TEMPLAR ARKA
NAME: Andrew “Arka” Bell
PLANET OF ORIGIN: Super Earth
ENLISTMENT DATE: June 20th, 2185
BIOGRAPHY:
Before the armor, the vows and medals; his name was Andrew.
It was the name his daughter, Alice, knew when she was afraid.
The name that meant safety.
The name that ceased to exist the day the sky turned into ash.
That day, the heavens over Super Earth had not been blue for weeks.
Smoke and debris choked the atmosphere, turning daylight into a perpetual dusk. Ash fell constantly, soft and silent, settling on ruined streets and the shoulders of the displaced. Sirens overlapped until they lost all meaning.
Andrew ran with his daughter, her hand locked in his, her breath sharp but steady. She was 8 years old… old enough to understand what war meant, young enough to still believe her father could protect her from it.
Illuminate light flickered above the cloud layer.
When they reached the evacuation platform, it was already collapsing into panic. Civilians surged forward. SEAF personnel shouted orders, forcing people into lines that dissolved as quickly as they formed. Pelicans hissed as they started ascending one after the other.
Andrew pushed Alice toward the last Pelican on the ground.
The SEAF trooper at the ramp raised a hand.
“We’re over the weight-limit!”he barked. “Children and essential personnel ONLY!”
“I’m her father,” Andrew said. “I’ll take the next one.”
The trooper shook his head. “There is no next one. We’re the last.”
Behind them, Illuminate fire lit the clouds… followed by thunderous sounds of explosions.
“Please,” Andrew said. “I can help. I have combat experience. I swear!”
The trooper didn’t even look at him anymore.
“I said no.”
The Pelican roared its engines as the pilot behind them signals that time is up.
Alice tightened her grip on Andrew’s hand.
“Dad!”
Andrew’s voice cracked as he dropped to one knee in the ash.
“Please,” he begged the trooper. “Then just… just take her. Please. She’s all I have.”
For a moment, the trooper hesitated. Then he grabbed Alice by the arm and pulled her aboard the Pelican.
Andrew felt her fingers slip from his.
She turned back once as the hatch began to close, trying to break free.
“Dad!” she said. “Don’t leave me!”
Andrew forced a smile through the ash and tears.
“It’s alright. I’ll be right behind you,” he lied. “I promise.”
The hatch seals. Alice looks through the window, her hands pressing against it.
“I love you, Dad.”
The Pelican lifted.
Then joined a dozen others clawing into the smoke-filled sky.
For one fragile heartbeat, Andrew believed he had made the right choice….
Then the sky flashed white.
Illuminate Stingrays descended in perfect synchronization, leaving bright blue trails. Their lances of alien light scythed through the evacuation fleet.
The Pelicans exploded one after the other… simply ceasing to exist, erased mid-ascent.
And then hers.
Andrew falls to his knees as he watches her ship get reduced to ashes.
She was gone…
Super Earth reclaimed his hometown hours later. Command reports labeled the loss unavoidable.
Alice’s name became one line among millions… no remains, no marker, no place for Andrew to kneel.
Something inside him hollowed out and never refilled.
He enlisted into the Helldiver Corps the week after Super Earth repelled the Illuminate forces. Her name etched on his armor.
They told him he was too old. Too damaged. Too broken. Yet he did not argue. He did not plead. He only said that if he had survived while others did not, then that survival had to be spent.
When asked for a callsign, Andrew remembered Alice’s drawings; angels with burning swords, wings outstretched not in mercy, but in defiance.
“They protect people!”she’d told him once.
“Just like you, Dad.”
“Call me Arka.”he said. A name shaped from Archangels and war.
And ‘Andrew’ disappeared into armor and ash.
On the frontlines, Arka was relentless.
He held collapsing flanks alone. Refused extraction orders if there were remaining civillians. He advanced through Illuminate fire as if the beams couldn’t touch him..
The Illuminate no longer frightened him.
It was during a stalled counteroffensive, one written off as a lost zone, that Grand Master Aegis found him.
Aegis watched Arka fight in silence: alone in a ruined SEAF building, back to a shattered wall, holding a corridor so evacuation shuttles could lift. His armor was scorched. His ammo nearly gone. Still, he did not retreat.
When the battle finally ended, Aegis approached him through the smoke.
“You’re alive?” the Grand Master asked.
Arka did not turn.
“Not anymore.”he replied.
Aegis did not offer comfort. She offered understanding.
She saw the etching on his armor.
She knew the story instantly.
She recognized the familiar shape of a man who had lost everything and turned the loss into a weapon.
“You fight like someone who has nothing left to lose,” Aegis said.
“Yes,” Arka answered.
“Then fight with us,” the Grand Master said. “Not to die, but to stand where others cannot.”
Aegis placed the Templar medallion into Arka’s hands personally.
Andrew did not return.
But an Archangel, rose from the ash,
recruited on the frontlines, forged by loss,
and sworn by a Grand Master who understood that some warriors are not found in academies…
They are found standing alone beneath a dead sky, still refusing to fall.
From that day onward, Arka was no longer just a Helldiver. He was a Templar.
