[Slow Burn] When he was sixteen, Eric Volganov was dragged out of an underground hive city by a conscription officer and forced to take the place of a nobleman's son.
He didn't know what the Emperor was. All he knew was that his father's old lasgun had enough charge left for one final shot.
He didn't know what xenos were. All he knew was that something beneath the ice fields was watching him.
He met five people: Instructor Rezov, whose eyes concealed a farewell letter; Vasily, whose pupils sometimes turned into slits; Ivan, who could shoot down a wolf king in a blizzard; Grigory, who took down an antigrav tank with heavy weapons; and Katya, who dug snow all night with a shovel after her first kill.
Thirty years later, the thirteenth Black Crusade ended, and every member of the Heroic Souls Company was dead.
Except him.
Eric returned to Valhalla alone and erected a stone marker on the ice fields, carving three hundred and seventy-two names into it.
Every year, he brewed a pot of Tanna tea and spoke to the stone.
Some called him a hero. He said:
“I'm no hero. I just lived a few minutes longer than they did.”
But whenever the aurora lit up the ice fields, he could always feel it: the thing watching him from beneath the ice was still waiting.
Waiting for what?
For him to finish telling the story.
