Inside the council chamber, the discussion continued for some time.
Four figures, who had now become the representatives of humanity's supreme will, sat around the table as the massive icon of the Emperor cast an eternal light down upon them.
Yet, even Sanguinius's eyes, capable of foreseeing the future, even Adam's power, formidable enough to make the Chaos Gods wary, and even the Emperor Himself seated upon the Golden Throne remained unable to stretch their vision to this place.
To stretch it beyond the limits of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Here lay a void that the light of the Astronomican could never reach.
For Imperium vessels reliant on Warp travel, losing the guidance of the Astronomican meant falling into an abyss like a blind person, destined to be lost entirely in the endless dark and become frozen hulks adrift in the Warp.
This was precisely one of the greatest contributions made for humanity by the Emperor seated upon Terra's Golden Throne.
However, calling this place beyond the vision of all living beings was not entirely accurate.
After all, certain entities could no longer be classified as living beings.
Desolate.
Empty.
In the boundless void, no stars provided decoration—only eternal, freezing darkness.
Yet at this very moment, uninvited guests appeared within this void that had slumbered for uncounted hundreds of millions of years.
Ships emerged one after another from the dark.
Ghostly in silhouette, their hulls were pitch-black, save for the eerie green glow flowing across them like foxfire from an ancient tomb.
The structure of every vessel exhibited a tomb-like, pyramidical morphology—sharp-angled, cold, solemn, exuding a dead, regal authority that belonged to no modern era.
Clearly, such identifiers sufficed to prove their origin.
The Necrons.
Dynasties of Necrons active outside the Milky Way galaxy were exceptionally rare to begin with. Among this fleet, the vessel occupying the core position was none other than the grand tomb ship revered by uncounted Necrons as the *Song of Oblivion*.
Immense enough to rival a city, its interior space was deep and silent, vast enough through Necron spatial technology to encompass the volume of an entire planet.
Inside the *Song of Oblivion* at this moment:
The entire chamber had been forged through the unfathomable technology of the Necrons. Its noctilith structures emitted a faint, cold sheen like a tomb dormant for tens of millions of years.
At the center of this infinite space stood a massive, pitch-black throne of state.
Constructed almost entirely from tomb stone, its lines were sharp and majestic.
Yet the most eye-catching element was not the throne itself, but the twisted, unstable humanoid entity of pure energy bound tightly within it. It struggled and burned in agony, radiating a divine, overwhelming power capable of making any living creature tremble.
A C'tan Shard—the once-unconquerable Burning One, Nyadra'zatha.
Now, it was merely a pathetic prisoner, an ornament inlaid upon a throne to display a conqueror's immortal achievement.
Upon the throne stood a figure.
A Necron Overlord.
His body was the ultimate creation forged during the biotransference of the Necrontyr, far more advanced than any newly awakened Necron. His functions represented perfection across his entire species, transcending the limits achievable by any ordinary biological entity.
This Overlord was the Shatterer of C'tan, the Vanquisher of the Old Ones, the Unifier, Master of the Last Triarch, Wielder of the Staff of Eternal Radiance, Supreme Ruler of the Necrons—
Szarekh, the Silent King.
The Silent King stood in quiet composure.
At this moment, his will had long since transcended this perfect metallic shell, transforming into a raging torrent of data surging through the Necrons' dedicated neural node network.
The entire *Song of Oblivion*—no, more than that, the entire fleet down to the smallest escort ship—merged into a single entity beneath his will, as if the Silent King's soul had become the incarnation of the fleet itself.
Hyperspace wide-area scanning operated at full power as the Necron fleet meticulously probed the vast void.
After 0.03 seconds of thorough analysis, he reached a conclusion.
There was nothing here.
Only the vast void most common outside the galaxy, and nothing more.
No emotion showed on the Silent King's iron face, but had he possessed flesh, he might have frowned slightly.
Through six tens of millions of years of self-imposed exile, he had grown weary of such views.
Endless dark, endless void, and the occasional barbarian planet that required conquest.
Over this vast expanse of time, the Silent King had continuously reclaimed and expanded territory beyond the galaxy, taming ignorant and rabid lands to prepare a new legacy for the subjects under his rule.
Glory had long since been claimed; domains had been demarcated beyond the stars.
Granted, this created a minor issue: Szarekh, the Silent King, remained entirely ignorant regarding recent changes within the galaxy.
Yet now, even the Silent King who achieved such grand feats finally noticed something beyond his expectations.
"Those ghostly abominations hiding in the Warp... what are they planning?"
Placing a cold palm on the throne's armrest, the Silent King leaned back slightly and fell into deep thought.
The computational capacity within his mind shifted to full operation.
Boundless projections of the future unfolded in his thoughts within an instant. Tens of thousands of variables were factored into the calculations one by one, working out uncounted potential outcomes.
Not long ago, the Silent King had just conquered a barbarian world and was preparing to lead his fleet to the next objective.
At that moment, he detected an anomaly.
A violent Warp fluctuation.
At least 370,000 light-years away from him.
That distance held no meaning for any normal civilization, but the Silent King still perceived it. The magnitude of the fluctuation was such that even an ancient Overlord like him—devoid of a soul, yet possessing deep comprehension of the Warp—had to pay attention.
Without a doubt, this was the handiwork of those sinister entities hiding behind the veil.
The question was: why project their attention outside the galaxy?
Could they be coming for him?
This uncertainty drove Szarekh, the Silent King, to arrive in person.
He assumed some treasure existed here—a unique star system, perhaps, or a relic worthy of being contested by gods.
Such an item might merit inclusion in his collection.
Yet there was nothing here.
Only an empty, boundless void.
However, the Warp fluctuations grew increasingly intense.
The energy levels surged continuously—climbing, climbing, and climbing further—to a terrifying intensity that forced even the Silent King, who had fought the War in Heaven and personally faced the power of the Old Ones, to pay close heed.
This intensity...
Could it be that they had united?
More than that.
Energy of this magnitude could kick up endless waves within the Warp, sending ripples across uncounted dimensions in the Immaterium.
The Silent King Szarekh's calculation arrays rapidly analyzed the data within the fluctuations, breaking down and categorizing the distinct signatures contained within.
He discerned the meaning behind them.
...Five?
Indeed, five great gods of the Warp were simultaneously focusing their attention here, acting in concert with seamless tacit understanding to project their grand power into this void and stir up rolling, monstrous waves.
Their power was as astonishing as it was vast.
Just as the Silent King issued a command for the fleet to scatter into combat formation while determining the origin's distance and coverage area, he suddenly noticed something amiss a nanosecond later.
"...Wait."
"Five?"
What was going on?
Even far outside the galaxy, the Silent King was not completely cut off from news of his homeland.
He simply did not care about most matters.
A piece of trivia, for instance: the Silent King was acquainted with Sanguinius.
Another example: the Silent King knew about that newly born god, the entity spawned from the fall of an ancient foe...
Yet the count was wrong.
Even including that new god, Chaos should not possess a fifth.
Yet right now, the outline of a fifth mind grew clearer and more powerful on his scanning arrays.
Even the Silent King was momentarily stunned.
Because he could perceive that this unrecorded Warp deity was actually the most powerful among them.
What was happening?
The Warp fluctuations grew increasingly violent and chaotic.
Then, under the alert gaze of the entire Necron fleet, the veil between realspace and the Warp suddenly shattered.
Unsurprisingly, a Warp rift so massive that language failed to describe it was torn open simultaneously by five distinct, mighty powers.
The span of that rift was terrifying; measuring it in light-years felt inadequate. Had it appeared inside the galaxy, it likely would have overshadowed even the Eye of Terror of old.
None of that mattered anymore.
Because the source of that fifth power finally revealed its true form within the Silent King's visual arrays.
Surging out from the Warp rift was a fleet in total contrast to the Necrons.
Those bio-ships, seemingly born of the deepest nightmares, were encased in thick chitinous carapaces. Huge tentacles waved slowly in the void, while fearsome claws and fangs glinted with cold sheen.
Bio-torpedoes and bio-plasma launchers were densely packed across the hulls, every inch of carapace squirming with the sickening vitality unique to apex predators.
The Tyranids.
The Great Devourer.
They poured out from the rift—one, ten, a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred million, a trillion... overlapping pitch-black silhouettes expanded into the void like a tide blotting out the sky. They gushed incessantly from that light-year-spanning rift in a continuous, seemingly endless stream.
Those raging Warp energies—the monstrous waves raised by the combined forces of the Chaos Gods—now served as their ultimate cover, concealing their movements perfectly.
These predators, who normally lacked superluminal travel capabilities, had been granted the most accommodating escort possible.
Accommodating like waiters eagerly inviting guests who traveled from afar to take their seats for dinner.
The entire void trembled.
"...Your Majesty, the Silent King."
The voice of a Cryptek beneath the Silent King rang in his consciousness through hyperdimensional wide-area communication, its tone flat yet carrying an undeniable recommendation:
"Combat analysis indicates that this detachment fleet under your command cannot pose an effective threat to the hostile species designated 'The Great Devourer.' Multiple high-energy signatures have appeared on their side, exceeding our firepower projection limits by orders of magnitude."
"Recommendation: You may temporarily withdraw and make further plans once you link up with the main fleet already converging toward your position."
The Silent King did not respond.
His iron face still showed no emotion.
Yet moments later, the Silent King slowly rose from his throne.
This ancient Overlord, who had conquered uncounted star systems over sixty million years, now radiated a heavy, battle-ready intensity from every inch of his necrodermis.
In his long campaigns outside the galaxy, he was not unfamiliar with these hideous, predatory beasts.
While these disgusting xenos might frighten civilizations that had only recently taken to the stars, before a veteran of the War in Heaven, these bugs possessed a bit of potential at best—and nothing more.
They possessed sheer numbers, yet lacked quality entirely. Unable to field any power capable of matching a C'tan Shard, they were meant to be slaughtered at his whim.
At least, that was what the Silent King had once believed.
Now, looking at those swarms surging wildly from the rift, blotting out the sky and threatening to fill the entire starry void, the Silent King realized he might have been mistaken.
His previous intelligence estimates had vastly underestimated their scale.
The swarm before his eyes was so immense that it rendered his detachment fleet tiny by comparison, like a drop in an ocean.
Meanwhile, the power of those five gods continued to sustain the Warp rift, steady and unyielding.
Data analysis revealed that the continuously spewing Warp energy could even neutralize shots fired from the Necron fleet to a certain extent.
To say nothing of those terrifying numbers capable of driving any opponent to total despair.
Yet what of it?
The Silent King smiled coldly.
As if perceiving its master's will, the grand throne beneath his feet suddenly operated at full capacity. Boundless energy was drawn in wildly, and eerie green light flared within the noctilith structure like a curse awakening inside an ancient tomb.
The C'tan Shard bound behind him—the Burning One—issued a piercing shriek at that exact moment.
The twisted entity of energy struggled violently, only to be crushed down by an even stronger force, as if performing a bizarre overture for the impending storm.
"That will not be necessary."
The Silent King raised his hand and issued his decree with absolute finality:
"Advance my ship."
His will detonated across the entire fleet, cold and resolute.
So what if it was the Great Devourer?
Avoid their edge?
Absurd!