[Warp]—the clash of divine powers was terrifying.
Whether in the material world or this bizarre darkness—a superdimensional, boundless realm formed from the emotional and psychic energies of all intelligent life in the physical universe—when the wills of two Chaos Gods collided without restraint, calamity followed. The oldest of the Ruinous Powers, the God of Disease and Plague, [Nurgle], clashed head-on with the newly risen Chaos God—the God of Destruction and [Finality].
The entire [Warp] began to boil. Like shattering glass, cracks spread across its surface as an unprecedented Warp storm erupted.
Standing amidst the shroud of ruin, harboring deep malice and venomous curses, the lesser Chaos Gods, psychic deities, cosmic demigods, and other extraordinary beings dwelling within the [Warp]—whether lurking, sleeping, writhing, or waaagh…—all sensed the upheaval and turned their wary gazes toward the once-exclusive domains of the Four Great Powers.
The damp, rotting tides of pestilence clashed against the gorgeous violet-red flow of Imaginary Energy. Lightning, fire, and oceans born of the highest heavens' might flashed ceaselessly within the chaotic, boundless void.
Every tower and hall within [Nurgle]'s realm—vast enough to contain the corpses and plagues of all worlds in existence—shifted endlessly. Each decayed planet drawn into the [Warp], each unclean star system shrouded in its sickly yellow haze, seemed wrapped within a kaleidoscopic aurora of grand geometric arcs.
That was the color of war.
Beautiful, yet deadly—an eternal dance of Chaos.
Crack! Crack! Crack—!
Brilliant sparks burst from the sacred garden [Nurgle] treasured most. They illuminated the depths of the [Warp]'s veil as fierce flares howled through the skies, tearing through the layers of space.
"ROOOOOAR—!!"
Thunder roared in the high heavens. With wrath boiling in his heart, a decayed hand burst forth from the turbulent veil of time and space.
"Arrogant, detestable, and shameful fool!"
That massive, moss-covered, ancient staff—weathered like deadwood and impossible to describe in scale—descended in a single colossal strike toward the far horizon, the edge of the [Warp], and the immeasurable prism of Imaginary Space.
That hateful light—that unbearable radiance—mocked him.
"Heh… arrogance demands a price, and I have plenty to pay."
"Rotting [Nurgle], pitiful [Nurgle], relic of an old age, forgotten [Nurgle]…"
Rip—Crack! Crack!
Thunderous screams echoed through the void. Countless wails rose in agony and despair. The shockwave shattered minor realms and ancient constructs within the [Warp]. Enormous rifts in space-time split open across infinite dimensions.
It was the trumpet of annihilation. In a single instant, uncountable [Warp] entities perished.
The boiling sea of souls blurred the boundary between the [Warp] and the material universe.
"Why? Why?!"
Amid the furious assault stood a father's grief—Nurgle's benevolent sorrow twisted into rage. He cared not for Selene's unapologetic malice; he mourned for his children, his creations, his lost offspring.
"Why hurt My children?! Thou shouldst have struck at Me instead!"
From the sky, thick, sluggish tears of oily corruption fell, splashing into the battlefield where violet-red crystalline seas met Nurgle's plague-swamps.
Hissss—
The advance of the crystalline ocean halted. Countless Honkai Beasts screamed in agony. Even Emperor-class beasts such as Parvati could not withstand the corrosive deluge—the reverse flood of divine, plague-laden ichor from Nurgle himself. They rotted and crumbled into nothing.
For the first time, Selene truly witnessed what it meant for a Honkai Beast to decay.
"Nurgle is love! Nurgle is life!"
Just as Honkai Energy acted as a fatal, infectious, corrosive virus to the daemons of Nurgle—creatures otherwise immortal within His realm—so too did Nurgle's pestilence prove lethal to Selene's army of Honkai Beasts, beings supposedly immune to all disease.
Even corruption could be corrupted.
...
The morale of countless Nurgle daemons seemed to surge at once—they chanted, praised, and shrieked with fanatical devotion. Some spread their arms wide, splitting open their bellies; others prostrated themselves, licking the filth and muck of the swamps with fervent zeal.
"Pain is but an illusion of the senses. Fear, an illusion of the mind. All is vanity. Only decay loves the living! Praise the Benevolent Father!"
Puh! Puh! Puh!
Thick, sloshing sounds echoed like gas seeping from bloated pipes. The already round-bodied legions of Nurgle daemons swelled grotesquely as they devoured their Father's merciful gift. Maggot-filled entrails burst from mottled deer-like antlers piercing through yellow-green flesh; massive, swollen bodies split open with festering wounds as their innards rolled and churned within.
Putrid lymph glands erupted from hidden recesses, spilling bright, glistening filth. Trails of bile flowed from festering wounds, marking the ground with slimy, unclean tracks behind the advancing host of the Unclean Ones—daemonic lords saturated with corruption—who now engulfed the dying ranks of Honkai Beasts beneath the thick tears of Nurgle's polluted rain.
"Pathetic playacting. Feigned kindness. You speak of harming your children? Hah… I merely call it collateral wear."
Selene glanced downward with amusement. In some ways, she was not much nobler than Nurgle, yet that did not stop her from standing upon the moral high ground, mocking him with cold arrogance. Conscience? A mask to be worn when convenient.
"You even treat your 'children' as tools to be discarded at whim. How base. How heartless. Those lives, enduring endless suffering yet standing firm, are truly beautiful! The essence of life, trampled beneath your feet!"
"My so-called kin, thou disgust Me."
Nurgle found himself reminded of Khorne—even surpassed in cruelty—by Selene's attitude toward her Honkai Beast legions, treating death as nothing more than the cycle of rebuilding and reshaping. He had witnessed a few of Finality's greater daemons, clearly her trusted lieutenants, collapse under his plague's rot. They howled in agony, yet Selene spared them not even a glance—merely reclaimed their essence and reforged them, coldly, without pause in her assault.
"This is the mission of the Honkai Beasts. Their very existence serves the expansion of destruction. Perhaps I could grant them wisdom—but not yet. My dear decaying predecessor, how dare you presume they are My army? Is that not arrogance in itself?"
"The means to defeat you, to weaken you… this is only the beginning."
Speaking in the tone of one Chaos God addressing another, Selene curved her lips in a smile devoid of warmth—like a dead, frozen sun. At her fingertips, stellar fusion, the power of dying stars, spun like marbles, circling around Warp and Imaginary constructs alike.
"Let Me enlighten you! In the future I shall compose, the stars themselves shall be Mine, the galaxy united. The chorus of the cosmos shall resound—every race and being reborn beneath My dominion. The glorious utopia of fantasy shall return under My reign!"
Twisting logic into proclamation—was that not her art?
After all, once a Heroic Spirit within the vast Nasuverse, she had learned well the art of grandiose chanting in a world full of riddling philosophers.
"Whether in this Warp where starlight cannot reach, or the sea of souls beyond light's grasp, the cosmos shall kneel. And you—your future holds no glory. To Me, you are already a corpse in a tomb."
"In My era, there is no seat for you or your spawn. Life and death, Finality—the end of all things—requires only Me."
"Bask in this torment. Rejoice, for once. This is the sole honor you have earned in your wasted existence."
With those words, Selene opened her palm. The stars converged—the radiance of cosmic birth, the authority of creation. Finality, too, was Origin. "...A merciful gift, from Me."
"Blasphemous wretch—!"
Whether laughing or enraged beyond laughter, Nurgle's fury faded from his face, replaced by pure plague and Chaos, condensed and undispersed. "Then come—!"
Vnnnn—KRAK-KRAK!
...
So reckless. Newly born, yet already fighting the eldest of the Chaos Gods to the death, leaving no retreat… truly worthy of the title—God of Destruction, Finality.
It was clear to all—Selene was much like Khorne, the brute of battle—another god addicted to stirring wars, drawing sustenance from the destruction and slaughter within the infernal crucible.
In the cataclysmic clash that dissolved into void across the chaotic veil, all who observed sensed it—a cold, arrogant declaration. A proclamation of absolute supremacy.
Among them, some ancient entities of the Warp, those unaffiliated beings who had existed since before the fall of the ancient Aeldari Empire—before one of the Four, Slaanesh, had even risen, and before the age when humanity's Federation flourished—began to recall a dreadful memory.
That storm… the one that cast humanity, the now-dominant race of the galaxy, from the golden dream of its prime—and raised the Chaos Gods to their full might.
Back then, after enduring immeasurable loss and suffering, the human Federation—still not yet the Imperium—finally quelled the Iron Men Rebellion. For the first time, it turned to peace and recovery.
But the ancient calm of the Warp had become history. Roaring storms made warp travel nearly impossible. From mysterious assaults by warp entities to the disappearance of ships, to entire fleets vanishing forever into the immaterium, humanity's vast realm shattered overnight.
Planets were isolated—each world trapped in its own prison.
In time, the Federation's order crumbled. Technology and civilization regressed. Humanity's once-golden glory—its science, its culture, its radiant splendor—became an unreachable dream.
Civil war, ignorance, and bloodshed filled the long millennia of loss. The paradise of old became hell. The chaotic age of endless war and disorder devoured humanity's future, even as it nourished the destructive might of the Warp, dragging reality deeper into the abyss.
Mortals of the material universe did not know the truth—but the ancient, transcendent beings of the Warp did.
That Warp Storm which annihilated humanity's Golden Age… had been born from a civil war between the new and old Chaos Gods.
At that time, the newly-born Slaanesh—the Prince of Pleasure—grew fascinated with the Aeldari race, whose ecstasy and depravity had given birth to them. Claiming all that belonged to the Aeldari, the Prince declared that every creation of their empire was theirs by right.
But what are the Chaos Gods, if not rivals without mercy?
When Slaanesh rampaged through the ruins of the Aeldari Empire—within the Eye of Terror and across the high-dimensional layers of the Warp—reaping, consuming, and defiling every Aeldari creation found by their hands, tendrils, claws, or tongues… the other Gods intervened.
Though Tzeentch did not strike openly, that cunning schemer surely acted in secret—perhaps even as the hidden instigator—claiming no small share of the spoils.
Nurgle and Khorne, however, entered the fray directly.
The former, swift as pestilence, seized the Aeldari Mother Goddess—the goddess of life and fertility, Isha—a treasure Slaanesh still covets to this day.
The latter, bolder by far, declared openly that the Aeldari war god resembled his own passion, and that he desired him.
The young Prince of Pleasure, of course, refused. All Aeldari creations were their exclusive possession.
So Khorne struck.
Thus began a war of millennia—an age-long struggle of the strong against the newly born. In the chaos of their conflict, the Aeldari war god Khaine was shattered into countless fragments, his essence scattered throughout the material universe.
That, in turn, became the direct spark that ended humanity's Golden Age—the great Warp Storm that followed. By the time of the Emperor of Mankind, the massive Chaos civil war had finally ended. The millennia-long Age of Strife that consumed the human Federation had fed both Khorne and Slaanesh, solidifying their dominions.
Only then did the realms of the Chaos Gods stabilize.
And now—another newborn Chaos God had risen in defiance of the old ones. Yet this time, it was absolute—a war that could end with one's death.
All across the Warp, despairing speculation spread like wildfire: this new Warp Storm would be even greater than the last.
"Emperor save us…" many whispered.
The last Chaos civil war had destroyed countless innocents.
Now, panic spread. Countless transcendent beings of lesser rank—those beneath the might of the Five Great Evils—resolved to fortify their private realms or flee into the farthest, most hidden corners of the Warp.
And all, in silent unity, prayed—may both combatants perish together.
In the midst of the exodus, a god of some unknown galactic species paused mid-flight. Gazing toward the edge of the veil, they beheld the expanding collision's aftermath. Strange violet-red energy tore through the fabric of space-time, and the fluid essence of the Chaos God Finality poured ceaselessly through the rift.
"...Aeldari origins?"
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