Pale light flickered beneath the largest dome of the Ulthwé craftworld, its translucent shell enclosing countless crystal trees.
Most Aeldari could spend their entire lives without ever reaching this glittering forest.
Without guidance, they would lose their way among the winding paths, unable to remember the route here even after being led through it countless times.
Songs of death echoed beneath the dome, filled with ghosts from ages past.
This was a place of death. Every crystal tree bore the imprint of a departed seer upon reality.
Of course, those imprints also existed upon the supernatural plane.
Eldrad Ulthran sat alone in the center of the forest, a staff in his right hand and his left resting against the trunk of a crystal tree.
His soul left his body, gathering the power left behind by the seers as he peered into the Threads of Fate.
He let his consciousness drift freely upon the tides as echoes of ancient races washed past him.
The vital fate of a newly risen race glittered like stars. Ulthran knew they called themselves humanity.
Others of his kind, such as Slau-Da, scornfully called them monkeys, while the Old Ones had called them Mon-keigh. They were a short-lived,
barbaric race.
They had emerged from the cradle that birthed them and conquered their Sol System.
Now, in a vast crusade, they reclaimed fragments lost in the early days of civilization and ruthlessly destroyed the races that stood in their path, even including their own lost kin.
Through their pure bellicosity, Ulthran saw the seeds of humanity's destruction buried within their hearts.
He had already glimpsed the extinction of their race and the ultimate victory of the Chaos Gods.
Ulthran knew their course would not change simply because its end was fated to be ruin. Yet the Mon-keigh