Staring at the golden skeleton before him, Zhou Ye barely managed to hold back a laugh. He forced it down at the last possible moment — because if it weren't for the helmet visor blocking his face, anyone watching would have seen a grin more impossible to suppress than an AK on full auto. He was deeply satisfied with his creation.
In a universe this thoroughly sewage-drenched, a man had to find his little spiritual comforts wherever he could — or he'd lose his mind sooner or later.
But just as quickly, his expression froze.
Because...
"For the Second Empire."
"Oh, for f***'s sake. GTFH, Tzeentch!!!"
He stared at that suddenly-blurted line — the kind of line that made it genuinely hard to keep a straight face — and couldn't help cursing aloud. Definitely Tzeentch's fault. Absolutely not his own miscalculation. His plan had been flawless, every detail perfectly accounted for. If anything had gone wrong, it was entirely because Tzeentch had been meddling from the shadows. It was Tzeentch's scheming that made him give just the tiniest, most microscopic bit extra.
"Hahaha......"
And yet somehow, inexplicably, Zhou Ye could have sworn he heard the echo of hearty, unrestrained laughter ringing in his ears. It wasn't coming from the Warp — it was coming from that other dimension, the Imaginary Space, with which he'd always maintained the faintest thread of connection.
"Great Lord of Laughs above... come to think of it, am I getting a bit heretical myself?"
He rubbed his chin, staring at the golden Necron Phaeron radiating sacred radiance before him.
Zhou Ye sank into thought. And then, just as he was contemplating whether he ought to go to confession...
"What is the Second Empire?"
The Necron Phaeron's voice emerged — a low, puzzled murmur — as though it genuinely could not work out the answer.
"The dominion that humanity established when it first departed from Terra was the First Empire. And our magnificent God-Emperor, upon the ruins of that First Empire, founded the sacred and glorious Second Empire."
"I see... And you are?"
The Necron Phaeron gave a firm, approving nod at that — seemed perfectly satisfied with the explanation — but then something seemed to occur to it. Its gaze turned toward Zhou Ye.
"Who are you?"
"I am a faithful subject of His Imperial Majesty. And at this very moment, His Majesty's subjects are being persecuted by heretics. We must..."
"Crush the desecrating heretics — for the God-Emperor!!!"
A furious roar thundered out, and the entire tomb world shuddered to its foundations. Whether it was Zhou Ye's doing or something else entirely, the dark and deathly-silent tomb was flooded in the very next instant with blinding golden light — radiant, solemn, and strangely magnificent.
Zhou Ye felt like his eyes were about to give out entirely, but he still managed to fish his communicator out at that moment.
"Hello, hello — Inquisitor. I found reinforcements."
"Hmm — really?"
On the other end, Chris was standing with cold sweat already running down his forehead. As a psyker, he could feel it with complete clarity — the state of the Warp had shifted. Khorne's gaze had descended upon the battlefield.
If things kept escalating like this, there was a very real chance it would all spiral into a full Greater Daemon manifestation.
At that point, Exterminatus might be the only remaining option — but the problem was, he didn't have access to an Exterminatus order right now. His Black Ship was still drifting somewhere in the Warp, completely out of reach. He had to find a way to press these cultists back down.
So when Zhou Ye's words reached him, Chris couldn't contain his eagerness. He had a nagging sense that something was off — but there wasn't any room left to worry about that.
"Then... for humanity. For the Imperium."
And with those words from Zhou Ye still hanging in the air, Chris, the White Scars Astartes, and the PDF troopers all watched in wide-eyed disbelief as a blaze of golden light swept across the battlefield.
A cohort of Necrons stepped forward — gauss weapons raised, golden-armored, every one of them radiating a startling aura of sacred, imperial dignity.
Their weapons fired with crisp, precise bursts, picking off target after target. Khorne cultists, Tzeentchian cultists, Genestealers — every faction was a valid target. The moment that Necron cohort appeared on the field, even the Grand Free-for-All seemed to pause for a fraction of a second, as though the entire battlefield had stopped breathing to stare.
The Thousand Sons sorcerer felt as though he had just witnessed the single most Tzeentchian thing that had ever existed in this universe. Then he felt it — a shift in the air above.
From the highest heavens, a shriek rang out.
A great and transcendent presence cast its gaze downward — as though it had just witnessed something utterly unprecedented, something it had never seen before.
And within that crystalline gaze, countless eyes fixed upon a single point.
They saw it — a cohort of Necrons thoroughly marinated in the curses of the Ruinous Powers, somehow radiating the essence of Imperial faith in every direction. This was beyond Tzeentchian. This was so profoundly, impossibly Tzeentchian that even Tzeentch himself had never conceived of it.
The change thrilled him. He wanted it. He desperately wanted to find the source of this change. He would bestow his most generous blessing upon the one responsible. He would make them his Champion. He wanted to possess them.
Ten thousand years — it had been a very long time since Tzeentch had felt a hunger like this.
Change. Change. Change. Endless, infinite change.
Tzeentch's supreme pursuit. Nothing in all creation excited him more than change.
And now he was like a starving beast, clawing desperately to find the one who had authored all of this.
But unfortunately — he couldn't see a thing. He truly, genuinely could not see anything at all. So he followed his gaze, searching and searching — and what he found at the end of it was red light.
"Khorne!!!"
Tzeentch let out a sharp, explosive shriek — because he had found the Butcher.
He couldn't see the source. It had to be Khorne's doing. That dimwit. That brainless butcher, trying to strangle this change before it could bloom.
Despicable. Were you going to betray change too, just like that festering trash Nurgle?
And so even the famously stingy and utterly deranged Tzeentch, in that moment, poured down a blessing of his own — a blessing to rival Khorne's in full. He would tear apart whoever was disrupting this. He would find the source of the change. He would claim it.
If conditions had allowed it, he'd have hurled Kairos Fateweaver or Magnus himself through the veil without a second thought.
Bless him. Take him...
"Praise the Architect of Fate — crush the dogs of Khorne!!!"
The Thousand Sons sorcerer felt it in that same instant — felt the yearning rolling off the Architect of Fate like heat from a furnace, felt the blessing pour into him like a torrent. And then lightning crashed down, and frost locked the air solid. Savage ice and crackling thunder rained from the sky in sheets — indiscriminate, relentless, targeting everyone not aligned with Tzeentch.
The Khorne cultists caught the worst of it especially. The battle kept escalating.
As for the Imperium's forces...
From Inquisitor Chris and the White Scars Astartes all the way down to the ordinary PDF infantryman — every last one of them felt their entire worldview quietly shatter.
They knew what Necrons were, of course. The Xenos were Xenos — not heretics. They didn't corrupt, didn't spread contagion. And before the formation of the Great Rift, heretical threats had been, frankly, far less common than xenos encounters. Everyone knew what these things were.
But this...
Inquisitor Chris felt something in his perception crack, just slightly. Standing there, watching all of this, he arrived at only one conclusion: this world had gone insane. If he himself hadn't lost his mind — then the world absolutely had.
Particularly after he watched a golden Necron lord, radiating a holy aura from every inch of its metal frame, raise its fist and roar — For the God-Emperor! For humanity! For the Second Empire!
At that point, the Inquisitor simply gave up on thinking. He stood there, staring blankly at everything unfolding before him.
And in that same moment, a flash of light — and Zhou Ye teleported directly to his side.