Well, for the past few seconds, I have been anyway. You might be asking yourselves how I got here—and honestly, I'd have to point you toward some rabid fan on Reddit yelling drivel about how the Precursors from Pacific Rim were actually the good guys and humanity was the real villain.
Yeah. That was my evening.
What started as a normal argument turned into a full-blown, multi-day back-and-forth. I had just come back from college, nothing better to do, so I leaned into it. Hard. At first it was just memes and sarcasm, but then he started getting serious about it—like, genuinely unhinged. Talking about humanity being a plague, how we deserved to be wiped out, all that edgy nonsense.
So naturally, I doubled down.
I started throwing "humanity first" edits at him, long paragraphs, clips, whatever I could find. Not because I thought I'd convince him—but because it was funny. The more he ranted, the funnier it got. He started making threats at some point, the usual internet tough guy stuff, and I just kept laughing it off.
Then he leaked my address.
That… took some of the humor out of it.
Still didn't think he'd actually do anything though. I mean, come on. It's the internet. People say stupid stuff all the time.
Turns out, this one wasn't bluffing.
So yeah. Cue home invasion. Middle of the night, door gets kicked in, and in walks a guy wearing a full-on fursuit like that somehow makes him intimidating instead of ridiculous. I remember just staring at him, half-awake, trying to process whether I was dreaming or not.
I wasn't.
Things escalated fast after that. Not much to say there. I didn't exactly win that encounter.
Last thing I remember is him standing over me, breathing heavy through that oversized animal head, and me—being me—even then deciding to get one last jab in.
"Want to be an animal…? Shit in your fursuit."
Probably not the most heroic last words in history, but I stand by them.
And then I died.
…
Now here's the weird part.
I'm not panicking.
I feel like I should be. I mean, I just died, right? That's usually a big deal. But instead, there's this strange calm sitting in my head, like none of this is surprising anymore. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that calm isn't really mine.
It belongs to something else.
Something that's been sitting in the back of my mind this whole time, quiet until now. Not a voice exactly—more like a presence. A weight of memory that doesn't fit into a single lifetime. Thousands of years' worth of experience, thoughts layered over thoughts, all of it bleeding into me like it's always been there.
Because I'm not human anymore.
Not really.
My true "species"—if you can even call it that—wasn't born in any normal sense. We weren't flesh first. We were patterns. Constructs. Equations given shape. A mix of symbols and intent, forced into reality by something far beyond anything humanity ever touched.
The Old Ones.
Yeah, those Old Ones.
Ancient, powerful, and from what I can tell, completely unhinged when it came to messing with reality. If I had to describe them in simpler terms, I'd say they were like Hutts—big, ancient, and full of themselves—but with godlike psychic power and a habit of creating entire species just to see what would happen.
The Krorks. The Eldar. All of it started with them.
And then there was us.
The Precursors.
We weren't warriors like the Krorks or refined like the Eldar. We were something in between—tools, assistants, problem-solvers. We existed to help the Old Ones shape their experiments, refine them, push them further. Where they created, we perfected.
At least, that was the idea.
Then came the War in Heaven.
And everything fell apart.
When I say the Old Ones lost, I don't mean they retreated or weakened. I mean they were wiped out. Gone. No grand last stand, no hidden survivors waiting in the shadows—just… gone. Whatever killed them made sure of that.
After that, things got worse.
The Krorks devolved. The Eldar fractured. And us? The so-called successors?
We became targets.
Every side saw us for what we were—beings with a natural connection to the Warp, strong enough to rival lesser Old Ones, capable of creating life if we reached our full potential. That kind of power doesn't get ignored.
So they tried to erase us.
And they nearly succeeded.
Our biggest weakness didn't help either. We couldn't reproduce quickly. Creating new life for us wasn't just biological—it was ritualistic, almost surgical. Two Precursors would spend centuries carving out a stable pocket within the Warp, shaping it carefully before using it to form an egg. Every detail mattered. Every fluctuation in the Warp affected the result.
It meant our numbers never recovered.
And over time… we faded.
Which brings me to now.
Because somehow, against all odds, I'm here.
I can feel it—the Warp, alive and screaming in the background of everything. The four parasites lurking within it, watching, waiting. Even without seeing them directly, I know they're there.
And when I look up, I see it.
The Eye of Terror.
No mistaking that.
Which means one thing.
I'm in the 41st millennium.
And judging by the ground beneath my feet—the broken, scarred surface of a world that feels like it's constantly on the edge of collapse—I've landed on Cadia.
Of all places.
I push myself up slowly, getting used to the weight of this new body. Everything feels… heavier, but stronger. More solid. When I glance down at my hands, they're not human anymore—larger, sharper, something closer to a weapon than a limb.
Twelve feet tall, if I had to guess.
I flex my fingers slightly, and the air itself seems to shift around them.
Yeah.
This is going to take some getting used to.
I take a step forward, testing the ground. It cracks slightly under the pressure, not enough to break, but enough to tell me exactly how much strength I'm dealing with.
Auramite wouldn't hold against this.
That realization settles in slowly.
I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding and glance back up at the sky, at the swirling madness staring back down at me.
"…Right," I mutter to myself.
"I've got a lot to do."