Turbulent energies swirled around the Kairos Fateweaver as the Lord of Change brandished the Staff of Tomorrow. This daemonic artifact was not straight like the force staves wielded by Imperial psykers; instead, it was a mass of irregular twists and contortions. Its head bore two avian skull decorations, paired with a razor-sharp, blade-like pommel that radiated a profound sense of unease. Countless warp-runes flickered across its length, casting a sickly cerulean glow as a gargantuan ritual circle, composed of twisted sigils, slowly took form.
Kairos had already peered into the tides of the future.
Before long, the mechanical leviathan in the materium would fall into a state of semi-exile due to its master's ignorance. The vessel would become hopelessly snagged upon the veil between reality and the Sea of Souls, anchored by its own psychic crystals.
As the temporal flow progressed, the construction of the weapon bays aboard the Void Sword neared completion. The psychic crystals were slotted into their unique containment cells, eventually forming a singular, massive network, much like an interconnected circuit.
Through the sensory nodes of his integrated automata, Axion surveyed the ingenious architecture derived from his logic-engines. The massive psychic crystals intersected within the chambers, creating a radiant, semi-spherical structure that shimmered like a crystalline chandelier. Between the primary cells ran numerous conduits composed of smaller psychic shards. These channels carried the potency of the giant crystals, allowing for precise power adjustments during weapon activation.
Whether it was rapid-fire volleys, sustained beams, or a singular, cataclysmic overcharge that drained every crystal at once, the system was now capable of all. Meanwhile, the nearly one hundred million Imperial psykers, ferried to this "paradise" by the Guardian-class vessels, remained blissfully unaware that they were about to endure a fate of unparalleled horror.
As the final psychic crystal was secured and locked into place, the inaugural firing test commenced.
The activation of forty gargantuan psychic crystals triggered a psychic shriek so profound it acted as an unimaginable stimulus to the millions of psykers within the hull. Across the decks, countless individuals suffered immediate shock; the violent shockwave seemed to tear their very souls asunder.
However, what followed defied all calculation. While mortals were often predictable, their collective actions harbored infinite variables.
Driven by the agony searing their souls, a single mortal began to chant the Canticle of the Emperor. As the psychic resonance spread, the soul-deep pain began to ebb. Soon, more and more psykers joined the chorus. No one had taught them how to focus their power like the choirs of the Ecclesiarchy, yet, following the primal instinct to flee from pain, they poured their sincere longing for a better future into the song.
Brilliant psychic radiance began to flood into the colossal cannon known as the Soul Annihilator. Massive energy-conversion units took this raw, previously unstable psychic essence and reshaped it into a specific, structured energy matrix. At the cannon's maw, which spanned several kilometers in diameter, the gathering light began to tear the very fabric of the universe.
Influenced by the psykers' chant, the shimmering cerulean light was now flecked with threads of gold.
As the beam erupted toward the void beyond the galaxy, the weapon manifested an impossible physical state:
Recoil.
The entire gargantuan cannon, and the ship attached to it, jerked backward under the psychic momentum of the discharge. The interconnected, active psychic crystals immediately punctured the space-veil, which had already been stretched to its absolute limit.
Without an active Geller Field, more than half of the Void Sword plunged into the Warp, exactly as Kairos had foreseen. The ship was suspended in a grotesque duality: from the prow to the mid-section, the hull appeared as a shimmering phantom in realspace, while the aft remained anchored in reality.
This internal distortion of physical laws failed to trigger any conventional alarms. But without the protection of a Geller Field, a deluge of daemons manifested within the corridors of the Void Sword like a burst dam. Usually, these Neverborn would have fallen upon the mortal psykers with predatory hunger, but today they had a directive. They swarmed through the bulkheads, ignoring the masses of living flesh to race toward the power cores of the Soul Annihilator.
The pure, gargantuan psychic crystals acted as an irresistible lure, blinding the daemonic host to all else.
However, the psychic ripples generated by a hundred million psykers praising the Emperor did not go unnoticed. High within the Empyrean, the Great Presence turned His gaze toward this corner of the galactic fringe.
The Emperor swiftly delivered His mercy.
In an instant, every psyker was ignited by psychic fire. Cold, warp-scouring flames raced across the entirety of the Void Sword. Even the Emperor could not risk the consequences of such a mass of psykers falling to daemonic corruption. Furthermore, should their frantic worship continue to galvanize His divinity, His own state might become even more irreversible. These were not the sanctioned, educated psykers of the Scholastia Psykana; they were commoners who viewed the Emperor as a literal God. To a sanctioned psyker, the Emperor is a peerless man of supreme power; to these desperate souls, He was the Divine. Their untempered faith was a far more volatile force.
In a heartbeat, every psyker within the Warp across the entire Imperium Nihilus beheld the Beacon. On the edge of the galaxy, a light shone that dispelled the darkness of the void.
Even at its periphery, the light scorched Kairos Fateweaver, sending the Lord of Change fleeing in panicked haste. His carefully prepared profanities dissolved into nothingness.
"Caw! A future I did not see! Is this also the design of the Changer of Ways?!"
Kairos vanished into the depths of the Sea of Souls. Tzeentch, however, cared little for the setback of his favored daemon. All was but the shifting of the loom. An unforeseen future was exactly what the Great Conspirator desired.
Unlike the previous incident where psychic energy was crudely vented, Axion was prepared. The ship-wide siphon arrays accelerated. Whether it was the encroaching Chaos taint, the pure psychic fire ignited by the Emperor's gaze, or the unfortunate psykers themselves, everything was ruthlessly harvested.
The energy bypassed compression and was fed directly into the Soul Annihilator. The firing mode shifted from intermittent pulses to a sustained discharge.
The forward half of the ship, submerged in the Warp, acted as a gargantuan pump, mixing the ignited internal psychic fire with the raw energies of the Empyrean. Even the pure crystals within the bays were stained with patterns of pale gold flame. The burning psychic essence, fed by the Warp itself, flared like promethium poured onto a bonfire.
The maw of the Soul Annihilator unleashed a power that struck terror into all who beheld it. A massive pillar of psychic fire erupted, churning through the Sea of Souls.
For hours, this pillar tore through the Warp, shining as brightly as a second Astronomican. And across the Segmentum, ships lost in the madness of the Warp suddenly found a direction to steer toward.
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