Darth Vader's consciousness—or rather, that cold, dark will of the Force, tainted and reshaped by the "Abyss"—did not hesitate in the slightest.
He walked straight toward the portal burning with blue flames, leading into the Lord of Change's core domain.
The instant he stepped through, the Warp's frenzied whispers and torrent of visions, enough to tear apart a mortal soul, surged toward him.
But Darth Vader's senses seemed wrapped in a layer of obsidian at absolute zero.
The screams trying to bore into his mind, the seductive illusions, the cognitive corruption that could make a Space Marine fall in an instant—all of it hissed like water striking red-hot iron the moment it touched that Abyss-born cold will, evaporating completely without stirring even a ripple.
There was no dizziness, no sense of weightlessness.
When Darth Vader could "see" clearly again, he was already in a place beyond ordinary description.
The Crystal Labyrinth.
The name was fitting.
Endless crystals shimmering with cold blue light formed the walls, floors, and ceilings of twisted corridors.
These crystals were not dead objects. They flowed, shifted, and reflected scenes beyond time.
On the walls, countless faces wailed silently, laughed madly, and prayed. They were the fear, pain, despair, frenzy, and false hope accumulated by innumerable living beings across the river of time.
Scenes from history flashed past and vanished like a revolving lantern, mixed with incomprehensible symbols and fragments of knowledge.
A single glance was enough to shatter the sanity of even the most resolute psyker and condemn them to eternal madness.
Yet Darth Vader merely "watched."
Within those eyes consumed by darkness was only a trace of... pure curiosity?
The corruptive essence of Warp Chaos seemed, before the "Abyss" as he understood it, more like an inefficient and disorderly phenomenon of energy dissipation.
He stood