stand made in Elune’s name, where their survival here would decide the craftworld’s fate. To lose them now would be to sever Elune’s future.

The order came without hesitation.

Withdrawal.

Guardians disengaged in disciplined ranks, Warlocks shepherding them through collapsing lines as psychic wards flared under strain. Striking Scorpions fought a measured retreat, cutting down Ork Boyz with ruthless precision, bleeding the advance and denying pursuit. Yet Kraznakh would not be denied. With a bellow that shook both air and warp, he smashed through the contested ground, his presence threatening to collapse the withdrawal entirely.

It was then that the Howling Banshees advanced.

Their war masks screamed as one, a psychic wail that tore through the Orks’ momentum and carved a moment of stillness into the chaos. They hurled themselves into Kraznakh’s path, blades flashing, voices rising in defiance and sacrifice. Against them the warboss met resistance worthy of his fury, locked in a brutal clash that stalled his advance just long enough.

It was not victory. It was survival.

The Banshees were driven back, scattered and bloodied, yet unbroken. Behind them, the Guardians escaped the kill-zone, borne away by fate fulfilled rather than fortune earned. Timura felt the skein shift as the last of them crossed beyond immediate danger — the future stabilising, its threads no longer fraying into nothing.

The Eldar abandoned the field, the Orks roaring in triumph amidst the wreckage. Kraznakh One-Eye stood unchallenged, believing the battle his own. He did not know that in allowing the Guardians to live, he had lost something far more valuable than the field.

The battle was lost.

Elune’s future endured.

And the planet, listening still, tightened its grip upon fate.