The House of Soft Stone
The building did not look like an orphanage. In the Union, an orphanage was a warehouse for unwanted things—cold stone, straw mattresses, and the smell of unwashed bodies.
Here, in the Sanctuary District of Amplus Observo, the building was a sprawling manor of smooth, heated obsidian. It had wide, arched windows facing the ocean, catching the morning light. It smelled of lavender, baked bread, and safety.
But Jonas didn't trust the smell.
Jonas was ten years old. He was skinny, his ribs showing through his new grey tunic. He sat at the long wooden table in the dining hall, his hands hovering over a bowl of beef stew. He didn't eat. He watched the doors. He watched the adults. He waited for the trick.
Beside him, a younger girl named Tess—who had lost her left eye to a Union taskmaster's cane—was eating so fast she was choking.
"Slowly, little bird," a voice said.
Jonas flinched, his hand instinctively going for the butter knife.
Matron Hestia stood there. She was a large woman, formerly a cook in the slave caravans, now draped in the clean black-and-silver apron of the Caretakers. She didn't look at the knife in Jonas's hand. She followed his gaze to the far wall of the dining hall.
There, carved into a massive slab of polished black stone, were the laws of the Imperium. But one section—the Third Tenet—was different. It pulsed with a soft, rhythmic violet light, breathing like a living thing.
"Do you know why that one glows, Jonas?" Hestia asked softly.
Jonas shook his head, his eyes fixed on the shimmering letters.
"Because the Raven Lord put his own heart into that one," she said, her voice like iron wrapped in velvet. She recited the words that burned on the wall:
III. THE CHILD IS THE RAVEN'S OWN.To strike the youth is to strike the Throne.To corrupt the innocent is to invite the Void.There is no trial. There is only the End.
"The masters... they count the bread," Jonas whispered, his voice hoarse, ignoring the magic on the wall. "If we eat too much, they take it from tomorrow."
Hestia knelt. It was a struggle for her knees, but she did it. She put herself lower than the boy.
"There are no masters here, son," Hestia whispered. "There are only mothers. And we have plenty of bread for tomorrow."
She reached out. Jonas flinched hard, squeezing his eyes shut, waiting for the blow. It never came. A warm, calloused hand cupped his cheek.
Jonas opened his eyes. He looked at the glowing Tenet, then at the stew. He looked at the fifty other children in the hall—humans, demi-humans, scarred, broken—eating until they were full.
For the first time in his life, Jonas picked up his spoon not to survive, but to enjoy. He took a bite. It tasted like salt and beef. It tasted like home.
The Day the Ravens Rested
The bells of the orphanage rang. It wasn't the alarm bell. It was the deep, resonant chime of Visitation.
When the gates opened, Centurion Kael entered first, leading a massive black warhorse that stepped gingerly on the flagstones. Behind him came Corvin Nyx.
The children froze. They expected fire. They expected the tyrant who burned Voluptus.
Jonas stood at the back, clutching Tess's hand. He watched as the Raven Lord surveyed the garden. Corvin saw the scars. He saw the missing eyes. He saw the way they flinched when a bird took flight. In their eyes, he saw the Crucible—the slave pits where he was born, the iron bars he had pressed his face against while his father was forced to watch the defilement of his mother.
The Raven Heart surged, a volatile engine of rage, but Corvin swallowed it. He would not bring his war here.
He sat on a stone bench. He didn't check his pocket watch. He didn't dismiss his guards to secure the perimeter. He simply sat.
"Who likes horses?" Corvin asked.
After the initial fear broke—after the boy with rabbit ears fed the warhorse an apple—the tension didn't just snap; it evaporated. Because Corvin didn't leave.
He stayed for lunch.
He didn't sit at the head of the table. He squeezed his massive, armored frame onto a wooden bench between Jonas and a quiet girl named Elara. The Matrons tried to bring him a silver goblet, but he waved them away, taking a wooden bowl of the same beef stew the children ate.
"It needs more pepper," Corvin noted, taking a bite.
"Matron Hestia says pepper makes us sneeze," Jonas whispered, daring to speak to the Emperor.
Corvin looked at him, a conspiratorial glint in his violet eyes. "Matron Hestia is a wise woman. But a little sneeze never hurt a warrior."
With a flick of his finger, a tiny, harmless wisp of shadow drifted from his hand, grabbed the pepper shaker from the kitchen counter, and danced it over Jonas's bowl. The table erupted in giggles.
The afternoon wore on, and the "Monster" became a jungle gym.
Corvin went to the courtyard where the children were playing with blocks. He watched them build jagged, unstable towers.
"You need a stronger foundation," Corvin murmured.
He knelt in the dirt. The architect of the Obsidian Citadel, the man who designed the unbreachable Sector Towers, began to stack wooden blocks with a group of six-year-olds. He showed them how to interlock the corners. He used tiny threads of Obsidian magic to fuse the blocks together so they could build higher than they ever thought possible.
"Look!" Tess screamed, pointing at the structure that now towered over her head. "It's a castle!"
"It's a Citadel," Corvin corrected gently. "And you are the Queen inside it."
As the sun began to dip low, painting the sky in hues of bruised purple and orange, the energy in the orphanage settled into a drowsy calm. The children were gathered on the soft grass of the courtyard for story time.
Corvin didn't read from a book. He sat with his back against an ancient oak tree, his cape spread out like a picnic blanket. Three children had fallen asleep directly on his cloak. One brave toddler was asleep against his armored shin.
Jonas sat close, watching the Emperor's face. The terrifying helmet was on the grass. Corvin looked... tired. Not the tiredness of sleep deprivation, but the soul-deep exhaustion of holding the world together by sheer will.
"Lord?" Jonas whispered.
Corvin opened one eye. "Yes, Jonas?"
"Do you have a father?"
The air went still. Kael, standing guard by the gate, tensed.
Corvin closed his eyes again. He thought of the Crucible. He thought of the man who had loved his wife so much that seeing her broken had destroyed him. He thought of the blood on the shale.
"I did," Corvin said, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in Jonas's chest. "He was a brave man. But the world was too heavy for him."
"Is that why you are so strong?" Jonas asked. "So the world isn't heavy for us?"
Corvin looked at the boy. The Raven Heart, usually a source of cold power, felt strangely warm. It wasn't screaming for vengeance. It was humming with purpose.
"Yes," Corvin whispered. "That is exactly why."
For a moment, the Emperor of the Imperium let his guard down completely. He leaned his head back against the bark of the tree. The sounds of the empire—the logistics, the Sector Lords, the threats, the constant vigilance of the Raven's Eye—faded away.
All that was left was the sound of the ocean and the breathing of sleeping children.
He hadn't felt this safe since before the Crucible. He realized, with a start, that he needed them just as much as they needed him. They were the only proof that his war was worth fighting.
"Rest now, Lord Corvin," Tess mumbled in her sleep, shifting on his cloak.
And he did. For twenty minutes, the Raven Lord slept in the garden, guarded not by his Legion, but by the innocent.
When he finally stood to leave, the sun was gone. The Matrons had come to collect the sleeping children. Corvin fastened his cloak, the mask of the Emperor sliding back into place, but his eyes remained soft.
He stopped at the gate and looked back at Jonas, who was watching him go.
"Jonas," Corvin said.
"Yes, Lord?"
"The pepper," Corvin said, tossing a small pouch to the boy. "For next time."
As the heavy gates closed, separating the Sanctuary from the world, Corvin turned to Kael.
"Sir?" Kael asked.
"Increase the funding for this Sector," Corvin ordered, his voice back to the cold steel of the ruler. "And Kael?"
"Lord?"
"If anyone threatens this place," Corvin said, looking at the high walls of the orphanage, "burn their entire lineage to the ground."
"Understood, my Lord."
Corvin walked into the night, the darkness swirling around him, no longer just a weapon, but a shield for the only things in the world that remained pure.