As the ships vanished into the Warp passage,
the Men of Iron Fleet, still attempting to wear down the Tyranid Swarm at the edge of Segmentum Tempestus, immediately changed course and accelerated toward either flank of the segmentum.
Just as all the fleets cleared the projected damage radius,
the four ships carrying End Bombs successfully reached the heart of the swarm.
In an instant, flashes as immense as those at the birth of the universe erupted within the four ships.
The dazzling light seemed extraordinarily gentle, without the slightest hint of danger.
Everything its spreading radiance touched was instantly transformed into strange azure streams of light that rushed toward the centers of the explosions.
Space, matter, time, even the fabric of the universe and the unfathomable depths of the Warp were all pierced in that instant.
Whether life in realspace or the various entities within the Warp,
all seemed to hear the universe itself shattering at that moment.
The light spread in defiance of physical laws.
Within seconds, the four End Bombs enveloped dozens of light-years of space.
The flashes of annihilation went out.
Their disappearance was as abrupt and unheralded as their appearance, violating every known law of physics. It was as though an invisible hand had gently erased that region of the universe, leaving neither the aftermath of an explosion nor the trails of debris, only an absolute, mind-freezing... "nothing."
At the edge of Segmentum Tempestus, the Men of Iron Fleet that had just escaped the danger zone hovered like cold tombstones beyond the newly defined "boundary."
Their sensor arrays focused on the former battlefield at unprecedented power, but the data they returned showed only emptiness.
The deep-space scanners reported an almost perfectly spherical "void" approximately seventy-five light-years in diameter.
Within that region, there were no signals from