The Bloodying of Cerelia
Date: 26.08.2026 Combatants: World Eaters (Red Knights of Oblivion) vs Astra Militarum (House Crosius) World: Cerelia Result: World Eaters victory, 42–25
First account — The Tally of Skulls
“They dug their own graves and then complained when we filled them.” — Verux, Daemon Prince of Khorne
From the Tally of Skulls of the Red Knights of Oblivion, as spoken before the Brass Throne:
Eight hundred and forty, taken at Cerelia beneath a red sky. The Emperor’s soldiery had burrowed into the ash like vermin and called it a line, and the Blood God found this amusing enough to attend.
Mark this: the enemy’s thunder-tank turned its fire upon the Prince and bathed him in laser and shell, and Khorne did not permit so much as a blister. Verux walked out of the fire with his contempt intact and took the gunner’s skull through the hull. Let no one say the Blood God does not watch. He watches, and he judges, and he found the Red Knights worthy.
On the right the line broke and kept breaking. The last of them died on the final blow of the final hour, which is how such things should end — no retreat sounded, no mercy asked, nothing left standing to take back to their Lord-Captain.
In the trenches we found something sealed. It is not ours to read. The tally is what matters.
The sealed thing is fixed to the Hate of Dorvax above the left shoulder, where the banner hooks were. It will not come off and we did not try hard. Let the one who wants it come and take it off a Helbrute.
Second account — Dispatch of the Lord Martial
“A Lord Martial who writes only when she wins is a liar with good timing.” — attributed to Honoria Calvert
++ DISPATCH: CERELIA THEATRE ++
++ FROM: Lord Martial Honoria Calvert, Household Regiments of Crosius ++
++ TO: The Lord-Captain Domenico Crosius,
aboard The Consolation of Just Slaughter ++
Lord-Captain,
Cerelia is lost. I will not dress it.
We held prepared positions and were overrun in under a day. The enemy is faster than anything in our doctrine accounts for; entrenchment bought us hours where it should have bought us a season. Our incendiary armour engaged their daemon directly at close range and achieved nothing — I have the gun crew’s final vox and I would not recommend it to you. The right flank collapsed under a single assault led by a champion your Household’s records already know by name. The line did not break. It was consumed, in order, from one end to the other.
One further matter, which I raise because you will hear it from elsewhere if not from me. A survey detail was working a section of the eastern trenches that my sappers did not dig. Their tasking did not pass through my staff. It carried the authority of the Ordo Scriptorum, and when I asked what they were bringing up I was told the question was not mine.
That section is now in enemy hands, along with whatever was in it.
I remain yours, and I remain blunt.
Third account — Standing Assessment from Ordo Agent Magpie
“The Lord Martial reports what she saw. I report what was there. These are not the same account and should not be filed together.” — Agent Magpie
++ ORDO SCRIPTORUM ++
++ SUBJECT: CERELIA, RECOVERY OF ++
++ FILED BY: AGENT MAGPIE, STANDING ASSESSMENT ++
++ FOR THE ATTENTION OF: INQUISITOR H. THULE, ORDO SCRIPTORUM ++
Inquisitor,
Cerelia is the fourth site disturbed in eleven months. I attach the Lord Martial’s dispatch, which you will have read, and I ask you to attend to the paragraph she thought least important.
She records a survey detail working the eastern trenches under our authority. I have checked the tasking. We did not send them. No warrant was issued for Cerelia, no personnel were assigned, and no return has been made. Either the Lord Martial was lied to by men wearing our seal, or she is lying to her Lord-Captain, or a third party is using our name in the Reach and has been doing so for some time. I incline towards the third. It is the only one of the three that explains the other eleven months.
What they brought up is a control module of early Imperial manufacture, in a pattern that predates the Ecclesiarchy and very probably predates the Emperor’s compliance of this region. Set into its upper housing is a wand of blackstone. It is not a fragment lodged there by damage. It was fitted. Someone with human hands and human tools took blackstone and built a machine to hold it, and then wrote nothing down that survives.
It is now in the possession of the Red Knights of Oblivion, who will not read it, cannot read it, and would not care if they could. This is the single piece of good fortune in the entire affair.
Appendix: Xenos Interrogation X999.474-BETA — unattributed. Recorded under compulsion. Not for citation.
++ transcription begins ++
You ask what it was for. I have answered this question for eleven thousand years.
It was for going home. It has always been for going home.
([Subject declines to continue. Restraint applied. Subject continues.)
You are the ninth to ask me and the first to write it down, which tells me your order is younger than you claim and more frightened than you admit. The men who built that machine asked the same question and did not wait for an answer. There were sixteen of the things. I watched them install the fourth.
It has never once worked.
++ transcription ends ++
(Clerk’s note: the subject is xenos and its testimony is inadmissible under standing convention. It is recorded here without designation and should be referenced by file number only. The subject has given no name. The junior staff have taken to calling it The One Who Remains, which I have asked them twice to stop.)
Sixteen, Inquisitor. Not one. I would give a great deal to know whether the creature is telling the truth, and rather more to know why it chose to tell us.
Consequences
The Red Knights of Oblivion hold Cerelia, and hold the Cerelia Fragment. They cannot read it and have no interest in doing so.
House Crosius knows that something was taken from ground it was nominally defending, and does not know what.
The Ordo Scriptorum knows the Fragment is one of a set, and does not know the set’s size, distribution, or purpose beyond a xenos testimony it is forbidden to cite.
A party unknown is operating in the Sundered Reach under falsified Ordo Scriptorum authority, and has been for at least eleven months.
Mechanically: the Red Knights of Oblivion bear the Cerelia Fragment as a battle honour and will carry it into the final engagement, mounted on a model of Tristan’s choosing. The Red Knights take the first turn in that engagement. They gain no intelligence and want none.
Dramatis Personae
| Verux | Daemon Prince of Khorne, Red Knights of Oblivion |
| Lord Martial Honoria Calvert | Commanding the Household Regiments of Crosius |
| Lord-Captain Domenico Crosius | Warrant-Holder of the Crosius Dynasty |
| Inquisitor Hadrian Thule | Ordo Scriptorum |
| Agent Magpie | Ordo Scriptorum. Never seen. Never named. |
| The One Who Remains | Designation unofficial. True name Oomvarah. Xenos, Zoat. |