The world had no name the Imperium kept. It was a slate-and-iron moon with bracken forests and manufactoria that chewed ore and men in equal measure. The Raven Guard called it "trouble," and set about making the word temporary.
Kael watched their approach from the Watcher Above's forward gallery while the strike craft of Deliverance descended in arrowhead silence. Raven Guard
Thunderhawks flew like thoughts: no contrails, no boasting. A wing dipped once to acknowledge his ship on a shadow-coded channel and then was gone into cloud.
"Orders received," Veyra said behind him, voice thinner these days, never weak. "We support from the dark. Surgical insertions only. No banners. No speeches."
"Good," Kael said. He found himself saying that more often as the years shrank. "We'll match their pace."
Joras joined them, one hand on a rail, eyes tracing the Raven Guard's attack vectors on the hololithic map. "They hunt like we used to."
"We still do," Kael replied.
"Some of us," Joras said, and did not elaborate.
The first insertion was into a filament-thin canyon cut by ancient water and recent neglect. The Veiled Hand moved in a file that looked accidental until you tried to pin it down. Raven Guard scouts were already ghosts across the ridge, their black armour the colour of intention.
Kael's five seconds unfolded: a sentry coughing into a glove; a tripwire looped too high because the mechanic who set it was tall; a patrol leader who would check left twice and never right. He adjusted them the way a craftsman corrects a line. The Varanshade drank rain and gave him back stillness.
A Raven Guard sergeant eased out of the rock with a motion that hadn't learned friction. He touched forefingers together in mute greeting, then signed in the clipped cant of Deliverance: We go. You stitch behind. His helm lenses caught a sliver of light and didn't reflect it.
Kael returned the sign: We leave the room working.
The sergeant's head tilted a fraction. Approval.
They flowed. The manufactorum's outer galleries were half-lit and poorly loved. Men in stolen uniforms stood at corners and held rifles like hopes. Kael let the darkness gather around his left hand, a hush that turned echo into breath, and slid past places where noise wanted to be born.
In the holding pens, the Raven Guard cut chains with tools that didn't sing; the Veiled Hand taped wrists and wrote SAFE on forearms in grease pencil. In the control room, Kael found the foreman's ledger and noticed it had been written by three different hands and a gun.
"Veyra," he voxed, "send pallets to the east gate. Food, batteries, blankets. No symbols."
"Filed," she replied. "Also—your lunch, Captain. If you intend to start eating again."
"I will," Kael said, and realised it was a promise to someone who might not be there to hear it soon.
A quiet cough—Raven Guard sign for trouble—came from the rotor stairs. Kael turned and three men stepped into his five seconds all at once. They wore the colours of the planet's militia, eyes raw, mouths set to anger because fear was unpracticed. The one in front brought up a lasgun.
"Down," Kael said, not loud. The word carried, because purpose does.
The muzzle hesitated. He reached, took the gun at the wrist, and raised it just off line with a small motion that had ended a thousand arguments. The shot went into a duct, screaming steam. Joras's knife clicked the second man's trigger finger into compliance. The third man dropped his weapon like a man dropping a lie.
"We're not here to empty rooms," Kael said. "We're here to make them work."
"Work for who?" the first man spat.
"For you," Kael said. "If you stop pretending you want to die."
A Raven Guard captain appeared at his shoulder with the silence of agreement. "These three know routes," the soft voice said through a grill that made words modest. "We'll take them to the east gate."
Kael nodded. "We have soup."
The captain allowed a whisper of humour. "Then you have us."
They cleared the plant in under an hour without a single corpse left to explain. Outside, the wind pressed the bracken flat in long sighs; above, Thunderhawks moved like understated punctuation across a sentence already decided.
Corax himself did not descend. He sent a captain with a token: small, metal, feathered at the edges. On one side, a raven's head; on the other, a single word: USE.
Kael turned it in his hand. "Tell your Lord Primarch he honours me."
"He says you honour the work," the captain replied, then leaned in a fraction. "Watch the Warmaster's sons."
Kael's eyes narrowed. "Why?"
"They smile too easily," the captain said, and was gone into the evening rain.
They left the slate-and-iron moon with its manufactoria humming to a schedule that didn't need a whip. The Watcher Above and the Raven Guard strike cruiser parted without fanfare, each ship folding back into the roles the Crusade carved for them.
In the bridge's pale light, Veyra leaned on her cane longer than she had to. Kael noticed the way her left hand trembled once, then stilled through will alone.
"Report," he said, because rituals are scaffolds.
"Two hundred ninety-seven liberated," she read, voice steady. "Forty-seven conscripted into local defence with Raven Guard oversight. Six pallets left behind. One ledger corrected."
"Any losses?"
Her eyes flicked up. "None of ours. Three broken fingers avoided."
He let breath leave him. "Good."
"You did not eat," she added, gentler.
"I will," he said again.
"Before or after you walk the decks like a ghost?" she asked.
"After," he admitted, and she let him go with a look that said this was not an argument worth winning in public.
The Watcher Above crossed three subsectors in days. That was the benefit of Malcador's clearance: doors opened, patrols looked away, astropaths carried messages couched as maintenance logs and weather reports. In the quiet between orders, Kael walked the ship's spines with his helmet under his arm and his shadow at his heel.
Crewmen stepped aside with practiced calm. They had learned not to fear him, only the reasons that brought him. The new intelligence core responded to his presence with precision—a lumen dipped two grades to his preference, a pressure door chose not to whistle, a data-slate unlocked its calm script the instant he touched it.
"Captain," the ship whispered in a voice only he could feel.
"Work," he answered, and the lights agreed.
Sevatar's last words in the hangar of Nightfall returned unbidden. "Get out before he thinks of teaching you another lesson." Kael filed the memory and set it beside a new one: a Raven Guard captain's warning about sons who smiled.
At mess, he took the bowl Veyra had put aside. The soup was thin and honest, like most true things. He ate standing, staring at a star chart that had begun to sprout amber thorns in places where the Crusade should have been smooth.
"Sir," Joras said quietly, stepping into the door. "Transmission from Ultramar. Roboute Guilliman requests a brief exchange while we cross his outer palatine fields."
"On channel," Kael said.
Guilliman's voice was as even as the laws he loved. "Captain Varan. I observe your methods with approval. Your restraint has saved me more men than I can count."
"Your counting is better than most," Kael replied.
"Perhaps," Guilliman said. A pause, then, softer: "Be wary of peace that comes too quickly. Some compliance reports are… optimistic."
"I have noticed," Kael said.
"Then if you pass through Calth's orbit," Guilliman continued, "send me your shadows. I prefer problems announced before they become histories."
"Understood."
The link closed with the dignity of a man putting away a pen.
Veyra had been listening from the galley door. "He'll be a good ruler," she said.
"He's not the ruler," Kael answered.
"No," Veyra agreed. "But he behaves like one in public, which is most of the job."
Her hand shook again. This time she didn't hide it fast enough. Kael set the bowl down.
"How long?" he asked.
"If I lie," she said dryly, "you'll hear it."
He waited.
"A year. Perhaps two," she said. "The kind of tired you can't sleep off."
He looked at her as he'd looked at planets about to die. "I will get you a stasis berth."
"And then I will die later, colder and more confused," she said. "No, Captain. I want to walk until I can't. Then I want to sit and listen to your ship hum. Then I want to stop with my ledger closed."
His jaw worked once. "You will not fall at your station."
"I will be carried with ceremony," she said, with the faintest smile. "Yes. I have scheduled it."
He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them because men watched him for cues he did not intend to give. "I will… try to eat earlier," he said.
That won a true smile. "There's a good heresy," Veyra murmured.
The Watcher Above took a long, slow arc through the dark. Malcador's seals brightened on Kael's console with succinct instructions—visit, observe, do not commit. On the periphery of the Luna Wolves' campaigns, Kael stood on a blasted ridge and watched sons of the Warmaster conduct war like theatre. Their efficiency was blameless. Their smiles were not.
In a bivouac of white ash and broken concrete, a Luna Wolf centurion approached him, helm off, grin perfect. "You're the quiet Night Lord," the man said, as if it were praise. "We wondered if you were real."
"Real enough," Kael said.
"Your way looks… economical," the centurion said, eyes bright. "We prefer to be admired."
"By the living?" Kael asked.
"By anyone who can see," the centurion said, then laughed and clapped him on the shoulder like a friend. Kael let the hand fall away without returning the gesture.
His five seconds gave him a sliver then: Luna Wolves firing in tight ranks at men in black and cobalt; a banner burning; a scream that sounded like a Raven. It was only five seconds. It was enough to make him turn his head and look at the sky.
Back aboard, a sealed message waited in Malcador's small, severe hand: The Warmaster is moving pieces. Keep your silence, Kael.
He read it twice. Then he touched the glass. The ship dimmed, loving the habit.
"Set course," he said.
"For where?" Veyra asked.
"Where the light flickers," he repeated, softer now, as if speaking to a child who would inherit his ledger. "We'll start there."
The Watcher Above turned, her new gravitic hearts thudding once like a promise, and slid into the dark—between brothers, between futures, in the narrow corridor where conscience lives.