Zander
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Chapter 117: The Tear Between Worlds
🕑 Added 2025-06-21 02:44:28 +0000 UTC
ON THE EMPEROR'S PERSPECTIVE
Smoke still lingered in the air like the breath of a slain beast. On the deck below, in the Multiversal Gate chamber, the rings had begun to rotate. Slowly at first, then faster. Warning lights flared to life. Consoles flashed in angry crimson. The five Salamanders, sons of Vulkan, had tightened their formation, their armor glowing dimly in the eerie chamber light. Vox signals crackled as they reported the shift in energy patterns.
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the breach collapsed.
The rings shattered. The Gate’s core failed. A pulse of impossible gravity tore through the chamber. Smoke and silence followed in the aftermath. Nothing remained of the five warriors but shattered metal fragments embedded into the floor and a faint trail of magnetic dust carried on static-charged air.
High above, aboard the command spire of the Bucephalus, the Emperor of Mankind stood alone.
Through the tall observation window, he stared down at the ruined gate below. His golden armor hummed with restrained energy, its sigils flickering dimly as if in mourning. A Custodian approached from behind, but he raised a single gauntleted hand. "No one is to approach the chamber," he said, voice quiet but absolute. "Not until I have seen it myself."
The Custodian bowed silently and stepped away.
Moments later, the Emperor descended.
The heat of the ruined gate chamber clung to the walls like a memory of violence. The Emperor stood in the center of the wreckage, his presence alone suppressing the residual energies. He looked down at the cracked remnants of the gate’s inner core, the swirling anchor points now little more than scorched steel.
He did not need to see the readings. He already knew what had happened. It wasn’t a failure of design or material. The explosion hadn’t come from within. It had come from beyond.
He extended his will, the golden radiance of his psychic power lancing outward like sunlight through cloud. Where the breach had once been, he found a scar in space’s fabric. Thin. Shimmering. A wound left by the hungry force of four gods and the explosion of the Multiversal Gate.
Chaos.
They had forced it open. It was not corruption in the conventional sense, no demonic infestation, no howling warpspawn, but a deliberate strike, coordinated and contained. An intervention.
The Emperor closed his eyes and reached further, his mind folding through dimensions. He was not reaching into the Warp. Terra, this Earth, was still sealed by his own doing. The Warp was suppressed, nullified, silenced. But through the tear, he could project a fragment of himself into the other side.
He sent his will through the scar.
Through shadows. Through fire. Through time and space twisted by war.
He found them.
The five Salamanders.
They stood amid ruins, locked in battle against machines of terrible design. Sentinel constructs, dozens of them, burned and shattered in the wreckage around them. Mutants fought beside them, humans with power etched into their flesh, born not of sorcery but the genetic legacy of ancient interference.
The Emperor saw it. The truth.
These mutants were not twisted by the Warp. They were shaped long ago by beings known as the Celestials. Even now, he could not sense those ancient giants; they lay dormant, buried deep in the crust of this alternate Earth. But the legacy remained.
On Terra, the X-gene had always occurred naturally, as an expression of biological variance. But here, it was artificial. A tool created by a higher race.
Yet even these mutants were hunted, broken, and cast aside. The machines did not see nature or artifice, only deviation.
He reached out further and found the strongest among the Salamanders. Astartes Ardent. His flamer roared as he held the line beside a silver-haired mutant and a clawed warrior.
The Emperor projected a sliver of his mind into Ardent's consciousness. Golden light enveloped the Salamander for the briefest moment. Ardent froze, heart pounding, eyes widening as a familiar warmth washed over him.
"Son of Vulkan," the Emperor's voice echoed within his mind.
Ardent dropped to one knee on instinct, even as Sentinels advanced.
"My Lord?"
"You have crossed into a broken reflection of Terra. I see you. You are not forgotten."
"The skies here are dead," Ardent answered mentally. "There is no Emperor. Only ruin. Machines hunt mutants like prey."
"I know. Hold your ground. Aid them. You fight not only for survival but for Humanity as well. I am marking your location. The connection is faint, but it will be enough."
With those words, the light faded. The link collapsed.
Back in the gate chamber, the Emperor opened his eyes.
There was silence. Not of failure, but of deep resolve.
He turned and walked back toward the lift, issuing one command to his Custodes before ascending:
"Begin building another gate. Use the original schematics. This time, reinforce it with secondary anchoring rings. I will lead its alignment myself."
As the Custodes moved to obey, the Emperor stepped into the golden lift.
He stared forward, his voice low.
"You think this will slow me down? It will not. It will only go faster. It is inevitable. I will find you, disgusting Chaos."
And behind him, the fires of the second forge began to light.
(Ps: now that it's summer, and I have motivation to write some story, I want to write another novel, but no worry, this will not stop)
This is the first chapter and tell me what you guys think.
Chapter 1: Awakening in the Waves
The boy awoke to the sound of waves.
Not the comforting hum of a beachside vacation or the distant roll of ocean from a modern city. This was different, raw and untamed. The wind howled softly through gaps in the warped wooden walls. His bed was no bed at all, just bundled straw layered atop a rotting mat.
He opened his eyes.
Wooden rafters stared down at him like skeletal arms. His body felt sluggish, heavy, too small. He blinked, then blinked again, lifting his trembling hand to his face.
It wasn’t his hand.
It was small. Pale. Young.
“What the…?” he whispered, and even his voice wasn’t his own. Higher-pitched. Lighter. Foreign.
He scrambled upright, the motion dizzying. His vision swam for a second before steadying. The shack he was in was barely large enough to fit a single table, a water basin, and a few scattered items: a bamboo broom, a rusted cooking pot, and a small chest pressed into the far corner, locked and covered with dust.
Panic built slowly, not like a storm, but like a rising tide. The scent of salt and humidity filled his lungs. He stumbled toward the door, pushed it open, and stepped out into a world he did not recognize.
A narrow dirt path stretched down a hill toward a village nestled beside the sea. Children played barefoot among rice paddies. Fishermen hauled nets from worn boats. An old woman hung seaweed to dry. There were no cars. No electric poles. No signs of the world he once knew.
In that moment, standing barefoot on the cracked wooden porch, the truth settled in.
He wasn't home.
He wasn't even himself anymore..
...
The first days were a blur of quiet terror.
He learned the village was in the Land of Waves, a small, poor island nation often overlooked by the great shinobi powers. Here, life was slow, fragile, and harsh. There were no ninja clans. No Hidden Villages. Just farmers, fishermen, and tradesmen trying to survive.
The boy, now Hajime, as he pieced together from the murmured names of passing villagers, had no surviving relatives. His mother had died giving birth to him, the midwife said flatly, with no trace of grief. There had been no medicine. No healers. No chakra-infused techniques to stop the bleeding.
His father, a strange man who stayed only briefly in the village before vanishing, had left behind nothing but a name and an old trunk.
“He called himself a wandering shinobi,” the village elder had said, stroking a white beard that reached his chest. “Kept to himself. Wore no village headband. Left one day and never returned.”
No one knew where he had come from. No one knew where he went. The villagers didn’t care, only that he left behind a burden.
That burden was Hajime.
...
On the third night, Hajime had his first dream that wasn’t his.
He found himself in an impossible space, vast, dark, and silent. A world of black stone beneath his feet and endless stars above.
And in the center of it all floated a strange object.
A metallic container, about the size of a wine bottle, suspended in midair. Its surface shimmered faintly, as though reality bent around it. It was capped with silver seals etched with script he couldn’t read, alien, yet ancient. It pulsed gently, like a heartbeat.
He stepped closer.
Suddenly, a voice, not a whisper, not a sound, but a thought, cut through his mind like a divine sword:
“Contained within: the Gene-seed of the Emperor’s Chosen, the Grey Knights.”
He froze.
His breath caught in his throat. That name, he knew it.
The Grey Knights. In his past life, in the modern world, he had read about them. Fiction. Lore. Warhammer 40K. An army of psychic Space Marines forged by the Emperor of Mankind to combat the daemonic threats of the Warp. The purest of the pure. Each one a living weapon of unshakable will, trained in both the arcane and the martial. Warriors immune to corruption. Born for war. Sworn to secrecy.
And now, the geneseed of one of them, the genetic blueprint of the ultimate super-soldier, was here.
Inside his mind.
This can’t be real, he thought. This is a hallucination… right?
The container pulsed again, responding to the thought.
“This vessel may be brought into physical reality. Once done, it cannot be returned. Choose your moment wisely.”
He stumbled back, breath shallow.
It wasn’t a dream. This space was real, not just symbolic, but something that bled between the spiritual and material.
He stared for what felt like hours. But in the end, he turned away.
He wasn’t ready.
.....
Life went on.
The villagers treated him with passing kindness but no warmth. Some pitied him, others avoided him. He was a boy without parents, without place, without purpose.
But inside him burned a growing flame.
The geneseed. The name Grey Knights echoed like a distant call to arms.
And the trunk left behind by his father, locked but easily pried open, contained several worn scrolls, sealed to keep out moisture and age.
Inside, he found:
Chakra theory: the fundamentals of inner energy, its connection to life force, and how to refine and circulate it.
Control exercises: balancing leaves, focusing while walking, surface adhesion theory.
Basic physical conditioning: stances, breathing methods, strengthening the body.
Two simple ninjutsu: a weak Earth-Style wall and the Clone technique.
The writing was handwritten, rough but dense. His father had clearly intended it as a guide for a child.
And Hajime read it all.
Every night, by candlelight. Every morning, he rose before dawn to practice.
His body was weak. His chakra refined. With his adult mentality he easily refined chakra, now hajime training his chakra control by climbing trees but kept failing, fall and fall.
But he persisted.
Not because he wanted to become a ninja.
But because something far greater waited inside him.
“The Emperor’s Chosen.”
Weeks passed.
And one morning, standing barefoot on the surface of a shallow stream behind the village, Hajime opened his eyes and realized he was doing it.
Standing on water.
Chakra flowed steadily through the soles of his feet. The surface rippled gently beneath him, but held firm. The village wind rustled his hair. Birds chirped overhead.
He smiled, not the smile of a child, but the quiet, fierce grin of a man who had taken his first step on a long, bloodied path.
He wasn’t ready to bring the geneseed into the world.
Not yet.
But someday…
He would be.
And when that day came
The shinobi world would never be the same.
