Luck's Shadow
Chapter 3: Black Powder and Broken Promises
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Hive Ferrix wasn't a place of peace, even in the upper spires.
Down below—beneath the manufactorums, below the scrap-sinks and labor slums—the city seethed like an infected wound. Gangs fought with pipe-clubs and rusted laslocks. Disciplinary squads hunted traitor-cults in the dark. And the tech-priests kept digging deeper, always deeper, in search of forgotten STC relics no sane man would want to find.
I was fourteen the first time I saw death.
Not clean death. Not battlefield death. The kind of death that stank of blood and oil and screamed for hours before going silent.
It started with a riot.
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Tensions had been boiling in Sub-Spire 34 for weeks. Workers were demanding better ration cubes—less synthetic, more protein. Some fool priest thought it wise to cut water rations instead.
I was there because Father believed a noble son should "understand the lower caste's loyalty firsthand." That meant parade inspection duty with the local enforcer regiments. Mostly ceremonial. I stood on a balcony in formal armor, flanked by Taren and Kaelen, pretending to pay attention while the overseer droned about production quotas.
Then a shot rang out.
A single las-blast—crude, red, loud. Fired from the crowd.
Everything erupted in seconds.
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The crowd surged like a tidal wave of bodies. Chains, makeshift blades, mining drills—improvised weapons in desperate hands. Enforcers panicked. Some returned fire; others fled. A servitor stumbled and crushed two men beneath its tracks before shorting out in a burst of sparks.
Chaos. Screams. Smoke. Blood.
And me?
Frozen.
Then something strange happened.
A pipe was hurled—jagged, rusted, spinning end over end—right at my face. I remember seeing it clearly, as if time slowed.
And then?
A pigeon.
A pigeon, of all things, flew directly into the pipe mid-air. It deflected, missed my head by inches, and buried itself into Kaelen's breastplate with a clank. He cursed. I gasped.
And that's when I ran.
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Not out of cowardice—though I won't lie, fear was there. No, I ran because something deep inside whispered:
> Move now or die.
Taren grabbed my arm. Tried to hold me in place. But his boot slipped on blood-slick metal. He fell. I bolted through the hall behind the balcony while nobles screamed behind me.
No plan. No weapon. Just instinct.
Luck, some would say.
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The hall twisted into darkness. Somewhere, the power had failed. Red emergency lights blinked. Static buzzed in my ears.
And then—
Gunfire.
I ducked into a ruined side-room. It was a forge-chapel once. Now desecrated. Statues of the Omnissiah vandalized. A corpse nailed to the wall in mockery. I tried not to look.
Two rioters entered.
They had auto-pistols. No armor. Dirty overalls soaked in sweat and hate. They didn't see me right away. But they would.
I had no weapon.
Just a broken steel candlestick from the ruined altar. I held it like a sword.
My heart thudded like thunder.
> This is it, I thought.
This is how I die.
And then…
The ceiling gave way.
A collapsing pipe. No, not just collapsing—ripped loose by one of the ancient, forgotten servitors overhead finally shorting out from centuries of decay.
It fell directly on the two men.
Crushed them.
Just like that.
I stood there. Alive. Unharmed.
And I laughed.
Not out of joy. Not out of relief.
But something in me cracked.
> Why do I keep surviving?
The ring on my hand pulsed once.
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An hour later, enforcer reinforcements arrived. They found me among the rubble, still gripping the candlestick, the blood not mine.
The official story called me "valiant." A noble youth defending the Chapel of Steel with honor.
Kaelen rolled his eyes. Taren said nothing.
But Father looked at me differently that evening.
Like I was useful.
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That night, I had another dream.
The battlefield again. Ruined cities. Smoke in the sky.
And the ring—glowing, spinning slowly. Feeding on chaos. Feeding on fear.
This time, it spoke without words. I understood now.
It didn't protect me.
It didn't care if I lived or died.
It just balanced the odds.
> The greater the danger…
The stronger the luck.
> And someone always paid the price.
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End of Chapter 3