Morning light flowed along the street like melted amber, glazing last night's rain-slick pavement with a shimmering sheen.
The boy's family stood on the steps of their apartment building, broken concrete chips and faded fragments underfoot—the remnants of the riots days before.
All along the street, other doors cracked open; faces peered out through slivers, eyes mixing vigilance with tentativeness.
An old woman leaning on a cane tottered half a step out, then pulled her foot back as if the ground were scalding.
Next door, a young couple clutched their infant tight; the husband's fingers rubbed unconsciously at the pistol at his waist. The chaos of these days had made habitual alertness cling like a rusted chain that would not come off.
A strange hush saturated the air.
No alarms, no gunfire—only the occasional clang of metal in the distance, like giants hammering the city's bones.
Thoom, thoom—
Heavy footsteps came from the far end of the street, drumming the ground.
Pebbles jittered in puddles, and the boy felt a tingling tremor through his soles.
!!
He looked back by reflex, pupils tightening hard.
Two giants in golden armor were marching in step.
Their plate ran with a blinding sheen in the morning light, the dragon reliefs on their pauldrons rising and falling slightly with their gait as if alive.
At over three and a half meters tall, the light threw shadow across their waists, and their mag-boots pressed the road like clay, leaving sharp, sunken prints.
"Run! Run!"
"Oh God! Those monsters—bigger monsters!"
A ragged scream tore from the crowd.
Chaos blew open the street.
The old woman stumbled back, cane clacking on the steps; the young couple bolted for the nearest alley with the baby.
The boy's father jerked up his rifle—yet he still never leveled the barrel at the Custodians. Not from fear, but because his instincts told him such an act was an ant swinging at a mountain.
His older brother clenched the baseball bat till his knuckles crackled, but froze where he stood.
Their mother yanked the boy and his sister behind her, forearm thrown out—a brittle dam.
Only the boy's face stayed quiet.
Head tipped back, he peered through the slits of the golden helm and met the Custodian's scarlet lenses.
There was no savagery there, no contempt, only a near-mechanical calm—like a god gazing down on men, or a colossal statue guarding a granary.
The Custodians did not quicken their pace for the commotion.
They held to precise rhythm, each bootfall as steady as a pendulum. Servos at their joints thrummed low, the aftertone of some ancient instrument.
When the giants reached the family, the little sister peeked out from her mother's arm and cut the congealed air with a small voice:
"Are you… going to kill us?"
?!
Time seemed to stop.
Father's breath halted; the bat clanged to the ground from the brother's hand.
On the street, the fleeing froze like a paused video; countless eyes peered from behind cover, watching.
The two Custodians stopped.
The one on the left slowly bent his knee, hydraulic systems whispering like silk.
When he set one knee to the ground, the earth gave a faint shudder; a few chips of stone trickled from cracks in a wall.
With a click, his faceplate unfolded and tucked back into the gorget, revealing a chiseled face—
Black hair cropped like steel bristles, bronzed skin crossed by faint scars, and a gentle smile that didn't fit the massive frame.
"Easy, child."
His voice was as deep as tectonic motion, yet oddly soothing in cadence. "We are here to protect you."
He drew two silver-foil packets from a pouch at the small of his back. Metal fingertips neatly peeled the seals; rich chocolate scent spilled out at once.
The little sister wrinkled her nose; her small hand clutched tighter at their mother's hem.
The boy stared at the two chocolates.
The wrappers were printed with unfamiliar Chinese characters, but the sweet, fatty cocoa smell bridged any language gap. He swallowed and slowly reached out, under his father's taut stare.
The Custodian's movement was graceful; when he set the candy in the boy's palm, his fingertips deliberately missed the child's delicate skin, as if he'd already calculated every milligram of pressure.
"Try it," the giant winked, lashes rimmed with gold in the morning sun. "It's from the Prime Universe's Saturn's third agricultural ring—much better than your compound cocoa fat."
The little sister suddenly snorted a laugh.
It cracked the spell; the street's frozen fear began to thaw.
The old woman let go of the doorknob; the young couple edged out from behind a trash bin. A bold youth even lifted his mobile and aimed the lens at the surreal scene.
Father finally lowered the rifle and rasped, "What exactly are you here to do?"
The Custodian stood. Before the faceplate sealed again, the boy saw the smile at the corner of his mouth settle into a solemn gravity.
"Rebuild."
He pointed afar; the Flower of Purity monument's gold washed over a ruined hospital, Iron Hands engineering skiffs darting through like hummingbirds. "In the name of the Emperor."
Thoom, thoom!
As the giants moved on, the little sister broke free of their mother's hand and shoved a piece of chocolate in her mouth.
The instant the sweetness burst on her tongue, she squinted and mumbled, "Thank you, Mr. Shiny-Gold!"
The Custodian's back twitched—just barely.
A muffled chuckle came from under the helm; the servos translated that pleasure into a sprightly buzz along the armor's joints.
At last the sun punched through the clouds, gilding the whole street in living gold leaf.
People drifted out from hiding, testing the temperature of a new world like animals waking from hibernation.
Above them, a silver-gray cruiser skimmed the sky, projectors on its belly casting the full text of the Codex of Humanity across the clouds, every character seeming to burn with the Flower of Purity's golden flame.
The boy took his sister's hand and followed the swelling flow of people forward.
On both sides of the street, the scars of war were healing at a speed visible to the naked eye—
Hex robots perched over the wreck of a collapsed overpass, hex-field generators glowing blue as they reassembled concrete chunks with childlike, block-perfect precision.
A construction-type Hunter used the molecular welder on its forelimbs to mend a twisted steel beam, sparks raining like gold. They bounced over its black shell without leaving a mark.
Scents drifted in the air.
The little sister gazed up at the machines, her face lit by flickering arcs, chocolate sugar still glinting at the corner of her mouth.
"Those machines…" Father murmured. "Yesterday it seemed they were still fighting the UED's armored units."
Her older brother breathed, "Now they're fixing streets. It's like…"
"It's like they're getting ready for a celebration."
Mother cut in softly, more sigh than sound.
Soon the crowd thickened.
Clone soldiers stood at every intersection, the hems of their coats stirring in the breeze.
They wore full-cover helmets, lenses a bloodless dark red, the way they held their rifles precise as if drawn with a protractor.
When the boy met the gaze of one clone, the figure dipped a barely-there nod. The humanizing gesture chilled the boy's spine—as if he'd seen precise gears begin to turn by themselves.
"The way they look at us…" The little sister hunched her neck. "Like they're counting how many hairs we have."
Children's instincts are sometimes sharper than adults'.
Indeed, though the clones in full-kit looked no different than men, they were emotionless "weapons." Naturally, they lacked the Custodians' "approachability."
Before long, the family reached the central square with the throng.
The perimeter was held by Salamanders tactical squads.
Warriors in moss-green Titan-plate went bareheaded, scarred faces gentle.
One Astartes with burn scars at the corner of his eye knelt on one knee to let children touch the lizard and firedrake reliefs on his pauldron; the scales glowed warm in the sun.
"Look there!" the older brother pointed skyward.
As they drew nearer the square's center, the light began to refract in a strange way.
The air grew warmer, as if each breath carried a faint current, like standing under a cloud pregnant with rain.
A few strands of the little sister's hair stood up, floating like jellyfish tendrils under static.
Then—
They saw the great dais reared at the heart of the square.
It was built from a white stone with intrinsic luminescence; lines like liquid light flowed across its surface, as if the whole galaxy had been pressed into building material.
Twelve crystal pillars ringed the base. Within each bloomed a Flower of Purity; their pulsing glow kept a weird sync with the human heartbeat.
Two figures stood upon the dais.
On the left, a being over five and a half meters tall in a dark-gold robe warped space's laws by standing there.
A rainbow fringe of distortion shimmered around his silhouette, like a mirage over heat.
When a strong wind lifted a hem of robe, a wink of black-and-gold armor flashed beneath.
On the right, the woman looked like a statue forged of sunlight.
Golden war-plate traced perfect muscle lines. When the Spear of Victory leaned on her shoulder, "droplets" of light from the tip vaporized midair into fine prismatic spray.
As she dipped her head, speaking to the giant beside her, the arcs sparking in her hair sketched a profile like a Greek relief.
The crowd fell into absolute silence.
Even infants stopped crying. A presence beyond language blanked every mind for a beat.
The boy felt heat in his nose; warm blood spotted his collar, as if his brain couldn't bear such close brush with a numinous being.
But his sister suddenly slipped her hand from his, her eyes already conquered by golden light.
"Brother, that giant looks like Mr. Shiny-Gold's dad," she said, pointing at the dais.
The childish title rang sharp in the hush. Several clone soldiers turned their helms at once, lenses flaring brighter.
"Heh."
But the giant on the dais seemed to chuckle.
The halo veiling his face rippled. For an instant, the boy was sure he saw the corner of that mouth lift—
A tired, gentle expression, like a father home from years at war, unbuckling his armor under the porch light.
The glow of the Flower of Purity surged.
A tide of gold rolled outward from the dais, sweeping over every upturned face in the square.
The boy felt warm fingers brush his brow; his nosebleed stopped at once. A peace beyond understanding wrapped his body like down.
He heard sharp breaths all around: the lame old woman's knees straightened; the rattle in a coughing man's chest vanished; even the stoop in his father's back eased, an old injury unbound.
"That's…" his mother's voice quavered, "they're healing…"
The crystal pillars around the dais rang together. Tones as pure as cathedral bells condensed words in the air; proclamations in many tongues poured like a waterfall and finally unified into Earth's ancient Chinese seal script—
"The old epoch is gone. This is humanity's dawn."
The clones dropped to one knee together, coat hems spreading like black petals.
Custodians grounded their long halberds; shockwaves chiseled radial fissures across the paving stones. Astartes took off their helms; rare awe traced the scars of their faces.
The boy simply hugged his little sister tight. In the Flower of Purity's gold, he saw for the first time how the new age looked.
Upon the dais, the giant lifted his hand—slightly.
The simple movement sent a subtle ripple through space, as if the entire world trembled at his fingertips.
The Flower's light swayed, casting his image across the square as a semi-transparent phantom a hundred meters tall. Every detail was clear—from the star maps etched on his armor to the dark-gold flows along the hem of his robe.
When the giant spoke, his voice did not travel through the air. It resonated directly inside every skull.
It was deep as the pulse of the planet's core and strangely gentle, like a fireplace cracking in winter, pouring safety straight into the soul.
"Children of Earth."
At the words, the air over the square went "viscous."
Old eyes clouded with age lit with a strange gleam, as if recalling a warm afternoon from childhood forgotten; young people straightened without meaning to, as though hearing an ancient summons in the blood.
"The suffering you have endured, I have witnessed."
The giant's gaze slowly swept the crowd. Wherever it fell, even clone helms dipped a fraction. "Hungry children curled in slums. Mothers boiled thin porridge from their last handful of flour. Fathers gripped rifles short of ammunition and stood guard over their families—
"And all these scenes are carved upon the tombstone of the old age."
His words bore the weight of time. Every syllable felt like a piece of bronzeware dredged from the river of history, laden with the sighs of civilizations.
The little sister suddenly squeezed her brother's finger. In her clear eyes, the star maps flowing over the giant's shoulders reflected—and deep within them seemed to replay Earth's rise and fall, from stone-age campfires to mushroom clouds.
"But today, I bring a new covenant."
The giant opened his palm, and a pool of liquid gold condensed into a miniature Earth.
Continental plates stood out. Tiny waves lapped the blue of the seas. When his fingers curled, that little Earth flared like a supernova and scattered into countless light-particles that rained down on the crowd.
______
(≧◡≦) ♡ Support me and read 20 chapters ahead – patreon.com/Mutter
For every 50 Power Stones, one extra chapter will be released on Saturday.