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From Blood of the Emperor: A Primarchs Anthology: Lupus Daemonis

He was the runt of the clan, a freak of scars. A survivor of wounds no child could possibly survive. A boy whose body refused to grow and develop like the others.

Some called him a curse, a changeling left by the evil spirits at Cthonia’s heart to torment them. They all wished him dead, but the Overlord had forbidden it.

Khageddon had found him hung from a hook in an abattoir cave of the Corpse Grinders, a skin-masked butcher in a blood-stiffened apron readying him for a greased spit. Khageddon had gutted the man before lifting the boy from the hook and carrying him back to Reiver territory. No one knew why and he had never given a reason for saving the infant with shining sea-green eyes.

Down in the dark, everyone’s eyes were a dull and sickly blue. Terms like biodiversity were unknown to the Reivers, but everyone knew that different meant bad.

Different meant you were an outcast. Shunned.

Many were the days Nergüi wished the Overlord had left him to die on that hook. Khageddon had called him that, a meaningless name from the dead language of Cthonia’s first deep miners. One that literally meant no name.

‘It is for protection,’ said Khageddon on one of the rare days he bothered to speak to Nergüi.

‘Protection from what?’

Khageddon looked to the roof of the cave, and his pearlescent eye clicked and scratched as the mechanism seized. A shadow of regret passed over his face.