In the void of Cadia.
A iridescent residual blur materialized, rapidly taking solid form in a short span of time.
The Macragge's Honour.
Its hull resembled a silver spear forged by the gods—cold and solemn, every inch of its armor plating reflecting the faint light cast by distant stars.
Behind it, even more titanic ships revealed themselves. The entire fleet formed neat, disciplined battle lines across the void, steeped in the stern majesty unique to the Imperium.
Aboard one of the Macragge's Honour vessels, Roboute Guilliman stood before the observation window, hands clasped behind his back, his brow tightly furrowed.
His gaze fell heavily on the scene outside.
This isn't right, Guilliman thought.
The Pandorax Campaign had been far too easy. He hadn't even encountered a Daemon Primarch—it was as effortless as rolling over a speed bump.
Which meant something was wrong.
To Guilliman, it was glaringly obvious; he had suffered enough at the hands of the Four Chaos Gods during the Great Heresy.
He reasoned that Pandorax was merely a feint—a pawn meant to divide the Imperium's forces—and that the Chaos Gods must have already poured their true strength into Cadia.
Thus, after swiftly purging the remaining Chaos Space Marines on the Pandorax battlefield, Guilliman took virtually no rest. He immediately entrusted local garrison duties to the loyal Lamenters Chapter, then turned his fleet straight toward Cadia to assist his brothers.
It was the ultimate, decisive choice.
Deep down, Guilliman harbored severe PTSD regarding reinforcement scenarios like this.
It was too similar.
It felt all too much like the Siege of Terra ten thousand years ago.
Back then, he had arrived nine hours late, failing to reach the critical engagement in time—an experience that haunted him to this day.
Those nine hours remained an unhealable scar on Guilliman's soul.
This time, he was going to save everyone!
Yet now, Guilliman raised his eyes, his frown deepening.
Outside the window, across the vast void...
Whether through sensory cogitators or his own eyesight, all that met his gaze was wreckage.
Debris.
An endless expanse of warship wreckage.
Shattered hulls were twisted into all manner of indescribable shapes; snapped keels lay exposed to the vacuum; armor plating had crumbled into metallic dust, reflecting cold, sparse glints beneath the starlight.
It looked as though they had been crushed by some unimaginable force, floating lifelessly to form a pervasive, system-spanning graveyard of metal.
Meanwhile, the Imperium's ships—including the mountain-like Phalanx-class vessels—were slowly maneuvering through the debris, like giant beasts sweeping the battlefield.
Their gun barrels still glowed faintly with residual heat. There was no flash of artillery, no roar of battle.
Everything was already over.
Guilliman stood in silence, motionless.
How could this be?
One had to remember that every Macragge's Honour created by Adam was equipped with Necron inertialess drive engines.
He had pushed his fleet to its absolute limits to arrive here as fast as possible.
And yet, he was still too late?
Still, perhaps it was for the best.
Guilliman quietly breathed a sigh of relief in his heart.
He thought to himself: If only, ten thousand years ago when I rushed to Terra, I had seen a sight like this—traitor shipwrecks as far as the eye could see, the Emperor's banner still flying high in the void, my brothers safe and sound, and the Emperor himself still standing proud... how wonderful that would have been.
But that was in the past.
And now, everything could be set right.
Guilliman rallied himself, setting aside the gloom on his face.
Just then, a vessel caught his eye.
It was enormous—a Gloriana-class battleship like the Macragge's Honour, but designed in a vastly different style. It lacked the elegant majesty of the Ultramarines, replaced instead by cold, hard lines of iron and extensive cybernetic modifications. The hull was heavily reinforced with heavy armor plating and broadside gun batteries built for sheer combat power.
The Iron Fist.
Flagship of the Iron Hands Legion.
Surrounding the Iron Fist, dense swarms of Phalanx-class ships formed a majestic battle line in the void. Their sheer numbers and tight formation created an almost suffocating sense of pressure.
The two equally imposing fleets observed each other in the void for a moment before receiving command signals from their respective flagships. They began slowly adjusting their formations, converging toward one another.
Ultimately, the two massive fleets merged.
The reunion was complete.
Half an hour later.
Guilliman stepped onto the bridge of the Iron Fist.
The automated doors opened before him with a low, mechanical hum.
He immediately spotted the figure standing by the command platform—Ferrus Manus, whose silver-clad arms reflected the crisp, cold lights of the bridge.
Beside Ferrus stood Sanguinius, his immaculate white wings folded back, bearing a gentle and sincere smile.
Ferrus turned, stepping forward and extending his silver arm.
Guilliman reached out, their hands clasping tightly. The two Primarchs drew close and exchanged a brief, quiet embrace.
Sanguinius smiled warmly as he watched the reunion.
Around the bridge, whether Ultramarines, Iron Hands Astartes, Blood Angels, or warriors from other Legions, everyone paused their duties, watching the moment with shining eyes.
Nearly every Chapter Chaplain vowed in his heart to record this scene in his Chapter's hall of honor, ensuring future brothers would remember this glorious moment for eternity.
So honorable.
So magnificent.
Without a doubt, this was a glorious victory!
The convergence of three Primarchs convinced everyone present that the war was settled beyond a shadow of a doubt.
"You seem in high spirits, my brother," Guilliman said, looking directly into Ferrus's eyes as he voiced his genuine thoughts. "I am glad to see it."
"Thank you, Guilliman."
Ferrus nodded.
The Iron Hands Primarch, renowned for his stern and cold demeanor, relaxed his facial features, as though a heavy burden had finally been lifted from his shoulders.
He spoke: "I am doing well. In fact, I've never been better."
"Wonderful," Sanguinius added with a warm smile.
After a brief exchange, the smile vanished from Guilliman's face, replaced once again by the calculated, strategic composure of the Ultramarines Primarch.
He raised the issue he cared about most.
"So, the battle has drawn to a temporary close. But what about Chaos? What cards do you think they have left to play? Is there anything else we need to guard against?"
"From my perspective," Ferrus offered his assessment, "they should be completely out of cards. Cadia today is virtually impregnable unless the Four Chaos Gods intervene directly—and even then, they are out of options. So, this is the end."
Sanguinius asked, "Then how long until our plan succeeds—until the complete closure of the Eye of Terror?"
Ferrus ran a quick calculation in his mind, cross-referencing the scheduled timeline, and answered: "If we go by percentage, progress is already past fifty percent. As the Eye of Terror shrinks, its self-healing pace accelerates. It should take about one to two more weeks."
Guilliman paused to reflect, as if about to press further.
At that moment, a voice echoed directly inside their minds out of nowhere.
"It won't take that long."
The voice was calm and clear, possessing an indisputable poise.
"Because I am taking action."
All three Primarchs showed expressions of surprise at the same time.
At that very moment, elsewhere.
Adam raised his head. The surrounding scenery indicated he was no longer in the Immaterium.
Or rather, Adam was in multiple places at once—the version left in the Warp had become a clone at some point, meant to confuse the vision of the Four Chaos Gods.
His true self was already in the physical universe, directly beneath the surface of Cadia.
And right before Adam stood the colossal Blackstone facility buried deep within Cadia's subterranean depths.
Co-engineered by Necron and Adeptus Mechanicus technicians and combined with Adam's reality-warping technology, this ultimate device was so massive it defied imagination.
It resembled a giant obelisk shooting deep into the earth; looking up from Adam's vantage point, its peak was almost entirely out of sight.
The technicians busy at the lower levels appeared as tiny as ants in comparison to this juggernaut.
Adam's strategy was simple.
Since he didn't know what scheme the Four Chaos Gods were cooking up, he wouldn't bother guessing.
Rather than passively trying to deduce the enemy's plan without a clue, Adam's style was always far more direct—strike proactively, overpower trickery with brute force, and disrupt the enemy's deployment outright.
Since Chaos had abandoned their pursuit of him in the Warp and seemingly had no intention of striking directly at the physical universe, he had been granted free reign.
And when a reality warper is freed up to act, it means he has some new tricks up his sleeve!
Adam moved like a phantom, walking through the facility.
At that moment, the anti-memetic effect applied to his body was lifted, and everyone present turned to look at him.
The tech-priests from the Adeptus Mechanicus and the Crypteks from the Necron tomb world all fixed their gazes upon this avatar of the Omnissiah simultaneously.
"Then, let us begin."
Adam slowly raised both hands.
Reality warping—released at maximum output.
He commanded: "I order you to unleash!"
As Adam's decree fell, reality-warping power swept over the entire Blackstone facility like an invisible, overwhelming torrent.
The power was so vast and absolute that everyone present could feel its presence with unmistakable clarity.
A Cryptek under Trazyn's command widened his eyes.
He simply could not believe what he was witnessing.
A device whose foundational principles even he hadn't fully grasped was now sending its power output curve surging vertically upward at a near-ninety-degree angle under the influence of this unknown force.
Then, a pillar of light shot into the heavens.
It was a massive green beam of light—more than ten times thicker than before—erupting from the core of the Blackstone facility and piercing straight into the sky.
Under the radiance of that green light, the Eye of Terror spanning the firmament—that purple scar that had endured for ten thousand years—began mending at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Its edges contracted inward, the fissure constantly filling in, looking like a wound accelerated countless times over as it scabbed, healed, and disappeared before their eyes.
An unimaginable backlash of energy traveled back down to the ground along the light pillar.
The entirety of Cadia violently quaked, the ground cracking, rocks collapsing; everyone felt a planetary shockwave beneath their feet that threatened to tear the world apart.
In theory, a backlash of this magnitude was enough to completely shatter the planet of Cadia into a cloud of cosmic dust—yet with a mere thought from Adam, the star-destroying energy tremor was dissipated into nothingness.
Everything returned to stability.
Yet the green pillar of light continued its output.
Everyone witnessed the process with their own eyes.
The Eye of Terror was closing.
That term, which within the Imperium was practically synonymous with fear and despair, shrank from a massive scar spanning astronomical units into a narrow crack, then down to a tiny pinpoint of light...
And then, it vanished.
The cosmic scar that had devoured countless souls over ten thousand years and brought endless terror to the Imperium of Man was gone from everyone's sight.
Pure darkness returned to the void, as though it had never existed.
This sight defied every law of physics.
Logically, even if the Eye of Terror had closed at that exact instant, it should have taken a long time for even the closest observers on Cadia to detect the change in light.
Yet somehow, an indescribable force had bypassed the limitation of the speed of light.
Though no one present could believe what they had just seen, an unreasoned certainty surged from deep within their hearts—this was real.
The Eye of Terror was completely gone.
Dead silence fell.
Everyone was gripped firmly by the throat by a shock that transcended reason, unable to utter a sound.
Then, from some corner, someone let out a faint cheer.
It was quiet, but like the first spark, it ignited everything instantly.
A second cheer followed, then a third, a fourth...
The cheers spread like wildfire, one after another, each louder than the last, eventually converging into a roaring wave.
From the Macragge's Honour and the Phalanx in the void, to the rest of the fleets supporting Cadia, to the soldiers on the surface, and even to the people in other sectors... finally, the wild cheers swept over everything like a tidal wave!
Down in Cadia's underground command bunker, Lord Castellan Creed slowly raised his sole remaining arm, took off his military cap, and pressed it to his chest.
As a Cadian, the emotions surging inside Creed were beyond words.
His battle-tested experience barely allowed him to maintain his composure, but the emotional tide within almost swallowed his ironclad resolve.
Choking back tears, his throat hitched several times before he finally managed to speak.
"So this is..."
Creed's voice was raspy, barely sounding like his own.
"...the war to end all wars."
Beside him, Archmagos Belisarius Cawl, who had also taken part in this campaign, turned his head and shot him a puzzled look.
"How could it be?" he said. "...This is far from enough."