The Imperial Navy was completely annihilated.
It was an entirely anticipated outcome. Leveraging the unique space environment of the Baal system, they had successfully delayed and destroyed a massive volume of Tyranids.
However, against the true primary force of the Tyranid swarms, this quantity was a mere drop in the ocean.
A literal drop in a literal ocean.
"The stars in the sky are no longer visible," Baal noted grimly, as the surrounding Blood Angels checked their weapons.
Even the mortal auxiliaries had received their gear; every single soul was fully prepared for death.
"Let us hope that Mephiston and the others meet with absolute success on Baal Secundus."
Baal was fully aware of Mephiston's operational plan. Confronted with an act so highly unorthodox and in flagrant violation of Imperial law, he could only offer silent consent.
Ultimately, the singular, paramount objective was the defense of Baal.
The power of the warp, even under the crushing dampening field of the Shadow in the Warp, could still output catastrophic destructive force—provided it was channeled by individuals who were, without exception, terrifyingly powerful psykers.
At this moment, blood unspooled across the terrain as calcined skulls and warp-flame manifested out of thin air across the surface of Baal Secundus.
The swarm's Mycetic Spores were already breaching the upper atmosphere. Mephiston's baseline contingency plan dictated that if they failed to maintain absolute control over the daemon, they would simply unleash it directly into the path of the encroaching Tyranid vanguard.
However, his tactical calculus had just suffered a critical failure.
The entity forcibly pulled through the veil and targeted for psychic containment was not the Exalted Bloodthirster Ka'Bandha, but a completely different apex predator who had historically clashed with Sanguinius.
"KILL!"
Accompanied by a world-shattering roar that vibrated through the crust of the moon, a grotesque, monumentally powerful entity materialized.
Angron stood upon the soil of Baal Secundus. In a flash of absolute fury, he butchered the vast majority of the assembled Librarians. Yet no Khornate legions followed in his wake; it was as if he had been deployed personally by Khorne for an isolated directive.
Mephiston's cognitive processors could derive no logical loop to explain this anomaly.
He had committed an absolute, unforgivable strategic error.
"Mephiston!"
He pushed his psychic capacity to its absolute limit, unleashing a torrent of warp-magics while the surviving Librarians channeled their collective output to reinforce his matrix.
Yet regardless of the spell's magnitude or the raw output of the psychic energy, every single vector was violently shattered by Angron's functionally infinite rage and kinetic power.
Mephiston computed the reality instantly: to engage a Primarch, one required a combat asset performing at a Primarch-tier specification. His current echelons simply did not possess that magnitude of force.
"A truly pathetic display."
As the vocal data unspooled, a wave of exceptionally malevolent, highly concentrated warp power erupted from the Immaterium.
Countless blue and red tendrils materialized, intertwining rapidly to ensnare Angron's massive frame, locking his kinetic momentum in place.
This was—
Mephiston experienced an unprecedented spike of cognitive pressure. Never in his operational lifecycle had he anticipated encountering adversaries of this scale and tier in such rapid succession.
Directing his gaze toward the blue-armored Astartes levitating effortlessly above a floating disc, Mephiston identified the target instantly.
"Ahriman. The Thousand Sons Sorcerer."
"Suppress that hostility when formatting your address to me," Ahriman responded smoothly. "My current operational objective is exclusively to reinforce the defensive line against the Tyranids."
Angron violently ruptured the binding tendrils, but Ahriman's secondary spell-array had already achieved total initialization.
The reality-warping script instantly teleported Mephiston and the remaining active Librarians clear of the immediate kill-zone.
"The structural integrity of the entire Imperium currently hinges on the defense of Baal," Ahriman unspooled calmly. "I harbor absolute contempt for this rotting regime, but if this massive imperial corpse finally collapses, zero factions will remain to thoroughly obstruct the total advance of the Tyranid swarms."
"What parameters are you calculating?"
"Are your visual sensors failing you, Mephiston?"
Mephiston required no prophetic vision to comprehend the data; leveraging his advanced cognitive algorithms as a Chief Librarian, he instantly deduced Ahriman's structural meaning.
"The primary macro-fleet of the Tyranids... precisely when is it fated to arrive?"
"A mere few centuries."
It was a remarkably brief chronological window—a mere microsecond in the grand timeline of the cosmos.
"Though the probability trends toward zero, our future kinetic engagements against one another should likely be modulated with a degree of restraint."
The high-altitude dialogue was abruptly truncated as a continuous deluge of planetary landing pods choked the skies.
Above them, a Tyranid bio-fleet spanning tens of thousands of kilometers had completely penetrated the Baal Secundus sub-system, systematically severing all physical and communications logistics between the primary world and its twin moons.
By every analytical metric, the definitive hour of conflict had arrived.
Infinite swarms of Tyranid organisms plummeted through the atmosphere, met instantly by the defensive fire of the planetary garrisons and Space Marine detachments.
There was zero tactical elegance left to execute; the campaign had devolved into the most primal tier of raw, unadulterated attrition.
Ground-based orbital defense macro-cannons roared against high-altitude acid-spore bombardments, while Bio-Titans of colossal proportions matched strides with Imperial armor.
Mephiston cast his optics back toward the primary drop zone. Angron had already launched his frame directly into the densest cluster of descending Tyranids.
In a highly unorthodox sense, the ritual had achieved its baseline objective.
The remaining Librarians fragmented, departing the staging ground to reinforce the various Chapter defense sectors across Baal Secundus, while a select detachment initialized transit protocols to relocate to Baal Primus or the homeworld to fight alongside their parent units.
Ahriman casually unspooled a pair of localized telekinetic scripts, violently twisting and incinerating a cluster of descending Spore Mines.
"Ahriman," Mephiston began, experiencing a profoundly anomalous sensation as he operated in tandem with an arch-traitor of Mankind. "Do your data feeds indicate whether the Astraeus Fleet is slated to converge on these coordinates?"
Hearing that specific designation, Ahriman's movements stalled for a microsecond. He immediately projected an exceptionally dense psychic aegis around their perimeter.
"The Astraeus Fleet is merely the nomenclature utilized by the Imperium's archives," Ahriman corrected flatly. "The Tyranid Hive Mind categorizes those specific echelons as Hive Fleet Aether and Hive Fleet Chronos."
"How did your network harvest that data?"
"Because I have personally cross-examined the supreme commander of that fleet."
"The intelligence reports suggest—"
"That fleet is directed by an exceptionally unique individual asset," Ahriman interrupted. "Their operational volume, macro-objectives, and ultimate coordinates remain entirely uncataloged. Even the pantheon of the Four Gods cannot map their trajectory with absolute clarity—or perhaps, they simply decline to distribute that file to their heralds."
Mephiston committed the data stream to his primary memory banks.
"Their commander seeks to convert this entire galaxy into a colossal livestock sector engineered exclusively for Tyranid consumption. Every independent living organism is explicitly categorized on their bio-menu."
"Does this imply the entity operates with a cognitive matrix capable of conventional dialogue?"
"Affirmative. I recognize the calculation sounds entirely anomalous."
Before the exchange could yield further data, a cataclysmic kinetic detonation from the rear severed the dialogue.
The specific coordinate where Angron had been engaged was completely obscured by a column of displaced sand and debris rising thousands of meters into the air. The raw kinetic shockwave violently deflected every independent Tyranid organism within a massive radius.
Ahriman halted his advance. His internal sensors registered an exceptionally dense psychic dampening effect—the Shadow in the Warp had scaled to a threshold that completely severed his interface with the Empyrean.
Mephiston, relying on his deep biological instincts, calculated that an exceptionally powerful organism had just materialized within that dust cloud.
Angron's localized death-roar had not ceased, yet an adversary capable of matching his exact power tier had officially checked into the grid.
As the dust column settled, a Tyranid organism of identical proportions to the Primarch emerged, sporting massive bio-wings and encased in an incredibly dense layer of reinforced chitinous armor.
The creature's morphology suggested a highly synthesized hybrid of a massive Haruspex and a Hive Tyrant—yet both powerful psykers computed instantly that this was no conventional synapse unit.
Only a combat asset performing at a Primarch-tier specification could engage a Primarch.
Yuno experienced a distinct neural spike.
She directed her sensory arrays toward Baal Secundus, her brow furrowing slightly.
"Angron... has the operational variable of Ka'Bandha been completely swapped for Angron?"
Yuki simultaneously parsed the anomaly. "Does that signify the deployment of a new sub-consciousness?"
Yuno nodded, her expression shifting to one of absolute solemnity.
"Affirmative. And this specific sub-consciousness is configured with a completely different data profile compared to War and Pestilence."
She locked her optics onto Yuki.
"Its designated codename is Famine. It functions as an independent entity that successfully extracted and weaponized a core fraction of my primal hunger."