Chapter 19: Echoes of Iron and Fate
The air smelled of oil, ozone, and dying men.
Lucien Artor Vale stood alone on the ridge, cloak shredded, his carapace armor scorched black and bleeding sparks. Around him, the rocky plains of Merovax burned under a green sky choked by smoke and xenos spores. The Orks had come in greater numbers than command had predicted. Again. That much, at least, was unsurprising.
What was surprising, perhaps, was that Lucien still lived.
Below, in the valley, a battered regiment of guardsmen rallied around the Valean 9th's banner, holding a broken line against swarming greenskins. Leman Russ tanks smoldered like tombs, their crews reduced to red mist. Vox chatter screamed nonsense before cutting into static. The Commissar lay dead by Lucien's feet, his head pulped by a warboss's crude hammer.
Lucien hadn't meant to take command. Again.
But when the storm came, his instincts—and the ring—had acted. His hand had moved before thought, his voice risen before permission. And now, the surviving command channel was waiting on his word. Again.
He touched the ring beneath his glove. It pulsed faintly. Not warm, not cold—just alive.
He closed his eyes. This isn't what I wanted, he thought. Just peace. A quiet life. A normal death.
But the Emperor does not give peace.
The Orks screamed. Trukks roared over the ridge opposite, belching fire and boys with axes the size of Lucien's torso.
He opened his eyes. "Vox me in to all surviving units."
The tech-adept near the wrecked Chimera blinked, then nodded, patching him through.
"This is Lucien Artor Vale," he said, voice steady, commanding. "You don't know me. Most of you won't live long enough to care. But listen to me."
Static.
"The Orks are coming in force. They're bigger. Meaner. Louder. And stupider. So let's be smarter."
Somewhere, a squad cheered. Others held their breath.
"I want all flamer units on the east flank. Lay burning traps in the shale beds. Our snipers: pick targets, not volume. Shoot the nobs, not the boys. Tank crews—if you can still hear me—pull back into crossfire position at Grid Omega. We bait them. Then we bury them."
Someone laughed. It was mad and glorious.
Lucien looked toward the Orks. The ring pulsed. And reality began to bend.
---
It wasn't raw power. Not really. His enemies were just...unlucky.
The Warboss, towering and sneering, charged first. His shoota jammed, then exploded. Two of his nobz tripped over a wreck and broke their own necks. A third got stuck in a trench filled with burning promethium laid by a terrified sapper who barely knew how to hold a flamer.
Lucien advanced slowly. He was no blade-master. No superhuman. But he moved like a ghost in the battlefield.
Bullets missed him. One clipped his pauldron and veered into an Ork's skull. Grenades misfired. An entire squad of greenskins suddenly ran into their own booby trap. A WAAAGH! banner caught fire from a glancing las-blast.
And everywhere he went, the soldiers watched.
They saw him dodge fire without flinching. They saw death fail to touch him. They saw the ring—though they didn't know it—hum like the Emperor's own halo.
"Captain Vale!" someone shouted, unbidden.
He turned. A young corporal, barely seventeen, bloodied and limping, saluted him through the smoke.
"We're winning," she said, disbelieving. "By the Throne… we're actually winning."
Lucien looked behind her.
Indeed, the Orks were breaking. Not because they were outgunned. But because they thought they were cursed. Their warboss lay twitching under the wheels of his own Trukk. The Valean 9th was bloodied, but standing. Their faith had teeth now.
It felt wrong.
It felt right.
---
Later, when the smoke had settled and the medicae tents were overfull, Lucien sat alone beside a ruined chapel wall.
The ring shimmered on his finger. Not glowing, not speaking. Just there.
He looked at his reflection in a shard of broken plasteel.
Blackened armor. Scars. Eyes that no longer looked young.
"Who am I becoming?" he whispered.
"You are the Emperor's will," someone said.
An Inquisitor stood in shadow, his rosette glinting from beneath a cloak of ash-gray.
"I watched you," the man said. "I've seen what you do. The patterns. The outcomes. You play a rigged game, Lucien Artor Vale."
Lucien stood slowly.
"I just fight," he said. "And I get lucky."
The Inquisitor smiled. "That's what they all say. Until they start bending reality."
"What do you want from me?"
"To watch. For now. But know this, Captain. The Emperor may bless the faithful… but He watches the unnatural. Closely."
Then he was gone.
Lucien turned back to the stars, heavy with silence.
The legend was beginning to outgrow the man. But he wasn't ready to stop. Not yet.
The war wasn't over. His story wasn't done.
And luck, it seemed, had only begun to wake.