The silence of the forest carried the distinctive oppression of Imperium Nihilus.
Traces of corruption dotted the twisted trees and gray moss like festering wounds. The air was thick with the stench of stale earth, rotting vegetation, and a faint, almost imperceptible taint of the Warp.
No one hurried to leave. Instead, they took the rare opportunity to stroll through the forest, talk, and fill in the gaps in memories lost for ten thousand years.
Pandora was like an overenergetic sprite, her small figure darting and blinking between massive trunks and gnarled roots. Every now and then, she stopped to curiously poke at mushrooms glowing with eerie phosphorescence or kick away a strangely shaped stone, giggling all the while.
Liang Bing lounged in the shadow of a twisted ancient tree, but her gaze, like the most precise tracker, remained firmly fixed on Pandora, ensuring the little ancestor did not get a sudden urge to play this planet out of existence.
Elsewhere, Luke, He Xi, Glory, and Joan of Arc walked slowly alongside Azrael, Ezekiel, and the other Dark Angels.
They spoke in low voices about the Imperium's current state, the nature of the Warp disturbances in this region, and the harrowing battle of minds they had just endured.
At the center of the group was Lion El'Jonson.
His stride was steady, every step solid and powerful. Ten thousand years of slumber had not stripped away the majesty of the King of the Forest. It had merely added the weathered weight of ten millennia and a mass of chaotic memories awaiting order to his sharp gaze.
Azrael and Ezekiel flanked him like his most loyal shadows, rapidly and quietly reporting the changes that had taken place over the past ten thousand years to their primarch—the decline of the Imperium of Man,