Among the Stars, the flames of war blossomed silently in the cold vacuum.
After completing its assembly and deployment, the expeditionary fleet under Lorgar formally declared war on this lost human nation.
There was no warning, no ultimatum, no needless talk.
Before those figures confined in compartments measuring 0.2 square meters, before those children flayed to make drumheads, before those Navigators sealed into starship cores as living compasses, any diplomatic language would have seemed hollow and hypocritical.
Lorgar's orders were brief and clear: destroy their armed forces, liberate their slaves, then erase this regime that held suffering as its creed from history altogether.
Once war broke out, the Imperium's vast intelligence apparatus, spanning half the Galaxy, began operating at full capacity.
The agents lurking in various star systems, the listening nodes hidden within civilian communications networks, the enemy officials and merchants who had been turned—all seemed to be activated at once by an invisible hand, gathering countless streams of information into a torrent that surged toward the flagship of the Word Bearers.
In less than three days, intelligence on this nation piled onto Lorgar's desk like drifting snow, achieving eighty percent coverage. From its political structure to its economic system, from its military deployments to its social organization, from its history to its religious beliefs, almost nothing was left uncovered.
The enemy nation was called Reincarnation Heaven.
It had formed during Old Night, those dark years when Human Civilization collapsed and contact between the Stars was severed, and was a lost interstellar human theocracy.
Its rule rested on the worship of a deified ancient administrator. That administrator was said to have led them across the Sea of Stars in the early days of Old Night and found them a refuge. After his death, he was revered as a god, and