A hundred years had passed since the end of the Machine Rebellion.
Countless races, including the Human Federation, had only just begun to recover a fragment of their former strength.
Entire regions ravaged by the Fallen Machines still lay in ruin. With entire branches of technology sealed away, countless devices destroyed beyond repair, and manufacturing methods lost, recovery remained out of reach.
Planets once thriving with ecosystems had been scorched to barren wastelands, some burned to ash, others reduced to glassy spheres—now spinning lifelessly through the void. None of the powers had the resources or energy to attempt repairs.
Meanwhile, the fall of the Aeldari Empire continued steadily and without pause.
Although a handful of Aeldari still retained their sanity, they were insignificant compared to the overwhelming 99.99% who had succumbed to corruption.
Nurtured by the endless sacrifices of their kin, the Chaos God Slaanesh stirred ever more actively in the depths of the Warp. The power radiating from it grew stronger by the day.
Under such influence, the Warp storms resonating through that twisted dimension reached unprecedented levels of intensity.
No longer were they rare phenomena. Instead, they became increasingly common—each day more inevitable, and still growing in frequency and ferocity.
Soon, stray fragments of raw Warp energy began leaking into realspace itself—slowly but relentlessly altering the very fabric of matter.
Faced with this grim situation, every interstellar civilization across the Milky Way—each dependent on the Warp for faster-than-light travel—began to sense impending catastrophe.
If left unchecked, Warp travel would become a thing of the past.
And without Warp jumps, colonial worlds scattered across vast gulfs of space would be cut off forever, each one stranded as a lonely island adrift in the star sea.
In desperation, countless civilizations drafted emergency measures.
Even the Human Federation put aside its disputes with rival powers, attempting to unite in a final effort to find a solution.
But the rate of collapse was far beyond anyone's predictions. As the Aeldari Empire sank deeper into corruption, the Warp storms multiplied a thousandfold faster than any forecast.
---
By the 107th year after the Machine Rebellion, the Warp storms had grown so violent that Warp travel became impossible.
Any ship attempting to enter the Immaterium was immediately swallowed by the raging maelstroms, vanishing without a trace.
With only sublight travel left, distant colonies became utterly unreachable.
To make matters worse, more and more Warp energy continued seeping into the galaxy.
Signals and communications collapsed under the interference. Soon, even contact between homeworlds and their own colonies was lost.
Cut off, isolated, and unable to respond, interstellar civilizations disintegrated almost overnight.
Anarchy became the new order.
Yet even this was not the end.
As the Warp's presence thickened across the galaxy, visible changes began to manifest.
At first, mutated creatures appeared sporadically on worlds.
Twisted flesh, deranged minds, and powers infused with raw Warp energy turned them into vicious predators, terrorizing countless species.
Then the situation escalated further. Where mutations gathered in numbers, daemons of the Warp began manifesting directly into reality.
Countless planets and races, isolated and defenseless, slid into ruin.
Thus began the galaxy's new Age of Darkness.
Only the Aeldari, who relied on their Webway for safe faster-than-light travel, remained untouched.
With their vast foundations intact, they continued to revel in their decadence, utterly unconcerned with the chaos engulfing the stars.
Watching the struggles of lesser civilizations became a source of amusement for them.
The sight of mortals fighting desperately for survival was, to their eyes, nothing more than a circus performance.
They remained ignorant of the truth—that all of this was their own doing.
And they remained blind to the fact that, as the architects of disaster, they too would one day pay the price.
In a sense, it was nothing more than karmic retribution.
Though in the grand scheme of the Chaos Gods, such cycles meant nothing.
They remained enthroned above all, unchanged.
---
The Crimson Heaven
From within his dominion, Orsaga gazed upon the changes sweeping realspace.
His heart was utterly calm.
The Aeldari's descent into ruin, the Federation's collapse overnight—these were, to him, nothing but fleeting echoes of an eternal cycle of rise and fall.
Mortal races forever writhed and tumbled within this cycle.
Why should he be moved?
To him, pondering what he might eat later carried more weight than contemplating their fate.
The other Chaos Gods felt much the same.
One was off slaughtering, another brewing abominations, another immersed in esoteric experiments.
None of them spared a thought for the galaxy's plight—despite the fact that they themselves were its cause.
---
The Immaterium — Year 28,994 (Terran Standard)
Deep within his crystalline labyrinth, the Changer of Ways, Tzeentch, stood before the Well of Eternity.
In his hands, he gripped a colossal staff, churning the waters of that unfathomable pool.
The Well itself was a manifestation of his essence—an extension of his authority, a fragment of the infinite cosmos embodied in liquid form.
Time, space, causality, destiny—every thread of existence could be glimpsed in its depths.
At times, Tzeentch even used it to reset entire universes.
Yet, because the Well connected all points of time, including infinite futures, even he could never be certain what might emerge from its depths.
Now, after countless years of research into dimensional anomalies, he prepared to conduct his first true interdimensional experiment.
"Hmm… let's add a few blasphemous incantations…
A bloodthirster from Khorne…
Perhaps a plague or two…
Dinosaurs? What absurd nonsense is that?
No matter—throw them in anyway."
One by one, bizarre elements were cast into the Well.
As Tzeentch stirred its depths, a murky rift slowly opened above it.
Through the breach, streams of warped time and chaotic currents swirled violently.
Tzeentch's eyes gleamed with delight.
He could sense it clearly—the other side of this tear belonged not to this Multiverse.
At last, he had opened a passage to another dimension!
Even with a fleeting glimpse, the torrent of alien information carried within the chaotic streams made the God of Knowledge tremble with hunger.
His very being yearned to seize the knowledge of those other realms.
Without hesitation, Tzeentch stretched his hand into the rift, eager to test the depths beyond…
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