Master of Mankind

Tzeentch's will crossed the endless divine realms. His phantom, holding twenty lesser souls, arrived before the Golden Sun.

"Master of Mankind." The Chaos God paused slightly, his tongue stirring as he spoke the Golden Sun's identity.

Master of Mankind—this was how the golden will named himself.

In the final days of the Aeldari Empire, another intelligent species, "humanity," rose in the material universe, and the Master of Mankind was the most powerful psyker among them.

Though the Master of Change had named him, the Master of Mankind neither confirmed nor denied it. He said in a low voice, "Where is what I need?"

Tzeentch offered the lesser divinities in his hand. He did not take the Master of Mankind's rudeness to heart, merely chuckling softly. "Master of Mankind? Heh heh."

There was no shortage of powerful psykers in the material universe. They could extinguish stars without effort, even twist space-time and manipulate the laws of the world.

Yet none of them could be as powerful as the Master of Mankind, capable of facing the Four Chaos Gods directly.

Every power came at a price, and psychic power was no exception. One had to pay an equivalent price in the Warp.

Not only could the Master of Mankind confront the Four Chaos Gods, he could wield the power of the Warp without restraint. All of this showed that his essence was far from human.

Tzeentch and the other Chaos Gods had long since seen through the Master of Mankind's true nature.

Beneath that human skin lay boundless power, love for humanity, and humanity itself. Yet deeper still, there was endless darkness!

The Master of Mankind said no more. One had to be exceedingly careful when communicating with the Warp, especially when one's opponent was the God of Change.

Before the master of fate, revealing even the slightest unnecessary movement or word was exceedingly dangerous.

Golden psychic power swept up the red souls floating above the tower. Carrying twenty-one lesser divinities, he vanished into the Warp without a word.

"I look forward to the day you stand alongside us, Master of Mankind." As the Master of Mankind disappeared into the Warp, Tzeentch's demonic voice came from behind him, seductive and insinuating, piercing to the bone.

"I will never stand alongside you. I am the Master of Mankind. I am the Emperor!" With those final words, the Golden Sun completely vanished into the Warp.

Tzeentch's phantom smiled sinisterly.

"You will..." He stared at the place where the Master of Mankind had vanished and murmured, "We shall witness the fall, witness the birth of the Dark King!"

"Tzeentch's Daemonic Legion, there is nothing here worth guarding. Return to my divine realm." The Master of Change vanished from the borders of the Four Chaos Gods, taking his daemonic legion with him.

A new cycle had begun. The Great Game would gain another... perhaps two more players moving the pieces.

Khorne? A brute with muscles for brains. Slaanesh? A wanton whore addicted to pleasure. Nurgle? A lump of rotten, decaying flesh.

Tzeentch had never placed the other gods on equal footing with himself.

His brothers were merely indispensable roles in the Great Game, necessary hands that kept the endless cycle turning.

The Master of Change returned to his palace and began plotting the details, calculating against every man and god.

The Warp returned to calm once more.

Meanwhile, in the material universe, storms rose and fell, the years turned, and the tide of life continued without end. Countless intelligent species rose and perished across the cosmos.

Before the Aeldari Empire had completely fallen, another race rose within the galaxy. They called themselves "humanity" and conquered the stars through technology and reason.

As humanity pursued technology, they discovered the Warp at the "right" time and used it to create Warp engines.

From the 1st to the 15th millennium, as humanity rose from Terra, its cradle world, and stretched its boundless desires toward the galaxy, destiny decreed that humanity would rule the galaxy.

From the 15th to the 25th millennium, human technology erupted explosively. Some human groups used powerful genetic technology to ascend into the "Gold Men," guiding humanity onward.

The Gold Men then created the bioengineered "Stone Men" to assist them, and the Stone Men created thinking machines, the "Iron Men," to protect humanity.

With the Stone Men's help, humanity lived in prosperous societies. When they fought hostile alien forces, the powerful Iron Men armies would annihilate their foes.

All of this was thanks to humanity's formidable technological power. Technology was humanity's ultimate means of ruling the galaxy, and the indispensable pillar of human development.

After discovering the Warp, humanity developed Warp engines, allowing rapid interstellar travel and the colonization of the entire galaxy.

As their understanding of the Warp deepened, humanity discovered that it could be used for more than crossing light-years and traveling faster than light.

After deeper study, humanity discovered psychic power, confirmed the existence of "souls," and regarded psykers as the "future."

This discovery thrilled humanity. By altering genes, they could even create psykers artificially.

Just as everything flourished and a scene of vigorous life lay before them—

Humanity's creation, the "Iron Men," war machines with independent personalities and the ability to think for themselves, betrayed humanity for unknown reasons.

A rebellion that spread across the entire human race erupted!

Humanity and machine, creator and creation, waged an unimaginably brutal war. Both sides deployed their most advanced forbidden weapons, seeking to utterly exterminate the other.

Entire star systems were destroyed by weapons of war. Stars were drained of energy and extinguished. Nanobots ravaged star regions, devouring all life.

Colossal war machines like world-serpents wrapped themselves around planetary equators and activated resonant force fields, peeling away human skin, blood, and bone layer by layer into orbital space.

Silicon-dioxide viruses were used to destroy machines and nanobots, while gene phages erased humanity's existence at the genetic level.

The scale of the war was too immense. Both sides used every force at their disposal to destroy the other.

So much so that records of it existed even in the halls of the ancient Aeldari. Some Aeldari who held goodwill toward humanity even joined the war personally, helping humanity fight the machines.

After paying an enormous price, humanity finally defeated the machines.

Afterward, none of humanity's mechanical creations possessed independent personalities or the capacity for independent thought.

By then, human civilization was already on the verge of collapse, like a dying candle flickering in the wind.

Without artificial intelligence to assist them, vast amounts of technology were lost. Humanity struggled to sustain itself, let alone maintain its vast galactic territory.

Alien races that had signed treaties of friendship with humanity tore off their friendly masks and exploited humanity's plight, plundering and enslaving its people while stealing its technology.

Under all these blows, humanity's territory shattered. Contact with Terra was severed, and distant colonies among the stars gradually became independent.

Some worlds that lost outside supplies saw their civilizations gradually regress. Cut off from the outside and deprived of resources, their inhabitants died in great numbers.

Then, the lingering poison of the Warp erupted across countless worlds.

The number of psykers surged. Genetic degeneration produced large numbers of mutants. Lacking powerful armed forces, planetary governments could not suppress these aberrations and gradually fell under the savage rule of Chaos and mutants.

From the 25th to the 30th millennium, all of human civilization suffered both internal strife and external threats. Amid misery and torment, it steadily regressed, the entire species declining as it slid toward the brink of destruction.

Since humanity began recording history, this was the 30K era, an age in which humanity marched toward destruction.

As the human race teetered on the brink, a man stepped forward, determined to lead humanity back to the pinnacle of the galaxy.

He was the Master of Mankind. His former name had long been lost to human history. Now, he called himself the Emperor!

The Emperor of Humanity! The Master of Mankind!

No one knew his past—or rather, all of his past was recorded within humanity's weighty history.

The Emperor belonged to humanity's most unusual group—the Perpetuals.

He had concealed himself among his fellow humans, learning knowledge and accumulating wisdom throughout his long life.

At the same time, he was a powerful psyker. His long life had allowed him to amass power and completely master that dangerous force.

He stepped into history's spotlight upon humanity's oldest territory, the birthplace of humanity: Terra. Now it was called "Terra."

This planet had been ravaged during the civil wars. Technological barbarians and warlords ravaged the land at will, wantonly destroying humanity's birthplace.

Using the genetic knowledge he had accumulated, the Emperor created an army of genetically modified soldiers, the Thunder Warriors, preparing to end the war and completely unify Terra.

Though the Thunder Warriors were powerful, they had serious flaws and could not meet the demands of humanity's future wars to reconquer the galaxy.

After countless struggles of conscience and pragmatic assessments, the Emperor had no choice but to turn his gaze toward the Warp, borrowing its dangerous knowledge to achieve humanity's goal of unifying the galaxy.

Before humanity ever left Terra, the Emperor already knew of the Warp.

He deeply understood the dangers hidden within it and had guarded against its power at every moment throughout his long life. But now, the galaxy awaited humanity's reconquest.

Such a great undertaking had to be completed in a short time. He had to use the Warp and reach an understanding with its great powers.

"Did you succeed?" When the Emperor's consciousness left the Warp and returned to reality—

A low, hoarse voice greeted him from nearby, tinged with worry and anticipation.