Chapter 15: Fortune's Favor and Fear
The murmurs began with a glance, a whisper, and a prayer.
Soldiers in the trenches glanced toward the young officer with reverent superstition. Commanders sent him into the worst of battles not only with expectation, but quiet hope. Across regiments and planets, Lucien Artor Vale was no longer merely a rising officer. He was becoming a phenomenon.
They called him many things: "Ghost of the Emberline", "Luckwrought", and even, in hushed tones, "The Emperor's Gambler." The name Lucien Cassian—a formality he still used in official documents—became a minor footnote to the legend. Those closest to him still remembered he was simply Lucien, or to some, Tavian—a name rarely spoken now, tucked away like an old childhood story.
The problem was, Lucien didn't feel like a legend.
In his private quarters aboard the 41st Crusade Fleet vessel Saint Resolute, Lucien sat in silence. His fingers drummed slowly on a dataslate, untouched reports glowing faintly with red status alerts. Outside his cabin, hundreds of officers and logisticians scurried, preparing for the next battle in the Sorrowing Maw sector. Inside, Lucien stared at the reflection of his own eyes.
"I should have died ten times over," he muttered.
His room was modest by noble standards, but its isolation gave him a rare sliver of peace. Not comfort—he hadn't felt that in years—but solitude. His left hand gripped the edge of the desk, while the other traced the faint, almost imperceptible outline of the ring embedded in the flesh beneath his glove.
No one could see it. To them, it was part of his skin. But he felt it, always.
It was warm now.
A sure sign that the enemy stirred.
He leaned back and closed his eyes, the faces of the fallen flashing behind his lids. Men and women who'd marched beside him only to fall under collapsing walkways, misfired enemy plasma, or sudden equipment failures on xenos armor. Soldiers with families. Names. He didn't forget any of them.
His victories were never bloodless.
---
The next campaign came without ceremony.
Valerix Prime was a forge world under siege. Not from Orks, nor from T'au. This time, it was something stranger—a xenos faction classified as the Virethkin, crystalline insectoids whose psionic interference scrambled vox signals and battlefield coordination.
The fleet's command believed them minor. Lucien's instincts said otherwise.
Aboard the lander Harsh Deliverance, the officer stood in full carapace armor, silent as the storm of descent rattled the ship. Around him, new faces again. Replacements. Another fresh batch of infantry who didn't yet believe the stories about him.
A sergeant next to him, stocky and scarred, kept stealing glances.
"Something you want to ask, sergeant?" Lucien said without looking up.
"Apologies, sir," the man said, adjusting his belt. "Just... heard you've got some sort of premonition. Like you know when death's coming. That true?"
Lucien shrugged. "If it were, I wouldn't be here."
The sergeant laughed. A nervous sound. But it broke the tension.
The lander slammed into the atmosphere, flame streaking across the windows. Moments later, the doors hissed open to reveal a battlefield that looked like shattered glass. The ground glittered with reflective crystal, jagged and unnatural. The air was thick with psionic interference—vox static hissed like whispers from the warp.
Lucien stepped onto the crystal plains, and the ring pulsed beneath his skin.
Danger. High.
An hour into the assault, it began.
The first squad to engage the enemy disappeared in a storm of distorted light. No screams, no remains. Only scorched earth. The second squad's comms failed, and a strafing run from friendly aircraft went wildly off course, destroying their own lines. Lucien, observing the front from an outcropping of ferrocrete, watched silently as the chaos unfolded.
And then luck bent.
A Virethkin energy beam meant for his squad hit a nearby hill and rebounded, arcing wildly before exploding a xenos command nest.
A crystal minefield triggered prematurely—just as an enemy pincer formation moved through it.
One of his soldiers, ducking to reload, narrowly avoided a sniper round that vaporized a command drone behind him instead.
Lucien barely moved.
His troops began to notice.
"Did... did he plan that?" someone muttered.
A lieutenant, blood-smeared and wide-eyed, pointed toward Lucien like he was a saint from a shrine painting. "No, he makes it happen."
Lucien didn't smile. He just pressed forward, barking orders.
The more intense the battle grew, the sharper his instincts became. Not inhuman—not psychic. Just... aware. Subtly guided. He could almost feel threads of chance tightening or loosening. He didn't dodge bullets. But he moved just before they were fired.
The Virethkin began to suffer inexplicable system failures. Their shielding overloaded. Their psionic crystals shattered. Their ambushes turned to stampedes.
By nightfall, the enemy withdrew, fractured and disoriented.
By dawn, Valerix Prime was theirs.
---
The debriefing was held on the command ship Saint Resolute, in the presence of three high-ranking generals and an Inquisitorial observer. Lucien gave his report flatly, without embellishment.
When asked how his unit avoided the worst casualties, he only replied, "Training, coordination, and providence."
The Inquisitor's eyes lingered on him longer than the others.
"Providence," she repeated. "And what makes you think the Emperor favors you so personally, Lieutenant Cassian?"
Lucien looked up, calm. "I don't presume the Emperor favors me. But He favors the Imperium. I merely serve."
There was a pause. The Inquisitor said nothing more.
But as he left, she turned to the other generals.
"Watch that one. Luck is not always a gift. Sometimes it's a warning."
---
That night, Lucien stood alone on the observation deck.
He didn't want any of this.
He remembered his old world. The car. The music in his ears. The ring glowing in those final moments. He remembered a life of obscurity and now stood beneath stars that knew his name.
But peace had never been an option. Fate had decided otherwise.
And fate, he now realized, was watching with amusement.
In the glass reflection, he caught sight of the faint glow beneath his skin again.
He closed his eyes.
And the legend of Lucien Artor Vale continued to grow.
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