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Chapter 1: Awakening of the True Emperor
Darkness.
Then, light.
For a moment, all was void—an endless expanse of nothingness stretching beyond comprehension. Then came the flood. Knowledge, memories, power beyond mortal reckoning. The mind of an ordinary man shattered, reforged, and expanded into something infinite. He was no longer who he had once been.
He was the Emperor of Mankind.
The realization was as instant as it was absolute. His body—taller than any mortal man should be, clad in divine perfection—stood upon the surface of a world that felt both alien and familiar. Ancient Terra. The cradle of humanity. Yet, this was not the dying husk of the 41st millennium, drowning in superstition and ignorance. This was Terra at its turning point, poised before the Great Crusade.
He breathed in deeply, feeling the sheer might of his being. Every fiber of his existence pulsed with boundless energy, every thought processed in limitless parallel. The knowledge of a trillion lifetimes, of technologies long lost to the Imperium's dark age, of every perpetual who had ever lived—all of it was his.
But beyond all that, he knew his mission.
This time, he would not allow the sins of the past to repeat. This time, the Imperium would rise without flaw, without heresy, without the decay that had doomed it in another timeline.
His golden eyes opened, and in that instant, his will stretched across Terra. Every psychic presence, every soul, every hidden force bent under the sheer weight of his existence. The labyrinthine tunnels beneath the Himalayas—his domain, his seat of power—stood waiting for his command. The Primarchs, still unborn, still whole, awaited their future. And the dark forces that lurked beyond the veil of reality—he felt their attention shift, sensing the anomaly that had just emerged.
A ripple passed through the Warp, a whisper from the Ruinous Powers, uncertain yet wary. He let them feel his presence. Let them know that this time, their schemes would amount to nothing.
Turning his gaze skyward, he clenched his fist, golden lightning arcing across his skin. The future of humanity was his to shape. And this time, nothing—not Chaos, not betrayal, not the mistakes of the past—would stand in his way.
The Emperor had truly returned.