Terra Imperial Palace, Throne Room.
The star-chart on the screen had gone dark, yet the deathly chill that spanned sixty million years still seeped, almost tangible, into humanity's grandest palace.
For viewers in the World of Warhammer, this chapter felt more horrifying than any previous Loki. Loki embodies madness; the Necrons embody absolute, icy, utterly inhuman reason.
It is termination in another form.
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Upon the Throne, the Emperor's usually knitted brows relaxed—just a fraction.
Not from ease, but from a certainty that brings release.
[As I thought.]
The vast mind-voice echoed once more through the Primarchs' thoughts, this time carrying the weight of eons seen and understood.
[I walked the ruins of the Old Night; beneath red dunes I felt the breath of that ancient being.]
[In the depths of Mars's labyrinth I sealed the "dragon"…]
[I knew they existed, yet I never showed you the whole picture.]
The Emperor's gaze seemed to bore through the planet's crust, toward the dark subterranean maze of Mars.
[Now do you understand?]
[My sons.]
[Why such haste? Why must I build the Webway?]
[Because this Milky Way Galaxy… is a double trap.]
[In spirit, the Warp was poisoned by the Old Ones' war; it teems with predators that feed on souls.]
[In matter, the sleeping dead are waking—tyrants of physical law who will harvest all life.]
[Stay, and the Necrons and C'tan will use us as living batteries; flee into the Warp, and the Ruinous Powers will devour us.]
[It is a death-puzzle with no exit… unless…]
The Emperor's will turned adamant, a sword cleaving destiny itself.
[Unless we carve a third path.]
[A path neither reliant on the Warp nor bound by the laws of the material Universe—the Webway.]
[Not merely for travel, but to let mankind evolve within a sealed, secure dimension into a new race where psyker might and cold reason coexist—until we can face both threats.]
His explanation crushed the Primarchs who had resented his secrecy and impatience; they felt a suffocating pressure.
Their father was not feuding with an unseen foe—he was wedging a single plank between two colliding trains, a bridge for humanity to escape.
"So…" Horus's voice was hoarse, "we fight more than Chaos. We fight… these awakening machines?"
[Yes.]
the Emperor replied.
[They are older than Chaos. Chaos seeks to corrupt; the Necrons seek only to annihilate or enslave.]
No one reeled more than Ferrus Manus, Primarch of the Tenth Legion.
He stared at his own hands—those metal arms shimmering like liquid mercury.
A "gift" earned on Medusa after he slew the silver wyrm.
Yet watching the Necrontyr march into Biotransference Furnaces, shedding "suffering flesh" for "eternal metal" and losing soul and self, Ferrus felt a chill as though a skeleton stared back from the mirror.
"No…"
Ferrus snarled, denying what he saw. "Different. This is different."
"I sought power! Control! They… they are only slaves!"
"Brother."
Fulgrim, the usually flamboyant Phoenix, set all jest aside.
He stepped close, worry in his eyes.
"You see? Utter mechanization brings no perfection—only hollowness."
"Strip all flesh, sever every pain receptor, replace the brain with logic circuits…"
Fulgrim's voice was soft yet cutting.
"For whom then do we fight? Are we still Guardians of 'humanity'? Or simply power-armored Necrons?"
Ferrus clenched his fists; metal shrieked against metal.
"I had planned… after the Great Crusade, to heal my hands."
For the first time his voice trembled, revealing a secret he had told no one.
"I never wanted Eternity like this. I know… these hands gnaw my humanity away."
He glanced at his Iron Hands sons still fervent for augmetics, and a hard light he had never shown them flashed in his eyes.
"'Flesh is weak'… our creed may be the first step into our graves."
In a corner, Fabricator-General and the Tech-Priests lapsed into frantic binharic chatter.
Binary noise crackled between them.
To the Adeptus Mechanicus, the Necrons were a theological detonation.
Soulless, faithless xenos wielding miracles of science the Adeptus Mechanicus coveted.
Living Metal, Gauss Weapon, inertialess drives—"Blasphemy… or revelation?" one adept buzzed.
"They achieved ascension of flesh, cast off weakness. Is this not the final form the omnissiah foretells?"
Another countered at once:
"No! They have no soul! The omnissiah is union of knowledge and soul. These Necrons are hollow—Abominable Intelligence given body!"
Yet the seed of doubt was planted.
To those longing to lift the ban on "prohibited tech," the Necrons proved: without Warp or Emperor, pure material science could reach godhood.
While the Adeptus Mechanicus feared, Magnus the Red of the Thousand Sons grew excitedly defensive.
He pointed at the soul-sea roiled by the Old Ones' war and cried to his brothers:
"Look! Did you see?!"
"The Warp itself is innocent! Once it was calm, crystal-clear! Ancient war, uncontrolled emotion—those defiled it!"
Magnus turned to Leman Russ and Mortarion, his single eye blazing with the arrogance of truth.
"You dread the Warp, call it hell."
"Yet it is but a poisoned ocean. With enough skill, enough wisdom to cleanse and comb it…"
"We can restore the serene 'sea of souls'! We need not flee—we should heal it!"
"Fool!" Mortarion cut him off coldly, the butt of his scythe striking the floor.
"Did you miss the outcome? Even the Old Ones who made it were consumed."
"You think yourself wiser? You believe you can tame the monsters born from that war?"
"This is not healing the ocean, Magnus."
Khan added icily, "It's trying to purify poison by taking deep breaths in a Gas Chamber. You'll drown us all."
As debate deepened, a subtler, darker unease spread among Primarchs and mortal auxilia alike.
They glanced at servo-skulls, at battle-automata waiting in corners, at Servitors webbed with tubes.
Once mere tools, necessary cogs in the Imperium's machine.
Now, seeing the soulless, tireless, fearless Necron warriors… a terrible overlap dawned.
"We lobotomize criminals, fuse them to machines, turn them into living tools."
Corax spoke from the shadows, voice tinged with self-loathing.
"How is that, in essence, different from the Necrontyr becoming Necrons?"
"The only difference,"
Vulkan said, sorrow in his eyes as he watched the Servitors, "is that the Necrons sought eternal life and power. We do it… for efficiency alone."
"We are turning humanity into a kind of 'biological Necron.'"
Sanguinius' alabaster wings trembled as he thought of the Astartes whose memories had been wiped, leaving only a murderous instinct, and of the cloned soldiers mass-produced in their thousands.
"If, to defeat monsters, we discard everything that makes us human—emotion, memory, soul—and keep only the efficiency of slaughter…"
"Then even if we win, how are we any different from the metal skeletons buried in those tombs?"
As First Captain of the Imperial Fists, Sigismund was usually as grim and immobile as a statue carved from granite.
Yet now his hand unconsciously stroked the hilt at his waist, knuckles whitening from the pressure.
His gaze was fixed on the serried ranks of Necrons advancing in perfect lock-step through the emerald beams of Atomic Dissolution.
They were not the rabble of xenos filth he had seen during the Great Crusade.
They were… Order. Absolute, lifeless, suffocating Order.
"I think…"
Sigismund's low voice broke the deathly silence of the Imperial Fists' formation.
In his eyes shone a gravity he had never known—the instinct of a master bladesman when he meets a foe who can truly kill him.
"These Necrons will cause us no end of trouble in the future."
Captain Pollux beside him turned, brow furrowed. "You mean tactically? Their weapons disintegrate matter, but our Void Shields and Terminator plate—"
"No, not just tactics." Sigismund shook his head, gaze sharp as a blade. "Look at their eyes. No fear, no fanaticism, not even a desire to win. They are simply… executing."
"We also execute Orders," Pollux countered.
"Not the same." Sigismund's voice roughened. "We fight for belief, for honour, for loyalty to the Emperor. Our blades carry heat. But they… they are cold inevitability."
"Take an Ork's head and it dies; break an Eldar's spirit and they flee. But these things… you cannot win by 'defeating' them. You must grind them to dust. It is a war… without honour."
Sigismund drew a deep breath, as though glimpsing the dark millennium that would be called the 41st.
"If the future pits us against such foes, it will no longer be war—it will be garbage disposal. And we may drown in the refuse."
Across the hall, among the Iron Hands, the atmosphere was stranger still.
To warriors who revered steel and firepower, the Necrons were a grotesque mirror.
Gabriel Santor, looking at his own power armour and at his cybernetic brothers, felt a chill.
The Iron Hands prided themselves on their 'iron and blood,' scorning weak flesh for greater killing efficiency.
Yet watching the Necrontyr walk into the Biotransference Furnaces, casting off all flesh to become metal skeletons that obeyed only programming, Santor felt a marrow-deep dread.
"Is this where our path ends?" Santor murmured; the soft words made every Iron Hand around him blanch.
"What are you saying?" a comrade hissed. "Don't let xenos shake your courage."
"Look at them!" Santor pointed, finger trembling.
"They possess the strongest firepower, the toughest bodies; they know neither fatigue nor pain. Is this not what we seek to make of our Legion? Is this not the 'iron' our Primarch demands?"
"But they… have no soul."
Dantioch turned to Perturabo, whose face remained bleak, and a vast sorrow welled within him.
"If we slice away our emotions bit by bit, replace our flesh piece by piece—even if we never enter that green furnace—how are we different from these Necrons?"
"We are turning ourselves into weapons. And weapons… have no right to speak of 'life.'"
Loken, Captain of the Luna Wolves, felt the vertigo of a worldview collapsing.
He had believed the Great Crusade was the light of human reason sweeping the galaxy; once superstition and xenos were gone, the Universe would be beautiful.
But the screen told him: the Universe is malevolent. The Warp is a rubbish-heap of a war sixty million years old; realspace is a hunting ground for star-gods.
"We… are like children trying to light a candle in a storm."
Loken said bitterly to Targost beside him.
"We thought we were conquering the galaxy; in truth we are merely scrapping over ruins with ancient ghosts."
Tarvitz, Captain of the Emperor's Children, saw things differently.
A seeker of perfection, he felt instinctive revulsion at the Necrons' self-annihilation.
"The Silent King…" Tarvitz watched the lone monarch on the screen. "He won the war but lost his species. Such victory… is more tragic than defeat."
"Loken, now I understand why the Emperor hid the truth from us."
Tarvitz sighed.
"Because the truth… is despair. If mortals knew their souls are merely daemon-snacks in the Warp and their bodies only battery-packs for Necrons… who would have the courage to live?"
"Hah!"
A shrill, mocking laugh came from the corner.
Sevatar, grinning sardonically at the ashen loyalists.
"Look at you all, faces like your parents just died."
"What's so surprising? The Universe has always been a cesspit."
He jabbed a finger at the C'tan Shards on the screen, eyes glittering with madness.
"The laws of physics want to eat you; the spirit World wants to toy with you. Fair game! Means none of us owe the Universe a thing."
"Those Necrons were pretty smart. Since death's coming anyway, why not turn yourselves into stone? Stone doesn't hurt; stone doesn't cry. Perfect."
Sevatar looked at Khârn beside him and whistled:
"Hey, World Eater lunatic—if we made you into one of those metal skeletons, you'd never have to suffer those damn nails again. Tempted?"
Khârn ignored the taunt.
He pressed trembling fingers to his throbbing temples. The Butcher's Nails were hammering his nerves, yet as he watched the pain-free Necrons a flicker of envy crossed his eyes.
"No pain…" Khârn rasped, voice like grinding gravel. "No nails… only silent killing…"
"Is that… heaven?"
If the others felt fear or disgust, Azhek Ahriman, Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons, felt bone-deep chill.
He stared at the seething Warp, at the destruction the Old Ones had brought upon themselves through reckless psychic power.
"Overload…"
Cold sweat beaded Ahriman's brow. "The Old Ones fell not because their psychic might was too weak, but because… they had no restraint."
He thought of Prospero, of his Primarch Magnus' confident explorations of the Warp.
They believed they were charting an ocean of truth, unaware they were leaping into a pool teeming with sharks and venom.
"We must warn the Primarch." Ahriman clenched his staff, knuckles white.
"Knowledge is poison. If we swallow it unfiltered… we will repeat the Old Ones' fate. We will become… another kind of monster."
Sigismund's grip tightened on his sword hilt again; the doubt in his eyes burned away, replaced by purer, fiercer resolve.
"Since the Universe is so dark…" the future Champion of the Emperor said softly, "then we must burn all the brighter. Even as ash… we will choke the damned xenos."