Pov: Tony Stark
I remember the sound of the Emperor's voice before I remembered my own.
It was not speech, but command, a resonance that carved purpose into flesh.
Where other men were born screaming, I awoke in silence, surrounded by the smell of oil, blood, and ozone. His eyes met mine once, golden and endless, and I knew: I exist to make His will manifest.
That was twenty millennia ago. Or more, I don't know, time is a decaying thing, it rusts in the cracks of my mind like iron left in rain.
I was one of the Primarch prototypes, they said. Not fit for godhood, but too strong to kill. When the Unification Wars ended, when the Legions were born perfect, I was still alive, gaining the privilege to see the great soldiers of the Emperor finally complete and fight in his name
My designation was Project Aeternum. My title was a failure, but He does not discard what still serves, so I lived enough to see that man pointing his sword at the stars before I go to rest. That didn't take much time
When the vault doors cracked open during the Horus Heresy, the world had changed. I had not. I stepped into a galaxy at war, and I fought where I was pointed. I fought through the millennia. Through the burning of worlds, through the breaking of faith, through the endless silence of a dead Imperium that forgot its creator's face.
And still, I killed for Him, because I know what was once his intention, the original plan, the one where humans governed the stars, but now... Now that future is impossible
The battlefield before me is a ruin, ash plains littered with the corpses of men who forgot His name. Heretics, mutants, xenos. They are all the same to me. Flesh that resists His dominion.
My armor is older than the Imperium itself. It bleeds sacred oils. My weapon is a relic from the days when His hand shaped humanity's future, a bolter that still bears the sigil of the Unification. I call it Veritas. Its machine spirit hums prayers older than the Ecclesiarchy itself.
They come at me now, the blasphemers of the Archenemy, daemons in mortal guise. Their war cries drown beneath the storm of my gunfire. Each detonation is a hymn. Each corpse, an offering.
They call me "Relic" here. "The Emperor's Ghost.", but hey do not understand. I am not His ghost. I am His forgotten memory, the las one who rembered his plan
The sergeant beside me dies screaming, his chest flayed open by a chain-axe. I crush his killer's skull beneath my boot, feeling bone and iron pulp into mud. The air stinks of promethium and sin. I move through it like a machine of faith.
"Fall back!" someone yells through vox-distortion.
I do not move. Retreat is betrayal, there is no back to fall to, only the Emperor's light, ahead.
I advance. Always advance, even when He didn't wanted it
Every step is pain. My body is older than worlds that have turned to dust. My bones are ceramite and memory. My flesh is a battlefield of scars. But pain is the Emperor's reminder that I still serve, that there's still hope
They swarm around me, mutants, heretics, traitor marines clad in desecrated plate. One strikes, a massive thing in rust-red armor. His chainfist whirs as it descends. I catch it with my forearm. The teeth bite into flesh, but I hold it, force it back, and drive Veritas under his chin. Bolter fire explodes through his skull, painting the ground in corrupted blood.
"Glory to the Emperor!"
I roar, not with fanatism, but with truth, and the words burn my throat like holy fire.
Between battles, I pray.
Not to the false Emperor the Ecclesiarchy teaches, the gilded corpse on Terra, I pray to Him as He once was, the golden warrior who walked among men, who burned away ignorance and demanded nothing but obedience.
The God-Emperor is a lie. The Emperor needs no divinity, he needs only weapons that do not break, and I am His weapon. Still. Always.
The next wave comes with wings of shadow. Daemons scream through the rent in reality above us, a tear in the sky bleeding lightless fire. Vox-chatter turns to panic.
I do not feel fear, because I feel purpose.
I charge, firing until Veritas clicks dry. Then I draw my blade, a proto-chainsword from the wars of unification. It coughs once before roaring to life, its teeth screaming as they bite into daemonflesh.
Their ichor burns. Their voices whisper. They promise rest, freedom, even reunion with Him, I laugh, a broken, static-filled sound that tastes like iron.
"You do not understand,"
I say as I tear one of the many enemies apart
"He is with me. He is in me. He made me, and I am enough."
My brothers, what's left of the regiment, fall around me. Guardsmen, conscripts, zealots. They die screaming His name. Their faith is clumsy, misdirected. Yet it is still faith. I will honor it with slaughter.
The ground cracks beneath my feet as artillery tears the horizon. The sky is a wound, bleeding warp and fire. And in the center of that storm stands something vast, a Prince of the Warp, horned and terrible, wearing the armor of a fallen Primarch.
It points at me.
"Relic of dust,"
it snarls.
"Your master is dead."
Its voice is thunder, its gaze a furnace. I can feel my flesh decay beneath it. My armor melts, my skin sloughs away. But my heart, the core of me, burns hotter than ever, after all, I finally meet one of the causes for his fall
"He is not dead,"
I say, voice shaking,
"for I still kill in His name."
I charge, ignoring everything else
"The world narrows to blood and faith", said once the person who I could call "father", whose name was Malcador the Sigilita , and the worst part?, he was right
I drive the sword into its leg, It howls, smashing me aside, my ribs shatter, but I rise again, my arm is gone but I swing with the other, It crushes me beneath its claw, bones grinding, still, I push the blade deeper.
"By His hand I was made,"
I gasp,
"and by His will I end."
The creature roars, its breath molten.
"You are nothing!"
"Yes,"
I whisper, barely alive
"but I am His nothing, and that's more than you are"
With the last of my strength, I ignite the plasma cell on Veritas, The detonation tears us both apart, Light consumes the world, The daemon's scream turns to silence
I fall, I cannot feel my limbs. My vision flickers, filled with static and gold.
Through the haze of dying neurons, I see Him again, not the corpse-Emperor, not the god, but the Man. The one who forged me with hands of fire and eyes like suns.
"My Emperor,"
I whisper.
"Thanks"
He said while He looks at me, and I understand. I was never meant to live forever. I was meant to endure, until the last enemy was slain, until faith itself became the weapon.
My reactor burns out, my heart stops, and as the void takes me, I smile.
And for the first time in twenty thousand years,
I am at peace.
"Rest for now, this ain't the end"
Was his last word, and doing exactly what he said, I rest until my next call
When I woke again, I wasn't a spirit, a machine, or another being, I was human, fragile, breakable, and disgustingly mortal, But it was my body. My vessel.
I didn't need a voice from the heavens to tell me why I was here, I already knew, If I had returned, it was because He needed me.
My Master, My Creator, My Emperor, So I planned to wait, not out of patience, but calculation, I had to understand what was left of the universe before I made my move.
And then it hit me, the flood of Information, raw and divine, burning through my neurons like wildfire, It nearly tore my brain apart, but pain is irrelevant when it's the price of revelation.
Compared to the whispers of the false gods, that suffering was Nothing
When I finally processed it all, I understood His new command.
And when I did… I cried. Not out of weakness, but from something deeper. The kind of pain that splits your soul open and makes you remember what you are.
"Humanity… failed. They betrayed the Master."
That was the truth at the core of it all. The Emperor, the one who carried mankind on His shoulders, who gave everything to save them, was betrayed by the very species He protected.
And in their betrayal, He self-destructed, destroying everything, Humanity beyond Earth? Purged, Erased, Reduced to cosmic dust,
Those left on Terra barely survived the aftermath, His final act, mercy, Even in His destruction, He left them a chance, and how did they repay Him?
They forgot Him.
"Cursed… CURSED HUMANS! How dare you forget the one who bled for you!? How dare you erase His glory, His sacrifice, His torment!?
Damn you all! You could have saved Him, and you chose to look away!?
If you won't follow the Master of Mankind… I'll make you!!"
The words ripped themselves from my throat before I even realized I was screaming.
But then, from the fragments of information I understood: He's not gone. Not truly. A being like Him can't die. Perfection doesn't end, it fractures, and He's perfection itself.
His soul is still out there, scattered across the void. Pieces of his divinity, waiting to be found.
And I will find them.
If I have to burn every world, shatter every Galaxy, and rip apart reality itself just to stand before Him again, so be it.
But first… I need to grow.
Yeah. Grow. Funny word coming from a six-year-old. That's how old I am now, physically. Tony Stark, son of Howard Stark, a Mechanicus tinkerer with more ambition than wisdom.
Cute story, right? Except I remember what came before. I remember who I was before this body.
My memories are fractured, but the purpose isn't.
One fragment of His soul lies in the mind of a lunatic who stared into the warp and saw his own god. Another is hidden by a cult of madmen who've declared war on existence itself.
"Idiots. Absolute idiots. The path to truth is right there, carved in light, and still they stumble in the dark."
But it doesn't matter. I'm here for a reason. The Emperor willed this.
He protected humanity for millennia.
Now it's humanity's turn to protect Him.
And if I have to tear the universe apart to make that happen… I will.
(Traductor: I want moneyyyyy 🥺
Writer: I don't have money 😋
Traductor: ... You're a failure of furry, how you dare to not have money 😑
Writer: Hey!, that's.. Kinda right... In part.... Y'know what??, even so, I don't have money I'm not like the others 😘)