The air in the vaults beneath the Imperial Palace hummed with a power unlike any mortal engine. This was the Emperor's greatest undertaking, a project that transcended mere technology and delved into the esoteric heart of reality itself: the Human Webway. For years, untold resources and the collective psychic might of a thousand carefully vetted savants had been poured into this venture. Its completion promised an escape from the treacherous tides of the Warp—a golden road to a united galaxy, free from the predations of the Great Enemy.
Timeline: M31.005. The Great Crusade was concluding, sowing the seeds of triumphs and betrayals blossom fully. Beneath the Golden Throne, optimism was a palpable force, thick as the ozone crackling around colossal crystalline conduits and throbbing psychic resonators. The Emperor Himself, a figure of impossible light and calm focus when He chose to manifest His physical presence here, oversaw the final calibrations. This was His dream made manifest—a stable, secure network linking the stars, bypassing the capricious, daemon-haunted void.
But dreams are fragile things, easily warped into nightmares by the touch of the Ruinous Powers.
Across the galaxy, the tendrils of Chaos were tightening their grip on the hearts of men. And deep within the sprawling, secretive facility beneath Terra, agents of that darkness moved with insidious purpose.
Known only by code designations whispered amongst corrupted choirs and hidden covens, Griffith and Vader were chosen instruments of the Great Game. Griffith—his mortal guise that of the seemingly devout Arch-Adept Kaelen, Master of the Paternova Choir—moved with unsettling grace. Once devoted to the Emperor's will, Kaelen's faith had curdled, replaced by a zealous obsession with the Prince of Pleasure. The perfection he now sought lay not in the orderly functioning of the Emperor's design, but in the exquisite agony of its unraveling. He subtly misaligned resonance frequencies, introduced dissonant psychic echoes, and whispered poisoned suggestions into the collective unconscious of the choir—sowing discord like a deadly psychic virus.
Vader—his mortal shell the monstrously augmented Fabricator-General Vangor of the Terran Mechanicum, Cold ceramite limbs and humming archaeotech replaced flesh. His mind was a labyrinth of forbidden knowledge. He served the Lord of change. His sabotage was physical yet profound: entropy woven into safeguards, power conduits rerouted for collapse, stable components swapped with corrupted surrogates primed to fail at the crucial moment. Not an explsion but raw power of blood .all happened in lunar is given to a Necron overlord for now.
Neither agent knew the other's true nature or allegiance, only that the Webway project must not succeed. A shared understanding whispered through the Æther, from Warp-touched dreams and daemon-oracles: the Great Work must fail. The path must be broken. The Joke must be perfected.
The final phase began.
The massive portal conduit pulsed with unimaginable power, a shimmering field of force crackling at its heart, seeking purchase on the ancient lattice of the Eldar Webway. The psychic choir, led by Arch-Adept Kaelen, focused their combined will—a golden beam lancing into the portal's core. Fabricator-General Vangor stood at his dais, many-limbed and expressionless, guiding the final activation sequence.
Then, the subtle became catastrophic.
A near-imperceptible flicker in the resonance frequency—Kaelen's final, loving sabotage—triggered a harmonic feedback loop that screamed through the choir's minds. Savants dropped to the ground, clutching their heads, blood weeping from ears and eyes. Their focused will shattered. The golden beam sputtered, turning to a chaotic, multihued spray of raw, uncontrolled psychic force.
Simultaneously, Vangor's altered power conduits surged. Readings spiked. Sparks became searing arcs. Protective wards fizzled and died. The primary containment field—meant to stabilize contact with the Webway—shuddered and flickered.
Then silence.
Just for a moment—a microsecond, heavy and unnatural.
Then the scream began.
Not a sound, but a violation. A physical tearing. A sundered veil. The portal did not stabilize or expand. It ruptured.
Impossible colors bled into being. Geometry twisted in ways the mind rejected. The air reeked of ozone, brimstone—and something colder, older, utterly alien. From that yawning rift in space, they came.
Not a trickle. A flood.
Thousands of Daemons poured forth. Gibbering horrors of Tzeentch, roaring Bloodletters of Khorne, rotting Plaguebearers of Nurgle, and shrieking Daemonettes of Slaanesh—each one a fragment of the Immaterium's hate given form. The pure, sacred vaults beneath the Golden Throne were defiled in seconds.
Skitarii, servitors, custodial staff—all were annihilated. Flesh twisted, melted, or torn asunder. Souls devoured. The psychic screams filled the chamber like a black tide.
What had been humanity's most daring hope now became its most intimate damnation. The Human Webway was no longer a promise. It was a wound—an open conduit from hell.
And somewhere, from amidst the impossible colors and the unthinkable angles, came laughter. Not loud. Not mocking. Subtle. Soft. Patient.
The Joke had landed.
Humanity's proudest step toward the stars had opened the door to hell in its own heart. It was the ultimate irony, orchestrated by hands invisible, insidious—and delighted.
High above the chaos, in the serene sanctum of the Golden Throne, the air changed.
The Emperor felt it.
He had been guiding the project through His psychic focus, maintaining His vigil through the Throne's arcane systems. Now, that focus brought Him face-to-face not with the hidden paths of the Webway—but with raw, unfiltered nightmare.
He knew instantly.
The dream was dead. The nightmare had arrived.
Across the palace, the Legio Custodes felt the shockwave ripple through reality. Valerian, Captain-General of the Custodian Guard, received the command—wordless, absolute.
Descend.
The Emperor stirred.
He did not fully rise from the Throne. To do so would risk unsealing the protections that now barely held the Warp at bay. But His form manifested—golden, blinding, impossible. A radiant sun standing at the edge of an abyss.
He did not speak. His will was command enough.
The Custodes moved—ten thousand golden sentinels descending into the vaults like the wrath of heaven.
Bolters roared. Guardian spears flared. Daemons fell, dissolved, shrieked. The Custodes moved like gods among mortals, back-to-back, perfect in unity, merciless in execution.
The Emperor moved with them. Not a warrior in the mortal sense, but a force—His psychic fury banishing daemons by the hundreds, His mere presence unmaking the lies of Chaos. He walked among the slaughter, a golden storm obliterating the unclean.
But this was not a victory.
This was containment.
This was triage.
The Webway project was dead. In its place: a gaping wound in reality, a backdoor to Terra itself. The fight had become one not for hope, but survival. Not to save humanity's future—but to prevent its annihilation in the present.
The vaults became a warzone. Blood drenched the floors, sacred wards shattered, and the Emperor Himself fought amid the horror, carving order from madness.
And always, in the distance, in the shadows between screams, that laughter echoed. Soft. Cold. Eternal.
The Joke had landed.
And it would echo across millennia.