In a world where the gods remain silent, blood begins to speak.
The sound of the wind was the first thing he felt. A harsh, constant whistle, loaded with fine particles that scraped the skin like tiny needles. Ethan opened his eyes with difficulty, momentarily blinded by a purple light that tinged everything around him.
The sky above was not one he recognized: vast and dark, torn by ceaseless lightning dancing in the distance, and watched over by two enormous, pale twin moons that loomed like eyes over the dead landscape.
The terrain was a rocky desert, uneven and fractured, as if gods had struck the planet with hammers millennia ago. Natural stone pillars rose like petrified spines among the ash dunes. The air smelled of iron and dust.
Ethan slowly sat up. He had the body of a teenager—the same one he remembered—but inside… something was different. Something in his chest beat more strongly than usual, as if a dormant spark had been ignited.
His clothes were not his own. He wore a tunic of thick, dark fabric, unfamiliar, with metallic edges that sparked faintly with the ambient electricity.
"Where…?" he murmured, but his voice was lost to the wind.
A strange sensation ran down his spine. Something invisible pulsed in the air, a presence he couldn't identify. That's when it appeared before him: a light suspended in the void, a meter from his eyes— a geometric figure made of floating lines, glowing in amber tones.
Astral Bloodline System activated.Welcome to the Warhammer 40,000 universe.Current status: Newly awakenedSurvival requirement: Spread your bloodline. Expand your lineage.You will ascend through blood.
Ethan took a step back, but the interface followed him, as if anchored to his mind. He tried to touch it, but his hand passed through the light lines without resistance. The structure changed shape, revealing new data:
Vital status: Stable
Base psychic power: Activated Direct descendants: 0
Accumulated power: 0
Unlocked ability: Minor emotional perception
"Is this a dream?" he whispered, looking at his own hands. "Or am I… dead?"
No response came. Only the dull hum of the system, which seemed to entwine with his thoughts.
Driven by the need to understand, he began to walk. The ground crunched beneath his boots, and each step took him further from his initial confusion. As he rounded a crest of rock, he felt a slight pressure in his skull, like an internal whisper he couldn't identify. Not words. Emotions.
A few meters away, half-hidden behind a fallen pillar, a four-legged creature watched him. Its body was slender, covered in thick reddish fur, with black eyes like wet pearls. Despite its wild appearance, Ethan felt its fear, its hunger, its distrust.
"Can I… feel you?" he thought—and instantly, the connection intensified.The animal let out a low screech and fled between the rocks, leaving behind a cloud of dust.
A screen reappeared:
Psychic ability activated: Basic empathic reading
Estimated range: 10 meters
Note: This power will grow as you form descendants
Ethan stood frozen. The system wasn't lying. He had just proven it.
He kept walking for hours, without food or water, driven by the need to find shelter. There was no sun in that sky—only the strange, constant light of a dying world.
And then he saw it: a semicircular structure, half-buried in sand and time, with metallic inscriptions faintly glowing under the atmosphere.
It looked like a flattened dome, partially collapsed. Around it, pieces of what had once been vehicles or weapons lay, consumed by rust and age.
As Ethan approached, the technology felt him.
A pale blue glow ran along the ruin's lines, from its base to its peak, as if an ancient heart had beaten once. The sand at his feet trembled lightly. The door—if it could still be called that—began to open with a metallic screech that felt almost spiritual.
He stepped back, breathing rapidly. His instincts screamed at him to flee, but something stronger—a mix of curiosity and destiny—pushed him forward.
Inside, the darkness was not absolute. A dormant energy core, perhaps millennia old, pulsed faintly at the center of the chamber. When he touched it, a new wave of information flooded his mind: blueprints, fragments of binary code, genetic structures, unknown names.
And a warning, spoken in a voice with no gender or origin:
"Bloodline is power. Bloodline is burden. Choose well who you father. For through them you will live… or perish."
Thus, Ethan Graves ceased to exist.And Ethan Solhart took his first step into an age he did not yet understand——but one that belonged to him by right of blood.
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