The Psychic Awakening was a galaxy-wide surge in psychic power that followed the opening of the Great Rift, a spiritual convulsion as significant as any military campaign. With the boundary between reality and the warp shattered, the tides of the immaterium flooded the material universe, kindling latent gifts and empowering witches, sorcerers, and prophets across every world and species.
This awakening manifested in countless ways, few of them benign. Latent psykers ignited in unprecedented numbers, straining the Imperium's ability to sanction or destroy them, while ancient powers stirred and long-dormant beings roused from their slumber. Factions across the galaxy felt the change: the Aeldari saw the followers of their nascent god of the dead rise in strength, buried genestealer cults quickened toward revolt, and the servants of Chaos found their sorceries swollen with new might.
Far from a single battle, the Psychic Awakening was a sprawling era of interlinked conflicts and revelations, in which heroes and monsters alike came into their full power. It reshaped the balance of the galaxy in the shadow of the Great Rift, setting the stage for the wars of the new millennium. The age of quiet witchcraft was ended; henceforth the psychic and the daemonic would walk ever more openly through a galaxy drowning in its own awakened power.