Qi-Oh and Eugenia give themselves over to blades, their chainswords snarling through armour plating and sending arcs of pale dust into the air. Ashava fires her flamer with that same grace and deftness that I saw aboard the Vow. Each short, controlled burst catches one of the heretic warriors, lighting their cobalt plate ablaze. The flame does not stop them, but it deforms their armoured suits under heat and pressure. It marks them for Veridia and Haskia. For Joti. The three of them turn their bolters on whichever of the Heretic Astartes Ashava chooses to burn, shattering their armour plates and ornate masks and sending them crashing to the ground.

The three of them are in turn defended by Sarita and Munari. The twins fight as though they are of one mind, though they are both wounded badly. Munari’s face is crumpled around her right eye, the swelling already trying to steal her sight. Sarita’s chestplate is cracked along its length, her breathing coming in sawing rasps.

‘It looks as though this shall be a story for the both of us, Sister,’ Munari says, as she turns on her heel and fires again at a cobalt-clad heretic looming through the smoke. She hits the silent warrior three times, even with her eye as good as closed.

‘That does not mean I will let you tell it,’ Sarita replies, as she reloads her own weapon.

Munari laughs. Sarita doesn’t. She probably couldn’t, even if she were to try. I heave my sword downwards, splitting another of the heretics open from collar to hip. Grey dust blows out in a thick plume, scattering across my scars. I expect to see something inside. Something corrupt, and debased. But there is nothing inside the suit of armour save for that dust. The warrior is hollow, just as I once was. Even so, I still feel something like sorrow bleeding from it as it collapses to its knees.

I end that sorrow and the stream of dust in the same instant by taking the heretic’s head. Even then, I do not pause. I keep going, striding straight through the fires that Ashava sets as she washes the Heretic Astartes with promethium, cracking their eye-lenses and making their armour run like wax. Eugenia ­shatters her chainsword’s teeth churning the blade through a heretic’s mask, while beside her Qi-Oh plunges her own sword deep into another’s chest, the blessed steel breaking deeply what bolters and las-bolts cannot hope to pierce. We gain ground, pace by pace, pushing the traitors apart. Pushing through their lines, ever closer to the crystal steps.

But then Veridia cries out.

I turn in time to see her stagger back from one of the Heretic Astartes, her bolter lost, and her sword with it. Veridia’s armour is pulverised. Crushed inwards, as is her chest beneath it. Blood dribbles freely all over the chamber floor as she struggles to breathe. To stay upright.