As the Black Legion's Chaos fleet maneuvered swiftly between the orbits of the Cadia System under the orders of Warmaster Abaddon, the corrupted Imperial defense worlds within the system, including Cadia's moons, fell under the dominion of the Dark Apostle Erebus. The Word Bearers' renegade Space Marines conducted countless blasphemous rituals upon these now-daemon-infested worlds.
Meanwhile, Selene, satisfied, shifted her gaze away from the glowing green phase scepter in her hand.
Let the winds of Chaos run wild—all of you will burn sooner or later!
She wondered idly what kind of relic the Staff of the Destroyer, belonging to the Phaeron of the Sautekh Dynasty—Imotekh the Stormlord—would make, after that fool Trazyn's failed attempt at theft.
Selene turned her attention to the being before her—a Necron Overlord who called himself the Witness of History, the Grand Archaeologist of the Prism Gallery, and the Lord of Solemnace.
Of course, she knew well enough that this was a meeting between two with similar… predilections.
Ah, how I wish I could plunder the tomb world of Solemnace myself.
Ahem… business first.
"Star God? No, no, that's not quite right—it should be Honkai, or perhaps Xel'naga, or even Old One… hmm, come to think of it, 'Star God' works too. I do recall once holding such a divine title."
At her words, the Necron's jaw structure gaped wide in sheer astonishment, and the living-metal face of the shell Selene possessed shifted subtly, emotion rippling across its surface. The blank, metallic visage began to twist and reform, sketching out distinctly humanoid features.
In an instant, the hazy metallic contours sharpened. Selene's expression, lively and full of amusement, became clearly visible to Trazyn and the assembled Space Marines and Imperial Guardsmen present.
Clack-clack, hum-hum—
Clearly, the men of the Imperium had little interest in the theatrics of a talking metal skull. They trusted their bolters and chainswords more than such sorcery.
"Heretic! This is no place for your kind! Even with the Primarch's promises—"
Thud!Crack!
"Shh. Please, be quiet for a moment."
The metallic mouth opened, and—shockingly—released a soft, warm breath. With a sharp snap of her slender, living-metal fingers, Selene lightly tapped the end of her scepter against the floor.
Hummm—!
A crimson-violet wave shimmered across the previously green phase blade, spreading in a flash. Within moments, the entire command chamber was engulfed.
The Space Wolf sergeant who had leapt forward, chainsword in hand, froze mid-stride. Every other Imperial soldier and Astartes in the room followed suit—locked in place, unmoving.
"Now, calm down, alright?"
Selene walked forward, gracefully passing the immobilized Space Wolf whose face twisted in impotent rage. An invisible precision of power control forced the man's finger away from the trigger. "Dangerous. An accidental discharge would be… unpleasant."
She stopped at the center of the hall, facing the makeshift Imperial shrine that had been hastily restored.
"No need for extra displays of sanctity. I'll visit you eventually—but not now. The hospitality of those few in the Warp is… overwhelming, to say the least."
Her words puzzled all who could still think—especially Ursakar E. Creed, whose furious eyes darted after her every movement. Selene paused briefly, snapped her fingers again.
"Carry on with your duties. This projection of mine won't harm you or humanity. It's merely an isolation barrier—it'll dissipate soon."
Selene had no desire to waste breath explaining herself to the Imperium's famously stubborn warriors. If not for Sanguinius' prior negotiation and stern assurances, she suspected these battle-hardened zealots would have already bellowed their war cries in unison, charging her like a raid boss to 'purge' her for the Emperor.
Honestly, she didn't have the patience for it.
No, Selene had no intention of personally meddling in the Imperium's affairs. That colossal, blood-and-tear-driven, fear-fed, hate-sustained, ignorance-fueled machine was a grotesque relic—a bloated, malfunctioning contraption.
Even looking at it too long made her feel her blood pressure dropping.
She sighed softly.
She really was too kind, too conscientious… her standards far too high for her own good.
By the judicial standards of the Sacred Selene Empire, the entities within the Imperium of Man of the 40K era were… well, abominations.
The deranged Inquisitors of the Holy Orders of the Emperor's Inquisition, the self-serving oil-soaked adepts of the Adeptus Mechanicus, the incompetent bureaucrats of the Administratum and Departmento Munitorum, the corrupt Cardinals of the Ecclesiarchy, the hereditary planetary governors—
Especially those senile fools of the High Lords of Terra, whose only talents were embezzlement, scheming, and dragging their civilization backward. Every single one of them—without exception—was guilty.
To execute them all might seem excessively harsh… but to spare every other one would leave far too many vermin behind.
Selene had merely taken the basic framework designed jointly by the Emperor and the Sigillite Malcador—a system meant to maintain stability and unify the dominant species' faith and values across a galactic civilization—and refined it.
Many of the details, supplements, and optimizations were Selene's own, drawn from her vast study of both ancient and modern civilizations. She took the best from all, then handed the blueprint to her administrative staff of over a million secretaries and overseers, aided by powerful AI servitors, for integration and refinement.
It worked… quite well, actually.
By adjusting the existing framework of the Empire of a Thousand Years (Akame ga Kill!) into an "Imperialized" model, Selene created a structure that not only reinforced her supreme authority but also granted her ample personal freedom.
After all, even the Emperor had been bedridden and mute for ten millennia.
If that system could continue to function—however haltingly—for ten thousand years amidst chaos, enemies, and decay, then surely it had merit.
Moreover, the aggressive, martial culture of that civilization left no room for the "messy and noisy" kind of so-called left-wing politics that polluted other societies. It suited Selene's needs for expansion, knowledge, technological advancement, and civilizational growth perfectly.
If nothing else, Selene was pragmatic—she corrected her mistakes, and she solved problems.
"Ancestral laws must never change?" Selene smirked. "Then I am your ancestor."
When certain vested interests were threatened, she had two approaches: to the obedient, a slap followed by a reward; to the defiant, she tore them out by the roots.
Of course, that did not mean she ruled impulsively or changed decrees on a whim.
After thoroughly understanding the Emperor's system, Selene had crafted for her own Sacred Empire a distinctive governance cycle suited to the control and expansion of Honkai Energy.
Conquered civilizations and newly annexed worlds inevitably endured a brief but brutal purge at first—swift, surgical pain. But soon after, Selene would reveal to the loyal her grand vision of a more prosperous and glorious future.
Naturally, there were always those who declared, "Better to die than live without freedom." Quite a few, in fact.
But did they think Selene's vast armies were for decoration? They were all wiped out—each corpse becoming another soldier's medal, honor, or noble title.
She left those headaches to Sanguinius and his peers. Selene herself preferred to focus only on the essentials: communication with the Warp, the internal annihilation powers, the Emperor, and, of course, the Necrons.
"Feared ones of mechanical ascension," she said, her metallic voice echoing gently. "You've been watching long enough. It seems you foresaw my arrival, yet you still appear so surprised?"
"Hardly, Your Majesty," the other replied. "Such an ancient title… to hear one who knows so much of our history…"
Trazyn—the overlord before her—let out a deep, amused laugh. But the mirth faded as he solemnly leveled his phase staff at her projected form. Gone was his usual jovial eccentricity; his tone became grave.
"Star God. After sixty million years, you now stand beside humanity… Is it vengeance upon my kind that you seek?"
Trazyn's sensors and memory cores, his analytical subroutines—all screamed the same conclusion: the anomalous energies radiating from Sanguinius, the Honkai Cube, and the corrupted blackstone constructs were identical—or nearly identical—to those emanating from the being before him.
Or perhaps… those energies, that technology, originated from her.
Trazyn could not help but feel dread.
No one knew better than the Necrons, the once Necrontyr, the true terror of a fully restored Star God.
The Star Gods were born from the Big Bang itself—pure energy lifeforms born from the hearts of stars, insulated from the Warp, and entirely bound to the material universe. They were beings of raw cosmic power, feeding upon stellar energy and existing beyond any physical substrate. Once born, they spent most of their existence slumbering within suns.
They were, in every sense, the true deities of the material cosmos.
Yet, sixty million years ago, during the end of the War in Heaven, they were betrayed by their own creations—the Necrons. One by one, the Star Gods were shattered, imprisoned, or consumed, reduced to mere batteries and weapon fuel—an almost complete genocide.
The betrayal came when the Silent King, supreme ruler of the Triarch, struck while the Star Gods were weakened after slaying the final Old One. Wielding weapons of unimaginable power, he and his people shattered the unsuspecting gods, imprisoning their fragments—each a concentrated vessel of divine energy—within tesseract labyrinths for later use.
But the Necrons themselves did not escape unscathed. The constant divine wars had left the galaxy scarred and crippled. Their military might and galactic supremacy were broken. And so, the Necron race entered their long sleep—sixty million years of cold, mechanical hibernation—to let time heal their wounds and erase their rivals.
Now, with dynasties fractured and countless eons gone, many Necron nobles and Phaerons had lost fragments of their memories—or simply died in their tombs.
A hostile Star God might not be able to annihilate every last Necron—but it could certainly devastate them, wiping out entire slumbering dynasties with ease.
"How fascinating," Selene murmured softly. The longer she occupied this living-metal shell, the more distinctly feminine and alive it became. Her laugh—gentle, melodic—shivered through the air.
It was beautiful… and deadly.
"I will not kill you, nor will I strike at the Necron race," she said, her tone deceptively light. "At least, not now. Your kind… are my greatest source of nourishment."
"Nourishment?!"
The word alone sent a jolt through Trazyn. No—through any of the Necrons, it would have awakened terrible memories. The pain of that ancient biological transfer—the horror of the soul-devouring process that birthed their metal bodies—was etched forever into their consciousness.
"How dare you—"
"Calm yourself."
Her voice, soft as butterfly wings, carried an effortless command. Though it came from a metallic skull, it was mesmerizingly human. The hand she placed upon Trazyn's shoulder was light, yet it pressed down with the weight of a collapsing star. His anger, like a storm, dissipated in an instant, his trembling subsiding.
In that moment, her crimson eyes met his—and within them, he saw the infinite. A sea of galaxies shimmered and churned, each star flickering in unison, filling the entire sensor spectrum of his cognition. The sheer pressure of that gaze was suffocating.
"Perhaps," Selene said, "I can help the Necrons regain their flesh."
"You…"
No further words were needed. Trazyn stared into her eyes—and believed.
Because the body she had possessed—his own projection—was already beginning to take on a subtle, skin-like sheen.
An allure he could not resist.
Damn it… this is something the Silent King should hear, not me.
After a long silence, Trazyn finally spoke. "What do you want in return?"
Her metallic face softened slightly. The faintly human features allowed her to squint, lips curling into a devilish smile—a whisper of temptation.
"I want you to take me to your dynasty's crown world—Thanatos, of the Oruscar Dynasty."
"Your target is the Celestial Orrery?" The words left his mouth before he could stop them. His reaction was immediate and absolute: "Impossible!"
The Celestial Orrery was a relic of incomprehensible magnitude—constructed by the Oruscar Dynasty's ruling Phaeron at the height of Necron power, before the War in Heaven. It was a vast and ancient device capable of projecting a real-time holographic map of the entire galaxy—every star, every planet.
Of course, if that were all it did, it would not be called an artifact.
The Celestial Orrery was connected to the entire Milky Way. Whenever its user altered any light point upon its map, the corresponding celestial body in reality would undergo genuine, physical transformation.
Indeed—if its user simply reached out and extinguished one of those shining points, the real star linked to it would begin to age unnaturally fast, compressing billions of years of stellar life into mere millennia, culminating in a catastrophic supernova.
Utterly absurd.
A few thousand years might seem an eternity to humans or other short-lived species, but for the Necrons—who could fight wars spanning tens of millennia and slumber for sixty million years—it was nothing more than a flicker, the blink of an eye.
If the Phaeron of the Oruscar Dynasty, or perhaps even the returning Silent King, ever awoke in a half-conscious daze and decided to play a game of cosmic connect-the-dots with the Celestial Orrery, the End Times would quite literally begin.
It was a fitting testament to the Necrons' nature—the very race that had once bludgeoned the galaxy's oldest intelligent species, the Old Ones, into extinction, then betrayed the mightiest physical entities in the cosmos, the Star Gods, themselves. They had crushed the ancient Orks, Aeldari Empires, Jokaero, Hrud, Rashan, K'nib, and countless other intelligent species, becoming the first to truly rule the galaxy unchallenged.
In the realm of pure material science, Selene gladly acknowledged them as unmatched.
In the grim darkness of the 40K universe, the Necrons were among the few genuine materialists. They believed in science—utterly and absolutely—relying on no psychic trickery or Warp sorcery to achieve their supremacy.
Their mastery of physics and technology was so profound that even their eternal rivals, the Aeldari, derisively referred to it as witchcraft—a testament to how far beyond comprehension their science truly was.
Indeed, in this nightmarish, chaotic universe, the Necrons were, in Selene's eyes, her most valuable treasure.
Even more precious than the Imperium of Man, the grease-stained Adeptus Mechanicus, the self-doomed remnants of the Aeldari Empire, or even the rotting corpse enthroned upon the Golden Throne of Terra itself.
"No," Selene said gently, her smile curling like moonlight, "everything is possible. You will agree."
She lifted her head, a faint curve gracing her lips—a smile warm as spring sunlight. "It has begun…"
"Begun?"
Trazyn's voice faltered. His optical sensors flickered wildly as he slowly looked down. From beneath his feet, thin trails of violet-red light began to spread—radiant, ethereal, seeping outward like cracks of living energy. The glow reflected upon his polished metallic face, illuminating it with haunting brilliance.
"I'm waiting for the corruption progress," Selene said softly. "The coordinates are active, Trazyn. Would you like to witness it? The might of the army that will annihilate the Necron dynasties…"
Hummm—!
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