The eastern fringe of the galaxy.
Mandalor.
In the Necrontyr language, the name of this planet meant "Place of Eternal Rest," and it truly lived up to its moniker.
Magnificent mausoleums and towering catacombs formed this glorious world. Spires stood like monuments commemorating an era long gone, while their winding corridors seemed to lead straight into the depths of death itself.
Following the end of the War in Heaven, the Necrons of the Sautekh Dynasty sank into a long, near-eternal Great Sleep here.
The planet's unmatched defensive capabilities had allowed it to weather tens of millions of years in peace. Countless fleets of raiders, explorers, and latecomer civilizations had been reduced to dust in its orbit; not a single soul had ever set foot upon its surface.
Yet at this moment, within the deepest hall of this tomb world, a harsh metallic screech echoed forth.
'Pfft.'
A sharp phase blade sliced effortlessly through a shell forged from living metal, drawing an arc of eerie green light in the air.
The sound was sharp and grating. From the severed metal cross-section, faint energy luminescence flowed like blood, slowly spilling out and dripping onto the hall's blackstone floor.
The Silent King slowly retracted his phase blade.
His movements were deliberate and elegant, as though the strike had been nothing more than an effortless moment of light entertainment.
He lowered his head and cast his gaze upon the figure lying on the ground.
"You should give up by now, shouldn't you?"
The Silent King's tone carried a touch of impatience, like an august monarch whose patience with a clown refusing to leave the stage had finally run out.
Lying on the floor was none other than Imotekh the Stormlord.
Imotekh the Stormlord, general of the Sautekh Dynasty, was the greatest opponent of the Silent King and the restructured Triarch.
During the period when the Silent King was far beyond the galaxy, this ambitious Necron had begun expanding his realm of influence at an astonishing pace.
He gathered a faction of Necron dynasties harboring discontent toward the Silent King, amassing a formidable force in just a few decades and explicitly opposing the Silent King's rule.
However, when the Silent King turned his gaze back here, everything crumbled rapidly like a castle built on sand.
Right now.
Imotekh the Stormlord lay flat on his back, his meticulously crafted battle-frame dismantled into pieces.
Those green eyes, which had once flashed with ambition and confidence, were dimming at a visible speed, like an oil lamp about to burn out.
"Heh... impressive."
The Stormlord's voice came in broken fragments.
He stared up at the complex, ancient murals on the hall's dome, a bitter note in his words.
"To think... I am so unwilling..."
"Interesting. Did you truly never consider this outcome before facing me? And your method was actually trying to use those latecomer civilizations to block my path?"
The Silent King let out a cold sneer.
"In truth, your scheme was utterly pointless. By paying merely a small price, I ensured those latecomer civilizations lost the ability to intervene between us."
His voice was calm and absolute. "Coincidentally, I happen to know a little about their leader, and I am somewhat familiar with his style of doing things. Naturally, your clever calculations fell flat."
"...So that's how it is," the Stormlord said. "It seems that even without the Command Protocols, you remain the sovereign who rules over everything."
"Naturally."
The Silent King looked down at him coldly, watching him barely cling to his last breath through his reanimation protocols, watching the nano-repair swarms inside his shattered chassis fruitlessly searching for severed points to mend.
"Your death is certain."
His voice held not a shred of mercy. "Your reanimation protocols will soon exhaust their final energy reserves. Then, you will perish completely. Your consciousness will never be uploaded to the core again, and your name will be erased from all records."
"This is the ultimate end bestowed upon you by the Silent King. Consider yourself honored."
"...Is that so?"
The Stormlord's voice grew fainter and fainter.
Artificially simulated agonizing pain surged in wave after wave like a tide, shattering his neural circuits into fragments.
Yet what could be done about it?
His opponent was the Silent King.
Ruler of the Triarch, ultimate destroyer of the C'tan.
To have held out this long against his onslaught was something he ought to be proud of in the first place.
Of course, the Stormlord would never know—had a certain reality-warper not arrived early, during the period when the Silent King was far beyond the galaxy, Imotekh would have brought a massive swath of tomb worlds under his banner, eventually forming a force that even the Silent King could not ignore.
According to the original timeline, he would have nearly succeeded.
However, those were matters for later.
There was still nearly a century until that intended point in time.
As for his present self, his power fell far short of what it would be in the future, and he had clashed against the Silent King's blade before he could grow to fruition.
Thus, he was powerless to turn the tide.
In the end, the Stormlord could only swallow all his bitterness in regret.
Those green eyes went completely dark.
The heavy chassis hit the ground with a dull, prolonged thud that echoed repeatedly throughout the vast hall before finally dissolving into silence.
Death had truly descended upon this general.
The Silent King calmly sheathed his phase blade.
He turned around, his gaze sweeping across the figures gathered in the hall.
Those factions thrown into chaos by their leader's death—whether Dynasty Lords and Overlords under the Stormlord, Deathmark legions holding a wait-and-see attitude, or mindless Necron soldiers and tomb constructs acting purely on commands—all bowed their heads the instant they met his gaze.
The sounds of kneeling echoed one after another.
Not a single soul dared to speak.
For every Necron understood that with the complete demise of the Stormlord—the largest opposition leader—the Silent King had once again become the sole ruler of the Necrons in truth.
As a matter of course, they held a firm belief.
Under the leadership of this great monarch, the Necrons would undoubtedly stride toward greatness once more.
Those latecomers who had taken advantage during their slumber to establish civilizations atop the ruins of the Necrontyr Empire would ultimately tremble before the Necrons.
However, for the Silent King, there was still one final nuisance to deal with.
"So, what do you have to say?"
The Silent King drew his phase blade once more, casting a cold glare toward a certain direction.
Among the Necrons, the robe-clad Cryptek—Orikan the Diviner—stepped out from the rank with a touch of embarrassment.
Truth be told, as one of the Stormlord's advisors, Orikan had indeed helped the Stormlord gain quite a few advantages during his clashes with the Silent King.
His timeline manipulation capabilities had caused the Silent King's forces to suffer considerable setbacks during several crucial skirmishes. Though it failed to change the final outcome of the war, it was more than enough to prove this Cryptek's abilities.
Of course, following the Silent King's complete victory, this situation became extraordinarily awkward.
What was going on here?
According to standard tradition, a Cryptek shouldn't be held accountable under such circumstances.
Yet faced with the sovereign's pressing glare, Orikan the Diviner respectfully lowered his head.
His voice retained the steady, professional tone expected of a Cryptek: "Your Majesty, I possess an intelligence report I wish to share with you, and I hope you will forgive my intrusion."
He slowly raised his head, his flickering optical sensors looking straight into the Silent King's eyes.
"This is an extraordinarily vital piece of intelligence—one Your Majesty will certainly be pleased to hear, and one that all of us Necrons seek."
Hearing this, the Silent King lifted his head with a slight trace of interest.
His gaze lingered on Orikan for a moment before he nodded, gesturing for him to continue.
However, the moment Orikan the Diviner opened his mouth, the Silent King almost lost his composure.
"...I may have discovered the ultimate method to reverse Biotransference."
The air in the hall seemed to freeze in an instant.
The Dynasty Lords who had been bowing their heads all raised their eyes at once.
Under the gaze of the crowd, the Silent King barely managed to conceal his inner shock.
At this moment, he even forgot to notify the other two members of the Triarch—written as Phaeron, read as mouthpieces—to come observe and speak on his behalf to maintain his requirement of silence.
Those traditions were things he would scrupulously observe on ordinary days—yet right now, the Silent King tossed them all to the back of his mind.
"Say that again," the Silent King commanded, his voice carrying a dangerous low thread.
"Are you aware of the penalty for deceiving your king?"
"Yes, I am," Orikan the Diviner nodded without hesitation. As a Cryptek who made a living playing with timelines, he knew better than most Necrons what the consequences of lying to a ruler were.
Especially when that ruler had just personally executed an disobedient general.
"Had I not absolute certainty, I would never speak of such a matter," Orikan explained.
"Your Majesty the Silent King, you ought to know that previously, I often had minor friction with Overlord Trazyn of the Nihilakh Dynasty."
He placed deliberate emphasis on the words 'minor friction'.
The Silent King made a gesture, signaling him to hurry up and get to the point.
He certainly knew about it—that fellow Trazyn was someone who occasionally left even the Silent King feeling amusedly baffled.
The melodramatic feud between that eccentric fellow and Orikan was no secret among the top brass of the Necron hierarchy.
For instance, during one occasion when they went to a Necron court to settle a dispute, the evidence Trazyn produced was recognized on the spot by the judge as stolen goods from the judge's own dynasty.
Even the Silent King had heard whispers of such comedy.
"To put it simply, a week ago, I discovered an anomaly at Trazyn's Solemnace Galleries."
"The Solemnace Galleries?"
"A taste-lacking, vulgar structure built by Trazyn—a open provocation to the aesthetic bottom line of Necrontyr civilization," Orikan the Diviner said with unmasked contempt. "He frequently scours the galaxy for all kinds of trash and places them into that so-called museum to dress up his tastes, which I find utterly unacceptable."
"Enough, get to the point! Cryptek."
The Silent King's brow furrowed even tighter.
The monarch clearly showed slight displeasure at Orikan seizing every opportunity to slander his old rival.
The Diviner immediately adjusted his stance obediently.
"To put it simply—during another one of my attempts to breach Trazyn's museum, I didn't see Trazyn himself appear, but I discovered abnormal traces. Through precise operation of temporal weapons, I successfully performed a temporal rewind on the area to a certain extent."
The Silent King's pupils flickered slightly.
He received an encrypted data package sent by Orikan the Diviner via the data link.
After a rapid decryption, a clear scene unfolded.
It was inside a display hall within Trazyn's museum.
A human-looking Central Asian man with slightly dark skin was skilfully operating everything inside the museum.
His fingers danced nimbly across control panels that only Crypteks should have been capable of operating, his movements as practiced as if he had lived there for several lifetimes.
The man even casually adjusted the angle of a lighting fixture to illuminate a display piece more perfectly, then took two steps back and appraised his work with satisfaction.
That posture was as relaxed as someone arranging collectibles in his own living room.
Then, humming a short tune, he muttered to himself: "Wow, this feeling of being alive is truly wonderful... I wonder what expression that Majesty would make if he ever found out about this."
The Silent King: ...
Seeing this, Orikan the Diviner immediately realized he had gained ground.
"It is glaringly obvious. I believe Trazyn is definitely colluding with humans at this point."
He paused, seemingly organizing his words.
"I know Trazyn very well. That Necron Overlord has zero scholarly achievements to speak of; there is no way he could research Biotransference technology on his own, let alone transform himself into a human form."
"Evidently, he must have interacted with that newly emerged god of the humans—he might even have received a boon capable of reversing the C'tan curse from him."
"This is treason against our species!"
"Could it really be so?"
The Silent King remained silent.
He was pondering. Seeing this, Orikan pushed his suggestion further.
"Your Majesty, you may not be entirely aware of humanity's current strength. Various signs indicate that a new god has appeared among them—I even suspect it might be a living C'tan that somehow disguised itself in human form and reached a mutually beneficial arrangement with the psychic jerky sitting on the Golden Throne."
He lowered his voice slightly, his tone carrying a cautious probe.
"However, this presents an opportunity for us. If we could capture this entity alive—just as you captured the C'tan shards—we could surely resolve the issue of Biotransference once and for all. We could fulfill your greatest dream: allowing the Necrontyr to embrace bodies of flesh and blood once more—"
"No need to explain, I am aware of that god's existence," the Silent King interrupted calmly.
Orikan the Diviner immediately shut his mouth obediently.
The Silent King paid no heed to his petty thoughts.
In the depths of his consciousness, a memory from not long ago was being retrieved and replayed.
Beyond the galaxy.
A sky-blotting Tyranid hive fleet obscured the entire starscape like black clouds, as hundreds of millions of bio-ships swarmed in from all directions.
And right in front of that alien tide, a single figure launched an assault.
One against many.
The Silent King slowly withdrew his thoughts.
"You are mistaken," his voice came calm and firm.
"Regardless of what that god's true nature may be, he is absolutely not a living C'tan, nor does he have any relation to any C'tan."
He paused, a subtle and profound gleam suddenly surfacing in those green eyes.
"However, this individual indeed possesses formidable capability."
Without the interference of hatred, the Silent King was able to think much more calmly.
When even the most advanced Necron technology could not decipher the entity's nature, it stood to reason logically that such a being could possess influence over methods of reversing Biotransference.
"It seems this matter requires careful planning."