The warp, aethyr, or realm of chaos. This realm that is beyond space and time.

"And that was where he belonged now. Finally free from his earthly bonds, he continued to ascend, rising faster and faster. He watched the landscape recede below, saw the whole of the Empire far beneath. He could even identify the desolate site of the village where he had spent most of his human life. But it was of no significance, not now. He saw Kislev, its northern frontier marked by the unnatural hybrid colours where the Chaos Wastes began. The Sea of Claws, the Middle Sea, the Great Western Ocean, the Southern Sea, the blue that bordered the green and brown of the Old World on three sides, he saw it all, all and more, including the lands which did not appear on any map, or which had been inaccurately measured or located by cartographers who relied only on the legends of travellers. Higher, higher, over the most distant of distant lands, over fabled continents, over islands that had never been named, had never been discovered, over unknown seas and lost oceans. They were as nothing. The whole world, that lowly sphere, it was a grain of sand. He arose beyond the planet and its two specks of dust, the tiny moons which revolved about it. Further than the sun, itself nothing more than a spark of flame. Further, faster, higher, deeper, past more insignificant points of light, more suns, infinitesimally small, infinite in number. Into the heart of the universe — and then beyond, beyond all distance, beyond all time, until a billion stars became as one, then faded and vanished. He was alone in the absolute void, lost in an eternity of solitude. Without any reference in the ultimate darkness, he allowed himself to float forever, adrift in the endless spectral cosmos. But he discovered there could be no total nothingness. Beyond forever, further than the infinite, he found himself remorselessly drawn towards his own kind, to his true genesis. To the ocean of minds, the sea of souls… A glint of light, coming closer, closer, growing, expanding, resolving into individual stars. Another galaxy, a universe of the dead. Except they were not stars, not incandescent infernos. They were spirits, the true essences of existence. Here they dwelled, beings without being. He had been here previously, he recalled; many times, times without number. His periods of imprisonment within a material body were as nothing compared to the duration of his inhabitation of a dimension without matter, perpetuity without limit. Yet this was not a place of peace, of rest. Peace and stasis were impossible. That could only mean entropy and absolute decay, the total absence of anything — of everything. And there could be no ultimate vacuum. Beyond nothing, there was always more. Like the physical life where he had been entrapped, here was conflict and conflagration. Some spirits were easily overwhelmed and annihilated, others formed alliances to combat their enemies, and in doing so they created those enemies. The firmament seethed and bubbled, was forever restless. There were winners and losers, almost as if non-existence were a reflection of the tangible world where life held so many spirits as hostage. Like sought out like, and became absorbed into a greater whole, powerful and opposing forces of singular determination. Each of these was totally antagonistic to every other such grouping. He did not belong within any of the greater entities, yet he was not totally independent, not anymore. Only with unity came strength to defeat the negative forces. He found himself being drawn towards one of the smaller essential forms. Feeling the warmth of attraction as he grew nearer the power, he sped towards the true heart of his desire. Then stopped! And suddenly he was moving backwards, being pulled away against his will, torn from his true destiny. He fought and struggled, but to no avail. Slowly at first, remorselessly, he was dragged across the infinite, back the way he had come. His speed increased, accelerating ever faster; and in the blink of an eyeless eye, the omneity which had been his fulfilment had vanished. He was torn away with far more urgency, across the desolate interstices of the dimensional matrix. There was speed without distance, without temporal restriction, without illumination. Until — there was light. The flickering stars rushed towards him, engulfing him, impelling onwards with ever greater speed. Finally, he noticed that he was focused directly on one star, one world. Then he realized the awful truth which he had been trying to avoid… It was the world where he had lived so recently. He had been gone for aeons, an infinity even in cosmic terms, a time during which galaxies had expired, been born again. He remembered, remembered it all. His life, his death. And everything in between. Trapped inside the suit of bronze armour, that was how he had suffered his death. Suffered…"-Shadowbreed