The bells of the High Spire rang with a rare, frantic silver tone. On Cygnis III, such sounds were usually reserved for the sighting of a xenos fleet, but today, they sang for life. High King Valerios stood on the Great Balcony, his chest swelling with a pride that felt like the warmth of a second sun. Below, the serf-castes and the knight-pilots cheered, their voices rising through the smog of the rusted industrial plains.
A son. A prince. An anchor for the House of Valerios.
The King strode into the birthing chamber, his heavy boots clanking rhythmically on the flagstones. He ignored the sterile scent of the medical unguents, his eyes fixed on the bundle held by the Queen.
"Let me see him," the King boomed, his voice thick with a rough, knightly tenderness.
Queen Elara looked up, her face pale but glowing with the relief of a successful labor. She pulled back the lead-trimmed swaddling. The child was perfect, limbs strong, skin the color of polished ivory. The King felt a surge of predatory protectiveness.
"He shall be Caspian," the King declared, the name an ancient honor from their lineage. "Caspian Valerios, the Tide-Breaker. He will lead the Knights when my armor is empty."
He reached down to touch the boy's brow. At that moment, Caspian opened his eyes.
The transition was instantaneous. It was as if the sun had been snuffed out by a hand of ice. The King's hand froze inches from the infant's skin. The joy didn't just fade, it turned to ash in his mouth.
What was once in the cradle was not human, the King saw a bundle of darkness like a black hole drawing in any and everything into itself. In that bundle was a beast that sout to devour everything in front of it
To the King, it felt like the child was drinking him. Not his blood, but the very essense of his being, his thoughts jerk for a split second.
"Abomination," the King gasped. The "Tide-Breaker" he had named seconds ago was no longer a son. He was a predator of the spirit.
Panic, sharp and jagged, replaced his pride. He saw the way the shadows in the room seemed to lean toward the child. He saw the nurses clutching their heads, their noses beginning to bleed.
He didn't know how far this would spread, but there was one thing he knew anything that stayed near this thing will die.
He drew his blade. The act was not one of malice, but of survival. The King struck.
The blade sheared through the cradle. The Queen screamed, not for the child, but from the sudden, jarring snap of the "hole" in reality closing for a split second as the heart stopped. But then, it opened again.
The King watched in mute horror as the infant's throat sealed, the skin smoothing over as if the sword had been a mere shadow.
"Take it away," the King hissed, retreating toward the door, his hand white-knuckled on his sword. "Elara, take it to the Sea of Shards. It cannot stay, or it would be the doom of us all."
The Queen, driven by a mixture of lingering maternal instinct and a terrified, hypnotic command, gathered the child.
The journey took a full day. For Elara, it was a march to her own grave. As she through the spiny jungles, and climbed through the rugged rocks. He body started losing her, but she knew this thing must be brought a far away as is possible to avoid any more damage to the kingdom.
Her skin turned a translucent, sickly gray, the veins beneath appearing black. Every breath felt like inhaling ground glass. The "void" was stripping her soul bare, leaving her a hollowed-out husk of a woman.
By the time she reached the precipice of the Sea of Shards, she was dying. Her eyes were bloodshot, her movements jerky and arthritic. She looked down at the child, Caspian, who stared back with that same, unblinking emptiness.
"You... are... nothing," she rasped, her lungs failing. With the last of her strength, she threw the bundle.
She did not stay to watch him hit the water. She fell back into the dirt, her heart fluttering and stopping, her life extinguished by the very presence of the thing she had birthed.
Caspian hit the churning, mineral-heavy water. The weight of the lead-lined silks dragged him down into the crushing dark.
The Sea of Shards was a cruel cradle. He was battered against crystalline reefs that tore his soft flesh to ribbons. He was swallowed by salt-heavy currents that burned his throat. Each time he died, the black outlines on his skin pulsed.
They were not just markings they were connected, to what was yet unknown. They looked like scars one would get upon injury, but these were not healing marks, they were solid black lines connecting in an arcane fasion that made no logical sense.
By the time he washed onto the far bank, miles from the Spire, his tiny body was a map of black ink. Twelve symbols, intricate and alien, covered his torso and limbs.
He lay on the salt-flats, his tiny chest still. The silence of the Ghoul Stars settled over him. In that moment of finality, the pressure became too much. His soul, too massive and "wrong" for a single frame, buckled.
In his mind as he drifted off to finality he thought to himself 'What did i do, I just got here', this thought turned into a scream
'IS THIS HOW YOU WANT TO PLAY THIS', for someone who had transmigrated to a new world, there can be no start worse than this, he thought.
The last breath he took consciously let his overburdened soul claim the opportunity to leave his body. His sould ascended and
BANG!!
It tore into two shards, screaming through the Empyrean like silent meteors, heading toward the distant light places unknown to him.
Caspian Valerios did not move again. What was coming was not known to him, but to those that saw those meteors move, they knew a change had come.