The undercity of the Indomitable was quiet.

  Not silent, but hushed in the way only a sanctuary could be. Far above, the titanic heart of the Forge-Tender beat with the slow, thunderous rhythm of plasma generation and warp-anchored grav-coils. But down here, deep beneath the official schematics, where the light was gentler and the air tasted faintly of sand and hope, Dusthaven lived again.

  Tara drifted lazily through the corridor, slowly rotating as she floated past hydro-lines and lumen fixtures. Graffiti curled along the bulkheads—symbols, warnings, prayers—each fiercely personal. There were handprints and scribbled names, bright flowers in flaking pigment, a faded but proud mural of the town's aquifer. Someone had tied a string of beads across a maintenance alcove, each one scavenged from somewhere different. They clicked softly with every passing shift of air.

  She twisted mid-spin and kicked gently off the wall, bouncing the tip of her boot against a vent grille. The anti-grav plating still didn’t quite agree with inertia. Or people. She was learning. Slowly.

  Her armor—green ceramite in standard Guard pattern—clinked faintly with every movement. To the uninformed, it looked like any battlefield shell: helmet, chestplate, shoulder guards, armored thighs and calves. But that was a lie. A careful, intentional one. The liquid metal that made up the plates had been balanced to her, the seals airtight, the joints articulated into something that moved with her instead of around her. He’d called it ‘Functional, but needed improvements’. She suspected that, like most things with him, the words didn’t tell the whole story.

  Above her, floating across the ceiling conduit like a man fixing the world from the shadows, Koron worked in silence. One of his fingers had reshaped itself into a smooth wrench-head. Metal gave way from a loose panel as he unbolted a coolant junction, calm and efficient in the way only he could be.

  “I think you should go meet with them,” he said, voice casual, like he was commenting on the weather.

  Tara blinked and spun in place, boots passing over her head as she hovered sideways.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, squinting at him upside down. “Did you hit your head on a plasma manifold? Bit of radiation damage from bathing in a fusion core?”

  He didn’t look away from his work. One bolt, two, then the panel came free with a soft groan of metal. He caught it against his chest with one arm while guiding a bundled set of cabling out of the way.

  “I’m serious,” he replied.

  “That’s the worrying part,” she muttered.

  “You can’t stay down here forever,” he continued, shifting slightly to get better leverage. “Eventually, someone’s going to demand more than silence and shadows. And the Salamanders just turned down a bundle of incentives that would make most High Lords ask for it in writing, with witnesses.”

  Tara arched an eyebrow. “Like what?”

  “An Ark Mechanicus,” Koron said, glancing down at her as she completed another slow spin. “A mobile forge-world. Full reinforcement from Mars. Medicae reclamation. Chapter-wide absolution. And command of the ship, revoked from Tavos himself. They gave it all up.”

  He let the last bolt drop. It pinged off his chestplate.

  “So yes,” he said. “I think the Salamanders are on the up and up.”

  Tara’s brow furrowed. “Wait. They’re on the what?”

  “‘Up and up,’” Koron repeated, amused. “It’s an old phrase. Means honest. Straightforward.”

  “Right,” she muttered. “Because what this galaxy needs is more pre-Fall idioms.”

  She bumped off the wall again, arms crossing over her chest. The motion was effortless now, even with the occasional pauldron clunk against the wall.

  “I still don’t like it,” she said. “Doesn’t feel safe.”

  “No,” Koron said, nodding. “Which is why I’m sending backup.”

  She stilled mid-drift, her body rotating slightly toward him. “What kind of backup?”

  He clicked a panel into diagnostic mode and tapped a few sequences. The soft chime of confirmed access echoed through the conduit.

  “A dozen Sentinels,” he said. “Each with a pair of Vipers. Some Prometheus drones, just to make sure no one gets clever.”

  Tara stared at him.

  “That’s not backup. That’s a small army.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You’re going to give yourself away.”

  “They already know I’m here,” Koron said, voice level and even. “Just not where.”

  He floated near the ceiling, one boot casually hooked against a support strut, the rest of his body adrift in zero-G ease. Below him, Tara hovered in a slow spin, arms folded, braid snaking like a crimson comet behind her as she tried to find a stable orientation in the gently shifting gravity field.

  “This reminds them,” Koron continued, “that there are more eyes watching than just the Salamanders.”

  Tara stared at him, her expression unreadable for a long moment. Mouth slightly open, brow creased—not from confusion, but calculation. She wasn’t just listening. She was weighing him.

  The way he floated. The calm in his voice. The near-total absence of visible tension in his body, like he’d thought through this scenario a hundred times and still came to the same conclusion. Not smug, not cold. Just calm.

  “And you think that won’t scare them?” she asked softly.

  “I think it will,” he replied. “Not enough to make them lose their minds—but enough to make them consider something important.”

  He rotated slightly in place, so his gaze met hers head-on.

  “If your escort is what I’m willing to reveal,” he said, “what might I have hidden up my sleeves?”

  Tara’s eyes drifted down to his arms—both sleek, cybernetic limbs of dark, brushed alloy. Smooth. Sleeveless. And very obviously not concealing anything.

  She arched a brow. “Do you even have metaphorical sleeves?”

  Koron tilted in response, starting a lazy spin midair with that same frustrating grace she could never seem to emulate. The movement was precise, practiced—until, halfway through the turn, his unsecured belt pouch jostled open.

  With a metallic fwip, its contents burst free and scattered like shrapnel, spiraling into his personal gravity field and beginning to orbit him.

  One particularly sharp-looking shard nearly struck him between the eyes.

  Koron snatched it mid-spin, scowling.

  “Sasha, shut up,” he muttered under his breath, batting away a floating screw as if it were a fly.

  Tara laughed—outright giggled—as she slowly drifted to the floor and began collecting the scattered bits.

  “You’re lucky she hasn’t made those start whistling,” she said, plucking a capacitor from a bundle of coaxial wires.

  Koron touched down beside her, boots crunching on the sand as the rest of the pieces drifted gently around him. He crouched to help, but paused as Tara held something up.

  It wasn’t a bolt. It wasn’t a wire.

  It was a grip—just a pistol grip. Matte black, elegantly machined. It had finger grooves and a trigger guard. But no barrel. No casing. No visible energy source. Just the handle of something that had once—maybe still did—belong to a weapon.

  She turned it over in her hand.

  “Why do you have just a pistol grip?” she asked.

  He glanced up, brow creasing in confusion, as if the question itself was a bit absurd.

  “So I can fire my gun?” he said plainly.

  “You have a gun?”

  “Of course I do,” he said, reaching for the grip. “It was standard issue for every serviceman in the naval engineering corps to carry when on duty. I was a pretty good shot thanks to dad teaching me all my life, he was proud as hell when I told him I scored in the ninety-fourth percentile.”

  She handed it over, but didn’t let go immediately.

  “Then why’s it just the grip?” she asked.

  His fingers closed around it with a kind of softness she hadn’t seen in him before. His eyes drifted to the thing in his hand, unreadable thoughts flickering behind them.

  “It’s stupid, but it’s because it forces me to assemble it. Because guns,” he said at last, “only have one purpose.”

  He looked back at her. And this time, his voice lowered—not in menace, but in gravity.

  “And I’d prefer to exhaust all other options first.”

  She looked at him, unsure whether to feel comforted… or terrified.

  -

  The command deck of the Hammer was alive with motion and purpose. Servitors trundled along suspended rails or stomped across the reinforced plasteel flooring, trailing mechadendrites and vox-cables like sluggish insects. Serfs in soot-streaked robes whispered litanies of recalibration as they crawled over damaged consoles, relinking cogitator nodes and replacing cracked luminarrays.

  Beyond the voidglass viewports, the stars hung silent, but inside, there was only the sound of warships healing.

  Captain Orvek stood near the hololithic display pit, flanked by Warden-Proximate Tavos and Chaplain Arvak, their presence calm but undeniable. The scent of burning incense and ozone clung to the air, familiar, grounding, consecrated.

  Orvek's gauntleted hand drifted to the massive warhammer now resting at his side: the Dawn’s Anvil, symbol of office for the Hammer of Nocturne. Its haft was carved with oaths so old their dialect was halfway to Ecclesiarchal scripture. He hadn’t expected it to be so heavy. Not physically—though it was that—but symbolically. Each engraved vow burned against his palm, a silent reminder that leadership in the Salamanders was forged not in glory, but in duty.

  Tavos had quietly spoken to him the day before, with measured words and a commander’s pride. Arvak had spoken with fire and scripture, placing a firm hand upon his shoulder and declaring him ready in soul, not just strength. Orvek had offered little in return. But their trust would not be forgotten.

  He was drawing breath to speak when he heard it: the faint click-click of metal claws on adamantium flooring.

  He turned toward the entryway and saw the guards stiffen, their postures subtly tightening in reflex.

  From the deck’s central corridor emerged a formation of twelve Sentinel-class drones, prowling forward in lockstep precision.

  Wolves made of alloy and silence.

  Lady Brandt walked within their midst, wrapped in her signature longcoat and wide-brimmed hat. The coat fluttered faintly with each step, caught by the environmental filters. Her stride was measured, unhurried, but her cheeks bore the faintest flush. Whether from embarrassment or irritation, Orvek couldn’t tell.

  The drones flanked her protectively, spreading slightly as she approached, until the wolves came to a smooth, synchronized halt before the command dais. They didn’t lower their heads. They didn’t growl. But the message was clear: this was a guarded gift, wrapped in steel and loyalty.

  Elissa stopped three paces from the raised command tier and offered a respectful nod, glancing between the three towering Astartes.

  “Lie—ah… I mean Captain Orvek,” she said. “It’s good to see you upright again.”

  She turned, nodding first to the somber figure of Chaplain Arvak, then to the imposing bulk of Tavos.

  “Chaplain. And… Warden Tavos. I’m glad to see you both recovered.”

  Orvek returned the nod, studying her. Something about her was changed. Less tense. Healthier, somehow. He couldn't define it—just a sense that the strain she’d carried for so long had lightened.

  “You seem…” he began, narrowing his eyes slightly as he searched for the word. “Healthier?”

  The flush deepened. She tugged the brim of her hat lower with one hand, half-hiding her expression.

  “Yes,” she murmured. “Um. Long story.”

  She raised her head again, eyes steadier now, voice clear.

  “In any case… we’ve decided to move forward with Lord Guilliman’s offer.”

  The words hung between them like a drawn blade.

  “We don’t have a way to repay you,” she continued, looking at each of them in turn. “You stood between us and death. You risked everything—for people you’d barely known. We’ll find a way to make that right. I swear it.”

  Silence followed. Not awkward. Not expectant. Just full.

  Tavos nodded once, slow and solemn. Arvak placed a hand across the Aquila embossed on his breastplate in a silent benediction. And Orvek—still new to command, still adjusting to the feel of leadership worn like armor—found his voice steady.

  Orvek felt his voice settle in his chest. “You already have.”

  He paused, then asked, “Will it be just you to speak for your people?”

  Elissa shook her head. “No, everyone’s going to speak. We figured that the more detail we feed the cogboys, the happier they’ll be.”

  Tavos arched an eyebrow. “And your... escort?”

  She glanced down at the nearest Sentinel and reached out, absently stroking the alloy plating along its flank like a loyal hound. “They’ll stay out of sight, out of mind.”

  Orvek stepped forward, eyes narrowing with quiet scrutiny as he lowered himself to one knee, meeting the Sentinel’s blue-optic gaze at level. “I assume you can hear me?”

  A voice answered from the drone’s speakers, smooth as water over stone. “I can. A pleasure to meet you, Captain.”

  Orvek’s expression stayed neutral, though his voice took on a weight it hadn’t held minutes before. “And you, Koron. On the matter of these automata: are they guided by the Silica?”

  “Nope,” the drone replied. “All me. Just think of them like servitors receiving orders from a cogboy. Nothing exotic.”

  Orvek rose. “Then I must ask that you not speak unless necessary. The situation is... delicate. Even your presence will raise questions. But if the Adeptus Mechanicus suspects, even for a moment, that they stand in the presence of a true Silica...”

  “I understand,” Koron replied. “I’ll be on my best behavior—so long as nobody tries anything stupid. Fair enough?”

  “Fair enough.” Orvek looked back toward the deck doors. “The others?”

  “Waiting at Bay Four,” Koron answered. “Standing by for escort.”

  Orvek exhaled slowly and tapped the haft of Dawn’s Anvil against the floor. The ringing note carried.

  “Then let us begin.”

  -

  One by one, they came.

  No fanfare. No titles. Just boots scuffed from sand and eyes bleached by too many years under the sun.

  They stepped into the chamber–stood before Primarch, Inquisitor, psyker, machine–and offered what they could.

  “State your role,” Ferox asked.

  “Construction. Ferrocrete, wiring, plumbing, that sort of thing.”

  “And your experience with the one called Koron?”

  “Brought my daughter back. Slung over his shoulder like a sack of groxmeal. Said ‘She wandered into a pressure sinkhole. Fixed that too.’ Then he left. Didn’t ask for a thing for reward.”

  -

  “Your assessment of his technology,” Varn pressed, augmetic fingers twitching as he logged the vox.

  “It worked.”

  “That is not a sufficient response.”

  “It worked.” A shrug. “You want more, ask him, I’m not a priest.”

  -

  A woman with burn scars across both forearms stepped forward. She didn't speak at first. Just held up a ring of fused circuit-keys.

  “He made these for my little girl. Baby toys. Said the noise helps regulate sleep cycles.”

  -

  “Did you ever witness anomalous behavior?” Ferox asked an older man with an augmetic eye and a limping cybernetic leg.

  He gave a dry cough that might’ve once been a laugh.

  “Aye. Fixed my leg for free. Compared to how the cogboys act, that’s weird as hell.”

  -

  “Do you think he’s human?”

  A long pause. Then a slow nod.

  “Human? Course, what else would he be?

  -

  “Would you follow him?”

  A young man, his voice old before his time.

  “Follow? Don’t know. But Elissa seems to trust him, and that’s good enough for me.”

  -

  The final speaker was quiet. A girl, perhaps thirteen, with a length of chain looped around her shoulder like a sash.

  She stepped into the circle, looked up at Guilliman, and said only:

  “He taught me to ask why.”

  Then left before anyone could stop her.

  -

  The room was not cruel or overt. Just sterile—clean angles, black walls, a soft hum that made your teeth itch. Somewhere behind the luminaries, Doc could hear the beat of a Gellar field stabilizer. A heartbeat of brass and faith.

  She didn’t sit right away.

  She stepped in, scanned the chamber, then turned to Guilliman in the center, Ferox and Varn and Rael with an expression that would’ve fit better in an underhive surgery theater.

  “Before we start,” she said, voice crisp, “I’d like to know if any of you are carrying any active purity seals, neural correctors, or psychometric filters.”

  Ferox blinked. Rael tilted his head slightly, the glow in his eyes shifting—curious, not hostile.

  “Reason?” Ferox asked, her voice calm.

  “If this is supposed to be a truth interview,” Doc replied, folding her arms, “then let’s not skew the results. I’ve dissected servitors with cleaner minds than some of your ecclesiarchal implants.”

  Rael’s lips twitched. Not a smile. But close.

  Ferox made a small note on her slate and gestured to the chair. “All passive systems. No filters. You're safe to speak.”

  Varn spoke up first. “Interrogator Lucia Malinov, eighty-six years of age, one rejuvenation treatment after loss of left leg and arm during a Ork incursion-“

  “I know my own damn record.” Lucia snapped out. “And everyone of you here has my file, so let's cut to the heart of things.”

  She crossed one leg over the other, leaned forward with forearms on knees, and stared straight into Ferox’s eyes like she was preparing for field triage and Ferox was the patient.

  “You want to know about Koron.”

  Ferox nodded once. “We do.”

  “What part?” Doc asked. “The cybernetics that violate every known interface protocol? The AI that lives in his skull and calls itself Sasha? The fact he doesn’t register on most auspex scans, or that his blood contains programmable microstructures that repair organic tissue like they’re knitting socks?”

  Varn’s fingers rasped across the slate, frantic enough that Doc waited for the slate to start smoking.

  Ferox raised a brow. “All of it.”

  Doc snorted. “Of course.”

  She paused, just long enough for the silence to stretch—then laced her fingers together and set them under her chin.

  “Fine. Clinical summary?” Her voice flattened, eyes narrowing. “He’s not normal. Not augmented in the traditional sense. Not post-human by Mechanicus terms. He’s something else. Something that shouldn’t exist—but does.”

  She leaned forward slightly.

  “His tech isn’t just advanced. It’s impossible. Redundancy for redundancy’s sake. No glorified cabling draped like saints’ entrails. No worship in the wires. Just design. Every part does exactly what it’s meant to, and more. A unified system.”

  Varn leaned in, augmetic fingers twitching as his optics zoomed.

  “I cut him open once.” she said, voice sharpening. “After the reactor breach. He was critical. I thought we had minutes.”

  She leaned back, staring at the ceiling like it might help her process what she'd seen.

  “His dermis dulled four of my sharpest scalpels. Not armor—skin. Muscle that wasn’t his. Too smooth, too perfect. Synthetic. Dermal weave threaded with something like carbon, but alive. Self-repairing. It started closing on its own after I was finished, like it knew I was done.”

  Her hands twitched unconsciously, remembering.

  “Skeletal structure? Reinforced with wetware lattices—looked grown, not grafted. His spine… Saints, his spine was entirely machine. Fiber channels for something I, again, had no name for. Not ports—channels. You can’t remove them without removing him.”

  She looked toward Guilliman now. Met his eyes square.

  “His lungs are bionic, yes—but they’re not Mechanicus bionics. There are no exposed seams. No humming fans. Just layered gas-exchange membranes coated in heat-shielding biofilm. He can operate in vacuum, no rebreather. He doesn’t even breathe unless he wants to.”

  A pause. Her voice lowered, now more measured.

  “The heart’s magnetic. I think. It uses oscillating pulse cycles to regulate bloodflow and electrical distribution through his entire body. I tracked fifteen distinct micro-reactors feeding into an internal loop, but I think there's more. One I do know of is located in his left kidney—a bioreactor that filters, pressurizes, and re-injects nanite-rich fluid back into his veins.”

  Rael shifted slightly. The air in the room tensed.

  “There’s no nutrient dependency. He doesn’t eat unless he wants to. No waste output. Electro-biofeedback runs the entire system—skin, muscle, bone, thought. His skull? Reinforced with a metal alloy that my auspex said didn’t exist.”

  She glanced briefly at Ferox, then back at Varn.

  She took a breath.

  “His blood carries nanite substructures that reroute damage and reknit tissue on command. Not just clotting. Reconstruction. I watched one of his ribs regrow itself from a fracture spiral. In minutes.”

  She exhaled, jaw tight now.

  “He’s not augmented. He’s architected. Like someone once sat down and asked: ‘What if we made a man who would never have to die unless he chose to?’”

  Guilliman’s expression had shifted—just slightly. Not surprise. Not fear. Something deeper. Recognition, maybe.

  Doc turned her gaze toward Guilliman. There was steel behind her eyes now—not defiance, but the hard glint of a surgeon who’s seen too much and still isn’t done cutting.

  Ferox blinked, stylus pausing mid-air.

  Doc let out a short, humorless chuckle. “And that? That was just the metal.”

  She leaned forward, voice low and deliberate.

  “I ran blood panels, purity scans, genetic backlogs—everything short of throwing him into a stasis centrifuge and peeling him like fruit.”

  She ticked off on her fingers, each point a scalpel of its own:

  “Biologically? Perfect cellular repair. Oxygen efficiency that lets him operate in thin air or survive for a limited time in straight-up vacuum.”

  A pause. Doc’s lips pressed tight for a moment, then parted again in exasperation.

  “Bone and muscle density off the charts—stronger, faster, more durable than anything short of an Astartes. Immune system? Adaptive. He doesn’t just fight off diseases—he learns them. Same with poisons and venom.”

  She paused to let that sink in. Then continued, her tone growing sharper.

  “Reflexes faster than machine-readers can track. Healing factor that makes lets him recover in hours. Skin that adjusts to radiation, pressure, temperature—you name it. Senses tuned up to predatory levels. Smell, sight, hearing—all calibrated, all deliberate.”

  Doc folded her hands, slowly, knuckles white.

  “He doesn’t age,” Doc said. “Not in the way we understand it. No telomere collapse. No mutational drift. His cells just… keep going. Like they were designed to outlast entropy itself.”

  She let the words settle. Then added:

  “The really scary part? He can have kids.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  That made Rael shift, the faintest tilt of his head like a bird catching a sudden draft. Guilliman didn’t move, but the room changed with him. Attention sharpened.

  Doc folded her arms, hiding the tremble in her hands.

  “His children would inherit everything—strength, immunity, regeneration, his entire genetic alteration scheme.”

  “Intentional design?” Ferox asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “So he’s a template.”

  Doc kept her voice calm. Clinical. “No. He’s the baseline.”

  A breath passed.

  “He told me once—offhand, like it didn’t matter—that his genetics and cybernetics barely qualified him for his job as an engineer. Apparently the higher-end augmetics and gene alterations were too expensive for his family.”

  A long silence followed. Even the ambient hum of the chamber seemed to dull.

  Rael’s gaze grew distant, like he was listening to something the others couldn’t hear.

  Guilliman didn’t speak. Not at first. Just stared—thoughtful, still.

  Then, very quietly:

  “They built people like this… and gave them wrenches.”

  The silence that followed was cold and sudden.

  Rael’s brow furrowed. The flickering lights above him dimmed—just slightly—as if the warp itself had paused to listen.

  Ferox’s fingers stopped tapping. Her voice was measured now, but quieter. “Then what did the soldiers look like?”

  Doc’s answer came slowly. Carefully.

  “I don’t know.”

  A heartbeat between words.

  “And he won’t say.”

  Varn’s mechadendrites hissed behind him, twitching with soft, insectile grace. Each tip pulsed with shifting data-light, tiny holos blooming and collapsing in silence.

  “If that is the baseline…” he said, more to the room than anyone, “…then extrapolation would place their combat personnel at a technological threshold we cannot even perceive.”

  The air cooled a fraction, as though the ventilation systems themselves were listening. Somewhere above, a light flickered.

  Then Rael spoke. Soft. Precise. “That is not what frightens me.”

  Ferox turned to him, the shift of her slate against the table sounding too loud in the quiet.

  “Then what does?”

  Rael didn’t blink. His pupils were pinprick-thin now, black coins in a sea of grey.

  “That they lost.”

  The lights didn’t flicker—but something behind them seemed to flinch. The shadows shifted as if drawn inwards.

  Rael drew a breath, the static in the air rising with it. Dust on the chamber’s edges trembled like something old remembering fear.

  “And with all that knowledge…” he murmured, voice quieter still, “…you chose to save him.”

  Doc shook her head. Her voice stayed even. “He didn’t need saving. I just kept his heart beating long enough for him to do the rest.”

  The silence that followed wasn’t empty—it was loaded. A pause in the gears of fate. A breath before recoil.

  Ferox studied her, the stylus in her hand tapping once against the slate—click—like a trigger being tested.

  “Do you trust him?”

  “No.” The answer was sharp. Immediate. Like a knife driven point-down into the table. “Trust’s the wrong currency for someone like him.”

  Ferox frowned, her gaze tightening. “Then what?”

  Doc looked down, just for a moment. The floor’s polished black surface mirrored her face back—older, more tired than she remembered.

  She looked up again. Steel in her gaze.

  “I believe in what he chooses.”

  “Explain.”

  Doc exhaled slowly. Arms unfolding like gates unlatched.

  “Because every time the balance tipped—when he had the power, when no one could’ve stopped him—he didn’t take. Not command. Not worship. Not vengeance.”

  She half-shrugged, the light catching on the surgical scars along her knuckles. “He just fixed things. Then walked away before anyone could chain a title to him.”

  Rael’s eyes drifted to a corner of the chamber where the shadows lay thickest. A faint shimmer there—maybe a heat ripple. Maybe not.

  “Still a threat.”

  Doc didn’t flinch. She turned back to Ferox, voice steady as bedrock.

  “Of course he is. So’s fire. So’s a vaccine. So’s childbirth, and orbital decay.”

  She stepped forward, into the light of the lumen panels, her silhouette stark against the glow. “Anything that forces change is a threat. But he hasn’t broken anyone yet. Not even the ones who deserved it.”

  Ferox’s lips tightened. Her stylus hovered—then lowered. She sat, still as a statue of judgment.

  “What’s he waiting for?”

  Doc’s smile was faint.

  “I don’t know.” She let the words fall. “And that? That’s what keeps me up at night.”

  -

  The room was colder than it needed to be.

  Not by malice—just design.

  A cathedral of silence dressed in black: steel-trimmed walls, polished black floor, the faint ozone-snap of lumen arrays filtering through sterile air. Somewhere overhead, a Gellar field thrummed like a distant war drum muffled in silk, steady as a heartbeat made of brass and blind faith.

  Milo stepped in and saluted.

  Back straight. Shoulders squared. Parade-ground perfect.

  The uniform wasn’t his original—that had been left back in Dusthaven—but Sasha had worked her subtle magic, reshaping the undersuit to mimic the weary dignity of old Guard fatigues. The cut was close enough to memory, and in truth, that was all he needed. If he was going to stand in front of the Emperor’s own son, then by the Throne, he’d damn well do it looking proper.

  Ferox’s gaze swept over his file like a scalpel—not lingering, not indulgent, but precise.

  Her brows lifted a fraction at the sheer length.

  “Impressive record, Mr. Hasken. Forty-three years of service in the Guard—”

  “Forty-five, ma’am,” Milo corrected. He didn’t move an inch. “Two years got swallowed up when the Administratum marked me KIA on Koltren. Took a while to get the paperwork to stop arguing.”

  Ferox gave a slight nod, scrolling further. “I see. Purgation of Jorvin Reach… Tharsis Rift Pacification… Defense of Crixos Prime… Halvix Convoy Escorts… Iax Echo-Zone… Koltren Depths… Khentek Belt Extraction… Quarus Sprawl, Ternith Jungle, Vraxos Ridge, Exthalon Forge, Hallowmere Plateau…”

  She glanced up, meeting his eyes. “Promoted to Lieutenant during the Koltren Depths siege, then demoted back to Corporal six weeks later. Reason listed as: ‘Failure of political expectation.’ Care to elaborate?”

  Milo didn’t blink. “Commissar caught a lasround to the throat, ma’am. Command told me to hold the line, keep the men alive ‘til we got a new one shipped in.”

  “He lasted three days. Bolt shell to the spine. Then the next Commissar decided morale needed accountability. I was standing nearby.”

  From the far end of the chamber, Guilliman’s voice entered like the sound of judgment being given room to breathe. Calm. Clear. Measured.

  “I’m surprised they settled for a demotion.”

  Milo didn’t blink. “Must’ve had bigger messes to clean up at the time, my lord.”

  A silence fell—short, but taut.

  Guilliman arched a brow. Not much. Just enough to suggest something like humor had stirred somewhere behind the marble of his face.

  “Seems so.”

  The moment held, brittle as glass in winter.

  Varn’s voice cut through, all ice and iron. “This is irrelevant. Speak of the anomaly.”

  Milo didn’t answer. Not right away.

  Instead, he reached into his coat, slow and casual. The rustle of fabric was soft beneath the lumen-laced hush of the chamber. A battered foil pouch appeared and from it, he pulled a hand-rolled cigarette. He placed it between his lips, struck a worn ignition patch against his sleeve, and lit it with a soft snap.

  Smoke rose in thin, curling tendrils, carried into the ceiling vents like ghosts escaping judgment.

  “Ah. Apologies.” He looked at them then—Guilliman, Ferox, Rael, even Varn. Eyes tired, but still bright behind the weight of memory. With the casual confidence of a man who’d seen too many firing squads to care about one more, he held the pouch out.

  “Rude of me not to offer.”

  For a heartbeat, there was silence.

  Guilliman’s mouth didn’t quite smile. But the corners ticked up, just a fraction. He waved the offer away with the kind of motion that could have commanded fleets.

  “Tempting. But no.”

  Milo nodded, took a long drag. The ember flared orange in the chamber’s chill. Smoke wreathed his words.

  “Can’t tell you much about his tech. Fancy kit. Works like hell. Keeps us breathing. That’s what counts, right?”

  He let that linger—then lowered his voice.

  “But the kid’s got ghosts in him.”

  Ferox leaned forward. Not pressing, not pouncing—just intent. Her forearms rested lightly on the table, her eyes gleaming like wet mercury. “Clarify that, please.”

  Milo’s gaze drifted. Down to the floor. Across the black glass panels that swallowed light like secrets. He tapped some ash into a cup he’d conjured from nowhere, then looked back up—smoke in his eyes, memory behind it.

  “He’s scarred. Not just physically. Deep. Like something chewed through him and left enough behind to keep walkin’. He hasn’t seen war, not like we have. But he’s seen death.”

  Guilliman’s voice came low, curious.

  “How do you know the difference?”

  Milo turned toward him. Not defiant. Not even respectful. Just… honest. The way a soldier might size up another by the weight in his shoulders.

  “Soldiers carry something behind their eyes. Like part of them’s still bleeding in the mud back on whatever rock they left friends on. You see it in the way they move. Track doors. Listen to the quiet.”

  He exhaled. Smoke drifted like prayer.

  “Civvies who’ve seen death—they wear it like a bruise. You can see the hurt, but it fades. Sometimes. They cry. They shake. And if they’re lucky, they go on.”

  He tapped the cigarette again.

  “Koron? He’s both. Got the reflexes of a fighter who never had backup, and the stillness of someone who’s watched too much die to feel much anymore.”

  Silence held for a moment. Then, like a knife slipping into place:

  “He doesn’t stare at doors. He listens for ones that shouldn’t be opening.”

  Guilliman didn’t speak. He studied Milo with a stillness that held weight—like something vast and ancient had paused to listen. Then his gaze shifted, just slightly, as if aligning some unseen constellation in his mind.

  “You speak of him like a soldier.”

  Milo let smoke curl through his nostrils. “I speak of him like a survivor.”

  “Explain.”

  Milo’s gaze slid to the high walls—black and seamless, humming faintly with shielding fields and distant vox-murmurs. No windows. No air. Just the quiet pressure of power in waiting.

  “You’ve seen trained men, my lord. Soldiers who knew the rules, took orders, died clean if they were lucky.”

  He flicked the cigarette’s stub to the ground and crushed it with the edge of his boot.

  “Koron didn’t come from training. He came from wreckage. From something that tried to unmake him and failed. And now, every step he takes, every instinct—it’s not for glory. Not revenge. Not even orders.”

  Milo straightened. Not stiff. Not formal. Just… sure.

  “Personally? I think it’s to make sure no one else falls into whatever pit he climbed out of.”

  Guilliman watched him. Not judging. Just thinking. His expression unreadable—but no longer distant.

  “You believe he acts out of empathy?”

  Milo huffed. Just once. Dry. Not quite a laugh.

  “No, my lord. I think he acts out of memory.”

  A silence followed—not empty. Just full of the weight no one dared name.

  Ferox tapped her stylus. Once. Then stopped.

  “That kind of memory doesn’t come cheap.”

  “No,” Milo said, voice gone soft. “It doesn’t.”

  And for a long breath, the chamber wasn’t filled with rank or record, protocol or judgment. Just the quiet gravity of lives measured in scars.

  -

  Tara couldn’t keep her hands still.

  Her thumbs chased each other like stripped cogwheels, catching and spinning, spinning again, a jittery rhythm of nerves trying to grind themselves smooth. She stared down at them—callused, trembling—and tried to focus on anything beyond the roar of her pulse and the brittle edges of panic.

  The chamber didn’t help. It wasn’t meant to.

  It was too quiet. Too deliberately quiet.

  A sealed sanctum of matte black plasteel and exact geometry—no windows, no breeze, no voices beyond their own. Just the hum of sealed doors and the faint static crackle of dormant pict-casters lining the walls like sightless eyes. A room designed for judgment. For pressure. Like standing in the breathless pause before a plasma cutter sparks to life.

  Tara felt small in it. Not just in size—small.

  Outmatched. Outranked. Out of her depth.

  One Inquisitor was enough to turn her blood to frost.

  Two made it nightmare territory.

  But the silver-armored Astartes standing just off-center, the one whose mere stillness throbbed with caged violence? He was something else entirely.

  Not like the Salamanders. Not like Mr. Kade.

  Kade carried weight, sure—discipline forged into every step, fire banked behind his eyes—but there was a warmth to him. A sense that he saw the people around him as something more than variables on a tactical slate.

  This one?

  This Grey Knight?

  He looked like he’d been sculpted from contrition and absolution and told never to smile.

  Not a man. A judgment in ceramite and psychic steel. No kindness. No hesitation. Just the quiet, absolute certainty of a living weapon waiting for orders.

  And yet, it wasn’t even him that truly made Tara feel like she might come apart at the seams.

  No.

  That honor went to the other figure in the room.

  Roboute Guilliman. The Avenging Son.

  The Primarch.

  The man whose words shaped campaigns, whose presence warped the fates of worlds.

  He was watching her.

  Speaking to her.

  Her. Tara Brandt. Wasteland scrapper. Salvager of rust and ruin.

  A girl so far out of her depth, she half-expected the deck beneath her boots to collapse under the strain and suck her into a black hole of embarrassment.

  “—ara?”

  The voice sliced through her spiraling thoughts—clean, sharp, female.

  Tara jerked upright, blinking hard as her gaze snapped upward.

  Inquisitor Ferox watched her, silver eyes calm as an autopsy chamber. No visible judgment. No raised brow. Just the unwavering neutrality of someone used to interrogating people far more dangerous than a desert rat.

  “Y-yes?” Tara croaked. “Sorry, I got… a little lost in my head.”

  Ferox didn’t smile. Didn’t frown. Just gave the faintest nod. “Tell us about Koron. In your own words.”

  Tara opened her mouth. Closed it again.

  Her thoughts were fraying, unraveling like overused insulwrap. Kala would’ve been fine here. Kala with her crooked grin and don’t-give-a-damn charisma. Kala who could trip over her own boots and make three friends on the way down.

  But Tara wasn’t like that. Never had been.

  People drained her. Eyes on her crushed her.

  She worked with systems. With code. With machines. Machines didn’t stare. Machines didn’t expect you to speak with confidence when your knees were knocking together.

  She tried to speak. “He—”

  The word died in her throat.

  They can’t know. Not everything. If she gave the wrong detail—if she said too much—

  They’d use it. Against him.

  Against them all.

  Her fingers froze mid-fidget, curling into tense little fists on her lap.

  ‘Want some help then?’

  The voice slipped into her thoughts like a cool breath through overheating vents.

  Elly.

  She could feel her, a presence moving through the static of her panic like a grounding cable snapping into place.

  ‘I can feed you answers if you want.’

  Tara didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes. Please.’

  It was like someone dimmed the emergency alarms in her head. The panic didn’t vanish—but it stabilized. Became manageable.

  She lifted her head.

  Still afraid. Still trembling.

  But not alone.

  Not anymore.

  Her hands flattened against her thighs. She willed her thumbs to lie still.

  The chamber hadn’t warmed, not physically—but the sense of cold isolation lifted a degree.

  She glanced again at the Grey Knight—immovable, unreadable—then flicked her gaze to Varn. That one worried her more. The way his augmetic lenses clicked and whispered, like they were already drafting her death certificate.

  One mistake, one wrong phrasing, and she’d be dissected under a hundred articles of tech-heresy.

  She swallowed. And began.

  “Koron arrived at night. Our reactor was running on fumes—low power for decades. We didn’t even have clean lumen flow. He… assessed it, diagnosed the faults, and brought it to full power within the hour.”

  She paused, framing her words carefully. Elly’s guidance helping her stay inside safe lines.

  “He resealed the coolant junctions, balanced the heat sinks, patched the main conduit. No manuals. No tests. Just walked in, read the system, and fixed it.”

  She risked a glance at Rael. The psyker watched her like someone tuning a prayer.

  “Then he moved to the aquifer pumps. Equalized the pressure. Brought contamination levels down to baseline. We had clean water again. People lived because of him.”

  Ferox leaned forward, pen tapping silently.

  “Did he ever explain how?”

  Tara shook her head. “No, Inquisitor. He said the town needed function, not explanations. He didn't want thanks.”

  Varn’s vox grill clicked once. “Schematics? Instructional data? Technological prints?”

  “Nothing.” She kept her voice steady. “It’s in his head. He didn’t share it—not even with us. He just… kept going. From one emergency to the next.”

  Guilliman’s voice cut through the tension like calm water.

  “Beyond repairs—what else?”

  Tara breathed in. ““He helped around town,” she said. “Worked with the salvage teams, hauling in parts. When orks hit the salvage teams, he was out there with them. When a dust storm tore half the thornbeasts roof plates loose, he welded them back in place mid-gale. He doesn’t lead, not really. He just… acts.”

  Ferox studied her for a moment. “And your assessment of his nature?”

  Tara hesitated.

  Then, softly, clearly: “I don’t know what he is. But I do know—he is my friend.”

  That last word hung in the room like a quiet defiance.

  No one moved. No one spoke.

  Finally, Ferox gave a small, definitive nod. “Understood.”

  Tara let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Elly’s approval flickered across her mind like a soft pulse of light.

  She had said what mattered.

  No more.

  No less.

  And—for now—she hadn’t given them anything they could use to hurt him.

  Or them.

  She hoped.

  -

  Kala tilted her head, squinting up at the towering figure across the chamber.

  The room was still, quiet save for the faint hum of lumen coils and the ever-present, barely-audible thrum of a starship’s bones in motion.

  “You know,” she said slowly, “you and Koron look a lot alike.”

  Guilliman didn’t react at first. Then one golden brow rose, carved in marble. “...How so?”

  “The face mostly,” Kala replied, unfazed. “Blonde hair, sharp jaw, eyes like frostbite on a good day. Got that whole statuesque thing going too. Good cheekbones. Broad shoulders. You walk differently though—like furniture gets out of your way on instinct.”

  She gestured vaguely with both hands, as if trying to frame him for an imaginary painting. “Though I’ll admit, he’s got a better tan. You’re more… well, archival.”

  The cold lumen strips caught the gilt of Guilliman’s laurels, turning him into a museum piece for half a heartbeat.

  Ferox let out the ghost of a breath—whether disapproval or amusement was hard to tell. Varn didn’t move, though his optics pulsed once in silent recalibration.

  Guilliman’s expression didn’t shift at first. But something in his eyes flickered. Surprise? Curiosity? Maybe the faintest trace of a smile, held in deep reserve.

  “You believe I resemble a man born nearly fifteen thousand years before the Great Crusade?”

  Kala shrugged, unbothered. “Hey, I’m just calling what I see. Stranger things have happened. You sure you’re not secretly from the Dark Age too?”

  She said it with a grin—but behind it was a spark of something more. Not defiance, not mockery. Just honesty.

  Guilliman studied her for a long moment. Then, at last, a breath—dry, not quite a laugh. More an exhale through a mouth that had forgotten how to smile.

  “No,” he said at last. “Not that I’m aware of.”

  Kala smirked and tilted back in her seat, arms folding comfortably across her chest. “Then maybe fate just has a type.”

  Ferox made a valiant attempt at stoicism, but centuries of drilled composure cracked. She turned the near-laugh into a cough, clearing her throat behind one gloved hand. “Ahem. Right. Miss Brandt—”

  “Kala, please. I’m only twenty-one, and way too tired for formalities. My mom’s ‘Miss Brandt.’”

  Ferox gave a small nod, adjusting her slate with a flick of her fingers. “Noted. It says here you served as a vox-runner aboard the Hammer of Nocturne?”

  “Yes ma’am. Ran signals, dispatched codes, relayed commands. Did it well, too.”

  “Indeed,” Ferox replied, scanning her notes. “Voxmaster Thorne called you ‘unreasonably effective’ and ‘worryingly fast.’ What made you choose that role?”

  Kala shrugged, the motion casual, but her eyes held the quick sharpness of someone who’d navigated both narrow maintenance shafts and narrower expectations. “Honestly? I needed the work, and I hate sitting still. Plus, the underdecks smelled like boiled fungus and despair, so I figured staying on the move meant staying alive.”

  She turned, fixing Varn with a bright, not-so-innocent grin. “You guys really ought to invest in a better internal comm system.”

  Varn’s head jerked up. One of his augmetic optics whirred as it recalibrated, the tiny iris twitching once—visibly. He stared at her like someone deciding whether a heretic joke was actually treason. Then, with a series of low, static clicks, he returned to his slate, muttering in staccato Binaric under his breath.

  The room held its breath for a beat.

  Guilliman broke the silence, the weight of amused caution in his voice. “While I appreciate the feedback, Miss—ah, Kala—I would suggest submitting such observations anonymously in the future. The Adeptus Mechanicus receives such… suggestions with a certain level of skepticism.”

  Ferox arched an eyebrow. “Suggestions?”

  “Yes,” Guilliman replied dryly. “Suggestions.”

  Kala’s smirk faltered—not much, just a hairline crack in the confident veneer—but enough to catch the trained eyes in the room. Her gaze slid to Varn. The Tech-Priest’s silhouette loomed like a broken mantis over his dataslate, mechadendrites twitching in erratic rhythms. Binary whisper-clicks spilled from his vox-grille like a quiet threat—a language of numbers with the cadence of a countdown.

  A flicker of wariness crossed Kala’s emerald eyes. It passed quickly, masked by a breezy shrug, but the tension had already rippled outward.

  “Right,” she said, more carefully this time. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  She cleared her throat and straightened a little, gaze flicking across the others before landing back on Ferox. “So. Koron. What do you want to know?”

  Ferox didn’t smile, but the shift in posture said plenty—leaning back, crossing one leg over the other, pen tapping once—lightly, rhythmically—against her lower lip. A calculated gesture. Not casual. Not kind.

  “Has he ever tried to manipulate you?”

  The question hit like a slap wrapped in silk.

  Kala’s expression shifted—just slightly. Gone was the cheek. Her brows dipped. Her voice, when it came, was cool and clear, stripped of its usual playfulness.

  “That’s a hell of a loaded question. But no. And I’ve got good reason to think he’s telling the truth.”

  Before Ferox could press, Varn’s head snapped up, a sudden jolt like a machine alerting to sabotage. The low binary hissing turned sharp, serrated, as he surged forward.

  “What reason?” The words slammed through the room in static-laced bark, overriding the others.

  Kala didn’t flinch. Not visibly. But her nostrils flared. Her arms folded. Her weight shifted—a subtle brace.

  “A personal one,” she said, voice tightening around each syllable. “But if you want a broad answer? He told me something I don’t think he’s told anyone else.”

  Varn’s mechadendrites stiffened, spines clicking into new positions. One of them began tracing rapid fire runes in the air beside him, glowing red with rising internal temperature.

  “You are in love with him,” Varn declared. Not asked—stated—as if submitting coordinates to a war engine.

  The air stilled.

  Kala’s jaw tensed. Her arms stayed crossed, but her spine straightened as if she were rising to full height without ever leaving the chair as her braid flicked like a lash.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, steady now. “And also? That’s none of your Emperor-damned business.”

  There was a beat of silence. A stillness that pulsed with the weight of unsaid things.

  Ferox's pen stopped tapping.

  Rael's eyes, half-lidded in that unreadable Grey Knight way, opened just a fraction wider.

  Even Guilliman tilted his head, as if adjusting the focus of a microscope on something newly intriguing.

  And Varn—well, his lenses flared briefly before dimming, his arms twitching back to his slate without comment.

  Ferox let the moment settle like dust after a detonation. No reaction. Just silence and the precise shift of her stylus gliding one line down her slate.

  Then, lightly—almost gently:

  “Why do you trust him?”

  Kala blinked.

  Not from shock. From the sheer absurdity of the question.

  Her mouth opened. Closed. Then opened again with a short, incredulous breath. “Why do I—?”

  She looked around the chamber as if expecting someone else to call it out. When no one did, she leaned forward, arms still crossed but now braced on the table, elbows planted like roots.

  “Because he never asked me to.”

  Her voice was quiet. But not weak.

  “You want the truth?” Her eyes found Ferox again, sharper now. “It’s not about faith. It’s not about evidence. It’s that… everything he does—he does without expecting anyone to follow.”

  She exhaled slowly through her nose, brushing a strand of red hair behind her ear, fingers steady now.

  “People talk about how much knowledge he has. What he could do. What he’s hiding. But here’s the thing—he never uses it for anything we might. Not to get respect. Not to get loyalty. Just… to help.”

  Kala glanced over toward the towering silver form of Rael, then back to Ferox.

  “You think I’m na?ve. I get that. You’re reading this like a manipulation playbook. But I’ve seen manipulators. I’ve lived under people who treated compassion like a weapon, or a tool. And that’s not him.”

  Her hands played with the end of her braid below the table, but her gaze was calmer. Wiser. But tired now, too.

  “He’s not a saint. He gets angry. He’s hurt. He’s weird. He makes mistakes. And sometimes, he vanishes for hours because he’s fixing something he didn’t tell anyone was broken. But he’s trying. Every day.”

  A pause.

  Then softly, almost like a confession:

  “And when you’ve lived your whole life being seen as someone in the way? Someone not worth fixing things for?”

  She smiled faintly, without mirth.

  “Having someone like that in your corner feels like drinking clean water for the first time.”

  No one spoke as Kala continued.

  “I don’t know where he’s from, or what happened to him. But I know this—he’s not trying to rule anyone. He’s trying to stop the rest of us from breaking the way he did.”

  Guilliman’s voice came low. Thoughtful. “How far does your trust extend?”

  Kala smiled, but there was no humor in it this time.

  “I’d follow him into the Warp, if he asked.”

  Her smile softened, just a hair.

  “Only thing is? He never would.”

  For just a moment, the hum of servos and the whisper of filtered ventilation were all that remained.

  Then Rael’s voice drifted across the table, low and even.

  “And if we decide he’s dangerous?”

  Kala looked at him.

  And for the first time, the smile was sharp, a lioness baring her fangs.

  “Then I hope he runs. Far and fast. Before any of you figure out how scared you should be.”

  -

  The door hissed shut behind them with a finality that echoed louder than it should have.

  Elissa paused at the threshold. Not out of fear—she had walked into worse—but with the weight of understanding. This was not a place for comfort. It was a crucible. A chamber built not to shelter, but to reveal.

  In the center, the chair waited. Not a throne. Not a seat of power. A spotlighted fulcrum of judgment—positioned so that every breath, every shift of posture, every flicker of doubt could be tracked by the four figures encircling it.

  Roboute Guilliman sat slightly elevated, just two steps above the rest. Even unhelmed he seemed carved from the Imperium itself. Polished ceramite gleamed beneath the lumens, and the Aquila across his chest was no ornament—it was authority, incarnate.

  To his right, Inquisitor Ferox moved with methodical grace, stylus tapping at a slate with practiced precision. Every few seconds she twirled the pen between her fingers, an unconscious rhythm that belied the hawk’s stillness in her silver eyes. Her black bangs framed a face carved in focus, not cruelty—though the difference, Elissa suspected, was one of intent more than effect.

  Opposite her sat Inquisitor Varn, crimson and bronze draped like the vestments of a dying sun. His once-sharp gaze was now obscured behind a freshly affixed optical display—its lenses adjusting with soft ticks and hums as they read the microexpressions in the room. It was not for show. Nothing here was.

  And at ground level, sharing her space, stood Brother-Librarian Rael. Not seated. Not watching from a galley. Present. A mountain of silver armor and controlled psychic pressure, the air around him faintly warped by the latent power he kept banked behind iron discipline. His halberd remained unlit, but it did not look inactive. It looked patient.

  Elissa stepped forward, her boots tapping gently against the black floor—each step a punctuation mark in a sentence she hadn't yet spoken.

  Then Guilliman spoke, voice low and steady.

  “Lady Brandt. You may be seated.”

  Elissa exhaled slowly and walked toward the chair at the center of the chamber.

  It looked smaller than she’d expected. Lonelier.

  She tilted her wide-brimmed hat back just enough to see Guilliman’s face without craning her neck. He hadn’t moved. Still carved from judgment and old wars. Still watching.

  “So,” she said, lowering herself into the seat with careful dignity. “Who’s first?”

  Ferox moved first.

  She didn’t bark commands. She didn’t flick open a slate with the mechanical detachment of someone checking boxes. She leaned forward instead—elbows on her knees, fingers laced loosely, body language open in the way a counselor might sit across from a patient too proud to ask for help. Her silver eyes gleamed beneath her dark fringe like mercury stilled by intent.

  “Elissa Brandt,” she said, voice smooth as worn velvet, “it’s good to finally meet you face-to-face. I’ve read… rather a lot about you.”

  Elissa blinked, just once. Her brows drew in the slightest fraction, caught between wariness and dry amusement. “I have to say I’m surprised by that,” she said. “Didn’t think there was much of a file on me at all.”

  Ferox chuckled—soft, practiced, a sound that diffused tension like heat through old bone. “There isn’t,” she admitted, tapping a small slate in her palm. “But enough to give me an impression. That said, I’ve never been one to trust secondhand stories. I’d rather hear it from the source. Paper never does people justice.”

  Elissa’s eyes flicked to the slate in Ferox’s hand, a little too centered, a little too brightly lit. She settled with deliberate calm, back straight, hands resting in her lap. She was not there to beg, or tremble, or break.

  “You’re listed,” Ferox went on, her tone light but precise, “as a diplomat, frontline combatant, and mayor of your settlement.” She tilted her head. “And a mother of two. That’s quite the resume, all things considered.”

  Elissa shrugged, the motion tight around her shoulders. “Wasn’t really a choice. Town needed doing, so we did it.”

  Then, she leaned forward, just a hair. The lighting caught the faint lines at the corners of her eyes, the hard-earned ones—etched by wind, fire, grief, and sleepless nights beside broken aquifers and dying neighbors. Her emerald gaze met Ferox’s liquid silver without flinching.

  “Now,” she said, voice low, firm, “I may not have the Inquisition’s training. I didn’t go to any diplomacy academies. But I’ve survived thirty years of Dusthaven trade routes, made deals with psykers, scavvers, and Mechanicus caravan lords alike. So let’s not play around with the soft questions and smiling traps.”

  The air shifted, ever so slightly. The drones behind her didn’t move, but their stances re-synced—passive but alert, as if reacting to her heartbeat.

  “This isn’t about me. Not really. You want to know about him.”

  Ferox didn’t deny it.

  She simply smiled again. A different smile, this time—acknowledgment, not manipulation.

  “I do,” she said. “And I think you’re going to tell me. Because you care more about what happens next than I do.”

  Elissa’s jaw clenched once. Then she gave the smallest of nods.

  “Alright,” she said. “Shoot.”

  The Inquisitor wasted no time.

  Varn’s voice cut through the chamber like a scalpel—precise, unflinching.

  “Would you consider Koron… human?”

  No preamble. No build. Just the question—laid bare on the table like a corpse awaiting dissection.

  Elissa didn’t flinch.

  She arched a brow—not in surprise, but with a flicker of dry amusement. Her voice, when it came, was steady. Grounded. The kind of answer that didn’t come from impulse, but from long nights of wrestling with the question until it no longer had teeth.

  “Yes.”

  The pause that followed wasn’t silent. It pulsed—tension stretched like wire between the four figures watching her and the dozen drones still standing sentinel behind.

  Varn’s optics narrowed, a faint crimson blink cycling across his lenses.

  “Explain.”

  Elissa didn’t bristle. She didn’t posture. She just pushed her hat back just enough to let him see the fire behind her eyes.

  “If we’re going by some manner of metric, he’s more human than you by far,” she replied to Varn. “But to be frank, you’re asking me a question I don’t really have an answer to. Lots of meta stuff in that, so I’ll say yes and leave it at ‘Because he thinks he is.’”

  She folded her hands loosely in her lap, her expression unreadable. “What’s the next question?”

  No heat. No challenge. Just a calm invitation to continue—a reminder that she wasn’t rattled. Not yet.

  Ferox’s smile twitched, just a shade more real this time. “All right then. Let’s talk about how you know him.” She didn’t lean in like a predator—just a companion, curious, almost kind. “You’ve traveled with him. Fought beside him. Let him near your daughters. That’s not nothing.”

  A pause followed, softer now. “What made you trust him?”

  Elissa took a breath, and her fingers briefly touched the brim of her hat before resting in her lap again. The lights overhead caught the faintest shimmer of dust on her coat—a reminder that she wasn’t forged in cathedrals or gene-vaults, but in wind, grit, and too many small choices that always had consequences.

  “No one thing,” she said. “He lived with us for a year. In that time? He helped. Fixed our reactor, water pump, fixed things most people gave up on. Doc’s dataslate. Emric’s arm. Even stopped to re-tie one of the Fudd kids’ dustjackal traps.”

  Her lips curved slightly—not pride, but affection. “It didn’t work any better, but he tried.”

  Across from her, Guilliman shifted. He leaned forward, elbows resting on the grand desk before him, expression unreadable save for a slight crease between his brows.

  “He failed?” he asked.

  Elissa nodded, unflinching. “Oh yeah. He’s not perfect. Not some all-seeing demigod. He makes mistakes. First time he tried to help the crews wrangle a scrapbeast herd, the damn things bolted. Took him two hours to track ’em down again. I heard he had to hog-tie three of ’em and drag the rest back with a snapped tow cable and pure spite.”

  Ferox laughed softly—genuine this time. Even Rael, still and statuesque at her flank, gave the faintest shift that could’ve meant amusement.

  Guilliman’s frown didn’t vanish, but his hands slowly folded before him in thought.

  “And yet,” Ferox said, voice low, “you came to trust him.”

  “I chose to trust him,” Elissa corrected, her voice firm but not hostile. “Not because he’s perfect. Because when it would’ve been easier to run, or to take power, or to lie—he didn’t. Not once.”

  “Except for his identity. His past. The source of his knowledge,” Ferox replied, gently but without apology. She wasn’t attacking. She was unfolding something. Bit by bit.

  Elissa didn’t flinch. Didn’t even blink. “I never asked him about any of that.”

  Ferox tilted her head slightly. “You didn’t think it important?”

  “I thought it was his to share when he was ready.” Elissa’s gaze sharpened—not with anger, but conviction. “In Dusthaven, we didn’t ask questions like that. We couldn’t afford to. Everyone had secrets. Everyone had something they were running from. We stayed out of each other’s pasts so we could survive the present.”

  Ferox nodded slowly, digesting that. “That’s a rare kind of trust.”

  “No,” Elissa said quietly. “It’s the kind born of desperation. You either built a little trust, or you buried another neighbor. We just got lucky this time… that he earned it.”

  She shifted slightly, the set of her shoulders tightening just a fraction.

  “You’re used to liars, Lady Inquisitor. I get that.” Elissa’s voice was steady, but colder now—no heat, just steel drawn across old scar tissue. “But not all of us are looking for angles. Some of us are just trying to hold on to what we’ve got.”

  Ferox didn’t flinch. She simply nodded, slow and thoughtful, fingers turning the pen in her hand with unconscious grace. Then she made a small note on her slate—nothing aggressive, just a flick of the stylus—and looked up again.

  “Has he ever talked about what he lost?”

  The question was gentle. Too gentle.

  Elissa’s eyes snapped up, narrowing. No hesitation this time.

  “He did,” she said, her voice low.

  Then, with a finality that could have cut through ceramite:

  “And no, I’m not telling you about it.”

  Elissa settled into the chair’s spine like it owed her nothing. The lights above caught on the edge of her scarf, casting a faint, wavering shadow across her cheekbones. Her expression was calm—but not relaxed. Someone who knew a storm was always waiting somewhere behind the next door.

  Ferox’s voice cut clean and quiet through the air, but there was no sharpness in it. “What does he want?”

  Elissa let out a short snort, amused more than dismissive. “Honestly, I wish I knew. Idiot’s an open book and a lead box. You never know which page you’re gonna get.”

  She paused—then leaned forward slightly, elbows on her knees. The edge of her hat caught the light, throwing a soft shadow across one eye. “But I think... he’s trying to figure out how to help without breaking more than he fixes. Trying to keep the galaxy from eating us alive.”

  Her gaze shifted then—locked onto Guilliman’s across the chamber. “Much like you, I think, my Lord.”

  Guilliman didn’t blink. Didn’t move. But something behind his expression changed.

  A softening at the corner of his eyes. A tension in the jaw that eased, fraction by fraction, like a gear releasing pressure it didn’t know it carried.

  The chamber held its breath.

  Then he leaned back—slowly—fingers steepled beneath his chin. “The difference,” he said, his voice low, “is that he has the luxury of doing it alone. I do not.”

  Elissa smiled. Not in mockery. Not in victory. A quiet, honest thing.

  The kind of smile shared between people who know just how much it hurts to try. “And yet,” she said, “you both keep trying.”

  Guilliman gave the smallest of nods—imperceptible to most. But to Elissa, it was enough.

  Ferox glanced between them, a flicker of thought behind her silver eyes. “Thank you, Lady Brandt. That will be all for now.”

  Elissa stood. “Word of advice? Don’t lie to him.” No bow. Just a tip of her hat—dust-scuffed, weathered, earned. “Good luck out there,” she said, turning toward the door. “It’s a bastard of a galaxy. But you already knew that.”

  -

  Ferox stretched as the chamber door hissed shut behind Elissa. She let her slate clatter onto the desk with a sound like a dropped blade. “Well,” she said, dryly, “that was less productive than I’d hoped.”

  “Indeed,” Varn replied, clipped and precise. “Emotional noise. Sentimentality from menials. Your Interrogator was the only one to offer usable insight.”

  Ferox smirked. “You can’t have her, by the way. Just in case that rusting abacus in your skull was starting to calculate recruitment value.”

  Varn’s optics narrowed, the soft whirr of recalibration his only reply. Possibly a growl. Possibly a curse in Binaric.

  Guilliman stood with the smooth, deliberate weight of a mountain shifting. His fingers flexed as if testing unseen gauntlets. “There is still value,” he said quietly. “Even without revelation. We have the shape of him now. Not data, perhaps—but direction.”

  And then the air cut.

  A voice—clear, sharp, modulated like silk wrapped around monofilament—slid into the space like a blade between ribs.

  “Would you like more than a shape?”

  All four turned.

  There, at the center of the chamber, atop the steel edge of the central table—unannounced, unlogged, utterly silent in arrival—perched a sleek, four-limbed machine.

  A wolf, wrought in brushed alloy and seamless joints. Its lean frame gleamed under the overhead lumens, matte plates catching no shadows, only suggestion. Twin optics glowed a faint, unthreatening blue—but their focus was surgical.

  “As I heard it,” Koron continued, “this was open to all Dusthaven residents.”