98: Chapter 98 Legal Definition: On the day the agreement was signed, the final door of the Ancient Saint opened.

When the news that the legal definition of The Swarm had been officially incorporated into the imperial codex reached Griffin IV Anchorage, Hasseldorf, Arbiter of the Adeptus Arbites, personally sent a scanned copy via encrypted psionic communication. The amendment to the imperial codex had officially taken effect, with the Coalition Charter fully included as an appendix. The legal definition of The Swarm occupied all the clauses of the reserved chapter, with the legal personality of the Hive Mind, the contracting authority of the Brood Queen nodes, the legal boundaries of the Gene-phage sequence, and the ownership of the intellectual property of the Living Psionic Network all written into the main text. Marcus Aurelian projected the scanned copy onto the main screen of the briefing room, his right hand resting on the edge of the command console, where the bone fracture had long since faded into a faint calcified scar. He said to all members of the War Council, "The legal definition has been finalized. The Coalition now has laws, charters, and a dispute arbitration mechanism—next, it is time for that gate in the void to open."

The alarm of the Void Throat Defense Command blared at the exact same second. It was not a hostile alert, nor was it the restart of a self-destruct countdown—it was a complete restart of the channel. The quantum state monitoring array of Canoptek-7 captured signals at the base of the Talasta Void Gate that were no longer tremors or intermittent test protocols, but a complete, clear, and continuous stream of channel docking requests. This request traveled through extragalactic deep space, passing through all encryption layers of the Old Ones' backup channel protocol stack, and struck precisely at the frequency of the original template of the old ones protocol at the base of the Void Gate. It was accompanied by a string of the Old Ones' highest-priority identification authentication codes, formatted exactly like all the old ones protocols the Coalition had encountered at the Origin Facility and the Star of Judgment, but with a higher level of encryption. The sender's signature consisted of only two words: "Migrants."

The Brood Queen crouched on the other side of the conference table, the Blackstone Resonance Chamber on her adamantium-chitin carapace flashing violently in cold green light patterns. She translated Canoptek-7's complete scan report into Swarm genetic code and forwarded it to the Overmind, while simultaneously projecting it onto the main screen in Imperial high gothic: "The Old Ones' backup channel has completed docking from the far end. The channel protocol stack is fully decrypted. The authentication code is confirmed to be the Old Ones' migrant fleet. They are not calling for help. They are announcing their return."

A long silence fell over the briefing room. Sebastian took off his helmet and rested it on his knees, the Coalition's Universal Armor Plate on his power armor chestplate gleaming with a cold green light under the illumination. He said that the Old Ones did not go extinct, but had migrated—when they withdrew from the Milky Way, humanity had not yet learned to use fire, the Necron Dynasty had not yet become Necrons, and the Eldar Empire was still in its cradle. They had lived outside the galaxy for tens of millions of years, and now they were saying the gate was open and they had returned. Bern sent real-time scan data from the Void Gate position, his Holy Hammer resting gently on the edge of the console, the silver light of the Psychic Talisman shining a bit brighter than usual. From the moment the Old Ones' backup channel was fully awakened, the talisman had been continuously responding to a very faint but extremely stable psionic resonance—it was not an attack or interference, but more like a holy hymn sung for tens of millions of years that had finally reached the ears of its listeners. He said that the energy readings at the channel entrance were stable, Warp interference was zero, and the internal structure of the channel was intact. The Old Ones had not fled in panic back then; they had repaired the channel, sealed the gate, and then departed at leisure.

The Iyanden Farseer's Wraithbone Staff traced a faint blue arc in midair. The ancient prophetic fragments in the Web of Prophecy marked as "Shadows of the Old Ones" were all automatically decrypted the moment the channel restarted, piecing together a complete route map of the migrant fleet. The scale of the migrant fleet was magnified layer by layer through the prophetic markers in the Web of Prophecy—the Craftworld Council preliminary estimated that the biomass and civilization data reserves it carried were equivalent to the sum of several Craftworlds. The Farseer said that the Eldar had been debating where the Old Ones had gone for tens of thousands of years, and now the debate was over.

Nephilak's quantum state communication patched in immediately after. The Necron Overlord's voice remained steady, but his speaking pace was half a beat faster than usual. In the Necron Dynasty's Core Matrix, the ancient archive long marked as "unverifiable" automatically decrypted all its annotations at the exact same second the channel restarted—when the Old Ones sent the last migrant fleet out of the Milky Way at the end of the War in Heaven, they wrote a testament into the bottom layer of the channel protocol. The triggering conditions of the testament corresponded one-by-one with all the evaluation nodes the Coalition had currently completed—activating the Void Throat, completing the Living Psionic Network, passing the Origin Facility exam, clearing the Chaos remnants, and establishing the Coalition's legal order. Only when the Coalition completed all five criteria would the Old Ones confirm that the latecomers of the Milky Way no longer needed their protection, and only then would the migrant fleet send a call of return from the other end of the channel. At the end of the annotation, there was a message left by the Old Ones for the Coalition: "Thank you. We have returned. The gate no longer needs to be locked."

Marcus stood up and walked to the star map. The channel coordinates, the Old Ones' authentication code, and the Web of Prophecy's heading markers were projected simultaneously at the edge of the Ultima Segmentum. The route extended from extragalactic deep space into the Milky Way, with a very short estimated contact time. He glanced at the Brood Queen, then turned to Heinrich's holographic projection. The veteran admiral stood on the bridge of the Shield of the Emperor, the cold green shimmer of the Coalition emblem on the bow illuminating his face, which had been scarred by Warp radiation. He said that the Expeditionary Fleet had completed its Warp preheating several days ago, with the entire formation maintaining combat readiness. The Leviathan Battle Group had formed an escort formation on both sides of the anchorage, and the Titan-Eater's void-class core had completed channel docking calibration, just waiting for the Coalition's order. Sebastian sheathed his Power Sword back into his waist belt and said that since its inception, the Coalition had fought at the Star of Judgment, the Lead-Gray Abyss, and the Origin Facility, cleared the Chaos Hulk Fleets, and signed the legal definition. Now, they were going to welcome the descendants of the Old Ones home.

Marcus issued the final departure order. The United Fleet assembled on the outer perimeter of the Griffin IV Anchorage, led by the Shield of the Emperor, with twelve Strike Cruisers deploying in a wedge formation on the flanks, the leviathan mothership battle group extending on the left and right wings, Iyanden's wraith cruisers deploying ghost coatings at the vanguard, and the Metallis base ship bringing up the rear, carrying the Titan-Eater and living metal regeneration chambers. The Expeditionary Fleet cut silently into the entrance of the Old Ones' backup channel in a standard marching column, with the Psionic Void Network forming a living neural network navigation layer around the fleet, and the channel coordinates on the star map were precisely calibrated one by one. At the end of the channel, the first silhouettes of the Old Ones' migrant fleet had appeared on the faint blue prophetic boundary of the Web of Prophecy—not warships, not colony ships, but an entire mobile world, its surface covered in cold green light patterns, older than the blackstone engine array of the Metallis Forge Temple, and deeper than the Old Ones' seals of the Star of Judgment. The last gate of the Old Ones was fully opened, and standing behind it were the Old Ones themselves.