The silence that fell after the Joker's departure was heavier than stone. It pressed in — a physical weight in the air that tasted of ozone and forgotten dreams. The reflection of Terra, already a grotesque mirror, seemed to hold its breath. The crumbling ferrocrete spires clawing at the bruise-colored sky stood straighter for a moment, then sagged, as if remembering their place in the theatre of decay.
The ripple the chuckle had caused did not fully subside. It lingered, a persistent tremor deep within the Warped ground. The statue that had bled liquid void wept slower now, staining the dust with impossible darkness. Dust motes, disturbed by his impossible dance, did not settle. Instead, they continued to swirl in hypnotic, non-Euclidean patterns, tracing invisible sigils in the vacant air — sigils that pulsed with faint psychic heat. The seeds, unseen moments before, were beginning to germinate in the mind-stuff of the Warp-reflection.
This desolate stage, however, was merely where the performance began. The Solitaire was not bound by space, nor time, least of all by consistency.
He reappeared not on a shattered ruin, but hovering, impossibly, over a vast, churning sea of pure psychic energy within the Warp. This was closer to its true nature — a formless, boundless ocean of thought, emotion, and raw possibility, where horrors swam like leviathans and fleeting whispers became eternal truths. Here, the concept of 'ground' was meaningless; he stood on the surface of a consciousness vaster than stars, yet as intricate as a single tear.
His motley shimmered, a stable point of impossible color in the formless, pallid light that emanated from within the psychic sea. The mask, fixed in its enigmatic rictus, offered the only solid focal point in the shifting landscape.
Here, the music was deafening. It was not sound, but sensation — a chorus of raw existence: the screams of souls lost, the triumphant roars of daemons, the silent sorrow of dying hope, the buzzing static of a million confused thoughts echoing from the material universe. To others, it was madness. To the Joker, it was a score. And he listened, not with ears, but with the whole of his being.
He wasn't omnipotent. Merely an echo granted teeth. A whisper dressed in motley with permission to twist reality in ways others could not see.
He reached out a hand, his fingers dipping into the psychic ocean. Where they touched, the chaotic currents momentarily stilled, forming a small, impossibly calm pool. Within this pool, images began to coalesce — summoned by his will, or perhaps simply reflections drawn from the vastness.
He saw a battle raging across a forgotten moon, Astartes locked in brutal combat with mutated horrors. He saw a hidden chamber deep beneath a Hive City, where robed figures chanted before a shimmering portal. He saw a lone Rogue Trader ship, adrift in the void, its Navigator staring into the abyss and seeing things he shouldn't. He saw the silent halls of the Emperor's Palace, and the golden light that felt so distant — so fragile — against the encroaching dark.
And he saw others.
A man of black metal and volcanic rage, casting his gaze into a Necron tomb.
A pale, smiling figure twirling through a garden of death, trailing threads of Tyranid ichor.
A crowned specter offering redemption to fallen Eldar, cloaked in myth and lies.
A silver-tongued shaper etching new species in vats of blasphemy.
And a demon prince wrapped in wings of fate and prophecy, waiting to strike.
He watched them with the detached air of a director reviewing dailies. He hummed a low, discordant tune, not through his lips (the mask had none) but through the very air around him, a vibration that resonated through the psychic sea.
"Ah, yes," a telepathic whisper emanated from him. It was not his voice, but a resonant presence given form. "The suffering... the certainty... the utterly predictable arcs of tragedy and defiance."
He chuckled again, the dry, ancient sound echoing across the psychic ocean.
"They call it grimdark. How terribly serious."
His eyes, hidden behind the porcelain, were surely focused on something specific within the images. A corner of a scene perhaps. A flicker of doubt in a soldier's eye. The timing of a single syllable in a heretical chant. This was where the seeds truly took root. Not in the physical world, but in the psychic fabric that underpinned it. A misplaced fear here. A sudden surge of hope there. A memory resurfaced. A whisper in a dream.
He drew his hand back from the psychic sea. The calm pool vanished, swallowed by the churning chaos. But the moments he had touched were altered — a microscopic nudge here, a psychic tick there. Unseen. Unknowable.
He turned, gliding over the psychic ocean toward nowhere and everywhere. His movement wasn't flight but a seamless transition — like a card shuffled into a deck. He was the card that didn't belong, yet always found its way to the top.
He paused again, this time standing on a narrow, invisible ledge that curved into the gibbering void. Below wasn't the psychic sea, but a deeper darkness — where the faint, distant light of the galaxy looked like dust.
"The players are in position," the unseen voice murmured. "The board is set. The great game... they believe they understand its rules."
He tilted his head, a human gesture made alien by the stillness of his mask.
"They think the goal is victory. Subjugation. Survival." A phantom sigh rustled his motley. "Such limited imagination."
He raised both hands, palms out toward the distant, glimmering motes of the galaxy. His fingers twitched, manipulating invisible threads that connected every star, every soul, every scream.
"The punchline," he whispered — a sound like a bell tolling across dimensions — "is the dawning realization that none of it mattered. That the ultimate truth is absurd. That the cosmic horror they fear is just... poor stage management."
He lowered his hands, letting the threads snap back into place. The energy around him pulsed, charged with a manic potential. The seeds sown in the dirt of Warp-Terra, nurtured in the psychic sea, were ready. Carried on the currents of the Empyrean like spores on a malevolent wind.
He began a slow, deliberate pirouette on the invisible ledge, motley blurring into a rainbow swirl against the void. The movement was graceful, theatrical. A rehearsal for the final, devastating performance.
And then, as before, he turned. Not toward the psychic sea. Not toward the galaxy. But sideways — toward the fragile barrier between his reality and… yours.
The mask didn't change, but the air thickened, humming with unnatural focus. The painted smile felt less like porcelain and more like a predator's grin.
"You watch, don't you?" the voice was a low growl now, intimate and chilling. "From your gilded cells of reason. From your psychic sanctums and numbered archives. You see the war, the madness, the sacrifice. And you label it. You think you understand the narrative."
He leaned in. The void swirled behind him.
"But do you see the clown in the corner? The misplaced prop? The line delivered just slightly wrong? Those are my edits. My notes in the script."
He tilted his head further, as if studying the observers — scholars, psykers, Inquisitors, and dreamers — with impossible eyes behind the mask.
"The Second Son... and the eleventh son are line crossed out too early. A hole in the narrative I find most... entertaining."
A gloved finger rose, tapping his cheek.
Tap. Tap.
And again.
"Every great tragedy needs moments of farce," he whispered, the voice now light, almost cheerful — a terrifying counterpoint to the void. "And every great joke needs a buildup."
He straightened up. The intense focus receded. The unsettling pressure began to lift.
"Keep watching," the voice said, fading like vapor in a nightmare. "The final act is approaching. And you wouldn't want to miss the punchline, would you? After all..."
His form began to dissolve, motley colors bleeding into the Warp.
"...you're part of the audience."
And then he was gone.
The invisible ledge vanished. The void remained. But the feeling of being observed — of being known — slowly dissipated. The Warp's ambient madness returned to its normal whisper.
He was gone, but the seeds remained.
Scattered across the psychic expanse. Tucked into the corners of a million minds. Waiting for the right conditions to bloom.
They were whispers of doubt. Flickers of forgotten truths. Impossible connections woven into the script.
The Warp did not forget him.
And the galaxy had just been... edited.
The joke was coming.
And soon, somewhere in the void... someone would start to laugh.
And when they did —everything
would break.