Seraphs of the Emperor’s Judgment

Chapter 101: A Fool Trapped in Armor

The chapel's doors were only meant for mortals to pass through; Soshyan had to lower his head to enter.

Upon entering, the first thing that caught his eye was a small prayer room.

It was sparsely furnished, even simpler than some private shrines.

Two travel trunks mounted on the wall formed a closet. In the most conspicuous place among them lay a pile of books. The window and shutters were propped open by a branch snapped from a scar-bark tree.

Sunlight streamed through the window, passed over exposed metal, and cast onto the flat wooden walls.

More light came from a lumen box resting on an overturned crate next to the lectern, as well as primitive grease lamps on other shelves.

The flickering light illuminated old circuit boards and damaged reading dataslates. Some other ornaments of little practical value were placed in open boxes on the floor; most looked to be of a certain age.

A dust-covered Statue of the Emperor hung on the wall, having lost its original luster.

Soshyan took off his helmet and clipped it to his waist.

Step by step, he walked to the window at the end of the prayer room and pressed the control button to raise the blinds.They hummed as they retracted into the recesses of the window frame, allowing golden light to pour in.

Soshyan gazed out the window and discovered that behind the chapel was actually a cliff. From here, one could overlook the vast, boundless land outside the Soms Hive.

He couldn't help but drink in the breathtaking scenery.

Suddenly, a few memories flashed violently in his mind. It seemed he used to do this every morning.

Starting from here, everything that had been unfamiliar suddenly gained a slight sense of familiarity.

Soshyan turned around. Through the half-open closet door, he caught a glimpse of a small wooden toy horse standing atop a storage box.

He seemed to still be able to hear the sound of a harmonica drifting from afar, and smell the scent of freshly squeezed fruit juice.

On the bookshelf in the corner of the room, a medal for outstanding students of the Soms Nobles Academy sat peacefully inside a beautiful little box, next to which was an ancient prayer box.

By the window ten paces away, a Regicide board was arranged on a small table. Judging from the distribution of the pieces, this game of Regicide would end in another two or three moves.

Time seemed to have frozen.

Home?

An inexplicable emotion surged up within Soshyan, as if a large boulder was blocking his chest, making it difficult to even breathe smoothly.

At this moment, he noticed a door, a door left ajar on the side of the prayer room.

He walked forward, but hesitated at the moment he was about to push it open.

Then, Soshyan removed his Gauntlets and gently touched the rough hardwood door with his palm, pushing it open bit by bit, bit by bit.

It was a subconscious action.

Just like many years ago, when he returned home too late and became exceedingly cautious for fear of his mother's reprimands.

Then, he saw her.

A shriveled body lay on the bed, eyes closed, its chest rising and falling faintly in rhythmic breathing.

Her skin was ashen, full of wrinkles, dull and lacking luster. Her hair had also been shaved off. A row of walnut-shaped machines chirped and beeped by the bed, covered in golden buttons and display screens.

Coiled copper wires extended from the sockets along the sides of those machines and attached to her skull, while crackling spheres softly hummed atop the devices.

These pieces of equipment looked very new; it seemed they had only been moved in recently.

But it no longer held any meaning.

Soshyan stood at the doorway. He could not connect this dying person, shrunken like an infant, to the one in his memories.

Suddenly, he caught sight of a picture frame on the bedside table out of the corner of his eye.

He walked over with light steps, picked up the picture frame, and brushed away the thick layer of dust upon it.

A man, a woman, and a child trying to look mature.

How ridiculous.

Soshyan knelt on one knee and gently cupped the shriveled hand resting on the edge of the bed. The contrast between the two was like that of an adult and an infant.

He felt absolutely no weight, as if what he held was merely a feather. Aside from the near-vanished warmth, he could hardly feel any presence at all.

At this time, what else could he do?

He prayed, prayed that the Emperor could bestow a miracle, even if just for a moment, just for a moment...

At that moment, he suddenly realized that this person, his mother, might have repeated this very act tens of millions of times after his departure.

Soshyan bowed his head deeply, hoping for a miracle.

However, there were no miracles.

Nothing at all.

Soshyan stayed in the room quietly for three days. For these three days, he did not move a single step, nor did he speak a single word.

At dawn on the fourth day, all the machines simultaneously let out ear-piercing shrieks.

Miracles were nowhere to be found; there was only salvation.

After one final heave, this pitiful woman's chest stilled forever, while her hand rested in the palm of her own son.

Soshyan carefully returned that withered hand beneath the blanket. He then wrapped his shriveled mother in a blanket, cradled her in his arms, and walked towards the chapel doors.

She looked so peaceful, just like a baby. Soshyan did not know if he had ever lain in her arms in such a posture.

When he walked out the door, he saw that a large crowd had already gathered outside, many people he did not know.

"Cousin, Aunt she—"

Upon seeing what was in Soshyan's arms, Nerio immediately realized what had happened. Tears uncontrollably streamed down his face.

Those other people, those whom Soshyan did not know, wearing masks of fake expressions, also followed suit with choked sobs and regretful sighs.

Soshyan did not spare them even the slightest thread of attention. Instead, cradling his mother, he strode out of the manor and headed straight for the family cemetery.

The burial ceremony was not overly complex. Soshyan's mother had long ago reserved her own place next to her husband's grave.

After a simple cleansing of the remains, the Archbishop of Soms presided over the funeral—according to the standards of the most devout believers.

The funeral lasted for six hours. Besides her personal belongings, Soshyan also placed the very first medal he received after becoming a Space Marine into the sarcophagus as a burial object.

But entirely unbeknownst to everyone, after this funeral concluded, Soshyan secretly performed another small burial, right next to his parents' graves.

And the one being buried was none other than himself.

He buried all his belongings from his mortal period within it, and erected a tombstone.

There was no epitaph on the tombstone, nor the name of its owner, only a single line of High Gothic.

[A fool trapped in armor]

After finishing all this, physically and mentally exhausted, Soshyan silently returned to the Starfire. He declined all visits and banquets, locking himself inside his own private cabin.

He felt an unprecedented exhaustion. He really wanted to sleep, to just sleep and ignore everything else...