Yet the storm everyone feared did not immediately sweep across the entire Imperium.
Since the return of the Men of Iron, the constant changes within the Imperium had gradually accustomed everyone to sweeping upheavals arriving in rapid succession.
But then a strange "calm" descended.
Across humanity's vast, sluggish domains, more than a decade passed like a great wheel rolling over fine dust, its passage barely perceptible.
The sectors that had boiled with Genestealer uprisings and Enslaver invasions gradually settled into outward order beneath repeated blows from the Imperium's iron fist and the cold logic of the Men of Iron.
The smoke of war cleared, and new urban structures covered the wounds left behind. Memories of bloodshed were deliberately forgotten or distorted into yet another victory under the Emperor's protection.
The wave of Enslavers infiltrating realspace from the warp on a massive scale receded sharply, like an ebbing tide.
Reports of Imperial Ships ambushed by these pale xenos during warp travel plummeted. Incidents of Astropaths being invaded and Navigators having their minds twisted also became increasingly rare.
It was as though these maggots of the warp had feasted in the physical universe and temporarily returned to their revolting nests to lie dormant, or had been restrained by some unknown force.
Even more astonishingly, the clamor of Chaos diminished considerably.
The Chaos Traitors seemed to have collectively entered a period of dormancy, with large-scale invasions and raids becoming rare.
Warp storms weakened, and Chaos Daemons manifested in realspace far less frequently than before.
Those accursed realms seemed to have fallen into some kind of stillness, and even the whispers of the warp grew much fainter.
Even the Necrons fell silent.
The tomb fleets of the various Necron Dynasties vanished from the Imperium's sight like ghosts.
Occasionally, Imperial Navy patrol fleets reported detecting