Chapter 1
**From the journal of Grand Master Titus Veraxes**
My legion (such as it is), has, after five long years, established a chapter stronghold on the largely abandoned and isolated ice world of Septembriones. Despite everything, despite all the odds, we've survived, and emerged from the blood and chaos stronger in spirit, if lesser in numbers. Still, the forces arrayed against us won't stop their assault. They never have, and I'm starting to think they never will. However, now, at least, we can weather the storm. Now, the Grey Brothers, an honored chapter in the service of the Emperor's... succesors... will regroup, rebuild, and take the fight forward.
We have had no word from the other Chapters.
Terra is overrun.
_
Battle Brother Flavus June is singing in the cold. Mist falls from his mouth as he fights for breath, like the smoke pouring from the lip of a fired cannon. A cold winter breeze brings snowflakes on his militarily cropped hair and rustles his week-old stubble, both rendered prematurely grey from the side effects of his biological modifying. The crags look on, still and austere, as the sharp staccato of of gunfire, the roaring crescendo of a chainsword, and the dying screams of the fallen disturb the otherwise unearthly silence of the mountains. The song Flavus sings is brutal and violent, and no one sings it better. He's a master, a virtuoso of his craft. The song come to his arms faster than he can think, and foes fall as easily as dandelion tufts under a light breath.
Eventually, the tide of green skin and black-red blood stops, leaving Flavus alone in the mountain pass with his victory. Sighing with relief, he finds a rock on which to clean the gore out of his arms and armour. The wind picks up, and he pulls his hood over his head, noticing as he does so a telltale wet, warm sticky spot. His hard, callused hands come back, streaked with red. He hadn't noticed the wound in the heat of battle.
I must be getting lazy, he thought. Can't be helped, I suppose. Three days, no food, no sleep, all too many orks to kill.
He holsters his boltgun, replaces the now clean and gore-free chainsword in its scabbard.
Best go find Aryn. Bastards would never have attacked only me.