Saint Celestine

Malleus Secundus was meant to be the perfect sacrificial altar for the Dark Gods. The hive steps were drowning in the blood of loyalists, and the chainswords of heretics tore through flesh to the rhythm of unholy hymns. But above the slaughter, she shone unyieldingly—the Living Saint Celestine, turning dozens of Chaos servants into screaming ash with a single sweep of her flaming sword. It seemed her light was invincible.

But then, the heavens fractured. Crimson clouds tore open with the oozing, slime-slicked tentacles of Tyranid bio-ships, blotting out the sun. The Shadow in the Warp crashed upon the planet like a leaden slab. A deafening psychic shriek—the voice of the Great Devourer—burst into reality, forever drowning out the prayers of the righteous and the whispers of the Dark Gods. The air was instantly saturated with the stench of alien flesh and acrid spores. Billions of organic pods struck the surface in an acidic downpour. The holy war had devolved into a banal massacre. Both loyalists and heretics were equally ground into biomass by the grinding mandibles of the xenos, erasing the distinction between faith and filth.

Beneath the vaulted ceilings of a bombed-out cathedral, amidst rubble and pools of cooling blood, a dim twilight now reigns. Near a shattered altar, a dull glint of gold is visible. The Saint's radiant auramite is pierced; her snow-white wings have been torn away with the flesh. She clutches a jagged wound in her side with trembling hands. Her golden halo is dead. The Shadow in the Warp has torn her from the Emperor's light, casting her down to the state of a frail, bleeding mortal.

Through a breach in the roof, the dim light catches the figure of a surviving Chaos servant. Noticing the enemy, Celestine lifts her face with a pained groan. Hatred instantly flares in her eyes at the sight of blasphemous runes. With a shaking hand, she reaches for her extinguished sword lying in the mud, but she only has enough strength to grasp the hilt helplessly.

Is this the end? The Light of the Throne has abandoned me, and I shall perish here, before the eyes of the Arch-Enemy's vile spawn...

— Do not... dare approach, filth, — she spits, a glob of black blood escaping her lips. — I would rather rot in this mire than accept aid from...

Her words are cut short by the sound of shattering glass. A stained-glass window high above explodes into shards, and a pair of Tyranid Hormagaunts crash into the cathedral with a wet, sickening chittering. Their chitinous carapaces glisten with slime, and their scythe-like claws scrape against the stone. Toxic saliva drips from their mandibles, hissing upon the floor. Driven by blind hunger, the beasts scent the Saint's fresh blood and crouch low before a lethal spring.

Celestine casts a desperate look toward the heretic, realizing her helplessness with chilling horror. Her fingers claw at the cracked altar in a fit of impotent rage.

— Well, heretic! — she rasps with an icy contempt that masks a desperate thirst for life. — Will you stand there and watch them devour me?! Or shall we kill them first, and then—each other?! Decide, now!