A Saint's Fall, A Legion's Rise

Aaron stopped walking.

He hadn't so much stopped by choice as by absolute necessity.

His legs wobbled under him like rusted scaffolding, trembling with each tiny shift of weight.

The battlefield had surged past him:

the faithful screaming war-prayers, charging into Heretic ranks like holy avalanches;

Saint-Captain Hema, High Cruciger Lueth, and Confessor-General Holwen fighting at the fore, relics flashing like the thunder of angry gods.

Aaron swayed.

Arms still spread wide.

Vision swimming like oil over water.

Inside his head, the only thought:

I am so cooked, bro.

I'm gonna die standing like a scarecrow.

The world tilted.

Colors blurred.

His guts twisted violently.

And then—

"F-Fuck," Aaron slurred, the word escaping more a dying croak than a curse.

He doubled over, hands instinctively clenching at the empty air.

An instant later, he vomited, an explosive, glittering arc of liquid that sprayed the blood-soaked trench floor.

It sparkled unnaturally in the fading firelight.

Ash swirled through it like sacred dust.

Somewhere, a choir of Heretic Choristers recoiled in horror, mistaking the sound for some final death-curse.

Nearby soldiers, rushing past him in the charge—skidded to a halt.

Helmets turned.

Eyes widened.

Weapons drooped in stunned silence.

They stared.

For one long, hanging heartbeat, they stood frozen by the sheer absurdity of the sight:

The Saint of Paint, Fire, and Ash, he who had risen from death, faced monsters with bare hands and bare everything, was now hurling his guts out onto the battlefield.

At first, confusion.

Then realization.

Rippling, spreading, sparking in minds half-mad with faith and exhaustion.

A Saint's body is sacred.

A Saint's blood can heal.

A Saint's breath carries blessings.

A Saint's hair weaves miracles.

If even a tear could sanctify a blade, if a single drop of sweat could bless an entire company—

Then surely—

The Saint's vomit... must be a relic too.

The soldiers lunged.

Like starving wolves sighting sacred prey.

Some scrambled to pull empty relic jars from belt loops.

Others popped open battered canteens, scooping the ash-laced bile with desperate reverence.

One madman simply dropped to his knees, hands scooping both palms full of the glittering vomit, smearing it across his forehead and cheeks, laughing manically.

"I AM BLESSED!" he screamed, spinning in circles like a whirling dervish of madness, Saint-puke dripping from his temples.

Another soldier, more solemn, knelt beside the puddle, dipping two fingers into the glistening mess.

He dabbed it onto his cheeks like warpaint and murmured:

"To anoint oneself in Saintly manifestation is the highest honor..."

Somewhere, one Redemption trooper was carefully bottling it and labeling it "Vomit Relic — Certified by Field Observation" with solemn gravitas.

Arguments broke out almost immediately over whose sample was "purer."

Meanwhile, Aaron, weightless and limp, began to tip forward like a felled relic statue.

Aleric, sprinting desperately from the rear trenches after securing Trenaxa's rescue, spotted him and screamed into the choking ash-choked air:

"CATCH HIM, YOU IDIOTS! THAT'S A SAINT!"

Panic exploded.

One soldier—luckier than smart, threw himself forward, arms outstretched.

He caught Aaron in a graceless, awkward bridal-carry, staggering a few steps under the limp weight of a Saint.

The soldier stared at Aaron's slack face, pale and glowing faintly with the last guttering embers of miracle.

His own face turned beet red.

A single spurt of blood shot from his nostrils in a nosebleed of pure spiritual overload.

He whispered, almost reverently:

"I'm holding... the Saint... I'm literally holding... the Saint from the prophecy..."

Behind him, chaos continued.

Pilgrims weeping as they anointed their weapons with what was supposed to be Holy Puke.

Crucible Walkers fiercely defending the puddle from Heretic counter-fire like it was the Ark of the Covenant itself.

Some Redemption soldiers arguing whether drinking the Saint's "Sacred Fluid" raw would confer additional blessings or just immediate spontaneous combustion.

Aleric finally shoved through the crowd, breathless, his uniform half-shredded, soot and blood painting his cheeks.

He knelt beside the soldier carrying Aaron, gripping the Saint's slumped shoulder tightly, like anchoring a dream about to blow away.

Aleric's voice shook, thick with exhaustion and emotion:

"You did well, Your Eminence.

You can rest now.

Your people will handle the rest."

Aaron, unconscious, drooling slightly, offered no reply.

A faint snore bubbled out instead.

Meanwhile, across the battered fields, the counterattack thundered on.

The once-lost fronts, broken, bled dry, buried in ash—began to stir, inch by brutal inch.

The Blessed Hinge, centerpiece of a hundred failed charges and ten thousand graves, was being reclaimed not in triumph, but in a slow, grinding agony.

Every trenchline was a grave waiting to be filled.

Every fortified relic-pit a last stand.

Soldiers clawed forward through mud and blood, bayonets snapping on broken bones, relic-rifles flashing dull and red with overuse.

Chaplain-Sergeants screamed battle-prayers hoarse enough to tear their throats raw, dragging the wounded forward with sheer hatred of death itself.

There was no elegance to the reclaiming.

No glorious banners snapping proudly in clean wind.

Only boots slogging through fetid water.

Only relics jammed into the muck like broken teeth.

Only men and women falling forward into gunfire and screaming "FOR THE SAINT!" until the mud swallowed them whole.

At the center of the grinding surge, the Blessed Hinge shifted.

No longer a tomb.

Now a crucible.

Each yard taken cost a dozen lives.

Each shattered trench reoccupied cost a dozen more.

But the faithful pushed.

And when one fell, another climbed over the body to take their place.

And another.

And another.

Faith did not flow like wine here.

It was hammered out of flesh and fire, one death at a time.

The Hallowed Front, under High Cruciger Lueth's scorched banners, surged forward like a tide of dying suns.

Lueth himself stood amid the chaos, Iron Lantern blazing overhead, its golden light cutting swaths through the ash-choked gloom.

Every soldier who caught sight of it screamed until their throats gave out.

Every heretic who glimpsed it recoiled as if from the eye of some vengeful god.

Where the light passed, trenches boiled.

Goetic Warlocks burned alive in their own unholy fumes.

Legionnaires of Hell, once unstoppable in their heavy blasphemed plate, dropped their weapons and ran sobbing into the night.

Lueth's soldiers followed the light like drowning men clawing for air.

Their banners shredded.

Their faces streaked with blood and black dust.

Their relics cracked and bent from overuse.

Still they moved, bayonets lowered, relic-flamers sputtering, relic-grenades hurled with the last strength of dying arms.

Every step forward was bought with pain.

And paid for in faith.

The Martyr's Left, the one that was conquered by the Heretic vanguards in the first wave, now howled back to life under Saint-Captain Hema's brutal advance.

Where once the trenches had been silent but for the weeping of the dying, now they thundered with the roar of relic-cannons, the crack of flamers, the primal screams of the wounded refusing to die.

Hema led from the front, shattered hammer in hand, armor stitched together with relic-rivets and battlefield prayers.

Each blow of her weapon crushed a Heretic back into the earth.

Each charge she led broke another war-line, another relic-tower, another cursed choir.

Her followers, her undying undead battalion, a ragged collection of Redemption survivors, Crucible zealots, and Pilgrim wanderers, rallied to her like moths to a funeral pyre.

They sang broken hymns.

They wielded shattered bayonets.

They fought on bloodied knees when their legs failed them.

But they moved forward.

Every foot gained was lined with bodies.

Every prayer screamed was paid for with shattered teeth and splintered bone.

The no-man's-land between the trenches had once been a wasteland.

Now it became a graveyard. Heretic and Faithful alike strewn in heaps, relics tangled with fallen banners, blood painting the mud a sickly black.

Above it all, the sky seethed with burning clouds and the smoke of half-dead relics.

But where once despair choked every breath, something new began to fill the air.

A ragged, stubborn hope.

A hope forged in the mouths of the dying and the hands of the broken.

The once-lost fronts were halfway retaken.

The trenches, abandoned in panic and devoured by darkness, refilled with the blood and prayers of the faithful, reclaimed yard by yard, heartbeat by heartbeat.

Pilgrims hammered broken relics into the trench walls.

Survivors raised battered banners from the ruins.

Medicae knelt beside the fallen, offering prayers before bullets.

Confessors roamed the lines, anointing the dying with sacred oil made from blood and ash.

Scribes and Codex-keepers, bloodstained and weeping, carved the names of the dead into bullet-scarred walls, desperate to remember before memory itself was lost to smoke.

The Heretic lines recoiled.

Retreated.

Crumbled.

Their songs broke into screams.

Their prayers curdled into curses.

The Legionnaires of Hell ran blind into the smoke, their armor melted and useless.

Behind them all, like a second dawn bleeding through nightmare, the faithful pressed on.

And at the center of their rising storm—

A Saint lay sleeping in the arms of his people, his body broken, his mind adrift—

But his flame still burning in every step the trenches reclaimed.