Nocturne was loud in ways Armageddon hadn't been.
Armageddon had been loud with industry — the constant mechanical roar of manufactorums, the grind of hive city infrastructure, the sound of millions of people living in proximity to each other whether they wanted to or not. That sound had been relentless but predictable, a noise that had a source and a reason and stayed where it was.
Nocturne was loud with the planet itself.
The wind came off the ashfields with a low continuous push that Lilith felt through her clothes and against her face the moment she stepped off the drop shuttle. The ground underfoot was dark rock, old lava flows cooled and cracked into patterns that spread in every direction. In the middle distance a volcanic vent breathed upward in a slow steady column, and the light it cast across the landscape was amber and red and moved with the particular quality of firelight. Not the flat artificial light of the orphanage or the recycled light of the ship, but something alive, something that had been burning since before anyone present had existed.
The sky was dark. Not night-dark — the system's sun was up somewhere behind the ash cloud layer, diffuse and amber, casting the whole world in a permanent late-afternoon quality that she suspected was simply what daytime looked like here.
Lilith stood on the landing apron and looked at it.
Dangerous, she thought. Yes. I see that but beautiful.
Eve was beside her, taking the environment in with the quiet systematic attention she gave new places. Lysander was attempting to look in six directions simultaneously, which was going about as well as it always did, his bag clutched in both hands and his mouth slightly open.
"The rocks are enormous," he said, to no one in particular.
He wasn't wrong.
They were moving quickly. Ha'ken had indicated as much on the shuttle descent — the Chapter Master was expecting them, the meeting had been arranged, there wasn't time to settle in first. The three children moved with the group of Salamanders through a fortress-monastery that was exactly what a fortress-monastery built into the side of a volcanic mountain on Nocturne should be: immense, dark, lit by fire, smelling of hot stone and metal and something that might have been forge-work from somewhere deep in the structure.
Lilith kept pace and looked at everything she could look at without slowing down.
And then felt it.
She glanced back at her shadow.
It was wrong. It feels wrong though now that she looks at it is just slightly off. The angle of it, the way it sat against the dark stone floor. Like something was sitting in it that shouldn't have been there.
She thought of the quarters on the ship. The cold. The hand on her neck.
Is that you? she thought, at the shadow.
The shadow did nothing. It was a shadow. It looked like a shadow and that's that.
But the back of her neck prickled, just faintly, and she turned back to the front and kept walking and thought about what would happen if that presence chose to make itself known here, now, in a fortress-monastery full of Space Marines, in front of a Chapter Master.
Don't, she thought, at nothing in particular. Please don't. Not right now.
The Chapter Master's hall was large enough that even Ha'ken didn't fill it.
That was the first indication of scale. The second was the ceiling, which was high enough that the fire-light from the braziers along the walls didn't reach it, leaving the upper portion of the room in a darkness that the amber light only suggested at the edges. The floor was dark stone, polished by years of use. At the far end, on a seat that was functional rather than ceremonial but carried its weight regardless, sat a figure in armor that had seen more than Lilith wanted to calculate.
Chapter Master Tu'Shan.
Though she never heard the Chapter Master's name in her past life and the name only appeared in this life.
She recognized the name from her research in the orphanage library. Regent of Prometheus. One of the most respected Chapter Masters in the Imperium. A Salamander in the fullest sense of the word — warrior, protector, the particular breed of Space Marine that had made the chapter's reputation in a galaxy that ate reputations for breakfast.
Lilith walked into the hall and felt the weight of it settle on her immediately. The ceiling, the braziers, the figures standing beside the seat at the far end. Her hands were not shaking but they wanted to and she was actively discouraging them.
Beside her, Eve was perfectly calm. She looked at the hall the way she looked at most new environments — reading it, filing it, entirely unbothered by the scale of it or the people in it. If she found the Chapter Master's presence any more significant than any other room she'd walked into, she gave absolutely no indication.
Lysander was gripping the strap of his bag with both hands.
He was doing his best. That was evident. He was standing straight and looking forward and keeping his mouth closed, all of which required visible effort, and the overall effect was of someone who had decided to be very serious and was succeeding through sheer determination.
His knuckles were slightly white on the bag strap.
Tu'Shan looked at them for a long moment. Beside him stood several figures Lilith immediately classed as important without knowing their specific roles. The way they held themselves, the way they occupied the room. People who had been doing significant things for a long time and had the particular stillness that came with it.
Tu'Shan himself was not cold. He wasn't warm either. He was simply and completely present in the way that very serious people in very serious positions sometimes were — all of his attention in the room, none of it withheld, none of it performed. His red eyes moved across the three children with the measured attention of someone taking inventory.
Ha'ken stopped a respectful distance from him and brought his fist to his chest.
"My lord," he said. "As reported. The three children."
"Ha'ken's reports were detailed," Tu'Shan said. His voice was deep and unhurried, carrying the hall without effort. "I have questions regardless. Reports and people rarely match perfectly." He looked at Lilith. "You first."
Lilith met his gaze.
No schemes or lies, she told herself. Just the truth. That was the plan.
Her hands wanted to shake. She didn't let them.
"My name is Lilith," she said. "I was created aboard a Mechanicus research vessel as an experimental gene-seed implantation. The project designation was Alpha Plus." She kept her voice level. "I have enhanced memory and cognition. One red eye, one gold. The gold one was blind from creation because it's a Navigator's eye. It isn't anymore, and I don't fully understand why." She paused. "I have awakened as a psyker. I can't control it with any consistency. The two times I have used it, the trigger was emotional rather than deliberate, and the result was destructive both times. I'm not going to minimize what that means."
Tu'Shan said nothing. His expression didn't shift. He was simply listening, fully, in the way that made you aware he wasn't going to miss anything.
"My sister," Lilith continued, glancing briefly at Eve. "Her project designation was Omega Minus. She was created as a Pariah gene-seed experiment. Her Blank field is — I'll be direct, I haven't experienced it buy yhe Magos who created her couldn't remain in the same room with her without being affected. It isn't only her strength that makes her dangerous, though her physical capability is comparable to an Eversor Assassin according to the records." She held Tu'Shan's gaze. "When she's in proximity to me, her field is suppressed enough to be manageable. When she's separated from me, it expands fully." A pause. "She heals from injury quickly. So do I."
Eve stood beside her through all of this without expression. She didn't have the details of her own construction to offer and she knew it, so she offered nothing and let Lilith speak and trusted that what was being said was accurate, which it was.
Tu'Shan looked at Eve directly. "You have nothing to add?"
Eve looked back at him. "She said it correctly," she said.
Tu'Shan held her gaze for a moment. Then he looked toward Lysander.
Lysander looked back at him.
Then at his bag strap. Then back at Tu'Shan.
"His name is Lysander," Lilith started, stepping in, because Lysander had gone slightly pale.
"I can do it," Lysander said quietly, to Lilith. He squared his shoulders. Then he looked back at Tu'Shan and took a breath that was very slightly unsteady. "My name is Lysander. I'm six. I was at the orphanage with Lilith and Eve on Armageddon." He swallowed. "I died during the Ork attack. Sister Marian checked and she's a medicae nun and she's very good at her job so she would know." A pause. "And then I came back. Because I promised someone I would protect Lilith. I meant it when I said it." He held Tu'Shan's gaze with the focused determination of someone who had decided this was important enough to be brave about. "I still mean it."
Tu'Shan looked at him steadily.
"This is accurate?" he said, to Ha'ken.
"I arrived at the scene shortly after," Ha'ken said. "Sister Marian's assessment was clear and thorough. I witnessed the boy afterward. The wounds were gone. He was alive." A beat. "I have no explanation that fits within ordinary understanding, my lord."
Tu'Shan looked back at Lysander.
Lysander maintained eye contact with visible effort. Then, with slightly less steadiness but complete sincerity, he added: "I also wanted to ask. If it's alright." He glanced at Lilith, then at Eve, then back at Tu'Shan. "Could I stay with Lilith and Eve? I know I'm not like them. I don't have special things. I just — I made a promise and I'm better at keeping it if I'm near them." A small pause. "Also they're my friends. My best friends. And I don't really have other ones."
The hall was very quiet.
The silence held for a moment.
Then Tu'Shan looked at Ha'ken again.
"You vouched for them," he said.
"I did, my lord."
"And your assessment stands."
"Without reservation."
Tu'Shan was quiet for another moment. When he spoke again his voice was the same — deep, unhurried, carrying no more weight than it needed to and no less.
"A psyker and a Blank," he said. "Created together. One balancing the other." He looked at Lilith. "And between them, a child who should not be alive, who came back."
"Yes," Lilith said.
"Brother Ha'ken's report included a belief," Tu'Shan said. "That one of you carries something of the Emperor's grace."
The braziers breathed. The amber light moved across the dark stone floor.
Lilith's hands were not shaking. They wanted to.
"I believe that may be true," she said carefully. "I don't have the full shape of it yet. But I intend to find out. And I intend to tell you what I find, my lord." A pause. "I've learned recently that withholding things from people who've earned honesty tends to go poorly. I'm trying to do better at that."
Something moved in Tu'Shan's expression. Not humor, not warmth exactly, but the recognition of someone who had heard a true thing said plainly and had noted it as such.
He looked at Ha'ken one more time. "You said she was more than she appeared."
"I said she was a great deal more than she appeared," Ha'ken said. "My lord. I stand by it."
Tu'Shan looked at the three of them for a long moment. The kind of look that had been practiced over decades of looking at people and situations and deciding what they were and what they required.
"You will remain at Prometheus," he said. "Under Ha'ken's oversight. You will be assessed properly, with time and care. You will not be used as instruments." He looked at Eve when he said this and then at Lilith, and the look was steady and direct and meant to be heard. "That is not what we do here."
Lilith breathed.
Tu'Shan looked at Lysander. "You will be housed with Lilith and Eve. You will be cared for and educated and watched over." A pause, and something in his expression shifted just slightly. Not quite warmth, but the acknowledgment of it. "Your promise will not require you to be separated from those you made it for."
Lysander's grip on the bag strap loosened.
He let out a small breath.
"Thank you, my lord," he said. And then, because he was Lysander and six years old and had been holding himself together under considerable pressure for quite some time: "That's a very good decision."
The figure beside Tu'Shan made the sound again.
Tu'Shan looked at Lysander for one long moment.
"Indeed," he said.
He looked at all three of them a final time.
"Nocturne tests everything that stands on it," he said. "I won't pretend otherwise. The ashfields, the volcanoes, the creatures — this world does not make exceptions." He paused. "But nothing on it stands alone. That is the first thing you will learn here and it is the most important." He held their gaze steadily. "See that you remember it."
The hall was quiet.
Lilith thought about Ha'ken kneeling in a medicae ward. About Sister Mercy walking through a hive city at night. About Lysander with a picture book and a metal Sentinel and a promise kept through death.
"We already know," she said.
Tu'Shan looked at her for one more moment.
Then he nodded. Once. The nod of someone who had asked a question without asking it and received the answer they were looking for.
"Dismissed," he said. "Ha'ken will see to your quarters."
They turned to go. Lilith glanced back at her shadow one more time as they moved toward the door.
It looked like a shadow.
Just a shadow.
But she kept the thought filed carefully, for the conversation she was going to have with Ha'ken as soon as there was a proper time and a proper place. She walked out of the Chapter Master's hall into the amber firelit corridors of Prometheus with Nocturne's fire-light moving on the walls around her and did not let any of it show on her face.