The Eldar Empire, the most powerful force in the galaxy at present.
A resplendent psychic civilization that none had dared oppose, the Eldar Empire was plummeting into ruin from within rather than at the hands of an external enemy.
The increasingly extreme Pleasure Cults had grotesquely corrupted and brought down the noble psychic civilization that had once commanded the galaxy.
Some sank so deeply into sadism and brutality that indiscriminate massacres spilling out into the streets had become a common occurrence.
Before long, the Eldar began creating and worshipping a new god to embody their twisted desires.
Abandoned by their maddened kin, the ancient Eldar gods lost their faith and gradually weakened.
As ever more Eldar continued down the path of vile corruption, their intense and obscene thoughts sent the Immaterium into mad upheaval.
At last, in the heart of that immense Warp storm, something which should never have been conceived in this universe was beginning to open its eyes.
Unable to bear witness to their kin’s insane depravity any longer, the Eldar of the Craftworlds resolved to leave the rotten imperial heartland behind.
Before departing, however, numerous Craftworlds remained near the Empire’s borders, seeking to save even one more of their kin who still retained some measure of reason.
Yet the Eldar who remained in the Empire did not take their Craftworld kin’s warnings and outstretched hands of salvation seriously.
Instead, they merely mocked them as “extreme ascetics.”
Even so, the Craftworld Eldar did not give up. They searched the abyss for even the few uncorrupted among their kin and brought them aboard their vast arks.
But the ominous signs rising from the Warp only grew greater by the day.
Sensing an unprecedented threat, several Craftworlds ceased their rescue efforts and hastily fled Eldar Imperial territory.
During their escape, they were attacked by Ork hordes within the Webway.
But avoiding an all-out battle with the Orks, they raced through the Webway at full speed, fleeing far from their people’s homeland.
And finally,
that which had grown within the Warp by devouring the accumulated thoughts of countless Eldar opened its eyes.
At the end of corruption and excess, Slaanesh, the Chaos God of pleasure, was born.
The moment Slaanesh descended, it unleashed a scream steeped in horrific pleasure from the core where the Eldar Empire’s homeworld had stood—a scream that shook the entire galaxy.
With that single cruel cry, the souls of nearly every Eldar in the imperial core and within thousands of light-years were torn from them and swallowed by the Warp.
Countless Craftworlds that had failed to escape in time because they tried until the very last moment to save one more of their kin were dragged alive into Slaanesh’s hungry maw.
At the same time, an immense scar that would never be erased—the Eye of Terror—was torn open at the heart of the galaxy.
Thousands of Webway passages collapsed beneath Slaanesh’s bizarre shriek and psychic aftershock.
The Eldar cities scattered throughout the Webway fell in an instant as the Webway regions that housed them collapsed.
And besides the Eldar, nearly all the Orks of the Starclaw forces wandering the Webway were also swept away and killed by Slaanesh’s cry, save for a few.
The Eldar who remained intact were the Exodites, who had sensed the omens long ago and settled upon primitive worlds;
the Craftworlds that had fled for their lives;
Commorragh, which was spared because the Webway in which it lay had luckily not collapsed;
and the Harlequins, who survived under the protection of Cegorach, the Laughing God—the First Fool and the greatest Harlequin.
Compared with the age of the fallen Eldar Empire, they had declined catastrophically.
From that moment onward, every Eldar was bound in soul to Slaanesh from the instant of birth. At death, their souls would be dragged to Slaanesh and condemned to eternal, terrible suffering.
The karmic debt of excess committed by their entire species had returned as the cruelest punishment.
Yet Slaanesh’s birth brought one unexpected side effect—and one fortunate development—to the universe.
The Warp storms that had blocked off the galaxy converged all at once upon the eye of the storm that was Slaanesh and erupted.
Paradoxically, the Warp became exceptionally stable, making interstellar Warp travel possible once again.
Of course, the galaxy-wide Warp shockwave caused by Slaanesh’s birth sent countless psykers across the galaxy into simultaneous rampages, unleashing a wave of chaos.
Fortunately, our Ark, hidden in the outer reaches of the galaxy, was far enough away to remain unharmed.
That did not mean we had suffered no damage at all.
The monks of Dharma Temple dispatched to the orbital fortress and Nuceria for their missions suffered an accident: the abrupt Warp surge made them weep tears of blood, cough blood, and collapse.
Thankfully, Dharma Temple’s unique spiritual protection techniques prevented it from leading to Chaos corruption or rampancy.
They were currently resting and recuperating.
Meanwhile.
As though he had been waiting for it, the Emperor confirmed that the Warp had cleared immediately after Terra’s Unification Wars ended and promptly assembled his armies.
Before the Imperial Palace, the countless Astartes of all twenty Legions looked solely upon the Emperor and silently listened to his address.
"Children of Terra, blood of humanity."
"Look upon me. And look back upon your past."
"Once, we built palaces among the stars and held every light in the night sky beneath our hands. But superstition, arrogance, and alien predators shattered that glorious age. For thousands of years, you have been isolated and starving, living in fear of dominion and madness amid the darkness."
"But now, that long night is over."
"Just as I ended the division of Terra and forged unity beneath one banner, we shall now gather humanity’s bloodline, scattered throughout the entire galaxy, into one once more. Humanity’s legacy must become ours again. This galaxy was originally ours, and it shall remain so forevermore."
"Hear me, xenos. The age in which you coveted humanity’s weakness, ruled us, and butchered us is over."
"Hear me, all gods, superstitions, and false idols that threaten humanity’s reason and truth. Your false myths shall all be reduced to ash beneath the reason of mankind."
"My Legions shall march. They shall stand at the forefront and become the flame that cuts through the darkness. Their footsteps shall bring salvation to oppressed humanity and unavoidable doom to all who threaten us."
"Go! Find our lost brothers! Reclaim our rightful throne, and establish humanity’s Imperium once more upon the sea of stars!"
"The Great Crusade begins."
Raising his burning golden sword high into the sky, the Emperor grandly proclaimed the beginning of the Great Crusade, the vast prelude that would bring the entire galaxy beneath the Imperium’s feet.
At the same time, the Astartes’ cheers thundered out, shaking heaven and earth.
The Great Crusade, which would become the Imperium of Man’s true growth, had finally begun.
I silently recorded every moment with my camera.
With the proclamation of the Great Crusade, the Imperial Truth—the Imperium’s foundational doctrine commanding the complete abolition of superstition and religion—was issued to every Imperial citizen on Terra.
Over his long life, the Emperor had witnessed countless times that rather than religion’s beneficial aspects, it was irrational violence, division, corruption, and madness brought about by religion warped through mankind’s inherent limitations that caused human society to rot from within.
Thus, he personally wrote the final guidebook armed with an anti-religious philosophy: the Book of the Emperor’s Truth.
But after reading the completed Imperial Truth closely, I clicked my tongue in disbelief.
The Emperor was forcibly turning away from two exceedingly grave contradictions within himself.
First, he had made the arrogant mistake of ignoring humanity’s most primal, instinctive need to rely on a transcendent being in its darkest hours.
Second, under the pretense of denying superstition and magic, he was entirely excluding the very existence of the Warp. Yet the Warp was an undeniable reality, already intertwined with the material realm so intimately that it could not be separated from it. To dismiss it wholesale as a falsehood that did not exist was nothing but extreme arrogance.
The Emperor was excessively arrogant and self-righteous.
I understood what he intended, but not all of humanity was as strong or superhuman as he or the Perpetuals.
Humans were fundamentally weak and foolish.
It was only by facing those shortcomings, struggling against them, and overcoming them that they could grow.
But rather than solving this fundamental problem, the Emperor was merely covering the wound with a filthy rag to hide it.
It might look as though there was no problem for now, but in the end it would fester and rot beneath the surface, before bursting horribly one day.
Letting out a derisive laugh at the Emperor’s foolish, self-righteous conduct, I threw the hardcover copy of the Imperial Truth in my hand onto the ground.
"Hey, throw this away for me. Reading it only ruined my eyes."
I jerked my chin at the Custodian Guard standing behind me as though ordering him to clear away trash, then shifted my gaze into the distance.
The sun had already begun to set, dyeing the surroundings in a deep, dark night.
Cold raindrops began to fall one by one through the thickening black clouds.
"..."
The Custodian Guard behind me silently bent down and picked up the fallen book.
No, more precisely, he was Primarch Alpharius.
He was currently keeping close watch over me while disguised as a golden Custodian Guard.
Unlike his other brothers, who had been scattered in every direction across the galaxy, Alpharius had fallen onto a small plateau on Terra.
Thanks to that, the Emperor had been able to recover him before any of the other Primarchs.
One interesting fact was that the name Alpharius had not been given to him by the Emperor.
Malcador had once let slip that when he first met the Emperor, he introduced himself by saying, "I am Alpharius," and that had settled the matter.
Alpharius, the first Primarch to be recovered, was personally educated under the Emperor and Malcador.
And I had met him face-to-face and held a proper conversation with him exactly once.
My honest first impression from that encounter had been just one thing.
‘This bastard is fucking devious.’
Alpharius had inherited only the Emperor’s dark and underhanded qualities, so I could not find a single thing about him that I liked.
So I deliberately paid him no attention and ignored him. Yet he continued lurking around me while concealing his identity, now bearing the title of my second watcher.
Still, one fortunate thing was that, unlike the previous fellow who had been roasted to death in the stratosphere, this one did not report every one of my little deviations to the Emperor.
Thanks to that, I could enjoy harmless mischief, such as sneaking into the Emperor’s secret vault for a look around.
Alpharius possessed psychic traits similar to the Emperor’s.
The ability to make others perceive him as whatever he wished them to see, or to twist their perception so completely that they failed to recognize his very existence.
Thanks to this ability, Alpharius could perfectly deceive the eyes of anyone except the Emperor, Malcador, and me.
Wondering how I recognized his identity at a glance?
I may not look it, but I am a Perpetual who has lived for over ten thousand years.
Though I can barely use psychic abilities other than those concerning space,
my sense for detecting the texture of a soul is equal to Malcador’s.
Besides, more than anything else, I was one of the creators who had personally shaped this bastard in an incubator.
I could never forget the fundamental resonance of his soul that I had felt within that growth tank.
At first, I found him rather uncomfortable because he had approached me while concealing his identity. But since he kept acting that way, I eventually decided that whether he was there or not made no difference and left him alone.
Then, whenever I need him—as I had just done—I use him like a servant.
You would think that, as a Primarch, he would rebel out of sheer indignation at least once. Yet here he was, silently picking up the trash I had thrown away.
What a devious, creepy bastard.
Completely ignoring Alpharius as he hunched behind me, I stood beneath the cold rain and quietly looked toward the Church of Thunderstone, the last remaining sanctuary of an ancient religion on Terra.
Today, the day the Emperor began officially proclaiming the Imperial Truth.
This small church, the final relic of humanity’s ancient history, would also vanish into history forever at the Emperor’s hand.
As an observer and recorder, I watched this tragic end.
Krrrooom—!
Lightning struck from the sky, and the dark surroundings were instantly illuminated by a blinding flash.
And amid that flash, the Emperor appeared in the distance, a crimson cloak draped over him and its hood pulled low. He was slowly walking toward this place.
Behind him, Custodian Guards in sunset-colored uniforms followed like shadows, guarding the Emperor at close range.
Like the apocalypse itself come to end an age of religion and faith forever,
the Emperor advanced in silence, an overwhelming psychic pressure radiating from his entire body.
But the Emperor did not walk straight toward the church.
His cold gaze visible beneath his hood, he slowly approached me as I stood in the rain.
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