Chapter 138 - Sevatar: Should Have Joined the Raven Guard
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Harsh white light hit his face like a scalpel, splitting open Sevatar's consciousness.
His eyes snapped open on the cold operating table, pupils contracting to pinpoints.
Every muscle in his body was broadcasting signals to his brain.
Unfamiliar. Brand new. Brimming with power.
He tried clenching his fist. His knuckles cracked clean and sharp, the strength behind it leagues beyond anything he remembered.
"How does the Primaris upgrade feel, Sev?"
A familiar voice, carrying that habitual lazy drawl, drifted from beside him.
Sevatar turned his head and saw his Gene-Sire, Konrad Curze.
The Lord of the Night stood beside the operating table, arms folded across his chest, that pale, nearly translucent face wearing a rare trace of gentleness.
Honestly, that expression on Curze's face was more surreal than the Primaris upgrade itself.
Sevatar forced down the questions piling up inside him, clenched his fist again, and spent a long moment cataloguing every detail of his new body. When he finally spoke, his voice came out hoarse. "My lord. I feel excellent."
He paused, as if verifying something, then added.
"More vigorous than my original body."
"That's how I see it too." Curze nodded and pointed at the top of Sevatar's head. "After all, your white hair has turned black."
The Lord of the Night produced a mirror from somewhere and held it out.
Sevatar took it and looked.
The face in the mirror was much younger. Every strand of white hair, earned early through the legion's turmoil and years of unbroken warfare, was gone. In its place: thick, jet-black hair. The fine lines at the corners of his eyes had vanished. He looked exactly as he had the day he first joined the Night Lords.
Father and son left the operating room together, walked the corridor, and returned to Curze's quarters.
Sevatar had assumed his Gene-Sire would have arranged the room the same way as always.
Like back aboard the legion's Gloriana-class Battleship, the Nightfall, a dark, labyrinthine execution ground. Bones and skins scattered across the floor, dark red bloodstains sprayed across the walls, rot thick in the air. Honestly, even Sevatar had found that atmosphere a bit much, but Curze liked it, and who was going to argue with the Primarch.
The door opened.
An unfamiliar scent reached his nose.
Not blood.
Not decay.
Something that reminded him of Terran nobility, a faint, woody perfume.
Sevatar went still.
He blinked, eyes sweeping the room. Neat bookshelves stood along the walls, packed with books of every color, the spines worn from regular handling. A few armchairs were casually arranged in the center of the room. On the low table between them sat an open book and a teacup.
The space was a little cluttered, but it was the clutter of someone actually living there, not a horror set.
Nothing like the Nightfall.
Sevatar stood in the doorway and couldn't quite bring himself to step inside. He even glanced back down the corridor to confirm he had the right room.
Curze had clearly noticed his son's shock.
He didn't remark on it. He just hummed some nameless little tune, strolled in, dropped himself into one of the armchairs, and waved for Sevatar to follow.
"What are you standing there for? Come in."
Sevatar's legs moved stiffly. He entered, sat down across from Curze, and kept looking around. A plate of biscuits on the table. A small, delicate ornament beside the bookshelf, something handcrafted.
Curze brewed him a cup of tea and pushed it across.
Sevatar took it with both hands, which were, he realized, trembling slightly. The warmth seeping through the cup wall steadied him a fraction.
"I never would have imagined..." The Prince of Crows let out a slow breath, genuinely awed. "That you could change this much."
"People must always make progress." Curze crossed his legs, visibly pleased with himself. "Improve a little every day, and eventually you become great."
The Lord of the Night paused. He raised his chin slightly, arranged his features into the expression of a man about to share profound wisdom, and added:
"The ancient Roman philosopher Seneca said that. I'm quite fond of it."
The corner of Sevatar's mouth twitched.
The Curze he knew had no interest in ancient Roman philosophy. The Curze he knew stared into his own prophetic visions of death and destruction, muttered I have seen the end, and nailed human skin to the wall.
But the man in front of him had genuinely changed.
Not a performance. It radiated from somewhere deeper than that, a kind of ease, settled in the bones.
Sevatar lifted the teacup and took a careful sip.
The temperature was perfect. Someone had timed the steep.
Curze sank fully into the soft armchair and stretched like a lazy cat, bones cracking down his spine. His eyes went half-lidded.
"Guess where this furniture came from?"
Sevatar blinked. "Isn't it... allocated to you by the Imperium?"
"Oh, no. I don't like getting things for free." Curze waved a hand. "That lad Kaelen outsourced some work to me."
"Work?"
"Legal consultation and civil mediation for the fleet. Plus a cleaning job — clearing rats and filth from the lower decks." Curze counted it off on his fingers, his tone as breezy as a weather report. "I earned the money and bought this furniture."
He patted the armchair beneath him with quiet pride.
Sevatar nearly dropped his cup.
Shock.
Anger.
Both hit at the same instant, churning through his chest.
"That mortal made you do such degrading work." Sevatar's voice dropped low. The cold in it was barely contained. "I..."
"Calm down, Sev."
Curze cut him off. He was examining his own neatly trimmed fingernails, unhurried.
"I don't care about the rank of this work or that work. Because in it, I found something I hadn't felt in a long time." He paused. "Happiness. Ease."
The Lord of the Night lowered his hand and looked up. Those eyes, which had once mirrored nothing but death and madness, were still now, calm as deep water.
"One more thing. Show your Uncle Kaelen some respect."
Sevatar opened his mouth. A single look from Curze closed it.
"A mortal who brought Horus and Sanguinius back into this reality. A mortal who changed me." Curze's voice carried a thread of genuine disbelief, directed inward. "By Father's big buck teeth, he actually managed to change me. Even I find that hard to believe." He let out a short laugh. "And I heard from Horus that he personally banished Magnus. Does that sound like an ordinary man to you?"
Curze paused. "You've met Loken too. I expect you noticed how he looks at Kaelen."
The Prince of Crows drew a slow breath and lowered his head.
"Forgive me, my lord. I only..."
"Thought a primarch shouldn't be doing work that's meant for mortals?" Curze finished it for him, and shook his head. "No, Sev. That's a very narrow view."
The Lord of the Night straightened in his chair. His tone shifted, turned serious.
"In all of human history, anything that requires people to function — I see it as work, without exception. And work has no rank."
"A warrior is a profession too."
The words landed like a hammer against Sevatar's sternum.
In the old days, it had been him standing before Curze, berating his Primarch for extremism, for narrow thinking, for seeing only part of the picture.
And now the tables had flipped. He was the narrow one. And Curze saw further than anyone.
Sevatar's mouth twitched. He chose silence.
He raised the teacup and drank deeply, trying to drown the turbulence in his chest with hot tea.
Curze didn't notice, or didn't care. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, he slapped the armrest.
"Speaking of which — you have to read what I've been writing."
He extracted himself from the armchair with visible reluctance, like a man leaving an old friend behind. Walked to the desk. Rummaged through a pile of manuscript pages. Pulled out a bound book and turned to hand it over.
Sevatar looked at the cover.
A handwritten title, penmanship clean and careful. Compared to the Nostramo Grimoire, it was an improvement.
"What is it about, my lord?"
"Rebuilding the legion."
Four words. Sevatar's heartbeat stumbled.
He looked up at his Gene-Sire, not quite believing what he'd heard.
"The Imperium will allow us to rebuild the legion?" Uncertainty threaded through his voice.
"Not the Imperium." Curze settled back into his armchair and took a slow sip of tea. "Roboute Guilliman."
The Avenging Son's name dropped into the air, and Sevatar felt a reflexive flicker of irritation.
Ultramarines.
He remembered the Great Crusade. Those Ultramarines, coveting the Night Lords' Red Gauntlets culture, had quietly invented their own Red Helmet tradition. Nothing significant, in the grand scheme of things, but Sevatar had always felt Guilliman and his sons were copying someone else's homework. His opinion of them had never been warm.
Now hearing from his Gene-Sire's own mouth that the fate of their legion rested on that Master of Ultramar's approval, it felt like a hand closing around his throat.
"Then aren't we under his thumb?" Sevatar asked, frowning.
Curze looked at him. The faint trace in his expression was almost confusion.
"Roboute is the Emperor's personally chosen Imperial Regent. He holds the lion's share of military and political authority." The Lord of the Night's tone was even. "Even Horus can't be bothered with politics. Do you think we're in any position to challenge him?"
"Military and political power has to be centralized now. If it stays fragmented the way it was before, everyone ruling their own corner — then the human Imperium can just sit down and wait to die."
The last sentence came out cold. Sevatar heard what was underneath it.
His Gene-Sire's contempt for division. His loathing for it.
"That said, calling it a legion is generous." Curze's tone eased off slightly. "In practice, we probably won't reach even one-fifth of our old numbers. Because frontline combat isn't actually our role. We'd be helping Horus and Guilliman pin down enemy main forces through asymmetric warfare. Security operations. That kind of thing."
Sevatar's frown deepened.
He couldn't accept it.
That was auxiliary work. The classic example played out in his memory: before the Lord of the Raven Guard, Corax, returned to them, the Raven Guard had fought alongside Horus and the Luna Wolves, and Horus had repeatedly, shamelessly deployed them as support troops. A full Astartes legion, reduced to running errands and filling gaps.
This was the same thing.
The Prince of Crows sighed, and opened the book anyway.
Maybe his Gene-Sire had something insightful written inside. The man had transformed entirely, after all. Perhaps the strategic thinking had been upgraded along with everything else.
The first line his eyes found was:
Henceforth, legion management and strategic direction shall be assumed by Jago Sevatarion.
Sevatar's pupils snapped tight.
He raised his head slowly and looked at Curze.
"My lord..."
"What, is there a problem?" Curze was in the middle of pouring his second cup of tea. He glanced up and saw his son's face — that expression of someone desperate to speak and yet completely unable to, saturated with quiet suffering, and blinked, all innocence.
"You still don't intend to manage the legion yourself." It barely came out as a sentence. Sevatar's voice was pressed through clenched teeth.
"Ah." Curze cleared his throat. He met his son's gaze without a flicker of guilt. "Sev, this is a mark of trust. You are, after all, the only son I have who I can truly rely on and entrust things to."
His tone was so sincere it made a person want to swing at him.
Sevatar stared at his Gene-Sire for three full seconds.
Then he lowered his head, looked at the book in his hands, and said quietly: "I should have joined the Raven Guard."
Curze pretended not to hear, and drank his tea with great contentment.
➤ Next: Farewell, Return to the Sanctum
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