Chapter 6: Luck Muted, Luck Awakened
Age: 16 | Virellian Training Barracks
The morning air at the training grounds was sharp with ozone and sweat. Cassian Virell stood in the rigid line of recruits, his armor still stiff from the forge's heat. The drill sergeant barked orders that cut through the hum of the barracks like a power sword through ceramite. But Cassian's mind was elsewhere—on the strange warmth nestled beneath his skin, a flicker barely felt but always there.
Training was relentless. From dawn till dusk, the recruits were ground through unending cycles of obedience, marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, and war history. The Adeptus Militarum demanded perfection—and any failure meant death on the battlefield.
On day three, Cassian faced his first live-fire exercise. A squad was tasked with assaulting a simulated enemy bunker, its walls thick with ceramite plating and layered defenses. Lasgun fire sang around him. Bolter rounds thundered overhead. Explosions painted the sky with fire and smoke.
It was during the assault that the flicker pulsed.
A deadly bolt round zipped toward Cassian's head, faster than reflex should have allowed. Time seemed to slow. The bullet clipped the edge of his helmet's ceramite plate, deflecting just enough to avoid a fatal strike.
His heart thundered.
"Luck," he whispered, almost ashamed.
But the power was a secret, a shadow he dared not reveal. In the Imperium, such gifts were often feared, misunderstood, or branded heresy.
More troubling was the price. Every time Cassian felt his luck bloom, he noticed something else: enemies faltering, weapons jamming, miscommunications ripping through opposing ranks. The more danger he faced, the worse it seemed to get for those who opposed him.
It was an equal exchange, a hidden weapon only he wielded—though the cost was a mystery.
During training, his squad's veteran sergeant, a scarred and stoic man named Gaius, watched him closely.
"You got the touch, Virell," Gaius muttered one evening, eyes like chipped stone. "Survivin' when you shouldn't. But don't let it make you careless."
Cassian nodded, swallowing pride.
Carelessness would mean death. Or worse.
In the quiet moments, Cassian wondered if his luck came from that mysterious ring—the one fused to his soul at death, from another life he barely remembered. The ring he never removed.
The ring was his secret, his only shield against a universe determined to break him.
And yet, the universe had more in store.
Because luck alone couldn't save him forever.
---