Guilliman had made it a priority to re-establish the Sisters of Silence. He had gathered up the broken remnants of their order after arriving back on Terra. As the influence of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica had waxed and waned, their military arm had become less prominent over time. There had been comparatively many Sisters of Silence during the Great Crusade and the Heresy. Though numerous enough to play a role in the War of the Beast a thousand years after the Heresy, by the 41st millennium they had dwindled toward extinction. Those remaining were occupied aboard the Black Ships, hunting psykers and performing the crucial role of damping the abilities of the cargo. The militant orders of the Emperor’s day had been disbanded, diminished or lost to war. The last surviving few were scattered around the Imperium, most reduced to a handful of members. They fought on, here and there, but their glory days were a myth at best. They were unremembered by the people they had died to protect.

After thousands of years of obscurity, when Guilliman returned the Sisters of Silence had come back willingly into the light, not because of who he was, but because of what he was. To them, he was a living saint.

It had shocked Guilliman, that the Sisters of Silence worshipped his father as so many other misguided souls did. Not for the first time, he thought of his brother Lorgar.

The clock loomed over the broken altar like a murderer over his victim. The great slab of exotic stone that had made the altar had been cloven in twain, and the walls behind it were deeply carved into with the three-ringed symbol of the Plague God. Arcane sigils gleamed with reflected witch light between them.

A wooden statue of the Emperor holding out His arms in blessing hung above the altar still, but its head, feet and hands had been hacked off, and the wood was charred all down one side. To the statue’s right and left there were small alcoves, each containing representations of the loyal primarchs. For some reason these effigies were untouched. Most looked nothing like their subjects; Guilliman’s was laughably idealistic.

With the Sisters standing by Guilliman he was protected from the greater part of the clock’s power, but still the sense of evil emanating from it curdled his stomach and made his hands tingle with an urge to violence. It pushed at his mind, voiceless whispers telling him to tear off his armour and abase himself in the squalor of the city’s ruin. Were it not for the Sisters forming a circle around it, he would have found it difficult to approach. He pushed back with his own formidable will, refusing to be cowed.

‘This is what my brother uses to defile the earth,’ he said with cold anger. ‘He who was most vocal at Nikaea against the Librarium.’