The galaxy was dim.
The stars were faint, trembling slightly, tiny as flies. A vast, unhealed wound still stretched across the galaxy. Molos's Spear, cast by the fallen dead, shone like thick ink, branding an unforgettable image upon every living being who gazed directly at the stars.
The wounded god was roaring. The outsider—a true god, still whole—was making a Warp Jump. Space was like pebbles before it, easily stepped over with a raised foot.
The galaxy witnessed it all.
This soil that had birthed the Warp possessed magic enough to nurture glorious civilizations, ultimate wisdom—and true gods.
Perhaps it was rebelling against the fate of the entire universe. Since the singularity's explosion, increasing entropy had been an inevitable certainty. The grand universe was destined to become nothing amid disorder and chaos. By then, everything would merge, become chaotic, without rules, without boundaries.
Only the eternity of heat death remained.
Perhaps the galaxy possessed a will—though it perhaps should not be called consciousness—but rather some kind of upstream current resisting its overall environment. Or perhaps concepts and rules, from a certain angle, possessed choices of their own.
In one corner of the universe, among the Andromeda Galaxy of the Local Group, a small galaxy was using its own soil to nurture a weapon against fate—
Gods.
Gods, deities, deus, δαμων. Different civilizations had bestowed different names upon them, and the beings they referred to also differed, but the broad outline of their image was fixed.
Powerful, unstoppable, beyond mortal capability.
But that was merely how ants defined gods.
The galaxy had its own choice.
Gods, whether Chaos or C'tan—the galaxy's conception and definition of them was extremely rigorous, never vague—
A unified aggregate of concepts and authorities.
That was the galaxy's complete summary and description of "gods": individuals that gathered