Sanguinius strode to the edge of the command dais. The hull groaned. The empyrean’s convulsions were roars and whispers that battered the ears and slid into the veins.

‘We fly on righteous wings,’ he thundered, defying the storm. ‘We cannot be stopped.’

The warp seemed to answer him. A massive surge struck the fleet. Even shielded by the Geller field, the auspex readings fell into shrieking madness. Pict screens shuddered, and their images suddenly looked too much like flesh. Vox-casters squawked and rasped with incoming transmissions, as broken and static-disrupted as they were urgent.

‘The Encarnadine has a Geller field breach,’ Neverrus said. ‘Incursions on the Scarlet Liberty, Sable and Requiem Axona.’

Sanguinius pressed his lips together. An instinct, deep and ancient, insisted that the apparent response of the warp to his challenge was no illusion. The fleet was not just battered by the vortices the traitors had summoned into being. This attack was directed.

Directed at him.

I do not accept this, he thought. The implications were too grotesque. He was deluding himself with sinful pride. It was the same hubris that had convinced him the Imperium’s salvation depended on his taking the throne. Would he now decide the empyrean itself was attacking him?

No.

And yet. And yet.

The Red Tear shuddered. The huge battleship was tossed by the fury of the warp.

The death vision pressed harder, a bare membrane of consciousness holding it back. Beyond the vision, there was something else. A hint of shadow, the weight of a huge displacement wave, the thing that pushed the vision upon him, that used the storm against the fleet.

You are watched. You are targeted.

Again, he tried to shake the delusions off. His mind must be clear. There were threats enough that were real without him clouding his decision-making with hubristic anguish. Whether or not he, personally, was the subject of the attack, something was coming. The threads of unreality were already reaching into the ship. A serious breach was imminent.

Sanguinius drew the Blade Encarmine from its sheath. Raldoron, in his office of equerry, approached and handed him the Spear of Telesto. Behind him, the doors of the bridge opened and Azkaellon led his Sanguinary Guard out to surround the command dais. At the sight of the gathering might of the Blood Angels, the human crew drew courage. The moans quieted. The officers worked their stations, holding the course of the Red Tear as true as they could in a realm where truth drew the blood of reason.

Claws scratched at the hull. They scraped along it, as if it were a thin wall of tin. The shutters bulged again, and yet again, with the rhythm of strange lungs.