📢 Author's Notice – Welcome to the Grimdark Multiverse! ⚔️
Hey readers!I'm beyond excited to finally launch Warhammer: The Emperor's Raven—a fanfic I've poured my soul into. If you're into multiverse travel, godlike MCs, galaxy-spanning wars, and dark, philosophical vibes… you're in the right place.
This story explores what happens when the Emperor of Mankind doesn't just reclaim humanity's lost worlds—but takes on all of reality itself. With a mysterious Raven at his side, the Emperor's Great Crusade becomes something far more terrifying.
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Chapter 1: The Golden Imperator
Terra.
The final days of the Unification Wars.
The killing fields of the Navian Peninsula.
The Emperor, wreathed in aurulent radiance, strode across the war-ravaged permafrost with measured pace, His countenance a mask of impassive judgment.
His golden panoply turned aside the biting winds that howled across the wasteland, and at His side hung a great longsword in its scabbard. The weapon's power field lay dormant, its sacred circuitry cold and silent in the aftermath of conquest.
Artillery craters scarred the earth like wounds in flesh, and the grey ash of irradiated snow fell from leaden skies. Around the Master of Mankind, the Thunder Warriors moved with ponderous stride, their archaic power armor humming with barely-contained fury.
They swept the battlefield with ruthless efficiency—salvaging the living amongst their brotherhood, delivering the Emperor's mercy to those enemies who yet drew breath.
The Emperor passed amongst the fallen, His attention fixed upon neither the dying who called His name nor the still forms of the dead. His purpose lay ahead, where the Custodian Guard maintained their vigil around a solitary figure.
Within their golden circle knelt a grey-haired man, broken and alone. Tattered robes of cloned-flesh hung from his frame, and he trembled beneath the pitiless sky.
Wounds marked his flesh, and his form was hunched with defeat and the weight of years spent in heretical pursuit.
Moransen. Supreme Tyrant of the Moransen Federation. Arch-heretic and devotee of the Primordial Truth. Commander of fanatic legions and architect of blasphemous rites.
He had been but one amongst the many warlords who had sought to deny the Emperor's ordained dominion over Terra. Like all who stood before the coming of Unity, he had been cast down by the inexorable advance of Imperial might.
"So ends all earthly ambition," Moransen spoke, his voice cracked with bitter mirth as the Emperor approached.
The Master of Mankind said nothing. Cold wind stirred His raven hair, and the pale sun caught the edge of His blade, wringing light from steel that had drunk deep of traitor blood.
"Why?" Moransen raised his eyes to meet the Emperor's gaze. "Why visit such slaughter upon my people?"
"Your people shall endure. You and your maddened zealots have forfeited that privilege."
"Lord of Terra," Moransen spoke each word with deliberate mockery, his laughter a broken thing.
The Emperor shook His head. "Nay. Lord of Mankind."
"Ha! All of humanity? Does a single world not suffice your hunger? Will you not spare even the stars themselves? Your hubris knows no bounds."
The Emperor offered no further discourse. His gaze sweeping across the field of victory.
"The day is mine."
"Tyrant. Butcher of civilized realms."
"I bring illumination. I shall kindle new fires in the darkness. Humanity shall ascend, and the galaxy shall know the dominion of our species as destiny intended."
"You bring damnation, cloaked in false salvation. While breath remains in my body, I shall curse your name. All that you build shall crumble to dust and ash."
The heretic's malediction stirred the wrath of the Custodian Guard. One of their number stepped forward, the butt of his guardian spear striking Moransen's skull with contemptuous force.
The blow, though restrained by the warrior's discipline, carried such terrible power that bone and flesh gave way beneath it. The traitor's face collapsed in ruin, his eye bursting in its socket as crimson flowed from the shattered orbit.
"Stay your hand, Sagittarius."
The Emperor spoke the Custodian's name, and the golden sentinel stepped back into formation.
He knew the names of each Custodian Guard—every warrior who stood in His service. This was no feat of memory alone, for they were wrought by His own hand. Raised from infancy within the Palace walls, each had been crafted into perfection itself.
Sagittarius bore upon his helm a look of contrition, bowing low before resuming his place amongst the golden brotherhood.
The Emperor gazed upon the writhing Moransen with something that might have been pity. His sight pierced all veils and pretense, revealing truth beneath mortal flesh.
Where others saw only a broken man, the Master of Mankind beheld corruption absolute. Moransen's soul had long since putrefied, consumed by the malevolent entities of the Warp.
Beneath the guise of humanity writhed something obscene—obsidian talons that flexed with hunger, maws that slavered with unholy laughter, voices that shrieked blasphemies into the aether.
"Your essence has been devoured utterly by the Dark Powers, rendered sustenance for those abominations. I counseled you once to spurn the false gods."
"They care nothing for your faith nor your devotion. They desire only that you feed them with acts of madness, violence, and slaughter without end."
Moransen raised his ruined visage, mouth working soundlessly as he sought to speak.
The Emperor heard no more. His blade sang to life, power circuits igniting along the fuller as flames wreathed the sacred steel. The longsword descended in a single, perfect arc, and Moransen's head tumbled into the crimson snow.
The assembled soldiery raised their voices in triumph.
In that moment, the vox-channel crackled with the voice of Custodian-Commander Valdor.
"My Emperor, there is something within the enemy's stronghold that requires Your attention."
The bunker complex lay in ruins. Rubble choked the corridors, and the broken forms of the dead sprawled amongst smoking wreckage.
Companies of the Imperial Army labored to clear the fortress, their work-servitors dragging corpses and charred debris beyond the walls.
When the Emperor appeared, every soul present prostrated themselves in reverence.
Custodian-Commander Valdor waited alone within a chamber deep in the fortress heart. The sentries at the portal rendered the aquila as their master passed.
Within, the Emperor beheld what had summoned Him.
Upon a cylindrical plinth of unknown material—half a meter in width, a full meter in height—rested a sculpture wrought in the likeness of a raven. The artifact seemed to drink in the light around it.
Valdor offered the aquila. "Forgive me, my Emperor. I should have attended to you upon your arrival."
"The artifact possesses a most singular property. When one's gaze departs from it, all memory of its existence fades. Only upon direct observation do the memories return."
"Impossible." The Emperor's rejection was immediate. "You possess absolute recall. Nothing witnessed by your eyes can be forgotten."
"I have tested this, my Emperor. When first I departed this chamber, all knowledge of it vanished from my mind. Only when I returned and looked upon it once more did remembrance resurface."
The Emperor turned His gaze aside.
At once, He felt the memory of the sculpture drain away like water through sand.
First, the fine details dissolved, then its general form, until only a vague sense of something important lingered at the edge of consciousness. Before total oblivion claimed it, He fixed His eyes upon the raven once more.
Memory flooded back in perfect clarity.
Even He, the Master of Mankind, could not retain knowledge of this thing when His sight was turned away.
"The sculpture may be touched, yet when I attempted its destruction..."
Valdor drove his guardian spear forward with killing force. The weapon's energy field crackled as the blade passed through the raven as though it were naught but shadow.
Yet even as the spear found no purchase, Valdor's gauntleted hand rested solid upon the sculpture's surface.
"It exists simultaneously as corporeal matter and immaterial phantasm—a paradox given form."
The Emperor approached the raven effigy, His hand extending unbidden toward the enigmatic artifact.
[PRIME SUBJECT DETECTED. INITIATING REVIVAL PROTOCOL.]
Light erupted from the sculpture's obsidian surface, coruscating energies that banished shadow from the chamber's corners.
When the radiance faded, the carved raven had become flesh and blood—or something approximating such. Its plumage was black as the void between stars, yet its eyes burned with intelligence that seemed to mock the laws of physics themselves.
It stepped from its perch into empty air, gravity holding no dominion over its form.
"Would you forge a compact, mortal? Pledge yourself, and I shall grant you dominion absolute—power beyond measure, wealth beyond counting, authority without limit."
The Emperor's countenance remained unmoved, no flicker of surprise disturbing His imperial composure at the sculpture's metamorphosis.
"A denizen of the Immaterium. Such artless subterfuge lacks even the merit of originality."
The raven studied the figure before it with newfound interest. Black hair, obsidian eyes, towering nearly four meters in height. Golden armor that seemed to drink in light and cast it back transformed. A circlet of thorns crowned His brow like some ancient king's diadem of suffering.
Its gaze shifted to the Custodian-Commander beside Him—resplendent in auramite plate, guardian spear crackling with lethal energies, the very image of Imperial might.
"Golden giant. Auramite armor. Guardian spear. Power weapons. Human. Terra is your jurisdiction. Such psychic might as to dwarf worlds..." The creature's voice trailed to a whisper as comprehension dawned. Its eyes widened with something approaching terror.
"By the infinite cosmos... You are the Emperor of Mankind."
The Emperor's blade sang as it cleared its sheath, golden flames racing along the fuller as the weapon's machine-spirit awakened. The very air grew heavy with the promise of annihilation.
The raven spread its wings and retreated, talons scrabbling for purchase on nothingness.
"Peace, Brother PEACE! Watch your hand! I have connections across the dimensional barriers—the risk is considerable, but the rewards are beyond your imagination. You might as well treat me as your equal."
"I treat not with daemons." The Emperor's voice carried the chill of absolute zero.
"I am no daemon, Lord of Humanity. I am a wanderer between realities, fundamentally distinct from the parasites that infest your Warp."
The creature's words gave the Emperor pause. His blade remained raised, yet He did not strike.
"Realities? Your Warp? Do you claim origin beyond this entire universe?"
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