Since Signus Prime, and during the period of Imperium Secundus, every word Kano had heard Sanguinius speak had been tinged with melancholy. The burden of his tragedies was a heavy one. Kano found it difficult to hold at bay dark thoughts about the Legion’s destiny. How much harder, then, for the primarch? He had to contemplate the reality that tainted blood was his gift to his sons. Since the victory on Pyrrhan, though, Kano thought he had detected a change. Now he was sure. Sanguinius’ eyes were still marked with care, their gaze fixed, it seemed, on a distant point, eternally considering how the present moment and a future end aligned. What was different was his voice. He sounded as if he had encountered something he had considered impossible, and he had been renewed. The weight of concerns had not lifted, but new possibilities had opened before him, and he was eager for the challenge. Though the Angel, too, was disturbed by what had just happened, the attack had run up against a core of hope that was stronger than before.

Kano wished he felt more reassured than he did.

Sanguinius looked at the silent crew and legionaries. His face was shadowed with concern again. ‘I will be in the Sanctorum,’ he said to Kano, and withdrew from the bridge.

The Angel was still in meditative mood several hours later, when the fleet translated back to the materium.

‘I have the coordinates,’ said Mautus. ‘This is Davin!’

At last, Kano thought. He felt a sharp stab of premonition as the shutters parted.

Silence descended on the bridge again as the system came into view. The Blood Angels gazed upon an immensity of death…

A grey sphere surrounded the Davin System. At first, from the point of translation, it had appeared almost featureless, except for a porous quality that made the Lion think of dilapidated stone. Its gravitational well was weak, barely pulling at the fleet.

‘Why do I feel like I’m looking at a grave?’ Holguin asked.

‘Not a grave,’ the Lion said as the fleets moved closer and the details of the sphere resolved in the oculus. ‘An ossuary.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘This thing is made of bones.’

The Invincible Reason came within a thousand miles of the surface of the necrosphere. Auspex scans zeroed in on small areas and projected magnified hololiths on the tacticarium screens. Individual bones and complete skeletons interlaced, creating a cracked, knobby plain. There were bodies of humans, eldar, orks – of every xenos race the Lion had ever encountered, and an even greater number he did not know.

Abyssal solemnity radiated from the necrosphere. It was perfect stillness, the quiet of the end of everything. Beyond it, the frenzy of the Ruinstorm was more intense, and the bones appeared to float in a sea of agonised colours. The materium bled around Davin, and the system was death lurking at the centre of the wound.