The sky above the Brooklyn docks was anything but natural. It wasn't the deep black of night, but a sickly gray—a bruised shade of blue and sulfur, choked by the perpetual New York smog and the sticky humidity of the East River. The smell was a nauseating blend of sea salt, burnt diesel, and urban decay. To Aurelian Valerius, it was the smell of the prison he called his life.
Aurelian wiped the sweat stinging his eyes with his sleeve for the umpteenth time. His work clothes, once blue, were now an armor of grease and industrial oil. At twenty-two, he felt fifty. His joints screamed with every movement, and his back was a map of throbbing pain. He wasn't a man; he was a function: load, unload, repeat.
An orphan of the gang wars that had turned Brooklyn into a battlefield in the nineties, he had no memory of a warm home. His only family was the mechanical hum of the cranes and the deafening crash of containers hitting concrete. He was an invisible cog, a wearing part in the city's great capitalist machine. A cog that no one would bother to replace if it were to snap.
"Valerius! Get your ass moving!"
The shout came from Mike, the foreman. A man whose cruelty was matched only by his girth, cinched into a leather belt that seemed ready to buckle under the weight of his arrogance.
"This cargo from Dubai isn't going to empty itself by divine intervention! If you want your paycheck at the end of the week, push that pallet jack or I'll toss you in the drink!"
Aurelian didn't answer. Answering required energy he preferred to save for his muscles. He gripped the cold metal handles and pulled with all his might. His boots slipped on the greasy floor, but he finally moved the ton of equipment. In his mind, however, a dull voice growled. A feeling of permanent displacement, as if he were a lion trapped in a rat cage. He had always been waiting for something. A sign. An order. A purpose that would give meaning to this suffering.
It was nearly 8:00 PM when Aurelian finally left the port. His legs felt like lead. He was walking mechanically toward the bus stop when he was stopped by a crowd in front of an electronics store window. About twenty people stood there, frozen in a cathedral-like silence, their faces lit by the bluish glow of a dozen television screens.
On the screens, the images were chaotic, filmed from an army helicopter. They showed a dusty road in Afghanistan, littered with the burning husks of Humvees. Black blood on red sand. But what shifted Aurelian's world was a close-up of a twisted dog tag, picked up by a medic.
It was Leo's. His only friend. The only kid from the orphanage who had made it out by joining the army, hoping the uniform would give him the dignity the streets denied him.
Then, the journalist's voice fell, bone-chilling:
"Authorities confirm the convoy was escorting billionaire Tony Stark. The Stark Industries genius is missing after an ambush of unprecedented brutality. Forty soldiers perished in the attack..."
Forty lives. Forty men like Leo, cut down to protect a warmonger who grew rich on their backs. Aurelian felt a cold rage rise from deep within his gut. It wasn't sadness; it was absolute disgust. The world was a cesspool. A bloody mess run by suited parasites and reckless geniuses.
"Someone should bring order..." he thought, his knuckles whitening as he clenched his fists. "Someone should break them all so this chaos stops."
At that exact moment, reality tore open. The sound of taxis vanished. The passersby around him froze like wax statues. A golden light, purer and more violent than any star, exploded before his eyes.
[ ASCENSION PROTOCOL INITIALIZED ] [ CANDIDATE ANALYSIS: AURELIAN VALERIUS ] [ AFFINITY: 99.8% - PRIMARCH LINEAGE DETECTED ]
Aurelian recoiled, hitting a lamppost that now seemed made of glass. Lines of text scrolled through his vision, engraved in majestic Gothic typography, surrounded by winged skulls and double-headed eagles.
"Human. This world rushes toward its ruin. The Xenos approach, and traitors already crawl within your ranks. Do you desire the power to rule, or the right to die with the herd?"
A searing pain, like a white-hot iron spike, pierced his skull. Memories that weren't his flooded his brain. He saw fortress-monasteries perched on snowy peaks, colossal warriors in blue ceramite armor, space cathedrals firing salvos capable of vaporizing continents. He didn't know these names, and yet, he knew: The Emperor. The Warp. The Heresy.
[ STARTER PACK AVAILABLE ] [ ADVISORY: PROCEED TO A DISCREET LOCATION FOR PHYSICAL MANIFESTATION ]
Aurelian caught his breath. Time resumed its course. Without a backward glance, he ran to his studio in Hell's Kitchen. A miserable room on the top floor, where the wallpaper was peeling in strips. He locked the door, pushed a dresser in front of it, and collapsed onto his bed.
"Do it," he breathed. "Activate the pack."
The air in the room suddenly grew heavy, charged with the scent of ozone, incense, and sacred oil. Three objects materialized on his rickety kitchen table. A laspistol, massive and angular. A chainsword whose adamantium teeth seemed to thirst for flesh.
And a man.
He seemed to step out of the very shadows in the corner of the room. He wore a long black leather coat trimmed with red, and a high-peaked hat adorned with a silver skull. His face was a parchment of scars, his eyes two beads of flint.
"Commissar Severus Vane, at your service, my Lord," he said in a voice that made the windowpanes vibrate. He dropped to one knee, but his gaze remained that of a predator.
Aurelian looked at his own hands. They were shaking. Vane stood up and approached. There was no softness in him. He grabbed Aurelian's arm with a grip of iron.
"You have the blood of gods in your veins, Aurelian, but for now, you are nothing but a piece of soft meat. This world has made you weak. We are going to burn that weakness away."
Vane swept the pizza boxes and food scraps off the table with a contemptuous backhand.
"One does not sleep when the Imperium awakens. First exercise: strip this laspistol. One hundred times. If you fail, you lose a finger."
Aurelian stared at the Commissar. He understood that his life as a dockside orphan was over. The night was only beginning, and it was going to last a very long time.