Chapter 5: A Flicker in the Darkness
Age: 15 | Hiveworld Virellia | Lesser Noble House Virell
The grinding roar of the manufactorum walls was something Cassian Virell had long grown used to. Beneath the golden crest of House Virell, one of the countless lesser noble lines clinging to relevance on Hiveworld Virellia, Cassian's life was one of sharp contrasts—polished boots and rusted gates, marble halls laced with soot. Born the fourth son, he was a noble only by name. The Emperor had no mercy for idle blood.
At fifteen, Cassian had begun to feel the weight of duty pressing like a gauntlet on his back. His brothers, all three older and favored, had already taken their steps into the Adeptus Militarum—each surviving longer than expected, each returning with scars they wore like medals. Cassian, however, carried no such marks. Not yet. His turn was coming.
And he feared it.
More than that, he feared how calm he felt when danger approached.
He first noticed it a year ago. A ground hauler lost control near the estate courtyard—an eight-ton steel crawler skidding across the ferrocrete toward the stables where he had just stepped. There was no time to think, no room to run. And yet, without logic, he had turned left instead of right—a twitch, really—and the crawler smashed inches from where he'd stood.
The handler said the controls jammed. The Mechanicus reported a freak short in the cogitator. Cassian said nothing.
It happened again three weeks later. A duel. Not formal, just hot-headed noble brats playing with live mono-sabers. The boy he fought lunged fast and low—exactly the sort of strike that should have opened Cassian's stomach. But the boy tripped. No one understood how. No one believed it was luck. But Cassian began to.
It wasn't right.
Not that he was complaining—life in the Imperium wasn't fair. It was brutal, chaotic, and short. If the God-Emperor had granted him some scrap of divine providence, Cassian would take it. Yet… in his bones, he knew this wasn't a blessing from the Emperor. It was older. Stranger. It pulsed deep in his chest at night like a phantom heartbeat. A warmth. A pressure.
He could still remember the shape of the ring.
Not perfectly. Not the metal. Not the runes. But he remembered the moment. The blaring horns. The truck. The cracking sound as it hit him.
And the cold.
He'd died. He was certain of it. But then, he was born. In this place. To this family. With that warmth still buried in his soul.
"I don't want to die," he muttered to himself that night, staring out the estate's high window toward the polluted stars. "Not like the others. Not like cannon fodder."
But he knew the truth. The fourth son of a lesser noble family didn't get to choose. His papers were already sealed. When he turned sixteen, he would join the Guard. House Virell needed its honors, its Imperial tithes. And the Virell name did not permit cowardice.
He clenched his fists. "Fine."
The wind howled outside the hive's upper sectors, a choking gale of smoke and distant sirens. Cassian stood tall, shoulders square like his father had taught him. But his heart pounded like it always did when he felt that flicker stir. That whisper of fate twisting in his favor.
He wasn't strong. He wasn't a genius. He wasn't even particularly brave.
But he was lucky. Unreasonably so.
And he'd learn how to make that luck count.
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