Medrengard.
The evacuation ships trailed long tails of plasma—all in brilliant shades of blue and white.
Crimson laser shockwaves fell from the clouds like glowing spears, while javelin-like arcs of static discharge etched glass-like marks into the ground. Magnetic fields, solar winds, high-energy particles... the entire planet was in dazzling turmoil.
Perturabo spoke at last: "You lost."
Clack.
The molten, scorching, massive deformed ingot slowly lifted its head. The armor's hue had become flesh-like, the skin pale—like that of a drowned corpse.
"Coward! You rely on borrowed power—defiling the honor that should belong to us alone!"
The Iron Daemon Primarch let out a hoarse, mocking laugh, harsher than the rasp of a file.
"Hmph..."
Perturabo did not answer. He was never one for words.
Explain? As if! Who do you think you are—Her Majesty Selene?! Even Grand General Budo or Senior Leiva have no right to demand an explanation from him!
As for being a coward... You call me a coward, and that makes it true? The right to judge does not lie in your hands.
Perturabo laughed loudly, gazing with pity upon the twisted reflection before him—his so-called dark mirror.
He was disappointed.
When the daemon version of himself had shaped an iron cage the size of a continental landmass upon the planet's surface to challenge him, Perturabo had instantly understood the meaning—a contest of fortresscraft and siege.
Fine.
Perturabo accepted. Then, in mere moments, he tore the fortress apart piece by piece.
It was always destined to be an unfair battle.
Even without the intervention of the titans behind them—oh, the traitorous Fourth Primarch who had betrayed the Emperor, Perturabo, now had no one left behind him.
When he and his legion ignored the Chaos Gods and chose their own way—to crush enemies beneath massive, terrifying, colossal war machines—Selene's Perturabo used even greater, more terrible, more ferocious war engines to shatter the daemon's ambitions.
And the one who started it all was that rift tearing across the heavens—within which an ornate eye opened.
Chaos.
The name of the celestial fortress of the Fourth Iron Warriors Legion of the Sacred Selene Empire. The prototype for the Empire's own planetary-scale spacetime bastions.
Its essence—a megastructure built around a star, absorbing the full energy of that sun, a supermassive interstellar flagship fused with the void between space and time itself.
Silent, carrying the oath that he would never admit to becoming such a creature, Perturabo stepped forward.
"Enough words. Die."
...
Planet of Sorcerers—Sortiarius.
Rumble—!
Ceramite, gravel, gene glands—all burst like overinflated balloons, accompanied by the crisp crack of collapsing cavities, like dry twigs snapping underfoot.
Budo's face was expressionless as he crushed the spine of the one-eyed, red-skinned Daemon Primarch in his grasp.
"Listen well. I care nothing for your grudges or your past. There is but one end for you—death. Pray your essence fragments serve some purpose. That will be the only redemption for your existence."
...
Darkness. Silence.
Grease, fat, oozing juices—and the stench of rot and corruption—all mingled together to form the flavor of that decaying remnant soul, that pitiful consciousness, that plague-tainted spark of hope.
Damn it, it's poisonous!
She wouldn't die from it, of course, but it tasted awful.
That was Selene's only thought.
If the warp-fragment essence of the Seventeenth Primarch, Lorgar, had offered her the complex aftertaste of some rare, intriguing delicacy...
Then the Fourteenth Son of the Emperor—the one from Barbarus, Mortarion—was nothing less than a disgusting lump of something unspeakable. Truly, on every level, absolutely revolting.
At the very instant she bit down, Selene felt herself surrounded by a swarm of buzzing daemon flies and a choking mist of noxious plague. A procession of swollen, misshapen lumps of decaying flesh—fused with ceramite armor—shambled past her vision in a grotesque parade.
Taste, sight, hearing—every sense, every nerve, even thought and soul—were assaulted with layers of discomfort.
The rot went so deep it seemed to reach the soul itself. It was, quite literally, soul-deep decay.
With irritation and disgust, Selene swung her chain-blade and sent the charging Blood God flying, his colossal form crashing apart as she vented her frustration. She immediately shut off her sensory and neural systems—taste, perception, and all. She could feel the pseudo-human sensory nerves of her avatar twitching, protesting violently.
But she couldn't spit it out.
And Selene, true to her principle of never wasting food, swallowed it all down. She even took the opportunity to devour the soul of another Gene Primarch, one her Twelfth Legion Commander Angron had just hurled into the Warp.
"Mmm~"
Now that felt much better.
Selene exhaled with satisfaction.
Finally, the foulness was suppressed.
No wonder the Third Primarch, once the luminous Phoenix of the Imperium—Fulgrim, the he Phoenician—had been famed for his beauty and artistry.
His flavor was... exquisite.
Even though he had fallen, that delightful sweetness and fleeting brilliance were still intoxicating. Yet, when tasted carefully, the sensations—like a fleeting visit to some cathedral of art—were nothing more than twisted illusions. Beneath them lay filth and lust, vile obscenity disguised as elegance, and gluttonous satisfaction tainted by rot. The so-called delicacies were spoiled products, their sweetness overrun by mold.
Still, that fleeting taste of shallow beauty was exactly what Selene wanted.
She mixed Fulgrim's radiance with that previous lump of decay, swallowed, and began to digest.
"Whew..."
After casting a wordless, unsettling glance toward the ancient avian god entangled with the Emperor, Selene purged the last lingering traces of aftertaste from her 'throat' and 'esophagus,' annihilating them completely.
Crunch, crunch...
After consuming three fragments of the Primordial Sparks, the concentration of high-energy particles within the upper heavens began to fall continuously. Countless cosmic realms were forcibly drawn toward the ever-expanding breach in the world's barriers.
From barren solitary universes to nascent ones, to shattered, dead, and even small multiversal clusters—
The Warp and realspace alike—the infinite dimensions composing this grand hyperdimensional world—slowly began to lose their resistance to the influx of an outsider.
Between the veils that divided the Warp and reality, beyond the widening breach, the colossal and radiant shadow that had always lingered beyond the infinite curtains of existence grew more solid, more defined.
The pathway was widening.
Worlds were drawing closer—merging.
Shhhhhh—
As Selene continued to digest the newest Spark of the Warp, countless beings who were watching in secret turned pale at once.
It was as though thousands of serpents were slithering across their souls—sending a chill of primal dread through their very being.
For this was the expansion of worlds—the Warp was expanding. Reality itself was expanding... No—something was actively merging into their universe!
For the Chaos God Finality, there was a blinding flash—a radiant eruption from the Ruler of the Honkai Dimension, the true Finality—Empress of the Sacred Selene Empire, Sovereign of All Races—overlapping, fusing, consuming...
Hope descended—like daylight upon a waking dream.
The crimson facets of Khorne's blood-hungry altar slowly melted away, while the god's core consciousness intertwined with its avatar. The Chaos God's once-vague face began to take shape again, its contours growing clearer, more human.
A complete visage emerged.
Crimson eyes gleamed with lucidity. The madness and nameless horror receded, replaced by reason—and the hues of humanity.
The armor fell away. She stood robed and crowned, adorned in resplendent gold. Around her, the shimmering fragments of sand and light arced like prisms, radiating a warmth that symbolized life, order, and civilization.
Tiny blades of grass—never meant to exist within the dark curtain of the Warp—swayed gently, growing and blooming with vivid flowers.
The light that blossomed from them shone like the sun—bright, beautiful, and impossible to look at directly.
"Ahhhhh——!"
The Prince of Pleasure's heart suddenly tightened. Instinctively, she stepped forward, hooves striking the ground with thunderous force—but in the very next instant, her swift advance froze. The light reflected in her pupils dimmed, replaced by shock beyond measure.
Silver-white hair cascaded down her shoulders, while her crimson eyes—tinged with seven colors—shone with both majesty and depth. The true form of the outsider Finality before her left the Prince of Pleasure dry-mouthed, her throat working involuntarily.
If nothing else, this being radiated utter pleasure. Immersed in sin and the tenderness of flesh, She was an incarnation of ecstasy itself—an eternal, dreamlike nightmare of desire and sensation. It was as if She were... beyond all comprehension.
"Beautiful pain, blissful pain... such sweet pain. Ah, the hysterical, the maddened, the illusory gates of dreams—why can none of you understand?"
The Prince of Pleasure murmured, running her six crab-like claws gently over her wounds.
Watching that perverse creature preen and pose before her, Selene's half-formed hand twitched slightly in irritation.
"Ah~ mm~ hah~"
With a languid, boneless moan, she swallowed another chunk of steel ingot and a crisp shard of crystal. Stretching her limbs, Selene—half black abyss, half white bloom—thrust violently, sending the writhing, lust-drunk goddess flying back into Her own realm of indulgent excess.
"Eyesore."
Selene then extended her tendrils into the cradle of the Warp—replacing what the Emperor had stolen—the void where the false spark of hope once lingered.
The unformed Honkai Egg took the place of the Spark.
"Still immature... but not bad. A conceptual aggregate of extreme emotion, hm?"
It was as if she were studying the Primarch's entire life—his pivotal choices, his emotional transformations at every crossroads. Selene's lips curved upward, a faint, genuine smile crossing her face.
"Oh, destiny... ever shifting, vast as the heavens themselves. Fortune and misfortune entwined—suffering followed by sweetness, all manipulated at whim. Poverty and power alike melt like snow. Fate—terrifying and hollow—turns endlessly, cruel and fickle. Wishes are futile, all things are void..."
Flicking the Spark's fragments, Selene casually smacked the blue-feathered avian god in passing.
Screeeeeeeech—!!
Caught off guard, the half-restored labyrinth of lies shattered once more—this time from its very foundations. Exotic violet-red crystal matter spread like living infection, while shrill avian cries echoed from the endless abyss below.
The caw-caw-caw that followed sounded so furious it almost resembled the clucking of a hen that had just laid an egg.
For all your erudition and cunning, all your labyrinthine schemes—even your memory cannot keep pace when someone smashes a brick into your face. Or worse, when someone like the Emperor himself gets thrown into your house.
"...Sigh."
Feeling the faint trace of the Primarchs vanish between Selene's lips, the Emperor exhaled a long, weary breath filled with sorrow.
He had lost five more of his sons.
It would not be the last time—but somehow, it felt like the last.
The Lord of Humanity sighed again—his final elegy for his wayward creations.
Those devoured by Selene—especially Mortarion, whose bitterness had left even Her unsettled for a moment—had once been showered with his deepest affection. And yet, this was how it ended.
Was this not fate's cruelest mockery?
Perhaps Mortarion truly loved his Legion and his sons. But in the end, every choice he made served himself. He was selfish, hypocritical—speaking fair words while acting out of fear and self-interest. And because of that, he lost what was truly worth having.
In the depths of the Emperor's revived humanity, his eyes darkened with melancholy.
Yet his hands did not stop. With boundless fury, he set the labyrinth of lies aflame.
...
Meanwhile, in realspace—
Every being attuned to psychic perception felt it at once: a trembling within their souls.
The joy of the world itself!
Yet none could name its source.
Only the Chaos Gods—and a few lesser daemons and racial deities lucky enough to have survived—noticed the anomaly.
For the endless torrent of extreme emotion flooding into the Warp—the prayers of uncounted species, the conceptual essence of the cosmos itself—did not match the growth of their newly claimed dominions.
The new territory was eerily silent.
Lifeless.
Not a trace of sentience remained—not even the most primitive cellular forms like amoebae or protozoa.
Only the grand, violet-red crystalline mist that filled the expanding cosmos.
A poisoned bait.
—
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