Lorn was strong. That was all that mattered.

An Ogryn’s worth was in his arms and shoulders, in how many rocks he could split digging the trenches, how many heavy shells he could carry on his shoulders, how many enemies he could smash flat with the butt of his ripper gun. He had fought under the Emperor’s banners, like all his kin, shouting praises drilled into him by the metal-faced priests.

But strength is nothing when the body betrays itself.

It began as a twitch.

A finger that trembled when it should have been still. A jaw that clenched without command. The first time it happened, the others laughed. ‘Lorn shaking like a cold grox!’ they jeered, slapping his back.

But the laughter died when the shaking grew.

He’d been only fifteen, still not grown to his full size, unloading crates of ammunition and artillery shells for the quartermaster. Lorn’s arms had locked tight, his legs had buckled, and he’d fallen to the ground. The shells had spilt, sending the quartermaster diving for cover. Lorn’s whole body convulsed like a puppet in the hands of a cruel master. Foam flecked his lips. His eyes rolled white.

The other Ogryns had stepped back.

‘What it be?’ one muttered.

‘Chaos thing,’ another whispered.

‘Daemon in his bones.’

From that day, they looked at him not as kin, but as cursed.

The priests offered no comfort. The bone ’eads, with their crude augmetic skull-plates, told the Ogryns that Chaos seeped in where discipline failed. To see a comrade convulse and spit like Lorn was to see corruption.

No one explained sickness. No one explained seizures. To the Ogryn, there was only the Emperor’s light and the Enemy’s shadow. And they decided the shadow had taken Lorn.

Lorn did not understand.

When the fits passed, he woke with bruises and blood in his mouth. He tried to rise, tried to laugh as he always had. But the others looked at him with fear.

He begged. ‘Lorn good! Lorn strong! Lorn fight for ’Peror!’

They shook their heads.

‘’S a Daemon in yous,’ they said.

And he saw it in their eyes—their simple loyalty had turned. They believed what they had been told. And to them, belief was everything.

The last fit came by the river.

They had marched from the trenches to fetch water to cool the big guns that were keeping up a steady barrage through the day, heavy barrels strapped to their backs. Lorn carried two at once, proud of his strength. The others marched beside him, chanting simple hymns in broken voices.

Then the trembling came.

First his hands, then his arms. The barrels fell, clattering into the mud. He tried to speak, to tell them he was fine, but his tongue thickened. His knees locked. He collapsed into the dirt, back arching, body writhing, mouth foaming.

The Ogryns dropped their loads and stumbled back.

‘See! Daemon!’ one shouted. ‘It sting him again!’

‘He cursed!’ another bellowed. ‘He magiked! Must go!’

Lorn heard them dimly, as if from a distance. His limbs were not his own. His body had become a prison, jerking and thrashing as though mocking his will.

And in that prison of his own flesh, he wept.

They seized him while the fit still gripped him.

Massive hands, rough as stone, lifted him by arms and legs. He tried to scream, but only blood-flecked spittle dribbled down his chin. The river’s roar filled his ears as they carried him to its edge.

‘He daemon,’ one intoned, voice like a crude prayer.

‘Water take daemon away,’ said another.

‘Lorn no more,’ said a third.

He wanted to shout I am loyal! I am yours! I fight for the Emperor! But his mouth would not obey. His body, his cursed betrayer, gave him only strangled gasps.

They swung him once, twice, then hurled him into the black current.

The water was cold as the void.

It swallowed him whole, filled his mouth, his lungs. His limbs thrashed—part seizure, part desperate struggle—but the river cared nothing for his strength. The current dragged him down. Stones cut his back. Silt filled his eyes.

Above, the shapes of his kin stood watching, their brutish silhouettes haloed by the grey sky. None moved to save him. None dared.

He was not Lorn to them anymore. He was a thing, a daemon wearing his skin.

In the darkness beneath the water, his body convulsed one last time. The river and the fit became the same, a cage of violence and drowning.

Betrayed by his comrades.

Betrayed by his priests.

Betrayed most of all by his own shaking flesh.

His last thought was not of Chaos, nor of daemons, nor even of the Emperor.

It was of strength wasted, strength mocked, strength undone.

And then the river closed over him.

His kin left him, his body carried off by the river.

When the seizures did not stop, when he did not rise from the surface of the river, they told themselves the daemon had drowned. They told themselves they were safe, that they had done the Emperor’s will.

But none of them spoke his name again.

For even the simple-hearted know shame, though they cannot name it.

And in the silence of their ranks, in the empty space where Lorn had stood, they felt a hollow weight heavier than any of the great guns’ shells.