"Where... exactly did the Word Bearers get something like this?"
On the Bridge of the Dark Angels Flagship, the Unyielding Truth, Lion El'Jonson stood silently before the observation window. Through the reinforced glass, his hawk-sharp eyes gazed at the distant star system that had been reduced to nothing, leaving only the cold afterglow of radiation.
Only moments earlier, the silver planet named Novalors, along with the dangerous intelligence upon it, had been utterly annihilated in the spectral blue light unleashed by the Superstar. Not a trace of debris remained.
It was not the weapon's destructive power that shocked him. As master of the First Legion, entrusted with the many ancient relics and forbidden secrets the Emperor had reserved for the most extreme contingencies, Lion El'Jonson had seen—and even personally operated—devices of destruction more terrifying than the Superstar, their underlying principles stranger still.
Deep within the Dark Angels' vaults slept many "last resorts" that would have left most of their brother Legions speechless.
What truly concerned him, even stirring a faint unease, was the weapon's origin.
The Superstar's technological characteristics, its use of energy, and its aesthetic, which lay beyond the Imperium's prevailing technological framework, all pointed toward one obscure but dangerous source: the lost Dark Age of Technology.
That was hardly unusual. Countless fragments of that mad age lay scattered throughout the Galaxy.
What was unusual was that this weapon—or rather, this class of weapons—had no clear records, leads, or related reports in any of the archives available to Lion El'Jonson, whose network was among the vastest and most secret in the Imperium.
It was as though it had appeared out of thin air, quietly acquired by Lorgar and his Word Bearers, then deployed today almost as a "routine measure."
Something was wrong.
Lion El'Jonson's brow furrowed almost imperceptibly. He