I remember my childhood. Vividly, for how short it was.
I was born on a harsh planet, especially for my universe. Cadia, it was called. It was a planet similar to Terra, originally classified as the Imperrium's most important Fortress World.
It was the fourth world of the Cadian System, and its surface contained a wide variety of terrain types and ecosystems, including frozen tundras, temperate plains, wind-swept moors and the great native axel-tree forests
At least that's what my mom told me. I was born years after it looked like that.
You see, Cadia guarded the only known navigable route to and from this thing called the Eye of Terror. Making Cadia the first target of the Black Crusade's.
Luckily, or unluckily, I wasn't alive for most of that. I was born a few years into the 13th Black Crusade, meaning that at 3 years old I was witness to the "Will of Eternity", crashing into the surface of Cadia like an artificial meteor. This monstrous kinetic strike wiped out most of Cadia's defenders, destroyed the network of Cadian Pylons and tectonically destabilised the world.
Of those defenders, was my dad. An imperial guardsman. He was okay from what I remember, kinda insane, had a weird obsession with a shovel.
I never really got to know him, since after the kinetic strike wiped out most of Cadia; the Warp and its denizens claimed the remains of the Fortress World.
Lord Castellan Ursarkar E. Creed helped somewhat, arranging an evacuation of the planet that saved 3 million of its citizens —though not before Creed himself mysteriously disappeared.
Most of my family members got away. My step-grandparents, my step-brother, and my step-sisters. The only ones who didn't make it, were my mother and I.
Mother, chose to stay behind with me. Perhaps it was a sense of duty to the broken remains of Cadia or perhaps she simply didn't want to leave my father's memory behind. Either way, it was a decision that would lead us into the depths of madness.
My earliest memories are filled with fire and whispers. The sky above Cadia was a roiling storm of Warp energy, unnatural hues shifting and twisting like a malevolent living thing. The once-proud axel-trees had been reduced to skeletal remnants, their barkless limbs clawing at the heavens. Chaos reigned everywhere.
I remember my mother clutching me tightly to her chest as we ran through the ruins of our home. The world was collapsing around us—both in the physical sense and in the metaphysical. The Warp was seeping through the cracks in reality, and with it came its horrors: daemons, madness, and whispers that gnawed at the edges of sanity.
I didn't understand any of it at the time. To me, it was just... home. A broken, blood-soaked home filled with shadows that moved on their own and voices that spoke my name in languages I couldn't understand.
We survived by sheer luck, or perhaps by the twisted design of the Warp itself. My mother was resourceful and fierce, a survivor who refused to let go of me no matter the cost. She scavenged supplies from the ruins, fought off raiders and daemons with a laspistol she'd taken from a fallen soldier, and whispered prayers to the Emperor every night. I don't know if he heard her, but she kept praying regardless.
Eventually, staying on Cadia became impossible. The Warp storms intensified, and the whispers grew louder. My mother made the desperate decision to try to escape, even though it meant entering the Immaterium itself.
We found an abandoned cargo freighter, rusted and barely operational. The ship's Warp-Drive still hummed with life, though it was temperamental and damaged. It wasn't ideal, but it was our only chance. My mother sealed us inside the vessel, whispering reassurances to me as the ancient engines roared to life.
The jump into the Warp was horrifying. The transition from realspace to the Immaterium was like falling through an endless abyss, and even as a child, I could feel the sheer wrongness of it. The walls of the freighter seemed to ripple and pulse, and the whispers that had plagued us on Cadia became screams.
For a year, we drifted. A year.
The Warp is not kind to travelers, especially not those without a Navigator or a beacon like the Astronomican to guide them. The ship's systems were erratic at best, and the Warp storms constantly buffeted us, threatening to tear the freighter apart.
I don't know how we survived. My mother's determination was the only constant in that year of chaos. She scavenged food and water from the freighter's dwindling supplies, and when they ran out, she turned to desperate measures—rationing what little we had and forcing herself to go without so I could eat.
The Warp didn't leave us unscathed. It seeped into the ship, into our minds. I saw things no child should ever see—things no one should see. Shadows that moved and whispered, shapes that weren't there when you looked directly at them. My mother's prayers became frantic, her voice hoarse from pleading with the Emperor to protect us.
I should have died. A child has no place in the Immaterium, where even the strongest of warriors can lose their minds. But somehow, I endured. My body grew weaker with each passing day, but my will—or perhaps the Warp's twisted sense of humor—kept me alive.
I turned four years old in that hellscape. My mother marked the occasion by scratching a small tally into the wall of our cabin, her hands trembling.
It was then, on the verge of despair, that we found him.
The ship had been adrift for what felt like an eternity when the freighter's sensors picked up a massive vessel approaching. The Nicor.
At first, my mother thought it was another illusion—a cruel trick of the Warp. But the Nicor was real, its colossal silhouette looming in the void like a predator stalking its prey.
The Carcharodons boarded us with ruthless efficiency, their grey-and-black armor gleaming in the flickering lights of our failing ship. My mother tried to shield me as they stormed aboard, her laspistol shaking in her hands. She must have looked pathetic to them— malnourished and half dead holding a near child.
And then he arrived.
Tyberos.
He was a giant, even among the Space Marines. His modified Terminator armor made him an even more imposing figure, the brass studs and ancient ceramite of his battleplate etched with sigils I didn't recognize. Hunger and Slake, his infamous Lightning Claws, hung at his sides, their adamantium teeth stained with the blood of countless enemies.
He stepped forward, his presence overwhelming. My mother froze, her breath hitching as his soulless black lenses locked onto us.
For a moment, there was only silence. Then, Tyberos spoke.
"What manner of madness is this?"
His voice was a soft, menacing growl, carrying the weight of countless battles. He crouched down, his massive frame dwarfing us both. I remember his head tilting slightly as he studied me, his black eyes seeming to peer into my very soul.
"This... child survived the Warp?"
He sounded almost incredulous, his tone laced with something I couldn't quite identify. Pity? Horror? Curiosity?
Tyberos reached out with one massive gauntlet, the servos of his armor whining as he gently touched my shoulder. I flinched, expecting pain, but his touch was surprisingly gentle for one so monstrous.
"You are either blessed by the Emperor or cursed by the Warp," he murmured. "Perhaps both."
My mother fell to her knees, sobbing. "Please," she begged. "Save him. Take him away from this place. He doesn't deserve this."
Tyberos straightened, his gaze shifting to the other Carcharodons. "Prepare them for transport," he ordered.
That moment marked the end of my life as I knew it. Tyberos and his warriors took us aboard the Nicor, away from the hellish freighter that had been our prison.
But the Warp leaves its mark. I wasn't the same after that year adrift. Neither was my mother.
Tyberos kept a close eye on me, though he never explained why. Perhaps he saw something in me that reminded him of himself, or perhaps he simply couldn't fathom how a child had survived such horrors.
The Nicor became my new home, and Tyberos... Tyberos became something akin to a father figure. A monstrous, blood-soaked father figure, but a father figure nonetheless
He was a good man... I think. Taught me to read, educated me in ways I'd never understood —like math, or how to kill a Tyranid.
I almost became complacent ... till I died.
I'm not sure how, I died. My memories get all fuzzy when I try to remember.
All I know is that there was screaming, a lot of red, and the head of a Primarch laid in my six year hands.
Honestly, I thought that was the end for me.
Dying young, left to forever float in a void of darkness.
Then I heard a voice.
"Thalia, look, I found a kid."
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DGW: Hello everyone, I'm sorry for the rewrite but I believed that the old story wasn't going that well and wanted to give it another go. If you have any complaints or suggestions, feel free to tell me. With that said, I'm signing off.
Tools used: FANDOMS app, Google Docs, Spotify
Suggest Love Interest Here: anyone is allowed, except those younger two or more years younger than the MC
Word Count: 1597