Adam awoke, groggy and disoriented, blinking.
He looked slowly around and found himself inside a lavish cathedral.
The place was nothing short of magnificent: a vast dome of stained glass overhead, light streaming down to bathe the interior in a hue so pure it felt holy. Towering walls carried masterful reliefs—epic scenes crowded with saints and every order of angel.
The nave itself could only be called cavernous; pews for thousands of worshippers stretched away. Yet what dominated every eye was the colossal humanoid statue rising dozens of meters directly ahead of him.
Golden plate sheathed its frame; a flaming sword filled the right hand, a titanic claw-gauntlet the left. Its gaze was unshakable, its presence overwhelming.
'…Let me think—wasn't I supposed to be in a safehouse in Chicago?'
'…Where the hell have I landed?'
His brows knit tight.
Adam, twenty-two this year, was a transmigrator.
Among that vast tide of world-hoppers, his drop-point had been anything but lucky. He had fallen into an anomaly-saturated, ultra-high-risk universe—The SCP Foundation universe.
'Okay, pulse check... one, two... holy crap, I'm actually alive. I really thought that much "forbidden" junk in my head would have popped my skull like a grape by now. Well, since I'm already past the point of no return, I might as well see what's behind the curtain.
Time to see what these 'monsters' are really made of—and maybe give them a piece of my mind while I'm at it.'
Counting the days, it had already been five years since his arrival.
Those five years of experience had forged nerves of steel; even an encounter this bizarre barely rattled him for long.
"Hoo—"
Adam focused his mind and called up the power he knew best.
A force that could twist reality to his whim.
It was the ace that let him survive in a world where demons danced in daylight.
Adam was a Reality Warper.
As the name implies, such entities can bend or break reality through perception and will, achieving near-miraculous, wish-fulfilling effects within a limited scope.
Even in the Foundation's crowded bestiary, they are vanishingly rare—and dangerous. Once discovered, they either spend life in a containment cell or are gunned down by a strike team; other endings are almost unheard-of.
For someone like Adam to have run free for years was already an extreme outlier.
'Oh—so I'm dreaming.'
Except this was no ordinary dream; he could feel the power shaping it, and it reeked of anomaly.
Even as a Reality Warper, he was stunned to find himself powerless inside it. Whether he tried to rip the dreamscape apart or conjure a weapon for self-defence, every attempt collapsed—this dream felt more stable than reality itself.
𐠒𐠒Adam… you've arrived.𐠒𐠒
A voice rang out, layered with a thousandfold echo, as though a choir sang behind it.
'Who—?'
Adam turned slowly. The cathedral's titanic doors—wide enough for a ship—were swinging open, and a figure stepped through.
Before him stood a youth with wheat-toned skin and long black hair cascading to his waist, a golden laurel circling his brow.
Barefoot, he wore a simple white robe of antique cut, cinched by a grass cord—no other ornament. Stark simplicity, nothing more.
Yet that austerity radiated such pure sanctity that to look away felt like sacrilege.
"Forgive my mortal eyes, their shallow sight,"
Adam murmured, bowing. "Which god stands before me?"
From the moment he'd seen the cathedral, Adam had racked his memory, but nothing matched—neither the Church of the Broken God Mekhane, nor Nälkä, nor the Fifthists. None fit this place or this boy.
The youth halted before him, eyes calm, surface unruffled.
𐠒𐠒…First, I am no god, merely a man of Terra.
Ease your courtesy; call me Neoth.𐠒𐠒
Seriously, buddy?
Adam's eyelid twitched.
You're basically radiating divinity—it's blinding— and you claim you're not divine?
He had never sensed anything like it. All the belief of Earth's humanity combined would be a drop beside this self-proclaimed 'Neoth.'
With that much faith, every miracle in human myth would be child's play for him.
And now the entity itself denied divinity?
Some new brand of anti humour?
'Still… why does that name sound familiar?'
Adam frowned, studying the boy's garb again.
'Come to think of it, this look gives me déjà-vu too… where have I seen it?'
At that instant, Neoth's pupils flashed gold—as though he'd noticed something.
Adam blinked.
'What was I just thinking?'
He cursed himself for drifting and shoved the half-formed thought aside.
"So—what business brings me to this dream?"
He asked straight-out. "I'm a just class-two warper; my Hume Level, range, and output are limited. An unlucky sniper round could still end me."
"I don't know who you are, but judging by this dreamscape, I'm nothing to you. If something's beyond you, it's surely beyond me."
𐠒𐠒You sell yourself short, Adam.𐠒𐠒
Neoth replied evenly. "
𐠒𐠒Beyond your identity as a Warper lies another anomaly—your truest support and the reason you've grown this far.
That is what I'm here for.𐠒𐠒
Hearing this, Adam's heart jumped.
It was the greatest secret he kept—his sole reliance since arriving in The Foundation's world.
"…You're referring to the fact that I can raise the level of my Reality Warping Ability, right?"
Adam relaxed instead, letting go completely.
"That really is different from other Reality Warpers. When I first awakened, my Reality Warping Ability was only Grade One—bending spoons with telekinesis, pulling objects through the air, petty tricks like that. I spent a huge amount of effort, step by step, to reach my current level."
"But I'm afraid I'll disappoint you; the conditions for further growth are basically a dead end now."
𐠒𐠒Tell me—why is it a dead end?𐠒𐠒
"The requirement is simple: plunder."
Adam sighed. "Whenever I kill a sentient being—or my actions directly cause its death—its soul is devoured by me, raising my personal power."
"You know power is the parameter that measures local reality stability. The higher a Warper's own power, the lower the surrounding Hume level becomes, so the Reality Warping Ability grows stronger."
He paused, then continued, "Going from Grade-One Warper to Grade Two only took a few dozen human lives; I wiped out a few drug-lord gangs and it was done."
"But now, to advance from Grade Two to Grade Three, the requirement rises exponentially—there's simply no way I can do it."
𐠒𐠒Must be an enormous number?𐠒𐠒
"Exactly."
Adam's expression was grave. "At minimum, a full hundred thousand souls."
The moment the words fell, an eerie silence settled between them.
After a long while Neoth finally spoke:
𐠒𐠒…Only a hundred thousand?𐠒𐠒
What do you mean by only a hundred thousand!
Adam's eye twitched. "A hundred thousand souls isn't a lot?"
Give me a break—does The SCP Foundation look dead to you?
If I actually tried it, the next second The Foundation's Achilles' Heel Mobile Task Force—specialized in suppressing Reality Warpers—would spawn right outside my door!
Next thing I know, I'm beaten to my knees and dragged off to a containment site as an anomalous object.
𐠒𐠒No—I have a proposal.𐠒𐠒
𐠒𐠒Would you be willing to leave this world and go to another universe?𐠒𐠒
"You mean leave The Foundation's oversight, go to another universe, and fulfill my growth conditions there?"
Having spent years behind the Veil in the anomalous world, the seasoned Adam was no stranger to the concept of alternate universes.
It sounded like a great offer—but not without problems.
"But the issue is, other universes have Foundations too, don't they?"
Exactly—that was the biggest hurdle.
An organization dedicated to protecting humanity from anomalies, The Foundation exists across the multiverse.
From Adam's experience using other anomalous groups' artifacts and tech to explore parallel worlds, there were only two scenarios: either a Foundation maintained order, or the world was a wasteland—post-apocalyptic, humanity extinct.
Neither could satisfy the growth requirements of his Reality Warping Ability.
𐠒𐠒No, you misunderstand—my universe has nothing to do with The SCP Foundation.𐠒𐠒
Neoth shook his head and delivered news Adam had never anticipated.
𐠒𐠒You could see it as an entirely separate multiverse.
In metaphor: two distinct books that should never intersect, yet a miracle even I can barely comprehend brought me here.𐠒𐠒
𐠒𐠒But the link between the worlds is fragile—not only can overly powerful entities not pass, it may vanish at any moment.
Because of these limits, I must choose someone to help me immediately—someone like you.𐠒𐠒
𐠒𐠒Would you leave this universe and travel to mine?𐠒𐠒
Adam almost agreed on the spot.
He was utterly sick of this damned world!
Anomalous objects that could kill you in a blink, K-Class Events of worldwide doom several times a year, The Foundation and Global Occult Coalition chasing him like mad dogs, anomalous groups scheming against each other, tech that could make you wish you were dead—what could be worse?
Yet he forced himself to ask:
"Could you describe what your world is like?"
Neoth's face was calm, unruffled:
𐠒𐠒It is a wondrous universe—a fantasy world where humans, elves, orcs, undead, demons and more coexist.𐠒𐠒
𐠒𐠒Of course, with many races sharing one world, minor frictions are unavoidable.𐠒𐠒
𐠒𐠒As ruler mankind, I ask little of you.
𐠒𐠒As the hero I've chosen, you need only help humanity defeat the Demons and the Dark Gods behind them, and lead mankind to greatness once more.𐠒𐠒
𐠒𐠒For a Warper who can twist reality at will—nearly making thoughts real—this task should not be difficult.𐠒𐠒
𐠒𐠒Moreover, you can keep slaughtering to raise your Reality Warping Ability; you may soon become Grade Three—or higher—making the mission even easier.𐠒𐠒
𐠒𐠒What do you say?𐠒𐠒
Adam rubbed his chin, lost in thought.
Of course his experience told him there was more to the story; Neoth's description was a little too simple—even by Foundation standards, as if demons, elves, undead and orcs didn't exist here too.
But after weighing everything, Adam gave a firm nod.
"I agree!"
Again—he was sick to death of this place!
Surely that world couldn't be a bigger cesspit than The SCP-verse.
Hearing Adam's answer, the youth calling himself Neoth smiled with divine compassion; sunlight-bright brilliance burst from his eyes, soaring light wrapped around him, and layers of white wings unfurled behind his back.
Adam felt a fierce burning pain on the back of his hand and couldn't help sucking in a breath.
Luckily the agony came and went quickly, fading into lingering warmth. He lifted his hand and looked.
On the back of Adam's hand now glowed a sun-like emblem, shaped something like:
'a Golden Double-Headed Eagle?'
Adam's eyes widened.
That all-too-familiar sigil jolted memories of his past life. With the end at hand, Neoth no longer hid anything, removing the cognitive interference he'd placed on Adam's mind.
Without that interference, Adam could piece together where he was headed—and who this "Neoth" really was.
"Wait, hold up, wait a moment
I changed my min—"
Unfortunately, it was too late.
Layer upon layer of wings folded down, wrapping him completely; the next instant, before he could speak, Adam vanished in a blaze of golden light.
All phenomena faded. Neoth slowly descended, staggered, cracks spreading across his face until he dissolved into light.
In the cathedral only a faint sigh remained:
"In this dark forty-first millennium, war is eternal…"
"…yet hope endures."
Adam opened his eyes.
Crossing universes wasn't as painful as he'd imagined; in fact, he felt nothing special at all. One moment of trance and the world flipped around him.
He looked around: a steel-alloy room, sparsely furnished with only a desk and a single bed.
The twin-headed aquila of the Imperium of Man was etched into the wall; incense and candle-smoke scented the air. On the desk lay a thick tome—its cover read: "Lectio Divinitatus."
Every sign said he was no longer in his previous universe.
Adam smiled.
A smile of pure frustration.
"Damn you, Emperor, you Anatolian motherf*cker, you set me up!"
Indeed, he now understood everything.
Escaping SCP-verse cesspool of a world was great—
but why the hell had he leapt straight from one cesspool into another?
Warhammer 40K—a famously grimdark space-opera IP from his past life, cooked up by the evil Games Workshop.
Gothic darkness and endless war; every race and faction packed into one tiny galaxy, each with its own edge, unique tricks, and secret weapons that kept the surprises coming.
Per the contract, Adam had to revive the Imperium of Man—an empire that had gleefully absorbed the worst dregs of human governance.
Democracy's buck-passing, totalitarian oppression, religious fanaticism, feudal rigidity, militarist sacrifice, slavery's cruelty, bureaucratic sloth, theocratic thought-control—an unholy bouquet of stench.
Ever since the "little accident" of the Great Crusade ten thousand years ago and the Emperor's internment on the Golden Throne, the Imperium had been nose-diving downhill; heroes tried, but the slide continued.
"Enough pessimism."
Adam quickly calmed himself.
First things first: figure out where in the galaxy he was—and what year.
He walked to the door and tried to open it.
The heavy alloy hatch didn't budge; it was locked tight.
"Hmmm."
Adam frowned; with a thought the supposedly solid door turned to drifting sand and collapsed.
Cold corridor-light spilled in; he stepped out into a wide cargo-hold.
Once a storage bay, now an abattoir—explosions and gunfire echoing as a massacre unfolded.
The butcher was a Chaos Space Marine—pearl-pink power armour twisted with obscene sigils, a sickly-sweet scent around him. Chainsword and Bolter in hand, he danced through the crew, blood spraying in his elegant wake.
"For the Four-Armed Emperor!"
An Astra Militarum trooper hoisting a melta bomb lost his head; the helmet spun away, revealing a chitin-scalped Genestealer hybrid.
The Marine flicked the bomb aside; its blast devoured several more bodies, and the slaughter resumed.
"Well, well, well—genestealers guarding the gate. Classic 40K."
Adam couldn't help the mental jab.
Both sides noticed him. The Genestealers kept firing at the Marine; the Marine spun and charged straight for Adam.
"Praise the lord of pleasure!"
For a Slaanesh-worshipper, victory mattered less than the thrill of the fight.
Bored of butchering pheromone-drones, he was delighted to find a lone mortal to toy with.
How best to play with this fragile toy?
Should he flay him alive? Keep him conscious, and inscribe the False Emperor's holy words upon every tendon—mmmm delicious.
The Marine's delight froze—his body locked in place before the "harmless" mortal.
'What—?'
"Scared me there—good thing I'm one step ahead."
With a single thought Adam had locked the warrior's Mk VII armour.
Back in The Foundation-verse, every strike team had packed Scranton Reality Anchors to cage his Reality Warping Ability; here, nobody seemed prepared.
An un-wary opponent was a rare treat.
Adam reached out and gently closed his fist.
Bang!
A sharp detonation rang out.
The Chaos Space Marine crashed down, armour splitting, blood spurting through every seam.
Adam had done nothing dramatic—just converted a portion of the Marine's blood into nitroglycerine and lit the spark.
This mining explosive still worked in the 41st millennium; it shredded the traitor's twin hearts and triple lungs, killing him on the spot.
Adam exhaled softly; as the Marine died a surge of power flooded him, lifting something deep inside.
"Nice quality buddy—your soul one of these equals a few hundred regular mortals."
He mused…
*******
The Warp—Slaaneshs Sixth Ring.
Beyond mortal imagining, a perfect palace rose amid the Immaterium's tides. Pillars and beams displayed sculptures, oils and artworks so exquisite they could steal a mind.
Yet the true focus was not the art but the myriad ordinary mirrors circling like satellites around a grand bed at the chamber's heart.
Upon that bed unfolded a vision able to drag mortals into Chaos-spawn horror.
Every mirror reflected the bed's blasphemy; each possibility fed its owner's sensations back a thousand-fold—enough pleasure even for a jaded Slaaneshi daemon.
After uncounted moments a Keeper of Secrets collapsed, limp and spent.
Another figure slowly sat up.
She wore an Adepta Sororitas gown—yet every purity seal had been replaced by writhing Slaaneshi icons.
Her body grotesquely elongated—four metres tall, limbs spider-thin, face a sultry, distorted mask.
Miriael Sabathiel
Disgrace of the Order of the Martyr Saintess—fallen sister, Slaanesh-worshipper, Chaos champion blessed by the Dark Prince.
She ran a metre-long, spike-studded tongue across her face, carving bleeding gouges that healed in seconds.
That cleared her head a little.
"What is it, my dearest Miriael?"
The spent Keeper cooed.
"Nothing grand—just a 'little fish' I'd marked seems to have slipped my net."
Miriael replied, languid and unconcerned.
The Keeper of Secrets fell silent, sifting through the mush inside its skull, then finally spoke.
"Are you speaking of that warband called The Blissful Angels?"
"Exactly. Its Chaos Lord is also a Dark Apostle; he struck a bargain with me. He needed my help in his ascension to daemonhood, and in return every Astartes soul in his warband—save his own—would be mine to keep as my collection."
The Fallen Sister cupped her chin, eyes narrowing.
"Yet I sensed a Space Marine die just now, and his soul never reached my chambers per our pact."
"A pity."
The Keeper of Secrets gave a regretful smile. "We could have had another plaything."
"Forget it. One soul more or less doesn't matter now."
Miriael sighed and waved a hand. "Who knows—perhaps only the lord of pleasure knows where that soul wandered."
She had seen stranger things.
In this universe, a soul failing to reach its chosen god was commonplace; the reasons were countless.
Slain and beheaded by a Khorne daemon, fallen under some relic blade, or maybe that Chaos Lord simply cheated—any was possible.
'Whatever. I'll contact the Chaos Lord later and see what happened.'
A devotee of Slaanesh, the Fallen Sister cared only for her own pleasures and thrills; such matters left her cold. Elsewhere aboard the vessel…
Adam, naturally, knew nothing of the drama unfolding in the Warp.
He glanced at the pack of genestealers and called out,
"I bear you no hostility. Send someone who can speak and let's trade information, shall we?"
Adam's plan was simple.
As the vanguard of the Great Devourer's invasion of the Milky Way, genestealers retain a shard of their host's self, yet in essence they remain a hive-mind organism.
Cut down the psychic node that commands them and the rest will plunge into chaos.
First trick the cult into revealing their leader—then strike!
Alas, the reply was a hail of Autogun, las, Bolter and other rounds.
"Figures."
Every bullet froze or ricocheted two metres away from Adam.
With a thought he rewrote the physics of the air around him, giving it the hardness and toughness of high-grade alloy; anything short of two metres of rolled-steel penetration could not breach his living shield.
"One, two, three… forty-three Genestealers left."
Standing untouched in the storm of fire, Adam finished his head-count.
He saw every enemy's position, yet he would not repeat his earlier trick.
A mere grade-two Reality Warper, his range and strength were still limited.
He could crush them one by one, but that would be far too slow.
Fortunately, a Warhammer fan knew a more efficient solution.
Amid the curtain of shells he beckoned; the Chaos Space Marine's discarded Bolter leapt into his grip.
An invisible hand stroked every part of the weapon; the Bolter shivered, drooling unknown alloys from its muzzle with faint clicks.
The machine spirit was ecstatic, lad!
Adam levelled the Bolter without aiming and squeezed the trigger.
BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG!
The shots blurred into a single roar, the Bolter firing far beyond its normal rate and magazine capacity, emptying nearly two clips without pause.
The muzzle twitched naturally; each round seemed aim-botted, drilling into the bald scalps of the cultists.
Blossoms of blood and brain splattered the ceiling.
The unluckiest was the genestealer Commander: his micro force-field earned special attention, and an overkill of bolt shells spread him evenly across the deck—more Bolter shrapnel than flesh remained.
Adam released the trigger; the Bolter reluctantly fell silent. No one breathed in the corridor now.
He ejected the magazine and glanced inside—still half full.
'That strong, huh?'
He had only negated recoil and weight and let the machine spirit run wild—yet the result was devastating.
"Anyway, peace at last. Time to figure out where the hell I am."
A few minutes later…
Having ripped the memories from the dead Chaos Space Marine, Adam got the intel he needed.
It was M41.890—over a century before Warmaster Abaddon gave Cadia his parting gift, and the blue man had yet to awaken and Make the Imperium Great Again.
But this was no safe timeline. Closer to the birth of the Great Rift, the late 41st millennium served up apocalypses buffet-style.
The Badab War, the World Engine War, the Second and Third Armageddon Wars, the Pandorax Campaign, the T'au's Third Sphere Expansion, the Second and Third Tyrannic Wars, the Orpheus Sector Crusade…
In plain words: F*cked³.
In fancy words: Full of opportunity!
Adam's current location lay within the Segmentum Solar. An Imperial world in this system had developed a bad case of Orks; even an Armageddon Steel Legion regiment, summoned by astropathic plea, could not contain the greenskins.
Perhaps because this was the Segmentum Solar, the Imperium reacted with uncharacteristic speed: a thousand Battle Sisters of the Order of the Martyr Saintess and two standard Astra Militarum regiments arrived aboard a lunar cruiser.
As they translated in from the Mandeville Point, the Chaos Warband Blissful Angels sprang a well-laid ambush. Dozens of Chaos Space Marines rode boarding torpedoes into the cruiser and butchery began.
Worse, one Astra Militarum regiment had already been infested by genestealers; the Chaos assault exposed them, and a three-way bloodbath erupted.
In Warhammer, such Tuesdays barely warrant a shrug; Adam felt no surprise and no urge to comment.
Knowing his situation, he made up his mind.
"First priority: link up with the loyalists aboard. I'm not fighting an entire Chaos Warband solo, and I'm not spacewalking home."
Adam scavenged a few weapons and grenades he might need, then headed for the main battle per the dead Chaos Marine's memories.