The daemon’s voice comes from everywhere. From inside my mind. It holds me in place as it looms forwards, eyes unblinking. My Sisters are frozen, too. Locked in place by its wicked power as dozens of images play across the daemon’s reflective, silvered surface. I see the lowdeck chapels, burning. The stoke halls made into slaughterhouses. I see whole swathes of the ship frozen with void-lock, and the gunnery decks awash with blood. I see the crew murdering one another and laughing.

But you do not see the truth of fate, or time. You cannot see the fullness of the path that lies before you, because you are nothing more than a pinprick of fire in the ever-darkening void, it says. A tiny, insignificant light.

The images change again to show me Beatris and Radah cut down by a flurry of shadows. Canoness Commander Elivia on her knees, bleeding, her sword shattered.

Look upon the cost of your prophecy, little light.

My heart thunders with rage. I am breathing through my teeth. Straining against the daemon’s hold on me.

They will all die, it says. One by one. Light by light, until only you remain.

The images change again, and this time I see my own Sisters. The ones I swore to lead and protect. Calyth. Joti. Veridia. Sarita and Munari. They are fighting their way through a corridor choked with a horde of warp-maddened vassals and members of the Vow’s crew. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Enough to be a danger, even to my Sisters in their blessed armour. I watch my Sisters kill their way through, offering the mercy of death. But it is not enough. The crowd are too many. Too mad. One by one, my Sisters are overwhelmed and dragged to their knees, where they are cut to bloody ­ribbons. Slaughtered, like animals.

Such a price to pay, it says, and the daemon’s mouths all smile. All for the want of your martyr’s death.

‘I deny you, creature of darkness.’

The words press their way between my gritted teeth. Heat rushes through my body all over again, like a fever. Like being burned alive on the Contemplation. It courses from my core outwards, along my limbs. It sets my scars alight, and despite the daemon’s hold on me, I manage to raise my bolter and pull the trigger. The gun bellows, the round detonating against the creature’s crystal skin. It is not enough to break the daemon, but it is enough to break the spell.

‘Destroy it!’ I roar, firing again as my Sisters do the same around me. ‘By bolt and blade. By the God-Emperor’s grace!’

‘By His grace!’ my Sisters answer.