The year 2038 tasted like ash, copper, and irradiated mud.
Rain lashed down in sheets, turning the trench into a miserable, flowing river of sludge and severed limbs. Above, the sky was violently torn apart by the shrieking trails of plasma artillery. The world was ending, or at least, the world as humanity knew it. For Orion, however, the end was a lot more personal.
He lay slumped against the reinforced durasteel of a shattered bunker, his combat armor cracked open like a discarded crab shell. Below his ribs, there was nothing but a gaping, cauterized crater where a rogue plasma mortar had deleted his lower torso. The pain had peaked about three minutes ago; now, there was just a cold, heavy numbness creeping up his spine.
'Fuck,' Orion thought, his vision flickering as the world slowly drained of its color. 'Thirty-two years of breathing, twelve years of fighting, and I go out face-down in a trench with my guts turned to vapor. What a spectacularly shity way to die.'
He tried to lift his assault rifle, but his fingers were unresponsive lumps of meat. He could hear the heavy, mechanical thudding of enemy walkers approaching through the storm. They were doing a sweep. Making sure the sector was clear.
He coughed, a wet, rattling sound that sprayed dark crimson over the inside of his cracked visor.
"Command..." Orion rasped, his voice barely a whisper against the roaring tempest of war. He tapped the broken comms unit on his helmet with a trembling hand. "Position is completely overrun. Squad is wiped out. Initiate... the glassing protocol. Burn these bastards to ash."
Static hissed in his ear. Nobody was listening. Command had probably been glassed twenty minutes ago.
'Well, at last, I don't have to listen to the General's whining anymore,' he mused with grim finality. 'Just sleep. Just a long, quiet sleep.'
Orion closed his eyes. The mechanical thudding grew louder, vibrating through the mud and into his shattered bones. He didn't feel the final shot that took his head. He just felt the cold. A vast, absolute, and all-consuming darkness.
Silence.
It wasn't the silence of a quiet room, or the silence of a deep forest. It was an absolute, suffocating void. A complete absence of sound, light, time, and matter.
Orion drifted in the abyss. He had no body, no lungs to breathe, no heart to beat. He was just a spark of consciousness suspended in an infinite sea of nothingness.
'Am I in hell?' he pondered, his thoughts echoing in the empty space. 'Or is this just what nothing feels like? If this is the afterlife, I want a refund.'
Suddenly, the darkness shattered.
A brilliant, blinding light erupted in the center of the void, not white, but a deep, pulsating, violent crimson. It bled into the nothingness like ink dropped into water, forming sharp, geometric lines that rapidly assembled into glowing text directly across his consciousness.
[Host Soul Identified. Designation: Orion Sanguis.]
[Evaluating Soul Resilience... Unprecedented. Trauma Resistance: Maximum. Willpower: Absolute.]
[Initializing Rebirth Protocol.]
'What the hell is this?' Orion thought, metaphorical eyes narrowing. 'A HUD? Did I get uploaded into a server?'
[Reality Designation: Marvel Universe-616. Temporal Coordinates: Early Devonian Era (Approximately 400,000,000 BCE).]
[Host cannot survive in standard mortal vessel. Administering Concept Integration.]
[Race Selected: True Vampire Progenitor.]
'Vampire? Marvel 616? 400 million years ago? What kind of glitching simulation is this?'
The crimson text flared violently, and suddenly, Orion felt pain. Not the dull, fading pain of his death in the trench, but an agonizing, molecular fire. It felt as though his very soul was being placed on an anvil and struck with a hammer forged from dying stars.
[Integrating Core Abilities...]
[Acquired: Absolute Immortality Ω. (Host cannot be destroyed, erased, sealed, or conceptually negated. The Host is eternal.)]
[Acquired: Limit Breaker Ω. (Host possesses infinite growth potential. All actions, conflicts, and absorptions trigger exponential evolution. There is no ceiling.)]
[Acquired: Crimson Dominion. (Absolute conceptual authority over blood. Blood is power. Blood is life. Blood is the domain of the Progenitor.)]
"GAAAAAAAH!"
Orion didn't think it; he screamed it. He actually had lungs again. He had vocal cords. The void around him ripped apart like a torn canvas, and gravity violently reasserted its claim on him.
He fell.
Orion slammed into the earth with the force of a meteor.
The impact cratered the ground, throwing up geysers of wet mud, shattered stone, and massive, fern-like flora. For a moment, he just lay there at the bottom of the smoking crater, staring up at a sky that was completely, terrifyingly wrong.
The atmosphere was incredibly thick, heavily saturated with oxygen and something else—something electric, heavy, and ancient. The sky wasn't blue; it was a bruised, swirling canvas of violent purple and murky green, choked with volcanic ash and raw, untamed magic.
Orion sat up slowly.
'Okay,' he thought, taking a deep breath of the incredibly rich air. 'That wasn't a simulation.'
He looked down at his hands. He wasn't wearing his ruined combat armor. He wasn't wearing anything at all. But his body... his body was flawless. The scars from his years of military service—the shrapnel wounds, the burns, the jagged line across his stomach from a close-quarters knife fight—were completely gone. His skin was pale, almost like alabaster, but beneath the surface, he could see faint, glowing crimson lines pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
He clenched his fists. The sheer, terrifying physical power contained within his muscles defied logic. He felt as though he could punch a hole through a battleship.
"oh Shit, I really didn't die," Orion muttered aloud, his voice deeper, resonating with an unnatural, commanding timbre. He touched his mouth. His teeth were sharp, and as he ran his tongue over his canines, they extended smoothly into deadly, razor-sharp fangs.
He climbed out of the crater, his bare feet sinking into the thick, primordial muck. He looked around.
The landscape was a nightmare of hyper-evolved prehistoric botany. Giant, towering mushrooms the size of skyscrapers loomed in the distance. Massive ferns with razor-sharp leaves formed an impenetrable jungle. The air was thick with the stench of sulfur, ozone, and rotting vegetation. But beneath all of that, Orion could sense something else.
A lingering taint. A dark, oppressive energy that felt like ancient malice soaked into the very bedrock of the earth.
'This isn't just prehistory,' Orion realized, his tactical mind rapidly assessing the environment. 'The system said Universe-616. Marvel. If I'm 400 million years in the past, this is right after the Demiurge seeded the planet. This is the era of the Elder Gods. Chthon, Set, Gaea... the world is literally radiating demonic energy from the Godwar.'
Before he could process the implications of his location, it hit him.
The Thirst.
It didn't start as a rumble in his stomach. It started as a void in his soul. A burning, desperate inferno that ignited in the back of his throat and spread through his veins like liquid fire. It was an all-consuming need, a predatory instinct that eclipsed every human thought he possessed.
'I need... blood,' he thought, his vision suddenly tinting red. 'I need it right fucking now.'
The ground beneath him trembled.
Orion snapped his head to the right. The dense, towering ferns were being violently shoved aside. Trees the size of modern redwoods splintered and snapped like twigs. Something massive was coming.
Out of the prehistoric jungle stepped a nightmare.
It was loosely reptilian, walking on four massive, tree-trunk-like legs, but that was where the natural biology ended. The beast was easily forty feet long, covered in jagged, obsidian-black scales that pulsed with sick, green demonic energy. It possessed six glowing, multi-faceted eyes, and its jaw opened horizontally, revealing rows of translucent, venom-dripping teeth. It was a remnant. A mutated, corrupted apex predator warped by the lingering black magic of the banished Elder Gods.
The beast locked its six eyes onto Orion. It didn't see a god; it saw a pale, hairless, bite-sized snack standing naked in the mud.
It roared, a sound that sent shockwaves through the air, flattening the grass around them.
"You're a big, ugly bastard, aren't you?" Orion said, not moving an inch. His voice was frighteningly calm.
The beast lunged. It moved with blinding speed for its size, its massive jaws snapping shut over Orion's entire upper body. The force of the bite was equivalent to a hydraulic press, instantly crushing Orion's ribcage, snapping his spine, and tearing him clean in half. The beast swallowed his top half whole and tossed his legs aside.
It let out a triumphant snort, preparing to lumber back into the jungle.
Inside the beast's acidic, demonic stomach, Orion opened his eyes.
'Well, that was unpleasant,' he thought calmly.
He didn't panic. The pain of having his body sheared in half was intense, but it vanished almost instantly. He felt a strange, magnetic pull. His lower half, lying in the mud outside, instantly dissolved into a mist of crimson energy and reappeared, seamlessly reattaching to his torso inside the beast's stomach.
[Absolute Immortality Ω Triggered. Host reconstruction complete. Time elapsed: 0.01 seconds.]
'I can't die. It wasn't a hyperbole. I literally cannot die,' Orion realized, a cold, predatory smile stretching across his face in the dark, acidic cavern of the monster's gut. 'Good to know. Now... how do I get out of here?'
He remembered his third core ability. Crimson Dominion. Absolute authority over blood.
Orion closed his eyes and reached out, not with his hands, but with his mind. He didn't just sense the beast around him; he mapped it. He felt the massive, corrupted heart beating wildly in its chest. He felt the thick, sludgy, demon-tainted blood pumping through veins the size of oil pipes.
"My turn," Orion whispered.
He clenched his fist.
Outside, the demonic reptile suddenly froze mid-step. Its six eyes widened in absolute, unprecedented terror. It let out a gargling, horrific screech as every single drop of blood in its massive body suddenly stopped moving.
'Rip it out,' Orion commanded internally.
The beast exploded.
It didn't just burst; it was violently dismantled from the inside out. Mountains of black scales, corrupted meat, and bone fragments rained down over the primordial landscape in a colossal shower of gore.
Standing perfectly unharmed in the center of the crater where the beast had just been was Orion. Floating in the air directly above him was a massive, swirling sphere of thick, glowing red and green blood. It was the entire life force of the demonic predator, condensed and perfectly preserved by Orion's telekinetic grip.
Orion looked up at the sphere. The Thirst flared up, demanding satisfaction.
He opened his mouth, and the sphere of blood descended, tapering into a crimson stream that flowed directly past his lips.
The moment the first drop hit his tongue, Orion's mind exploded with euphoria. It wasn't just sustenance; it was pure, unadulterated power. He was drinking the beast's life, its demonic vitality, its millions of years of evolutionary supremacy. The corrupted magic of the Elder Gods hidden within the blood didn't poison him; his Progenitor biology instantly broke it down, purified it, and assimilated it.
[Target Consumed: Corrupted Devonian Behemoth.]
[Limit Breaker Ω Triggered.]
[Assimilating Demonic Vitality. Purifying Elder God Corruption.]
[Strength increased by 400%.]
[Agility increased by 400%.]
[Durability increased by 500%.]
[New Trait Acquired: Lesser Demonic Resistance.]
Orion threw his head back and let out a breathless laugh. He could feel his muscles condensing, his senses sharpening to a razor's edge. He could suddenly hear the heartbeat of small reptilian creatures hiding miles away. He could see the individual spores of the giant ferns floating in the air.
He was a god. And he had literally only been awake for five minutes.
'So this is the Limit Breaker,' Orion thought, clenching his fists as crimson lightning crackled off his knuckles. 'No training arcs. No meditating under waterfalls for a hundred years. I kill, I consume, I evolve. Exponentially. Forever.'
He looked down at his naked body, entirely unbothered by the cold mud or the savage environment. The blood he had manipulated hadn't stained his skin; it seemed to repel from him, leaving him perfectly clean.
With a simple thought, he tapped into the Crimson Dominion again. He drew a small amount of his own blood through the pores of his arm. Instead of dripping to the ground, the liquid crimson flattened, expanded, and wrapped around his body, solidifying in seconds. When the bloody light faded, he was clothed in a regal, midnight-black uniform—reminiscent of his modern military fatigues but infinitely more elegant, woven entirely from hardened, manifested blood-fabric. It carried a high collar, armored gauntlets, and a long coat that drifted in the heavy prehistoric wind.
He looked out over the endless, hostile jungle. This world was a savage, chaotic hellscape. It was currently ruled by monstrous beasts, surviving demons, and ancient cosmic entities that viewed mortal life as a mistake. The Celestials would eventually come. The Kree, the Skrulls, the Shi'ar. Eventually, in millions of years, the Avengers, the Mutants, and the cosmic abstracts would rise.
In the original timeline, vampires were a pathetic mistake—a curse created by Chthon's Darkhold, turning humans into sniveling, light-fearing parasites hiding in the shadows of society.
Orion smirked, exposing his fangs.
'Fuck the shadows,' he thought. 'I didn't get reborn with absolute immortality and infinite power just to hide in a cave and play Dracula.'
He was the True Progenitor. The origin point.
He stepped forward, his boots crunching on the shattered bones of the beast he had just annihilated. He didn't just want to survive in this universe. He wanted to own it. He wanted to build an empire so vast, so magnificently terrifying, that even the cosmic entities would have to bow their heads when they spoke his name.
"I am Orion Sanguis," he declared loudly, his voice echoing across the prehistoric valley like a clap of thunder. The sound sent flocks of massive, leathery-winged creatures scrambling into the purple sky in a panic.
He raised his hand, pointing out toward the horizon where massive volcanic mountains scraped the heavens.
"And this world... is mine. The Dominion begins today."
He didn't know how long it would take to conquer the globe. He didn't know how long it would take to build his eternal empire, or find beings worthy enough to stand by his side. But then again, he had four hundred million years to kill before anyone interesting even evolved.
Time was the one thing he had an infinite supply of.
Orion lowered his hand, his glowing crimson eyes locking onto a distant mountain range where he could sense a massive concentration of lingering divine magic. It felt old. It felt female. And it felt powerful.
'Gaea,' he thought, a predatory smile returning to his face. 'The Mother of Earth. The Elder Goddess who survived the purge. Let's go introduce ourselves to the neighbors.'
With a sudden, explosive burst of speed that shattered the sound barrier and left a crater in his wake, the True Progenitor vanished into the prehistoric jungle, leaving the era of mortals to wait in the ashes of the gods he was about to consume.
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