En route to the Mandeville point, Nareth received the Navigator leader, Aeden Visscher, in his private office aboard the Shadow's Sovereignty.
Aeden wore ornate jewels on his forehead, concealing his third eye.
Nareth keenly noticed his body already showed some visible signs of mutation.
His skin was slightly pale. Scale-like plates were on his wrists, hidden within his sleeves.
"Aeden, what is the matter?"
"Lord Nareth, the alliance the Visscher family established with the Legion is envied by many other Navigators. They wish to establish varying degrees of cooperative relations with the Legion."
"I convey their requests to you, inviting you to visit Uranus as a guest."
Within the Solar System, there were two major warp gates: Uranus's Elysian Gate and Pluto's Khthonic Gate.
After the Great Crusade began, incorporating Uranus's settlements and moons into the nascent Imperium, void ships frequently entered and exited the Warp through the Elysian Gate.
Navigator families established their new domains on Uranus's twenty-seven moons.
Compared to the scarce land on Terra, these new domains offered more space and were more convenient for hiding secrets beneath their glorious facade, secrets not for outsiders' eyes.
Nareth had originally planned to travel to the Sol System, having some members of his treasure-hunting teams join the Legion to play a role in the upcoming Gardinaal campaign.
After brief consideration, he agreed to Aeden's request.
"I would be pleased to visit the Navigator families as a guest."
"I will immediately chart a course, guiding the Shadow's Sovereignty to the Sol System." Aeden bowed slightly, saluted, and departed quickly.
While the Shadow's Sovereignty traveled to the Sol System, Gardinaal System, Gardinaal Prime.
William Wood sprinted across the wilderness. At nine years old, his clothes were tattered, holding only a rusted dagger.
On Gardinaal, each person's fate was determined from birth.
The caste they were born into decided their destiny, their social stratum, their profession, their food, everything about them...
For thousands of years, Wood had been the worker caste.
Tens of thousands of Woods were all workers, without exception.
But William refused to accept this fate. Visions flashing before his eyes drove him to become a deserter.
He knew that from the moment he left the shabby shantytown, he had only himself.
His caste, the higher-caste masters, would not tolerate him.
If caught, his parents, his kin, no one would tolerate his transgression. Death would be his best outcome.
Punishments like immersion in medicinal liquid followed by ant-feeding, flaying, and other tortures, methods he was told as soon as he could speak, were reserved for those daring to challenge the hereditary system.
William bit his lip hard. He warned himself mentally.
'Between chemical plants B-12 and B-13, dozens of kilometers are filled with waste. I must find a hiding spot.'
'No, one hiding spot isn't safe enough. At least three. A cunning rabbit has three burrows.'
'Wait... how do I know the phrase a cunning rabbit has three burrows'
The Wood caste were workers. They had no right to education. Each Wood only needed to know numbers and the bolded words on the operation manuals.
Phrases like "a cunning rabbit has three burrows" weren't something a Wood would use.
William ran, breathing heavily.
His breaths were labored, yet he dared not stop, only able to distract himself by thinking of other things.
Suddenly, an image flashed in William's mind.
A grey figure, dripping sludge, charged swiftly towards him.
William then felt the wind whistling behind him. A strange chemical odor assaulted him.
Having grown up in chemical plants, William was accustomed to chemical smells. But he was certain this sudden, intrusive smell wasn't any single chemical.
It was the mixed odor of many chemicals and residues, similar to the smell in the drainage channels he, as a child laborer with an undeveloped body, was responsible for cleaning.
William's clothes clung to his back, soaked with cold sweat.
Without time to think, his body instinctively rolled.
The sound of fabric tearing, followed by something sticky slapping against his back.
William felt a piece of skin torn from his back. He tumbled awkwardly, crashing onto a hill of piled chemical dyes.
The growls were no longer suppressed. The grey figure pounced repeatedly, stirring up waves of mixed garbage.
William's body rolled continuously, bumping against the irregular junk piles, aching all over.
But William ignored the pain. As he rolled, his mind raced, seeking a way to save himself.
Suddenly, everything around him slowed down.
As his back hit the ground, William clearly saw the grey figure's appearance.
Overall, it resembled a wilderness hyena, but its body was caked in sludge, as if just pulled from a chemical pit.
From its gaping, foul mouth, a bizarre odor wafted forth, nauseating.
A cold glint flashed in William's eyes. He pushed hard with his arms, springing up, charging at the hyena.
Guessing the rusted dagger he grabbed while fleeing couldn't pierce the hyena's chemical sludge armor, he could only risk attacking its vulnerable eyes.
William stabbed the dagger hard into the hyena's left eye. The shattered yellow eye, disgusting fluid mixed with blood, splattered over his right hand.
But to his shock, William found the hyena's movements didn't stop. Its claws swiped at him.
'This damned thing is really tough. Its still not dead.'
William wanted to dodge, but the hyena was faster.
'I don't want to die! I refuse to accept this!'
'Can the worker caste never escape their fate?!'
As the hyena's claws were about to touch William's body, an invisible force surged within him.
With a BANG, the claws struck a psychic shield and were deflected.
Though William didn't understand what happened, his quick reaction after the narrow escape was swift. He yanked the dagger out and stabbed it hard into the hyena's other eye.
Once, twice...
Until he was utterly exhausted, collapsing together with the hyena onto the garbage pile, sludge covering him entirely.
William lay weakly on the garbage pile, breathing heavily.
After a long while, his stomach growled. He wobbled to his feet, retrieving the dagger from the hyena's corpse.
William used his hands and the dagger to scrape off the sludge, searching for the hyena's flesh.
…....
October, 852.M30, Solar System. The Shadow's Sovereignty emerged from the Elysian Gate.
Dust clouds filled the space around the Elysian Gate. In the roughly three-thousand-kilometer open zone, rows of fine particles shimmered uncertainly.
Nareth stood before an observation viewport with its protective shield open. Gazing at the drifting grey substance in the void, unlike its appearance, it shimmered with radiant spiritual light. A term surfaced in his mind.
'Siren's Dust.'
Nareth knew that for hundreds or thousands of years, starships entering the Warp from this location, upon exiting reality, would generate and scatter a drifting, soft grey substance.
Navigator families and the Jovian clans had a specific name for it: Siren's Dust.
Among them, stories circulated: Prospectors once tried to collect this dust. Upon truly touching it, they lost interest in any other substance.
Whether true or not, this dust perpetually hovered here, slowly orbiting the Elysian Gate's space, like swirling smoke within a glass sphere.
But the similar space around the Khthonic Gate lacked such substance. Siren's Dust was unique to the Elysian Gate.
....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
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