72: When the seal on the Star of Judgment was activated in Chapter 72, Tzeentch unleashed all of his Chaos Legion fleets.

The surface of the Star of Judgment began to crack shortly after the allied fleet completed orbital deployment. It was not an earthquake or a volcano, but the Old Ones' Final Sealing Protocol being remotely activated from deep within the planet's core by the Void Throat's quantum array. The sealing layer on the Star of Judgment's crust, which had been triple-encrypted and preserved by the Necron Dynasty for eons, peeled away layer by layer under the synchronous resonance of the Psionic Void Network. Every time a seal shattered, a ring of cold green shockwave exploded outward. As the shockwaves swept through the allied fleet, the Void Shields of all ships were simultaneously marked with an extremely thin layer of cold green light patterns by the Old Ones' verification ID—allied member identification passed.

The Brood Queen crouched beside the pedestal of the Talasta Void Gate, the Photonic Crown along the ridges of her carapace flashing violently. The operating procedures of the Old Ones' Final Sealing Protocol were pouring into her Hive Mind node in the form of quantum data streams. Every step required maintaining the quantum entanglement link between the Void Throat and the Star of Judgment's core without any external interference during the protocol's activation. She synchronously forwarded the full text of the protocol to the War Council, with only one note—once activation begins, it cannot be stopped, otherwise the core of the Star of Judgment will tear the Great Rift even wider.

Marcus Aurelian stood on the bridge of the Wrath of the Emperor, his right fingers pressing against the edge of the command console. Enemy projections in the deep space on both sides had already crowded the scanner screens—Tyranid remnants used surviving hive motherships to piece together a deformed but massive assault fleet pressing in from the left; Tzeentch's Chaos Hulk Fleets, led by six Chaos battleships soaked in pink-purple light liquid, cut in from the direction of the Cadian Ruins. The two hostile forces formed a pincer line that arrived almost simultaneously at the outer high orbit of the Star of Judgment. Marcus ordered over the fleet-wide channel, his voice raspy but every word sounding as if tightened by pliers and twisted into the communication link: "Oldenburg, Third Assault Fleet take all Strike Cruisers to the left wing. Leave the Tyranid remnants to you and the leviathan mothership battle group. Remember—not to crush them, but to stall them. The Chaos Hulk Fleets on the right wing will be handled by the Titan-Eater and the Eldar Wraith Strike Teams. The Swarm's Blackstone Cerebrate will project the resonance of the Void Throat's seal directly onto the Chaos fleet's shields; the Chaos psionic shields will self-destruct under the resonance."

The Iyanden Farseer's Wraithbone Staff traced a ghostly blue arc in mid-air, and the Craftworld's wraith cruiser slid silently into position on the right wing from the allied lane's flank. The Farseer's voice was steady and certain: "The Web of Prophecy has long marked that the Chaos Hulk Fleets would strike back with full force when the Star of Judgment's seal was activated. Tzeentch knows this is His last chance—once the Great Rift is forced closed by the Old Ones' Final Sealing Protocol, the Warp channels of Chaos in this sector will all be torn to shreds. He threw all the hulk fleets over not to win, but to perish together." Marcus's mouth twitched slightly, accepting another coordination with the Eldar.

Oldenburg's report followed immediately—the seal activation countdown had begun. The pressure on the allied forces to maintain an effective defensive line in the high orbit of the Star of Judgment would rise sharply in the latter half of the countdown, but as long as they endured this period, the shockwave from closing the Warp rift would solve the remaining enemies for them. The Brood Queen's translator projected the Overmind's orders onto the main screen, brief and efficient as always—Titan-Eater was authorized to ram the Chaos flagship directly; all leviathan motherships' Living Railgun switched to Void Throat resonance ammunition, with targets uniformly allocated by the Blackstone Cerebrate's quantum fire control; all allied fleet Void Shields must remain at full power throughout and withdraw from the closure's impact zone as quickly as possible after the Chaos fleet's dense areas were detonated.

When the first wave of psionic impact from the Chaos Hulk Fleets exploded on the allied right wing, the entire high orbit of the Star of Judgment was torn by light patterns of pink-purple and cold green. Tzeentch's six battleships simultaneously projected Error-correction code psionic screams at the allied fleet—not physical attacks, but cognitive pollution specifically designed for the living neural network of the Psionic Void Network. Bern grasped the Holy Hammer on the Void Gate's pedestal and broadcasted a passage of the Emperor's Prayer to all allied channels with Holy Power. The Holy Power Brand was injected into the Void Shield arrays of all allied members in real-time through the Psionic Void Network. He roared through gritted teeth: "Tzeentch is using Error-correction codes to pollute the living nodes of the Psionic Void Network, but the Old Ones' Cohesive Psionics are immune to cognitive pollution! Let The Swarm use the Holy Power Brand as a network interference filter and overlay it directly on every node!"

The Brood Queen's Photonic Crown completed the protocol adaptation within half a second. All allied nodes of the Psionic Void Network were simultaneously double-filtered by the Emperor's Holy Power and the Old Ones' Cohesive Psionics. Tzeentch's Error-correction code screams were stripped away layer by layer as they penetrated the network, finally leaving only a harmless pink-purple background noise. The Titan-Eater charged out from the right wing's gravitational reef in a zig-zag, its four adamantium piercing bone-blades drawing four cold green arcs in the void, crashing directly through the Crystal core of the Chaos flagship's bow. The Keeper of Secrets stood in the exact center of the Crystal core, its pink-purple scales pierced through the chest cavity by Void Throat resonance ammunition. It used its last breath to leave a sentence on the allied screens before turning into a burst of purple-black crystalline powder—"The Old Ones' exam, consider it passed. But Tzeentch always has the next question."

The seal activation countdown neared its end, and the Star of Judgment's core tore the Warp channels of the Great Rift segment by segment and forced them closed in a silent cold green shockwave. Ships of the Chaos Hulk Fleets within the closure zone were torn into fundamental particles, and the hive motherships of the Tyranid remnants began to collide with each other after losing Warp coordination, being swept away one by one by the leviathan motherships' railguns. Marcus pressed the fleet-wide channel and ordered all allied units to evacuate at full speed to a safe distance before the closure shockwave arrived. The allied fleet completed its turn in a very short time; the Third Assault Fleet and the leviathan motherships evacuated in an orderly fashion from the left lane, the wraith cruiser took the wounded and logistics vessels into the Wraith Network's shadow lanes, and the Titan-Eater returned from the right wing after smashing the Chaos flagship, smoothly descending into the recovery halo of the Void Throat.

The Warp rift in the high orbit of the Star of Judgment closed completely behind the allied forces. The light of the Astronomican illuminated this sector for the first time in the vacuum following the rift's closure, a sector that had been covered by permanently lost space for over ten thousand years. Marcus leaned against the command console and spoke slowly into the War Council's channel, his voice raspy and weary: "Allies, we're withdrawing. The Old Ones' trial is over, but our duty is not yet finished." The Brood Queen's Photonic Crown gradually dimmed, and her translator left one last line on the main screen—The Overmind says the alliance can start preparing for the next exam.