It began, like all absurd Isekai do, with getting hit by a truck.
He didn't see it coming. One moment, he was walking home in the rain, phone in one hand, greasy takeout bag in the other, half-laughing at a meme in a group chat about how Goku could solo the MCU with one pinky. His thoughts were scattered between rent, boredom, and the distant decision to finally start watching Warhammer lore videos. People kept saying it was all "grimdark" and "no one smiles" and "humanity is just meat paste in power armor."
And then, headlights.
A horn.
Pain.
Nothing.
No flash of divine light. No god. No system screen.
Just cold. Then silence.
...
He woke up strapped to a metal table.
The first thing he felt was fire. Not metaphorical fire, real, pulsing agony beneath his skin. Every nerve screamed. Tubes pumped fluids into him. Something was drilling into his ribs. Machines clamped around his skull.
His mouth opened, but no sound came out. A rebreather was jammed down his throat.
Figures in red armor stood above him, faces hidden beneath robes and metallic lenses. One of them nodded without emotion.
"Subject 117. Organs Phase Three implantation complete. Proceeding with Black Carapace bonding."
Another voice replied in static-tinged binaric.
"Gene-seed stable. This one endures."
Endures what?
His thoughts were a fragmented mess. He tried to remember his name. His mother's face. The greasy taste of burger and soda. The words slipped from him like water through broken fingers.
Then, something stabbed into his spine.
And the pain returned.
...
He lost count of how many surgeries they performed. Over weeks? Months? Years? They cut into him again and again. Organs were placed inside him, organs no human was ever meant to have.
He overheard them mention them in passing:
Larraman's Organ. The Multi-Lung. Sinew Coils. Ossmodula. Catalepsean Node.
They told him nothing. But his body changed.
He grew. Fast. His bones stretched and thickened. His blood turned thicker. Stronger. He could feel things moving inside him when he breathed. His reflexes sharpened. He began to see in the dark. Hear from kilometers away.
And then came the neural drills, the mental indoctrination sessions. He was forced to relive battles he had never fought. Worlds he had never seen. The Codex Astartes was burned into his brain with painful chemical pulses.
By the time he could stand again, he was no longer a man.
He was something more.
...
The instructors gave him no time to reflect.
He was handed a bolt rifle the size of a car and shoved into a thunderhawk drop ship with other silent giants like him. They wore deep blue armor, each one a perfect killing machine.
The symbol of the Ultramarines marked their shoulders. The twin-headed Aquila sat proudly on their chests. And on the lips of those who guided them, only one name passed with reverence and fear: Roboute Guilliman.
The Primarch returned. The Imperium burns. The Indomitus Crusade begins.
He was now one of the first true sons of this new age, a Primaris Astartes, engineered by Archmagos Belisarius Cawl, who even now still walked the galaxy, continuing his experiments under Guilliman's oversight.
He was a weapon. Nothing more.
...
His first deployment was to Raukos V, an agri-world under siege by Tyranids.
The drop pod slammed into muddy ground. The hatches exploded outward. Bolter fire roared into the darkness. A thousand claws and shrieks answered.
He had no time to think. No time to pray.
His bolt rifle kicked like a cannon. One round turned an alien the size of a car into mush. He turned, fired again. Then again. Another beast leapt, he ducked, countered, drove his combat knife into its throat.
But not everyone made it.
One of his squadmates was torn in half beside him. Another impaled on a talon. Blood, black, burning, acidic, splashed his armor.
He didn't flinch.
But something in him recoiled.
He tried to remember how he used to react to death. To pain. To screaming.
He couldn't.
...
The decades passed. Then centuries.
His armor changed, upgraded. His body became even more efficient, his strength increasing as gene-seed adapted. Missions blurred together, each one more horrifying than the last.
He hunted Orks across the shattered moons of Velkrad. Held the line against Necrons deep beneath the sands of Duranth Prime. He saw the skies torn open above Cadia's grave.
He fought on a forge world where the gravity fluctuated wildly every minute, and servitors burst like overripe fruit. He purged cults from hive cities where the very air whispered lies.
The longer he fought, the less he remembered of Earth.
He could still say the words: Naruto. Stark. Peter Parker. Goku. Ramen.
But they meant nothing. No images came. Just vague feelings. Faded warmth.
Fiction, perhaps. Dreams. Shadows.
What was Earth?
Had it ever existed?
...
Then came Alrion-9.
A shrine world. Holy. Sanctified. Now… twisted.
The Eye of Terror had belched warp energy into the sector. Daemons had erupted from the planet's surface like sores. The skies bled fire. The ground pulsed like infected flesh.
He led a strike force. Seven battle-brothers. All Primaris. All experienced. All ready to die.
They deployed into a cathedral that no longer remembered the Emperor.
Creatures from the Warp assaulted them, flesh-things with too many eyes, laughing skulls wreathed in flame, blood that crawled like spiders.
They held the line.
Until they didn't.
One by one, his squadmates fell.
He didn't grieve. He couldn't.
By the end, he stood alone atop the broken altar, breathing heavily, blade in one hand, bolter spent. His armor was cracked, his blood mixing with ichor and ash.
A Great Daemon, tall as a tank, stepped through a hole in reality, dragging a cleaver made from screaming bone.
He activated his power sword.
He would not beg. He would not run.
He would die standing.
...
Then
A sound he had not heard in a thousand years.
Ding.
His helmet flickered. Data danced across his auto-senses.
Then
[Multiversal Chat Group Connecting…]
[User Located – Cross-Dimensional Signature Detected]
[Link Established. Welcome, new user.]
More text.
But not in High Gothic. Not in Machine Code.
English.
Clear. Familiar. Human.
Then came the messages.
[Tony Stark]: Uhhh… did someone just join? "Veteran of a Thousand Wars"? Dramatic. I like it. But seriously, who are you?
[Naruto Uzumaki]: YO!! New guy!!! What's your favorite food??? Ramen or pizza?! CHOOSE!!
[Saeko]: Another warrior? Hm… sounds different from the others. Where are you from, armored one?
[Goku]: New guy's name feels wild! Are you strong?! Wanna spar?!
He froze.
The daemon was still approaching. It howled his name,mor what it thought was his name.
But the voice in his helmet, the words in his vision, they cut deeper than any sword.
He knew these names.
Not as enemies. Not as saints.
But from before.
Before the armor.
Before the pain.
Before the silence.
Flickers returned.
A laptop screen. A bowl of noodles. Laughter. A poster. A fan theory.
His name.
His real name.
He could almost remember it.
And he remembered: Earth was real.
...
The daemon lunged.
He snapped his blade into a high guard. Duck. Parry. Slash.
The monster screamed, but he did not.
He moved like thunder.
He struck like judgment.
And through it all, behind the centuries of blood and silence, he smiled.
Just a little.
Just enough.
"I remember now," he whispered.
"They were fiction."
"I have watched them."
"I knew them. Once."
...
And so, in the fires of a dead shrine world, bathed in daemon blood and the echoes of a forgotten life, a warrior of the Emperor stood tall
and logged in.