Colonel Carsten reorganized the troops in traditional Mordian fashion. He tried to bind the recruits with harsh discipline, and any minor infraction, such as standing out of formation or failing to fold a blanket into a neat block, invited merciless "corporal punishment." Yet these heavy-handed methods won him no obedience. Instead, they stirred an even deeper rebellion and hatred of authority ingrained in the bones of this Hive City scum. They began shirking their duties and even secretly plotting small-scale riots.
Alexander took the exact opposite approach.
He never physically punished anyone, and even abolished all the tedious formation drills. Each day, he simply gathered the recruits together, sat among them, and listened to their stories.
"...My name is Zora. I came from Hive, at the very bottom of Terra. I never knew my parents. I survived by fighting mutant rats for scraps in garbage heaps. My only 'family' was my little brother, but last month, an Enforcer beat him to death right in front of me for stealing a loaf of synthetic bread. I killed that Enforcer, and then they sent me here." A young man with a vicious knife scar on his face and wolfish eyes recounted his past in a hoarse voice.
There were no tears in his eyes, only numbness and hatred as cold as an iceberg.
Everyone fell silent. Stories like his were all too common here.
Alexander listened quietly to the end, then rose and walked over to the young man named Zora.
He offered no words of comfort. He merely reached out with his cold steel left hand and gently rested it on Zora's head.
"I know that feeling." His voice was quiet, yet carried a warmth powerful enough to pierce the heart. "The despair of watching everything you love crushed without mercy, while you're powerless to stop it."
He slowly raised his head and swept his gaze over every recruit present.
"Every one of you is just like me. You're orphans abandoned by the world, dust trampled beneath fate's feet. Your hearts are filled with pain and hatred."
"Those lofty figures tell us to forget our hatred and learn obedience. They say it's for the Emperor, for the Imperium."
"Fucking bullshit!"
For the first time, Alexander swore.
"Hatred is not our sin! Hatred is our most precious, most sacred treasure! It's the only proof that this fucked-up world has hurt us!"
"I won't make you forget your hatred. On the contrary, I want you to embrace it, feel it, and forge it into your sharpest weapon of vengeance!"
He pointed to the three hundred and fifty-one veterans standing nearby, silent as statues.
"Do you see them? They once had nothing, just like you. They were the orphans of Cadia, the dregs of war. But now, they've found a new 'home.'"
"In this home, we don't care where you came from or ask about your past. We care about only one thing-whether your hatred runs deep enough! Whether the flames of your vengeance burn fiercely enough!"
"Here, your hatred will be respected, your pain will be shared by everyone, and your vengeance will become the common purpose of us all!"
"We will become each other's family! We will use everyone's hatred to kindle a vast fireplace, one powerful enough to burn this entire unjust world to ashes!"
"We will no longer be orphans! We will no longer be dust!"
"We will become-flame!"
"Now, tell me, you souls abandoned by the world! Will you join this family?!"
His words struck straight into the depths of the recruits' battered, numbed souls like the wildest seduction of the Warp. Their yearning for belonging and a reason to exist, suppressed for so long that they had forgotten it, erupted like a dormant volcano!
"...I will!"
The wolf-like young man named Zora was the first to drop to one knee before Alexander, bowing his proud head, which he had never lowered to anyone.
Then came the second, the third...
In the end, more than ten thousand criminals and lowlifes from the bottom of the Hive City offered their most fanatical, absolute loyalty to the young Commissar with a steel left arm and a saintly smile, as though welcoming their god.
Watching it all from a distance, Colonel Carsten felt a bone-chilling cold shoot from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.
And he, Valerius Carsten, was nothing more than an insignificant, laughable backdrop to this grand ceremony marking the birth of a heretical cult.
Half a year passed in this strange atmosphere, half seawater and half flame.
Over those six months, the 99th Regiment, the "Pride of Cadia," underwent a complete and bewildering transformation.
Through Colonel Carsten's almost self-punishing persistence, the unit's "exterior" looked increasingly like a real army. The soldiers learned to goose-step, fold their blankets, and shout resounding slogans praising the Emperor on parade. Their appearance and discipline were beyond reproach; even the Mordian Iron Guard's honor guard would have felt inferior.
Beneath this "strictly disciplined" exterior, however, Alexander was leading the unit's "inner self" headlong down a path of utterly uncontrollable madness.
The "Fireplace Theory" had become the unit's sole, supreme guiding philosophy.
The recruits no longer called one another "comrades-in-arms," but "family" or "brothers." Their form of address for Alexander had also quietly shifted from "Lord Commissar" to the veterans' "Elder Brother."
Each day's training began with an "Adding Fuel" ceremony steeped in religious ritual. The soldiers formed a circle and roared out their deepest, most painful memories and their hatred of the enemy. Then, like a patiently guiding priest, Alexander would channel and elevate this "firewood" laden with negative emotions, ultimately transforming it into a resolve to protect their "home" and the purest, coldest murderous intent toward their "enemies."
The three hundred and fifty-one veterans became this "cult's" three hundred and fifty-one "Battle Priests." They personally taught the recruits the brutal, efficient killing techniques they had honed through countless battles, using their hideous scars and cold prosthetic limbs to demonstrate the ultimate "glory" of "sacrificing oneself for family."
The entire 99th Regiment became a tightly sealed fighting force, utterly unified and filled with collectivist fervor. Outwardly, they were courteous and strictly disciplined. Within, a destructive fire burned fiercely enough to make even the maddest Khorne Cultist take notice.
Colonel Carsten saw it all and protested to Alexander countless times, even threatening to "report this to the Department of Commissars and the Inquisition."
Yet every time, Alexander simply smiled and rendered him speechless with flawless rhetoric so impeccably "politically correct" that it was almost unassailable.
"Colonel, I'm merely explaining the Ecclesiarchy's teachings in a way that speaks more closely to the soldiers' hearts. Look, comparing the company to a 'family' and the Emperor to the 'head of the household'-isn't that the most vivid and profound interpretation of 'loyalty'? Surely you don't believe our soldiers shouldn't protect the Emperor's domains as they would their own families?"
Colonel Carsten was left choking on his words. He knew every word the other man spoke was twisted sophistry, yet could find no opening to challenge it under Imperial law.
This young Commissar was like the most cunning, most adeptly disguised demon, wrapping his darkest, most dangerous heretical core in the holiest and most radiant language.
He could only watch helplessly as the unit traveled farther and farther down a road entirely beyond his control.
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