3.045.912.M41
I set foot upon Heliovar beneath a sky the color of bruised silk, its twin suns smothered by incense-smoke that drifted from a thousand spires. The air was sweet as candied wine, yet it stung the throat with an undertone of rot. I had come at the Cardinal’s polite insistence to bless a reliquary newly unearthed—bones said to be of Saint Callis, martyr of the Halo Marches. I came weary, staff in hand, rosarius hidden beneath my robe, and with the old ache in my lungs that tells me the Emperor will soon call me to His side.
The court of Heliovar received me with velvet smiles. Perfumed courtiers in lacquered masks bent low, their voices honeyed and slow. Music quivered through the marble halls like a living thing: a rhythm just shy of heartbeat, too languid for liturgy, too precise for chance. I smelled roses and something sharper, a fragrance that reminded me of forgotten sins.
Among the attendants walked Sister Lira, the youngest of the reliquary’s guardians. Her eyes were wide as any novitiate’s, but her step faltered when a certain noble—clad in silks that shimmered like oil on water—brushed past. I saw the flush rise on her cheek; I heard the tremor in her prayer. Chastity, I thought, is not merely the closing of a door. It is the guarding of a flame.
That night the nobles hosted a vigil-feast “in honor of the Saint.” The feast stretched into something darker. Music deepened, pulsed. Veils fell from dancers whose limbs moved like question and answer. Goblets overflowed with wine that glittered faintly in the candlelight as though laced with powdered stars. I tasted none of it. Lira sat near me, fingers clenched white on her rosary. The masked noble leaned close to her ear, whispering words I could not hear but could almost feel, like warm breath on an open wound.
I laid a hand upon hers. “Daughter,” I said softly, “remember the Emperor’s love—it is fiercer than desire and gentler than touch. Do not let another claim the devotion that is already His.”
Her eyes cleared as if a veil had lifted. Together we slipped from the hall. Behind us, the music sharpened into a single, piercing note.
The reliquary chamber lay in silence, but the silence was a lie. Candles guttered though no breeze moved. At the reliquary’s base a sigil writhed—drawn in something dark and fresh. The noble stood there, mask discarded, face alight with unholy rapture. Around him a half-circle of courtiers chanted a name I will not record.
“Saint Callis died resisting the excess you worship,” I said. My voice was brittle but it carried. “Begone.”
Lira stepped forward, raising her rosarius high. Light spilled from the ancient beads—cold, clean, merciless. The cultists shrieked as the Emperor’s name rang from her lips. I joined her prayer, every syllable a hammer-blow. The sigil smoked, then burst like overripe fruit. When silence fell again, only ash remained.
At dawn we sealed the chamber and summoned the local Arbites. Lira knelt beside the Saint’s bones, tears on her cheeks not of shame but of release. “I nearly failed,” she whispered.
“No,” I told her. “Chastity is not the untested heart. It is the heart that feels the pull of the abyss and yet turns, again and again, toward the Emperor’s light.”
Now I write these words in the margin of my travel-bible. I will not name the noble, nor the world, for memory alone is punishment enough. Chastity is more than abstinence of flesh. It is purity of devotion, a single flame kept bright amid incense-laden corruption. May the Emperor guard that flame in all who serve Him, until the stars themselves grow cold.