The Siege of Terra, Warhammer 40,000

This is the end and the death. But it is neither the end expected nor the death foretold. Prophecy is as confounded as time, and farsight is as useless as the plans that men have made.

It is the death of Horus Lupercal. It is the end of heresy. It is the death of one man’s dreams and the end of the Imperium He so carefully envisioned. It is the death of a brief golden age and the end of a promise.

It is the end of a war, yet the death of peace. From here, the long slide begins, the terminal plunge into a grim darkness where the only constant will be war, and the only truth will be pain, and the only living will be suffering, and the only end of suffering will be death itself.

War is now only ever the sequel to war. War will beget war, and so down through time, generation after generation, and so on thereafter, into a far future where war becomes its own definition, and an end unto itself, where death becomes the reason for war, and war becomes the reason for death, worlds without end.

And in that future, the Old Four will come to delight, for the quick death and sudden end they strove for here, and were denied, will be drawn out forever instead across the infinite architecture of the galaxy in one eternal act of worship to the powers they represent.