~Uzemial POV~
The first thing Uzemial noticed about the Hive world of Gesvel was the smell.
It was not merely filth. Filth could be washed away. Filth implied neglect, and neglect could be forgiven. This was something else—an active, aggressive stench, layered and self-sustaining. Burnt promethium clung to the air like old regret. Chemical runoff seeped into everything, sour and metallic, stinging even a being who did not technically need to breathe. Rot mingled with incense, and beneath it all lay the unmistakable tang of human density: too many lives stacked too close together, sweating, bleeding, dying, and being replaced without pause.
Gesvel like all hive worlds, it was an argument against mercy.
Uzemial descended slowly through the smog-choked skies, his wings folded tight to his back, feathers dulled and dimmed beneath layers of ash and particulate grime. He had muted his radiance as much as he dared. Even so, his presence bent the light around him, refracting it into faint halos that clung to the edges of ruined hab-spires and rusted gantries as he passed. He touched down upon a fractured landing platform somewhere in the mid-hive, ceramite plating cracked beneath centuries of neglect, the screams of industry roaring endlessly below.
His bare feet met metal that vibrated constantly, as if the entire world were shivering.
This was not where souls were meant to begin.
He straightened, smoothing the long white robes that now bore stains of soot and oil, and allowed himself a moment—just a moment—to steady his thoughts.
Aedan, Uzemial reminded himself.
The name echoed softly within him, tethered to something vast and distant, like a star glimpsed through stormclouds. That tether was weaker than it should have been. Fractured. Obscured. The Multiversal Rebirth Allocation Terminal had censored nearly everything after the incident—management's didn't even know what was the cause. Where there should have been a full karmic ledger, soul-metric graphs, probability spirals, and projected survivability matrices, there was instead only a name and a bare descriptor.
AEDAN VOLEAR.
STATUS: DEPLOYED.
LOCATION: UNKNOWN.
No vitals. No astral resonance trace. No soul-frequency triangulation.
Nothing.
Uzemial clenched his hands, feathers rustling faintly. He had argued. He had pleaded. He had very nearly committed the celestial equivalent of throttling the his ward and Shaking sense into him. Instead the boy did the exact opposite of what he was told, and now Uzemial to go about to find him and save him. The response from management had been immediate and final.
You were responsible. You will correct this.
So here he was.
The logic, at least, had been sound. Infuriatingly so.
Option A. Option B.
The first product. The second product.
Warhammer Fantasy was A, it had come before Warhammer 40,000. Any being with even cursory pattern-recognition could see that. His ward, this Aedan was bright, reckless, catastrophically enthusiastic. Aedan would absolutely choose the option he believed corresponded to the grim darkness of the far future and not yee old warhammer.
Uzemial had not accounted for the Terminals lack of response… nor for the fact that his ward was an idiot of historical proportions.
But until proven otherwise, the assumption remained: Aedan was somewhere in the Imperium of Man. Somewhere in this galaxy-spanning monument to cruelty, paranoia, and bureaucratic despair. Somewhere that angels did not belong.
Uzemial stepped forward, wings unfurling despite himself as he pushed into the flow of humanity.
The reaction was immediate.
People stopped.
Not all at once. Not dramatically. Just a subtle, creeping hesitation that spread through the crowd like a sickness. Conversations faltered. Machinery clanked on, uncaring, but human eyes turned. Wide. Suspicious. Afraid.
He felt their gazes like needles.
He smiled, gentle and practiced, and raised his hands in a universal gesture of peace, an open hand salute. His voice carried easily, warm and resonant, cutting through the din without effort.
"Please," he said softly. "Do not be afraid. I mean no harm. I seek only a single individual. A man by the name of—"
"MUTANT!" The word cracked through the air like a las-shot. A finger jabbed toward him. A man, thin and soot-streaked, eyes bloodshot with fear and zeal. "LOOK AT 'IM! HE'S GOT WINGS!"
The crowd recoiled as one, the hesitation snapping into full panic.
"MUTANT!"
"BURN IT!"
"ABOMINATION!"
"KICK HIM IN THE BALLS BEFORE HE TRIES TO REPRODUCE MORE MUTANTS!"
Uzemial's smile faltered.
"I am not a mutant," he said quickly, stepping back as bodies pressed away from him. "I am not human at all. I am a—"
"XENOS!" The word was screamed this time, raw with hatred. "He said it himself! He's not human!"
"Kill it!"
"Call the Arbites!"
"No! Capture it! The priests will want it alive! They can use holy feet to KICK HIM THE BALLS."
The noise surged into a frenzy. Uzemial felt it then—the crushing weight of belief, of dogma so dense it warped reality around it. In this place, wings were not symbols of salvation. They were evidence. Proof of deviation. Justification for violence.
"I do not wish to fight," he pleaded, backing away as hands reached for improvised weapons. "Please. I only want to find someone. He is in danger. He does not belong here."
The first stone struck his shoulder, bouncing harmlessly away, but the intent behind it made his heart ache. Sirens wailed overhead.
An Arbites gunship roared into view, searchlights cutting down through the smog like blades. The crowd surged forward, emboldened by the backup. Each charging at Uzemial as if their God-Emperor was watching and not a single one of them would be found wanting.
"There! There he is!"
"Shoot it!"
Uzemial turned, panic blooming in his chest for the first time in millennia.
"No—wait—"
The gunship opened fire.
Not at him. The trajectory of the autocannon's muzzle was off.
The first burst of suppressive fire tore through the front ranks of the crowd, bodies collapsing in sprays of blood and bone. Screams replaced shouts. Panic detonated outward, people trampling one another as they tried to flee, but some with zeal attempted to rush at Uzemial, believing that they were safe, that the emperor Protects, only for more people to be torn apart by heavy autocannon as the operator of said automatic weapon didn't even fix his aim.
Uzemial stared in horror.
"No…" he whispered.
The gunship finally adjusted its aim, now finally focusing upon Uzemial.
That was enough.
With a sob tearing free from his throat, Uzemial launched himself skyward, wings beating hard as rounds stitched the air where he had stood moments before. He did not look back as he fled in a speed that defied physics and understanding. Uzemial flew faster and faster for he did not want to see the aftermath of his arrival. He folded himself into the shadows between towers, diving downward, ever downward, until light itself seemed to thin and break apart.
By the time he landed again, he was shaking.
The underhive swallowed him whole.
Here, the air was thick and wet, reeking of waste and decay. Sewage flowed in sluggish rivers through corroded channels, luminescent fungi clinging to the walls like diseased stars. The architecture was less deliberate here, grown rather than built, layers of habitation sloughing off into caverns and tunnels where the forgotten lived and died.
Uzemial took a moment, a small moment to let out a small sob, the sight of those people, mad zealous yes, but humans being gun downed so cruel, so incompetently just to attempt to strike himself down had the guardian angel of humans shaking in sorry. His vestments of gold and white was dyed with crimson for being too close to the slaughter. When he was finally composed, Uzemial moved quietly now, wings wrapped tight, robes torn and stained. He kept to the shadows, every sense strained for pursuit.
They would be looking for him.
He knew that.
And worse—others might feel him too.
He paused beside a rusted conduit, closing his eyes.
He could find Aedan. He knew he could. A single focused exertion of his true nature, a pulse of divine resonance, and the tether between guardian and ward would flare bright enough to follow.
But in this universe…
He shuddered.
Psychic power was not neutral here. It was a beacon. A scream into a void filled with things that listened. The Warp pressed close to reality, thin and hungry, and anything that shone too brightly risked being seen by entities that would gladly twist him, use him, or worse—trace him back.
Back to the Terminal.
The thought made him feel cold in a way that had nothing to do with temperature.
If Chaos touched the Multiversal Rebirth Allocation Terminal—if it learned of it—then every soul in transit, every rebirth, every second chance…
Damned.
All of them.
For a moment, Uzemial leaned against the wall and let the weight of it settle on him.
Aedan, he thought again, this time with something dangerously close to fond exasperation. Wherever you are, what have you done now?
He straightened.
He would remain a pacifist. He would not raise his hand against these people, no matter what they called him. He would not shine, not yet. He would walk the sewers and slums and forgotten tunnels of this hell-world if that was what it took.
Because somewhere out there was a reckless soul who had screamed devotion at the face of heaven, who had leapt into damnation with a grin and called it destiny.
And whether he liked it or not—
Uzemial was still his guardian angel.
So he moved on through the underhive, alone, hunted, afraid to use his own power, searching for a ward who desperately needed protection in a universe that devoured the unprepared.
Above him, Gesvel churned on. The massacre was reported as the work of the unidentified mutant, with the speed at which Uzemial moved, it looked like he disappeared. So the arbites claimed the mutant was one of the smaller pieces of gore that littered the upper hive level. It was not like anyone was going to double check, more importantly no one in the Imperium cared, neither of the slaughtered workers or the life of a single mutant in a hive world that contained thousands. For in the Grim Dark Future, you were only a number, one of countless trillions...