The void between stars was a patient thing.
Kael had learned to admire its discipline — no waste, no sound, no reason to hurry.
In the weeks since Ghorval, the Auric Silence had crossed the Segmentum Solar with slow purpose, its holds packed with men who slept in steel cocoons and dreamt of cities they would never see again.
Kael rarely slept.
When he did, it was shallow — the kind of rest that folds neatly around awareness. His dreams were black and edged with sound. Sometimes he saw corridors that weren't there, and sometimes he saw five seconds of future: a door swinging open, a muzzle flash, the moment before a man screamed. But those moments bled together and were gone when he woke. He didn't call it prophecy. He called it timing.
The orders had come through Malcador's seal, stamped in the language of absolutes.
Target: Aegon Cluster.
Objective: Compliance by any means that preserves production capacity.
Forces attached: VII Legion elements, Luna Wolves auxiliary fleet, Imperial Army cohorts.
Note: The Emperor's personal observation may occur.
That last line changed the air aboard ship.
Even among the gene-forged, the idea of the Emperor's presence — even indirect — pressed like a weight. Conversations shortened. Chaplains (for other legions, not theirs) preached more fervently. Men cleaned weapons that were already immaculate.
The Night's Children had no sermons.
Kael stood in the strategium, reading the holo display where three red icons pulsed across Aegon Primus, a hive world that had forgotten how to kneel.
"Rebellion began with the guilds," Var Juren said from behind him, his voice a precise, tired baritone. "They refused tithe escalation, then seized manufactorums. The Luna Wolves already broke orbit. Dorn's sons hold the orbital platforms. We are assigned to the lower hives."
Kael nodded once. "Urban war again."
"Who better?" Juren's augmetic eye ticked. "The Sigillite's protégé must be tested."
Kael didn't rise to the bait. He studied the holo — the immense vertical labyrinth of Aegon's lower hive tiers, each one a kilometre-thick wound of smoke and population. The underhive — his kind of place. The place where the Imperium's clean words met dirt.
"How many civilians?" he asked.
"Eight billion registered. Twice that uncounted."
Kael's eyes flicked up, black against the blue glow of the map. "Then we'll need a story."
---
They made landfall twelve hours later.
The drop bay filled with the hiss of pressure equalization and the vibration of re-entry burns. Kael walked between rows of his marines as they locked helms and checked seals. The hum of reactors filled the air like a heartbeat too large for one body.
Malchion caught his eye across the deck. "Luna Wolves already in the upper tiers," he voxed. "Reports of heavy resistance."
"Let them make noise," Kael said. "We'll make results."
The gunship shuddered, struck atmosphere, and screamed toward the hive's surface — a single black tooth falling toward a metal corpse.
They broke through the smog layer. Aegon Primus rose below, impossibly vast: mile-high stacks of arcology and ash, walls that had never seen sunlight, lights in patterns like veins of fire.
Kael saw none of its beauty — only the shapes of resistance, the arteries that needed cutting.
---
They landed in a crater that had once been a plaza. Statues lay broken, their faces eroded into anonymity. The smell was thick with old oil, ozone, and the wet copper tang of bodies buried shallow.
The Night's Children spread through the ruins, cloaks drawn, weapons low.
Their arrival drew no cheers, no jeers — only the silence of people who'd seen too much war to believe in saviors.
Kael advanced to the edge of a broken avenue. A Luna Wolves patrol had passed through earlier — he could see the scorch marks and the powder burns, the clean, efficient brutality of Horus's sons. They had been here, and they had left their story written in blood.
Malchion crouched beside him. "They went loud," he said.
"They always do." Kael's tone carried neither envy nor admiration. "We'll finish it quiet."
---
The contact came four blocks later.
Gunfire echoed through the hollow streets — disciplined, controlled, nothing like the militia panic he'd heard on Ghorval. These were soldiers. Trained. Someone had armed them with proper weapons and taught them how to fight.
"Squad Delta, flanking east," Kael ordered. "Gamma, stay high. No lights."
They moved like wraiths, shadows drawn across shadow. Kael's hearts stayed steady. He could feel the darkness flexing around him — responsive, obedient, eager.
When the ambush came, it was elegant. A wall of flares, a cascade of debris, fire from the balconies above. A textbook kill zone.
Kael's vision fractured — a sudden stutter of time. He saw himself die in one heartbeat, saw the bullet's path, saw the angle of descent, the geometry of slaughter. Then it was gone, and the world caught up.
He moved first.
"Down!" he barked, and the Night's Children obeyed before they knew why.
The first volley passed over their heads. Kael rolled to a broken column, raised his weapon, and fired in rhythm. Each bolt found a target exactly where his vision had placed it five seconds earlier.
Joras's voice cut through the comms. "Left flank secure."
"Take the high ground," Kael said. "No survivors."
Darkness gathered where he stood — not metaphor, not light-starved air, but something else. The muzzle flash from the enemy's guns dimmed, as though swallowed. The rebels shouted, disoriented, their optics dying one by one.
Malchion glanced toward Kael. "What are you—"
"Focus," Kael snapped.
Within seconds, the ambushers were gone. Not killed — erased. Their bodies lay where they had fallen, but the blood didn't glisten. It simply vanished into the dark, as if the light refused to look.
Kael exhaled. The air tasted cold, metallic. His vision cleared.
Malchion's voice came quietly over the private channel. "That wasn't shadow."
"No," Kael said.
"What was it?"
"Discipline."
He started walking before the conversation could continue.
---
By the time they reached the upper tiers, the fighting was over. The Luna Wolves had taken the governor's palace with their usual spectacle — broken marble, banners torn in half, executions already in progress.
Kael watched from the shadows as Horus's sons cheered their victory, the laughter of conquerors who still believed in glory.
One of their officers approached — a broad man with a wolf-sigil scarred into his pauldron. "You're the quiet ones," he said. "The Night's Children, yes?"
Kael inclined his head. "Captain Kael Varan."
"Captain Rhun, Luna Wolves. Your work below was clean."
Kael studied the man's face — the faint grin, the confidence. "Yours was… visible."
Rhun laughed, a genuine sound. "We leave the fear to you, then."
Kael didn't smile. "We're efficient teachers."
The two warriors regarded each other a moment longer — two interpretations of the Emperor's will, standing on the same stone, seeing entirely different empires.
---
Later, aboard the Auric Silence, Var Juren called him to the strategium.
"The campaign is concluded," the commander said. "Compliance achieved in seventy-three hours. The Emperor's observation fleet has withdrawn. We will redeploy within the week."
Kael saluted. "Acknowledged."
Juren hesitated, the lines around his human eye tightening. "The Sigillite sent a private addendum for you. Coded."
Kael took the slate, recognizing Malcador's seal — nine rings and a key. He read it once. Then again.
The search for your Father begins. Watch the stars beyond the Eastern Fringe.
He felt the words like a pulse in his bones.
He didn't know what Father meant — not yet — but the word felt heavy, prophetic, inevitable.
The darkness around him stirred, whispering across the deck like smoke caught in a draft.
He closed the slate, sealed the thought behind his expression, and looked back to the void.
The stars were changing. He could feel it.
And somewhere, in that infinite night, something was watching back.