seen from Brazil
seen from Syria
seen from United States
seen from Philippines
seen from Netherlands
seen from China
seen from Brazil
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Australia
seen from Russia
seen from United States
seen from South Korea
seen from Türkiye
seen from Maldives
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Russia
seen from Maldives
“Good boy. Now stay there.”
💜🥀X 💙📘
Molten Hearts 1.5
An interlude before we get to the Big Guy himself.
After reaching your quarters to hide and process, a friend comes to your unexpected aid in an unexpected way.
Part 1
(Pardon if the link to the first one doesn't work I am still new to editing posts and the like)
Warnings, if any: There is alcohol, but they only get mildly drunk/buzzed.
You blinked up at the ceiling, as you had for the past hour, clutching your pillow, as you lay sprawled haphazardly upon your bed. You had stopped crying thirty minutes ago, and had gotten over the manic giggle fit around ten minutes back as the ridiculousness of the situation finally hit you.
You were proposed to.
By accident.
By Vulkan.
“Salt and Stars.” You groaned, shoving the pillow in your face to muffle the sound as it devolved into either a sob or hiccup or laugh or… something. You’re not quite sure. But it was dramatic, which you think you’re allowed to be, considering the circumstances.
How did this even happen? How did you end up married, technically, to a Primarch?
‘Oh fuck,’ You sit up, launching your pillow halfway across the room as you did, as you realise, ‘There had been witnesses. His sons had been right there!’
“Oh for fucksakes…!” You whined, diving into overdramatic cries as you buried your face in your hands. This was a diplomatic incident waiting to happen! What the hell were you supposed to do? How were you to explain this? To anyone? Vulkan, the bastard, doesn’t even realise the situation he’s put you in. Perfectly oblivious to the incident that’s primed like a bomb ready to go off at the slightest disturbance, and it had rested right upon your head all the way back to your quarters.
Another realisation.
Shit. Shit!
You had walked all the way to your quarters. While wearing the circlet. Oh shit. Oh fuck. Ohdeargodhadanyoneseenyou-
A hiss cut through your thoughts as a figure strutted through the doorway. Mitzi, another remembrancer recruited from your home planet, waltzed in carrying a bag no doubt laden with dubiously-acquired spoils. The shorter woman stopped dead at the sight of you, mid-panic, and announced plainly-
“Glad I got the good stuff.”
-Before she unceremoniously dumped the contents on the bed, making a show of all she had managed to get. You also spied a bottle of something familiar, and almost cried at the sight. It was the good stuff, too.
“I’ll get the glasses.” You say, even though you’re tempted to just drink from the bottle. However you just made a new set of drinking glasses and you figured you might as well use them now.
“Why get glasses when its already in glass?” Mitzi teased as she settled on the bed, arranging the pillows and settling in as she began to sort the food and drinks she had brought in. You quickly joined her, jumping on the bed and ruining her work to sort the packages by size and colour.
“I could make an argument for civility, but really if I take that bottle, you aren’t getting it back.” You joke with a sly smile, handing over a glass that had sections tinted so it looked like a salamander beast was weaving around the glass from within. A little on the nose, but it was mostly for practice and they turned out better than you expected. So you kept it as a personal set.
Mitzi blew a raspberry as she took the offered glass, and immediately set about pouring herself an unhealthy amount of alcohol, and handed the bottle to you. You also poured an unseemly amount of alcohol into your cup, and you both tapped the glasses together with a happy ‘cheers!’ before downing half your cups and descending upon the hapless snacks piled between you two.
Thankfully, as you both wiled your time away with good food and drink, your friend didn’t ask about what had put you in such a state when she walked in. Curious, most certainly, by the looks she kept giving you. She would ask, eventually, if you didn’t speak up, but she was kind enough to keep her curiosity in check at least for a while yet.
Something you were thankful for. It allowed you to ignore, and even forget a few times, the box sitting quietly on your desk somehow impossible not to notice, even when turned away from it.
You giggled into your cup, refilled and emptied twice, and would need a third refill soon. Mitzi was cackling as she recounted her time confusing a young Salamander when she explained darkrooms and why they’re needed to process light sensitive photos and pictures. He had been confused on how she did that, as baselines don’t have night-vision, and trying to explain the special red lights and why she can’t use night vision goggles.
“I’ll be back.” Mitzi muttered between giggles as she slipped off the bed and stumbled to your bathroom, cursing as she tripped over her own feet. You weren’t sure if it was from the alcohol or it was just clumsiness… or her legs were asleep, from the weird way she had been sitting… or lying. She wasn’t sure what position Mitzi had been in, but it didn’t look comfortable.
You closed your eyes as you finished off your drink, pleasantly buzzed and beginning to lean towards being drunk, especially if you kept going. Which you would, most likely. Enjoy this levity before you donned your armour and gear and went out to the battlefield with Mitzi and the others, to record the events and witness the deeds of those who fought to protect humanity and the Imperium.
You dataslate dinged, somewhere beneath the pillows, and it took a while to dig it out but you did. You smiled when you saw it was from Vulkan, and cradled your cheek with your palm as you braced the dataslate against one of the pillows.
Opening the message, you read the ‘The preparations are taking longer than expected. Unfortunately we will have to reschedule our plans. I’m sorry to make you wait.’ he had sent, disappointed but not surprised. You expected this, really, and probably shouldn’t have offered in the first place, but you wanted to give him a moment of reprieve. He worked so hard, and always seemed to be doing something, never resting. Never making time for himself. Granted, you don’t know the truth of that, as you don’t spend all your time with him. But you would like to give him that, to carve out time to let him relax, to not be a Primarch or Warlord. Just Vulkan. A father. A friend.
You type a quick reply, assuring him that there was no need for apologies and that now you have something to look forward to after the battle. A reminder to rest, and to be safe, you added on impulse that was probably aided by the alcohol running through your veins.
As you send it before you can think better of it, you hear the door to your bathroom hiss open and close. You’re staring at the screen when you hear Mitzi’s curious coo, and the click of a latch being undone. You realise too late what is happening, and the warmth in your blood and haziness in your head turns to ice-cold clarity with the bolt of panic when you hear:
“What the fuck.”
Flinging yourself into a sitting position, you see Mitzi -the fucking sticky beak that she is- holding the box contraining the cause of your crisis. She is staring at it with a blank, if bewildered, expression. As though she cannot comprehend what she is looking at. You understand the feeling, but right now you just feel annoyed and panicked as you stand.
Walking over, you quickly snap the lid shut and lift the box from your friends hands, and place it back on the desk.
Back to reality, then.
Turning to face the music, you are instead faced with your friends scream of “What the fuck is that?” that was hopefully muffled by the walls of your quarters.
“A circlet.” You state, suddenly feeling petulant. Your irritation at your friend's inability to keep her hands to herself makes your tone more snappish than you meant.
“Yeah, no shit.” Mitzi snarled, more incredulous than anything. “Who proposed? When? Why didn’t you say anything?” Her tone turned more to hurt, no doubt thinking you had been keeping secrets about your relationship status.
“Nobody-” You try, stop, and try again, “It’s not- Salt and Stars! It’s not what it looks like.” You grab Mitzi’s hands with your own, squeezing them. “You know that if I was with anyone, you would be the first to know. If you don’t find out first because you’re a terrible snoop, I would tell you before anyone else.” You speak with all the conviction you can muster, which seems to be enough as Mitzi’s hackles lower as she listens.
“Honey, that is a marriage circlet. How is that not a proposal? Or…” she looks down at the box, eyes suddenly suspicious and slightly panicked, “It wasn’t a proposal? Are you married?”
“No.” You say immediately, but you pause as you remember the events. “Maybe…?” You sigh, closing your eyes. “It’s complicated.”
“How?” Mitzi tsk’s before shaking her head slightly, “More importantly. Who?” She presses, eyes focused on you with the same kind of intensity she gets with her craft.
“Vulkan.” You admit easily, knowing that Mitzi would rather face the cold void of space than share a secret between you two. You would do the same.
Mitzi blinked.
And blinked again.
“Vulkan.” Her question is more a statement, but you nod anyway. “Vulkan proposed to you.”
“No. He didn’t.” You say, already exhausted by this conversation.
“He gave you the circlet. You accepted. You’re married.”
“No, Mitzi.” You sigh, releasing her hands to cover your face with your own. “We’re not.”
“How come? Don’t tell me it’s some stupid ‘symbolic’ thing where he’s not committed to you, because if it is I’m going to have to go into hiding after I kill-”
“Mitzi! Don’t even joke about that!” “I’m not.”
Both warmed and concerned by Mitzi’s loyalty, and ease in admitting she would so readily try to kill a nigh-immortal giant, you try to steer the conversation away from treason.
“Regardless. That wasn’t his intent. Nor was marriage.”
“How could that be anything but intent for marriage?”
“He’s Nocturnean, Mitzi.” You try, gently, to lead your friend down the right trail of thought.
“Yes?”
“He’s not from our planet.” You push.
“And?” Mitzi snapped, crossing her arms. You raise your head enough to level her with a look.
“He’s not from our culture.” You try again. Shoving this time. Hoping she gets the point.
“Oh, by the Skies, you care about that?”
…
‘Mitzi you dumbass’, you think as you grab your friend by the shoulders. “Our ways are not his, Mitzi. He doesn’t know what it means.”
The silence that followed was empty and heavy as your friend processed.
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, shit.”
“I know.”
“You’re fucked.”
“I know.”
“Are you going to tell him?” She asked, which was the crux of the matter, wasn’t it? You groan as you rub at your temples, eyes lingering on the box that held the exquisite circlet.
“I have to.” You say quietly. “He’s going to find out sooner or later. Better that it comes from me.”
“But…?” Mitzi presses gently, knowing there's more to it.
“I love him.” You admit. “I really, really do. I didn’t expect it, certainly not with a Primarch, and I was happy to just admire him from afar, to be his friend. Then he gives me this, oblivious as you please and he looked so sad when I froze, but then he looked so happy when I accepted and what else could I do? His sons were there and I know I should have spoken up but I panicked and then he put it on my head and I tried not to say the words but they kind of slipped out but they weren’t the exact words, and I know I have to tell him but we're about to enter a warzone and I can’t talk to him about this right now because it could distract him, but more than that what if he gets mad? What if he thinks I’m trying to trap him or that I lied to him? What if he doesn’t want to be friends anymore? What-”
A hand covers your mouth, and you blink at your friend as she stares at you with wide eyes.
“Okay. I see why you were… in a state, before.” Mitzi starts slowly, because admittedly she’s not on this side of the equation. Normally, you are the one acting as the voice of reason in their duo. “From what I know of his character, Vulkan wouldn’t react like that. If anything, he’d probably feel bad for putting you in that situation. You’re assuming the worst possible outcomes, honey, and I feel like that’s unfair to both of you.” She says, lowering her hand and looking at you carefully. Her eyes tell you she’s weighing her next words.
“What if… he doesn’t mind? Sure, maybe embarrassed and apologetic, but not upset. What if, after you explain it, he’s fine with it? What if it’s the opposite of all your fears? You can just return the circlet” You both cringe at the words, uncomfortable, “and after an adjustment period you can go back to being friends like normal. Or… as normal as you two get.”
“As someone who is also my friend, I feel like that says something about you as well.”
“Oh, I know I’m weird. I also know you're deflecting.”
You grumble, annoyed that your friend knows you so well. However, she does have a point. All you have to do is get a moment alone with him, explain everything, and… give back the circlet.
It shouldn’t hurt that much just thinking about it. It was just a gift. Nothing more.
It can’t be anything more.
“Come on. Let’s get drunk and eat our way into a food coma. Then in the morning, we’ll help with the preparations. Then, war. And then, you find your moment with him.” The way Mitzi said ‘find your moment with him’, you can’t help but feel like she’s not just talking about explaining the situation.
However, the lure of soothing your pending heartbreak -and your nerves for the upcoming battle- was too strong for you to think more on it. Instead you went straight back to your spot, and decided to forgo your glass and just chug it straight from the bottle like an uncultured heathen.
The future is uncertain, and you will face this trial eventually, but you feel lighter now that you have spoken your troubles, and more prepared with Mitzi’s guidance. Tomorrow will come with duties and dangers, but tonight you enjoy the simple revelry of good food, good drink, and good company.
***
@incrediblethirst, @kit-williams, @beckyninja, @bleedingichorhearts, @jaghatai-khock, @pluvio-tea, @moodymisty, @thethronezone, @iluminatka16 Hope you enjoyed the Interlude! Hope you're ready because I'm not! Up next up is Vulkan's POV, so we'll see how well we do. I make no promises, beyond the fact it will be adorable (probably).
Until next time!
(Also if anyone does or does not want to be tagged pls let me know.)
Dreams of the Ruin Bound - III
Malrion (Astartes OC) x Eithra (Aeldari OC)
Part 1, part 2 here, AO3 link - ty for reading :)
A/n: STORY TIME! I like these two characters a lot....
Cw: sfw, enemies to lovers (hopefully), canon adjacent violence/descriptions of injuries, slow-burn emotional intimacy under duress, hints of psychic soul-bonding and ritual technology
He didn’t remember falling asleep.
One breath he was watching the pulse of the shard flicker across her jawline, catching in the filigree of old scars.
The next—
Dream.
Heat. Ache. Skin to skin. Forehead to forehead.
A nightmare of intimacy.
No words. Just weight. The air between them was gone, eaten by the shard, replaced with feeling that didn’t belong solely to him.
Her breath against his. His hunger inside her. Neither knew who dreamed it first.
Then nothing.
---
Malrion jerked upright with a sound that wasn’t quite a breath. It was a choke. A drag of air through a throat gone raw.
Pain flared in his side. Burning. Deep. Familiar.
Right where her hand had been in the dream.
He muttered a curse—low, broken, not meant for anyone. His gauntlet pressed instinctively against his ribs. The armor was slick with warmth. Either sweat or blood. Maybe both.
The shard didn’t glow. Didn't move.
But he felt it. Still. Like a second spine.
Watching.
Remembering.
---
Across from him, Eithra was awake.
Had been. He could tell by the set of her spine, the slight lift of her chin, the way her eyes didn’t blink when he moved.
She’d been watching him.
Studying him.
Like a scholar dissecting a rare moment of silence.
He didn’t speak at first.
Didn’t trust the way his body remembered hers.
Didn’t trust the way the air still smelled like her skin.
---
“How long?” he asked. Voice dry. Half-broken. It tore out of him dry, iron-tasting.
She didn’t answer right away.
Then:
“Long enough.”
He grunted and dragged a palm down his face. The edges of his gauntlet caught against dried blood and the salt crust of dream-sweat. His armor hissed in protest—plating shifting over grit, over pulverized bone fragments that clung to the floor like relics of someone else’s war.
He didn’t look at her yet.
Didn’t trust himself to.
The dream hadn’t faded. He could still feel her breath in his. Still felt the phantom of her weight against his chest. Heat where there shouldn’t be heat.
Where nothing had lived for a long time.
---
“You fell asleep,” she said eventually.
He nodded, slowly. Let the weight of it settle on his shoulders.
“Didn’t plan to.”
“Your body made the choice.”
“Without permission.”
Her head tilted faintly. She didn’t smile.
“Sometimes survival does that.”
He glanced at her then. Sideways. Caught the edge of her cheekbone in the dying light. Razor-sharp.
“So,” he said. The words dragged like glass in his throat. “Do you always watch people sleep?”
“No.”
Beat.
“But I wanted to see if you'd stop clenching your jaw when no one was looking.”
He barked a laugh. Harsh. Short.
“I didn’t, did I.”
“No,” she said. “You just started grinding your teeth.”
---
That broke the tension—slightly.
Enough to let breath flow again.
Malrion leaned back against the wraithbone pillar. It was cold through the ragged seams of his armor. Grounding. He took stock of his damage of his armor. Not out of any real necessity, just to have something to do. Duty before distraction.
Without his helm, he couldn't exactly be sure of the extent of damage. But based on the last readout, combined with the sheer amount of environmental sensation he was feeling, he guessed suit integrity couldn't have been more than 40%.
When he ran out of mental tasks, he finally turned his head toward her.
“You’re different than I thought.”
Eithra didn’t blink.
“Say what you mean.”
He exhaled through his nose.
“You have more edges than I expected.”
“You mean I’m not kind.”
“No,” he said. “You are.”
That made her still.
More than still.
Careful.
“I didn’t think you believed in kindness.”
“I don’t.”
A pause.
Then he added, quieter:
“But that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize it.”
---
The silence that followed was deeper.
More aware.
Eithra drew her legs in slightly, folding one beneath her. The move made her shoulder brush the bottom of his pauldron again. Accidental.
He didn’t pull away.
“Did it scare you?” she asked, suddenly.
His brow furrowed.
“The dream.”
He didn’t answer for a long time.
When he did, his voice had dropped an octave.
“No.”
Then, after a breath:
“But I wanted it to.”
---
Eithra looked at him then.
Really looked.
But she didn’t ask why.
Didn’t have to.
He was already shaking his head—like he wanted to scrub the feeling off his skin, but it was already under it.
“I haven’t touched anyone in decades,” he said. Quiet. Flat. “Not without a weapon in my hand.”
She said nothing.
Just let the words settle between them like dust.
Malrion ground his palm against his forehead.
“You?”
Eithra exhaled slowly through her nose.
"A century, maybe more," she said. "I've stopped counting.
She tilted her head down. Gaze softening.
Malrion sat quietly in the dark, one gauntlet resting lightly on the floor beside the shard. He hadn’t meant to speak, but the words came out like something pried loose:
"What is this thing, really?"
Eithra didn’t answer right away. Her head turned slightly—just enough for the light to catch the side of her face. Her expression didn’t shift. Didn’t reveal thought. But he could feel the temperature change between them.
Nothing hostile. Just memory kept behind teeth.
Finally, she said:
"They told us it was a tether."
“To what?”
“To each other.”
He glanced down at the shard. It sat between them like a wet tooth, glimmering faintly in pulses. More pressure than light. Like psychic breath, dragging from one consciousness to the other.
“It’s not Aeldari,” he muttered.
“No. But it was found on one of our dead moons. Deep beneath what used to be a temple-vault. Before the fall.”
He watched her. “So not a weapon.”
She hesitated.
“Not originally.”
---
Her fingers drifted toward it—not to touch, but to trace the air above it, like it was giving off a heat only she could read.
“The Farseers said it was once part of a larger construct. Something called the God-Skein—a Mnemonith Core.”
Malrion frowned. “That’s not in any Imperial lexicon.”
She tilted her head. “It wouldn’t be. The core predates most things. Maybe even us. The theory is—it wasn’t made to kill. It was made to make two souls…”
A pause. Then, with a faint breath:
“…understand each other.”
“Empathy,” he said, the word tasting strange on his tongue.
“As contagion,” she said. “Not feeling for. Feeling with. It doesn’t speak—it reveals.”
---
He looked at it now. Properly.
The shard wasn’t perfect. It was jagged along one edge, like it had been broken from something larger. Its surface wasn’t smooth—layered, ridged, almost fibrous in places, like fossilized muscle or memory calcified into crystal. The light inside it wasn’t light at all, but psychic pressure, refracting in the hollows. Sometimes it hummed—not audibly. Internally. Like it was echoing his heartbeat, or hers, or both.
“Like it’s trying to finish a sentence,” he muttered.
She blinked. Surprised by the accuracy.
“Yes,” she said. “But the rest of the sentence is missing.”
---
“Why give this to warriors?” he asked.
Eithra’s voice cooled.
“They didn’t. Not at first. It was ritual. High communion. Soul-bonding for seers, lovers, emissaries. You only used a Mnemonith if you wanted to be… known.”
“And now?”
“Now,” she said, eyes dark, “our kind have learned that knowing someone is the easiest way to destroy them.”
---
They both fell quiet.
But it wasn’t the old silence.
It was... active. The shard didn’t glow, but it pressed between them—thicker now. More felt than seen. Like it had inhaled everything they’d just said and was waiting to exhale.
Malrion’s jaw flexed once. Then again. He didn’t reach for the weapon at his side. He wasn’t even aware of the fact that he hadn’t.
Eithra swallowed. Slowly.
And didn’t look away.
“You hide it well.”
“What?”
“The ache.”
He didn’t answer.
So she shifted again—this time to face him more directly. Their knees brushed. She let hers stay there.
“You live in your body like it’s a prison,” she said.
His brow furrowed. He looked down. Then up.
“Isn’t it?”
She didn’t smile. But her voice eased, like she was stepping carefully across ice.
“It could be something else.”
---
Then—
Silence again.
But different now. Warmer.
And that was when she leaned back slightly.
Just enough to see him clearer.
Her gaze moved over his face—slower this time.
Seeing.
Letting herself see.
With intention.
He had the face of someone built to be revered or obeyed, not touched. Harsh, immovable lines. A jaw that clenched as if his teeth were the only thing keeping him from screaming. Mouth firm, colorless, slightly cracked at the corners—like it had forgotten softness. His cheekbones carried the faint dust of dried blood, dark along the edges where sweat had never quite reached.
The cut along his brow was shallow but precise. Clean through the flesh. He hadn’t noticed it. Or hadn’t cared.
His nose had been broken and healed crooked, not enough to mar—just enough to suggest a history of violence without shame.
But his eyes.
Dark. Deep-set. The kind that could’ve been flat—deadened by war, by doctrine—but weren’t. There was something there. Like a blade unsheathed but not yet raised.
Permission.
Not given easily. But given now.
She saw it and didn’t look away.
She saw the echo of him on his knees, in the dream—the part of him that didn’t know whether to bow or break.
She reached out.
Not far. Just a finger’s width.
And touched one of the dried lines of blood along his jaw. A streak left from the fight, now crusted to flake beneath her touch.
He didn’t move.
Didn’t speak.
The touch lingered.
Her fingertip had left a faint smear in the dried blood along his jaw. It wasn’t the warmth that unsettled him—it was the fact that he’d let her. No instinct to swat, no flinch, no warning.
Just… stillness.
He hadn't been still in years.
Malrion breathed through his nose, steady, slow. His hand hovered near his thigh, close to the bolter he hadn’t touched since waking. He didn’t need it. Not right now. But the absence of movement made him restless. Too aware of her proximity.
Her shoulder was still near his. Not quite touching. But the heat was there. Like shared gravity. Like a magnet waiting to click.
He glanced—briefly—out of the corner of his eye.
Eithra had gone quiet. Still again. She leaned back against the stone with the same strange grace she fought with—like her bones were made of something lighter than muscle and logic.
She wasn’t looking at him anymore.
But he could feel her awareness. She was giving him space.
Or testing him.
Either way, it worked.
---
He shouldn’t have looked.
Not really.
But the eye wandered. That was human. And despite what they’d carved into him, bled into him, buried into his spine—
Malrion was still human.
He catalogued without thinking.
Her boots: worn smooth at the sole, not decorative. Meant to move.
Her thigh: streaked with soot, blood—not hers. Her cloak was half pushed back, and the curve of her calf told him more about how she moved than her fighting ever had.
Her fingers: calloused, yes. But more along the edges, like she’d been training with instruments that required more precision than weight.
And her face—
No. He stopped there.
The memory of it from the dream had already done enough damage.
And still, he couldn’t stop hearing her voice.
Not from moments ago. Not the one that had whispered his name like prayer.
The real one.
“You live in your body like it’s a prison,” she’d said.
And that had struck deeper than daemon claws.
Because it was true. And he hated that she saw it.
---
“I meant what I said,” she murmured suddenly.
Her voice wasn’t loud. Just close.
His eyes flicked down toward her. “Which part?”
“That your body isn’t just a weapon.”
He bristled. Only slightly. But enough.
“And what would you call it, then?”
“A language,” she said, looking ahead. Not at him. “Even if you’ve only ever used it to scream.”
---
That—
That landed.
He wasn’t sure why. But it did.
He sat back further, eyes narrowing, trying to deflect the ache crawling up his spine.
“You speak like someone who’s been watching me for longer than a single battle.”
“Not watching,” she said. “Reading.”
A pause. Then, softer:
“You fight like someone who’s afraid of silence.”
---
That silence arrived right on cue.
Thick. Felt.
He should have said something. Laughed it off. Snapped. Moved away.
Instead, Malrion turned fully toward her for the first time.
And looked.
---
Her hair, the color of pale starlight—nearly translucent at the ends—was still damp with sweat. It curled near her ears in loose, uneven strands, some clinging to her neck where the collar of her tunic had torn. Her held the tension of restraint. Her lips were parted just slightly, like she'd been holding her breath too long.
Her eyes—
Black.
But there was color in them when the light hit right. Depth. Like she’d been hollowed out once and had chosen what to refill herself with.
She burned with nothing.
Carried no thirst for retribution.
What moved beneath her calm was colder—an ice that chose not to cut.
---
He didn’t realize he’d leaned closer until he felt her pulse again—faint, through the shard.
She looked at him.
Met his eyes without flinching.
Then:
“Are you afraid of me?”
The question was quiet. Not teasing. Not pointed.
Just... real.
He answered before he could think.
“No.”
And again, slower:
“No. But I think I should be.”
---
They sat in that truth.
Longer than comfort allowed.
Her voice, when it came next, was quieter.
“So what’s more frightening to you?”
He didn’t know what she meant.
She clarified.
“The dream? Or that you wanted it?”
---
He flinched at that.
Not visibly.
Just something in his chest. A flicker.
“I didn’t want to see it,” he muttered.
“But you stayed,” she said. “You let me touch you.”
“You touched me first.”
Her mouth twitched. The shape of a smile, missing its center.
“So you do remember.”
His jaw locked as he turned, heat creeping under the bone—no fury, just fire he hadn’t named yet.
---
The shard pulsed once. Gentle. Like breath against a fevered neck.
Neither of them moved.
Then—
Far off, a sound.
Not part of their stillness.
A dry drag. A click. A faint whine, like air pulled through broken vox.
Malrion’s hand was already at his bolter. The moment dissolved—not fully, but enough.
He rose slowly, armor groaning.
Eithra didn’t move yet. Her hand hovered near her belt, fingers brushing the handle of her bone-etched blade.
Their eyes met.
Again, nothing said.
But between them: understanding.
---
They weren’t done.
But something else had come looking.
So they moved.
---
They didn’t speak again for some time.
There was nothing left to say—and too much.
Malrion moved ahead now, bolter in low ready. The passage sloped downward into older bones of the Craftworld, ribbed with crumbling wraithbone supports and half-eaten conduits that hissed faintly as they passed. Eithra followed a step behind, her blade drawn, eyes never still.
It was a quiet kind of violence. The kind you carry in your lungs.
---
The dead lay thick here.
Not recent casualties—ancient ones. Shrines collapsed around fossilized soulstones, their psychic light long bled away. Carvings melted into slag by heat that didn’t come from flame. One corridor looked like it had been hollowed out by screaming.
Eithra’s pace slowed at times, her breath catching as they passed something sacred that had been split open—an altar of bone-hung runes still weeping psychic residue. She didn’t pray. But her fingers twitched like she wanted to.
Malrion didn’t ask.
He could feel the air changing.
Heaviness. Wet pressure. Like breath from a mouth too large to see.
---
They crossed a broken plaza—once a sanctum, now a crater punched through the psychic skin of the Craftworld. Gaps in the floor revealed twisted piping and strange half-organic cables, pulsating faintly.
Malrion crouched. Rubbed two fingers over a smear in the dust.
Blood.
Not human.
He stood again, slower.
“We’re not the only ones still alive.”
Eithra was already looking at the far wall.
Carved into the stone with something dull: a crude symbol. Imperial. Bastardized.
✠
The mark of the Deathwatch.
Beneath it, smears.
Footprints.
Power armor.
Multiple.
---
“They were here,” she murmured, voice flat, untouched by surprise.
Malrion’s expression didn’t change.
“Then they’re hunting.”
“Us?”
“The shard.” His hand brushed against it at his belt. “But they won’t hesitate.”
“No,” she said. “They won’t.”
---
They kept moving.
Faster now. Quieter.
Time blurred into corridors. Into lifts that didn’t function, stairs that had to be scaled with fingers bloodied by glass and splintered bone. At one point, Malrion boosted her through a crawlshaft barely wide enough to fit her slender form—his hands firm at her thighs, her fingers dragging over broken wraithbone.
Neither of them spoke about the heat that passed between them as she twisted away into the dark.
He followed after. Slower. Scraping his armor.
Breathing harder.
---
At a junction three levels deeper, they found something worse.
A corpse. Too soft for an Astartes. Too ruined for Aeldari.
Human, maybe.
If it still counted.
Half-cooked. Skin open like wet petals, mouth stretched in a silent howl. Sigils scorched into the flesh around the eyes. Warp-tainted.
Eithra crouched near the corpse with the precise tilt of a surgeon's eye.
“Cultist,” she muttered. “But…”
Her fingers brushed the jaw.
“…this was done by something else.”
Malrion stayed standing. His hand hovered near his sidearm.
“Warp predator?”
She didn’t answer.
Instead, she tilted her head slightly. Listening.
A pulse. The shard.
It beat once.
Harder than before.
Malrion hissed as it buzzed in his blood.
Eithra winced.
They both looked up.
And felt it.
Something was following them.
Not close. Not yet. But not guessing either. Hunting by feel.
---
They moved again.
Cover was a lie now. Only distance mattered. Wraithbone shrieked underfoot. Eithra’s cloak snagged on a shattered pipe. Malrion turned to help—but she was already past him, not speaking, eyes burning ahead.
There was a path opening. A tunnel choked with thorny cables and vines that shouldn’t be growing here. They slipped through it, brushing past old mycelium growths and petrified silk-rot. Malrion’s pauldron cracked a vine that bled steam.
Still, they pushed.
The light thinned.
The pressure rose.
---
Finally—
A door.
Twisted shut by collapse, but not sealed.
Eithra knelt, brushing her palm over the edge. Whispered something in a tongue that sounded like glass weeping.
The shard glowed.
The door opened.
---
Inside: silence.
Peace? No.
Safety? Less.
Only the echo of something long-dead, long-emptied.
The room had once been a memory-vault. Now it was half-collapsed. Soulstones embedded in the walls pulsed faintly with the remnants of stored lives. The air was dry. Faintly metallic.
Malrion stepped in first.
Eithra followed.
They didn’t speak.
But when the door closed behind them—sealing them in with ghosts and flickering light—they both exhaled.
A reflex, nothing more.
Survival marking itself, breath by breath.
---
Malrion moved first.
The chamber was quiet, too quiet. It had the weight of old breath in the walls—thousands of soulstones slumbering like eyes that no longer watched.
He scanned the edges for structural weakness. None. Just a long, cracked wall of psychic crystal and collapsed sigil-tapestries that twitched faintly when he passed. Behind him, Eithra trailed her fingers along one of the embedded stones. Her eyes were far away.
“They were archivists,” she said, barely audible. “Librarians of souls. They recorded every death. Every severing.”
He didn’t answer.
He was listening.
To something else.
---
There.
Beyond the vault’s door.
The softest tap. Like steel fingers brushing bone.
He turned his head slightly. Bolter already angled.
Eithra felt it too. She stilled mid-step, hand dropping from the soulstone.
One breath passed. Then another.
Then a sound.
Tap.
Tap.
Whirr.
Malrion’s blood went cold.
Grav-boots.
No civilian uses grav-boots.
And no loyalist wears them like that—staggered, slow, measured.
He turned to Eithra, voice low. “We’re not alone.”
Her blade was already in her hand.
“I heard.”
---
They moved quickly.
The vault had no second exit. But it had height.
A spiraling wall of memory-steps led upward into the half-collapsed dome. Above—fragments of broken stained crystal, barely holding against gravity.
They climbed.
Silent. Swift.
At the top, Malrion crouched behind a ruptured console. Through the cracked vault archway below, he caught the first flicker of movement.
Not Chaos.
Not Aeldari.
Astartes.
Black armor. Steel pauldron. The sigil of the Inquisition burned into the plating like a brand.
Deathwatch.
Two entered first.
One bore a heavy flamer—its muzzle already lit, dripping promethium with bored malice. The other carried a storm bolter the size of a child.
Behind them, slower:
A Librarian.
Malrion’s breath caught.
---
The psyker moved differently. Head tilted, gauntlet raised, fingers twitching like they were plucking vibrations from the walls.
He was reading something.
Following something.
No—sensing.
Malrion felt the shard at his hip pulse violently, reacting like a struck nerve. Eithra hissed, one hand pressed to her temple.
The Librarian turned his head.
Past them.
Toward the soulstones, like they’d whispered his name.
He reached out.
The vault groaned.
And one of the stones shattered.
A soul—someone's entire life—screamed into the warp like a flare.
The scream cracked through the chamber, but the sound wasn’t what hit him.
Something rushed into Malrion’s skull—raw, bright, terrible. A sensation like someone else’s memories tearing free inside his own nerves. He staggered a half-step, gauntlet tightening against the stone.
Flashes—too many, too fast.
A corridor lit in gold. A hand brushing a child’s hair. Panic, sudden and icy. A heartbeat’s worth of love that snapped off mid-thought.
Gone.
Eithra sucked in a breath beside him, sharp enough to cut. Her fingers dug into her ribs as if bracing against a blow. The soulstone dust drifted across her knees; she stared at it with an expression he’d never seen on her—hollow, stripped.
Malrion felt the shard react. A twitch against his hip, like a muscle contracting. A pull. A drag. And something faint—almost a taste—bleeding across the inside of his mouth: copper, ash, grief that wasn’t his.
Eithra whispered something under her breath. A name, maybe. Or the end of one.
He didn’t ask.
The moment passed, but slowly—like breath thawing in winter air, leaving a sting behind.
The shard hummed once, low and tired, as if it had swallowed the memory whole.
Malrion’s lips curled back in a silent snarl. Rage hadn’t arrived. It didn’t need to.
His body already knew what this was.
Desecration.
---
The shard at his belt vibrated harder.
Eithra pressed in behind him, her lips near his ear. “They’re tracking it.”
“I know.”
“They’ll breach the vault next.”
“Then we don’t give them time.”
---
He turned.
There was one exit. Barely.
Above, behind the dome, a breach in the upper structure had collapsed into a long ventilation shaft—jagged, wet with condensation, just wide enough to crawl.
They made for it.
He climbed first this time, dragging himself through blood-slick metal.
Behind him, Eithra followed.
---
Halfway up, the vault exploded.
The first sensation wasn’t heat or sound—it was a pressure inside his skull, like something screaming to be let out.
It tore through thought and memory in the same breath.
A soul detonation.
The Librarian had triggered it.
Malrion’s vision blurred. For a second, the shard screamed in his body like a second spine tearing loose.
Then Eithra’s hand closed on his ankle.
Anchoring him.
Light bled faintly from her eyes, but it wasn’t power radiating outward.
It was pressure.
A force curling inward, threatening collapse.
“Go,” she hissed. “Move.”
---
They climbed blind.
The shaft turned vertical, then angled, then dropped. At one point they had to jump—four meters down into a pile of bones and wet rags that used to be a sanctum. Malrion landed heavy. Eithra followed in a crouch.
Above—the footsteps came again.
Boots on the wall.
Climbing after them.
---
“We have to split,” Malrion said, turning toward her, voice low.
She shook her head.
“You’ll never make it alone.”
“I’m not alone.” His hand touched the shard. “They’re following this.”
Her jaw clenched.
“Then we destroy it.”
A beat.
Then—his hand closed over hers.
Not gently.
But real.
“No,” he said. “Not yet.”
---
Somewhere above, the ceiling caved in.
A Drop Beacon crashed through the floor.
Deathwatch had called reinforcements.
Eithra’s eyes widened. The psychic aftershock singed her senses.
Malrion looked at her. At the direction of the breach.
Then back down the corridor ahead.
“Run,” he said.
And this time—she didn’t argue.
---
The memory-vault collapsed behind them with a scream that didn’t come from stone.
It came from the souls—stripped, screaming, detonated in unison like a psychic minefield. The explosion cracked through Malrion’s skull like a hammer. His eardrums burst. His vision split.
He didn’t stop running.
Eithra’s hand gripped his pauldron. She dragged him left when the corridor forked, through a tunnel warped with melted wraithbone and fungal lace. Her boots skidded on blood-glass. Her breath was ragged.
Behind them—boots.
Whirring.
Floating.
Grav-walkers.
And now—they were tracking by memory.
The shard pulsed at his hip like a beacon, screaming his position to every bastard with a soul. And the Librarian following them had too many.
---
“Here—!” Eithra hissed, slamming her blade into a panel that barely held the wall closed. It cracked open. A service tunnel behind.
They slipped through.
The walls pressed tight.
Malrion’s armor scraped sparks. Eithra moved like shadow, but she was slowing. The warp in the air made her bleed from her nose—light, thin, but constant.
They climbed hand over hand through darkness that pulsed like a throat.
Somewhere behind them, the Librarian whispered a litany.
And every soulstone on the wall they passed shattered.
---
They dropped.
A vertical shaft gave way beneath Eithra’s boots. She fell first. Malrion followed without thought. The landing was ugly—wraithbone spikes caught on his greave, twisted metal ripping through part of his shoulder plating. Blood splashed the floor.
He grunted.
Didn’t cry out.
Eithra was already up. Already dragging him again.
---
The next passage was… wrong.
Light flickered, not from lumen-strips, but from memory. Flash-stills from the Craftworld’s dying archive: children laughing, warriors screaming, a single Aeldari face repeating again and again, lips moving soundlessly.
Eithra faltered.
Malrion caught her arm.
“Keep moving.”
She didn’t speak. Her eyes were blown.
---
Behind them, sound caught up.
Not footsteps.
Chanting.
The Librarian wasn’t just tracking them now.
He was sanctifying the ruin.
---
Another turn. Another crawlspace. They passed through a cistern that once carried soul-currents. Now it bubbled with psychic fluid that hissed against ceramite. Malrion's gauntlet corroded where it touched.
He shook it off.
“Direction,” he said. “We can’t keep running blind.”
“I know where we are,” Eithra murmured. “Or where this used to be.”
He looked at her. Her mouth was bleeding.
“How close?”
“If we get through the reactor cradle—there’s a grav-chamber beyond. No warp pull. No echo.”
He nodded once.
Then paused.
Something was… buzzing.
A hum in the walls.
She heard it too.
Then—
A flash.
A bolt of psychic fire screamed past them and exploded the corridor ahead. Wraithbone shattered. Debris rained. Eithra dove. Malrion covered her with his body.
The ceiling collapsed.
---
Blackout.
Then—
Light.
No HUD. Just fire. Rupture. Pain behind his eyes like someone had split his skull open to the air.
Malrion’s breath hitched sharp in his throat as consciousness slammed back into him. His leg was pinned—crushed. Armor twisted. Bone—maybe worse.
He coughed. Dust. Bone fragments.
Eithra was beneath him. Breathing.
He rolled off with a low, broken sound—half gasp, half snarl. The air tore at his lungs. Something cracked in his side as he moved.
She sat up. Her cloak was gone. Her right hand was burned to the bone—but she didn’t scream.
She looked at him.
“We go.”
He nodded.
They pulled each other upright.
---
They ran.
Now limping. Now smeared in ash. Malrion's wound reopened. Eithra’s blade was cracked. The shard glowed brighter than ever, pulsing with rhythm that didn’t match their hearts.
Ahead—a hatch.
Open.
The cradle.
---
They entered.
And hell followed.
---
The reactor cradle was never meant to be accessed in war. It was a sacred core—where energy met soul. Now it was… spitting ghosts.
Malrion stopped.
The floor was covered in faces.
Not real—psychic impressions. Half-lost. Screaming. Crawling up the walls like insects.
“Don’t listen,” Eithra hissed. “They’re not yours.”
He moved.
The faces whispered anyway.
“You left us.”
“Traitor.”
“The God-Emperor never knew your name.”
“You think she loves you?”
He gritted his teeth.
They pressed on.
---
Halfway across, the vault door at the far end sealed shut.
A moment later, it blew open.
The Deathwatch entered.
Four of them.
One with a plasma incinerator.
One with lightning claws wet with black ichor.
One—the Librarian—hovered without walking, haloed in screaming runes.
Malrion turned.
Eithra was behind him. She looked too small beside him now. But her eyes were wild with psyniscience.
“They’ll take us alive,” she whispered. “For dissection. For study.”
Malrion said nothing.
His bolter clicked empty.
Then he pulled a frag-charge from his belt.
No words.
Just choice.
---
He set it on the support column.
Turned to her.
“Run.”
She didn’t argue.
They ran.
---
The cradle exploded behind them.
Half the chamber came down.
But not all of it.
Through the fire and scream of twisting metal, the Librarian emerged.
Gone was the calm.
He burned now—soul and skin and silence wreathed in warpfire.
His eyes found Malrion.
Locked on.
And then he spoke—just one word:
“Bonded.”
---
They dropped through the floor.
Literally.
The force of the blast cracked an access tunnel below. Malrion went first this time, catching Eithra mid-fall. They slammed into the depths of the Craftworld.
And kept going.
---
Now—
They were crawling through blood channels.
Warp-seep filled their boots.
Something in Malrion's thigh was broken, but he didn't stop.
Eithra’s blade was gone. She’d dropped it. But she pulled a psychic shiv from her wrist—one of her soulrunes. A desperate act.
The shard between them began to hum in two tones now. As if sensing pursuit.
As if choosing sides.
---
They reached the grav-chamber.
Barely.
Collapsed just inside the iris-sealed dome, breathing like hunted animals. Malrion slumped against the wall. Eithra crawled beside him, every part of her shaking.
For a moment—
Silence.
Just breathing.
Then—
The door behind them groaned.
Something began cutting through.
No more running.
Not now.
Not yet.
Not ever.
-----------------to be continued--------------------
Thanks for reading!! And tysm @lucidknight for convincing me to post this
(uωu*)
Tagged: @incrediblethirst @druidwolf21 @thisuserislilsilly @iluminatka16 @nebulaegem @kit-williams @bispecsual @beckyninja @bookandyarndragon @jackalwolfsoul
