Part I
In the hush before the Great Crusade had a name, the Emperor of Mankind undertook a pilgrimage no chart could hold. He crossed the Immaterium past its howling reefs, beyond the reach of the Ruinous Powers' whispers, into a tract of silence older than memory. He hunted for a place unscarred by the Necrons' cold dominion, untouched by the Old Ones' designs, where the C'tan's star‑hunger had never fed. In that unlit distance, he sought truths older than gods—forces more primitive than creation's first breath.
He knew the cost. To cast his mind beyond flesh was peril—life, reason, purpose all at hazard—and time bled away with each attempt. Yet he bent the Golden Throne to his will. He had raised it upon the vaults beneath the Himalazia, a brutal engine first purposed for the Webway. Now it served as anchor and blade, a conduit that cut a narrow path through the Sea of Souls, if only for measured, punishing hours. No Astronomican burned above Terra yet. He went alone and unlit.
He drove himself harder. His will stretched thin as wire; his soul thrummed against the Throne's lattices until thought tasted of metal. Each advance felt like a nail turned in the mind. He heard them—the gathering hosts, the hungry parliaments of the warp—pressing close to parley in shrieks. He ignored their invitations. He went on.
At the brink of what even he could grasp, on the far ledges of the Immaterium, he found it. A lone ember drifted there, steady and serene, moving in the deep dark between galaxies, between realities, between laws—like an apple on a boundless ocean, unmoving and unbothered, simply travelling. It was not lost; it could not be lost. All things that were, would be, or would end seemed to begin from its quiet pulse. A statement. A rebuttal. A proof. Pure luck, then, to be the fisherman in that black sea whose line went taut.
A fragment of the first dawn. A thread from the loom where realities are woven. A drift in the endless, widening night.
He reached, patient and precise. The ember weighed him—soul against soul, will against will—then softened and dissolved into him like light into glass. Space groaned. Time shivered. For a breath, the Palace's deepest wards rang like struck crystal, and then stilled.
From that primordial fire, he would shape—not a weapon, not a son—something more. As the shamans of Old Earth once surrendered themselves to kindle him for the salvation of their kind, so too would he pour himself into this spark. He would not make a god to be worshipped. He would make an answer.
Malcador the Sigillite, confidant and witness, watched the toll accrue: the falter of wards, the scent of ozone where incense should be, the Emperor's ageless gaze edged with fatigue. Quills trembled. Candles guttered in rooms without drafts. He asked no questions. He counted the cost and kept the ledgers by memory alone.
They saw the Emperor leave the vaults, cradling a small light. He vanished into his sealed laboratory beneath the mountains, all tools, will, and discipline turned to a single end. Days bled into months—perhaps a year. The Webway could wait. The primarch project could wait, scattered or not. This could not.
He spent himself in numbers and purpose. He yoked arts forgotten since the Dark Age to nameless instruments. He wrote equations that were also prayers, though he would never call them that. He did not create —that would be theft of what the ember already was. He gave it form. He taught an idea of the grace of a body and the boundaries of breath.
At last, the work ended. In his hands lay a child—no phenomenon, but a newborn. A tiny finger, impossibly small, closed around his own with unmistakable certainty. The laboratory's lumen strips brightened by a fraction without power to feed them.
Malcador entered on quiet feet and forgot to breathe.
"What is her name, my friend?"
The Emperor weighed the charge that names carry. For a heartbeat, he considered the hard word he had used for other works of his design—a tool—fit for primarchs and engines, for things bent to a purpose. He set it aside; she was different, and he would not chain her with one function. "Aurelia Aeternitas Primus," he said, and the voice that moved legions gentled. "My daughter. Princess of the Imperium. Heir to my work."
The Sigillite's throat tightened. "My lord… this path has no return," he managed, millennia of caution threading his words. "To birth a will so singular—what end do you seek?"
The Emperor did not look away from the child. "An answer," he said softly. "To the question we never dared name. She is belief and hope—but not as idols. The faith of fools is a chain. The conviction of a species in its own destiny—that is a fire. She will not be a goddess to be worshipped, but the lens by which humanity sees its own brilliance."
Understanding settled over Malcador like armour, but not without weight. He turned the Emperor's words over in his mind and felt their hidden edges; they meant more than they first appeared. To name her heir—he was not yet certain of the shape of that choice, nor of all it would unmake and bind—but he trusted the Emperor's wisdom more than his own caution. He bowed his head. "Then I will make it so."
Letters Patent of Terra
Issued under the Hand and Seal of the Master of Mankind
Imperial Palace, Himalazia — Terra
To: All commanders of the Legiones Astartes, Lords of Terra, the Fabricator‑General and Magi of Mars, the Navis Nobilite, the Administratum, and all loyal subjects within the Sol System.
Be it known and remembered:
We do hereby proclaim and establish the style and dignity of
Her Imperial Highness, Aurelia Aeternitas Primus, Princess of the Imperium of Man, Anathema Solara, Scion of Terra.
Rights and Style. She shall be so styled in all registers, orders, rolls, and communiqués of the Imperium. She shall take precedence as Our Heir in matters of succession pertaining to Our Work.
On Worship and Cult. Let no shrine be raised , nor idol wrought, nor litany composed in Her name. She is not to be adored as a goddess; let none confound reverence with worship. The genius of mankind is altar sufficient to Us.
Charge and Custody. The Adeptus Custodes will extend the watch to Her Person; the Silent Sisterhood will attend in silence; the Mechanicum will render aid in arts and engines, but shall refrain from doctrinal inscription or the forging of creed.
Seals and Witness. Witnessed and countersigned by Malcador the Sigillite, Regent of Terra and First Lord of the Council. The Great Seal of Terra is here impressed: the Raptor Imperialis in raised gold wax, flanked by the twin‑headed aquila surmounting a solar disk; beneath, the personal sigil of the Sigillite struck in black wax.
Given at Terra, beneath the Himalazia, under Our Hand this day.
— The Master of Mankind
Countersigned: Malcador the Sigillite, Regent of Terra; First Lord of the C ouncil.
Great Seal: Raptor Imperialis (gold wax); Sigillite's seal (black wax).
The words rode a hundred vox‑thrones and choir‑pylons across Sol and Luna. Custodians of the Ten Thousand knelt in the shadowed galleries. The Silent Sisterhood inclined their heads without speaking. In the forges of the Mechanicum, a single canticle line was added and then erased before it could become a creed. The title stood. The worship did not.
For a single moment, he allowed himself the plain joy of a maker—a craftsman regarding his most exacting work. He was more artificer than father; he did not dote, he inspected. Pride lived in the precision of his gaze, not in softness. He weighed the symmetry of bone and the balance of limb, mapped pulse to breath, and tested reflex with a measured touch. When he drew her briefly to his chest, it was not to lavish affection but to feel heat, weight, alignment—the proof of humanity carried in small mechanics. To him, she was the answer to a question for which empires had died. He catalogued the cadence of her breath, the fall of her shadow, the way unpowered filaments glowed when she slept.
Then the tide of the coming Crusade seized him again. Engines woke beneath the Palace. Oaths were drafted. Maps were sharpened into knives.
On Holy Terra, beneath Malcador's vigilant eye, the Princess grew. She was a paradox: ordinary in her small habits, extraordinary in her gaze. When she looked up, Malcador did not see pupils—he saw slow galaxies turning. When she ran the palace gardens, her hair streamed like a fall of night seeded with distant lights. A halo of first light shimmered above her brow—not divinity, but the simple truth of her origin. A Custodian once set down his spear and forgot to breathe until she laughed, and the world resumed.
Her curiosity was boundless. Malcador recognised in her the same hunger for knowledge that defined her father. She was a clear page on which the future could be written. She asked why the sky changed colour at dusk. She asked why some words felt heavier than others. He answered what he could and built careful fences around what he could not.
Her power was not what the galaxy calls power. She did not measure herself by annihilation, nor by the cheap immortality of stolen souls, nor by how loudly the warp could be made to scream. Her essence sat beside the Immaterium as easily as within it. The Sea of Souls did not command her; it yielded. She walked its hellscapes untouched. Daemons and other neverborn recoiled from her innocent light; they could not truly see her in the ways they hunt, nor set fang or hook. Their hungers slid and skittered—there was nothing to bite, nothing to name. She offered them no handle of fear or hatred, and so they could not feed. To them, she was an omission in the ledger of souls, an unindexed constant, and the warp bent around that fact without bargain or blood. They did not understand what she was, only that by simply being, she was beyond their grasp. In its depths, she made a place of her own. Beyond the Immaterium, beyond the material, not the Warp but somethng above all—a quiet ballroom where comets bowed their heads, where a dying star could be held for a last time with kind look, where the birth of galaxies could be watched with a child‑scholar's calm. Where the princess mistook entire universes for beautiful waterfalls. Once, she stood at the lip of a storm that had eaten a galaxy and called it beautiful because the edges were so clean.
The warp itself looked different to her because it wasn't the Warp, yet the Princess didn't even know it. As with the ember that had begun her, she existed at the seam between what was known and what was not. When she closed her eyes and rested on her bed or even on the green grass she planted, she crossed the thought‑paths of a billion worlds and stars. Between dimensions that had no name. It was not astral projection; it was simply herself, going where she wished. She traced the memory of a dead sun and learned the word after before she learned tomorrow.
She did not yet understand what she was. She was a child who wandered, in idle hours, into places no mortal dared and no god claimed. At times, when she leapt from star to star, she paused at the very edge of it all and waved at watchers vast and strange. Some looked like ruin given shape. Some were as large as the gulfs between galaxies. She was not afraid; fear had not learned her name. They felt what she was—a question, an answer, and the eraser in one—and the wise among them looked away.
Others came close in curiosity and shared the small histories of their own first mornings. She listened, eyes bright, and remembered. Across the void, her own carved place between what it was and not and warp alike, countless minds and neverborn felt the change of her presence—some were terrified, others confused, and many were drawn closer by a dangerous intrigue at the fact of her simply existing. A farseer of Ulthwé, half a galaxy distant, felt a new thread pull at her runes and looked up in wonder and dread. Deep within a hollowed world, a starving shard of a star‑god spasmed and went still. In the warp's cold places, a prince without a kingdom forgot his title for the span of a breath.
She tried to share these journeys with those she loved. She told Malcador about the halls beyond the storm, about lights that forgot to die. He stopped her gently. He had trained psykers by the thousand, but this was different. No lexicon of the Scholastica Psykana could name what she was. He could only warn her about what gathers in the warp. Chaos had noticed her—a presence to which the warp itself deferred.
But there was strangeness in the place where the Princess spoke. That's not the Immaterium, the Warp, or the Webway at all, of that Malcador was sure. Perhaps the Princess confused it, because that's what he had told her it was, but he was wrong. Whatever that place was, where only the Princess could go, was above all that was named and all that would ever be named, and more. Malcador debated with himself whether he should tell her or not. But decided to speak with the Emperor first, for this was a question, he was unsure whether he wished to know the answer.
Still, Malcador told her about doors that shouldn't be opened, and to simply keep herself from leaving to those places.
The Princess listened and nodded, her voice near and far at once. She had heard them. She would be careful. She would still go. Afterwards, she sat in the garden and taught a sun‑warmed stone to hold its heat a heartbeat longer, just to see if she could.
Malcador knew he would have to speak with the Emperor soon. He drafted the words as edicts and then crossed them out, choosing instead the plain speech that had always served them best. No ledger can reduce her to utility, he admitted to himself, and yet he keeps measuring. That is his love as a maker; mine must be to ensure she is not measured into a cage. He would ask for boundaries, not chains. He would ask for teachers, though none existed yet. He would ask for time.
And in the meantime, the Princess grew—slowly, steadily—a child among titans, in a world about to fill with giants. The Palace clocks kept their faithful measure. Beyond the walls, legions assembled and fleets took light. In the deep, the ember that had become a girl learned the shape of her own shadow—and the galaxy, though it did not know it yet, learned a new word for hope.
Part II — Gardens & Guardians: Seasons in the Imperial Palace
Years went by—years as a child counts them, by afternoons and questions—while Aurelia grew within the Imperial Palace. Malcador served as tutor, guide, and the closest thing to an uncle that Terra's protocols would allow. The Adeptus Custodes watched her days, the Silent Sisterhood her nights; gold and grey in steady rings, as constant as the Palace clocks and the slow breath of its cyclopean engines.
She made gardens where there had been only stone: cloisters of alien bloom coaxed from seeds gathered in her harmless wandering, terraces of pale grass that sang faintly when wind crossed them, fountains taught to remember the sun a heartbeat longer. There she would lie upon warmed marble and let her mind slip where minds do not go. When her essence drifted, the Custodes stood as statues—unblinking; even their shadows kept formation.
Sometimes she chose mischief. A breath held, a glance aside—and she was elsewhere, leaving only a ribbon of hair, a print in dew, and a soft laugh caught under an arch. Even the Ten Thousand could start panicking when a child vanishes between blinks. Twice she reappeared behind a Shield‑Captain and tapped auramite with a knuckle.
"Are you awake?" she whispered.
The helm inclined a fraction. "We stand," he said—which was both answer and oath.
Malcador found her beneath an arch of silver‑leaf and wagged a finger with the patience of an old librarian. "Do not make the Ten Thousand wish for an end to their watch. They have sworn enough oaths without adding 'survive the Princess's ambushes' to the list."
She nodded—contrite in the way bright minds were: sincere, if not exactly repentant. An hour later, she gifted the same Shield‑Captain a sprig that never wilted.
"For your patience," she said.
He did not smile, but his posture forgot to be perfect for the rest of the day.
The Silent Sisterhood took it better. Their null‑aura unmade the Warp's whispers, and in its hush they found humour that needed no sound. Many avoided them, but the Princess felt calm around them, not disgust nor fear. She welcomed them with open arms and smiles. That was a gift that had no price for them.
Knight‑Commander Jenetia Krole spoke to Aurelia in Thoughtmark, each motion as precise as a blade: be careful, do not sow disorder in the minds of your father's guardians, focus is a fortress; do not test its stones for sport. And theirs can be flimsy.
Aurelia watched the clean geometry of Krole's hands. "Is that an insult at the Custodes?" she asked, solemn as only the playful could be. "At the honour guard of my father?"
Krole's reply was absent: no sign, no word. But a breath escaped her—something like a snort someone had forgotten to mute. Aurelia learned then that the Silent Sisterhood could be wickedly funny when no one was looking, and that the Custodes understood the Thoughtmark perfectly while pretending not to notice amusement at their expense.
An Aquilan Shield detachment rotated through her guard—watchers trained not only to ward blows but to stand beside lives destined to matter. A few Sisters of Silence began to trade words, about the "moving walls of stones finally arriving". They were not offended, only occasionally mortal . A sigh. A visor tilt that suggested exasperation.
They knew, and the Sisters of Silence were aware of their knowledge. The Princess always found amusing things to observe.
Once, Aurelia hid behind them when Malcador hunted her for lessons on the perils of the Immaterium; a mountain of auramite makes a serviceable screen. Other days, she rode a Custodian's shoulders, small hands in the laureled crest, sleepy from long walks among the beds she had coaxed to life. When she dozed there, no one woke her save Malcador himself, and even he did it like a man asking permission of a sunrise.
Her days took on a rhythm that did not admit boredom.
Morning: histories, maps, the long arithmetic of empire. Midday: languages—binharic as puzzle, High Gothic as song, thoughtmark as clean geometry.
Afternoon: cautions of the Immaterium, taught beneath wards that hummed like bees. And only what the Emperor wished for her to know. Wish was only "Don't go there. It's dangerous." And no more.
"Names are doors," Malcador would say, drawing sigils in ash and then smoothing them away. "Do not knock on the ones already listening."
She repeated the phrase, then forgot it in the exact way that kept her safe: by being herself. Still, she listened and obeyed. Aurelia never went there, and ignored the doors and the voices asking her to open them.
She was most human where she was least human. The paradox pleased her, though she could not have named it. In the sight of the Custodes, she was different from the Emperor: his presence was a summons that braced the spine and narrowed the breath; hers eased the jaw and gentled the heart. Those who guarded the Palace were grateful for the change, even as their brothers far away waded through wars beside their lord. Standing watch over the Princess offered a purpose not measured in slain foes. It asked for steadiness, not blood. They found they liked that, though none would have said so aloud.
From time to time, the Palace felt her in ways it could not name. Servitors slowed by half a beat when she laughed, as if savouring the echo. Banners that should have hung stiffly learned to breathe. In an astropathic choir, a chorister flinched when Aurelia passed the gallery above; the Sister‑Superior's null presence folded the moment flat, and the flinch became a shrug no one remembered.
She learned the kitchens at night: heat, steam, the beauty of motion. A cook taught her how to wait for bread to decide it was ready; she taught the oven to keep a memory of warmth for one loaf more. The exchange felt fair. She set a tiny garden by a service door so the night shift could take leaves without asking. A Custodian noticed the thefts and said nothing; discipline is not cruelty.
She asked questions that bent inward as often as outward. "Why does it hurt to speak a truth, instead of a lie?"
"Why do we pretend to be wise, when we don't know yet how to be wise?"
"Can pain be kind?"
Malcador answered what he could and built careful fences around what he could not. When she pressed, he would say, "Later," and she—who could cross the thought‑paths of a million worlds—accepted that single human promise with grave seriousness.
The Sisters taught her silence that is not absence and discipline that is not coldness. In the drill courts, they showed her how to stand still without becoming stone, how to watch without taking, how to say no with an open hand. Sometimes, when she stood between Krole and a ring of Sisters, the air felt like a lake before rain—charged, patient, honest.
"You make the noise quiet," Aurelia sighed once.
Krole's fingers moved: you make it quite true.
She did not abandon mischief; she refined it. Once she vanished for the span of a heartbeat and reappeared balanced atop a spear‑butt, neat as a note in a margin. The Custodian did not flinch, nor was his voice harsh.
"Down," he said, and offered a gauntleted hand. She stepped to the ground, chastened by the mildness.
Another season, she led a small procession of gardeners—Custodes among them—to transplant a tree she had raised from a seed shaped like a tear.
"It prefers the sound of water," she explained. They moved it beside a fountain. It lived. When winter grazed the Palace, the tree kept a small green even as marble took frost. A Sister paused there on rounds she did not have to walk and let the quiet settle in her bones.
So the seasons turned. Legions formed beyond the walls; starships took light; the Palace rehearsed its own heartbeat. Malcador taught history and caution. The Custodes taught by example—exactness without cruelty, patience without indulgence. The Sisters taught economy: of motion, of thought, of need.
Aurelia, in return, taught the gardens to climb and the fountains to remember. She taught corridors to give back echoes kindly. She taught herself to return whenever she vanished, and to warn before she did.
"Going," she would say, hand lifted.
"We stand," the nearest Custodian would answer, which meant we would be here when you return.
She was a child among titans, threading play through ritual and mercy through iron. In the quiet ledger Malcador kept where no ink dried, he wrote: The Ten Thousand breathe easier when she enters a room. They call it nothing and stand straighter. That is enough. And Terra, watching, learned to love her in the one way that needs no litany: by breathing easier when she entered the room—and a little easier still when she left and then came back.