She had rules. In the Basilica Liminalis she took knowledge in pages, not volumes; tools, not creeds; never Abominable Intelligence; never the kind of weapon that makes a people forget why they are fighting. And she kept the door shut behind each lesson.
Then, across the new lattice of Chorus‑Spires and Choir‑Forts, a message found her in days, not months. Her father had seen orders arrive clean at Ullanor's marched edge and fleets move as if the galaxy had one breath. Well done, the Emperor said—two simple words, unornamented. Use those numbers in your head. Keep making Me proud. Help your brothers in battle.
The praise went through her like a finely made knife. She had named enough a virtue; now she rearranged enough so it looked like obedience. If good work brought a nod, then more work would bring another. The instinct that kept her safe began to bend toward the habit that might break her. Malcador watched the angle change and wrote in his ledger without ink: Maker's pride is love; to her it sharpens into duty. Guard the line.
Aurelia told herself she would only build what saved lives: ships that arrived, armor that turned aside the last killing blow, tools that steadied the warp around a man long enough for him to be brave. She would take only small bites. She repeated it like prayer and meant it every time—until the next blueprint asked to be finished.
So she went inward again. The hall between names steadied beneath her feet; the Basilica adjusted like a workshop when a craftswoman moves a bench. A library for her. Pages opened where she pointed—Dark Age of Technology chapters on hull forms, void harmonics, conversion matrices; small, wordless diagrams that her green sleeping star—the shard that dreamed in her hair—seemed to understand and approve with the faintness of unstated memory. She never asked it for history. She asked for the angle of a field, the phase of a seam, the way metal might learn to flow without forgetting it was armor.
She stopped after each page. She stopped—until she didn't, because there were Orks near the Ullanor Sector and her brothers were sailing toward them and the word proud kept echoing like a bell.