Chapter 20: The Price of Rising Light
They were starting to whisper his name.
Lucien Artor Vale.
"The Emperor's Gambler."
It had begun as little more than a hushed nickname shared among the men of the 22nd Vortigan Rifles. A joke, perhaps. A way to cope with the impossible survival of a young noble turned soldier who had walked unscathed through a kill zone, or whose lasgun had always seemed to fire true when it mattered most. But like all things whispered often enough, it had gained momentum. And now, in command tents, in the vox relays of orbiting fleets, and across the mess halls of Imperial regiments, the name began to echo.
Lucien could feel the change.
He wore the same flak armor, bore the same worn lasgun—but eyes followed him now. Not just the hopeful or the desperate among his squad, but officers, priests, and even the strange, hollow-gazed adepts from the Departmento Munitorum who rarely spoke but always watched. They tracked him as if trying to calculate odds that no machine could predict. As if he were a variable that didn't fit.
It had been six months since the conflict on Kathur Prime, where he had walked a minefield blindfolded to distract a T'au battlesuit—only for every mine to misfire or simply fail to detonate. His squad had barely believed it. He had barely believed it.
But now...
Now the universe was paying attention.
---
Lucien sat alone beside a ruined hab-block wall under the silvered dusk of Pavonis III, cleaning his weapon with methodical precision. The ritual kept his hands busy. His mind, though, drifted.
He didn't want this. Not the attention, not the praise. Not the expectations.
He had wanted a quiet life once. A small estate, a modest duty to fulfill as the fourth son of a lesser noble house. But the galaxy had laughed at such a dream. Duty demanded service. The ring—that strange, unholy relic of his old world—had demanded survival.
And now... survival had become victory. Repeated. Spectacular. Unexplainable.
The ring had never spoken. Never shone. But in the deepest moments of chaos, when death loomed with certainty, it pulsed.
And luck bent.
He remembered the ambush on Delthor Ridge. Remembered the moment a plasma bolt meant for his heart twisted in midair to strike a rock instead, triggering a cascade that buried his enemies. He remembered the sniper's shot that missed him by a hair—only to ricochet and take out two Ork nobs.
Each time, his luck grew. And with it, the unease.
He looked at his hands. Steady. Strong. But not his own. Not truly. Not after that truck had hit him back on Terra.
Lucien Vale had died there. And something else had taken his place.
---
"Trooper Vale."
The voice snapped him back. He looked up to see Commissar Verlain standing over him, arms folded behind his back. The man's cybernetic eye glowed softly in the dark.
"You are requested in the command tent. By name."
Lucien rose slowly, slinging his lasgun over his shoulder. "Of course, Commissar."
Verlain studied him a moment longer than necessary. "You're becoming a symbol, Vale. Be careful. Symbols are useful... until they become unpredictable. Then they are erased."
Lucien nodded, offering only silence.
---
The tent was lit by green holomaps and burning incense. Around a central table stood officers of multiple regiments, their faces drawn with fatigue and expectation.
At the head was a woman in robes of deep crimson. An Inquisitor. Her presence made the air itself feel heavier.
"Lucien Artor Vale," she said, not looking up from the map. "Also called the Gambler, the Lucky Bastard, and, recently, the Saint's Shadow."
Lucien didn't speak. There was no point denying it.
"Your record makes no sense," she continued. "No formal training beyond basics. No known psychic signature. No divine visions. And yet you lead your unit to impossible victories."
Her eyes rose to meet his. Cold. Measured.
"I want to know why."
Lucien met her gaze. "Ma'am, I just try not to die."
A flicker of a smile. But not kindness. Interest. "And yet you don't die. Ever."
She circled him slowly. "You know what happens to anomalies, Trooper Vale?"
He nodded. "They disappear."
She stopped. "Good. Then don't become one."
---
After that, Lucien walked differently.
He kept to himself more. Spoke less. Watched everything.
But the battlefield gave him no peace. On the outskirts of Pavonis Hive, as they repelled waves of mutated cultists, his luck flared again. A flamer ran out of fuel the moment it aimed at him. A collapsing tower froze mid-fall, giving him seconds to escape. A misfired melta round from an enemy drilled a perfect hole in the wall behind him—and revealed a hidden bomb before it could detonate under his squad.
They called him a hero. Again.
He wanted to scream. To vanish.
But something deep in his soul whispered: Keep going. You are not done.
The ring pulsed.
And Lucien marched onward.
Toward whatever waited in the shadow of his own legend.
---