Trooper Ash Spitzam of the Catachan XII Regiment Seventh Company knows he is about to die, and unlike most twenty-year-old members of the Imperial Guard, he doesn't much care. What he does care about is taking as many of these heretic scum with him as he can. That and protecting the precious treasure strapped to his back in the stasis tube. A treasure that by right should have been in a vault on Holy Terra itself. Suspended in the stasis tube is a finger drop of blood smaller than a thumbnail. Many would consider it hardly worth the lives and effort of an entire company of the Imperium's elite to secure, but to any faithful citizen, it is worth the lives of an entire world because this single drop of blood belongs to the God-Emperor of Mankind.
His company had come in, in support of the Inquisition and two squads of Space Marines from the Blood Angels Chapter, all to reach the massive fortress temple at the center of the Shine World Sacrengus Reach's capital city, Valames. His entire regiment, along with twenty others, had been deployed to take the fight to the heretical forces that had invaded the world and to cover the direct insertion of their force into the fortress temple grounds. The temple had been under siege their landers had come under fire immediately. They lost a quarter of their force just getting here and the enemy had finally breached a major defense point held by the temple guard force soon after. The Space Marines had come in in drop pods, but they were immediately pulled off to face the Traitor Space Marines within the enemy ranks. Inquisitor Rulf Absarain had intended to secure the treasure and then teleport it out, but the enemy put pay to that plan by reactivating the temple's void shields. They had been forced to try to assault the void control station, which ended with the deaths of half of their remaining force. The Space Marines had been overwhelmed as well. That left them running, hiding, and surviving through the temple for the last seven days. In the end, it was only Ash and the Inquisitor left.
They are now trapped in the main chapel of the temple. Taking cover behind the huge gold and wooden altar at its head. Ash pops out and fires his Lasgun on single shot, sending a red bolt into the face of a heretic firing from behind a pew. He ducks back in time to avoid taking a return shot to the face. Beside him, Inquisitor Rulf opens fire with his Power Armour's Storm Bolter, cutting down more of the slowly advancing enemy.
"Ash, how many more clips do you have?" asks the Inquisitor.
The two of them had bonded in their time together, fighting for their lives. The Inquisitor calls him by his first name.
"One full clip, Inquisitor," says Ash, popping out to take another shot and killing another traitor before dropping down, "Half a clip left in my rifle. After that, just my blade."
"It would seem this is the end of us then," says the Rulf, "We can't let the enemy have His blood, my boy. They can never be allowed that. We-
The Inquisitor never finishes that thought as a machine roar of rage fills the chamber. Both men look over the alter and see their end. An enemy dreadnaught, black armor covered in the skulls of its enemy and the script of its fell gods, it levels a massive launcher at them.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD," roars the monster as it fires.
Ash doesn't know why he does what he does next. It is like someone else stepped into his body. Everything seems to move in slow motion while he moves at regular speed. He pulls the stasis tube around and holds it out in front of him like a shield. The long black missile streaks toward him slowly. He can see the heretic script etched into the steel. He looks away from it to the Inquisitor and sees his wide eyes. He doesn't realize that the man's eyes are wide because Ash's eyes are burning with a golden fire.
Time speeds up, and the missile strikes. The explosion that follows is one of Warp fire but not the tainted flames of the archenemy. These flames are golden, like the light in Ash's eyes. The stasis tube shatters, but the blood inside is not destroyed. It splashes out as pure and fresh as the day it was spilled. The day the Emperor of Mankind spilled it with his own blade. It flies back hitting Ash in his right eye as the savage force of the blast throws him back. The golden flames spread like the rushing water of an ocean. They spread throughout the temple and beyond. They engulf the entire world, stripping the souls of every living being on Sacrengus Reach. Loyal or traitor, human or transhuman, every soul is taken and every body is turned to ash. Over three trillion souls were stripped in a flash. Everyone except for Ash. They leave buildings, plants, and animals untouched.
As fast as the golden flames spread and annihilate all life on the shrine world, they are sucked back to the point they started, where they compress themselves into a single golden flame the size of a coin that hovers above Ash, who sits slumped against the wall under the massive portrait of the Emperor. He is out cold, but despite being at the center of the blast, he doesn't have a mark on him. The condensed flame slowly descends and enters Ash's chest, where it combines with his soul, changing it and turning it into the second brightest soul in the galaxy. Second only to the one that produces the Astronomican itself.
When other living beings descend upon the silent world nearly a week later, it is not the Inquisition, Space Marines, or any rescue force from the fleet in orbit because less than an hour after the golden flames wiped human, transhuman, and demon life off the shrine world an astropathic message of such force and authority was sent from Terra that it had to cost the lives of a million Astropaths to send it or else it came from the Emperor himself. It was an order that no one was to step on the shrine world, and any who disobeyed would be executed without question, no matter their rank or title. It was heard throughout ten star systems.
The ship that arrived five days later was as beautiful, rare, and dreadful as the beings that arrived aboard it. In ten thousand years, never had a world, but Terra has been graced with so many of them. One hundred members of the Emperor's own Adeptus Custodes, clad in the golden auramite power armor of legend, descended on the world. There, they retrieved the still unconscious form of Catachan Trooper Ash Spitzam and bore him in honor back to their black ship. Once there, they sent out a simple message to the fleet of ships surrounding the world, giving them an all-clear. Then, ignoring all requests for explanation, the black ship jumped back into the Warp.