Chapter Text
Chapter 1 — Awakening
There was warmth, constant and soft around me. A muffled heartbeat somewhere beyond the glass. I drifted in a sea of nutrient fluid, suspended in a sleep deeper than memory, and yet… not truly asleep.
Thought stirred before consciousness. There was little capacity of thought yet in my mind, but understanding flickered, sensory impressions I shouldn’t have been capable of parsing, patterns buried in the light, rhythms in the vibrations of distant voices.
Then light pierced the dark.
Soft at first. Gold.
I opened my eyes, or tried to. They responded sluggishly, my lids struggling to part against the fluid that cradled me like a womb. Shapes swam beyond the transparent curve of my world, but one stood at the center of everything.
“…responding well to gene treatments…”
“…I will never understand why use a lost human soul for this one, my lady…”
“…incorruptible—second will be a bulkhead against the parasites…”
Words came and went even when I couldn’t parse through them, what I did notice wasn’t with my normal senses… it was with my soul. She radiated power, even to my primitive brain. Radiated it not like sun, like the concept of divinity made flesh. I could feel the change in the air, or whatever passed for it in this chamber, when she drew close. The machines hummed louder in her presence. The glass of my pod felt warmer.
“…a potential replacement for Project Magnus…”
“…Psychic potential through the roof…”
She was beautiful. Terrifyingly so. I wanted to avert my eyes, but I found that I couldn’t.
Black hair fell like cascading night over shoulders wrapped in a golden toga that shimmered as though woven from captured starlight. Her eyes…
Her eyes were what held me. Bright, flawless orbs of molten gold. Living suns.
I couldn’t look away.
She turned to the figure beside her. A man, shorter, stooped with age, his grey beard combed and robes marked with arcane sigils. He leaned on a staff shaped like a dagger plunged into a book.
“Number Two responds to your voice, old friend,” the man said. His voice was dry, amused. “Neural activity spikes every time.”
“I know,” she replied, and the words were music. Light, full of gravity and grace. She stepped closer. “The Soul integration is going well, he seems… more than before.”
Her hand rose to touch the surface of my pod.
“I see you, my son,” she said softly. “And you see me, don’t you?
Her fingers splayed against the reinforced plasteel, and I floated forward, helpless in the current of my own awe. I couldn’t reach out, not yet. Could barely move. But I felt.
Her power reached out to my mind and I felt her emotions.
Love. Unconditional. Massive. Terrifying in its depth. And pride, a lot of it. She was sending her emotions directly into my brain.
“You are Second,” she whispered. “Second forged, second born. My blade, my storm, my flesh and my light. I have made you strong.”
A rumble from somewhere far away. The machinery whirred as my tiny heart surged. My mind flooded with impossible colors.
“Perhaps,” the old man muttered, glancing at a data-slate, “you have made this one too strong.”
The Empress smiled. Just a little. It was a thing of absolute serenity.
“The warp has not touched him,” she said. “He is… perfect.”
Malcador’s brow furrowed. “They all are. In their own ways. Perfection is not uniform, my lady.”
“No,” she agreed, and looked at me again. “But this one has balance. His soul is… anchored.”
I didn’t understand the words. Not yet. But I felt them. I remembered them. Somewhere deep, deep in the parts of me that were already more than human.
“I am sorry for what I must make of you, little lost soul.” she said at last. The gold of her gaze softened. “But you will not be alone. Your brothers and sisters grow nearby. You will have family.”
She leaned in, her forehead resting against the glass.
“Alexander. Sleep. Your time will come.”
And her voice, oh, that voice, washed over me like a tide.
“…Alexander? Really?”
“…We have to stick to the classics…”
Her power affected me, and I drifted back into the abyss. Safe. Warm. Cradled in divinity and power.
Wait… Empress? Sisters?!
The thought rushed through me before sleep claimed me.
Somewhere in the lab, a machine noted the spike in psychic potential and filed the data away.
Subject II: Stable.
Neural Growth: Accelerated.
Soul Resonance: High.
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I awoke to pressure and heat. A tremendous force squeezed my chest, as if gravity itself had grown angry.
Everything was shaking. The pod. My body. My thoughts.
I opened my eyes.
Not fluid. Not warmth. The walls groaned as if being torn apart. Sirens screamed, a bone-deep howl I somehow understood to mean danger, terminal descent, impact imminent.
I was no longer in the lab. Thoughts came to me like lightning. The Empress, Malcador, the lab, Ἀλέξανδρος, Alexander.
Memories pounded in my skull like fists on iron. Fragmented, blazing with clarity one moment, then slipping away like smoke the next.
I saw her, the Empress. She stood beyond the glass of my incubation pod, radiant as a star. Her golden eyes met mine through the nutrient fog, and for a breathless instant, I remembered what it felt like to belong. She was smiling, the way a creator might smile at their favored creation.
A white coat hung from her shoulders, half-buttoned over a golden tunic. She chewed cutely on a pen, the metal glinting between her perfect teeth. Her other hand moved swiftly, scribbling calculations onto a clipboard and parchment. The air around her shimmered with data-streams and the soft glow of cogitator banks.
The Empress had built me for war. And somewhere, far beyond the stars, she was waiting for me to rise.
Names have power.
I sat up too fast and slammed my head into the curved ceiling. It didn’t hurt. Not really. I blinked and raised a hand.
Big.
The fingers were mine, but they weren’t. Sculpted like marble. Veins thick as cords under skin too smooth to be real. I turned it, flexed it, felt every tendon move like a steel cable under tension. The fluid in my pod was just gone.
My mind raced. Not in a metaphorical sense. Thoughts erupted in terrifying speed. Language, physics, memories, old ones, not mine. Neural pathways lit up like a map of stars. Concepts clicked into place faster than I could track them.
I looked down.
I was almost naked. Clothed only in some smooth synthetic wrap that clung to my skin like a second layer of flesh. My legs were muscled. My chest and shoulders wide enough to block the emergency lighting above.
Thirteen, maybe fifteen in appearance. But no boy had ever looked like this.
A Primarch body, mind and soul.
The pod lurched violently. Something slammed into the outer hull and the lights blinked out, leaving only crimson emergency strips flashing in rhythmic pulses.
Thud-thud-thud-thud, my heart pounded like a war drum.
I leaned toward the viewport, driven by a mixture of instinct and terror. Grabbing the frame with one hand, I pulled myself up to stare out.
Flames.
The atmosphere burned around me in long, orange ribbons. The pod was a comet, punching through a world’s sky with murderous intent.
Below, the surface curved across the horizon in a black silhouette. Clouds boiled beneath me. A continent lay sprawled under cover of night, lit not by nature, but by civilization.
Megacities.
From orbit I could see it all. Endless grids, strange spirals, clusters of shifting luminescence.
The planet's surface was broken open with artificial scars, miles-wide craters turned into extraction pits, mountains leveled into slabs for infrastructure. Hive spires rose like jagged blades stabbing through the clouds, their tips adorned with red and green lights that blinked like angry stars. Some of the megastructures leaned under their own weight, surrounded by slums that wrapped around their bases like parasites feeding off a decaying god.
Highways of light threaded between the cities, arteries of motion where ships flowed like blood cells. But there was no beauty here. No harmony. It was function stacked upon function. Hive upon hive. Smoke-choked sprawls that pulsed with life and labor, unending.
And at the edge of one of these monstrous metropoles, a single flare of fire marked my descent. One pod, one godling, falling into a world that had long since forgotten it once belonged to Man.
I recognized none of it. This was not Earth.
Terra, my mind screamed at me.
I leaned closer, heart in my throat.
Warhammer 40k…
“Oh no,” I whispered. The words tore free from a throat deeper than mine had ever been. Rich. Resonant. Wrong. “No no no no no—”
I staggered back. My foot caught on the internal scaffolding and I tumbled, smashing into the wall hard enough to dent it. Alarms screamed louder.
The pod was screaming too. Vents opened to spray coolant. Inertial dampeners flared as the descent angle shifted. The lower hull turned red, glowing with the heat of reentry.
I tried to breathe. Failed. My lungs were too big, too strong, pulling in more air than I needed. Panic surged.
It wasn’t just the body. It was the mind. Too many thoughts. Too many sensations. I could hear the turbulence outside, feel the gravity well pulling at every atom in the metal.
This was real.
The pod shook again. Harder. G-forces slammed me back into the crash webbing as the altimeter shrieked inside my skull in pulses of binary data I shouldn’t have been able to process, but I did.
My muscles tensed. I braced.
Impact in five… four…
A blinding light filled the pod.
Three… two…
I screamed. I think.
One.
Then the world ended.
The pod hit something. Then everything. A shockwave tore through the superstructure. The walls twisted inward. The viewports exploded. The ground rose up like a titan’s fist and slapped the pod sideways, throwing me against a metal bulkhead. I felt ribs crack. Then reknit. Then crack again as the rolling didn’t stop.
There was a final, thunderous crash. The sound of a mountain collapsing onto itself. A split-second of weightlessness.
And darkness.
Pure. Absolute.
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Pain brought me back.
It was dull, at first. Then sharp. A throb in my shoulder, a sting across my left forearm. I groaned and shifted, metal creaking beneath me.
Smoke drifted in lazy coils inside the shattered pod. Sparks danced from ruined consoles. The acrid stench of scorched wiring filled my nostrils.
I coughed. Sat up.
The pod was tilted at an angle, half-buried in concrete and twisted rebar. The crash had cratered the landing zone and embedded the lower hull deep into some kind of foundation layer.
I blinked slowly.
My vision adjusted instantly, switching through a dozen spectrums.
I looked down.
A deep gash, from elbow to wrist, was torn across my left arm. Muscle fibers pulsed like coiled ropes. Bone glinted through the torn flesh.
I stared.
Then it closed.
Tendons knit together. Skin pulled itself shut like time reversing. No pain. No scar. Just new, unblemished flesh.
“…Holy shit.”
The words left my mouth before I could stop them. My voice still felt wrong. Rich. Deeper than a teenager’s had any right to be.
I was alive. Not just alive, I felt indestructible.
I stood, slowly. The internal servos of the pod whined weakly. Some of the restraints had snapped during the crash. The rest hung uselessly. The main hatch blinked red, sealed tight.
I reached for the manual override.
Nothing.
Something in me… twitched.
I pulled back my arm. Focused.
And drove my heel into the pod door with all my strength.
The sound was deafening. The metal screamed as it bent, crumpling like paper. The hinges snapped. The hatch flew outward, slamming into the rubble with a crash loud enough to echo through the world.
Light poured in.
Real light. Harsh and ugly.
I stepped out of the ruin and froze.
The world around me was wrong. Towering buildings loomed above me like titans of steel and rust. Enormous towers bristled with antennas and rotating cogitator arrays. Pipes the size of freight trains ran along the walls, belching steam into the air. Walkways spanned between structures at impossible heights. Girders crisscrossed the sky.
It was… a city. But one that screamed dystopia at me.
Don’t tell me I am in a hive world…
The air was thick with fumes. The ground was slick with grease and oil. Every surface was metal or ferrocrete, scorched by centuries of use. The smell was industrial rot, ozone, chemical waste, and overheated steel.
No trees. No earth. No sky.
Except, above, there was a sky. A glimpse. Cloud-choked and distant, but open. Not a fully sealed hive.
That confused me.
A hybrid city?
A minor sprawl connected to a greater hive structure?
I turned slowly. The crater behind me was massive. Smoke trailed upward into the sky. A few charred corpses lay nearby, partially vaporized. No survivors. No spectators.
Too quiet. I was alone. I should’ve panicked.
Instead, I crouched. Placed one hand on the metal street and stared at the rust stains and grease pools with a mind already calculating angles.
I needed a vantage point.
I needed information.
I needed control.
The nearest structure rose fifty meters above me, its side lined with exhaust pipes and lift rails. Ladders zig-zagged along the edge. Without thinking, I started forward, naked, barefoot, body wrapped only in the remnants of synthetic padding that had survived the crash.
I reached the ladder. Grabbed the lowest rung. It bent slightly under my grip. I reached the first platform. Turned. Looked out over the metallic valley below.
Smoke rose from several distant stacks. A train hissed and clanked across a suspended rail a few kilometers out, hauling massive cargo containers etched with symbols I recognized as a derivative of greek.
The city stretched around me like a living machine, an endless sprawl of metal and fire. I might have once called it beautiful, perhaps it had been, long ago. But whatever grace it had once known was buried beneath centuries of exploitation. Now it was a dystopia of industry, noise, and relentless motion.
Sky-cars buzzed through the air in tight patterns, weaving between towers like wasps circling a corpse. Elevated train lines coiled across the city like iron veins, connecting one factory block to the next. Great mechanical arms moved in the distance, shifting cargo crates the size of buildings from dock to depot.
Endless layers of hab-blocks, factories, transit rails, and smoking chimneys sprawled to the horizon. Here and there, flashes of moving lights marked patrol drones or skimmer convoys. Further out, I saw the silhouette of a foundry-fortress, its furnaces vomiting red light into the dark sky like some ancient volcano. High above, another cargo train thundered past on a suspended rail, dragging a dozen containers marked with stenciled glyphs.
I had no idea where this was, I could remember everything, a perfect memory coming from my engineered genes, but no memory of endless books and wikis told me where I was.
I need to get back to the pod…
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I was halfway down the ladder, maybe three stories from the ground, when I heard it.
Footsteps.
I froze, pressed myself against the structure’s side, and listened.
Voices followed, if you could call them that. Clicks, guttural warbles, and chittering syllables filled the air, accompanied by the faint whine of something mechanical powering up.
Weapons.
I climbed back down, silent as shadow, and crouched beside the base of the ruined pod. Smoke still billowed from it in slow, lazy curls, masking my presence.
Then they came into view.
Five of them.
Humanoid, but only just. Reptilian features, scaled skin ranging from obsidian black to swamp green. Long, sinewy limbs, clawed feet, armored chests, and tails that moved like whips. Their eyes gleamed like molten copper in the half-light, and each one carried a long rifle with a crystal core that pulsed with energy.
The lead one barked something. A series of sharp clicks and low growls. It pointed toward the crater.
My crater.
A second creature advanced cautiously, gun raised. It scanned the pod, then sniffed the air. Its nostrils flared, its frills extended like a lizard sensing prey.
I held my breath.
Whatever this species was, they weren’t from any Warhammer canon I knew. Or maybe they were part of the deep lore, the kind that only showed up once, in the margins of a decades-old codex I had never read.
Given I seem to be the second primarch… This species probably died with me.
One of them stopped in front of a nearby door. It looked like a maintenance hatch or a broken storefront, warped inward from the shockwave of the crash.
The xenos hissed something in its garbled tongue.
Then kicked the door in.
A scream followed.
Human. Female.
I tensed, watching from cover as the reptilian brute dragged someone out into the light.
She looked half-dead. Thin, filthy, and bloodied. Blonde hair matted with soot, clothes in tatters. She stumbled and fell to her knees, coughing.
The xeno leader barked something again, louder this time. The words clicked and growled, but then, under the harshness, something shifted.
The language changed.
Still rough, but intelligible.
“Where... child?”
I blinked.
It had spoken in Greek.
I know Greek now?
It had spoken the language I knew from Earth.
She screamed again. “I don’t know! I told you, I don’t—!”
Another blast echoed from inside the building. Screams. Then silence.
My fists clenched.
The alien raised its rifle. Pointed it at her head.
Enough.
I stepped out from cover.
“Hey,” I said.
Five heads turned. The woman froze. The xenos snapped to alert.
I could feel it again, that slow boil of energy under my skin. The wrongness that felt right. Like the air itself was holding its breath.
The lead xeno growled and stepped forward, weapon raised. “Identify.”
I smiled.
“No.”
Then I moved.
The world slowed to syrup. My foot hit the ground, and the pavement cracked. I sprinted forward, faster than I’d ever moved in my life, faster than a car, faster than a train. The wind howled past my ears.
The first shot grazed my cheek. I barely felt it.
The second I caught mid-air, my fingers closing around the barrel of the alien’s weapon. The rifle discharged directly into my palm with a crackling surge of plasma.
It burned.
Then stopped.
I crushed the rifle in my hand. The alien's eyes widened in the moment before my other fist caved in its skull.
Bone. Brain. Blood.
Gone.
The others reacted. Too slow.
One raised its gun. I was already on it. My elbow struck its throat. Cartilage shattered. A follow-up kick sent its body flying ten meters down the street.
Two left. One tried to run.
I grabbed it by the tail, spun, and threw it like a hammer into a wall.
The last one was smarter. It dropped its weapon and raised both clawed hands.
“Yield!” it hissed. “No... harm!”
I stepped forward, blood still dripping from my fists. I looked it in the eye.
“No,” I said coldly.
Then I ended it.
The street fell quiet again. The woman was still on her knees, shaking. Her eyes locked onto me like I was something between a savior and a monster.
I knelt beside her.
“You’re safe,” I said.
She recoiled.
I didn’t blame her.
She spoke at last, voice hoarse.
“They came looking for... for a boy. A child.”
How did they know I would be here? Chaos shenanigans?
I looked toward the broken building. Bodies lay inside. Civilians. Not soldiers. Hiding from monsters.
Sound came from a side alley once more, sounds of xenos running and the clicking of their language.
I crouched low beside a ruined wall, eyes locked on the cracked avenue ahead. The woman I’d saved huddled behind me, trembling, her fingers wrapped around a rusted pipe like it might somehow protect her.
“Stay quiet,” I whispered.
She didn’t answer. Just nodded, eyes wide.
There were six of them this time. Larger than the first patrol. Heavier armor, darker scales. One carried a heavy rifle that hissed with barely-contained plasma. Another had something like a whip crackling with energy. Officers?
Didn’t matter.
I reached down and wrapped my fingers around a chunk of rebar and concrete. The thing had to weigh at least a hundred kilos. I lifted it like a stick.
One of the xenos barked, raising its head to scent the air.
I threw the rock.
It howled through the air like a comet and crunched into the side of its head. Bone exploded. The creature crumpled without a sound, half its skull missing.
The others snapped into motion. Their rifles came up fast. Too fast for a normal man.
But I wasn’t normal.
I was already moving.
I closed the distance between me and the closest one in four strides. Its rifle hissed, something sizzled past my ear, but then my shoulder drove into its chest with the force of a charging rhino.
There was a wet, meaty pop. Ribs caved in. It hit the ground like a dropped bag of meat.
Two more opened fire. One bolt of energy slammed into my side, another into my left thigh.
Pain. Real, burning pain. But manageable.
I roared, voice echoing through the metal alleys like a primal storm, and grabbed one of their rifles mid-burst. The alien tried to wrench it back, claws scraping against the grip, but I drove my fist into its jaw and heard the satisfying crack of shattered bone.
The rifle buzzed in my hand. Alien tech, sleek and cold, glowing with hostile energy. But it spoke to me.
Somehow, I understood it. Like my hands remembered things my mind didn’t. I flipped the weapon sideways, aimed at the remaining xenos, and pulled the trigger.
Light. Heat. Sound like a dragon screaming.
Three of them dropped instantly. Their bodies burst into flame, armor melting from the inside. One tried to run. A second shot tore its torso in half mid-stride.
Only one remained.
It had a claw around the woman’s throat.
“Stop!” it hissed. “Stop or she dies!”
I didn’t stop.
I took one step forward.
The xeno tightened its grip, its weapon raised.
“I said—”
I pulled the trigger.
The energy bolt hit the creature square in the chest. It exploded into black mist and burning gore. The woman dropped to her knees, coughing, covered in blood that wasn’t hers.
Silence.
Just the whine of the cooling rifle, and my own breath heaving in my lungs.
I dropped the weapon.
My hands were burned. Smoking in places. One of the plasma shots had cooked a chunk of my side, it sizzled now, skin knitting itself back together with eerie speed. I could feel the heat retreating, the tissue sealing without scar.
I stepped over the corpse of the last alien and knelt beside the woman. She was shivering, staring at me like I was one of them.
“Hey,” I said, voice softer now. “You’re safe. It’s over.”
She blinked.
Her lip trembled. Then, hesitantly, she reached out.
I took her hand.
Calloused fingers. Nails chipped. She had the look of someone who hadn’t eaten a proper meal in weeks. But she clung to me like a lifeline.
Her eyes welled with tears. She leaned forward, forehead pressing to my chest.
I let her. She needed something to hold onto. Something human.
I looked around at the carnage. Bodies steaming on the concrete. Smoke rising into the air. The quiet between battles.
It wouldn’t last.
More would come. Dozens. Hundreds. They’d seen my escape. They were hunting for me. And now they had a reason to hunt harder.
But for the first time since I fell out of the sky, I had more than just questions.
I stood slowly, pulling her up with me.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Ariana,” she whispered. “Ariana Delos.”
“Ariana,” I repeated, then nodded. “We need to move. Fast. Somewhere safe.”
She nodded, still clinging to my arm. “I... I know a place. Not far.”
I looked down the street. The towers loomed like sentinels. This city was a prison, a battlefield, and a mystery all at once.
And how the fuck am I supposed to conquer a Xeno held planet?