 The battle of Prospero was now several hours old. Local chronometers read 1209, Prosperite Noontime, as Constantine Valdor's advance from the spaceport first began in earnest. It was, however, difficult to tell, as across the city it appeared for all the world that night was beginning to fall. The opening orbital bombardment that had torched Prospero's biome had thrown clouds of ash and smoke into the atmosphere. But beyond that, the unnatural pal of a building aetheric tempest was forming above the metropolis of the 15th Legion. The Thousand Sons had no intention of letting the censure host gain the upper hand in the battle, and in their fury turned to arts darker than any they had previously wielded. Grimoires research journals and experiments buried by prudence or morality were thrown open again in a mad rush to capitalize on anything that might kill more wolves. Forbidden practices were now indulged in, the means being justified by the end they would hopefully accomplish. Costs be damned. In the Templums of the Corvide, ritual sacrifices of legion thralls and prospering civilians were undertaken so that the adepts of the cult might be lent enough power to scry the immediate future, discerning 6th Legion movements from the threads of potential realities spinning out of the Tisken Conflagration. In the Arcology of the Athenians, similarly brutal arts were invoked, but this time uncaptured enemies. The telepaths of the Thousand Sons tore at the minds of captives to extract any remotely useful intelligence they could. No potential route was closed to the Legion. Magnus remained silent within the Pyramid of Photep, and the leadership under 1st Librarian Arriman was actively encouraging the usage of techniques, arts and skills previously denied to their subordinates, or even themselves. And it was working. Both the Corvide and the Athenians were able to supply the fellowships and circles of their legion currently engaged with detailed strategic information, which in combination with Tizca's portal network was allowing the 15th to run rings around the embattled censure host. The 3rd Taranic Orxilia, fresh from their landings at the Starport, were, for example, completely surrounded by the 9th Fellowship, and almost entirely obliterated in a single engagement. Aligio-Castore's force of some 500 companions under Valdor himself was similarly ambushed, this time by a massive detachment of Thousand Sons terminators and legion dreadnoughts of the Order of Ruin. While faring much better against a sudden attack than the Orxilia had, the conflict was nevertheless exceptionally brutal, and affected a significant blunting of the Captain-General's advance against the Magdan Freakor at the Palatinate Mansions. Elsewhere across the city, the 11th Great Company of the Vilca Fenrica were tied down by waves of Thousand Sons ambushes, but also the sudden appearance of what appeared to be a civilian militia. Whether these were volunteers, or simply mind-throws, sleeved to Thousand Sons psychers in desperation, it is unclear. But the waves that crashed into the deathkin of the Morkai served their purpose, depleting the ammunition reserves of the Great Company at the cost of thousands of lives every minute. Six Legion units had no effective counter against the psychana of the Thousand Sons. The famous tenacity and bloodthirstiness was the only edge they yet retained in a fight that was now thoroughly even, even if approaching, overwhelming odds. Ivan Rus, Primarch that he was, could only be in one fight at once. The Rune Priests of the Legion, their own psychers whose craft had continued, despite the Emperor's Nikean edict, under some form of ill-defined Fenrician cultural exemption, proved thoroughly outmatched by the majestic savants of the Thousand Sons. What limited counters the shamans employed were brief respits, inevitably overwhelmed in short order by the defenders of Prospero, who, once they had identified enemy psychers, redoubled their efforts to dispatch them. The 15th Legion had drawn a defensive cordon around their Templar Markologies, that no amount of pressure from the censor host seemed to be able to crack at this time. Managing to force a rough transmission through the squalls of interference using a Legion Mastodon's communication array, Liman Rus almost begrudgingly ordered those wolves that remained in orbit to make planet fall with immediate effect. The Wolf King was clearly set on hurling what every last astartes he possessed at the Prosperine. Throwing off whatever restraint had remained in the censor host's operation in favour of a full and total engagement with all Imperial assets on hand. The resistance of the Thousand Sons and the powers they were unleashing rendered them to Rus' eyes, not even wayward scions of the throne, but maleficarum, wretches all corrupted and lost to the sorcerous powers they were now wielding with utter abandon. Purgation was all that Rus could countenance now, and he would offer no mercy to those who opposed it. Prospero was to be scoured clean of all life, be it astartes or mortal. By the word of the Wolf King, the Seventh Great Company, the Black Kull, the destroyers of the Sixth Legion, were ordered to deploy their most lethal and proscribed ammunition and weaponry and employ whatever dark technology they had drawn from the Magi of Beta Garmin. No stone was to be left standing, and no human to be left alive. Interestingly, an operation of similar mien, but altogether more obfuscated visibility, was currently underway at the behest of the 16th Legion overseer Boros Kern. The appearance of the Sons of Horus contingent at the Beta Garmin Master had made for a surprising addition, and one that was unknown previously to both the Terran and Fenrisian forces of the censure host. Launching with the Vilka-Fenrica reinforcements from orbit, the Sons of Horus deployed not to the front lines of the fight against the Thousand Sons, but to nominally pacified regions of Tizca, alongside their Cthonian auxiliaries. Boros Kern, his intent questioned by some within the host, stated that the course of the operation was to employ the Sons of Horus' famed adaptability to haunt 15th Legion ambushers that had implagued the advance of the Wolves, and given the casualties these ambushers had already reaped, few expressed anything beyond mild annoyance that such a large force of 16th Legion Astartes, some 5,000 in number, were required for such a task. Rather than seek out the order of blindness, as he had stated he would, Kern and the Sons of Horus instead began rounding up any and all civilian refugees they could lay their hands upon. Herded into massive improvised pens, any who resisted were immediately and bloodily executed, or mutilated and left in prominently visible locations as a warning against other potential dissidents. Within these holding zones, Sons of Horus' overseers, with a tendon to mage eye of the Mechanicum, began moving through the terrified prisoners, scrying them with strange devices and medical apparatus, even as a battle for the city raged around them. Those few that were selected by the Sons of Horus were shoved or hoisted bodily by Astartes into waiting sea-green ships bearing the eye of the Warmaster, and transferred rapidly off-planet to the orbiting cruiser that accompanied the 16th Legion expedition. As this had been completed, the remaining refugees learned of their fate as artillery shells started falling in their midst, detonating bodies and buildings with equal abandon, as the Sons of Horus sought to expunge all trace of their curious operation. That we even know of this is due only to the most fragmentary of records, as well as operatives from the Sigilites' later night-errant investigative division. This latter body, formed during the heresy years that would vast approach, hypothesized that since prospering humans had a startlingly high level of psychic genomics, some 10% of the population at early Imperial estimate, the Warmaster was, through the chaos of the burning, extracting psychically sensitive humans for reasons known only to himself. Certainly this theory holds merit, as during the heresy, the Sons of Horus, as well as the 17th Legion word-bearers, made widespread use of mongrel cult divisions amongst whose ranks dwelt a high number of frankly insane rogue psychers. Should these poor, prosperous civilians have been quietly exfiltrated to be part of some hideous traitor breeding program, whose works would only bear fruit years later, well it speaks volumes to the degree that the Warmaster was already orchestrating assets for a conflict still gestating within his cankerous soul. As Russ was ordering the wholesale extermination of Tizca, due to the apparent descent of the Thousand Sons into sorcerous madness, Valdor II sought to unleash his most potent forces, albeit with a far greater degree of logical clarity to his decision-making. However, by a twist of fate, some had been deprived from him. Upon managing to establish communications with the Custodae's flagship, the Captain General discovered that the Ordo Sinister, the Psi Titans of the Emperor's secret titan legio, had already deployed, without any apparent orders, by their own merit to investigate the complete disappearance of the god-engines of the legio Mortis, who had themselves been deployed to investigate the Mechanicum Forge Fane of Shao Arcad that existed without the city limits. It appeared for all the world that this demimaniple of the legio, the Warmaster's most favoured titan legion, had simply disappeared in the process, whether or not this was due to some sort of sorcerous ploy, or that they had met their fates fighting against the iron vigil of the legio presagius, was completely unknown, but it appeared that the Ordo Sinister favoured the latter. Without the Psi Titans at his disposal, Valdor was forced to turn to the one remaining specialised force he possessed, the Silent Sisterhood. Two options immediately presented themselves. The Captain General could spread the null maidens of the sisters across the entire city, granting localised pariah anti-psychore protection to the most censure-host assets possible, or he could form all their hunter-seeker cadres, not currently engaged, into a spearhead to drive into the lines of the Thousand Sons in one incredibly potent thrust. He opted for the latter, reasoning that the former, while a decent option, left the precious pariah sisters open to fragmentary destruction. They were far too precious a resource to see winnowed away in any such fashion. He did, however, place a select number in nominal command of the spaceport, to ensure it remained defended from the infiltrators of the Order of Blindness, and to prevent such an important logistical transfer point from being denied to the host for potential withdrawal manoeuvres. Valdor's primary purpose was, after all, bodyguard and life ward. He would never allow himself or any he commanded to be cut off entirely from the need of escape should that need arise. This did, of course, deprive many units of the wolves yet engaged of sisterhood support. They were now fully forced to rely on their bloody mindedness to continue the fight against the seemingly ever more dangerous Thousand Sons. The battles this created were predictably bloody and destructive in the extreme. The 11th and 13th grade companies of the wolves, combined to force almost 10,000 strong, were led into the southern districts of Tizca by the so-called uplander Yarl, Torm Guderik, believed to be the last surviving Terran of that rank remaining within the Legion. A raid against them was the great Vulparain Bastion, a fortress outpost that commanded the great Cessostrian Canal. Should that arterial fall, an ideal assault route to the central districts of the city would be opened up for the censor host, and both sides knew this. Supplemented by siege engineers from the Caranid Sentinel's Imperial Army Detachment, the wolves flung themselves at the Thousand Sons defenders of the Fifth Fellowship, unleashing Phosphhex Munitions specifically tailored to burn and melt Imperial pharaoh creed. The living fire was battled in turn by Thousand Sons sorcery, the Magisters of the 15th Legion using Kinney shields to contain the almost unstoppable substance, or redirect it to their foes. Despite being outnumbered almost three to one, the defenders held fast, that desperation turning to resolve and spite as they laced the besiegers' positions with psychokinetic mines and aetheric lightning arcs, reaping a fearsome tally of wolves and Caranids alike. This pattern was now one repeated throughout the city. As largely deprived of anti-psychic measures owing to Valdor's maneuvering of the Silent Sisterhood, the attackers ground to a bloody stalemate against the fury of the Thousand Sons' defiance. In the Argent Bastion to the north, the second and third great companies had similarly encircled Thousand Sons' detachment, but were held at Bloody Bay. While atop the sanctuary mount, another force of Magisters were pulverizing the waves of Imperial Auxilia that menaced them. The censor host attackers only holding due to the presence of Ligio Custode's sodalities amongst them. Even the most forward elements of the wolves, under Russ himself having torn great wounds in the flanks of the temple arcologies of the Corvide and the Raptora, were bogged down and unable to make any progress. The Thousand Sons knew none amongst them were a match for the Wolf King. Their common sense easily overcoming any pretensions of pride, so instead of engaging the Primarch and his Varigair directly, they opted for a blizzard of hit and run engagements through the Warportal Network, in tandem with telepathic adepts assailing the forward censor host forces with illusions and phantasmic terrors. The Wolf King, despite his Emperor wrought senses, was caught in lures, directed to and fro from illusory engagement to actual ambush, with each of the latter claiming enough wolves to be bleeding the forward companies of vital manpower. It was, however, not so much succeeding as simply proving adequate. The Primarch was still a Primarch, and his most experienced wolves still amongst the deadliest killers in the galaxy. These actions were holding them, yes, but could only do so for so long, and the Thousand Sons knew it. As the Wolf King tore through each diversionary skirmish, the fellowships and circles of the 15th Legion hit the dogs at his heels with all they could muster, knowing time was ill on their side. Truly, the only real success made by either side during this stage of the invasion occurred on the grounds of the Manners. The Magdan Freecourt yet held, largely thanks to reinforcements from the Thousand Sons. But the renewed assault they now fell under combined the forces of almost all silent sisterhood divisions present upon Prospero, where the Magisters had previously been able to tear even Ligio Castodes vehicles apart with raw mental aggression. Their powers now failed them. Psychic fire sputtering to nothing, telekinetic barriers cracking, telepathic wards sundered. Such a concentration of sisters had never before been seen abroad across the galaxy, and here the sheer intensity of the combined null effects, augmented by a dozen of their most potent oblivion knights, stole the power of the warp from all within a significant distance. The warp portals relied upon for maneuvering were similarly disabled as the barrier between worlds was closed tight by the presence of the sisters. The Thousand Sons were, however, still a starties. Their genhanced capabilities and martial training could still allow a small number to conquer a world in years past, and in the burning gardens of the Palatenate Manners, they were gathered nearly six thousand of their ilk, including a force of scarab occult terminators and armored columns from the Order of Ruin, now arrayed against five hundred custodians and two full vigils of silent sisters. Within moments of their initial charge, it was apparent to the Thousand Sons that they stood no chance of victory. Dozens of 15th Legionist artis were lost to inflict even a single casualty upon the peerless custodians. The action became instead a stand of defiance and of potential opportunity. If Valdor, if the captain general himself could be wounded, or at the very least as many of the sisterhood's null maidens dispatched as possible, then the Prosperine could at the very least claw some recompense from the inevitability of their deaths. The spearhead straight towards Valdor was bought at savage cost. The blade scions of the Thousand Sons, Amitara occult, over one hundred strong at the beginning of their fatal advance, numbered a mere thirty by the time they reached the captain general. But reach him, they had in fact accomplished, even deprived of their psychic talents. The blades, they held so used to feeling aetheric energy, were still capable of slicing through oramite armor. These thirty astarties bore down on Valdor with pure desperation, knowing only their brotherhood stood a chance against such an individual. The captain general slew them all in their totality, but not without cost, as a sole astarties managed to wound the first of the Ten Thousand. It had been a conflict conducted at truly trans human speed. Mere minutes had seen the Six Thousand Astarties that had charged the Lidio Custodes force annihilated, but the Oric champions of the emperor had paid for their victory. Scores of Custodians had died, even their biology unable to overcome the wounds inflicted upon them by the rage mad Thousand Sons. Valdor himself was wounded, perhaps even more seriously for the Sensei host some five hundred of the sisterhood had perished. Despite all this, the Custodes continued to press forward, now turning their attention to what remained of the Magdan Freakor, who, despite hours of resistance against the Wolves, were completely wiped out by this new assailant. A route was now secured to the heart of Old Tizca, Valdor assigning hunter-codras of sisters to immediately move upon the district to rob the Thousand Sons infiltrators of their abilities that had allowed them to tie down the Wolves of the Black Cull as well as the newly engaged Sons of Horus. What remained of the 15th Legion within this region was quickly dealt with, finally caught by retributive Sensei host elements, now releasing the Wolves and the 16th Legion both for movements towards the central districts, and Russ' ongoing push towards the Temple of Magnus. At this point in the burning of Prospero, Imperial estimates declare that Thousand Sons had, despite their powers, lost some 30,000 Estartes, either to wounds too great to overcome, to combat deaths, or to capture, which, considering the Sensei host summarily executed all prisoners, was death. While the invasion force had taken a similar number of casualties, theirs was a reinforcement pool much deeper to draw upon, and within territory nominally under their control had been established numerous field medicaid outposts for the wounded to be transported to. While the Thousand Sons had their own facilities, such was the desperation of their defense that few of the Order of the Jackal, the Legion's apothecary and cultural division, remained within their Templums to receive those who needed their ministrations. The Sensei host could, in short, absorb far more losses than the Thousand Sons could afford to, as with each scion of Magnus that fell, the Legion's ability to hold ground diminished, pushing them further and further into Tizca. Valdor's deployment of the Silent Sisterhood, as almost one force, was a gamble that had paid dividends. Liman Russ now counted at his side a wing of the Oblivion Knights, though sisters whose pariah effect waxed the strongest, and whose abilities, with it, were more honed. With their arrival, no longer could the Thousand Sons maintain their illusory misdirections. No longer could they hide from the Wolf King's site, and his impact upon their now revealed front lines was nothing short of catatlysmic. Upon the Second and Eighth Fellowships, hurriedly fortified within the precinct surrounding the Raptora Arcology, the twin hammers of Valdor and Russ would fall. Some 10,000 Astartes were ranged against the commanders of the censor host, yet through them was carved a trail of purest slaughter. The Varragir and the Black Cull both followed in their wake, with annihilation in their hearts, turning the center of Tizca into a sea of blood and fire, death and misery. Should any Thousand Son have lived to bear witness to this renewed offensive, one must have wondered if they had any capacity yet to believe their Legion would triumph over such rampaging gods of battle. That is, of course, until one of their own awoke. Canis Vertex was a Warlord-class Battletitan, formerly of the Ligio Astorum. It had been enshrined in a position of great reverence by the adepts of the Pyrrhecult atop their Arcology. Having fallen in combat with the Komenka Troika during the Great Crusade, the Warlord had been declared a loss by the Legion. But the Pyrrhe, unwilling to see such a paragon of destruction be rendered to scrap, requested its retention as a combined museum piece and honorary statue. It had not moved since its destruction. Its machine spirit had long departed, as had its connection to the motive force. It possessed no crew. It possessed no power. And, at 1523, 734-00-M31, it stirred. Balefire lopped and played across its now-motile limbs, while a pulsating eldritch light appeared to glow within its core. Its incarnation heralded a renewed fury from the Prosperine's guise. The Aetheric Storm now vent its fury in thunder and wind that tore since your host aircraft from the air like the playthings of children. Canis Vertex howled. Not the blast of a titan's warhorn, but something far more ancient and primal. The fire now surrounding its limbs moving like liquid across its entire form. Its resurrection was, of course, no feat of the Mechanicum. But a blasphemic transgression of the machine god's doctrines wrought by the captain of the Sixth Fellowship, Calophis, who also held the rank of Archmageus of the Pyre cult. Within the temple arcology, the profane warlord had just torn itself free from. The Thousand Sons of the cult had torn open a portal to the immaterium and siphoned the energy of the warp itself to fuel the god's engine's wrath. Should recovered records be believed, Calophis was in fact literally incarnated within the machine spirit of the titan, his body lying recumbent within a crystalline throne at the heart of the Pyre's temple. His pyrokinetic abilities, however, were now the font from which the power of Canis Vertex could be directed. Though its guns lived once more, its reactor flushed with power to fuel them, Calophis instead opted to channel the fury of the living flame through his new body of metal. The sheer influx of immaterial energy appeared to reinvigorate the powers of those Thousand Sons yet engaged with the forces of the censure host, and should any of them have bothered to question its source, they appeared to care not. The wrath of the warlord reborn smashed through the null defences of the sisterhood, who even now were hard-pressed to contain the resurgent legion elements. Where the censure host had been poised to deliver killing blows in multiple theaters across Tizca, they were now suddenly upon the defensive, the anti-psychic capabilities they had wielded, overwhelmed by this unexpected blasphemic reversal that even now strode towards their lines with purest annihilation kindled in its baleful heart. Had this managed to swayed Russ or Valdor from their advance, none have ever seen evidence. The spear of the Emperor and the Wolf King still remained upon the offensive, pushing now into the depths of the temple-archology of the raptora, both that they may bring the Magisters that remained there within to destruction, and to move them out of the punishment of Calophis' incendiary wrath. The archology was currently being defended by 15th Legion Astartes under the command of Captains of the 2nd and 8th Fellowships, Phosus T'Kar and Aura Magma. The former was the Magister of the raptora cult, most powerful telekeen within the Legion, while the latter was Calophis' second in the Pyre. Both set upon their attackers with fury and power unbridled, Aura Magma's fire melting the armour of Varigir Terminators to liquid, as Phosus T'Kar bodily charged both Valdor and Russ, his kine shield completely turning aside all munitions that spat at him as he charged. As the 2nd and 8th Captains both engaged the Lords of the Emperor's censure, elsewhere in Tezga, 7th Fellowship Captain Phail Toron found himself and his Astartes hopelessly pinned between the advancing wolves of the Black Cull and the warriors of the Ligio Custodes. Of the 7000 Astartes under his command mere hours beforehand, only 3000 remained alive, and even then the survivors were not concentrated under their captain but scattered throughout the city after the collapse of the portal network. Magister Toron counted a mere few hundred at his side, and even these, loyal, dogged few, were perishing despite the powers bestowed upon them by Calophis' bestriding idol. Surrounded by the baying of the wolves and the clinical precision of the Custodes, soaked in the blood and viscera of his own brothers, what had once been Phail Toron broke. It is perhaps surprising that the trauma and insanity of Prospero had not done so to any member of the Legion until that point. Perhaps it had, and it was only the intensity of the etheric conflagration that was different in this instance. Perhaps it was a testament to the willpower of the Thousand Sons up to this moment, but for whatever reason, Phail Toron simply surrendered himself to the warp in its totality. All mental barriers were dropped, the tight mind hold through which all Psykers must channel the Imitarium was released. As a living conduit for the Aether Force of the Warp, Toron became a force of total destruction, annihilating those Imperials around him with coruscating lightning that flowed through him in a torrent until his body simply dispersed, atom by atom, into nothingness. After action reports around this chrono mark record a significant number of Psy abnormalities amongst the Thousand Sons, and while Phail Toron was included in these, subsequent examination reveals that it was at this moment that the Thousand Sons as a Legion, perhaps even as humans, ended. The flesh change was a curse born of the Thousand Sons almost since their inception. It had, they had believed, been cured by the work of Magnus the Red, who had cast the full might of his peerless mind against the condition. He had succeeded, or so all who knew of it had thought, until the death of Phail Toron. From the epicenter of the seventh captain's disintegrated body there now emerged a wave invisible, moving ever outwards, a malignancy cast against the genetic coding of the Thousand Sons, and setting it alight. The return of the flesh change was as spectacular as it was horrifying. All across Tizca, the startys of the 15th Legion felt their flesh rebel, and watched in abject shock as their brothers succumbed to grand mal mutations at astonishing speed. Reforming into shapes unspeakable, the bodies of those changed still convulsed with the torrential power of the Imitarium, becoming psychic tumor things that lashed out in blind idiot pain at all around them. In the raptoron arcology, the change tied Hitora Magma first, turning the captain into a revolting amalgam of fire and liquid meat, sending him running through the halls of the temple screaming as his flesh and soul burned with a fire that would not let him die. Phosas Tukar, furiously battling Constantine Valdor, swelled with monstrous potency, his body erupting in form until it had become a towering abomination who threw itself at the captain general with unnatural fury. It is said that, before the killing blow could be struck, the former Phosas Tukar was made aware of his aspect, and in revulsion of what he and his Legion had become, willingly dropped his defenses, allowing Valdor to plunge the Apollyon spear into what passed for his chest. All across Tizca, it is estimated that at least 10% of all thousand sons succumbed to the flesh change within a minute of failed Toront's apotheosis. But, and I note this despite advice that it should not be committed to official record, there remains evidence that the change was not restricted to the 15th Legion alone. Information contained within the archival stacks of the Silent Sisterhood note that, as the thousand sons succumbed to mutation untrammeled, so too did changes make themselves apparent upon the bodies of the wolves. Translated from Sisterhood thought mark, the records speak of ogroid things in the shape of lupine creatures that warred with flesh changed and imperials alike in the grounds of the raptoran pyramid. More berserk wolf than man, these beasts heeded no words, and may have been mistaken for some of the thousand sons afflicted had not their aspects been so eerily similar to each other, and some of their limbs had not still been clad in the dull gray of the Vilka Fenrica. The wolves have throughout these last ten thousand years furiously and violently denied that any such occurrence took place, or has ever taken place. They have worked with not insignificant diligence to ensure that official accounts do not refer to even the possibility that what genetic atrocities emerged on that night could have afflicted those of the 6th Legion, but I, for one, am reminded once more of the saying, there are no wolves on Fenris. Further elucidation on this point will remain for another day, but for now I will trust the word of the silent sisters over a legion whose vested interests remains to this day in presenting themselves as a just to cars during so fell a day in history. As the change wrought its hideous work upon central Tizca, Canis Vertex was plowing northwards. Seeking to crush the wolves' beech head, Colophus steered the god Enjun towards the concentric ring of stormbirds in the portlands, which, despite a total communications blackout, was still serving as a demarcation point for ammunition reserves ferried from orbit. No enemy stood against the warlord. The titans of the censure hosts had met their fates elsewhere. Its advance was heedless, each stride demolishing whole swathes of the city more totally than even the work of the black cull. The tanks of the wolves that arranged their firepower against us were just targets to the lashing flames that spun off its limbs. The censure host airpower that continued to mount attack runs on its hull were not even worthy of consideration. It was no external enemy that felt the thing Canis Vertex had become. What failed Toron had unleashed would lay it low. The power required by Colophus to maintain his control over so vast a thing as a warlord titan torn and rent by devastation emerging from the central districts. Without the mind of the Magister to effectively wield it, the aether fire that had replaced the beating reactor of Canis Vertex flew wildly out of control, blooming into an explosion like nothing anyone present had ever witnessed. Buildings across the city that had withstood the apocalypse of hours now fell under the pressure wave. The titan's corpse crashed into the temple arcology of the Corvide, sundering that ancient structure under its calamitous fall. While at the summit of the Pyrae Arcology, Colophus himself was granted one final instant of awareness before arcane feedback turned his body into a fiery conduit. The resulting detonation destroyed the Pyrae's pyramid from within and caused untold devastation to the areas surrounding it. Local reality, or what had passed for it upon Prospero for hours now, ceased to function. What can only be described as a localized warp storm emerged over central Tizca for all to behold. The sky became the color of heartbreak, lightening the shade of trauma and captured loss tore across it. Spacetime ceased to be in any true sense. It is at this point that all chronometric marks entirely fail. For what was to come and how long it took little is certain. All we have are accounts, fragmentary video logs, and tales that were it not for the sheer horror of what was unfolding would be discarded as dreams of madmen, until such a time as I can relate to the conclusion of this tale. Ave Imperator, Gloria in Excelsis Terra. Very kind donations and support from my Patreon subscribers. If you'd like to help support the channel, head on over to patreon.com. If you'd like to receive more updates about the channel and any future videos, you can contact me or follow me on Twitter at Oculus Imperia. Otherwise, please like, subscribe, comment, let me know your feedback, and as ever, thank you very much for watching.