The temporary imperial palace built for the Empress' stay stood by the mountains and waters, surrounded by carefully tended groves and splendid gardens. Inside the halls, golden brilliance shone everywhere. Roads and artificial streams made of stone intertwined like a bow's string and back, reflecting and supporting each other in elegant harmony.
Beautiful and serene.
Within the palace, statues, fountains, and commemorative pillars stood in abundance. Beneath the colonnades and archways, silent and intimidating golden-armored guards and Quiet Nuns kept watch—majestic, wordless, efficient.
In the skies above, within the glow of light and illusion, where luminous wings crossed like those of angels, the sight of the Flügel soaring through the air rendered even the Dark Angels of the Astartes First Legion, as well as every native of the Conquered World No.1, frozen in awe.
"Holy Selene."
"Almighty Supreme Ruler, who governs all that is seen and unseen."
"King of Kings, God of Gods, Light of Lights, Lord of Lords—by whom all things were made."
...
Taken from the sacred hymn recorded in The Book of Holy Words, the monumental work authored by Lorgar Aurelian, Primarch of the Astartes Seventeenth Legion—the Imperial Heralds—the faithful chanted in unison, kneeling in reverence, eager to offer their loyalty to the great Divine Empress.
Although Selene didn't hear any of it.
For she was occupied with more pressing matters and had temporarily shut out the world's clamor.
Having obtained the detailed data concerning something that piqued her interest, Selene followed the trail along the Honkai hyperspatial network. Her consciousness and spirit traversed through the infinite void, covering the entire sector's Honkai constructs in an instant.
Word by word, fragment by fragment, she traced the final signal and wavelength transmitted by the lost Honkai Cube.
Automatically filtering out trivial reports from the servitor vessels—mundane tales of merchant wanderers discovering new insectoid species in uncharted space—Selene focused solely on the strange anomaly, sensing the hidden aura behind this unnatural disappearance.
Even across worlds separated by astronomical distance, she intercepted the remnants of the trader fleet swallowed by an unknown storm. Within the boundless microscopic realm, in the boiling sea of imaginary particles, Selene could feel it clearly.
Just before these mortals vanished—body and soul alike—something foreign had tried to latch onto their entropy, their imaginary projections.
Her essence… had been tainted.
Surprise? Anger? Delight? Amusement?
It was a curious sensation to Selene.
After all, she was the one who always did the corrupting.
Countless beings—mortals, heroic spirits, energy lifeforms, even so-called gods, those manifestations of laws and elements born from worlds—once touched by Selene's Honkai energy, would inevitably fall into ruin, their existence reduced to agony and despair.
And now—someone had dared, in her absence (well, during her little… inspection tour), to smear their essence upon something that belonged to her.
These merchant wanderers, insignificant as they were, had never mattered to her. Their deaths meant nothing. Yet, when it came to matters of ownership—Selene, who was possessive to the point of tyranny, even piracy—had a simple rule:
I may abandon it—but you are not permitted to take it.
Let's see, then… who dares cross me.
Selene's expression grew serious. Her crimson eyes shimmered with divine brilliance. Supreme authority pulsed within her grasp as she traversed the Imaginary World, the scenery shifting endlessly until it stabilized upon a specific sector.
Peeling back the layers of foreign energies, Selene guided her thoughts outward, probing deeper. "Hmm? This emotion…"
From the residual energy readings of the missing Honkai Cube, Selene inhaled faintly, tasting the aura entwined within.
An odd expression crossed her face.
This vitality—this surge of creation, of all things thriving—filled her with delight.
"Well, well… quite the treasure trove."
Though in every wrong sense of the term.
Feeling the twisted energy remnants and the chaotic storm of countless negative emotions saturating even the threshold of the entry point, Selene paused in genuine surprise.
Selene had always considered herself a great villain. Yet, upon sensing the deep darkness entwined within that faint trace of Honkai energy…
She couldn't help but sigh.
"Well then… I truly am the embodiment of supreme benevolence and mercy."
Without needing to see it with her own eyes, Selene already knew what kind of world her so-called fortunate merchant wanderers had stumbled upon. A vast, magnificent, and dreadful universe—it was a blazing crucible of malice and hatred.
The resentment, grief, despair, and rage spread unchecked through that shadowy cosmos, so thick and potent that it seemed ready to overflow.
The surface of things could be deceptive—but not the essence of emotion.
Emotion, the power of twisted emotion, loomed vividly before her.
And there was not just one.
They overlapped like whirlpools of varying size, forming an entangled web of subspace energy—reflections of a chaotic and multifaceted source, similar yet distinct, clashing in discordant, paradoxical emotion.
Selene dissected them with the precision of a master butcher carving through meat, stripping away the veils that concealed their nature.
Filtering out the insignificant gnats, she soon identified several particularly prominent presences amidst the sea of warped emotion.
The first—a crimson hue of brass and blood.
At the first sight of it, Selene seemed to hear the maddened roars of countless living beings, the clash of steel and axe, the shattering of flesh and bone, and the scent of iron blood painting everything red.
A realm built of endless brass and gore, a battlefield of mountains of corpses and rivers of blood. Boiling rivers of blood, erupting volcanoes, bloodstained fields, black-burning skies, heaps of skulls—
Kill! Kill! Kill!
Hack! Hack! Hack!
That was the eternal refrain.
Selene had a guess.
The second—a dreamlike, mercurial indigo.
Nothing remained fixed. Its color and form shifted with her thoughts, her mood, her perspective—ever-changing, ever-morphing. Sharp whispers filled her ears, alluring and maddening, their tones changing by the second.
The third—a rotting yellow-green of decay and pestilence.
Selene's expression instantly turned to disgust and disdain. It was like seeing a sewer overflowing with filth and toxic waste. She shut her eyes and severed the connection at once.
And the last one—well, the less said, the better. It was the kind of obscene, grotesque energy that would make even an RRRR-rated horror film blush. Selene didn't need to look further to know exactly what kind of universe her lucky wanderers had lost themselves in.
"So it's you four…" she murmured, a faint smile curving her lips as she confirmed the identities of her next targets.
The four Chaos Gods.
Their domain, their influence, their home-field advantage—all made perfect sense now. The psychic storms and warp tides they stirred in the Immaterium had severed the wanderer fleet's anchor to the Honkai hyperspatial network. It was only natural.
Especially given that the fleet's Honkai Energy reserves were steadily being depleted.
"If you're smart, you won't drain your shipborne Honkai Cube dry… then, perhaps, you may yet survive. But the Tyranids… they are not to be compared with simple Zerg."
At this point, Selene had also confirmed what kind of space-faring monstrosities were tearing into the merchant wanderer fleet.
The Tyranids.
These were nothing like the Zerg that the Astartes Third Legion, the Black Templars, had once crushed in the Koprulu Sector on Zerus.
The Tyranids were far more brutal.
Known as the Great Devourers, the cosmic locusts—wherever they went, life ceased to exist. Born in the deep void of space, they were a species of ravenous predators whose sole purpose was to consume, evolve, and multiply.
They shared the common traits of all spaceborne insectoid races—an extreme adaptability, capable of restructuring their own genomes by devouring other organisms, constantly refining themselves to enhance combat efficiency and survival. Each evolution made them deadlier still.
They were, in every sense, an upgraded fusion of the Arachnid species (Starship Troopers) and the Zerg—stronger, larger, and infinitely more vicious.
Worlds attacked by Tyranids became barren husks, stripped to bare rock. Even bacteria and archaea were devoured along with the atmosphere.
Annihilation on par with the Exterminatus.
The merchant wanderer fleet that had collided headlong with the Tyranid hive fleet was most likely annihilated.
Under Selene's directive, the Imperial government's Regulations on Civilian Merchant Wanderer Armament Procurement had always been conservative. It gave them an overwhelming advantage when dealing with lesser civilizations confined to their home systems—but beyond that, it became a matter of capability. Against a threat like the Tyranids, they stood no chance.
Perhaps the armament standards would need to be relaxed.
Selene pondered in silence, then shook her head with a faint smile.
"Not sure whether to call him lucky or unfortunate. The Inquisition's exploration fleets and the Imperial Navy's main forces didn't stumble upon it—but this impulsive, jealous, hotheaded second-rate wanderer did."
"Well… it's fine. Their sacrifice won't be in vain. Measures must be taken. As for granting him a peerage… that can wait."
Selene had reviewed his records. The man had no direct heirs. If he were truly dead, she could simply bestow the title upon his younger siblings. But if he returned alive—what then? Strip them of their titles and hand them back to him?
Better not. Family relations were already fragile enough.
Seated behind a silver-and-gold desk inlaid with sapphires, Selene sighed softly, setting down the state briefing and rising gracefully to her feet.
"Well then, I should think about troop deployment…" Her expression turned expectant. "This will be… a trial."
A trial—and a report card to present to her senior.
Yes, her senior.
It didn't matter that the golden giant didn't know her. That didn't stop Selene from studying his legacy—learning, improving, optimizing. In some ways, he truly was her predecessor.
A senior she had never met—but had chosen to acknowledge.
A false Emperor meets the true Empress… perhaps it was time to test that.
Clatter—!
Hands resting behind her back, Selene strode slowly from the marble corridor to the grand fountain garden before the palace. Her gaze lifted toward the towering monument ahead.
Twenty Primarchs—immortalized in stone—stood in solemn formation around a veiled statue of Selene herself.
After a long silence, she raised her left hand and snapped her fingers.
Snap!
"Your Majesty—!"
Selene lightly tapped the railing before her with one finger. "Order."
"At once!"
Clack! The synchronized strike of armored heels echoed sharply through the empty fountain courtyard.
"Summon the Imperial High Commander, Grand General of the Empire, and Primarch of the Astartes Second Legion—Budo, Lord Commander of the Punishers Legion."
Her words caused the expressions of the attending military and political officers to stiffen in unison.
Such a formal invocation of every rank and title meant only one thing—Her Majesty was serious.
"Have Budo suspend all ongoing campaigns and begin concentrating his forces. I have a new mission for the Punishers Legion…"
She paused mid-sentence, as if struck by a sudden thought. Her lips curved in quiet amusement, and she raised a single finger again.
"Also—issue command to the following: Perturabo's Iron Warriors, Konrad Curze's Night Lords, Angron's World Eaters, Mortarion's Death Guard, Magnus the Red's Thousand Sons, Horus Lupercal's Luna Wolves, Lorgar Aurelian's Imperial Heralds, and Alpharius' Alpha Legion."
As each name—revered across the Empire—left her lips, the attending officials stared wide-eyed, their pens frozen midair.
"Nine legions in total," Selene continued evenly. "They will coordinate with Budo's Punishers Legion in joint operations."
Her expression remained composed as she gave her final decree. "And the Imperial Guard… can move as well."
"For me—purge the heretics, burn the universe, and cleanse the stars."
"In the name of the Empire—Your will be done!" ×N
...
In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.
Ten millennia after the end of the Great and Holy Crusade, reason has long been buried beneath the ruins of the Imperial Truth. The Emperor who once walked among mankind, and His demi-god sons, have vanished into legend.
For more than ten thousand years, some have chosen to become beasts to defend humanity against the endless night—hoping that compassion and humanity might yet survive the void. Yet when they turn to look back, they find that those they protected have become worse than beasts—groveling, corrupted, clinging to life.
Imperial Dating System — 999.M41.
The end of a ten-thousand-year empire.
The Eye of Terror. Fortress World—Cadia.
Now, armies gather. The storm brews. The air trembles with the pressure of impending war.
And once more, the tempest that never ceased… begins anew.
—
—
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