At the top of Terra's towering navigation tower, the Emperor held a drink as he admired the newest colossal statues built upon Terra.
Soldiers clad in mortal auxiliary Power Armor, Scholars dressed in white, workers wearing engineering Power Armor... all of them had been fashioned from a special metal classified as Adamantium.
They stood clustered together, raising the banner of the Imperial Eagle high.
Above them, the Eagle of Fire and Thunder hovered with its wings spread wide, its sharp eyes fixed upon Terra's starry sky.
Vast numbers of newly constructed warships departed Terra's spaceports, sailing slowly across the night sky above the colossal statues in great formations.
The Emperor watched it all with delight.
A flourishing Terra, an ecosystem gradually recovering.
An age belonging to humanity—an age more prosperous and powerful than humanity's former peak—was about to arrive.
Boom—
The sudden sonic boom abruptly pulled the Emperor's attention back to what stood before him.
The Emperor turned around and leaned against the railing as he looked at the newcomer. "If the entities within the Warp do not set their sights on us, humanity will ultimately become more prosperous than it was twenty thousand years ago."
"They should already have their eyes on us, or perhaps they have had them on us all along." Qin Mo spoke ambiguously. "Honestly, I never expected them to remain unprepared to do anything even now. That caught me completely off guard."
"Them." The Emperor smiled and shook his head. "They are not individuals. They are a collection of countless concepts and emotions within the Warp. They do not truly possess selves. Perhaps for certain reasons, they may even exert positive influence upon reality. These are the gods."
"But we still have to be prepared," Qin Mo said.
The Emperor nodded as though it were