Hunched around the war planning stone table, Rex parsed recent intelligence hauls from daring infiltration raids while Mara marked frontier settlement status beads on the strategic astrolabe - noting where displaced populations stabilized around Rex’s roving peacekeeper support corps versus isolated regions still facing hostile incursions across both human and beast faction lines. 

Tracking supply attack patterns and correlating accounts from rescued prisoners, disturbing connectivity emerged suggesting some shadowy third party stoking perpetual conflict by alternating covert support dynamics to prolong overall balance of power tensions rather than allow clear resolution. But to what ends beyond chaos profits? For seasoned conflict exploiters like Steel merely sought personal prestige and wealth seemingly lacking long-vision master plans. Was this another greedy mercenary syndicate or something more ominous from beyond the veil?

“Each full moon, my dreams walk back blood paths seeing again our martyred seers questioning mighty Zathamos as flames took elder temples. What seek ye from stars beyond void lies?” Mara rotated etched stellar discs depicting the celestial tableau on fateful eve her childhood sanctuary was overwhelmed by an unprecedented surprise attack - first in a wave of coordinated strikes simultaneously decimating independent havens daring to shelter hybrid refugees or preach coexistence philosophies violating regime purity doctrines. On that horrific night of flames and indescriptible violations, young Mara took sacred duty bonds to someday exact justice against orchestrating architects. 

Rex placed a gentle hand over the Inquisition Scarab emblem seared onto Mara’s wrist, wishing memories carried less permanent marks than skull metals. “We’ll unravel this appealed darkness together - light searches itself through unflinching eyes.” He had sat through too many Truth and reconciliation hearings witnessing trauma’s terrible harvests. “Your night visions may yet reveal strategic wisdom if patterns take clearer shape.”

Former imperial astronomer Venus believed she found initial correlation context by referencing confiscated archives from White Tower sanctum raids early in the conflict documenting strange Temple doctrines fixated on prophecy texts foretelling a cyclical cosmic event when exiled Overlords would return from banishment through centralized Hive temples built around geomagnetic fracking mines generating raw negative vacuum force potential from Telluric bleeds near dormant tectonic fault lines. Such rare deposits created risky reality friction zones ideal for advanced dimensional tore experiments but requiring vast slave armies to stabilize competing energy flows while First Priest brood siphoned off ascending dark photons towards inverted maturation Vats buried in lightless cradling caverns. It was an intricate esoteric operation spanning decades of secret infrastructure partnerships camouflaged as simple mining ventures by shows of occasional mineral hauls exported through corrupt officials. But what emerged from those revitalizing chamber pools remained obscured behind layers of lethalClearance was only granted when Rex’s embedded operative Venus located mysterious Segmentum Obscura entries referencing a sealed meteor impact site located past the legendary Ash Wastes plains - a dangerous landscape permanently scarred by magical fallout from an unknown cataclysm lost to history. After escaping Xerxes Factor military watchtowers confining curious academics, brave expedition parties willing to risk permanent flesh corruption from still active contaminant dust particles reported vast spires of oddly untouched onyx emerging from the grit-filled horizon almost orchestrated in concentric ringed layouts too precise from random collision debris. Those towering pyramid structures also seemed resistant to gradual burial under perpetual storms of grey ash blowing past their sleek surfaces. Closer scout warns noted no obvious activity but strange oscillations detected in background radiation signals recorded, hinting at deep power operations from hidden lower layers. None returned after crossing the Cyclopean courtyards into shadowed interior ambits leading underground.  

When combined campaign arts conducted a risky mass Incursion push towards inland Empire heartland territories from multiple hidden assault garrisons stationed in secret retrieved ant colony hive networks buried below restricting wasteland catastrophe radiation levels, Rex split forces while advancing with swift entry teams finally breaching the imposing Ringed Stronghold noted across haunted pilgrim accounts no sane souls trespassed except desperate fools chasing forbidden occult super weapons referenced from ashes of deposed Overlords. Within barracks and secured vaults, Rex decrypted deformation architecture plans depicting standard aboveground fortresses and angular non-Euclidean connecting tunnels leading down to vastly extensive subsurface complexes obviously not crafted by human nor beast hands but rather generated by self-arranging Umbral Calculus systems controlled through now inert pentagonal logic loom rooms that seemed biological alchemy engines once flooding adjoining womb chambers with raw chaotic plasmatic fluids rich in torsion life force derivatives for gestating special hybrid pleasure slaves and aggressive battle brood castes attuned to Overmind telepathic control tendrils woven throughout the miles-deep metamaterial infrastructure body. Such ancient now idle mechanisms still gave Rex traumatic visions that night in the Inorganic growth fields leading towards descending spiral stair wells glowing red from angry pilots.  

Guided by plant and small animal intuition attempting to avoid material corruption nodes down there in the hollow earth pits, Rex led his forces deeper through strangely sensory and temporal dilating halls carved with bas relief frescoes depicting the Overlord arrival through shimmering Sky Tears as Winged Titan Harbringers who conquered primitive tribal factions by force then employed cunning social control tactics coupled with providing energy dense foraging supplements made from liquefied cognitive matter and DNA cocktail Ovoid vats organically printed in nursery meshes suspended in antigrav fields providing optimal neural reconfiguration conditions for maximized sensory ecstasy fusion rates when Soul exchanges took place. But since mysterious system failures ended the disciplined brutal regime over these lands in chaotic riots and slave revolts that ignited the current civilization dark age of perpetual conflict between man and beast, no operating sentinels barred access to inner Sanctum gates where the Pale Prince himself conducted his resurrection rituals through pyramid focus prisms drawing down purple squid deities through tornado vortices from beyond space time using maddening chants of fanatical monks driven to voluntary possession so their aging overlord sustained by golden mycelial umbilicus cords could finish metamorphosis rites before Rex arrived to trigger strategic cave-ins isolating the escaping brood swarm pathways out....