Neos felt himself sinking.
Sinking into a cold, viscous darkness with no light and no sound.
His senses were stripped away, his power drained, and even his consciousness itself seemed to be dissolving.
Time and space lost all meaning, leaving only a void-like, suffocating silence.
Then, fragmented images began to emerge.
They were not memories, but more like "possibilities" forcibly poured into him.
He saw himself.
Not Neos, the supreme god seated in the Imperium Senate, but a figure sitting upon a cold, solitary Golden Throne, clad in heavy, magnificent golden armor, his face hidden beneath shadow and helm.
Before him were no longer stars and fleets, but a burning galaxy. The flames of war across countless human worlds flickered through the darkness, while desperate prayers and agonized wails rang on endlessly like background noise.
The foul whispers of the Warp clung to his soul like maggots to bone, trying to burrow inside. His people, his warriors, even the "sons" bound to him by blood were slaughtering one another, betraying one another, falling into corruption.
He could see everything, sense everything, yet he seemed bound to the throne by invisible chains, unable to move.
The will that had once sustained him through his conquest of the galaxy and unification of humanity was gradually eroded, amid endless torment and loneliness, by something deeper and darker—rage at his own helplessness, hatred for eternal suffering, and... utter disgust for this endlessly repeating cycle of stupidity and betrayal.
Destroy it.
Since salvation was so difficult, order so fragile, and life itself always seemed to lead toward madness and self-destruction...
Then let everything return to nothingness.
Let war consume the galaxy. Let the tides of the Warp cleanse this rotten starry sky. Let all pain, all struggle, all hope and despair find eternal peace in