Glass shards burst over me. I push through them and raise my bolter, my fractured arm creaking and my chest burning and my heartbeat pounding in my ears. I fire twice, blinding two more of the creature’s eyes. The bolter’s recoil turns my arm from fractured to shattered. My fingers go numb, and I lose my grip on my gun. It falls to the deck, but I do not stop. I cannot stop. The daemon is so close that I can smell it. Ozone and spoil and the cold ice of the void.

Never give up, Evangeline.

‘Now, Ashava!’ I cry.

She does not speak, but nor does she hesitate. Purifying fire blooms all around me, travelling over my armour and coursing down my blade as I roar wordlessly and plunge my sword through the storm of glass and into the daemon’s membranous central eye. Screams spill out again. A huge wave of invisible force hits me hard in the chest and threatens to take my legs from under me. I cannot breathe. Cannot blink. All is fire and smoke and the acrid stink of the daemon. But I do not stop. I do not give up. I put both hands on the hilt of my sword and lean all of my power-armoured weight on it. The blade squeals as it inches inwards, slowly.

‘You have… no… power here,’ I tell the mirrored monstrosity as we burn.

The daemon’s remaining eyes shatter, one by one. But still, it laughs.

You think this a victory, little light, the daemon says. But this is simply a step on the path that fate has set for you.

‘Fate does not set my path,’ I say, between breaths. ‘The God-Emperor does.’

And then I drive my sword the rest of the way into its hateful, slitted eye. Right to the hilt. This time, there is more than a thunderclap. There is an instant of absolute violence. Sound and sight.

And then silence. Blessed silence.

I pull my sword free and the daemon shatters from its central eye outwards. Not violently, this time, but calmly, the cracks travelling all across its surface like a fine lace shroud. It breaks into fragments that fall away until all that is left of it is a great black stain and Ashava’s fire, burning itself out on the deck and on my ceramite plate.

I look around to see that Haskia is back on her feet and helping Ashava sit Eugenia up. At the sight of her, all words escape me. The left side of Eugenia’s face is open to the bone, masked with blood. I cannot even make out the shape of her eye amongst the mess.

‘Is she alive?’ I ask. ‘Is Eugenia alive?’

My youngest Sister stirs, somehow. She rasps her reply through the blood in her mouth.

‘I am alive.’

I freeze, just staring at her. At all of that blood that was meant for me.