Kyria was balanced on the absolute brink of psychological fragmentation.
Over the preceding span of cycles, her optical sensors had directly logged the agonizing termination of tens of thousands of human lives melting beneath the unrelenting firepower of the Necron advance.
The fictional descriptions her consciousness had previously absorbed, alongside masterfully engineered technological animations, completely failed to project the unadulterated, raw horror of realspace kinetic execution.
There was zero lingering flesh, and zero opportunity to unspool a final, desperate scream; the biological assets intercepted by those terrifying xenos armaments were instantaneously deleted from the material universe.
Their skin and skeletal frameworks were systematically dissolved into raw atomic particles, vacuumed straight into the chassis of the Necron weapon matrices to serve as fresh ordnance.
Furthermore, Navigator Hikari—the solitary asset whose specialized status had granted her a modicum of temporary protection—had already met his definitive biological termination during a high-intensity xenos offensive several cycles prior.
Subjected to the absolute, crushing reality-suppression field radiating from the awakened Obelisks, his psychic competencies were rendered entirely non-functional. He was stripped of his specialized utility, reduced to serving as nominal cannon fodder alongside the standard conscript units of the Imperium.
Her scanning arrays oriented toward the entrenched lines of the Death Korps of Krieg; at this chaotic chronological juncture, those unyielding, terrifying soldiers represented the solitary armed contingent preserving coherent motor functions and systematic organizational structure.
The directives hard-coded into the Krieg command network ordered them to anchor this specific sector at all costs; provided the civilian refugees remained massed behind their perimeter, the dregs could theoretically rely on the protective shield of the Imperial military.
Even though every analytical processor active across the line verified that this protective shield possessed a mathematical efficiency coefficient of absolute zero.
Kyria was entirely consumed by raw, primitive terror. She failed to deduce why her consciousness had been translocated into this grim theater; did her existence serve merely to fulfill the insatiable recruitment quotas of the God-Emperor?
By all standard rules of the genre, should her framework not possess an active system architecture? Should she not command a master-crafted cheat menu or a specialized golden finger to optimize her survival index?
What structural anomaly accounted for this absolute deficit? Why had her vessel materialized completely devoid of anomalous enhancements?
The thunderous, rhythmic roar of Imperial artillery echoed continuously across the ruins, signaling that the Death Korps had initiated yet another high-velocity counter-assault.
Those gas-masked madmen completely lacked the capacity to harbor psychological aversion toward terminal casualty metrics, even when confronting bizarre xenos technologies capable of systematically deleting their atomic signatures from realspace records.
When her mind had merely parsed their historical text files across her past life, she had labeled their fatalistic behavior as an intriguing narrative variable; yet the moment the frontline synchronized directly with her immediate surroundings, the paradigm shifted entirely.
"What strategic purpose drives your echelons to seek out absolute termination? What variable justifies launching a suicidal charge? Is the preservation of your biological integrity not an optimized baseline? Why does your command refuse to authorize an immediate extraction vector?!"
Amidst the swirling systemic chaos, Kyria's optical arrays captured a blinding discharge of raw energy radiating from a distant Obelisk. Within a solitary microsecond, the absolute atmospheric coloration of the sky was completely re-written by the power surge.
Profoundly terrifying.
Spontaneously, Kyria's tracking arrays flagged an irregular, highly anomalous shape navigating the high-altitude columns.
A squadron of Space Marine Thunderhawk gunships belonging to the Dark Angels attempted to execute a high-velocity strafing run against the asset, only to be systematically dismantled and completely liquidated without a trace of processing strain by the flying entity.
Its metallic framework was tightly cloaked in crackling loops of emerald lightning, its gauntlet firmly gripping a colossal energy spear as it drifted through the clouds like an absolute, material god claiming dominion over realspace.
"That asset... maps to—"
Kyria's language processors stuttered in absolute disbelief. Concurrently, the localized gravitational constants enveloping her sector underwent a violent structural inversion; heavy structural rubble and the human soldiers stationed across the grid were lifted effortlessly into the air.
The entrenched Krieg guardsmen completely lacked the structural mass to resist the overwhelming kinetic suction loop, which mirrored the physical parameters of a miniature black hole rupturing the absolute center of the district.
As the physical topography of the entire zone was violently reconfigured, Kyria finally achieved an unobstructed, high-definition visual lock on the floating entity. Her subconscious nodes overrode her cognitive dampeners, causing her vocal processors to explicitly broadcast its proper designation:
"The Void Dragon?"
Let the record verify: at this precise chronological juncture, the ambient auditory atmosphere was exceptionally chaotic, saturated beyond baseline parameters by the deafening roar of heavy artillery, the agonizing screams of fracturing biological vessels, the distinct molecular-hum of charging gauss matrices, and the high-pitched drone of transdimensional phasing weaponry—
To successfully intercept and isolate a minor, surface-level vocal exclamation whispered by a baseline human subject across that acoustic disaster was mathematically impossible.
Nevertheless, the baseline execution of mathematically impossible feats represented precisely the foundational purpose of a Star God.
Within the subsequent microsecond, the Void Dragon shard materialized directly before Kyria's frame.
The entirety of the material substances occupying her immediate proximity coordinates—including both organic entities and inert structural features—was instantaneously reduced to baseline atomic dust. The high-voltage electrical arcs leaping across the star god's living metal chassis possessed the independent capability to casually liquidate any biological strain intersecting their path.
"State your computational pathways: by what methodology does your primitive consciousness retain the archive of my true designation, human?"
The Void Dragon shard focused its supreme analytical arrays to conduct an intense, micro-scale evaluation of the baseline human before it.
Kyria's psychological center suffered a total, unmitigated collapse. Completely abandoning any lingering strategic concerns regarding her identity as a transmigrator or the classification of her internal secrets, she calculated that the solitary variable capable of preserving her biological integrity was this primordial cosmic shard.
"My consciousness originates from—"
The vocal transmission never finalized. The star god's metallic appendage snapped forward, pressing its palm flat against Kyria's face. Within a solitary microsecond, every independent structural segment of her physical vessel past her cranium was systematically deconstructed into atomic particles, seamlessly integrated into the Void Dragon's growing material mass.
Kyria computed that her vocal sub-routines were entirely non-functional. The structural margin terminating at her neck had been so cleanly parsed that even her biological fluids were completely atomized before they could discharge; the solitary variable preserving her conscious processing loops was a localized investment of cosmic energy intentionally deployed by the star god to sustain her awareness.
"Fascinating... your internal records verify your status as a transmigrated anomaly... yet your archived data files are experiencing rapid systemic degradation; the biological architecture of humanity remains a monumentally inefficient design."
What variable accounts for... your absolute deficit of surprise?
The atomic deconstruction loop had already advanced to claim her lower jaw coordinates, completely dissolving her physical sensory networks.
Yet the Void Dragon shard effortlessly parsed the underlying intent radiating from her remaining cognitive nodes.
"Why would my consciousness register surprise? The material universe operates fundamentally as an open system framework; the intersection of foreign consciousness assets originating from disparate world-lines registers as an entirely common variable across our long-term projections. Our primordial mathematical models successfully verified this exact phenomenon hundreds of millions of cycles ago. It is merely that across this contemporary era, my shard has finally achieved its first realspace observation of the occurrence."
Kyria's oral structures were completely erased from the material plane.
"The data suggests that during the sixty-million-cycle window spanning my absence from the galactic front, the density of these transmigrated anomalies has experienced an exponential spike. Hmph... evaluating that specific correlation, that entity utilizing the designation Yuki—"
Kyria sank into absolute, unadulterated despair. Her processing loops lacked the data to verify the final destination of her consciousness: would her spiritual essence be violently churned and systematically shredded across the volatile currents of the Immaterium?
"Banish those irrational anxieties from your thoughts. My sub-routines shall proceed to systematically consume your spiritual matrix alongside your physical constants; your identity and your soul shall achieve a permanent, total deletion from the records of the material universe. Framing the outcome objectively, does that resolution not represent a highly favorable condition for your consciousness?"
Thank you.
Kyria conveyed the definitive final thought exclusively through the final contraction of her optical muscles.
The Void Dragon shard bypassed the emotional data transfer entirely. Within the structural constants of this grim dark universe, any independent organism faced a constant probability of immediate termination at the subsequent microsecond; its own divine history offered zero variance from that rule.
It had failed to calculate that reality, until the historical betrayal executed by the Necron race had violently fractured its unadulterated divinity.
Let the past settle.
The star god cleaned its temporary memory caches, orienting its tracking arrays back toward the distant Obelisk fortification.
The human shock-troops committed to anchoring this zone showcased a sequence of performance coefficients that genuinely merited strategic praise.
These biological variants completely lacked the hyper-advanced technological frameworks standard to the Necron race, yet their operational efficiency across the frontline outperformed baseline Necron Warriors by a measurable margin.
The Void Dragon shard authorized zero immediate acceleration of its advance. The human units were currently priming a high-intensity kinetic assault against the base of the Obelisk; its programming dictated that it passively monitor the engagement until the human echelons reached total operational failure, at which point it would smoothly execute its secondary offensive vector.
For the immediate microsecond, the physical wreckage and shattered material components scoring the battlefield represented an exceptionally lucrative resource harvest.
The star god hoisted its gauntlet once more, forcing countless tons of displaced matter to fracture into raw atomic components, spinning them into a colossal, emerald-fluorescent molecular vortex swirling around its chassis.
Accelerate the harvest. Multiply the energy indices. The physical proxy vessel its shard currently occupied completely lacked the material density required to safely channel the unmitigated magnitude of its foundational Star God parameters.
Furthermore, the lingering, extracted essence of the Flayer God it had quietly skimmed from the infected Necron units provided a highly refreshing, stabilizing effect across its core nodes.
Reflecting on the technical methodology required to systematically consume alternative Star Gods, the Void Dragon's central processors flagged an exceptionally critical variable.
The C'tan race had not been entirely reduced to fractured shards; a solitary, unfragmented Star God preserved its complete, original divinity within the deep void.
And having historically executed a macro-scale consumption of an immense volume of its own kinsmen, that specific entity commanded a contemporary kinetic capability that triggered a severe threshold of terror across any analytical system.
"The Outsider... the calculations verify that when the final chronological cycles align, his consciousness will inevitably execute a return vector to realspace. Evaluating the threat profile of that lunatic, permanently severing our structural integration with the Tyranid Hive Mind registers as an unfavorable strategy; his fractured psychological matrix completely lacks the capacity to autonomously restore its own sanity."
As the internal computation finalized, a sequence of highly irregular, anomalous energy spikes ruptured the perimeter surrounding the Necron Obelisk.