The Emperor's Light, the beacon that had guided humanity through the darkness, began to falter in the late years of M31.003. It wasn't a sudden extinction, but a sickening, drawn-out gasp. Across the galactic expanse, where vessels navigated the treacherous currents of the Warp by its benevolent glow, Navigators shrieked, their eyes burning out, their minds dissolving into the raw, howling chaos. On a million worlds, sanctioned psykers—seers, diviners, astropaths—collapsed, their psychic organs overloaded, their sanity fracturing into a million echoing screams that tore through the noösphere.
This was no accident. This was the first chord struck in a symphony of ruin, a discordant, mocking fanfare composed in the deepest pits of the Immaterium. The Great Enemy watched, its many faces twisting in anticipation, glee, and cosmic indifference. The seeds of corruption, sown patiently by Champions known and unknown, tended by the Lords of the Dark Pantheon, were ready for harvest.
On the bridge of the Pax Astra in the Segmentum Solar, Navigator Elymas stared into the Warp. The Golden Path was not fading, but recoiling—like a nerve seared by acid. He clawed at his hood, the specialized lenses over his mutated eyes cracking. The blessed light, the comforting certainty of a billion souls focused by the Emperor's will, was stuttering, replaced by monstrous afterimages—laughing faces in the void, gaping maws, impossible geometries that bled malevolence.
Around him, the bridge crew shouted in panic. Augurs flared with readings that defied logic. Navigators in their isolation tanks convulsed, psionic feedback turning communion into torment. The ship bucked as Warp currents, suddenly unchecked and violent, seized it. The captain's orders to maintain course were drowned in the rising tide of terror.
Elymas screamed—not a cry of fear, but a raw, inhuman sound torn from his very soul. The light was gone. In its place was a face: Joker. A cosmic grin, painted in the entrails of dying stars, winked at him from the heart of the maelstrom. Not a face, really, but the idea of mirth, of exquisite cruelty, manifesting as pure, unadulterated chaos.
He finds this funny, Elymas thought, just before his mind shattered like crystal struck by a hammer, fragments of sanity scattering throughout the ship. The Pax Astra was lost, one of countless others. The lifeline of the Imperium was being severed.
Far across the void, on Mars, the Red Planet tore itself apart. Fabricator-Adept Ankhad could only watch as telemetry screamed betrayal. For months, rumors whispered of Archmagos Vader—his forbidden experiments in the deepest vaults, his obsession with silencing the Warp's "noisy ghosts." He had sought to nullify the psychic sphere, using technologies older than humanity itself.
But Vader had gone too far. Readings from the Noctis Labyrinthus complex revealed a gravitational collapse, a reality implosion—and something else. A resonance pattern: cold, alien, Necron.
A rent opened above the facility—not a Warp rift, but a wound in realspace itself. Silent and hungry, it drew in light and matter. Within, the air turned frigid, metal groaned, and sickly green light pulsed from ancient power sources. On Mars, civil war erupted. Loyalist adepts screamed "Schism!" over pict-casters, accusing Vader's followers of heresy. Skitarii legions turned on one another. Kastelan robots burned through barricades, phosphor weapons slicing through steel and flesh alike. The Thirteenth Great Rite was invoked not by decree, but by sheer, explosive violence.
Ankhad watched as the Forge World's heart burned, its once-unbreakable unity crumbling into chaos. And Vader? Consumed by the very null-zone he had tried to control. Another punchline delivered.
Orbiting just beyond the system, Captain Valerius of the Ultramarines 3rd Company stood aboard the Sword of Calth, watching a silent war unfold. Their mission was to reinforce Mars, but something unnatural barred their way.
Ancient vessels of living metal—Necron ships—hovered in grim formation, cloaked in eerie green light. They didn't advance, didn't respond to hails. They simply held the line. When fired upon, their emerald beams dissolved shields and ceramite with surgical precision. A single shot from one such ship had already bisected the Blade of Macragge.
"They're not interested in conquest," Valerius murmured. "They're preventing us from reaching Mars. But how could they have known?"
It wasn't a war of aggression—it was a surgical isolation, enacted with chilling accuracy. The Necrons, silent and implacable, were part of a greater game.
That game extended to Terra. In the Emperor's Palace, Lord Solar Leandros stood before a chamber filled with grim faces—Primarchs, generals, Custodes. The pict-casters played scenes of madness and collapse: Martian titans clashing in fratricide, Imperial ships drifting dead in space, Astropathic choirs driven mad, the Astronomican flickering like a dying star.
Reports flooded in. Roboute Guilliman offered to pull the Ultramarines back from the Eastern Fringe. Lion El'Jonson requested permission to return with a fleet from the northern sectors. Even Vulkan sent word—concerned, perceptive as ever—that the Warp's nature was becoming unstable, that the veil between worlds had thinned.
But the Emperor refused.
His voice was firm, cold, absolute: they were to continue the Crusade. Terra would hold. Mars would recover. The Astronomican, he assured them, would stabilize. No further distractions from His Great Work could be permitted.
Leandros didn't argue. No one did—not openly. But in that silence, doubt was planted. What did the Emperor truly see from His Golden Throne? Did He underestimate the threat… or understand it far too well?
He remembered the whispers from the Astropaths—visions of gears jamming, threads snapping, laughter echoing beyond the veil. A Great Joke. The fall of the Imperium wasn't tragedy—it was irony. Unity, speed, and power—its greatest strengths—had become the very vectors of its doom.
The Astronomican sputtered again, dimming. On Mars, distant explosions shook the soil. In the void, Necron ships continued their silent vigil. And across the galaxy, the Primarchs, bound by loyalty and confusion, pushed forward into the unknown, just as ordered.
Hope didn't die with a scream. It died with a punchline, perfectly delivered. The galaxy, once promised salvation under the Emperor's light, now plunged into an age of fire. The jester had played his hand. And the punchline was the death of everything.