The ancient galaxy's quiet hum stood in stark contrast to a world striving to heal. Jack, the Eternal Wanderer, sat cross-legged atop a moss-covered stone older than recorded history, the scent of pine and fresh rain filling his senses. Aku was gone, the future secure. Peace, hard-won across the span of eons, had finally arrived. Yet, the profound stillness felt… incomplete.
He closed his eyes, focusing on the rhythm of his breath, seeking the deep calm that had carried him through impossible trials. It was then he heard it.
Not Aku's monstrous, booming laugh, a sound soaked in evil and twisted humor. This was different. A lighter sound, like glass chimes vibrating in a hurricane, yet carrying an undercurrent of ancient, knowing madness. It echoed not in his mind but seemed to resonate through the fabric of reality itself.
The air around him began to shimmer, the familiar greens and browns bleeding into impossible hues. The scent of ozone replaced pine. A fissure tore open in the sky, not of storm clouds, but of pure, roiling distortion—a bleeding wound in the weave of existence. It was a shard of something vast, something wrong, that had touched his fragile, corrected timeline.
From the light and the laughter, a figure coalesced. Tall and lithe, clad in a harlequin-patterned suit that seemed to flicker in and out of focus, it moved with impossible grace. A featureless mask grinned eternally, but Jack felt an intelligence behind it—ancient and profound.
The figure bowed, a gesture of perfect, mocking respect. "Hello again, wanderer," a voice chimed, manifold and singular, carrying the sound of myriad voices speaking in perfect unison. "I knew someone once, not unlike you. We danced through time, across the stars. It was a long, intricate performance." The grin on the mask seemed to widen. "Now... the audience demands a new act. And the enemy is worse."
Jack opened his eyes. His face, usually a mask of serene determination, held no surprise. He had faced demons, aliens, robots, and Aku himself. The concept of a worse enemy, summoned through a crack in reality by a laughing entity, felt… like the natural next step. He rose, placing a hand on the hilt of his katana. He spoke just two words.
"I accept."
The world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of impossible colors and echoing laughter.
---
Meanwhile, beneath the rolling hills of Avalon, King Arthur Pendragon—Artoria—slept her long sleep. Excalibur, sheathed and silent, rested beside her, its power a comforting weight in the timeless slumber. Her dreams were of Camelot, of loyal knights, of a time of legends and chivalry—a stark contrast to the bitter betrayal and final battle that had ended her earthly reign.
Her rest was deep, shielded by the magic of the Lady of the Lake and the mists of Avalon. But magic, even the ancient kind, could be… nudged. Disrupted.
A strange resonance vibrated through the earth beneath her, a sound like shattering crystal mixed with a jester's gleeful cackle. It seeped through the wards, through the mists, touching her sleeping consciousness.
She saw a figure in her dream, clad in motley, performing impossible acrobatics across a stage of stars. It pointed at her, its masked face grinning, and spoke in a voice that was both a whisper and a roar, a chorus of approval and mockery.
"You are needed again, Once and Future King! Your legend is a beacon. Your sword is the heart of myth itself. Let's see what legend does to chaos that has forgotten the very concept of order!" A hand, gloved in diamond checkers, extended towards her through the dream. "Wake, Artoria Pendragon. The curtain is rising."
Artoria's eyes snapped open. The air in her tomb crackled with power, the familiar quiet replaced by the distant, terrible sound of war—not the clash of swords on shields, but something heavier, louder, filled with despair. The stone lid of her sarcophagus lifted not by magic, but was simply gone, vanished as if it had never been. She sat up, her hand going instinctively to Excalibur.
If my story must be told again, a quiet, fierce voice resonated in her soul, let it be told in fire and steel.
She stepped out of the tomb, not into the green hills of Britain, but onto a blasted, red landscape under a sky choked with smog and distant, burning stars. Blackened structures rose like jagged teeth towards the poisoned heavens. The air tasted of ash and despair.
She drew Excalibur. The blade, once a silver gleam, now pulsed with an inner light, its surface shifting, semi-transparent like polished crystal, etched with impossible geometric patterns. It felt lighter, sharper, connected not just to the Fae, but to something older, colder, born in the silent depths between worlds—the crystalline bones of a fallen Craftworld, reforged by the hands of despairing Eldar artisans who saw the potential in her legend.
She stood, Excalibur held low, scanning the desolate horizon. This was not the chaotic battlefields of her time; this was Systemic Chaos, a galaxy consumed by a war so vast, so ancient, it had become the natural state of being.
---
Jack arrived on a world that screamed of industry and squalor. Towers of rust and smoke scraped a perpetually overcast sky. Hives of humanity teemed below, their lives cheap, measured in units of labor and caloric intake. Within hours, he had encountered the Imperium's reach.
His presence was an anomaly. His calm, focused stillness amidst the constant low-level panic of the underhives was like a quiet room in a raging storm. His movements were too precise, his lack of fear… unnatural. It drew attention, cold, calculating attention.
Inquisitors, pale and gaunt from centuries spent hunting heresy, found his aura baffling. No psychic signature, no taint they could detect with their instruments or their trained eyes, yet his very being seemed disruptive. He answered questions with courteous silence, his eyes seeing everything, judging nothing aloud. His refusal to kowtow to their authority, not out of defiance but simple ignorance of its relevance, unnerved them more than any open rebellion. They saw the katana, unlike any blade they knew, and felt a prickle of unease. They conferred in hushed, paranoid whispers, filing reports on the impossible anomaly. They began to refer to him, warily, as: The Blade That Walks.
His katana, reforged in the esoteric starmetal that sang with anti-Warp energies, was a silent terror to the shadows of this galaxy. It didn't just cut flesh or steel; it sliced through the veil, cauterizing psychic wounds, banishing the whispers of the Warp with a mere movement. Daemons recoiled from its edge as if from a holy repellent, their forms shimmering and dissipating in showers of anti-reality distortion. It was a surgical instrument against the existential rot of this universe.
Among the few Eldar he briefly encountered, fleeing a collapsing webway gate, he was a ghost story, a rumor passed in hushed, melodic voices. They saw the echo of Cegorach's touch, the impossible weapon, and the quiet strength that resonated with their own sorrowful detachment.
The Adepta Sororitas, warriors of the faith, found him a mystery. They saw him fight daemons with impossible grace, his blade a silent answer to their fervent prayers and bolter fire. He spoke no litanies, showed no outward faith in their Emperor, yet his actions were undeniably righteous against the forces of Chaos. Was he a Saint? A strange alien? A test of their faith? They had no answers.
---
Artoria's arrival was on a world under siege, a fortress monastery hammered by the endless tide of a Chaos Lord's warband. The sky burned with the colors of the Warp, and the ground trembled under the footfalls of monstrous engines and daemonic legions.
She appeared on the shattered ramparts, a figure of impossible light and calm amidst the frantic, bloody defense. Her armor, though altered by her slumber and the transition, was undeniably knightly, her presence radiating an authority that transcended rank or power structure.
When Astartes, the gene-forged warriors of the Emperor, saw her cut through a hulking Daemon Prince with a single, effortless sweep of her crystalline blade, a silence fell over the section of the battlefield. They had faced horrors unending, witnessed miracles and damnation, but this… this was something out of ancient Terran myths, a legend made flesh. Some paused, simply staring. Others, those whose souls still held a flicker of awe amidst the endless war, involuntarily knelt amidst the carnage. It wasn't loyalty to a figurehead they didn't understand; it was a primal, instinctual reverence for pure, impossible heroism.
Excalibur, the Living Blade forged from sorrow and star-stuff, didn't just slay. It cleansed. Where its light touched, the air cleared of Warp taint, the whispers of Chaos were momentarily silenced, and the ground seemed to remember what it was to be solid earth, not bleeding distortion. It was hope given form, utterly anathema to the despair that fueled the enemy.
The Adeptus Custodes, golden guardians of the Emperor's throne, heard the impossible reports. A knight from legend, wielding a blade of pure light, inspiring awe even in the Emperor's Angels of Death? They dispatched a detachment, their golden armor gleaming like distant suns. Upon seeing her, sensing the sheer purity and legendary resonance she carried, they recognized something akin to the Emperor's own ancient might. They named her, with hushed reverence: The Living Blade.
To the forces of Chaos, however, she was an abomination. Daemons shrieked her arrival across the psychic ether, not just in fear, but in outrage. A figure of mythic order in a universe they sought to drown in despair? A source of inspiration in a galaxy they had perfected at extinguishing hope? They saw her as a direct challenge to the very nature of their infernal gods, a living insult to their dominion. They spat the name, twisted in hatred: The False Emperor's Saint.