The Empyrean screamed.
It was not the usual ambient hum of the Immaterium—the ceaseless murmur of psykers adrift, the whisper of warp tides, or the maddened echoes of daemons scratching at reality's edge. This was something sharper. Brief. Precise. A psychic scalpel, slicing across the collective soul of the galaxy.
In a single moment, the cry reached across light-years. Planets trembled beneath its resonance. The Astronomican flickered. Sensitive abhumans howled in agony. Astropaths collapsed, their minds flooded with raw dread. Navigators recoiled within their tanks, their third eyes bleeding as if clawed by unseen hands.
In the heart of Terra, within the golden walls of the Imperial Palace, the Emperor felt it—not just as pain, but as identity. It bore a signature. Alien yet deliberate. An emergent shape in the chaos, too vast for any singular sorcerer, too deliberate for mere coincidence. It wasn't a breach. It was a shift.
A shift in the balance of reality.
The Great Crusade thundered outward, glorious and bold. But deep within the Emperor's endless foresight, he recognized the true war had already begun—the war he had always feared. A war not of armies or empires, but of minds, of belief, of the Immaterium itself.
He did not rage. He did not shout. He calculated.
From his throne, he processed the disturbance with his ancient, near-infinite cognition. Billions of data-points from across the galaxy—astrological auguries, geomantic tremors, scattered whispers from clandestine agents, and psychic aftershocks from the very fabric of the warp—were drawn into his awareness.
What emerged was chilling: a vector. A growing instability.
And so, in silence, he moved.
The Summoning
Malcador the Sigillite felt the call like a thought not his own. It was not sound. Not a message. Merely pressure—a mental summons more ancient than language.
He walked the hallowed halls toward the Throne Room. Custodians, those golden giants forged for perfection, parted wordlessly before him. Inside, the air shimmered with raw power. The Emperor did not speak. He projected.
What passed between them was not conversation, but will. Not orders, but inevitability.
And beyond Malcador, others too felt the silent directives—Inquisitives deep within the Palace, technosavants of Mars, Librarians across segmentae. Minds aligned to the Emperor's unseen war.
The First Directive: Map the Unseen Fire
To the Custodes and the nascent Ordo Redactor, came a clear, absolute command:
"Isolate. Classify. Observe."
No anomaly was too small. No disturbance too distant. Worlds with the slightest warp fluctuation were to be catalogued. The Custodes, often wielded as golden thunderbolts, now acted as silent shadows—gathering information, operating in the dark corners of the Crusade.
The Ordo Redactor, a secretive body only just forming, was tasked with building the galaxy's most forbidden archive—a living map of the enemy's movements, even when that enemy wore no form.
This was not conquest. It was containment. Pattern recognition. Anticipation of an enemy still becoming.
The Second Directive: Rewrite the Paths
To the Navigators, Astropaths, and select Mechanicum cartographers, the Emperor gave an order both perilous and unprecedented:
"Re-map the Webway."
The Aeldari's psychic labyrinth had once been a theoretical shield. But now it was a potential dagger at Terra's throat. The enemy might already be inside.
And so, under great secrecy, Navigators were dispatched to explore the inner pathways. Forbidden auguries were employed. Ancient xeno-artifacts reactivated.
The Tech-Priests who understood non-Euclidean spatial mathematics and warp-adjacent energies were mobilized to dissect Aeldari remnants. It was a brutal, blind search into haunted roads, but one the Emperor deemed necessary.
He would not allow a path to Terra to remain unguarded.
The Third Directive: The Silent Zones
To the Librarius and certain Mechanicum enclaves, the Emperor imposed a hard truth:
"Establish Null Contingency Zones."
Psykers and warp-specialist Magi were ordered to cease their practices in select regions. Across Terra, Luna, and key strategic worlds, entire zones were established where no warp use was permitted.
These blackout areas were shielded by psy-disruptors, filled with hidden blanks, or watched by psychic auditors. Many within the Librarius balked. Some Mechanicum factions protested. But none defied.
To invite the enemy's gaze was to invite destruction. Silence would be their sanctuary.
The Fourth Directive: Pariah Begins
And then came the coldest order.
Malcador felt it before it was spoken. A name. A project. A necessity.
"Initiate foundational protocols for Project: Pariah."
Across the Imperium, hidden agents began the search for blanks—humans born without a warp presence. Outcasts. Pariahs. Untouchables.
Where they were found, they were taken. Studied. Contained. Dissected. Gene-plasm samples were secured. Ethical lines blurred and then disappeared. Laboratories once used for human advancement were quietly turned into psychic nullification chambers.
These were not soldiers yet. They were potential. Weapons in the making. Tools to fight a war where faith, firepower, and fleets would fail.
The Fifth Directive: The Saturn Vaults
Finally, the Emperor spoke of Saturn.
Its moons, cold and distant, were to become vaults. Not fortresses. Not shrines. But containment chambers for daemonic artifacts gathered by Crusade forces.
Forbidden relics, unclean texts, cursed blades, and warp-tainted fragments—these were no longer to be destroyed on sight. They were to be studied.
Malcador's duty was clear: construct secure facilities under layers of psycho-reactive wards and nullification fields. The most stable minds were to be recruited. The most fanatical, quietly excluded. This was a descent into knowledge as poison. But even poison could be an antidote in the right dose.
The Sigillite obeyed, though his soul trembled.
The Beginning of the True War
The Imperial Palace remained a beacon. The Great Crusade marched on, glory and triumph blinding those too focused on the stars. But within the Emperor's sanctum, another war had begun.
A war of silence. A war of preparation. A war of eyes in the dark and thoughts locked behind shields of will.
He had seen the ripple in the Immaterium and recognized its cause—something new, something impossible, something laughing just beneath perception.
The defense of Terra had not begun with a sword raised, but with secrets whispered across golden halls.
The Emperor had seen the storm—and he would meet it with a shield of silence, a sword of science, and the terrible weight of necessity.