Chapter 227 — A Quiet Return
The transition back was not violent.
There was no tearing of space, no burst of light, no force that pushed against the body. It was calm. Smooth. Like stepping from one room into another without noticing the door in between.
Gaius opened his eyes.
He stood once more within the Oath of Rectitude.
The familiar weight of the ship surrounded him. The low hum of its systems. The faint vibration beneath his feet. The distant echo of machinery working in rhythm. It was steady. Ordered. Known.
The difference was immediate.
The presence that had once stood within him, vast, ancient, absolute, was gone.
Not fading.
Not weakening.
Gone.
The Emperor's fragment had left him the moment they returned.
Gaius remained still for a moment.
For the first time, he focused on his own body, something he hadn't had the chance to do before.
And he could already tell.
Something had changed.
He didn't need to test it. He could feel it.
His body was no longer the same.
The strength within him had settled into something deeper, more complete. It wasn't wild or overwhelming anymore.
It simply felt… right.
His physique no longer held him back.
It matched him now.
His soul, his will, his control, everything finally had a body that could keep up.
He flexed his right hand slightly, the power fist responding at once.
No strain.
No resistance.
Just quiet obedience.
Gaius lowered his hand.
"…so this is what it feels like," he said under his breath.
—
Far beyond the ship, deep within the Immaterium, something stirred.
The Emperor returned, not as a body, not as a man, but as a presence.
The fragment that had entered Gaius carried something new with it. Power. Something taken. Something absorbed. The essence of the Infinity Stones.
It did not shine or erupt outward. It simply existed within him, vast, contained, and under control.
For a brief moment, the Emperor considered it. A single thought formed, clear and absolute: remove the Warp. End it. Erase the Immaterium entirely.
No Chaos. No corruption. No endless war feeding on itself. Only silence. Only peace.
But the thought did not linger. Calculation followed immediately.
The power he held was immense, but not enough. Not for something as vast as the Warp. Even if he attempted it, the result would not be complete, and he understood the consequences better than anyone.
He had existed within the Immaterium for ten thousand years. He knew its nature. To tear at it without certainty would not end it. It would make it worse, unstable, uncontrolled, far more dangerous than before.
So he did not act.
Instead, his focus shifted.
To Terra.
To his body.
To the Golden Throne.
Resurrection, that was the priority.
But before that, he moved the ship.
—
Within the Oath of Rectitude, the Navigator froze.
It wasn't a physical force, nothing that pushed or pulled. It was something else entirely. Direction. Clear. Absolute.
The ship's course changed at once, not gradually, not by degrees, but instantly.
Her third eye widened as she felt it settle over her perception.
"…Terra," she whispered.
Her hands tightened, but she did not panic. She knew this presence. She had felt it before, not often, not directly, but enough to recognize it without doubt.
"…the Emperor…"
There was no mistaking it. The ship was being guided, not by instruments, not by calculation, but by will.
A thought crossed her mind. They had just come from Terra. Why return?
The question lingered for only a moment.
Then she lowered her head slightly.
It was not her place to ask.
—
Back on the ship, Gaius moved.
"Return to your duties," he said calmly.
Titus nodded once. "Yes, my lord."
The others followed without question.
The Bladeguard took their positions.
The Sister of Silence turned without a word.
The Dreadnought remained still for a moment, then shifted as well, walking back to its vault.
Gaius did not watch them leave.
He turned and walked.
Each step steady. Measured.
He entered his private chamber.
The door closed behind him.
Silence.
He stood in the center of the room for a moment, then looked down at his arm.
The power fist.
The six empty slots where the stones had once rested were gone. Only the red gems remained, restored, while the Infinity Stones themselves had vanished, as if they had never existed.
But the effect remained.
He could feel it in every movement, in every breath, in the way his body responded to even the smallest action.
Gaius stepped forward and sat down on his adamantium seat. The metal did not shift or creak. It simply held him, solid and unmoving.
He leaned back slightly, his thoughts turning inward.
To strength.
To limits.
To comparison.
His gene-father, Roboute Guilliman.
Gaius understood the difference between them. Even now, even with his body refined and his strength raised to this level, experience still mattered. Guilliman carried centuries of war, command, and understanding.
That was not something Gaius could match. Not yet.
But physically…
He was no longer behind.
That gap had closed.
His haki had grown as well, stronger, sharper, more controlled than before. And his spirit…
His spirit remained his own.
Human. Unchanged. Untouched.
Even the Emperor himself had not been able to peer through it.
Gaius understood what that meant. In that regard, he could not be compared to a Primarch. Their nature was something else entirely.
But his strength was real.
If he and Guilliman were to fight one-on-one…
Gaius paused at the thought.
With what he had gained, including the regenerative core he acquired from Tony's world, the outcome would not be certain.
He might even win.
But only might.
And even that was nothing more than speculation.
He exhaled softly and shook his head.
"It doesn't matter," he muttered.
There was no reason to test it. No need to prove anything.
The thought faded as quickly as it came.
His mind settled.
Calm. Ordered. Controlled.
—
In another world, life had already begun to change.
News spread faster than anyone could control.
Videos. Clips. Fragments of the battle.
All of it uploaded, shared, replayed, watched by millions, then tens of millions, then more.
New York became the center of global attention.
At the heart of it all were the Avengers, and especially three figures who stood out the most.
Tony Stark.
Clips of Iron Man flooded every platform. Not just one suit, but dozens moving at once, working in perfect coordination. Precise. Efficient. Overwhelming.
People watched as he cut through waves of Chitauri, his machines acting like a single unified force, controlled, calculated, relentless.
Once again, he became the face of the battle.
Then there was Tanya.
A much smaller figure, almost easy to miss at first glance. A young girl in a soldier's uniform, suspended in the air.
Moving fast. Precise. Lethal.
One clip spread faster than most.
A single moment: she raised her weapon and fired. A Chitauri exploded mid-air. The footage caught everything, her position, her control, her calm expression.
Clean. Almost effortless. Almost graceful.
People replayed it again and again.
"…is she even human?"
The question spread everywhere.
But the most attention, the most confusion, came from something else.
The Ultramarines.
Massive armored figures moving through the streets like relics of another age. Knights, in appearance, but everything about how they fought told a different story.
Their weapons. Their coordination. Their sheer power.
They didn't hesitate. They didn't panic. They didn't rush.
They simply advanced, and removed anything in their path.
One video stood above the rest. Filmed from a high building, looking down.
Titus stood alone below, clearing wave after wave of enemies. Every movement was controlled. Every action deliberate. There was no struggle, only execution.
That video spread faster than any other.
But it wasn't what caused the real reaction.
Because if it had ended there, they would have been just another hero, strange, but not alarming.
Tanya and Iron Man were far more eye-catching in comparison.
Yet the Ultramarines were already known.
Before they ever appeared in New York.
A channel with a simple name had existed online:
ULTRAMARINE.
And it contained videos of them.
The numbers climbed at a staggering pace, hundreds of millions of views, rapidly approaching a billion. Subscribers surged into the millions within days.
The Battle of New York changed everything. The Ultramarine videos, already viral before, were pushed back into the spotlight and spread across every major social media platform.
Reactions flooded in, theories, fear, excitement, confusion.
Everyone had something to say.
—
Then came the analysis.
A new video appeared, from a familiar channel, Game Theory.
MatPat.
This time, he wasn't just a voice or a small overlay. He was fully on screen, his expression serious in a way viewers rarely saw.
"This video," he began, "is about the aliens in New York… and especially the Ultramarines."
He didn't waste time.
"We know this isn't a Game Theory episode," he continued. "Because this is real life."
A brief pause hung in the air.
"But we need to talk about it anyway."
Behind him, the footage played again, slowed down, zoomed in, broken into frames. Every angle, every movement, dissected carefully.
"For the past two days, we've been studying this footage as closely as possible," he said. "Not just me. We brought in professionals. People who work with video analysis, with forensic tools. We checked for edits, compression artifacts, anything that would suggest manipulation."
His expression didn't change as he looked straight into the camera.
"And we didn't find any."
Another pause.
"It's not fake."
The words didn't feel dramatic. That was what made them worse.
"It's real."
That statement spread faster than anything else connected to the video. Faster than the original upload. Faster than the clips of the New York incident that had surfaced two days ago.
Online, people fractured into groups almost immediately.
Some denied it outright.
Some tried to rationalize it.
Most were simply quiet, unsure what they were even looking at anymore.
He continued.
"We don't know exactly what the Ultramarines are, or where they came from. But based on everything we can observe…"
He hesitated slightly.
"…they are likely human."
A second pause followed.
The footage behind him shifted again, this time focusing on the other figures, the ones who weren't the armored soldiers.
Corrupted cultists. Muscular, wild, almost feral in their movements, yet still using weapons. They attacked even as they watched their allies being torn down and overwhelmed by the Ultramarines.
"They appear mad… or unstable," he said more quietly now. "Possibly altered. Experimented on. We don't know the mechanism, but we do know the result."
On screen, one of them slammed itself forward again and again, even after losing balance, even when it was clearly outmatched.
"They don't stop," he added. "They just keep going."
A beat passed.
"Not like soldiers. Not like trained combatants. More like… insane individuals with nothing left but the instinct to attack."
He exhaled slightly.
"Some people have compared them to zombies. That's not entirely accurate, but it's the closest word we have right now."
The footage cut again, showing the battlefield, the scale of destruction, the unfamiliar architecture in the background. Nothing matched known Earth cities. Nothing felt recognizable.
He pointed it out without emphasis.
"And the environment, and everything happening in it, strongly suggests this is not Earth. It also means they are interstellar compared to us."
Another pause.
"And that whatever happened there… happened to them. Not something they were born into. Something done to them."
Silence settled for a moment before he continued.
"And the last implication it suggests is this, there are other humans out there."
Not speculation this time.
A conclusion.
"And they are not like us."
The video ended without music. Without transition. Without explanation.
Just a cut to black.
No outro. No commentary.
Only silence left hanging behind it.
—
The reaction was immediate.
Fear. Confusion. Arguments breaking out in every direction at once.
If there were other humans,
Where were they?
How long had they existed?
What had happened to them?
And most importantly,
Were they aware of Earth?
Or worse…
Were they already on their way here?
~~~~
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