CHAPTER 7: SHADOWS OF BLOOD
PREQUEL: THE LOST HEIRS
Six Years Ago —The Scrap Town Shelter
The fever dreams had taken Lyra to dark places before, but never like this. For three days, she thrashed on their makeshift bed, her small body burning up as visions tore through her mind with violent intensity. Kaelen stayed by her side, wiping her brow with damp cloths while Marik stood watch, his face grim.
On the fourth morning, Lyra's eyes snapped open, but they didn't see the rusted ceiling of their shelter. They saw things that made her scream.
"The broken moon!" she gasped, clawing at Kaelen's arms. "She took them to the broken moon!"
Marik was at her side in an instant. "Who, child? Who did she take?"
"Aunt Anya," Lyra whispered, her voice trembling with horror. "When House Orion fell... she didn't kill all the children. Just the ones who fought back. The others... the useful ones... she took them."
Kaelen felt ice in his veins. "What others? What cousins?"
"Theron," Lyra breathed, tears streaming down her face. "And Liana. And little Marcus. She's been... changing them. Twisting them."
Marik's face went pale. "The Orion cadet branch children. I thought they all perished in the initial attack."
Lyra shook her head wildly. "She's making weapons of them. Twisting the Orion legacy into something dark. Teaching them to hate us. To hunt us."
Kaelen, just eight years old but already carrying the weight of his lineage, felt a cold dread wash over him. "Why would she do that?"
"Because she knows," Lyra said, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. "She knows about the Nova Seed. She knows you're the only one who can awaken it. The others... they're her insurance policy. If she can't have the Seed's power, she'll destroy anyone who might wield it against her."
Marik placed a steadying hand on Kaelen's shoulder. "This changes everything. If Lady Anya has been training Orion heirs in her twisted version of our ways..."
"They'll come for us one day," Lyra interrupted, her eyes seeing a future that made her tremble. "Our own cousins, turned against us. They'll be the blade Aunt Anya uses to cut out the last true Orion heart."
Kaelen looked from his tormented sister to Marik's grim expression. The world had just become infinitely more dangerous. Enemies you didn't know were one thing. Enemies who shared your blood, your legacy, your training, that was something else entirely.
"We need to prepare differently," Marik said quietly. "Facing another Orion... it's not like fighting common soldiers. They'll know our techniques. Our weaknesses."
But eight year old Kaelen Orion looked at his sister's tear-streaked face and made a vow that would shape his entire path. "I won't kill them," he said, his voice surprisingly firm. "They're family. They're victims too. I'll save them. I'll bring them home."
Marik's expression was grim. "That's a noble sentiment, boy. But when the time comes, you may have to choose between their lives and yours. Between their freedom and Lyra's safety."
Kaelen met the old armsmaster's gaze steadily. "Then I'll find another way. The Orion way has always been about protection. That includes protecting family, even from themselves."
It was a child's promise, made in the dim light of a scrap-town shelter, surrounded by rust and desperation. But as Lyra's visions faded and she finally fell into a peaceful sleep, Kaelen knew this was a promise he would have to keep.
No matter the cost.
---
MAIN STORYLINE CONTINUED (Kaelen's POV)
The Shadow Blades arrived at dusk, when the deep canyons were painted in shades of purple and orange. They didn't come with the crude violence of the Razor Gang or the mechanical precision of the Mechanicus hunters. They came like ghosts so silent, seamless, and utterly terrifying.
Kaelen was conducting an advanced training session with his twenty best students when the air grew cold. The Cosmic Current, which had been flowing strongly through their training ground, suddenly felt... contaminated.
// WARNING: MULTIPLE ORION ENERGY SIGNATURES DETECTED //
// ENHANCEMENTS: CYBERNETIC AND BIOLOGICAL //
// THREAT LEVEL: EXTREME //
"They're here," Lyra said from the sidelines, her face pale. "Our cousins."
The Shadow Blades emerged from the shadows between derelict ships, five figures in sleek black armor that seemed to drink the fading light. But it was their energy signatures that made Kaelen's blood run cold. They felt like Orion warriors, but twisted, corrupted. Like beautiful music played on broken instruments.
The lead Blade removed her helmet, revealing a face that was both familiar and alien. Liana Orion their cousin, who should have been playing in the gardens of Orion Prime, not hunting them in a scrap town.
"Hello, little cousins," Liana said, her voice carrying the cultured tones of the Orion court but edged with something cold and artificial. "Aunt Anya sends her regards."
Kaelen stepped forward, his students forming up behind him. They were scared, he could feel their fear in the Current, but they held their positions. "Liana. You don't have to do this."
Liana's smile was a razor cut. "Oh, but I do. You see, while you were playing in the dirt, we were being remade. Perfected. The Orion legacy was always meant to evolve, not cling to sentimental traditions."
// ANALYSIS: SUBJECT LIANA ORION //
// ENHANCEMENTS: NEURAL ACCELERATORS, REFLEX BOOSTERS, COMBAT PRECOGNITION //
// WEAKNESS: ENERGY SIGNATURE SHOWS FORCED SYNCHRONIZATION //
The Nova Seed's analysis confirmed what Kaelen already felt. Their enhancements weren't natural growth,they were impositions. Violations of the Orion way.
"Your energy feels wrong, Liana," Kaelen said, keeping his voice calm. "The Current rejects you."
Anger flashed in Liana's eyes. "The Current is a crutch for the weak. True power comes from certainty. From removing variables like emotion, like doubt."
She gestured, and the other Blades spread out in a classic Orion flanking pattern, but accelerated to impossible speeds. They moved like blurs, their enhanced bodies defying normal physics.
"Students, defensive formation Delta!" Kaelen commanded.
To their credit, his trainees reacted well. They fell into the defensive patterns he'd drilled into them, their movements synchronized through the Cosmic Current that connected them. But they were children facing monsters.
The fight was brutal. The Shadow Blades moved with terrifying speed and precision, their enhanced abilities making them nearly untouchable. But Kaelen noticed something,they fought like machines. Efficient, yes, but predictable. They lacked the intuitive creativity of true Orion warriors.
// OBSERVATION: ENHANCEMENTS CREATE PATTERN DEPENDENCY //
// RECOMMENDATION: UNORTHODOX TACTICS //
Kaelen stopped fighting like an Orion and started fighting like a scrap town survivor. He used the environment, kicking up clouds of rust, using broken machinery for cover, fighting dirty in ways no properly trained Orion would consider.
It worked. The Blades' pattern-based fighting style struggled to adapt to his unpredictability.
"Fight with honor!" Liana snarled as Kaelen used a discarded hydraulic piston to block her energy blade.
"Honor doesn't mean stupidity," Kaelen shot back. "The Orion way has always been about adapting. About using every tool available."
He reached out through the Cosmic Current, not to attack, but to feel his cousins' energy signatures. Beneath the artificial enhancements, he could still sense them,the real Liana, Theron, Marcus. Trapped behind walls of programming and conditioning.
"Remember the gardens, Liana," he said softly, even as he blocked her furious attacks. "Remember the crystal fountains. The starlight roses. Father reading us stories about the first Orion explorers."
For a fraction of a second, Liana hesitated. A crack in her programming. A flicker of the cousin he remembered.
Then it was gone, replaced by cold fury. "Sentimental weakness," she spat. "That kind of thinking destroyed House Orion."
But Kaelen had seen what he needed to see. They were still in there. His vow to save them wasn't just childhood naivete, it was possible.
The battle raged on, but the Shadow Blades' initial advantage had faded. Kaelen's students, though outmatched individually, fought as a cohesive unit, their synchronization through the Cosmic Current allowing them to support each other in ways the individually enhanced Blades couldn't counter.
When Gorak and his reinforcements arrived, the Blades made a tactical retreat, vanishing back into the shadows as quickly as they'd appeared.
But as Kaelen watched them go, he knew this was only the beginning. The first skirmish in a war that would tear at the very heart of what it meant to be an Orion.
And he knew, with chilling certainty, that he would have to face his family again. Soon.
---
LIANA ORION'S POV
The programming screamed at Liana to complete the mission. Acquire the targets. Neutralize resistance. Return to base. Simple, clean, efficient.
But nothing about Kaelen was simple.
When she'd first seen him standing there in that rusted canyon, surrounded by his ragtag students, she'd expected to feel triumph. Or at least the cold satisfaction of superior capability. Instead, she felt... something else. Something the programmers swore they'd removed.
He moved like Father. Not the technical precision of the Orion forms,she could match that easily with her enhancements, but the spirit of them. The flow, the connection, the joy in the movement that had always separated true Orion warriors from mere technicians.
When he spoke of the gardens, of Uncle Alistair's stories, the memory barriers shuddered. For a terrifying moment, she remembered the scent of starlight roses, the sound of her cousins laughing, the warmth of a family that hadn't yet been torn apart by ambition and betrayal.
Then the conditioning reasserted itself, flooding her system with calming chemicals and reinforcing the core programming: Sentiment is weakness. Tradition is stagnation. The new Orion way is strength through purity. Through removal of variables.
But as she retreated with her team, the ghost of that memory lingered. Kaelen wasn't the undisciplined child the briefings had described. He was... more. Different. He fought with the heart of an Orion but the adaptability of a survivor. A combination Aunt Anya's programmers had never accounted for.
Worse, she'd felt the Nova Seed's presence. It wasn't just a tool he wielded,it was part of him. Their connection felt natural, organic, unlike her own enhancements which sometimes felt like wearing someone else's skin.
The other Blades reported efficiently as they extracted, their voices flat and analytical. No doubts. No questions. Just mission parameters and performance metrics.
Liana alone was silent, wrestling with something she couldn't name. Something that felt suspiciously like the beginnings of a thought her programming should have eliminated.
Kaelen had looked at her not as an enemy, not as a corrupted cousin, but as someone to be saved. The arrogance should have been infuriating. Instead, it sparked a dangerous, traitorous hope.
What if there was another way? What if the strength Aunt Anya offered came at too high a price? What if some things were worth protecting, even if they weren't efficient?
The programming immediately suppressed these thoughts, but the seed had been planted. And in the sterile silence of her enhanced mind, Liana Orion began, for the first time in years, to truly think.
PREQUEL FOR CHAPTER 8
Five Years Ago — The First Fracture
The vision came to Lyra during a thunderstorm that rattled their shelter with its fury. She saw Kaelen, years older, standing before a massive gate of living light. Behind him stood an army not of soldiers, but of ordinary people, scavengers, merchants, farmers all glowing with the same energy Kaelen now wielded.
But it was what stood before the gate that made her scream, their cousins, but transformed into monsters of metal and flesh, their Orion heritage twisted into something grotesque and powerful.
"They'll have a choice," she whispered when the vision passed, her body trembling. "The same choice you'll have to make, Kaelen. To embrace the light or surrender to the machine."
Kaelen, now nine, looked at his hands. "What choice?"
"To become a god or remain human," Lyra said, her eyes seeing things that hadn't happened yet. "The Nova Seed offers both paths. So does the Mechanicus enhancement. Two roads to power. One requires sacrifice. The other requires losing everything that makes you you."
Marik, listening from the doorway, looked grim. "The ancient texts spoke of this. The Orion bloodline was always meant to be humanity's bridge to something greater. But bridges can be crossed in both directions."
That night, Kaelen looked at the still-sealed Nova Seed with new understanding. It wasn't just a weapon or a tool. It was a test. And the final exam was coming sooner than any of them realized.